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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   37122 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Death is a necessary and natural part of life. You don't repair what's not broken.

You are a traitor to humanity, aider and abetter of the Great Enemy. I genuinely can't believe so many people hold this view.

Seems that describes you better since you don't even want to be part of humanity.

Humans die. People that don't are something else.

As I’ve said elsewhere I’ll die, I just hope it’s billions of years away instead of 50 years away. What’s the difference?

Right back at you, neighbor.

You posted somewhere else in the thread that the obvious core drive of a human is to escape death. I assure you, I find that statement as repugnant as you appear to find its opposite. I see it as a repudiation of everything I recognize as noble within humanity, of the true core function to choose well from limited, fraught options. Obviously, I can't force you to adopt my view, and neither can you force me to adopt mine. All that can be done is to point out that the chasm between values, even for baseline, unmodified humans, yawns wide indeed.

I assure you, I find that statement as repugnant as you appear to find its opposite. I see it as a repudiation of everything I recognize as noble within humanity, of the true core function to choose well from limited, fraught options.

Then you die and let me do as I will.

You posted somewhere else in the thread that the obvious core drive of a human is to escape death. I assure you, I find that statement as repugnant as you appear to find its opposite.

You're Christian, yes?

I find the Christian objection to transhumanist anti-death pushes fascinating, because "death" means such different things to Christians and atheists. To a Christian, there is no need to escape death on Earth, because Christ already overcame the bonds of death for us with the Resurrection, and we too will be resurrected and raised to a state of perfection if we hold firm. To seek to overcome death on Earth looks like pursuing a shallow, partial, impossible form of what is already granted free of cost to all of us. Christians have fulfilled this drive already in their minds. The rest of us, lacking such a perceptual safety net, do what we must.

This fundamental disconnect over what death is makes it complex to have a meaningful conversation about the nobility of pursuit of immortality between Christians and non-Christians, as the rest of us seek to build what you believe you already have.

I am Christian, but I've been an atheist too. Even from an Atheist perspective, I think people are better off making their peace with death than fighting to the bitter end. One of the things that makes life good is people being willing to eat the badness set before them, rather than desperately attempt to avoid it or pass it off to others. Even on the assumption that death is the absolute end, how one reacts to that end is the product of immediate and indirect choices. Abject terror is largely, I think, a choice, and not a very good one given that it seems pretty unlikely to me that such death is going to be avoided for most of the current population. Where such fears grow especially pernicious is when the threat of death might appear to be forestalled by exploiting or victimizing others. In that case, the opportunity for evil is nearly boundless, and the attitude that takes death to be the worst possible thing just weakens one's resolve.

the resurrected person would be a copy of that person who long ago died and was buried in a grave, I think its arguable to say that its the same thing as extending your life without death.

I’m glad we have so much diversity of values!

I was a bit hyperbolic there I admit - I apologize. What do you find noble in humanity?

What do you find noble in humanity?

The ability to choose what is Good, even when the choice is hard. Death and pain are among the things that make it hard, but it seems to me that one of the choices we have to make is between accepting them, and acquiescing to them. Avoiding death is of great value, but it is not a terminal value. Treating it as a terminal value often allows one to be "forced" into choosing evil, in an attempt to avoid the ultimately unavoidable. Evil is the Great Enemy. Death is just an unfortunate fact. One might as reasonably declare that the speed of light is the Great Enemy, and all that matters is breaking physics by achieving FTL. Any passive feature of reality can be transformed into the ultimate villian, if one is willing to torture perspective sufficiently.

I don't feel like I'm afraid of death per se, certainly not like Yud's Voldemort or even like Yud's "DAE what can be worse than death???" Harry. But it would certainly be blasted inconvenient, and I'm particularly incensed that some people turn to worshipping some funny spiral chemical's lack of interest in letting us live longer above our own interests.

Death is a necessary and natural part of life.

Revolution against people who insist that their way is "natural" "necessary" and "god ordered" even when it leads to endless death and suffering is necessary and natural part of history.

