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[scourge728]

I mean, there's like 6 plausible ways to achieve escape from aging and thus, theoretical immortality, that are in development right now

[Hanslanda]

I mean, there's like 6 plausible ways to achieve escape from aging and thus, theoretical immortality, that are in development right now

And thus mathematically almost guaranteeing a violent and brutal death rather than peaceful senescence. So ya know, pick your poison.

[Frumple]

I mean... not really. Whatever treatments for aging that pops up, not taking them is an option. As is euthanasia. It just means more of a choice of when (if) to go by way of peaceful senescence.

[scourge728]

I choose the chance of a violent death over the certainty of a painless one,

[Frumple]

Uh, note you're more looking at chance of violent death versus certainty of some sort of one; the current state of things doesn't even remotely guarantee you painless even when it's not violent.

Far as I'm aware many "peaceful" deaths still involve a lot of pain. Lot of people would give a lot of money, effort, and possibly lives just to get us the certainty of a painless death, never mind an outright choice in the matter.

[Il Palazzo]

Y'know, now that I think about it, isn't "everyone dies alone" wrong in a statistical sense? The odds of there not being someone else dying at the same time you are is pretty staggeringly slim, even if you discount the whole "you're all dying a slow death by age" or whatever. When you die, someone else is probably dying with you.

When Obi-Wan Kenobi said he had felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices had been suddenly silenced, he wasn't talking about Alderaan. He was just opening up about how he feels all day, every day.

[Reelya]

I mean, there's like 6 plausible ways to achieve escape from aging and thus, theoretical immortality, that are in development right now

And thus mathematically almost guaranteeing a violent and brutal death rather than peaceful senescence. So ya know, pick your poison.

I think it's a little different than that. Constant medical advances will do away with slow deaths, because if something takes time to kill you then they'll have ways to stop it. Only deaths that are sudden will be lethal. They'll also tend towards being more alone, since if anyone else was there they could get help for you.

There is one type of death that's guaranteed to be alone - spontaneous combustion. Have you heard even one eye-witness account of someone spontaneously bursting into flames. What this proves is that spontaneous combustion is a quantum effect. If you're unobserved you're 100% more likely to just burst into flames randomly due to lack of the observer effect maintaining consistent laws of physics.

[ChairmanPoo]

Btw previous post is also the reason why when someone says cancer deaths haven't improved in X years, they're making a very selective reading of the statistics;  cancer outcomes have improved a lot, but that doesn't mean that you cant get other tumors afterwards.  Moreover,  in some cases the outcome has improved but the disease itself is still there. Take multiple myeloma, for instance:  depending on who you ask the rates of people actually cured go between 5% and 0%. Most people with myeloma end up getting killed by the myeloma.  But thanks to current therapies the median survival has improved from about a year to around ten.  Most myeloma patients would agree this is a pretty significant improvement, specially given that long survivals usually mean being around for new drugs when they come out of the pipeline, so a given patient's actual odds can be better than the "statistical" record.

[Reelya]

Also, "X deaths haven't improved" misses the point that everyone dies and the population is aging.

This is the thing with female heart disease. Some people are saying "for too long men have gotten all the attention about heart disease. It's sexism!" When in fact, the point is that men died from heart disease at a young age overwhelmingly more often than women. Some men also get breast cancer, but we don't see mandatory breast cancer screening for men, and it's not "sexism against men" it's just prioritizing who gets screening due to costs.

But we treated the male heart disease problem pretty well, so men are tending to live longer and are thus relatively more likely to die of other causes, so we can talk about a "rise" in prostate cancer. When it's purely because something else didn't get you first. Naturally, if all the fixable diseases are fixed then eventually everyone will have a 100% death rate from those things we can't fix. "100% of the population dies from pancreatic cancer. What is the cause for this epidemic?!?" reads the tabloid headline. The "epidemic" was caused by curing every other disease.

And for women, we tackled the diseases mostly likely to kill them, so naturally they lived longer, and other diseases, such as heart disease therefore increased in "frequency" of being the cause of death. Since deaths always add up to 100% you're always going to have a "big killer" with a similar percentage no matter how good medicine gets.

[Rowanas]

Also, "X deaths haven't improved" misses the point that everyone dies and the population is aging.

This is the thing with female heart disease. Some people are saying "for too long men have gotten all the attention about heart disease. It's sexism!" When in fact, the point is that men died from heart disease at a young age overwhelmingly more often than women. Some men also get breast cancer, but we don't see mandatory breast cancer screening for men, and it's not "sexism against men" it's just prioritizing who gets screening due to costs.

But we treated the male heart disease problem pretty well, so men are tending to live longer and are thus relatively more likely to die of other causes, so we can talk about a "rise" in prostate cancer. When it's purely because something else didn't get you first. Naturally, if all the fixable diseases are fixed then eventually everyone will have a 100% death rate from those things we can't fix. "100% of the population dies from pancreatic cancer. What is the cause for this epidemic?!?" reads the tabloid headline. The "epidemic" was caused by curing every other disease.

And for women, we tackled the diseases mostly likely to kill them, so naturally they lived longer, and other diseases, such as heart disease therefore increased in "frequency" of being the cause of death. Since deaths always add up to 100% you're always going to have a "big killer" with a similar percentage no matter how good medicine gets.

Not so! my new scheme aims to increase or decrease the likelihood of all causes of death to whatever Number of Causes/100 is, so that none of them are larger killers than any other.

[Hanslanda]

I would love to have an exactly equal chance to die of megalodon attack, a frozen chicken shot out of a cannon, kidney cancer, marijuana overdose, and hyper-evolution related critical existence failure.

[Rowanas]

I would love to have an exactly equal chance to die of megalodon attack, a frozen chicken shot out of a cannon, kidney cancer, marijuana overdose, and hyper-evolution related critical existence failure.

And under my government, we can achieve this lofty aim!

[wierd]

I would love to have an exactly equal chance to die of megalodon attack, a frozen chicken shot out of a cannon, kidney cancer, marijuana overdose, and hyper-evolution related critical existence failure.

Death by bizarre pulmonary failure resulting from being tickled by Korean midgets with feather dusters has to have equal chances as any of those others, or I call shenanigans!

[Hanslanda]

I would love to have an exactly equal chance to die of megalodon attack, a frozen chicken shot out of a cannon, kidney cancer, marijuana overdose, and hyper-evolution related critical existence failure.

Death by bizarre pulmonary failure resulting from being tickled by Korean midgets with feather dusters has to have equal chances as any of those others, or I call shenanigans!

And thus the greatest game show of all time is born: WHO CAN DIE THE WEIRDEST WAY hosted by Pat Sajak and Vana White, the only two true Immortals

[Rowanas]

I would love to have an exactly equal chance to die of megalodon attack, a frozen chicken shot out of a cannon, kidney cancer, marijuana overdose, and hyper-evolution related critical existence failure.

Death by bizarre pulmonary failure resulting from being tickled by Korean midgets with feather dusters has to have equal chances as any of those others, or I call shenanigans!

And thus the greatest game show of all time is born: WHO CAN DIE THE WEIRDEST WAY hosted by Pat Sajak and Vana White, the only two true Immortals

Umm, if only immortals are allowed to host then Keanu Reeves has to be present- also, since death by heatdeath of the universe has to be included, we need to make more immortals to keep the stats right.