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Remarkable and brilliant new book by long-time Objectivist and transhumanist Gennady Stolyarov: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Wrong-Gennady-Stolyarov-II/dp/0615932045

Death is a probable consequence of the second law of thermodynamics.

And if there are any living being in the solar system 5 billion years from now they will die when our sun dies.

That is the basic physics. Death has some benefits. It removes old defective organisms and creates and opportunity or niche for new (and perhaps better) life units.

Practical immortality would force the human race to eventually limit births only to replace people lost by accident or overwhelming natural conditions (earthquakes, floods, eruptions etc.).

Ba'al Chatzaf

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That would not be a bad thing Bob. Imagine if you will what Tesla or Einstein could have accomplished if they lived in a healthy body with a robust sound mind if they lived 500 years+.

The works of art that could be perfected if one became a master painter and sculpter with 300 years of practice. Remember there will be those that would reject this ability and gladly die. Currently most people have the flawed belief that true happiness is their just reward AFTER they are dead. So let them! I am pretty sure I could find endless things to do and create if I had the potential to live a productive fulfilling life of 200+ years!

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Death has some benefits. It removes old defective organisms and creates and opportunity or niche for new (and perhaps better) life units.

Practical immortality would force the human race to eventually limit births only to replace people lost by accident or overwhelming natural conditions (earthquakes, floods, eruptions etc.).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf -- The book argues otherwise. Convincingly. You should read it! :smile:

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Death has some benefits. It removes old defective organisms and creates and opportunity or niche for new (and perhaps better) life units.

Practical immortality would force the human race to eventually limit births only to replace people lost by accident or overwhelming natural conditions (earthquakes, floods, eruptions etc.).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf -- The book argues otherwise. Convincingly. You should read it! :smile:

I do not pay serious attention to any work that argues against the second law of thermodynamics on moral grounds. Nature is NEVER WRONG. Nature just is.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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"Nature just is." True, Bob. Life is good, goes the argument, therefore, more life is good-er - so endless life is good-est. Quantity doesn't equal quality. (Do you really want to live forever...)

Death is right.

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To all you resignationists, defeatists, passive submitters, surrender monkeys, and death-worshipers, I leave you to your fate, and that which you choose. I love life.

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Gosh. Do you understand consciousness? What is now, and one's present energy of consciousness, is extendable, ad infinitum, huh? More of the same and even better, with time unlimited? Epistemologically, I think it's an error of false extrapolation. Metaphysically, mortality delineates and defines man's life. The ethics of rational egoism will need a redo while you are about it, too.

Does it not occur that life is sweet and valuable because we know it's finite?

Casting anyone who voices disagreement, as "death worshiper" etc., is exceedingly intrinsicist. Not to say a glaring false dichotomy as well.

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To all you resignationists, defeatists, passive submitters, surrender monkeys, and death-worshipers, I leave you to your fate, and that which you choose. I love life.

You can love anything you darned please. That will not make the second law of thermodynamics go away.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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"Nature just is." True, Bob. Life is good, goes the argument, therefore, more life is good-er - so endless life is good-est. Quantity doesn't equal quality. (Do you really want to live forever...)

Death is right.

I would consider never ending immortality a curse and a half. I would not mind having a long life span (in good health) but living forever is a forever sentence to boredom and creeping insanity. We have finite brain power and finite brain capacity. We were never meant to live forever.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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I got a Kindle copy of the book and I'm going to read it, but I recall a recent news article on older people--the reason they are slower to act and react than younger. (I probably should look for it and post it here on OL.) The article said they have too much stuff in their heads. They know more, they have lived more, so they have more information stored in their brains.

It's like overloading a computer with programs and data. It will run, but run slowly and crash a lot.

Supposing death were conquered, I wonder how this problem would get solved after a few hundred years of learning new stuff every day. I think we would literally have to upload our consciousnesses to the cloud or something just to keep operating at a normal pace.

Talk about a collective mind.

:smile:

Michael

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"Nature just is." True, Bob. Life is good, goes the argument, therefore, more life is good-er - so endless life is good-est. Quantity doesn't equal quality. (Do you really want to live forever...)

Death is right.

I would consider never ending immortality a curse and a half. I would not mind having a long life span (in good health) but living forever is a forever sentence to boredom and creeping insanity. We have finite brain power and finite brain capacity. We were never meant to live forever.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Oh, but a brain transplant would fix that! (As a transhumanist might suggest).The mind now, that hasn't evolved to sustain indefinitely, no matter the weird and wonderful biological advances that lie ahead. Recipe for a major mind/body split.

It is a fine line to negotiate, I do admit, between placing highest value in your life - and in avoiding death at all costs. The one is genuine appreciation in living, the other seems to me mostly defined by abhorrence of dying.

What appears superficially the ultimate freedom to choose one's lifespan in the purported celebration of life, would soon devolve into a culture of death, in such a future. With indefinite life, medically guaranteed, all deaths (barring accident) would be by suicide, passively or actively. Surely, the question on everybody's lips all the time would be "When?" (How much longer do you choose to live?)

Not good news then, for rationalistic "lovers of life" who would try to escape the reality of their minds.

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1000 years ago the average lifespan was 30-40 years. Very few people ever reached "old age". Are we to abandon current medical practices like vaccinations, or someone using insulin to extend their life?

This is of course conjecture and theoretical at the moment. What if through science we could through a combination of gene therapy and other techniques slow the aging process and to some degree reverse it. If 70 could become the new 30?

If we could enhance and retain our mental vigour so as to not become senile and to continue to have a zest for life for as long as we are able to do so?

I am not talking about becoming an immortal robot here. How many people die and their last thoughts are "but I'm not done yet? I want to live!"

