Thanks!
MarkelKori
Karma: 87
On Badness of Death
Comprehensive FAQ on Immortalism
I’m not afraid of death. In a way, Epicurus was right: when death comes, you’re no longer here, so what is there to fear?
No, it’s not about fear. I hate death; I feel a deep revulsion and rage toward it.
I’m not afraid to die. I feel no fear when I imagine my own death. But I don’t want to let this burp of evolution called aging continue to take my loved ones and animals away from me. At least not until they themselves (speaking of people, of course) want to leave. If they ever want to.
But, of course, at the same time, I would like to live for thousands of years, or even live forever. Not because I’m afraid of dying. Because life is interesting, multifaceted, and full of surprises. And if I can spend that time with those I love—if aging and death are conquered—there is no doubt that I will always choose life.
A love of life may be a reason to fight against aging. But personally, I think that a fear of death is a much stronger motivator.
MarkelKori’s Shortform
In my personal experience, what motivates people most to pursue life extension is not a love of life, but a hatred of death. Economic gain and the maintenance of “healthpan” are even weaker arguments.
Many of those I know who have been fighting death for years and with great effort do so primarily out of a deep hatred for the very idea of death… The idea that subjectivity could ever come to an end against the subject’s will. Judging by Yudkowsky’s early posts, which I sometimes revisit, his motivation regarding transhumanism is (or was) very similar.
Immortality: A Begginer’s Guide (Part 3)
Glad you liked it! The site should be launched very soon, and initially it will be in demo mode with a basic FAQ that primarily includes arguments in favor and a breakdown of counterarguments. I also plan to add a brief overview of approaches and the science behind it in the future, but I know very little about business models. If you know of any good sources where I could find information on this, I would appreciate it.
Key to Life No. 9: Access
Wow, that’s great. Thanks.
I understand. I have also lost loved ones, and I sincerely hope that I will live to see the day when death becomes optional.
Immortality: A Beginner’s Guide (Part 2)
Am I correct in understanding that you are suggesting that the human brain will deteriorate even without aging, since it is simply not designed to last for hundreds of years?
I know little about the limits of the brain over centuries or millennia, where exactly it will fail, and how this can be repaired. If you (or others) have a good resource with similar arguments, please let me know about it.
Of course, the easiest thing would be to recreate the brain — organic or silicon — with all its memories. But perhaps the problem of identity is even more complex than the problem of preserving the brain over centuries? I’m not sure.
Immortality: A Beginner’s Guide (Part 1)
I’d like to ask the following:
As I understand it, you agree that R1 and R2 would not be the very same individual, even if they were exact copies of each other (i.e., two identical tokens of the same type). That’s the idea I’m trying to convey in my post, but it seems I’m not doing it very well, and I’ve started to doubt myself—whether this is merely a “human language game.”
But it does seem genuinely true: if there are two tokens, then there are two independent “centers of experience” (if we are talking about conscious creatures of course).
And a single token in two locations does not seem physically realizable to me, although my knowledge of physics is fairly limited.
You also say that there are certain intuitions by which one can test or track the identity of objects. I’m not familiar with those ideas, but I’ll definitely look into them—thank you for the link.
Am I correct in understanding that, in the context of my thought experiment about perfect resurrection, you consider it impossible to bring back that very “I”—that very same line of experience, that very same “view from the inside”—whose existence ended with the person’s death?
And regardless of whether the answer is yes or no, I’d be interested to hear why you think so.
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.
I still haven’t fully figured out the issues of consciousness and illusionism, but it seems I’m an illusionist. I doubt that inverted qualia is possible without changing the physical structure. But you understood my idea correctly — “the view from within” will be another one, not the same one. I’m glad I was able to convey this idea, ha.
I would rather analyze this concept; I do not yet have completely accurate and firm conclusions on these issues.
I would like to emphasize once again that, for me, the question is that even when creating identical clones, we have two subjective experiences, two perspectives from within. Therefore, for me, being “the same” in the “perfect resurrection” scenario means remaining the same consciousness, without creating an additional consciousness, an additional first-person perspective (above, in my response to Dagon, I tried to explain this more clearly again).
Most likely, there may be no way to verify whether the new instance is “the same,” but I am interested in discussing this.
Of course, I agree that our personality is constantly changing. In my post, I wanted to reflect on the fact that even with perfect cloning, R1 would retain its sense of self, while R2 would develop its own separate sense of self. Both would have two separate “first-person perspectives,” even if we imagine that time has frozen and they remain two completely perfect copies. I mean, they would not become a single consciousness connected by invisible threads.
Currently, digital resurrection relies on artifacts such as photographs of a person, their correspondence, or voice recordings. But in the future, when whole brain emulation becomes possible, we will have a far more comprehensive source of information about a deceased person than ever before.
Based on the theory of mind, each of us has a “simulation” of important people in our brains. We will be able to extract these simulations from the WBEs of various people who knew the deceased and analyze cross-referenced memories to avoid confabulations. For example, using Bayesian Truth Serum.
In short, this is a great way to get the most useful and accurate information about a person in the [very] relatively near future.