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2Punx2Furious t1_ixhfhxy wrote

Reply to comment by KeepItASecretok in Lex Fridman's father is pro-immortality by SpiritedSort672

> cult like obsession with accepting death or old age for some people

https://hpluspedia.org/wiki/Deathism

It's basically a way to cope.

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HongoMushroomMan t1_ixipsix wrote

Its all one massive giant coping mechanism in my opinion. Some start earlier than others. I've been cursed to have spent a portion of my brain cycles on the cold hard truth that death is the end since I was 14. Ate some mushrooms at way too young of an age and something in my mind just... clicked. I remember the second it happened. I woke up, sober and just proceeded to live post-realization. That an actual cessation of existence was coming, and that its not to be spoken or talked about around normal people.

I'd imagine most average people only really start getting into that internal realization in their 50s/60s/70s when they feel their body literally beginning that cycle of disrepair that leads to inevitable failure. Its for sure the #1 reason religion has maintained such an iron-fisted hold over mankind.. People simple can't have "the realization" and not wrap it around some form of hope or belief that its really not the end.

But just like that bug you smashed or the roadkill squirrel you saw on the highway, those life forces were extinguished and so too will yours. Another thought exercise I do is reflect on how we view humans in antiquity. How we tend to look down upon them more or less because we are fortunate to live in the modern world and they are not. The terrible thing in my mind is (finally back to this topic) is that WE are the ones that either already are or will be thought of in a different age as the unlucky ones to have come before. We are living in antiquity as I type this. With our handheld computers walking around thinking we are the future. We're not the future, we are the ancient past, the dust in the ground.

We will cure forever consciousness one day, and there will be a massive grieving period for our race when it dawns on everyone, that everyone who had the misfortune to die before eternal consciousness was enabled was more or less a sacrifice. We continue to shoot our genes like a marathon baton into the next fleshbag that lasts about 80 years so that we can incrementally get closer to that salvation. Its a shitty thought, to be taken out of existence before all knowledge and mysteries are made available forever to those future humans.

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Stulam0g t1_ixisn3e wrote

There's no science that says there will be a "forever". Do you think that science will solve that, and in what way is that belief different from religion? Do you not perceive this as a coping mechanism to avoid the reality of death?

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HongoMushroomMan t1_ixiuuob wrote

Well, sure. Its just a vastly superior coping mechanism to the cessation of being. I'd say 1,000 years, 10,000 years, 10 million years, a billion years. All would be drastically better.

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Stulam0g t1_ixixuo6 wrote

Maybe, but even a billion billion years is nothing in the face of the eternity of non existence. Not trying to dunk on you or anything btw, very much in agreement with you, I'm tryin to dodge that fate for as long as possible lmao

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HongoMushroomMan t1_ixiz5ne wrote

Lol no I get it. It's something important to remember that forever basically can't exist. Heat death and such. However, I suppose if one could reposition oneself to a different universe on a different timescale you could postpone it more or less forever by always moving to a new universe. Probably in the next 20 years amirite?

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SpiritedSort672 OP t1_ixj278r wrote

>It's something important to remember that forever basically can't exist. Heat death and such.

Even if the heat death of the universe has a solution, which it may have (who knows?), living forever is by definition impossible, since it's never forever.

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Stulam0g t1_ixjv1t2 wrote

Hopefully less. Honestly I'll take tech that can change me into a person that's chill with facing an eternity of nothing. Take what I can get. Who knows tho, when we're smashing neutron stars together in a couple years, maybe we can break something the right way around.

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Original_Ad_1103 t1_ixkhifu wrote

Heat death? As we get a better understanding of the universe, each new step takes more and more resources. 150 years ago a single physicist or astronomer could on their own still make a world-changing discovery. Now, most major research is done by large groups working together. In the case of particle physics, the research involves literally the largest machines any humans have ever built. And the discoveries are getting smaller. Once one has the basic idea of evolution and DNA, and how RNA functions, in some sense what remains in biology, while quite interesting, just aren't as large or as amazing questions, even if their answers may have a lot of important applications and will continue to help us understand life. And one sees some of this issue also in where practical engineering has gone with science also- between 1885 and 1910 you have the first practical cars, the first radio and the first airplanes. People often like to say were in the midst of a technological revolution, but the turn of that century was far closer to that. Now, while we still have game-changing technologies, they aren't coming as fast. We may be moving into a long plateau.

We absolutely cannot decrease the entropy of a closed system. It's (almost) physically impossible. But it doesn't seem implausible that future engineers might be able to build machines that are efficient enough to approximate processes with zero net entropy increase. Perhaps they could get close enough for all intents and purposes? That's science. Heat death of the universe is what matches the data we have at this moment the best. We might get new data tomorrow.

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TheHamsterSandwich t1_ixxicpp wrote

We either conquer heat death or leave the universe for a new one. Those huge swaths of time will give us a viable solution, if we even assume heat death is the ultimate fate of the universe.

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