Most importantly barring a fatal accident if one were able to live a life of happiness, was able to lead a fulfilling productive joyful existence who would I be to judge and say "you have far outlived what is right."

On the other side of the same coin. If a man truly was no longer leading a fulfilling life. If he accomplished everything he wanted to accomplish, and experienced everything he thought that he wanted or needed to see then would it not be the most moral and proper form of justice for him to choose the time,place and manner of his death? (As long as he did not violate the NIOF principle.)

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To all you resignationists, defeatists, passive submitters, surrender monkeys, and death-worshipers, I leave you to your fate, and that which you choose. I love life.

You can love anything you darned please. That will not make the second law of thermodynamics go away.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf -- Reference.com defines the second law of thermodynamics as "the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work." The freedictionary.com defines it as "a law stating that mechanical work can be derived from a body only when that body interacts with another at a lower temperature; any spontaneous process results in an increase of entropy."

The obvious point here is that that law has nothing whatever to do with immortality. There's no contradiction here at all. Might as well say germ theory or the the third law of motion forbids infinite life. Even if one were to wildly suppose that this physical law somehow mysteriously forbids biological immortality, given the current age and expected lifespan of the universe, at best it would limit human longevity to a mere billion or trillion years. That's effective immortality.

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1000 years ago the average lifespan was 30-40 years. Very few people ever reached "old age". Are we to abandon current medical practices like vaccinations, or someone using insulin to extend their life?

This is of course conjecture and theoretical at the moment. What if through science we could through a combination of gene therapy and other techniques slow the aging process and to some degree reverse it. If 70 could become the new 30?

If we could enhance and retain our mental vigour so as to not become senile and to continue to have a zest for life for as long as we are able to do so?

I am not talking about becoming an immortal robot here. How many people die and their last thoughts are "but I'm not done yet? I want to live!"

Most importantly barring a fatal accident if one were able to live a life of happiness, was able to lead a fulfilling productive joyful existence who would I be to judge and say "you have far outlived what is right."

On the other side of the same coin. If a man truly was no longer leading a fulfilling life. If he accomplished everything he wanted to accomplish, and experienced everything he thought that he wanted or needed to see then would it not be the most moral and proper form of justice for him to choose the time,place and manner of his death? (As long as he did not violate the NIOF principle.)

All of which is entirely reasonable and rational, I think, and maybe you'll concede a long way from "death is wrong" as a blanket proposition. Being radical myself, I am aware of crossing the line into flamboyantly extreme statements sometimes. I wonder if Kyrel sincerely considers anyone who dissents with his assertion as a death worshiper!

Allowed a feasible possibility of a longer, healthy life it would be self-sacrificial for one not to take it - if that is desired, with conscious purpose in mind. There is a very fine area between a purposeful 'More!'- and a hedonistic 'More!', this one as much motivated by fear of non-existence, than by love of life. In my opinion, anyway.

I'm puzzled though by your reference to "NIOF" in context of ending one's own life?

One 'chooses' life (every day, by every thought and action), and the highly conscious individual, no less the one who has selected a medically-assisted longer life - has every moral and individual right to choose its ending.

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To all you resignationists, defeatists, passive submitters, surrender monkeys, and death-worshipers, I leave you to your fate, and that which you choose. I love life.

You can love anything you darned please. That will not make the second law of thermodynamics go away.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf -- Reference.com defines the second law of thermodynamics as "the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work." The freedictionary.com defines it as "a law stating that mechanical work can be derived from a body only when that body interacts with another at a lower temperature; any spontaneous process results in an increase of entropy."

The obvious point here is that that law has nothing whatever to do with immortality. There's no contradiction here at all. Might as well say germ theory or the the third law of motion forbids infinite life. Even if one were to wildly suppose that this physical law somehow mysteriously forbids biological immortality, given the current age and expected lifespan of the universe, at best it would limit human longevity to a mere billion or trillion years. That's effective immortality.

It has EVERYTHING to do with immortality. The Universe is cooling off. Eventually it will be in a state of maximum entropy and no more work will be done. The entire cosmos is going to die. That is nature's way. Heat flows from hotter bodies to cooler bodies (spontaneously). That is the essence of 2LOT. When a cyclic machine operates not all of the energy sunk from the machine to produce work can be recovered to produce work. The amount of high grade energy capable of producing work is decreasing globally. Death is Nature's way.

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To all you resignationists, defeatists, passive submitters, surrender monkeys, and death-worshipers, I leave you to your fate, and that which you choose. I love life.

You can love anything you darned please. That will not make the second law of thermodynamics go away.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf -- Reference.com defines the second law of thermodynamics as "the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work." The freedictionary.com defines it as "a law stating that mechanical work can be derived from a body only when that body interacts with another at a lower temperature; any spontaneous process results in an increase of entropy."

The obvious point here is that that law has nothing whatever to do with immortality. There's no contradiction here at all. Might as well say germ theory or the the third law of motion forbids infinite life. Even if one were to wildly suppose that this physical law somehow mysteriously forbids biological immortality, given the current age and expected lifespan of the universe, at best it would limit human longevity to a mere billion or trillion years. That's effective immortality.

The third law of motion only says that momentum is conserved. The second law of thermodynamics says that everything will cool down so no more work can derived from what energy there is. When everything as at the same temperature no more work is possible.

You don't have to worry about it because none of us will or can last long enough until the Cosmos reaches that state.

And even if our species manages a long shelf life when the Sun dies, we are done. The other stars are too far away for us to reach and even if we reached another star (not likely) it too will die. and so on and so on.

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To all you resignationists, defeatists, passive submitters, surrender monkeys, and death-worshipers, I leave you to your fate, and that which you choose. I love life.

This thread belongs in the Humor section.

--Brant

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