The hospital where staff treat fear of death as well as physical pain(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
The hospital where staff treat fear of death as well as physical pain
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/22/palliative-care-denmark-hospital-death-dying
130 comments
My SO worked at a nursing home which had several elderly with dementia cry out they just wanted to die all day long, day after day.
Yet they got their flu shots and got treated for any infections they might get. This went on for the two years my SO worked there.
My dad had cancer that spread to his lungs, and then he got pneumonia. The day after being hospitalized, he asked the doctor if it was a chance he'd ever get home and they admitted that no, that was not very likely. Later that day he asked them to turn off the oxygen, which they did after confirming his wish. He passed peacefully a few hours later.
I was so glad he was given the opportunity to make his choice, and that the doctors respected it.
Sure, I lost some months with my dad, but he'd be in a hospital bed struggling to breathe. I hope I get to make a similar choice when that time comes.
Yet they got their flu shots and got treated for any infections they might get. This went on for the two years my SO worked there.
My dad had cancer that spread to his lungs, and then he got pneumonia. The day after being hospitalized, he asked the doctor if it was a chance he'd ever get home and they admitted that no, that was not very likely. Later that day he asked them to turn off the oxygen, which they did after confirming his wish. He passed peacefully a few hours later.
I was so glad he was given the opportunity to make his choice, and that the doctors respected it.
Sure, I lost some months with my dad, but he'd be in a hospital bed struggling to breathe. I hope I get to make a similar choice when that time comes.
My 85yo dad just spent 3 weeks in a nursing home because he had a digestive issue that weakened him. The stay made his mental and physical health very much worse. He didn't get enough sleep in there (lots of noise all night) and the food was abysmal - he already had problems with sarcopenia and they weren't feeding him nearly enough protein. I'd call him up or visit and he seemed to be having trouble separating his dreams from reality - he was hallucinating which isn't something that was happening before. At the 21 day point they released him (due to medicare limits) and I took him home to his house and stayed with him for 2 weeks making sure he had good food, good sleep and some sun every day. By the end of those 2 weeks he was remarkably better and I was able to leave him on his own. Nursing facilities are necessary for some, but for many they're making their problems much worse.
That’s not necessarily a choice that the nursing home can make. Many families struggle with letting a loved one go. Up to a few years ago, I was meeting with an obviously struggling 101yo weekly, and the family refused hospice despite it being covered by Medicare. The family equated hospice with actively killing someone.
Not blaming the nursing home. Just shared two episodes that significantly influenced my wish to have a choice.
And on the other side of the coin I worked at a nursing home where some guy who was in pretty bad shape and had maybe a month or so left had a DNR, keeled over, got R'd because poor process (to the great annoyance of the family), did a lap around the hospital, came back to the nursing home and months later walked out, on his own, with a cane. IDK how long he lived after that but the point stands.
People are different. For example, my fear of death is in the from existential dread. It's an occasional thing.
We should probably try harder to make people healthier in general. Much of the frailty of the elderly can be avoided with rigorous exercise. Maybe heart disease and dementia doesn't have to be your fate. I don't know how much longer people will be able to live if they optimize the hell out of their biomarkers.
But I do know...I don't want to be in pain and frail when I die. The best way to do that is making health my priority.
We should probably try harder to make people healthier in general. Much of the frailty of the elderly can be avoided with rigorous exercise. Maybe heart disease and dementia doesn't have to be your fate. I don't know how much longer people will be able to live if they optimize the hell out of their biomarkers.
But I do know...I don't want to be in pain and frail when I die. The best way to do that is making health my priority.
Unfortunately, in the end, bad health is likely to come get you anyways, you just have a higher likelihood of more and more healthy years.
A good friend of mine lived healthy, and still went hiking in their 90s. Yet, they had a stroke and are now bedridden.
If you just drop dead after having had a nice live or go through months or years of frailty and bad health, it's all in the cards.
A good friend of mine lived healthy, and still went hiking in their 90s. Yet, they had a stroke and are now bedridden.
If you just drop dead after having had a nice live or go through months or years of frailty and bad health, it's all in the cards.
There's also the possibility that you can suffer from a long series of health conditions causing you a very reduced quality of life over a long period of time, have a stroke, and become bedridden. Perosnally I'd rather be healthy up until that particular time comes (if it indeed comes for me)
without disputing that there exists an optimal diet/exercise regiment for longevity and health, i very much doubt that we at present have a clue what it is. every day new science and medical evidence overturns old, and reproducibility fails.
optimizing diet and rigorous exercise comes at some cost in the form of time spent in your precious youth. so you sacrifice youthtime for a chance at a longer better old age. each hour of exercise does not make you live an hour longer, so you are net negative from the get-go. (if you love exercise, it's not a loss, but in that case you would do it anyway even if it shortened your life because you love it, no need to spend time extolling its virtues)
i optimize for doing what i love to do all the time.
optimizing diet and rigorous exercise comes at some cost in the form of time spent in your precious youth. so you sacrifice youthtime for a chance at a longer better old age. each hour of exercise does not make you live an hour longer, so you are net negative from the get-go. (if you love exercise, it's not a loss, but in that case you would do it anyway even if it shortened your life because you love it, no need to spend time extolling its virtues)
i optimize for doing what i love to do all the time.
> optimizing diet and rigorous exercise comes at some cost in the form of time spent in your precious youth. so you sacrifice youthtime for a chance at a longer better old age. each hour of exercise does not make you live an hour longer, so you are net negative from the get-go.
