I don't see longevity advocacy, or longevity medicine, as having anything to do with Infinite Invulnerable Indestructuble-ness or any other metaphysical fantasy. No matter what amazing medical technologies are developed, there's never going to be any guarantee that any person exists in a state wherein continued existence forever is somehow assured. In order for something to be truly immortal it would need to exist...well, right up until "the end of time" (beyond which the very concept of "time" would itself become incoherent).
In other words, when I talk about life being wonderful, and about the necessity of making medicine as effective as possible for old people as well as for young people -- in fact, even when I talk about the notion of mitigating things presently considered "part of the aging process" -- I am not talking about "making people immortal".
Just, you know, in case that wasn't clear.
Nobody knows how long they will live, or how long consciousness of any kind will even exist in this or any other possible universe. This is a fact. This will, as far as I can tell, always be a fact. Which means that yes, even the staunchest, most optimistic advocate for longevity research must engage with the same age-old existential question that has faced humanity since the moment we became aware of our own tremendous physical vulnerability: how can I live knowing it could end at any time?
I personally struggled a lot with this question in my late teens and early 20s. I remember one day (years ago) I was actually crying about it -- about how I had finally viscerally grokked mortality, and about how horrible and tragic it was that individuals only had the most tenuous and fragile access to this beautiful reality. And my stepmother said something that I am grateful to her for saying to this day:
"So, what are you going to do? Just crawl into a cave and wait to die?"
When I heard that, I suddenly felt very silly.
I am certainly still quite motivated to help out in any way I can to encourage the development of effective longevity medicine. This isn't likely to change. But I refuse to make this effort a desperate, maudlin one, or one that requires apologetics to justify. Longevity advocacy itself, and the reading and research that goes along with it, are joyful acts for me -- acts that I would consider worthwhile even if they did not end up panning out for me personally.
Because life, to me, isn't about "ultimate" end-goals at all. Longevity isn't about achieving immortality or the guarantee of such. There's too much uncertainty, too much noise in the lens between now and the distant future to hinge one's hopes and dreams and reason for being on some long-way-off super-metagoal. I reject the idea that life means nothing unless it is guaranteed to last forever -- that idea is no different from the religious fundamentalist's lament that "an atheist's life can have no meaning because the atheist only gets his time on Earth, and then that's that". There is nothing paltry or dismissable about this "time on Earth", regardless of how long or short a person's life ends up being.
And acknowledging that in no way negates any drive or motivation toward promoting and developing better and more effective geriatric healthcare. I see this as a medical and ethical imperative, and a function of the acknowledgment that all people are valuable and irreplaceable, and that the loss of a single individual is like the loss of a whole world.
I don't see anything magical or mysterious about the fact that human bodies don't generally fare very well after their eighth or ninth decade as things stand now, or about the idea that perhaps people could be maintained in good condition much, much longer than they presently can. I am definitely one of those people who sees no end to the potential good in life, and who can't ever imagine getting bored or tired of existence.
But I don't hinge my appreciation for life, or my ability to get the most out of a day, a week, or a minute, or a single experience, or a sunrise, or a grain of sand, on the "possibility of immortality". Life is too precious, too precarious, and too exquisite to spend white-knuckled and curled up in a cave (as my stepmom so pointedly invoked the image of), despairing at the looming spectre of death.
35 comments:
Anne,
I found your post very interesting.
I just found your blog post and found it quite interesting.
Here is another idea about immortality. If you are serious about this subject, then you will be quite interested in my research and findings on this very topic.
I have summarized what I have found on my main blog:
www.Ben-Abba.com.
Check out the post “Summary of the Facts” when you get a chance and then my follow up book “Secrets of an Immortal - An Eyewitness Account of 2,800 Years of History”.
Blessings!
Um...it doesn't look as if you actually read my post carefully. Your blog reads like an episode of "Coast to Coast AM".
annec said:
I personally struggled a lot with this question in my late teens and early 20s. I remember one day (years ago) I was actually crying about it -- about how I had finally viscerally grokked mortality, and about how horrible and tragic it was that individuals only had the most tenuous and fragile access to this beautiful reality.
From the premise page of The "God" Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God:
In humans, however, once we became aware of the fact that death was not only inescapable but that it could come at any moment, we were left in a state of constant mortal peril, a state of unceasing anxiety - much like rabbits perpetually cornered by a mountain lion from which there is no escape. With the emergence of self-awareness, humans became the dysfunctional animal, rendered helpless by an inherent and unceasing anxiety disorder. Unless nature could somehow relieve us of this debilitating awareness of death, it's possible our species might have soon become extinct. It was suddenly critical that our animal be modified in some way that would allow us to maintain self-conscious awareness, while enabling us to deal with our unique awareness of our own mortalities, of death.
