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Also you'd think there would be people taking the 'middle' option of just forgetting the poo poo they experienced if they get tired of it and doing it all over again. "How is that different from non-existence?" says the moron, who I can't hear over all that cocaine I'm doing. It doesn't work tactically or psychologically, it's a narrative metaphor for the human experience. If you tried to break it down for real you'd start doing stupid poo poo like going "If they can force people not to say different words or forget and remember things at will couldn't they just....not have them get tired or bored?". At which point we are back to "It's not actually about being an afterlife, it's a metaphor for how you live your actual life. As an afterlife it's stupid and pointless.".
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Feb 1, 2020 21:21
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ImpAtom posted:You can make an afterlife where people are all one way but that isn't the actual people anymore. Counter-argument: Who gives a gently caress? It's not like there aren't a bunch of other supposed aspects of humanity that don't disappear when people die. The reason they needed to invent an oblivion door is because otherwise folks don't ever stop existing in the afterlife. It argues that the finality is what makes people people, but as they lacked that finality before that were they not really people? And if so, why would you tweak things to make them less when you could tweak things to make them more? It's 'unnatural' either way. And the answer is because none of this makes sense it's just a way to say "Do good because it's good not because you get some reward at the end". Mulva fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Feb 1, 2020 21:58
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I mean not really. The material causes of 'aging' and cell death are known, we are beginning to handle cell manipulation, and we have examples of other forms of life that aren't subject to cell death in the same way we are. This leads to the question "Is there any biological need for death?". And the answer is "No.". There is no biological reason for why things need to die. Then there is "Can we do something about the limitations of our biology and eliminate natural aging and death?". And the answer is "I don't know, maybe? Probably?". Followed by a shrug emote.  It's academic to all of us, we are going to be centuries dead before they crack this one, but in light of a show about how to live a fulfilling life whose climax was the inevitability of death and it's purpose in giving life meaning? It's fair to go "Do you think people would *actually* think that way if death really was only a choice and not a constant?".
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Feb 27, 2020 22:04
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luxury handset posted:the implication of an ever growing population of immortal humans is also terrifying in ecological terms, unless we use other magical escape hatches like "space colonization" and "synthetic food" and so on The planet can comfortably house a multiple of our current population, and the trend of development is less babies happening, to the degree some areas have a negative growth rate. Obviously when you remove illness and aging ANY birth is a positive growth rate, but it's not an immediate and intrinsic kill switch for life on the planet. If we got our poo poo together tens of billions of people is fine. Build up, build down, build green, focus all the energy you would on a massive army on a massive social development core and this isn't even hard. This won't happen, but it could. There's nothing *actually* impossible about it. Also you keep saying "Magic" for poo poo when it's just hard or complicated. We already have 'synthetic food'. It's not worth making because it costs too much, and boy howdy is it full of growth hormones and and antibiotics, but we have it. It's only going to get cheaper over time, and better made. We could colonize and terraform the Moon with our current technology. It'd also be the work of centuries and we'd probably have to stop pretending money is a thing, but we have the technology and resources to do it. We won't do it, but we could. "Magic science that isn't real" isn't the thing holding a lot of this back, it's people being loving morons. Which is sort of the point. Our understanding and tools aren't the problem, the problem is understanding what tools *we are* and changing our behavior. And that isn't the problem [Or remit, for that matter] of science or engineering. We don't need better toys, we need better philosophy. e: Or possibly more guillotines, either/or Mulva fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 01:41
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