Pretty much all science on exercise's impact on both physical and health can be loosely summarized by "doing anything, anything at all is likely to have significant short and long term benefits". Similarly, nutrition can be summarised as "try eat a balanced diet, but at the very least just avoid hyper UPF, and don't eat red meat every day". You might decide that's worth it, but "walk your kids/dog/partner/self twice a day and only eat red meat on the weekends" is probably enough to make a significant impact for a very significant number of people.
Pretty much all science on exercise's impact on both physical and health can be loosely summarized by "doing anything, anything at all is likely to have significant short and long term benefits". Similarly, nutrition can be summarised as "try eat a balanced diet, but at the very least just avoid hyper UPF, and don't eat red meat every day". You might decide that's worth it, but "walk your kids/dog/partner/self twice a day and only eat red meat on the weekends" is probably enough to make a significant impact for a very significant number of people.
Even if they don't enjoy working out, most people would probably enjoy living in a strong, healthy, good looking body. The hour of exercise makes every future hour of life slightly better, even in the short term (within a couple months of effort). Following pretty much any strength training program will also do a pretty good job even if it's not an optimal routine.
You don't need an hour. Fifteen minutes a day will make a very obvious difference. It's like you're trying to put people off!
Exercise done today improve health and well being. I would not consider that a waste.
Such a wrong mindset... but you do you, don't complain later when inevitable comes, its not like there haven't been hundreds of millions of folks who made similar life decisions and we can easily see what it leads to (or doesn't).
One example out of sea of examples - climbing. Indoor, outdoor, bouldering, long walls, doesn't matter. Its an amazing activity, every single person I know is doing it at least occasionally becomes much happier during&after a session. Massive health benefits could be just a side effect and it would most probably still be the best and most memorable thing you did on that day.
Plus people in community are generally very positive, welcoming, helpful and happy to talk to. Its sort of sport that changes you in many ways for the better (healthier, happier, better life perspective and so on). How much time it takes is sort of irrelevant, ie coming and commenting here costs you probably more time than continuous amateur climbing career would do.
Change climbing for many other sports and it would still be true.
One example out of sea of examples - climbing. Indoor, outdoor, bouldering, long walls, doesn't matter. Its an amazing activity, every single person I know is doing it at least occasionally becomes much happier during&after a session. Massive health benefits could be just a side effect and it would most probably still be the best and most memorable thing you did on that day.
Plus people in community are generally very positive, welcoming, helpful and happy to talk to. Its sort of sport that changes you in many ways for the better (healthier, happier, better life perspective and so on). How much time it takes is sort of irrelevant, ie coming and commenting here costs you probably more time than continuous amateur climbing career would do.
Change climbing for many other sports and it would still be true.
It's curious how many athletic people fit this stereotype: they can't fathom that someone might not be like them.
For a great many of us climbing is utterly terrifying. Yeah, tried it. Yeah, aware that the belay rope is there. No, it still sucks and no extra happiness is anywhere to be found except happiness that it's over.
But more importantly the athletic people underestimate just how bad unathletic people are at exercise and just how much effort even something basic is for them.
Most people could not do the basic bouldering you are about to suggest to counter my point above: they don't have the arm strength. Building that strength would take at least 6 months of a dedicated workout program and a cure for whatever psychological issues are affecting their diet. Most will never get there and suggesting to them that they can sound like "just perform a magic ritual". Oh, and after 6 months of doing the impossible their achievement is "you can do the noob bouldering". Underwhelming to say the least.
But to you exercise is easy and fun and the opposite is inconceivable. And if we dare speak up - we'll be told we are our perspective, attitude, and indeed our very life experience are invalid and wrong. Go on, hit that downvote.
For a great many of us climbing is utterly terrifying. Yeah, tried it. Yeah, aware that the belay rope is there. No, it still sucks and no extra happiness is anywhere to be found except happiness that it's over.
But more importantly the athletic people underestimate just how bad unathletic people are at exercise and just how much effort even something basic is for them.
Most people could not do the basic bouldering you are about to suggest to counter my point above: they don't have the arm strength. Building that strength would take at least 6 months of a dedicated workout program and a cure for whatever psychological issues are affecting their diet. Most will never get there and suggesting to them that they can sound like "just perform a magic ritual". Oh, and after 6 months of doing the impossible their achievement is "you can do the noob bouldering". Underwhelming to say the least.
But to you exercise is easy and fun and the opposite is inconceivable. And if we dare speak up - we'll be told we are our perspective, attitude, and indeed our very life experience are invalid and wrong. Go on, hit that downvote.
You don't need to be an athlete to experience physiological gains in health. Your health improves almost immediately no matter what exercise you start doing.
I don't get how people can't be kinda freaked out by the universe subjectively fast-forwarding to its end, to occur at any time between this second and a few decades from now.
Worse you won't see how it ends! I recently read a novel (this is a massive spoiler so I am not naming it) that drove this point home extremely well and has me thinking about it all the time since I read it. The book built up a number of enticing storylines. A huge mystery, various characters had struggles we wanted to learn about. However, the book resolves almost none of this because the protagonist dies and we just never find out. That's what death is. There is no debriefing. You don't find out how life continues for your loved ones you leave behind. You don't find out who wins the next election. You don't find out how your favorite tv show wraps up or what other movies your favorite director makes. You don't find out if faster-than-light travel will be achieved, if we'll one day inhabit Mars or if quantum computers breaking RSA will cause havoc. It just en
This is highly dependent on one's own belief system and theology, because beyond a certain point, we literally can't prove what happens to a human mind when the body dies, the existence or non-existence of a soul, etc.
