I *refuse* to live to be 150 unless I can also have a younger, or at minimum, a healthy, body.
I'm now 53; still in fairly good shape, yet in bad enough shape that I'd not care to spend the next 100 years declining from this "high" point.
In my view, one of the consolations of age (I mean, aside from the fact that I'm wiser and more knowledgable than when I was younger) is the sure knowledge that it will be over soon enough.
When I was a little kid and heard the adults say things like that, I simply could not begin to understand their point of view. Now I do.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Who (in his right mind) wants to live to be 150?
In response to Jordan's post about a recent 'Science!' item, I said:
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Would you settle for a good Matrix-style VR sim?
But that wouldn't be *me* now, would it?
Maybe you misunderstood.
I don't mean 'a good simulation of your mind' or some transhumanism stuff. I mean you - same body and everything - but of course you're in a VR world.
If you don't think that would still be 'you', then I'm missing something.
I kind of figure that I'll piss someone off that I shouldn't and ultimately get gunned down before I reach 60. Maybe you could go that route.
Oh? As I did the other day?
I was in Wal-Mart (for about the third time since it opened) to get myself a notebook. Some teenybopper boy (in a herd of three) was yelling, quite loudly, into his phone -- telling his mother that he was in charge of the relationship and that he'd be home at his own time.
I told him to shut up.
"I don't mean 'a good simulation of your mind' or some transhumanism stuff. I mean you - same body and everything - but of course you're in a VR world."
How can one's body enter a virtual reality? At best, one's body will be in a coma-like state -- tended by other persons and machines -- while one's mind is somehow deluded that one's body is experiencing the virtual reality.
And, that would eventually pale, too.
Physical death is actually a good thing for us. It's not just that the Afterlife is promised to be so good that we cannot even conceive it at this stage of our existence, it's that unending life as we are now would be Hellish in the extreme.
Who wants to live until they are 100 years old anyway?
-The man who is 99
Of course, almost no one wants to die when it is staring them in the face.
Doesn't change the fact that (potentially) unending physical life -- even with perfect health -- would ultimately be Hellish.
How can one's body enter a virtual reality? At best, one's body will be in a coma-like state -- tended by other persons and machines -- while one's mind is somehow deluded that one's body is experiencing the virtual reality.
Well yeah. But that would eliminate a number of the major downsides of having a failing body. If your mind was still in good enough shape, anyway.
Just curious!
"I told him to shut up."
It may have been a first for him! i wish I could have seen his face. :)
Not that I want to encourage you in such potentially lethal engagements!
He did (eventually) shut up. I did later overhear him talking rudely to her again, but at least it wasn't as loud as before, when he was shouting.
Yeah, as for his face, it may have have been the first time since he was two that anyone had even attempted to rein him in.
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