The War on the War on Death Begins

&gt; &quot;Tell me, Harry,&quot; said the Headmaster (and now his voice sounded simply puzzled, though there was still a hint of pain in his eyes), &quot;why do Dark Wizards fear death so greatly?&quot;<p>&gt; &quot;Er,&quot; said Harry, &quot;sorry, I&#x27;ve got to back the Dark Wizards on that one.&quot;<p>from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:<p><a href="http://hpmor.com/chapter/39" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hpmor.com&#x2F;chapter&#x2F;39</a>

Here&#x27;s something I like to point out any time the subject arises. Let&#x27;s use 39 per 100,000 population as the current accidental death rate[0]. Perhaps you have reason to believe it is lower for you (you don&#x27;t have a dangerous occupation, you aren&#x27;t clumsy, etc. etc.) but that is hand-wavey and anyway you can consider it a rough order of magnitude.<p>Raise .9996 to 10,000th power and you find you will have a 2% chance of living 10,000 years. Raise it to the 100,000th and you get something very very close to zero.<p>You should also consider all the thousands of different rare diseases that we won&#x27;t have figured out how to cure even if we do cure &quot;ageing&quot;.<p>Long story short, you should be prepared to die at some point.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/leadingcauses.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;injury&#x2F;wisqars&#x2F;leadingcauses.html</a>

Oh man, this one will be fun.<p>&gt; Every person must die!<p>&gt; But I don&#x27;t want to die.<p>&gt; But thou must!<p>&gt; If that&#x27;s your position, I respect that. I&#x27;ll go on living and you can die, even right now if you want to.<p>&gt; Oh no no no, I don&#x27;t want to die right now. I just want at some future moment to have died and be dead and have checked off every one of life&#x27;s achievements, including death.<p>And it is at this point where I cannot continue this sarcastical mock-conversation -- it gets too surreal for me. As horrible as it sounds, at least the people who don&#x27;t want to live past 80 will gradually die off and leave the rest of us to live.

It would be nice to spend trillions of dollars on eliminating death instead of spending it on pointless wars and other retarded stuff.<p>I don&#x27;t understand how anyone would want to die. I believe when you die that&#x27;s it. You cease to exist and rot in the ground until you decompose into nothing. How could you want that rather than to run around for a few thousand years at some prime age without pain or disease?

The recent Torchwood miniseries Miracle Day spent a good 6 episodes talking over this very point. It&#x27;s worth watching, if only for some good speculative fiction about how humanity would really respond if we suddenly were immortal.<p>In short, we have a lot more pressing problems to address with the basic human condition before we make ourselves immortal... Removing things like homelessness and poverty would be more beneficial first steps (and ironically would go a long ways to increasing the average lifespan of our population).

There&#x27;s something that I don&#x27;t think gets discussed enough when this topic is risen. One reason why death is good is that the ideas of old people die with them. Often, it&#x27;s the only way to scourge ourselves of bad ideas. Imagine a country of people still stuck in an 1850s mindset.

I occasionally ask friends if they could take a pill to live forever, would they?<p>Most say No.<p>I then add that everyone else would have access to them too, so their friends and family would also be around. They think a bit more.<p>Some then say Yes, but some still say No.<p>I then say they&#x27;d go back to a 25 year old&#x27;s body.<p>Then they pretty much all say Yes.<p>The war disappears as soon as you change the conversation. I&#x27;m from a secular country though, so I don&#x27;t what the American Religious Right would say.

Articles and discussions like this seem mostly like trying to comfort ourselves on the fact that in our lifetimes we probably won&#x27;t clinically cure death.<p>It&#x27;ll matter a lot more when we&#x27;ve actually done it, and we&#x27;re asking people to stop living voluntarily.

Ive been thinking alot about the ethics of it and its really hard. Personally id love to live forever but i am not sure if any form of meaningful live extension is due within my generation (i am 30 now). Probably not. Would be kind of sad to be the last gen to have normal lifespans though. On the other hand dying from non natural causes in a world like that would be even more dramatic.

&gt; Callahan seems in no hurry to let his own death have its day, and I can’t blame him.<p>Reminds me of a (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) warning against the universal condemnation of suicide that those who have discovered the most compelling arguments for it aren&#x27;t around to give it a proper defense.

How about transferring human consciousness onto machines? I think its much more probable than to stop the human body from aging and its also more secure. Id at least have two offsite backups of my mind somewhere, just in case you know. And dont forget the encryption in case the NSA gets ahold of it!

As long as humans are so forgetful, people will experience forever, which is a good reason to live forever.

Three conditions would make life extension practical for me.<p>1) Cost of living becomes negligible or earning a living is still possible at 100+. 2) The additional years are healthy ones. 3) Breeding is reduced or resource availability is increased.<p>But even then, I think Asimov&#x27;s premise that a longer-lived person doesn&#x27;t have the urgency of a shorter-lived person has merit (The Naked Sun.)<p>If you have hundreds of years to live, why do something risky (or even expressive) RIGHT NOW?

What would we need more life for? To consume more experiences, people and things? Do you really need 100 years to become what you are, learn empathy and letting go, and to get some perspective? Personally I think if you can&#x27;t hack it in 50 years, you can&#x27;t hack it in 5000 either. Health is nice, youth is fun, but living longer for the sake of living longer is something I pity rather than envy.