Believe or disbelieve whatever you like, go on about a God of the Gaps, but that's why they talk about people's religious "faith."
Believe or disbelieve whatever you like, go on about a God of the Gaps, but that's why they talk about people's religious "faith."
You're right that there's no way of knowing, but there's no need to make up something from thin air and believe that somehow is true.
Who cares?
Sometimes, you don’t know everything, nor will you. You won’t be around for everything. This is the human condition.
It seems unwise to spend too many brain cycles worrying about this.
Sometimes, you don’t know everything, nor will you. You won’t be around for everything. This is the human condition.
It seems unwise to spend too many brain cycles worrying about this.
Of course we don't know everything and shouldn't care about everything. However, we have lots of things we care about for good and less good reasons. It's natural and good to care about your friends and family or even your country and maybe the future of humanity. We need to make decisions based on these factors. While we stop being able to influence outcomes, it would IMO be odd to simply not care what happens after.
What purpose would be served by freaking out? Would freaking out somehow help me to avoid death? Or at least prolong my life? Freaking out in fact shortens my (useful) life because now I've wasted time in some state of agitation that could have been better spent doing virtually anything else.
Hoping I get to see my grandkids. Hell, even see them start to marry off, come to that. But I'll spend what time I've got trying to enjoy the things that are here, now. You should do the same.
Hoping I get to see my grandkids. Hell, even see them start to marry off, come to that. But I'll spend what time I've got trying to enjoy the things that are here, now. You should do the same.
Being "natural" doesnt mean anything on relation to fear. Being eaten alive by lions is 100% natural too. Death is inevitable. So there is little to gain from being too afraid of it, but i would never suggest that anyone not fear the unknown. That fear is what has kept us alive and evolving. The fear is natural.
I think death being natural lends a lot of credence to the idea that it’s normal — as normal as life.
And I’d say most people probably don’t fear death or non-existence itself, but rather the process of dying (suffering, stress, pain, shame, loss of agency, the grief inflicted on others, etc). In palliative care settings, where the process of dying is well-managed (physically, emotionally, spiritually), people don’t seem to be that afraid. Many make peace. Or at least that’s the image painted by popular science articles on the matter. And speaking for myself, N=1 and all, I really do fear the process only, and not the conclusion.
That’s why I think dignified death laws for these settings are important. And why I say I fear what society will put me through when it’s my time, if such laws aren’t passed.
I am concerned in general about me living past my health-span. It’s a new concern for many, as medicine traditionally focused on prolonging lifespan. But now people are talking about how full of suffering life is when one doesn’t have whatever minimum of health they deem required to live, but are kept alive anyways. Sometimes agains their wishes. It’s just a macabre prolongation of the process of dying — something that really is scary.
Or that’s what I’m afraid of, anyways. But I understand it’s a difficult and somewhat taboo topic in society, so apols if it offends.
And I’d say most people probably don’t fear death or non-existence itself, but rather the process of dying (suffering, stress, pain, shame, loss of agency, the grief inflicted on others, etc). In palliative care settings, where the process of dying is well-managed (physically, emotionally, spiritually), people don’t seem to be that afraid. Many make peace. Or at least that’s the image painted by popular science articles on the matter. And speaking for myself, N=1 and all, I really do fear the process only, and not the conclusion.
That’s why I think dignified death laws for these settings are important. And why I say I fear what society will put me through when it’s my time, if such laws aren’t passed.
I am concerned in general about me living past my health-span. It’s a new concern for many, as medicine traditionally focused on prolonging lifespan. But now people are talking about how full of suffering life is when one doesn’t have whatever minimum of health they deem required to live, but are kept alive anyways. Sometimes agains their wishes. It’s just a macabre prolongation of the process of dying — something that really is scary.
Or that’s what I’m afraid of, anyways. But I understand it’s a difficult and somewhat taboo topic in society, so apols if it offends.
> now people are talking about how full of suffering life is when one doesn’t have whatever minimum of health they deem required to live, but are kept alive anyways
This is more a social anxiety than reflection of reality. To the extent we’re prolonging suffering, it’s on the order of weeks, maybe months. Not years.
Most people fear death. That’s natural. Some of us, due to being stupid, depressed or possibly enlightened, don’t. But these fears evolved for obvious reasons.
This is more a social anxiety than reflection of reality. To the extent we’re prolonging suffering, it’s on the order of weeks, maybe months. Not years.
Most people fear death. That’s natural. Some of us, due to being stupid, depressed or possibly enlightened, don’t. But these fears evolved for obvious reasons.
I disagree. There is increasing conversation in the medical community[0] about living past one’s health-span for years.
While fear of death is widely considered universal, many people (for various reasons) fear death significantly less than others[1]. Fear of death levels appear to generally stabilize to low past 60 years of age. Many philosophies reject the fear of death, including some of our very popular religions. Only about half of terminally ill patients feel clinically significant death anxiety[2]. It is normal to not fear death without being depressed, enlightened, or stupid.
I think it’s not so black and white as evolutionary psychology might suggest.
