[sigurdV]

arKane, on 07 March 2012 - 11:23 AM, said:

Let's rephrase a bit. No one can be happy 100% of the time. I like to balance my happy times with those not so happy times. But when the balance goes to mostly unhappy maybe I'll look forward to an ending.

You can stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, its addictive but it works: your happy all the time...

[arKane]

sigurdV, on 10 March 2012 - 09:50 AM, said:

You can stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, its addictive but it works: your happy all the time...

Yes, but those addictive methods tend to be somewhat expensive, and are probably against the law, and will take there own toll on your body to the point where you shorten your life, disrupt your relationships and maybe don't give your kids the best start in life they could have had.

But what about the person that has done everything right, worked hard, raised his family, and then retired and now wants to experience some addictive pleasures before his life ends?

[sigurdV]

arKane, on 10 March 2012 - 05:38 PM, said:

But what about the person that has done everything right, worked hard, raised his family, and then retired and now wants to experience some addictive pleasures before his life ends?

If life grows exponentially, all available energy will get consumed eventually, and earlier if most people refuse to die;)

[Moontanman]

sigurdV, on 10 March 2012 - 09:50 AM, said:

You can stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, its addictive but it works: your happy all the time...

Lets get happy!

[CraigD]

As someone who describes himself as a transhumanist/extropian, I’ve neglected this thread! I think what happened is my age-addled mind reclassified it according to its forum and title as a simple Q & A about biological evolution. Anyhow, late is better than never, and I’m back with multiples of my 2¢.

bravox, on 07 March 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

I find those discussions about immmortality humorous. Given human nature, at some point or another every human being will wish to die. You can't avoid it. Even continuous pleasure eventually becomes a bore and a burden.

arKane, on 07 March 2012 - 10:16 AM, said:

Unless one has lived a very long time, it's probably pointless to argue the question about eventually wanting to die.

The idea that “living forever” – a catchy misnomer meaning “living many times longer than usual” – isn’t desired by any or many people has been a perennial one since the mid 1980s. I believe serious conversation became widespread (among young academics and technologists, at least) around the time that a statement in 1981 by astrophysics prodigy Mal Iles,

“I am planning to live forever.
There are people alive today who will never die involuntarily.
The technology to prolong life is on the drawing boards right now. It's maybe 20 years way. But no one is talking about it.”

, which was printed in a newspaper 23 June 1981 (source), became widely known and repeated.
------------
This quote is often ascribed to Ray Kurzweil, who echoed and continued echo its sentiments, perhaps most obviously and prominently in his 2004 Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever). That Iles is nowadays obscure is due in no small part, I think, to his having died suddenly and unexpectedly from an apparent epileptic seizure a few years after he was quoted in the above – a sad irony lost, I think, on no one familiar with this bit of the history of transhumanism.
------------

The “official transhumanist response” to the assertion that few if any people would want to live much longer than the usual 80 or so years is that the eventual wish to die is not due to boredom, weariness, or ennui, but to depression caused by age-related illness. People don’t get tired of living, they get sick from living, and so tired of being sick that they prefer to die. “Cure ageing” – that is, make age-related illnesses bearable – and the usual human “death wish” will vanish along with them.

To emphasize this idea, tranhumanists often use the neologism “immorbid” (not subject to sickness) in place of “immortal” (not subject to death).

As we’ve not yet “cured ageing”, this idea remains speculation. However, Kurweil and like-minded others have assembled some reasonable statistical analysis and commentary supporting the idea.

Restating: the idea is that the loss of desire to live in old people is not due to boredom and intellectual weariness, but a symptom of psychiatric depression caused by pain and suffering due to illness. The perception of being bored with and weary of life is a symptom, not cause, of this depression.

Consider these quotes from Bravox’s posts in this thread:

bravox, on 07 March 2012 - 10:51 AM, said:

I have come to understand the problem with this world, and it's a problem that no amount of scientific knowledge can solve. Essentially the problem is that there are problems. When we create temporary solutions to current problems, we create even worse problems for the future. The longer you live, the harder your life becomes.

So no one can be happy in this world. Living forever here would be a curse.

Now imagine that you are a psychotherapist hearing something like this from a 20 year old.

Along with others, you would almost certainly take these statements as indicators of a diagnosis of clinical depression (a condition involving a distinct, disease-like underlying neuropathology), investigate if your patient is physically ill or experiencing unusual stress (such as trouble in relationships, work, or school), and if indicated, prescribe psychiatric drugs and counseling.

A transhumanist/extropian position, and mine, is that sentiments like “life just gets worse and worse” and “living forever would be a curse” are indicative of depression in either the young or the old. The key difference in these populations is that in the young, illness is a condition to checked for, and if found, treated, in the assumption that it likely can be cured. In the old, illness and its ongoing treatment is assumed, and assumed, correctly at present, to be incurable.

Change that last assumption, and the whole psychological situation is changed.

PS: Does anyone object to my splitting and moving this thread to a more appropriate forum?

[arKane]

CraigD

Yes there is a lot to be said for having a young vigorous body. But even that can't do anything about your living condition. Even with a healthy body I wouldn't want to live in poverty forever. However you might say to yourself, if one has forever it's never to late to change your status in life.

But if we are talking about everybody in the world living extended lives, how is that going to change things for everybody? Over population, forced birth control, rationing the food and resources. How rich can a Bill Gates get if he has forever to work at it? Sounds like the world would become like a big poker game, winner take all.

[Deepwater6]

Craig D feel free to change the the forum, don't know how I ended it up with that one?? I also put a BBC article about the ease of genetic manipulation for the common person in this one, but the post was split off into it's own thread of Biology. It's an interesting article about how people will have at least some control over their genes in the near future. Along with ways to extend their lives to get around diseases. What I want to know is will everyone want to have their genetic future read now? will they want to know they are likely to get a brain tumor 45 or breast cancer at 50, or even more defined information.

[sigurdV]

Deepwater6, on 29 March 2012 - 04:39 PM, said:

Craig D feel free to change the the forum, don't know how I ended it up with that one?? I also put a BBC article about the ease of genetic manipulation for the common person in this one, but the post was split off into it's own thread of Biology. It's an interesting article about how people will have at least some control over their genes in the near future. Along with ways to extend their lives to get around diseases. What I want to know is will everyone want to have their genetic future read now? will they want to know they are likely to get a brain tumor 45 or breast cancer at 50, or even more defined information.

Human evolution will in a large part be directed by humans, but natural evolution will not stop completely when random mutations no longer is the primary generator of change. Theres the environment pressure remaining and its actually the universe that IS our environment.

I think most posts on the future are ...eh... myopic!
So: What are we going to do with our universe?

[HydrogenBond]

This topic raises an interesting question. At what time in history/evolution (in your opinion) did humans reach the tipping point, when genetics and human consciousness were equal partners in human evolution?

[arKane]

HydrogenBond, on 03 May 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

This topic raises an interesting question. At what time in history/evolution (in your opinion) did humans reach the tipping point, when genetics and human consciousness were equal partners in human evolution?

I'd like to hazard a guess on that subject. I'd say when humans first started using fire.