[rogers18445]

The reason why regulation is going to fail is simple. AGI is the supreme bet, the Gamble to Resurrection. Faced with death years to decades from now or a chance at amortality. Which would you choose?

Would you be willing to bet on p(doom) whatever it might be when p(amortality | AGI) >>> p(amortality) during your lifetime? I personally am willing to place such a bet, and I would hazard a guess that decision makers don't come to their positions without similar sentiments.

[ChatGTP]

I think this is what our tech overlords are investing all the money for. They're getting older quite quickly and probably feel like immortality is just around the corner if they keep syncing money into AI research and keep taking risks, they will cheat death.

I compare it to the the great pyramids. The pyramids were arguably another technological marvel also built on the back of slaves (just like modern tech now) and probably a lot of great inventions and innovations were made to facilitate their creation. To people of the time, the pyramids must've been absolutely incredible marvels to behold.

But all those Pharo's are dead, just like everyone else. I think the current tech overlords will die like everyone else too.

Nature already has a way for people to live on, it's called having children and dying. It's a great system and no one ever gets bored. However, the ego of some people is so strong and isn't satisfied with this, so on we go pouring money and resources into the search for the holy grail no matter what the risks are to everything else.

[rogers18445]

To some people death and the end of the universe are equivalent events. Others seek refuge in natural fallacies.

The difference between this moment and all others, is that amorality is actually achievable. If you can get an AGI and drown it in compute, through sheer brute-force the secrets of biology will be unraveled. The task is not to attain amortality immediately, merely gain more life faster than you lose it.

[bamboozled]

Others seek refuge in natural fallacies.

Are you trying to call having children a natural fallacy?

[rogers18445]

The natural fallacy is seeing your children in any way a continuation of yourself. They are independent entities.

[bamboozled]

The only way what your saying is true is if we could create people with zero links to their parents DNA or create completely rewrite all DNA so it's novel (we can't).

This doesn't mean you own your children or anything like that, no one is suggesting their not independent, but you do go on living through your children in one way or another.

[paulcole]

> Faced with death years to decades from now or a chance at amortality. Which would you choose?

Death, 100%. I know that death doesn’t have any downsides (although dying sometimes has some) and it’s worked for everyone who’s lived so far.

[habitue]

> death doesn’t have any downsides

The fact that most people try to avoid death by any means possible is a good indication it has downsides.

Specifically, the fact that you can no longer go on living is a big downside of death in my mind.

[paulcole]

People try to avoid dying every day.

They put on their seatbelts, make sure their food isn’t covered in poop, check their boots for scorpions, take their insulin, etc.

They can’t avoid death. Nobody in the history of humanity has successfully avoided death.

But once death happens nothing matters to them any more. They literally no longer care about the life they’re not going on living.

Dying might be scary or painful but death isn’t.

[lukev]

Technically untrue, approximately 7.31 percent of all humans who have ever lived are currently alive (i.e. have avoided death (so far)).

Also your argument is just disingenuous. Nonexistence may not be painful, but the concept of nonexistence can be quite disturbing for the currently existing (even apart from the experience of dying.)

[paulcole]

Do you think any of those 7.31 percent of all humans will avoid death?

And no, it’s not disingenuous. If someone offered you the choice of immortality (never ever dying under any circumstances) or continuing with natural human existence (being guaranteed to die at some point), which would you take?

[pzo]

I think kids born recently have higher chance to avoid death - in next 70 years a lot of can change. And even if in that time frame we won't be able to make people immortal maybe we can extend lifespan to 150 years with still healthy body? Then they would buy themself extra 80 years for another health innovations in race to immortality.

And immortality is not like you cannot die - it's just you wouldnt die becasue od aging. You could also kill yourself if you get bored after living 200 years. Today most people don't commit suicide because they got bored. Most people don't give up after having cancer. Average lifespan is 80 years and people know it and kind of accept it but would you be happy to have lifespan as dog or cat less than 20 years?

I think many people would want to have a choice to live 200+ years and in good health.

[Balgair]

Over the pandemic and thereafter my family has had a lot of deaths in it. So, I've been forced to think about it a lot, to sit with others over it, and to just deal with a lot of the mundane parts of it too.

Death is horrible. It makes no sense. When people say they have had a 'loss', they're not kidding. You feel like that person should still be there, but like a kid at Disneyland, they are lost to you and you're searching for them. I'm dealing with a fair few relatives that just are not processing all these losses. Grief is a strange, personal, and unique thing too. It manifests personally and yet stereotypically for every individual.

That said, I think Death is the way.

The reasoning is complex and long. So, I'll try to sum it up for a simple comment, and I'll do that poorly, sorry.

The big reason stem from this article on Wikipedia. I think it's one of the best there is on the whole site:

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

Say you were truly immortal. That timeline would be your future, as far as we currently understand physics. You get to spend a lot of time between universes if the last entry is to be believed. In fact, they don't even bother with giving the units. Nanoseconds or gigayears are pretty much the same st those timescales. Our time here on Earth is essentially as brief as the entire non-black-hole era to an immortal like that. Purgatory in the black void is more like what such an immortal would experience.

Or say you get to relive your life when you die. Poof, you're reborn to your folks and have all your memories again somehow. Repeat forever. You're doomed to live and die the same life, like 'Groundhog Day', but for ~80 years long and not just a day. Another purgatory after enough lives, I'd guess. Sisyphean.

Heaven, hell. An afterlife is our best hope. Somewhere we can't possibly understand with our minds right now. A total lack of understanding of the life hereafter is the only path where you retain something of you. Where you can grow and change, time can continue in, I dunno, 7 dimensions. I've not a clue, and I think that's great. If I did, right now I think you'd just end up in a form of purgatory given enough time.

But an endless dreamless night is just fine too. In no other way except an afterlife that I cannot possibly understand do we get to have 'happily ever after'. I think everyone would take that Socratic apology given enough time and I think they'd be right to do so.

I dunno, been sitting on this a while, and it's late for me and, again, sorry that this is a brief and jumbled comment.