Here lies the origin of humankind's spiritual function, an evolutionary adaptation that compels our species to believe that though our physical bodies will one day perish, our "spirits" or "souls" will persist for all eternity. Only once our species was instilled with this inherent (mis)perception that there is something more "out there," that we are immortal beings, were we able to survive our debilitating awareness of death.
The post of yours reminds me of the people who say, when talking about the advances in technology, "if only I had been born 200 years later!". I don't find much sense in this, since I think that every moment of history offers it's own challenges to people, and I feel it's about identifying and taking part in those challenges that matters, not what and when. Besides, it's not like you can help being alive today.
I would say that there never will be an "immortal" person. Even if there was an aging switch in us, and it was pressed off today, there still are accidents and diseases no matter how you work to shield yourself from them. It's just a matter of probability - further the time moves, slimmer the chance for you to exist becomes. I agree that it's funny in a sense, us worrying about the natural decay and death that would occur maybe 60-70 years to the future, when we might be dead tomorrow in a freakish accident involving a severe cow dung misplacement.
Of course I'm very pro life extension myself - it's not the ceasing to exist that we should be worried about, but the silly reason of corrupted bodily functions as a cause of it.
I feel alright saying that I have the goal of immortality. I'm not sure why immortality has to mean indestructableness?
I can have immortality as a goal, and simultaneously not be confused or angry towards mortality, as well.
Immortalists never really said that life means nothing unless it's for forever. Where did you get that impression?
Basically, I agree with basically everything you say in this post, but I still feel comfortable saying "I want to be immortal".
There's uncertainty in everything... for instance, people put money into retirement plans starting early on. But you might die early, so there is no use for it. Does that mean that people who use retirement plans are looking for "future to hinge one's hopes and dreams and reason for being on some long-way-off super-metagoal". No, not really.
Again, I agree with most everything you said, but note that there's nothing incompatible between valuing each minute and wanting to live forever.
Anne -- as usual, a fine, sane post.
Michael:
I'm not sure why immortality has to mean indestructableness?
Really? Immortality and invulnerability seem a fairly conspicuous fit, rather like mortality and vulnerability are.
I can have immortality as a goal, and simultaneously not be confused or angry towards mortality, as well.
I agree that this may be logically possible but disagree that it is more than very rarely exhibited, as publicly advocated positions go.
Michael I want to echo your comments. I too wanted to extend my life and if it was possible, become immortal. Once I made the choice that was it was ok for me to want increase my life path and change my destiny, subtle changes took place in my life. I then got the idea to look for the oldest person alive and model their life to figure out how to do this. After numerous experiences along my quest, I finally located a person who I fully believe is well over 150 years old even though appears younger than 70 years old. In fact, I believe he is thousands of years older; which to me makes him an immortal.
He does not appear to me to be indestructible but he does have the belief that all death is choice; not a requirement of life.
Someday I hope to publish all of his secrets to accomplishing immortality for the rest of to ponder. I intetend to incorporate his lifestyle into my own to extend the quality of my life and possibly become immortal at the same time
There is a YA novel called The House of the Scorpion (or something like that). It's not a particularly great book, but the ideals that you described reminded me of it. In the novel, a Cartel-Mafia kind of guy who lost all 8 of his sisters has a clone made of himself, who has a "normal" life up until the Cartel guy's organs run out and the clone is "of age". He is then killed and his organs are transplanted into the Cartel guy (sorry, can't remember his name). The book is about the 9th clone. The reason this guy is doing this is because he wants to live 9 lives--one of his own, and 8 for the lives that his sisters lost. The trouble is, this guy is a really nasty peice of work, even though he is always nice to his "clones" (that is, until he orders them butchered), and somewhere down the line became obssessed with never wanting to die. It's more complicated than that, but you get the idea, and the plot line isn't really great anyway. It just brings up some interesting questions.
As a teenager, I still hold this worldview of being ultimately undefeatable, despite still finding it difficult to realise that some people I have known in the past won't be coming back. Even early childhood experiences with death tend to take on an ethereal quality, probably because no adult is willing to spoil a child's "innocence" by telling them the truth.
Frankly, though I myself am ambivalent about the whole idea of dying (try to find a non-suicidal person who isn't), I would definately say that I'm glad people aren't. Sure, there would be good people who would survive, but this technology wouldn't be available just to good people, but also to bad (and by "bad" I don't mean Fidel Castro, I mean Vlad III). Try to find someone who wouldn't mind being stabbed through a wooden pike for the enjoyment of some tyrannical man who won't die himself. Kind makes the whole situation sound even worse.