[0] https://peterattiamd.com/outlive/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_anxiety
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35609222/
While fear of death is widely considered universal, many people (for various reasons) fear death significantly less than others[1]. Fear of death levels appear to generally stabilize to low past 60 years of age. Many philosophies reject the fear of death, including some of our very popular religions. Only about half of terminally ill patients feel clinically significant death anxiety[2]. It is normal to not fear death without being depressed, enlightened, or stupid.
I think it’s not so black and white as evolutionary psychology might suggest.
[0] https://peterattiamd.com/outlive/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_anxiety
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35609222/
> increasing conversation in the medical community[0] about living past one’s health-span for years
Sure. This doesn't reflect the popular discourse, which is more concerned with fantastical edge cases.
> fear death significantly less than others
Totally agree.
> Only about half of terminally ill patients feel clinically significant death anxiety
Massive difference between death anxiety, which crosses into dreadful anticipation of a future state, and fear, which is more of a present concern. I fear getting hit by a car. I'm not really concerned with it most of the time. (And when I am, it's fleeting and limmited.)
When you say fearing death, I think you mean obsessing over death. That, I agree, is unhealthy. Fear, more generally, is an unpleasantness that results from dangers or threats. Death is very clearly a danger and threat. Contemplating it doesn't need to be uncomfortable. But it's dedidedly unnatural, if alluring, to consider one's own death monotonoically. (For what it's worth, this is closer to my experience. But I also know I have a high risk tolerance, and have to consciously keep an eye on that.)
Sure. This doesn't reflect the popular discourse, which is more concerned with fantastical edge cases.
> fear death significantly less than others
Totally agree.
> Only about half of terminally ill patients feel clinically significant death anxiety
Massive difference between death anxiety, which crosses into dreadful anticipation of a future state, and fear, which is more of a present concern. I fear getting hit by a car. I'm not really concerned with it most of the time. (And when I am, it's fleeting and limmited.)
When you say fearing death, I think you mean obsessing over death. That, I agree, is unhealthy. Fear, more generally, is an unpleasantness that results from dangers or threats. Death is very clearly a danger and threat. Contemplating it doesn't need to be uncomfortable. But it's dedidedly unnatural, if alluring, to consider one's own death monotonoically. (For what it's worth, this is closer to my experience. But I also know I have a high risk tolerance, and have to consciously keep an eye on that.)
Quality of life is often gone long before there is any imminant chance of death. Chronic pain, loss of mobility, memory, visikn, and hearing deteriorating. Drugs and all their side effects.
There is a very large gradient. Even all of those symptoms, while lower quality of life than when they were in their prime, are a far cry from being in a hospital/nursing home, with random people poking needles into you all the time, and that is a best case scenario.
I know from seeing my grandparents, who lived into upper 90s. At home, they were still happy. Being poked and prodded in a hospital is a material step down in quality of life. On top of that, imagine having a breathing tube/catheter/etc.
I know from seeing my grandparents, who lived into upper 90s. At home, they were still happy. Being poked and prodded in a hospital is a material step down in quality of life. On top of that, imagine having a breathing tube/catheter/etc.
Plenty of people fear non existence. Pretty bizarre to claim otherwise.
If you offer euthanasia by hungry lions, you'll have takers.
Not after i play them that tape of a man being eaten alive by a grizzly.
> The fear is natural
To be fair, we have evolved stupid eras, e.g. male adolescence, when that fear seems to be purposely tamped down.
To be fair, we have evolved stupid eras, e.g. male adolescence, when that fear seems to be purposely tamped down.
"If the tiger attempts to eat you, remember that you yourself are simply composed of atoms, and it is simply attempting to rearrange some of them for you."
I fear for the people I would leave behind, mainly my wife and two little children, if I was gone today, it would seriously impact all their lives.
Similarly, I don’t really fear my death, I fear the death of others.
Similarly, I don’t really fear my death, I fear the death of others.
Fear of death can be healthy (esp when one is young)! That said, courage is the first virtue, don't pay attention to people who complain about its signalling
This sort of utilitarian "unit of suffering" metric has never made much sense to me. 1B people die in a given decade, each perceives or experiences some amount of suffering, so we have say 2B units of suffering, 2 units per person on average.
Is anything better or worse if 2B people die instead of 1B with the same aggregate amount of suffering? Average suffering reduced by half! What about 100,000 people instead of 1B? Those people presumably die horrific, painful, suffering deaths but now there a lot more people alive. Is that better or worse?
Is anything better or worse if 2B people die instead of 1B with the same aggregate amount of suffering? Average suffering reduced by half! What about 100,000 people instead of 1B? Those people presumably die horrific, painful, suffering deaths but now there a lot more people alive. Is that better or worse?
Indeed this kind of utilitarian suffering quantization leads to some weird, some would say "repugnant" conclusions
Classical Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) is about maximizing overall well-being (or happiness), not just minimizing suffering as a number. It's not just math with units, it's about the quality and context of experiences too.
There's also average utilitarianism which says: maximize the average happiness per person.
There's also average utilitarianism which says: maximize the average happiness per person.
Reminds me of the Drake equation. Depending on what weights you put in, you can reach any conclusion.
I would welcome death, but I don't seek it out. Life is generally miserable. It wouldn't be that bad if I got hit by a bus on the way into work.
If you wanted you could probably change that state of affairs. Have you just decided you'd rather be miserable?
> I don’t fear death, it is natural. I fear the suffering society will put me through when I’m old and ill, because they can’t cope with death.
Assisted death--one with dignity--is rare recent development about which I'm genuinely and wholeheartedly happy.
