I appreciate this framing a lot and I really enjoyed the post.
On the topic of living forever, I worry that people who aren’t super smart might not be able to find nearly as much joy in random activities/concepts. If I were locked in a room with Richard Feynman I’m not sure that I would actually love physics; I might just come out very confused and a bit drained.
I worry that my brain is simply unable to deeply understand and appreciate theoretical physics, and even if it were, I don’t know if I have the willpower to sit through Feynman explaining quartz to me for the tenth time. Would I find this willpower at some point over the span of a million/billion/infinite years? Maybe? Maybe not?
Is it possible that smarter people have more concepts they can play with, and maybe if you’re smart enough you have essentially infinite ideas to play with, but people less intelligent than this certain threshold will run out of interesting ideas after X years/decades/millennia?
(Even if this was true I still think most people would like to live forever. I just think they will likely relive/rethink the same things and visit their great-great...-great grandchildren, rather than learn the secrets of the universe. Heck, most people relive the same thing every day, and yet most aren’t suicidal, so I don’t think they would be suicidal if they did this for a million years rather than 80 years.)
I appreciate this framing a lot and I really enjoyed the post.
On the topic of living forever, I worry that people who aren’t super smart might not be able to find nearly as much joy in random activities/concepts. If I were locked in a room with Richard Feynman I’m not sure that I would actually love physics; I might just come out very confused and a bit drained.
I worry that my brain is simply unable to deeply understand and appreciate theoretical physics, and even if it were, I don’t know if I have the willpower to sit through Feynman explaining quartz to me for the tenth time. Would I find this willpower at some point over the span of a million/billion/infinite years? Maybe? Maybe not?
Is it possible that smarter people have more concepts they can play with, and maybe if you’re smart enough you have essentially infinite ideas to play with, but people less intelligent than this certain threshold will run out of interesting ideas after X years/decades/millennia?
(Even if this was true I still think most people would like to live forever. I just think they will likely relive/rethink the same things and visit their great-great...-great grandchildren, rather than learn the secrets of the universe. Heck, most people relive the same thing every day, and yet most aren’t suicidal, so I don’t think they would be suicidal if they did this for a million years rather than 80 years.)