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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means.

I don't think it's fair to say "don't bother", because the situation is more "can't". You're asking finite beings to describe something which is not just infinite, but completely alien to our experience. Of course people can't adequately describe that.

But that also doesn't detract from my original point: it isn't "cope" to say that death is a good thing if your framework of existence says "after we die we get something even better than the best things here". That's just straightforwardly true in that case! Note that I'm not trying to convince you the framework is true, just pointing out that if you accept that framework for the sake of argument then death is obviously a good thing.

Well, I'm 35, and I still don't see it; my reasons for being weary of life are all fixable. I'm tired of getting old, but that can be fixed by being eternally 18. I'm tired of watching my friends and family die, but that can be fixed by making them all eternally 18. I'm tired working a job I hate, but that can be fixed by making AIs do all the jobs. I'm tired of having lost the love of my life, but that can be fixed by forking her and modifying the copy just enough that she will still want to be with me until the last star grows cold and the universe comes to an end.

You're cheating here by including things that are not really related to your original scenario of "living in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe". Yes, your body breaking down over time would be fixed. If we assume that you're also preventing any form of death, then losing your loved ones would be mostly fixed. But that doesn't bring back the loved ones you have already lost, it doesn't prevent your loved ones from deciding they want to gracefully exit life (at which point you lose them), it doesn't magic AI into existence to do your crappy job, it doesn't change human nature such that people will actually be nice to each other for the first time in recorded history.

Like yeah, if you wave a magic wand that says "every bad thing about life is gone now" then living forever is great. But that isn't what you said, you simply talked about living forever by itself being good enough. But it isn't, you would need to fix all the other problems too.

It gets even worse for your case when you think through what fixing all the problems in the world actually would require. Not just tech, though the tech barrier is so high that it should give us pause as to whether it can ever happen. The sheer fact of individuality means that sooner or later, two people are going to have desires which conflict with each other. Now what? Unless you mind control one or both of them, at least one of those people is going to be unhappy with the outcome. Even with a magic wand, this is unfixable. I guess you could use mind control, but that seems like the utopia now has a dark dystopian underbelly that is needed to make it work (yes Persona 5 Royal, we see you over there). Not a very satisfying utopia any more. Perhaps the sort of thing one might write a short story about walking away from. ;)