What unsettles me--as rational as I think I'm--is the thought of being born again (duh!). I lead a very comfortable life, but far from "perfect". I can say I'm content. What are the odds that I'll be content in my next life? How likely is it that I'll be born in the right country, to good parents, follow the right religion, and have a brain wired in the right way to make a decent living? I'm not hopeful. So, I've "decided" that I want to be a rock in all my next lives. No emotions, no feelings, no struggle, no pain, no indignation. Just a fricking rock.
Assisted death--one with dignity--is rare recent development about which I'm genuinely and wholeheartedly happy.
What unsettles me--as rational as I think I'm--is the thought of being born again (duh!). I lead a very comfortable life, but far from "perfect". I can say I'm content. What are the odds that I'll be content in my next life? How likely is it that I'll be born in the right country, to good parents, follow the right religion, and have a brain wired in the right way to make a decent living? I'm not hopeful. So, I've "decided" that I want to be a rock in all my next lives. No emotions, no feelings, no struggle, no pain, no indignation. Just a fricking rock.
There is nothing more natural than fear of death itself
I agree with your take. Very long story, while my family doesn't talk about feelings, we're pretty good at talking about end of life.
Separately, some years ago spent a good amount of time listening to what Atul Gawande thought about medicine and doctors and dying. He wrote Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End and there's a Frontline documentary (Being Mortal) about his experience and his book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQhI3Jb7vMg. I've not yet read the book.
Separately, some years ago spent a good amount of time listening to what Atul Gawande thought about medicine and doctors and dying. He wrote Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End and there's a Frontline documentary (Being Mortal) about his experience and his book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQhI3Jb7vMg. I've not yet read the book.
I think you do fear death, given that you plan to live until it is physically impossible for you to do so painlessly. If you don't fear death, an easy and reliable way to avoid suffering in your old age is to painlessly commit suicide right now. But be aware that we treat people who don't express a preference for staying alive as having a serious mental illness worth locking them up for.
Fear of death is not just natural, it is the most fundamental instinct of any creature besides reproduction. Those who don't have it, don't last long. Perhaps society's attitudes towards it could profitably be improved, but don't make out like it's an irrational personality flaw.
Fear of death is not just natural, it is the most fundamental instinct of any creature besides reproduction. Those who don't have it, don't last long. Perhaps society's attitudes towards it could profitably be improved, but don't make out like it's an irrational personality flaw.
You can’t honestly say you don’t fear death until you face it directly. Tell someone they’ll be executed tomorrow, then ask if they fear death, some people lose their minds when told they’re terminally ill. It’s not as simple as just saying, “I don’t fear death.”
Overworked nurses and suicide booth technicians on night shift will greatly dampen this utopia where dignified death isn’t usurped by lower-cost-at-all-costs reality.
Idealism can cause so much suffering in this way.
Idealism can cause so much suffering in this way.
That was a difficult read for me - after watching my father die peacefully, and with dignity in a wonderful hospice I can't help but admire the doctors, nurses and other practicioners who dedicate their life to caring for people at the end of theirs.
What angers me is that not everyone gets to experience a dignified death; the hospice where my father stayed relies on charitable donations to do their vital work - a death like this should be table stakes for an advanced economy, but alas, it's not.
What angers me is that not everyone gets to experience a dignified death; the hospice where my father stayed relies on charitable donations to do their vital work - a death like this should be table stakes for an advanced economy, but alas, it's not.
When I reach that point in my life I’ll probably just put a bullet in my own head. And I don’t want a fancy burial or cremation… toss me in the ground and plant a tree on top of me.
It often happens much faster than you'd think, and towards the end you're often on constant morphine for comfort.
If you have a terminal condition yes. But if you’re not terminal this won’t happen. Sometimes a hospice org will sorta do this under the table but realistically they have no incentive to terminate your life early as they are paid for taking care of you.
tl;dr do it yourself before it’s too late
tl;dr do it yourself before it’s too late
I would prefer ie heroin overdose. Way less messy especially for those who would find me, while having what has been described as an half an hour orgasm (maybe less since its overdose after all). After all all addicts are doing for rest of their addict career is chasing that first ultimate high (at least as per some addicts words, never came even close to such things).
You're often on a syringe driver of constant morphine towards the end in hospice care, either in patient, or out patient.
I plan to die at my desk. Hopefully my co-workers will be able to decipher the sql I was writing when I passed.
select * from castle_of_aaaugh where grail is not null*
select * from castle_of_aaaugh where grail is not null*
I genuinely think death will be conquered, for all practical purposes, within this century. In our vast 300 thousand year history, we are likely in the last century of mortal humans, and in the last millennium of biological ones.
Future generations will wonder at our coping mechanisms for something so tragic and horrifying as death, and wonder why we didn't try harder, earlier.
Why isn't the longevity problem our #1 tax expense? Because the culture believes the problem is insurmountable, inevitable, and not worth solving. Our parents try to hide their grief and dread at the inevitability, telling us it's okay, but the tears at a funeral disagree.
As an aside, I would pay vast sums of money (millions of dollars) to live my final days at an old folks' home that was capable of monitoring my health on a frequent basis, catching things early, and integrated SOTA cryonics facilities to maximize my chance of revival in case LEV doesn't become a possibility in my lifetime.
Future generations will wonder at our coping mechanisms for something so tragic and horrifying as death, and wonder why we didn't try harder, earlier.
