Think about the most enjoyable thing you have on this earth, and I'm not talking about something as favorite food or sex, but something that while you are doing it and afterward you are extremely satisfied and relaxed.



Okay got it?  Now that would be how you feel in heaven, all the time, because you would be doing the one thing you are ment to do.  Continually.

     So ... sleeping?

  Okay got it?  Now that would be how you feel in heaven, all the time, because you would be doing the one thing you are ment to do.  Continually.

That sounds like the single most boring existence possible. I'd rather cease to exist that suffer that for all eternity.

That's not suffering, that's fulfilling everything you are ment to do, not doing the mundain things in life.

You only think its boring because you don't know what being fulfilled truely is.  It's like being married and haveing the person fits you.  I have done it.  My wife fills me where I am empty and my wife (I hope) feels the same.

Life is about accomplishment and progress. What you describe is stagnation, we need to strive to overcome obstacles and solve problems, that's what it means to be human.

Ah, but here is where you are partially wrong.

Why do you work to tword a goal?  For a benefit or to better yourself, and when you gain these you get a sense of fulfillment.

Lets say your an automech.  You love the job and when you succeed in fixing a tricky problem you feel a sense of satisfaction.  Now you get a job offer as a manager with more money, but you don't work on cars anymore.  You will no longer feel satisfied because you are not accomplishing what you love to do.

Now is it stagnation if you stay in that job you love and turn down better money?  No you are doing what you are made to do.

This is what I am talking about, you love what you do so you do it.  A truck driver will never feel satisfied as a clerk.  The call of the road will be too much for him.

The key to life is to find what you unjoy doing and do that.

If you cease to be challenged by it and use it to grow, yes.  If every day you played video games, then went home where your sexbot had prepared dinner and a pre-programmed romantic encounter.  While this might all be very enjoyable, it is shallow.  You aren't growing.  You aren't becoming a better or different person.  Falkus is very right, we need growth, we need change, and ultimately, we need decay, because decay makes space for new growth.  The problem with the Greco-Roman view of heaven which has since been married into the contemporary Christian understanding of the same is that it's unbalanced.  Always spring time?  How can it always be spring time without the fall to make space for it, the winter to make us appreciate it, the summer to plant the seeds?  We need our seasons.  We need our pain.

Vexen - no, it must be metal.  The flesh is weak.

Falkus - the problem is, "downloading" your brain isn't immortality, it's making a copy of yourself.  If I copy myself, does that make me immortal?  Or does it mean there will be a facsimile running around for all time?  This is sort of like the Star Trek transporter problem.  Does the transporter actually transport you?  Or does it kill you and create a clone somewhere else?

I think, ethically, creating a cybernetic copy of yourself is okay.  Vaporizing yourself in the process probably is not.

  Falkus - the problem is, "downloading" your brain isn't immortality, it's making a copy of yourself.

What if the process was done in a fashion that the sentience continues throughout the process? Replace your brain with a computer one piece at a time, rather just uploading it all at once?

The Catholic Church would say it's unethical.  I don't know if we would be able to psychologically manage it though.  We aren't mentally designed to live forever.  I imagine depression would set in after a point.  But since we're replacing our brain with computers, of course it's all hypothetical as to whether we can 'feel' depression at all.

That's another valid point, but I also believe in the right to suicide, a person who isn't mentally ill should be afforded the right to end their life if they chose to. I regard involuntary death as something we strive to eliminate, but not voluntary death.

Soylent Green is people!  It's made out of people!

Er...sorry, couldn't help myself after that last post. (those that have seen soylent green will get it.  Those that haven't, well, sorry for just ruining the end for you).

For what it's worth, though, I do agree that people should be allowed to end their own life if they wish, especially if we somehow reach a point where are lives can continue for orders of magnitude longer than they currently do.

I don't know, is it desirable to make people live forever?  I have to agree that it seems against the nature of things.  There isn't anything inherently 'good' about living forever that I can see, except that it puts off existential anxiety.  On the flip side, it would take up a lot of critical resources.