You don't repair what's not broken.

What if I do repair what is "not broken" to avoid dying?

What will you do to stop me? What will you threaten me with that is worse than death?

Revolution against people who insist that their way is "natural" "necessary" and "god ordered" even when it leads to endless death and suffering is necessary and natural part of history.

Is it? Can you point to some examples where such revolution actually succeeded according to its own priors? Are we about to get another of those cartoonish, unsourced anecdotes about how everyone prior to the Enlightenment thought medicine was witchcraft and burned doctors at the stake?

Why even attempt to form a correct view understanding of reality, when re-writing the past is so much easier?

What will you do to stop me? What will you threaten me with that is worse than death?

Shouldn't death be sufficient, since that's exactly what hypothetical-you is desperately trying to avoid?

"What is the consequence of defying the luddite?"

"Death. "

"Then what is the consequence of submitting to the luddite?"

"Death."

"How shall we proceed, General?"

Conflict is eternal; if you can't deter people from instantiating horrors by threatening death, there's nothing left but to follow through and fight it out.

Transhumanist valhalla with everyone fighting at all times seems slightly superior to the wirehead utopia.

"Then what is the consequence of submitting to the luddite?"

"Death."

Hey! I just wanted a Space Ark to GTFO of here.

No, I mean stepping away from pursuing transhumanism means death, even if you don't personally execute us.

Well, but if you build me a Space Ark, and I GTFO, you can do whatever you want.

I was replying to the other guy who didn't settle for a space ark yet.

Revolution against people who insist that their way is "natural" "necessary" and "god ordered" even when it leads to endless death and suffering is necessary and natural part of history.

It certainly is. And those revolutions always fail. Because if something is truly natural, necessary and ordained by God, you never really escape the consequences.

Of course if it isn't, then they don't. But I don't see any reasonable argument that death isn't a natural part of the universe.

What will you do to stop me?

Violence ultimately, but I don't hold that cruelty has ever been an effective deterrent so I don't feel the need to invent worse punishments than death.

It certainly is. And those revolutions always fail. Because if something is truly natural, necessary and ordained by God, you never really escape the consequences.

Hmm, certainly seems like us transgressors of God are doing quite well for ourselves as a matter of fact.

But I don't see any reasonable argument that death isn't a natural part of the universe.

I'm not arguing this. Everything dies eventually. I'm arguing that dying in 100 years isn't any less natural than dying after 100,000 years. Do you see a difference yourself?

Violence ultimately

I'll refer to the first part of this reply. We've got you beat on the violence as well buddy.

certainly seems like us transgressors of God are doing quite well for ourselves as a matter of fact.

I don't really care to go into the large argument about how miserable industrial society has made everyone, go read Ted if you want to see those arguments, but on the face of it I do want to address the most painfully ridiculous elephant in the room, which Nietzsche famously predicted as a direct consequence of this transgression:

How many people died in the XXth century?

We've got you beat on the violence as well buddy.

This doesn't alter the moral calculus a iota for me. But I also don't believe you. Otherwise you'd be holding Afghanistan right about now.

How many people died in the XXth century?

How many did not? For most of recorded history, one third of all born children died in infancy, quite often taking their mother with them; of course these billions died quietly, often unnamed and unrecorded, and a death tax of a child every three in nearly every household is not so notable and exciting as a holocaust killing a hundredth of that number all in one event. The survivors didn't even find it all that noteworthy; after all it was all natural, and probably the will of God. Now the death tax is gone from most of the world, and on its way to be gone from the rest of it.

Granted, Mao is still to blame for the worst famine in history. But famines with a death tolls in the millions were quite common before the 20th century; before mechanized agriculture and the Green Revolution, it did not take a mad ideologue to starve millions in India or China; it happened quite naturally whenever the weather was too dry or too wet or too warm or too cold for a few years in a row.

