Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by kstenerud 5179 days ago
If you don't like it, you could always choose to die. The point is that these technologies will give you the luxury of the choice to live as long as you want.

Personally, I've tallied up a number of things I want to do in my life, and after having done 2 big ones (well, one finished and one still in progress with a moving goalpost), I've realized just how long it takes to accomplish big goals. Even my incomplete list far exceeds 200 years already. I'll take the life extension, thanks.
1 comments
digitalsushi 5179 days ago
I just feel like turning when I die into a luxury option somehow trivializes my entire existence. I know this is just a personal hangup of mine, but I feel like I am nothing but a summation of activities if I know it's time to die when I get bored with this now-plentiful lifetime. It's like, if you could just keep disney world open as long as you wanted, you could get to ride everything until you were sick of it, and then you'd finally be happy and ready to go home. shrug Maybe I am just uncomfortable that that level of control. It's definitely pressing a lobe in my brain I don't have a name for. I'm sorry I can't be more articulate than that but I know it's based in some rat-brain non-rational fear. It's interesting.
link
CompiledCode 5179 days ago
According to various philosophies and religions, defining life in terms of "doing" is one of the fundamental errors, and it does have various negative implications if you think it through to its logical conclusion.

So, no, I don't think this is just "a personal hangup" of yours...

link
kstenerud 5178 days ago
Any thing you define life in terms of is a fundamental error. There is no meaning except that which you make for yourself. You can define it in terms of what to be, or what to do. If you define it in terms of what to do, life loses meaning once you run out of things to do. If you define it in terms of what to be, you end up in an ego contest with anyone else who wants to be the same thing, and life loses meaning once you become "common".

Religion dodges the issue by presenting goals that cannot be reached, which I think is a fair compromise for most people.

link