alt Hacker NewsThere have been many, many stories over the millenia that try to empart the wisdom that mortality is necessary. Some present it as being a gift.
I don't think any one source made it click for me, but I think some combination of watching The Good Place, Sandman, and a lot of Black Mirror got me really stretching my imagination of what it would feel like to be truly immortal. I had a moment that felt like my horizons had been expanded very slightly when I felt this severe dread for maybe half a second. A feeling of being inescapably trapped.
There's also this PC game called The Coin Game that's just a solo-dev making lots of arcade games. They exist on an island where you have a home and some hobbies and a few arcades and I think even a mall. But the entire island is devoid of humanity. There's just a bunch of robots. I don't know if the game has a backstory, but the one my brain filled in is that this is a sort of playground for you to live in forever... and it's got a San Junipero feel, but far more bleak. Gave me the chills. I'm happy to be mortal.
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> watching The Good Place… I had a moment that felt like my horizons had been expanded very slightly when I felt this severe dread for maybe half a second. A feeling of being inescapably trapped.
Ah, he saw the time-knife
I'm with you. The idea of being immortal is terrifying to me. Will I still care about nature after seeing millions of extinctions? Will I still care about life when I see trillions of humans doing human things? Will I even still feel part of the universe as the only permanently unchanging thing?
Hard pass. Besides, if we were immortal, we wouldn't have my favorite quote, which feels a bit relevant here. As the great mind of our time, Bill Watterson says: "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want."
> I had a moment that felt like my horizons had been expanded very slightly when I felt this severe dread for maybe half a second. A feeling of being inescapably trapped.
Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" explores this feeling.
It seems absurd to argue that death is necessary or good when there is exactly zero experience with the alternative.
Imagine a society where everyone has a ball and chain permanently attached from birth. It would be just a part of life. Some thinkers might write articles about how much better things would be if a way could be found to get rid of the ball and chain. Others would come up with arguments for why the ball and chain is actually good, or even necessary. The limitation on movement gives life a purpose. The resistance helps build strength.
Looking at such a society from the outside, we'd find the latter arguments ludicrous. How can it possibly be better to stuck with a major physical restriction your entire life? If anyone said we should start doing this to all our children, they'd be run out of town.
If humanity does solve the problem of death, I doubt it will be absolute, in any case. Aging might be stopped, maybe added resistance to disease and injury, but nothing is going to allow you to survive hugging a detonating nuclear bomb, or any number of other physically extreme events. If you decide forever is not for you, then you'd be able to make that choice.
Most of those stories are just sour grapes. Dying has been the biggest fear for all of history for most people, and especially back then people were losing their family and friends at young ages.
You have to have some kind of belief in that situation that dying has a special purpose, or something happens after you die so that you’re rewarded.
It’s the same as the suffering of a medieval peasant, which they thought was so important. Nowadays we have eliminated that. Was it really giving them such an important meaning and rich life? No, they just thought it did to cope.
Besides, even if we cured aging it wouldn’t mean we’re trapped living forever, you’d be guaranteed to get killed some other way anyway.