Smallpox killed half a billion people just in its last century of existence (its thirtieth, give or take). It killed a significant fraction of all humans who ever lived, and left most of the survivors crippled, blinded, or disfigured. Now it's gone; and nazism and communism and religious fundamentalism and all other deranged ideologies ever dreamed up have a long, long way to go before they even get close to the death toll of one of these perfectly natural facets of the human condition.

"Accept nature", if taken as seriously as those other slogans, could be stained with quite a lot more blood than "proletarians of the world, unite" or "work will set you free".

https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths Proportionally less than in any previous century from violence. Or in early childhood, thanks to modern medicine. Or from starvation, thanks to industrial fertilizers. As for happiness, Ted might have had a better point if he went for the invention of agriculture. But pre-industrial agricultural society meant that the vast majority of humanity were subsistence farmers subject to frequent violence.

My impression is that, while Ted Kaczynski has interesting points about runaway tendencies in technocracy and the potential for social control and all that, any of his arguments about human misery have to be taken in the context of him being abused in what was probably a literal psy-op. Ted may say it didn't permanently affect him, but I dunno...

If my way is not ordained by God, then let Him strike me down. If yours is, why are you worried that He will allow my way to destroy yours?

We are all instruments, and my worry is part of it. I'm tempted to quote that parable about the man who refused help many times on account of his faith, not realizing it was God sending all those people to help him.

We can't expect God to do all the work.

not realizing that because God never gave him a clue for it? God knowing that he would not realize it and yet not doing the necessary correction. So God in this scenario is as effectively impotent as always.

God is a descriptive term for the nature of the universe, not a will in the proper sense. I am an atheist.

That's what people usually say when asked to demonstrate whether their claims of God-ordainment are falsifiable or not, yes.

Well yeah, it's just the coherent outcome of this position. What of it?

We're not having a disagreement that can be settled through reason.

Death is a necessary part of one particular configuration of an ecosystem, and appealing to nature is pointless. Everything is natural.

edit: not even that. Like darkness is an absence of life, death is an absence of longevity. It is not "a part" of life, it is that longevity is not a (necessary) part of life based on sexual reproduction. "You have outlived your usefulness", says the gene once it is duplicated and recombinated into a fresh host. I'm sorry, but who asked?

I could start to argue metaphysics, because I definitely think your view is incoherent, but that's boring and not very convincing.

Let us instead drop merrily into the realms of practicality: immortality is heavily and obviously dysgenic. Stagnant organisms lose the possibility to change, and therefore to adapt. And no cultural process can replicate one's just anihilation once they have indeed, outlived their usefulness.

I'm sorry, but who asked?

Well your children presumably. I certainly think the boomers are robbing a few generations of their due by sticking around and holding onto all ressources for too long. Which is not fair, because they were themselves handed society in trust.

Immortality is just the extreme extension of this problem.

why does it matter what is improved in the future if you wont be alive to witness it?

Because society was not given to you, it was loaned. You have a duty to the future much like the past had a duty to you.

If you break that, things stop existing.

And who started this duty in the first place?

How is it in your self-interest to restrict other people from making themselves immortal?

who started this duty in the first place?

Your ancestors, and ultimately abiogenesis.

How is it in your self-interest to restrict other people from making themselves immortal?

This is a much larger question and one that is dependent on large amounts of context. I personally favor the Hoppean solution to this problem, which is that you are absolutely allowed to have values that are sorely incompatible with mine so long as you do it away from me and my kin and don't try to interfere in our affairs.

Your ancestors, and ultimately abiogenesis.

so to clarify, this duty you are referring to is about continuing the cycle of evolution where species change through generations to adapt to their environments by way of natural selection processes, and you are saying that abiogenesis started this duty? if so, thats gibberish to me because abiogenesis is not some person that can make a contract with anybody thereby giving them a duty, with all due respect, I think youre just making stuff up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

Please read Aristostle, Cicero, Aquinas, Hobbes and then I'll gladly have a conversation about whether or not it's a valid or compelling ethical framework, but you need to understand where any of the western canon of morality even comes from for us to possibly have this conversation.

I for one would be ecstatic to have my parents around for longer, along with the rest of their generation, even if it robs my generation of its due.