Hi Anne,
Thank you for a heartfelt, intelligent post. I think I understand and sympathize with your perspective but I can't say that I completely share it. All this talk of "longevity" vs. "immortality" seems a bit like squabbling over semantics. Though it's certainly correct to say that being "immortal" implies total control over every possible variable that could negatively impact our continued existence and that such tremendous power currently seems out of reach, the point seems rather moot in relation to our species' current condition. If I were able to extend my lifespan a mere millennia it would, from my present perspective, seem that I was nearly immortal (though I'm sure my perspective would change quite radically in 999 years or so). Additionally, transferring my consciousness to a far more durable substrate like utility fog would so profoundly reduce the probability of my death that, though I would still not technically be "immortal", I would be close enough for my purposes (though, again, my perspective would probably change if I happened to come across a nanobot consuming alien ;)).
My main criticism of your post, however, is what I perceive to be a growing sense of complacency within the Transhumanist/Futurist community. Whatever happened to the old "rage against the dying of the light" spirit? We must not allow ourselves to be lulled into inaction by the promise of near future biotech miracles. Death is a travesty - Period! No one is denying that life is meaningful to everyone who experiences it even if they are or may one day be no longer able to experience it but that doesn't mean we should minimize how much more meaningful it would be if it could last indefinitely longer. You certainly seemed to benefit from what your stepmother told you but I think it's important to clearly define what you mean by "living white-knuckled and curled up in a cave". No one should be paralyzed by fear but I do think it's reasonable to make decisions that will maximize your probability of not dying, even if those decisions reduce your short term happiness. I recently quit smoking - a habit that, say what you will, gave me tremendous comfort and pleasure for years. I did this even though I am only 32, in reasonably good health, and am fairly confident that advances in biotech and nanotech will repair any damage that smoking did to my body long before that damage puts my continued existence at risk. Nevertheless, I voluntarily gave up an extremely pleasurable part of my life to maximize my chances for an indefinite lifespan. Would you consider my knuckles to be white?
Thanks again for a terrific blog!
Ben Abba said:
Someday I hope to publish all of his secrets to accomplishing immortality for the rest of to ponder. I intetend to incorporate his lifestyle into my own to extend the quality of my life and possibly become immortal at the same time
Before you publish your “Vitanomicon”, I strongly suggest you read Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time.
Anne,
In the About me section of your blog, you write:
I am a small piece of the universe observing itself ... Primary motivation is that joy in existence without which the universe would fall apart and collapse.
1. Are you familiar with Scientific Pantheism and would you say that you have a “scientific pantheist” worldview?
2. Are you familiar with Cosmicism and would you say that is a philosophical stance that is antithetical to yours?
De Thezier,
Thank you for your reading suggestion.
May I strongly suggest that you read my post Dealing with Pseudoskeptics and Wikipedia's article on Pseudoskepticsim.
I believe you will find both post equally enlightening.
I would not want to live forever. I am too tired now. I can not imagine. I love life but everything truly wonderful must come to an end to be truly appreciated.
De Thezier: I don't think of my worldview as something that fits tidily into any particular ideology -- sometimes I note resemblances between aspects of how I see the world and descriptions I come across of various "systems" (e.g., as a child my worldview apparently bore a passing likeness to something called "panpsychism"), but I have no interest in claiming adherence to any of them. If someone wants to know what I think and how I see the world, I figure they can just read my descriptions of such things and draw their own conclusions on the basis of that information.
Regarding the particular examples you gave: I hadn't heard of Scientific Pantheism or Cosmicism prior to your mentioning them. As far as Scientific Pantheism goes, it sounds like it's just a fancy label for the general sense that people can find meaning in life. Cosmicism sounds like a fancy label for the idea that "everything is insignificant". I don't really see the point of getting wrapped up in "isms" to describe either of those positions...my brain doesn't operate in that mode when it comes to stuff like this.
Ben Abba: I do actually think that "pseudoskepticism" exists, and that yes, some people do actively shut their minds down in the presence of data that doesn't fit into any of their predetermined categories. But that doesn't negate the fact that some things are real and some things aren't real, and that yes, there are tools people can use to tell the difference pretty reliably.
I went through a phase of being obsessed with parapsychology as a kid. I looked up every book on ESP I could in the library, made my own Zener cards, did experiments with playing cards, took data on the results of innumerable coin-flips (in my investigations of probability), and pored over all the material I could find on telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, UFOs...you name it.