Why isn't the longevity problem our #1 tax expense? Because the culture believes the problem is insurmountable, inevitable, and not worth solving. Our parents try to hide their grief and dread at the inevitability, telling us it's okay, but the tears at a funeral disagree.
As an aside, I would pay vast sums of money (millions of dollars) to live my final days at an old folks' home that was capable of monitoring my health on a frequent basis, catching things early, and integrated SOTA cryonics facilities to maximize my chance of revival in case LEV doesn't become a possibility in my lifetime.
I'm not too confident that mortality will be cured this century. Even if we cure some of the big targets (dementia, muscle wasting and cancer come to mind) there will inevitably be a long tail of problems.
If it were just that, I might still be hopeful, but the latency on aging cure experiments is inevitably going to be quite long, and that won't change without massive advances in biological simulations.
If it were just that, I might still be hopeful, but the latency on aging cure experiments is inevitably going to be quite long, and that won't change without massive advances in biological simulations.
I'm sure various scifi authors have covered this topic to death (pun intended). But something about eternal life just feels so empty to me.
And without changes to laws around euthanasia or suicide, it means being forced to stay alive forever, which is even more dystopian.
And without changes to laws around euthanasia or suicide, it means being forced to stay alive forever, which is even more dystopian.
If life feels empty to you, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope it gets better soon. I feel the opposite - there is so much to do, and so little time. I am also happy and content just... existing.
I don't think a social problem (that will be solved in time, and is already solved in some countries) is a reason to prevent this from happening.
Social problems can be fixed, death is final. If euthanasia doesn't become legal before, it certainly will be after.
I don't think a social problem (that will be solved in time, and is already solved in some countries) is a reason to prevent this from happening.
Social problems can be fixed, death is final. If euthanasia doesn't become legal before, it certainly will be after.
I think they meant eternal life much more in the “I have no mouth, and I must scream” sense.
Much has been said and written about the cruelty of immortality, since the myth of Sisyphus and probably before.
“The Mortal Immortal” is a story about prolonging lifespan but not healthspan, and also not emotional fulfilment in life — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mortal_Immortal. There are also TV shows (“Altered Carbon”, “Black Mirror” USS Callister and other episodes, “Twilight Zone”) and video games (“Nobody Wants to Die”) about it.
What your parent comment speaks about (the vanity of endless life) is particularly explored in Bernard Williams’s “The Makropulos Affair”. Endless life could mean no regard for quality of life and endless trivial pursuits.
Much has been said and written about the cruelty of immortality, since the myth of Sisyphus and probably before.
“The Mortal Immortal” is a story about prolonging lifespan but not healthspan, and also not emotional fulfilment in life — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mortal_Immortal. There are also TV shows (“Altered Carbon”, “Black Mirror” USS Callister and other episodes, “Twilight Zone”) and video games (“Nobody Wants to Die”) about it.
What your parent comment speaks about (the vanity of endless life) is particularly explored in Bernard Williams’s “The Makropulos Affair”. Endless life could mean no regard for quality of life and endless trivial pursuits.
Yes, I've read/watched most of those and I believe they are just entertainment. I can perfectly envision people living happy, long lives. These books and shows have manufactured conflict for drama.
With our current lifespan I already see lots of people intentionally killing themselves with alcohol or drugs or food. I cannot imagine most people would be happy with eternity.
To be honest, I've never gotten that. The creative output I can manage in a mere 80ish years has never felt sufficient to me. I would love to have the lifespan to be able to take on tasks like selectively breeding Bunya pines, or painting gigapixel collages.
> Future generations will wonder at our coping mechanisms for something so tragic and horrifying as death
We’re on a path to curing aging. We have no clue how to cure death.
We’re on a path to curing aging. We have no clue how to cure death.
If you can cure aging, death itself becomes an engineering problem. Curing aging gives you the time you need to figure out gradual replacement, uploading (transfers, not copies), distributing consciousness across multiple fault-tolerant nodes in orbit or beyond, etc.
Then you have cured death for all practical purposes. You will still be vulnerable to certain cosmic catastrophes (which you can plan around) and the heat death itself, but I would still call that "cured."
Edit reply because of HN rate limit: Transfers are possible, copies aren't our only option. Consider replacing one neuron at the time with an uplink to a virtual neuron in the cloud. An implant (at the cellular scale) reflects communication back to your physical neurons - they don't even notice it disappeared.
Wait for your thoughts to normalize, rinse, repeat. This is gradual replacement. You'd do it with more than one neuron (a cluster of neurons) realistically.
Then you have cured death for all practical purposes. You will still be vulnerable to certain cosmic catastrophes (which you can plan around) and the heat death itself, but I would still call that "cured."
Edit reply because of HN rate limit: Transfers are possible, copies aren't our only option. Consider replacing one neuron at the time with an uplink to a virtual neuron in the cloud. An implant (at the cellular scale) reflects communication back to your physical neurons - they don't even notice it disappeared.
Wait for your thoughts to normalize, rinse, repeat. This is gradual replacement. You'd do it with more than one neuron (a cluster of neurons) realistically.
I have a very strong metaphysical prior against consciousness uploads being possible, but I hope to live in a universe structured in the right way to make me wrong.
It's not the difference in substrate that makes me doubt it's possible (I'm a very strong believer in panpsychism), but I doubt the transfer could ever be "continuous" in a way that my monkey brain was satisfied with.