Here's the problem with allowing people to kill themselves for medical reasons.  What is the problem then if a teenager has had her heart broken and commits suicide?  How can this be wrong, the pain is still the same?

It's like abortion.  A human being is human at the moment of conception and should be given a choice to live or die on its own and not have some one else deside it's worth.  Ask anyone who has been handycapped from birth if they wish that they had been aborted or not.

Unfortunetly once you allow it for some, you have to allow it for everyone.

Well, with teenagers, there's the issue of whether they're legally old enough to make that decision.  I would say that if you're going to make it law, then it'd be okay to require some sort of psychological examination and/or a waiting period.  But in the end, yes, if you let people do it, you do have to live with some people doing it that you think shouldn't.  In the end, though, is what you want for them, or what they want for them the more important thing?

I don't know, is it desirable to make people live forever?  I have to agree that it seems against the nature of things.

I don't really regard nature as a valid argument. After all, transhumanism is about going above and beyond nature, taking our evolution into our own hands.

There isn't anything inherently 'good' about living forever that I can see, except that it puts off existential anxiety.

I believe that people should have the right to choose the time and means of their own death. Nature didn't give us this ability, so we should develop it ourselves.

On the flip side, it would take up a lot of critical resources.

I'm confident that we once reach that point, many of our resource problems will have been solved. Fusion power, nanotechnology. Call me optimistic, but I believe that many of the resource problems we face right now will be rendered irrelevant once we reach the technological singularity.

Here's the problem with allowing people to kill themselves for medical reasons.  What is the problem then if a teenager has had her heart broken and commits suicide?  How can this be wrong, the pain is still the same?

Severe depression is a mental illness. As I said, only people thinking rationally should be allowed to commit suicide.

A human being is human at the moment of conception and should be given a choice to live or die on its own and not have some one else deside it's worth.  Ask anyone who has been handycapped from birth if they wish that they had been aborted or not.

That's a discussion for an entirely different forum.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:17, Tue 14 Oct 2008.

Let me rephrase, you're ignoring the law of unintended consequences.  We are the products of billions of years of evolution, all of which centered around us dying.  We are literally built to expire.  After a certain number of years, our body shuts down.  Acting as though that's just accident and charging onwards seems foolhardy.  Maybe there's a reason why those animals who didn't have a built in 'and now you die' gene ultimately didn't pass it on?  Perhaps there's a reason why those species ended while the rest of us continued on?  Nature isn't inherently good, but it is inherently functional.  Changing that functionality begs for problems.



Why is that?  Should they be given the right to choose the time and means of their birth?



For the sake of argument, let us assume physical resources are taken care of.

What about the mindspace?  Can you imagine growing up where you're 14 and 90% of the population is 200 or above?  Can you imagine the size of the republican party?  Geez, can you imagine the painfully long stories over family dinner?

By letting the older generation lose power allows a new generation to form a new world, realizing a new world view.  I can assure you, if the population were primary made up of people like my dad, we wouldn't have computers, everyone would just use a pencil and paper still.  And I'm guessing my kids accept my 'new' reality as the baseline in their formative years, and they will adopt some new protocol I simply can't or won't keep up with.



How can someone who is either in extreme pain, or hopped up on painkillers all the time, possibly think rationally?

A bit off topic, but I just wanted to point out that there are species that do seem to lack such a "and now you die" gene.  Everything does die eventually, but for some species it's simply a case of "you can only swim around here so long before a shark eventually gets you" rather than their bodies giving out.  Human's aren't one of them, so this doesn't take away from your point, but I just wanted to point out that not all those species ended, as you put it.

But here's the problem, how many people who attempt suicide go for help?



Your question doesn't seem to be fitting into my head, could you refraise it?
This message was last edited by the player at 16:18, Tue 14 Oct 2008.

ROFLOL!!

That is true.  My original paragraph was about how there were people who didn't have a 'now you die' gene, but then I realized that may not be the case, while there ARE animals that didn't (or don't) have it.  I neglected to update the rest of the statement to reflect that, clearly.  But that does make the question more poignant; this IS a real, viable trait for creatures to have.  And in fact, one would think the active break down of systems (things like menopause, which sucks calcium out of the bones) would be so easily to breed out of the species, it must have been actively enforced by outside influences.  Why do tortoises survive basically forever, while humans don't?  What happened to those human ancestors who were free to 'live forever'?