Why? Well, I was excited initially by the prospect that reality really was full of cool things like super-powers and aliens but that all that information was being "suppressed" or denied just because it didn't fit people's comfortable ideas about the way the universe worked. I figured that if all that stuff was real, it was too important not to incorporate into everyday life.
But as it turned out, I never found anything, in all that research, that convinced me that any of it was actually real. So by the time I was 11 or 12 years old, I started figuring I'd done my "due diligence" with regard to the paranormal and could therefore safely discount "supernatural activity" as a valid explanation for things I observed happening in the real world. So I'm not coming at this stuff from the standpoint of someone who started out "wanting" to debunk it all to prove how smart I was, but as someone who as a naive child genuinely took a long, hard look at parapsychological research and (suspected) phenomena. I wanted much of it to be true, but it just couldn't stand up to scrutiny. And that was disappointing at first!
Subsequently, though, I came to appreciate the fact that finding out what is true and real is as wonderful and interesting a quest as a quest to uncover secret superpowers, aliens, or already-living "immortals". And while I do think that there are people who dismiss far too much without investigation, I personally feel pretty comfortable dismissing things like "remote viewing" and thousand-year-old men and butt-probing gray-faced space creatures as, well, malarkey. Sorry about that. You might have better luck promoting your views in some New Age forum where people are more credulous and care less about evidence and thorough investigations.
Marla: Well, I can certainly understand being tired! But I also think that different people have different ideas regarding what makes it possible to truly appreciate something. I also think there's a difference between wanting variety of experience in one's life (which necessarily entails having certain experiences come to an end in order to make way for new experiences) and feeling like life itself would somehow be cheapened if one couldn't necessarily count on having it end at some point.
I don't think life is something that can be cheapened -- I mean (and this is purely a hypothetical, philosophical point and not an attempt at making a prediction!) if something suddenly happened to make it such that no conscious being had to die involuntarily, I don't think that would make life any less intrinsically wonderful or valuable. Determining what does make life wonderful and meaningful is a very individual thing, so while I respect everyone's right to decide for themselves what gives life its greatest value and significance, I don't think that the notion that all things (including life) must end in order to be appreciated has to be shared by everyone. As for me, I feel like every day is a gift -- I mean, the fact that anyone exists at all, for any amount of time, is pretty amazing and cool!
Also, (and I wrote about this a while back, though I don't remember in what post), I sort of personally feel like there's never enough time ever to get the most out of any experience. I have encountered a curious number of autistic spectrum people who like the idea of living very, very long lives (though this is by no means universal, it's just a trend I've observed), and I suspect that might be due to the fact that we don't tend to get easily bored with things. Plus, at least in my case, I really really don't like being interrupted, and it's hard to think of a more egregious interruption than dropping dead! :)
It's lovely Anne the way you refuse to allow conversations like this to get abstract -- always bringing things back to the scene of Anne as individual looking out at the world and trying to make sense of things, or back to the scene of particular individual people being humiliated or misapprehended through the clumsy application to them of generalities unsuited to their precise situation. I think this is a very sensible precaution and powerful method for getting at certain truths unavailable otherwise.
Teaching to very large groups of students simultaneously in ways that must aspire to resonate with them all as best I can whatever their different histories, temperaments, levels of background knowledge, aspirations and so on -- especially teaching philosophy, one of the discourses most vulnerable to abstract evacuations of such specificities -- I find it is very difficult not to drift into habits of generality of the kind you are good at avoiding.
Of course, as with everything, there are tradeoffs -- there are valuable insights that are uniquely enabled by abstraction as well -- but I did want to mention that I appreciate very much the approach you seem devoted to.
annec said:
I don't think of my worldview as something that fits tidily into any particular ideology -- sometimes I note resemblances between aspects of how I see the world and descriptions I come across of various "systems", but I have no interest in claiming adherence to any of them.
So you don't claim adherence to transhumanism? ;)
I don't really see the point of getting wrapped up in "isms" to describe either of those positions...my brain doesn't operate in that mode when it comes to stuff like this.
That's interesting. I have never been as allergic to "isms" (whether it be the terms or the ideologies/identities themselves) as I am discovering more and more people are quite stridently so (which I've read might be a healthy reaction to the ideological/identitarian excesses of the past but also a insidious consequence of the hyper-individualist culture prevailing in postmodern Western societies). As long as they are flexible, nuanced, complex and (hopefully) evolving, I find "isms" useful to refer to a particular organized collection of ideas, whether they be my own or someone's else. However, I am not married to them nor do I believe that it is fair to continue labeling someone an "ist" when it is clear that he has outgrow it.
Now, with that being said, I'm still unclear as to what you mean by what you wrote in your About Me section.
