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[Avis-Mergulus]

Tell me what color is what you see directly behind your head.

It's black, but with multicolored clouds of acid green and magenta, if that makes any sense to you.

[Insanegame27]

Tell me what color is what you see directly behind your head.

Through the reflection at the edge of my glasses I can see a white wall. There is a white wall there.

[Arx]

I really don't understand all you guys that are so terrified of death. Like, I get that you might dislike the idea, but... I just don't understand the way it seems to make you guys absolutely flip out. The world faces much bigger problems right now than the fact that people keel over after sixty to a hundred years (and slowly increasing all the time). If you want to make a difference to the world, work on fixing things that make life hell for people right now, rather than on something that will inherently only be useful to people who have a good life.

But meh.

[smirk]

I had no experience before my birth and that makes me sad. The thought of going back to that way permanently terrifies me.

What terrifies me more is that this is a weird thought.

Don't fear the blank a-conscious of death! It'd be much better than, say, somehow retaining consciousness through the infinite time afterward. There's a relevant Pratchett quote for that somewhere...

...ah, here. From Small Gods:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Don't you fear death? You're a human!"
Brutha considered this.
"Well . . . sometimes . . . when I'm on catacomb duty . . . it's the kind of place where you can't help . . . I mean, all the skulls and things . . . and the Book says . . ."
"There  you are," said Om, a note of bitter triumph in his voice. "You don't know. That's what stops everyone going mad, the uncertainty of it, the feeling that it might work out all right after all. But it's different for gods. We do know. You know that story about the sparrow flying through a room?"
"No."
"Everyone knows it."
"Not me."
"About life being like a sparrow flying through a room? Nothing but darkness outside? And it flies through the room and there's just a moment of warmth and light?"
"There are windows open?" said Brutha.
"Can't you imagine what it's like to be that sparrow, and know about the darkness? To know that afterward there'll be nothing to remember, ever, except that one moment of the light?"
"No."
"No. Of course you can't. But that's what it's like, being a god."

[penguinofhonor]

I'm 99% sure that's not weird.

[Rolan7]

Tell me what color is what you see directly behind your head.

It's black, but with multicolored clouds of acid green and magenta, if that makes any sense to you.

To reference Pratchett some more, sounds like "octarine": the color of magic.

[scrdest]

I really don't understand all you guys that are so terrified of death. Like, I get that you might dislike the idea, but... I just don't understand the way it seems to make you guys absolutely flip out. The world faces much bigger problems right now than the fact that people keel over after sixty to a hundred years (and slowly increasing all the time). If you want to make a difference to the world, work on fixing things that make life hell for people right now, rather than on something that will inherently only be useful to people who have a good life.

But meh.

As a counterargument, what's the point of fixing everything *else* if no matter what you do otherwise, all your efforts will ensure they will die ten years later at best, when you could ensure it's a hundred more?

[Loud Whispers]

No such thing as death, only absence of life

The ending of a life is a type of absence, a different one

[Egan_BW]

No such thing as death, only absence of life

The ending of a life is a type of absence, a different one

Then do indulge me and say; what is absent from the dead, other than life?

[Loud Whispers]

Then do indulge me and say; what is absent from the dead, other than life?

What is absent from bacon, other than pig?

[Arx]

I really don't understand all you guys that are so terrified of death. Like, I get that you might dislike the idea, but... I just don't understand the way it seems to make you guys absolutely flip out. The world faces much bigger problems right now than the fact that people keel over after sixty to a hundred years (and slowly increasing all the time). If you want to make a difference to the world, work on fixing things that make life hell for people right now, rather than on something that will inherently only be useful to people who have a good life.

But meh.

As a counterargument, what's the point of fixing everything *else* if no matter what you do otherwise, all your efforts will ensure they will die ten years later at best, when you could ensure it's a hundred more?

Because there's no point in building a railway from Moscow to Beijing if the track cuts out fifty metres from each station (and at random intervals thereafter). Sure, you could get to Moscow from Beijing and vice versa if your train successfully jumps all the cuts, but the majority are going to derail at the first hiccup. It's much more useful to be able to get from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and then work on being able to go to Beijing.

(I have no idea if the geography there makes much sense, but I think I might lose a lot of you guys if I started talking in terms of Cape Town and Harare and Nairobi).

[Flying Dice]

In terms of potential good done and suffering averted, why is it better to work on maybe giving more people 70-80 years of good life rather than working on giving everyone 200-300 years of life and then working on improving quality later? Even if it takes a century to meaningfully raise global quality of life, that still results in more people living good lives for longer, both within a single generation and across all future generations.

This thing about wanting to live the best possible life now is something I've never really understood, for much the same reason as suicide. Certainly, it might be preferable to the current alternative, but life is inherently changeable. Ergo, continued life has the potential for future good where terminated life does not. The longer your lifespan, the greater the total potential good it can contain.

[Putnam]

No such thing as death, only absence of life

The ending of a life is a type of absence, a different one

Then do indulge me and say; what is absent from the dead, other than life?

An immune system.

I guess that counts as life...

It's really not so much the death that worries me as the not living.

[Arx]

In terms of potential good done and suffering averted, why is it better to work on maybe giving more people 70-80 years of good life rather than working on giving everyone 200-300 years of life and then working on improving quality later?

Because

continued life has the potential for future good where terminated life does not. The longer your lifespan, the greater the total potential good it can contain.

And I don't mean good life. I mean life. Life expectancy in my country is just over 60 years. In much of Africa it's less than that. People in Canada, the UK and the US can expect to live for two decades longer than most of those on average.

According to the UN, it's less than 50 years in a lot of African countries, and less than 60 in another lot. Meanwhile, their estimates still peg Canada, the UK and the US as ~80.

Expecting to develop an aging treatment that will increase those 40-60 years to 200-300 and somehow be affordable for everyone in those countries in any reasonable timeframe is honestly in my opinion significantly more optimistic than hoping for the Second Coming in my lifetime.

I usually detest saying things like this for obvious reasons, but I really think that a lot of first-worlders don't realise how good they have it. To you guys, natural causes is the Next Big Problem. To me, it's... a desirable outcome. It's better than dying of AIDS, TB, cancer, black lung, malnutrition, homicide, drug overdose... The point is, there are a hell of a lot of issues in the world. Immortality is going to do sod all for someone who'll never live long enough to appreciate it, and would never earn enough to buy it anyway.

[Nirur Torir]

In terms of potential good done and suffering averted, why is it better to work on maybe giving more people 70-80 years of good life rather than working on giving everyone 200-300 years of life and then working on improving quality later?

We could apply many more resources to curing aging if people not living in first world countries could expect to see their 80th birthday.