True, but there's not much we can do about that, really.  Legal or no, if someone wants to kill themself bad enough, they'll find a way to do it.  Making it illegal right now doesn't stop it.  Legalizing it, though, may encourage more people to go for help, since they'll know they won't be locked up if they do.



If you give people the freedom to make a choice, it's pretty much guaranteed that some of them will make what you feel to be the wrong choice.  Give them an option of chocolate or vanilla, and some crazy bastard will inevitably pick vanilla. ;)  So yes, if you give people the option of committing suicide, you will inevitably get people who commit suicide when you think they shouldn't.  However, they think they should.  And, in the end, whose opinion on the matter is really more important?  Part of giving people freedom to make decisions, is accepting the fact that they won't always decide what we think they should.

Oh I know this answer will get someone fired up.  :D

God.  He is the author of life so it is his choice on when we are to go or not.  Who knows if someone in pain can't lead someone else to Christ?  My depression almost killed me, but if it had my daughter nor my son would not be alive today and who knows what they are going to do with their lives.

The trouble, though, is God doesn't buy up commercial time to let us know what He wants us to do.  We have to listen to human statements about what God wants.  If you say God's opposed to it, and someone else says He's for it, who gets to have their way?  What about people who think Allah should have the final say?  Or Vishnu, or whoever else?  How do we determine whose god gets to make the rules?  That's the problem we run into whenever someone tries to use the "God makes the rules" argument.  It only helps if all agree on what God (or whoever) says the rules are.  If we don't agree on that, we're back to deciding who gets to make the rules, and we haven't made any progress.

Let me rephrase, you're ignoring the law of unintended consequences.  We are the products of billions of years of evolution, all of which centered around us dying.  We are literally built to expire.  After a certain number of years, our body shuts down.  Acting as though that's just accident and charging onwards seems foolhardy.

I'm not saying it's accident, any more than other aspect of evolution. I'm saying that if we have the ability to direct and control our evolution, we should do so.

Maybe there's a reason why those animals who didn't have a built in 'and now you die' gene ultimately didn't pass it on?  Perhaps there's a reason why those species ended while the rest of us continued on?  Nature isn't inherently good, but it is inherently functional.

Nature isn't functional, that's why species evolve. Circumstances changes, environments change, what guaranteed survival yesterday becomes a death sentence today.

Why is that?  Should they be given the right to choose the time and means of their birth?

I believe it extends logically from the right to life. If you have the right to live, you should have the choice when to end that life. It's just that, apart from voluntary euthanasia, there's never been the ability to do so.

What about the mindspace?  Can you imagine growing up where you're 14 and 90% of the population is 200 or above?  Can you imagine the size of the republican party?  Geez, can you imagine the painfully long stories over family dinner?

I don't know how it'll work socially. This an entire new form of society we're constructing here, like nothing that has come before. Will we even have or see a need for democracy when thinking machines can run the government better than any human? How do you define economic classes when nanoconstructors are widely available? Would currency even have a meaning when energy becomes too cheap to meter, and creation is essentially free?

They're interesting questions, and I don't have the answers. I just think that this future is inevitable, since I don't believe that we, as a species, are going to stop scientific progress.

  How can someone who is either in extreme pain, or hopped up on painkillers all the time, possibly think rationally?

Interesting question. I don't know the answer.

That's also going by the assupmtion the human didn't get his wires crossed! :)

While Yahweh doesn't interupt the Super Bowl he does talk to us through his holy book for those who will listen, but that is an arguement for another thread.

God does make the rules, but He gives us the option to follow them or not.  That's what makes Jehovah so great.  Most of the others I have read about only give you the "my way or else" option.  Jehovah, God, says "go my way, or go your way, I'll advance my plans with or without you".  This sounds like railroading, but its not, He let's you go and accomplishes what he wants to do through someone/something else.