Christopher: You said:
All this talk of "longevity" vs. "immortality" seems a bit like squabbling over semantics.
You're right that it often is, but every so often I feel the need to define my terms and encourage other people to define theirs, which is necessarily a matter of semantics. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of people arguing (or agreeing) with each other based on assumptions about the term-definitions being employed by the various discussion participants that may not actually be valid.
I know that for some people, "immortality" is used as a short-hand for the situation you describe: that of extending lifespan to somewhere up around a "mere" millennia. But for others, "immortality" implies some kind of super-secure state in which a person will be able to feel assured of survival (in some sense) up to and possibly beyond the heat death of the universe.
I've actually seen comments from people who seem to believe that they personally have a measurable chance of achieving this latter state, and while of course I won't insist that anyone can know anything for sure about the very distant future, I think it's important to avoid inflating teensy micro-probabilities into "faith".
I didn't write this post to encourage complacency at all -- quite the opposite! I'm actually quite concerned about certain notions of "immortality" leading directly to complacency (not to mention weirdly distorted attitudes about the way the world is right now, what living conditions various people exist in, etc.). Look at the fate of 1970s "futurism" (several key figures of which have already died) -- today's longevity advocates are not the first of that ilk, and I think we'd do well to look carefully at the past so as to avoid making the same mistakes. I've actually seen articles dating back to the 1930s in which reporters describe renowned physicians claiming that "within 50 years, death will be a thing of the past" due to forthcoming medical advances.
And to me, that kind of "wowie, we're almost there!" thinking tends to be more complacency-inducing than inspiring.
You said:
No one should be paralyzed by fear but I do think it's reasonable to make decisions that will maximize your probability of not dying, even if those decisions reduce your short term happiness.
Where would someone reading my post get the idea that I am telling people to simply try and maximize their short term happiness and not think about or plan for the future at all?
I am not advocating for a "live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse" approach here at all, nor am I suggesting that everyone should just burn out their lives on cheap hedonistic thrills!
Taking measures to protect one's health (drinking plenty of water, eating your vegetables, going to the doctor when necessary, not smoking, not using alcohol to excess, not playing freeze tag on the railroad tracks, etc.) is very reasonable.
But I would imagine you'd agree that health vigilance is a very different thing from, say, extreme hypochondriasis, just as caution around armed strangers is a very different thing from paranoia.
IMO, having either the: "I'm so terrified of death that I refuse to leave my bedroom and will only drink from my personal hip flask so as to avoid being poisoned" mindset, OR the "I don't need to mentally engage with the idea of death at all because the magic nano-elves will emerge from the laboratory in time to save my arse" is destructive.
What I was trying to get at in my post was that yes, humans might end up developing some really nifty biotech stuff that will enable us to live a lot longer than today's projected lifespans would suggest, but that this does not somehow "free up" anyone from having to eventually engage with the vulnerability of bodies and the probable finitude of the universe itself.
And I think people who simply can't engage with the finitude stuff or the vulnerability stuff are actually going to be less rational when it comes to evaluating possible means to achieve better healthcare which includes better longevity-oriented medicine.
Hopefully that makes sense. I don't sit either in the compacency box or the superlative hysteria box, and I don't really recommend either.
Toni S.: How is my post in any way like a lament about not being born 200 years later?
As for the rest of what you say, I pretty much agree with it, though I don't see anything particularly weird about not wanting to cease to exist (in addition to wanting to avoid "corrupted body functions" and pain and stuff).
I just think it's probably healthy for people to confront the idea of not existing someday. Though I'm certainly not trying to insist that everyone think a certain way -- I'm just making a suggestion based on what I've observed.
Michael Anissimov: You said:
Immortalists never really said that life means nothing unless it's for forever. Where did you get that impression?
I don't think I said that anyone said that -- I just said that I rejected the idea that life couldn't mean something unless it was forever. You might not think that way, but I'd guess that there might be some who do -- e.g., people who may have gravitated over to life extension after spending a lifetime prior in a religion that promised an afterlife. At most I was speculating that some people might think that way, not accusing any person or group in particular of thinking that way.
...I still feel comfortable saying "I want to be immortal".
Sure, why not? I feel comfortable saying I'd like to live indefinitely if possible...I don't think there's anything pathological about having a healthy survival instinct.
That isn't the issue I was addressing in my writing, though. I was addressing instead the issue of when I come across people taking some existing medical breakthrough and engaging in a bit of textual hand-waving that invariably leads to some sort of "uploading" scenario.