It's not the difference in substrate that makes me doubt it's possible (I'm a very strong believer in panpsychism), but I doubt the transfer could ever be "continuous" in a way that my monkey brain was satisfied with.
The continuity flaw is a reasonable concern; I have it as well. (I don't want a copy of me to live on; I want to live on, myself.)
However, I do think it's entirely possible to solve, if we're already at the point where uploads are possible. It's harder than the alternative, but theoretically possible.
However, I do think it's entirely possible to solve, if we're already at the point where uploads are possible. It's harder than the alternative, but theoretically possible.
I've come to believe that the copy will seriously believe it's me, similar to a virtual machine being halted and moved to different hardware, how would "I" know I'm not me? My copy will have my memories, if it's an exact copy it'll have the same ways of thinking, maybe after the transfer it'll remember "Ah, I have a date tonight with my wife, geez I remember this morning she drank all the juice except for a sip, and then put it back in the fridge, that always makes me irrationally angry.".
Sometimes we even feel "out of body", even in our own consciousness, so why would it be so different when we are copied?
Sometimes we even feel "out of body", even in our own consciousness, so why would it be so different when we are copied?
One easy way to tell the difference: if you do the full upload non-destructively, such that there's a full uploaded copy that thinks it's you, and your full original biological self, would the latter then happily get disintegrated? (There are people who say yes to that question, which genuinely baffles me.)
The thing I'm talking about, of attempting to build a "move" operation that isn't "copy then delete", is exactly what I meant when I said it seems harder but possible to solve.
The thing I'm talking about, of attempting to build a "move" operation that isn't "copy then delete", is exactly what I meant when I said it seems harder but possible to solve.
Both the copy and the original wouldn't like to be destroyed, would they, it's like volunteering to end one's consciousness.
What if there's hardware to wirelessly combine the minds, and you can experience what your clone^W other-self experiences. A bit like having someone be in e.g. Iceland and facetime you a low quality sight and sounds experience of Iceland... would you then say "Ok, I don't mind having one of my input devices go offline".
What if there's hardware to wirelessly combine the minds, and you can experience what your clone^W other-self experiences. A bit like having someone be in e.g. Iceland and facetime you a low quality sight and sounds experience of Iceland... would you then say "Ok, I don't mind having one of my input devices go offline".
"Combine" is a tall order. But "transfer in a continuous fashion, with continuity of consciousness throughout the process" is somewhat less so.
> it's entirely possible to solve, if we're already at the point where uploads are possible
The fundamental gating discoveries are all around the nature of consciousness. Is it emergent? Is it empirically detectable? Is it quantum magic? We have inklings around this. But our understanding of it hasn't fundamentally changed since, arguably, Descartes.
The fundamental gating discoveries are all around the nature of consciousness. Is it emergent? Is it empirically detectable? Is it quantum magic? We have inklings around this. But our understanding of it hasn't fundamentally changed since, arguably, Descartes.
> Curing aging gives you the time you need to figure out gradual replacement
Sure.
> uploading (transfers, not copies), distributing consciousness across multiple fault-tolerant nodes
We have no idea what the path to any of this looks like. We could easily cure aging without making progress on this for centuries, maybe millennia.
Sure.
> uploading (transfers, not copies), distributing consciousness across multiple fault-tolerant nodes
We have no idea what the path to any of this looks like. We could easily cure aging without making progress on this for centuries, maybe millennia.
Well, yes, if we had an idea we'd be there by now.
Even with the one-neuron-at-a-time thought experiment, I'm not sure if we are ever going to know for sure if we got uploads right — even in principle.
While a sufficiently detailed copy should be conscious, we don't know what "sufficiently detailed" is — and we can't just do this by external behaviour, because (1) People are still arguing both sides of the P-zombie thought experiment; and (2) LLMs regularly fooling people into thinking they're discoursing with a human, even though I think most people think LLMs aren't conscious.
There's something like 40 different definitions of "consciousness"; some are easy to test for, some are provably impossible, but I don't know if even one of them is actually what we want.
I remember my dreams, but was I really conscious, or was it an unconscious experience whose memory was available to my conscious mind when I woke? It's conceivable that I am fully conscious right now, that an upload of my brain would change and grow and report conscious throughout, that you could then download it into a new brain in a new body and that new mind would also report having remembered conscious experiences while uploaded — all without the upload having ever experienced anything that would match the hard-to-describe thing we often try to grasp at with the word "consciousness".
We have altered states of consciousness. People can have conversations and drive cars while sleepwalking. Am I only truly conscious while actively engaging in self-reflection, or all the time? Is my consciousness like your consciousness? Did my mother loose hers at some point during the course of her Alzheimer's, or did she keep it until the very end? When a Buddhist trains themselves to let go, do they lose theirs?
While a sufficiently detailed copy should be conscious, we don't know what "sufficiently detailed" is — and we can't just do this by external behaviour, because (1) People are still arguing both sides of the P-zombie thought experiment; and (2) LLMs regularly fooling people into thinking they're discoursing with a human, even though I think most people think LLMs aren't conscious.
There's something like 40 different definitions of "consciousness"; some are easy to test for, some are provably impossible, but I don't know if even one of them is actually what we want.
I remember my dreams, but was I really conscious, or was it an unconscious experience whose memory was available to my conscious mind when I woke? It's conceivable that I am fully conscious right now, that an upload of my brain would change and grow and report conscious throughout, that you could then download it into a new brain in a new body and that new mind would also report having remembered conscious experiences while uploaded — all without the upload having ever experienced anything that would match the hard-to-describe thing we often try to grasp at with the word "consciousness".
