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Comment by sailormoon | Hacker News Reader

But bodies, like all machines, really do wear, and eventually they wear out.

Wow - imagine if we could repair machines! We could have vintage cars that were actually drivable instead of mounds of rust. We could have planes from WWII that, if anything, fly better today than the day they were built. We wouldn't have to throw things away the first instant they exhibited any sign of trouble.

Oh, wait. We do have all those things.

Sarcasm aside, you know what, give me the indefinite lifespan and I'll take my chances with the boredom and accidental death and brain overflow and collapsing society. Cause I'm sure all those things are bad but guess what, it's better than being dead.

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Yes, we can repair machines. And to some extent - and in the future to a further extent - we will be able to repair our bodies. But that's not the near future.

> give me the indefinite lifespan and I'll take my chances with the boredom and accidental death and brain overflow and collapsing society. Cause I'm sure all those things are bad but guess what, it's better than being dead.

The reality is though, that chances are much better than even that those things will not come to pass in our lifetimes, or even in our grandchildrens lifetimes.

So in spite of it being 'better' than being dead, chances are that you will die. What's so hard about it?

There are billions of data points (all the creatures that ever lived have died, with the exception of those that have not yet lived long enough to outlive their natural life span) and there isn't a single one that lived longer than 1500 years (an Olive tree, if I'm not mistaken).

But that's not the near future.

Well, I think you're underestimating the pace of technological progress. Yes, I might not personally live to see the day, but I don't think it will be that far away. There are a lot of rapidly aging rich people. Research is increasing in pace, not decreasing, and efforts like SENS are only just getting started.

Those billions of data points are largely irrelevant on a timeline where technology only increases in potency. Historical death rates offer almost no guidance to a future where the causes of those billions of deaths are being isolated and eliminated faster than ever. You do know that according to Moore's law, computers will overtake the human brain in the 2020s, right? Where's the historical precedent for that?

You might have a point that immortality boosters are motivated somewhat by hope and self-interest, but you seem to be biased in the other direction, for no reason I can discern.

It is rational for any living being to seek to extend their life. Admitting it is possible and desirable is merely the first step. Why not considering taking it? There's still space in the 300. http://www.mfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=mj_donations_t...

Well, I think you're underestimating the pace of technological progress. Yes, I might not personally live to see the day, but I don't think it will be that far away.

I think you have the possibility to see it. We may not discover how to stop death in the next 30 years, but I'm sure we will have found a way to extend it enough so that we are alive when someone does.

You've done a great job at pointing out the weaknesses of the arguments -- bodies do get repaired, people manage to find things to do, and accidental death is a much easier risk to deal with than certain death.

However bodies are not even in the same few orders of magnitude of complexity as an old car, spending 200 years plugged into Facebook probably isn't the most productive thing for the rest of society, and your brain still can only hold so much and you still be you.

So -- points for pointing out the flaws, but no credit for failing to see the larger truth. Yes, being alive forever beats dying. Now on to step 2, where you start critically thinking about the odds of you personally living forever and the real trade-offs with not dying. Which is Jacques point.

The main point where Jacques blew it? He used our current definition of human as a working definition for the future. This species is evolving, and evolving at a super-fast rate. I don't think we would recognize our descendants ten thousand years from now as being human in any way.

Who's spending 200 years plugged into Facebook? I don't use it now and I doubt I'd suddenly start. I've got things to do!

your brain still can only hold so much and you still be you

Well by that logic I've died several times already. I'm very far from the same person I was at age 5 or even 15. I don't mind changing and evolving, even if you want to call that a kind of death. It's so gradual that I doubt I'd even notice.

on to step 2, where you start critically thinking about the odds of you personally living forever

I do not pretend that the odds are favourable, but that is orthogonal to all this justification about why dying is good and healthy. Dying sucks, man, no matter how much you try to dress it up as a good, socially beneficial natural part of life.

the real trade-offs with not dying. Which is Jacques point.

Well, I guess my point is that I could not care less what the trade-off is, anything is better than dying, because any problem can be solved, but you can never come back from death.

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