While I certainly don't think brains and minds are "magic", I do think that the whole embodiment thing is probably more important than a lot of people think it is, and that we don't have nearly enough neurobiological data to propose potential substrate-transfer exercises just yet.
...note that there's nothing incompatible between valuing each minute and wanting to live forever.
I know that. I wasn't trying to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't want. I see wanting something as different from believing you'll get it, though, and I don't think anyone living today has enough information to make accurate ultra-long-term predictions about what "levels" of longevity might be achievable in the distant future.
Therefore I see an over-emphasis on "achieving immortality" as potentially counterproductive in discussions of practical means to achieve better longevity medicine. First things first, and all. Your mileage may vary.
kakalina: Yeah, there are a lot of story villains that seem to have an obsession with death evasion (look at Lord Voldemort).
Regarding feeling "ultimately undefeatable": I don't think I had a sense of danger at all until I was 19 or 20, at which point I became extremely fearful for a while and felt like everything was dangerous. When I was a little kid I was afraid of some "weird" things (like that scene in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" when a car fills up with soap bubbles, and this picture from Dr. Seuss's ABC book), but I didn't have the usual litany of self-preservation-oriented fears (like "don't run around near traffic" or "don't jump out of trees").
Regarding the "bad people benefitting from longevity medicine" thing: I see that scenario as not exactly a special one, but one symptomatic of the general problem of people in positions of power being able to accumulate more and more resources for doling out destruction, etc. To me that seems like something that needs to be addressed through societal and cultural progress rather than through the development, or lack thereof, of particular gadgets and/or machines and/or medical techniques.
Dale: I don't know if it's so much a matter of my refusing to allow conversations like this to get abstract as just my general cognitive style.
I wrote about this sort of thing in this post, wherein I also quoted from a post by my friend Amanda who has similar issues dealing with abstractions. Both of us do see and understand that the "abstract widget" approach can at times be expedient, and that it can also sometimes lead to appropriate actions and/or observations we might agree with, but that some brains just don't work optimally in that mode (even though the same brains do work).
And honestly, even though you speak of "drifting into habits of generality" yourself, you seem to do this a lot less than most politically-oriented writers I come across. Or at the very least, you very clearly use the abstractions as tools convenient for explaining patterns in the real world as opposed to doing that annoying thing-I-can't-stand that involves insisting that the real world MUST be a certain way because "whateverism" says it is.
I think there's a difference between using abstractions in the context of the real world, and trying to over-write the real world with abstractions.
De Thezier: You said:
So you don't claim adherence to transhumanism? ;)
My position in that regard is summed up here. I am not going to entertain that subject in any blog comment threads, though, because it just makes my brain hurt at this point. I have many other things I'd rather be writing about, frankly.
And regarding being "allergic to isms": I'm not trying to make some political statement merely by the mere fact of expressing ideas and thoughts and notions about ethics the way I do. I'm just trying to express things in a manner that makes sense to me. My response to Dale's comment is probably relevant to this issue.
(Also, you will probably note that I don't reject all "isms" and "ists" -- I mean, I'm okay describing myself in terms like "atheistic", "autistic", and even "artistic" if you count my robot scribblings as "art", after all. :P)
Now, with that being said, I'm still unclear as to what you mean by what you wrote in your About Me section.
Well, you'll probably just have to remain unclear then because what I wrote in my "About Me" section represents the best way I could think of to express those particular thoughts using language. I don't have any better or clearer language to describe that stuff. Make of it what you will, I guess.
annec said:
My position in that regard is summed up here. I am not going to entertain that subject in any blog comment threads, though, because it just makes my brain hurt at this point. I have many other things I'd rather be writing about, frankly.
Oh don't worry! I wasn't really interested in discussing the T-word in this thread. I was just poking fun.
Well, you'll probably just have to remain unclear then because what I wrote in my "About Me" section represents the best way I could think of to express those particular thoughts using language. I don't have any better or clearer language to describe that stuff. Make of it what you will, I guess.
That's too bad because I was hoping you could have pointed me to some of your posts where you might have expanded your thoughts on the subject.
For example, do you believe existence can be wonderful despite the possibility that all efforts of humanity to find meaning in the universe ultimately fail (and, hence, are absurd) because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to humanity?
By the way, are you going to post your thoughts on anarchism any time soon? I'm actually looking forward to it.
De Thezier: You said:
That's too bad because I was hoping you could have pointed me to some of your posts where you might have expanded your thoughts on the subject [of the material in your "about me" section].
You know, I hadn't even thought of that approach...when I read your question I realized I couldn't come up with a short, tidy clarification of my "about me" statements, but now that you mention it, I do think a person could probably get a sense of what I'm talking about there from reading various posts:
- That Joy in Existence Without Which The Universe Would Fall Apart and Collapse
- Life In The Details
- Just What's So Wonderful About This Whole Existence Thing Anyway?