I agree that greatly extending the human lifespan would cause massive societal problems. I am willing to struggle with those massive societal problems for as many centuries as it takes.

I think it's pointed out elsewhere in this thread, but this is where the bright line between immortality and anti-aging is fuzzy. Had we robust ways of dealing with those societal problems one might be able to consider integrating that technology.

But to remove death in the absolute is clearly over the line for me. I won't go into the minute details of why given there's seemingly endless art that explores the topic.

I don't think the ways to deal with those societal problems have to be particularly robust, at least not at first. If you eliminated aging today, the short-term (next 10 years) problems would look pretty similar to the problems we face today. On a fairly immediate timescale we'd need to deal with social security, as that would suddenly have a very different financial outlook. Over the time scale of decades or centuries, we would face new and interesting problems, but I don't think "we would have moderate political difficulties immediately, and we'd need to tweak some laws in 50-100 years" is a good reason to block anti-aging tech.

But to remove death in the absolute is clearly over the line for me.

To remove the ability to die would also be clearly over the line to me. But to remove the bit where the bits of my mind that make me me slip away one by one, and then the body that used to contain the person who was me stops breathing? And to do that for everyone who wants it? I think that would be massively good on the balance.

You say this, and yet my country is right now enthralled in chaos all because our ponzi scheme of a pension system couldn't even handle a fluctuation in demography that is so extremely mild compared to the change you're advocating for.

I don't think you've even begun to think through the changes to just the financial system that something like this would cause. Not to mention second or third order effects.

What would the effect on the pressure to have state-sponsored retirement be once people no longer have to quit the workforce and the concept of "work for 40 years and then have a rest until you die" loses its meaning?

I don't think "if we save the lives of our citizens it might cause moderate financial distress to our country" is a good reason to consign those citizens to death. Obviously there exists an amount of financial distress where it becomes worthwhile. "plunge the country into poverty to save one life" is obviously a bad idea. I'd argue even the recent case of "devalue the currency by 20% to prevent the loss of an average of 2 weeks of life" went too far on that front.

But I think curing aging would be a massive boon even considering the second and third order effects. I think it would probably be worth it even if it led to a full Zimbabwe-level economic blowup, though I'm not entirely sure in that case.

Stagnant organisms lose the possibility to change, and therefore to adapt.

Again, an ability that they only don't have as long as the evolutionary process didn't deem it necessary for them to propagate. Or as long as they don't research neuroplasticity restoration and body modification.

Well your children presumably.

I'm sure I'll reckon with my children amicably, somehow. Another incentive for us all to go to space. We could also explore all those proposals about social systems that discourage concentrating wealth in a few people's hands...

"It's not like you can take it to the grave" would certainly age like milk.

as they don't research

All I'm hearing is a communist assuring me that once computers get good enough, they'll solve the economic calculation problem and we'll have FALGSC.

I hold this to be wish fulfillment untethered to reality, like a lot of futurism.

I'm sure I'll reckon with my children amicably,

I don't think you will. Chronos didn't really get along very well with Zeus.

Another incentive for us all to go to space.

Fair enough, but I hold no objection to that. Exploration is, in fact, quite natural for humans.

All I'm hearing are appeals to "it's always been that way therefore it can only be that way" and stridently ignoring all the cases where that principle didn't work, so I suppose we're even. Besides, I wasn't talking about computers or magically inventing FALGSC out of thin air. Medical advancement isn't that fantastical. Certainly not too fantastical to refute conjecture of the "immortality is stagnancy" rate.

Chronos didn't really get along very well with Zeus.

I hold this to be paint-the-bullseye justification of the current state of reality, like a lot of ancestral wisdom.

What can I say except that I disagree with your evaluation of what is and isn't fantastical?

I hold this to be paint-the-bullseye justification of the current state of reality, like a lot of ancestral wisdom.

And I hold this to be immortal wisdom about the nature of reality endlessly rediscovered by all human civilizations. Potato, potahto.

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