(Mind you, the third post there contains some material representing a mindset wherein I think I over-estimated the degree of negative influence social attitudes had on the progress of longevity research, but that material doesn't have much to do with the rest of the post so I'd not get too hung up on those bits in looking at the overall theme of the writing there.)
You said:
For example, do you believe existence can be wonderful despite the possibility that all efforts of humanity to find meaning in the universe ultimately fail (and, hence, are absurd) because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to humanity?
That question doesn't even make sense per my worldview. I don't believe in an "objective" meaning to the universe -- I think meaning happens when an individual consciousness interacts with and forms a feedback loop between it and the things outside it (or the things perceived as being outside it, as sometimes things like dreams feel to the person like an interaction between a mind and an "environment"). Hence, different individuals are going to find certain things more or less meaningful depending on their disposition, life experiences, knowledge, memories, perceptual style, cognitive style, etc. I do think that there are some things that tend to interact with consciousness in such a way as to prompt a sense of meaningfulness than others (i.e., the archetypes commonly employed in mythical and other stories), but I don't see there being anything a person could point to as the gold standard for what "meaningful" is.
This is a pretty complicated area of discussion, though, so I'm certainly not doing it justice here...I will say, though, that the book Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter employs discussions of meaningfulness and significance that, when I read them, "feel like" how I understand those things. Meaning is very contextual, very "emergent" (if I can employ what is probably an overused term here), and very individual, but at the same time, I think there are certain kinds of complexity and form and isomorphism that tend to appeal to humans who at least have a desire to run around seeking meaning.
For me, the process of "seeking meaning" tends to presume that things-in-reality do have intrinsic properties that make them interesting and valuable (and I don't mean in the monetary sense here, but in the sense of being significant and beautiful in their own way), but that different people's consciousnesses tend to respond differently to different things-in-reality. E.g., music on its own, playing for no-one, is still music with all the things that make music feel wonderful and moving. And a person sitting alone in a room with no music playing still has all the structures and memories and such in their head that make it possible for him to perceive the aspects of music that grant a feeling of meaningfulness. But when you put the person and the music together, you end up with something new that couldn't necessarily have been predicted from taking either in isolation -- the interaction between the person listening to music and the music itself is where meaning happens.
Now, I'm not saying that everything is somehow fundamentally good or that if one only looks hard enough, one can find meaning and wonder in something like, say, torture. What I'm saying is that while meaning isn't handed down from on high, and that people pretty much need to find their own meaning in life, there usually needs to be "stuff" around that is separate in some way from a person's internal consciousness in order for meaning to happen. It's an "interdependence" kind of thing, in other words. And I also think different people are attuned to different properties of space, time, matter, thought, etc. which makes meaning-structures emerge when some people look at some things but not others.
For example, some people I know find baseball to be extremely fascinating. Personally I find it really boring to watch but I don't believe that this is because there's nothing intrinsically complex or worthwhile in baseball -- I'm just not attuned to it in the way that would make a meaning-structure form when I see it being played. But I can still look at the concept of baseball and see that there's a fair bit of complexity there, right down to the importance of having the right stitching pattern on the ball, and having the bat be the right weight, and having people stand in particular places and move in particular patterns (and at particular speeds) to make the game progress and to make the matter and energy present in the "game-space" move around in certain ways. In other words, I know there's "something going on" there, but it doesn't ping my brain in the way that, say, Tetris and science fiction stories and electrical engineering and specks of dust floating in sunbeams do.
(I have no idea if that was actually informative in any way about how I think, but hopefully it gave you a bit of a sense of it at least.)
You said:
By the way, are you going to post your thoughts on anarchism any time soon? I'm actually looking forward to it.
Probably not. If I think of an idea for a post that would incorporate something about anarchism I'll post it, but I doubt I'd do a post just specifically devoted to that. I think that some of the worldview stuff I have come up with "on my own" (so to speak) is similar to some things I've read exist in anarchism (e.g., a desire to reject the notion of people having power over other people), but I am not going to go around calling myself an anarchist on that basis.
What I will probably do at some point, though, is write a post about what my idea of "government" actually is, and let people draw their own conclusions. Suffice to say for now that I think that "government" can do good things and perform necessary functions, but that it ought to ideally not consist of a big power structure. Rather, government should be about identifying particular (often logistics-oriented) jobs and then hiring/electing people who we-the-people think would be good at these jobs.
In other words, government should exist not to "lord over" people, but to help people deal with the extremely large-scale stuff that impacts their everyday life but that they personally can't necessarily manage. E.g., government positions should just be jobs pertaining to the management of particular, specific tasks (road-building, drug safety testing, etc.). And people who enter these jobs should not be people looking to wield power, but people who want to deal with (and are skilled at dealing with) balancing diverse needs and interests and administrating resource distribution and such. I don't think present systems of government meet this "ideal" view, but I also don't necessarily think that the very idea of "government" has to be rejected out of hand -- what I think needs to be rejected is the notion of treating governments as if they are "other" or not-the-people, as well as the notion of government as "authority" as opposed to "service provider".
(and I haven't thought all that through very carefully or thoroughly yet -- that's just sort of a preview of something I may expand on further in the future).
You said "I see this as a medical and ethical imperative, and a function of the acknowledgment that all people are valuable and irreplaceable, and that the loss of a single individual is like the loss of a whole world".
Yet, under what conditions do you consider one a person? By advocating life extension which is intertwined with technological proliferation (advances in chemistry/physics/biology/psychology/computer science/etc.) you greatly reduce the amount of autonomy any person has. This also ensures that our society approaches a technological singularity.
At this point no person could exist without sufficient modification (to the point of being non-human, and to the point of having no active say in their (re)configuration within the system).
Lacking any rigorous justification this is not only insane but genocidal.
What good is a long life without autonomy?
What beautiful reality is there to experience in such a world? A greying, balding planet, a shattered horizon and desiccated oceans.
The connection between The Scorpion and your post is that the Scorpion took place in a time where it was possible to have a clone made of yourself with genes programmed to "speed-up" growing, so you'd have an adult body with a brain that had the maturity of a 3-month old baby. Then they'd have scientists kill it and remove the organs to replace the worn out organs of some filthy-rich guy with these brand new ones so that he'd keep on living a fairly comfortable life. The passage in which this is revealed is hideous (from a moral point of view).
Of course, the ending is mostly happy. This is, after all, a melodramatic culture. Try to put out a movie with a true tragedy, and you'll be crucified on a burning cross.
You have a lovely, evocative way of expressing yourself annec. I thoroughly enjoyed your post.
While immortality is currently not achievable, it certainly is possible to improve your odds of living a long, healthy life. There are many means of improving the average person's expected longevity, but many people focus on all the wrong things.
Feel free to take a look at my blog if you're interested. It takes a very pragmatic approach to the topic of longevity. A good place to start is
http://thehonestdoctor.com/life-as-an-odds-game/
Anne, I envy you your ability to move beyond the paralyzing fear of oblivion. I've never really been able to move past it, even though I am certainly not curled up in a cave waiting for the end but it does pervade my being completely. On the other hand, it's what motivates me to keep working for life extension.
Disclaimer: I admit I didn't make it to the end of the comments! I made it 3/4 of the way through, and have greatly enjoyed this conversation, but I just wanted to pop in and comment on this:
In order for something to be truly immortal it would need to exist...well, right up until "the end of time" (beyond which the very concept of "time" would itself become incoherent).
I just want to toss out the idea that whenever it is that one dies, that really IS the end of time, for all pragmatic purposes to the individual. I'm not sure what this says about your position, but it strikes me that time itself becomes incoherent whenever it is that one stops living.
I really do love your blog, Anne. I need to set time aside to read your posts with as much thought as you write them!
Robin: Have you by any chance seen Donnie Darko? I'm a sucker for movies like that (melodramatic dark science fantasy fiction). :) They made a point in that movie that reminds me of your point regarding time becoming incoherent for the individual after death.
I've spent some time pondering THAT one, and honestly, that one strikes me as an even weirder mind-frell than thinking about one's own *death*. Eventually, if modern physics is at all actually accurate in its very-long-term predictions, the whole spacetime continuum is going to go kablooey. And while I'm sure someone could go off and establish a religion based on THAT realization alone (i.e., "Hey, heaven exists at the end of time, didn't you know?"), to me it's more interesting just to sit there and go "whoah!" at. :)
I have seen Donnie Darko - not in years, but I *loved* it when I saw it. Totally don't remember this topic coming up, but I'm not surprised! We have similar taste in films, I suspect.
"Hey, heaven exists at the end of time, didn't you know?"
You should look into "The Physics of Immortality" by Frank Tipler. He has complicated equations meant to prove that at the end of time, the dead actually WILL be resurrected and the Christian end-times story will actually happen. He backs it all up with physics I don't understand (or believe can quite possibly be correct) but it's absolutely fascinating in all its unbelievable weirdness! You'd love it.
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