We have altered states of consciousness. People can have conversations and drive cars while sleepwalking. Am I only truly conscious while actively engaging in self-reflection, or all the time? Is my consciousness like your consciousness? Did my mother loose hers at some point during the course of her Alzheimer's, or did she keep it until the very end? When a Buddhist trains themselves to let go, do they lose theirs?
Before you were born you didn’t have the thing you call a consciousness. But now you do.
I think continuity is a red herring, realistically our whole idea of consciousness is probably off base. It might not even be a real thing, for example my pet cat doesn’t care if he has a consciousness or not because he never invented a word for it.
I think continuity is a red herring, realistically our whole idea of consciousness is probably off base. It might not even be a real thing, for example my pet cat doesn’t care if he has a consciousness or not because he never invented a word for it.
> But now you do.
Perhaps I do. Perhaps it's only there when I pay attention to it, and my brain smooths over the gaps like I know it does with saccades and blind spots (both literal and metaphorical). And even if it is there all the time, is it like yours?
Perhaps I do. Perhaps it's only there when I pay attention to it, and my brain smooths over the gaps like I know it does with saccades and blind spots (both literal and metaphorical). And even if it is there all the time, is it like yours?
The Ship of Theseus has questions.
I agree, likely the first immortal person has already been born. Perhaps even large swaths of the population are already effectively immortal, but they just don't know it yet.
Sadly, my main fear is that immortality will only be available to the extremely rich and powerful. Generally historical progress is made when the old guard die, be it in science with the leaders clamoring to old theories, dictatorships falling when their leader does, companies setting a new course when their founder/CEO retires.
I shudder at the thought of living in a world where everyone still dies like before, except an entrenched immortal powerful elite.
Sadly, my main fear is that immortality will only be available to the extremely rich and powerful. Generally historical progress is made when the old guard die, be it in science with the leaders clamoring to old theories, dictatorships falling when their leader does, companies setting a new course when their founder/CEO retires.
I shudder at the thought of living in a world where everyone still dies like before, except an entrenched immortal powerful elite.
I feel like you and the parent need to give a better operational definition of what you mean by "practical purposes." The ultimate destiny of every bit of matter out there is to become part of a black hole, evaporate to Hawking radiation, then succumb to the expansion of space gradually putting every discrete particle outside of the future light cone of all others.
This should take unfathomably long epochs of time well beyond the current age of the universe, but it will still inevitably happen. This is even putting aside possibilities like proton decay and false vacuum collapse.
Don't get me wrong. Given the choice between a 100 year lifespan and a quadrillion year lifespan, my first instinct is to take the quadrillion year lifespan, but even then, it seems like you're incurring the very real risk that you'll eventually remain "alive" but in complete isolation with no matter to interact with that isn't part of your body, waiting for thousands of times longer then the Milky Way will exist for the attraction of a supermassive black hole to finally pull you in and end it. Given whatever sort of brain you might have has to have a finite storage capacity for information, you also open up the possibility that you'll spend the last few trillion years of your life with no memories except that complete isolation and experience of utter nothingness.
These are all sci-fi scenarios and there is no way to know for sure what will actually happen or what it will be like, but we do know for sure that a functionally immortal being would not just be living a normal life doing things animals typically enjoy doing, but forever. There are plenty of possible fates worse than death.
This should take unfathomably long epochs of time well beyond the current age of the universe, but it will still inevitably happen. This is even putting aside possibilities like proton decay and false vacuum collapse.
Don't get me wrong. Given the choice between a 100 year lifespan and a quadrillion year lifespan, my first instinct is to take the quadrillion year lifespan, but even then, it seems like you're incurring the very real risk that you'll eventually remain "alive" but in complete isolation with no matter to interact with that isn't part of your body, waiting for thousands of times longer then the Milky Way will exist for the attraction of a supermassive black hole to finally pull you in and end it. Given whatever sort of brain you might have has to have a finite storage capacity for information, you also open up the possibility that you'll spend the last few trillion years of your life with no memories except that complete isolation and experience of utter nothingness.
These are all sci-fi scenarios and there is no way to know for sure what will actually happen or what it will be like, but we do know for sure that a functionally immortal being would not just be living a normal life doing things animals typically enjoy doing, but forever. There are plenty of possible fates worse than death.
I feel like the situation you describe is fairly unrealistic because you'd definitely use simulations to pass time. And I don't see any reason why you'd be the only immortal being left, either.
All medical technology developed 50 years ago is now available to the general public, so I think it'd be available to everyone.
All medical technology is maybe "available", but if you google "person dies from not being able to afford insulin", we can see that availability is only half the equation. It has to be affordable, too.
If immortality becomes as available as insulin, it will be a smashing success. Nearly everyone that wants insulin gets it.
Death from aging maybe. But as we saw, the next most dangerous things are each other and the systems that push toward people to death.
Psychological health and well being are going to be key to resolving the problem of peaceful coexistence between humans.
Psychological health and well being are going to be key to resolving the problem of peaceful coexistence between humans.
Funny that we've gotten to the point where we can imagine an end to aging but not war.
Me and my partner always lement that we didn't evolve from capybaras instead.
Me and my partner always lement that we didn't evolve from capybaras instead.
Never going to happen. We don't have the technology, we're not going to get the technology, and nobody benefits by having wealthy people around forever. Your body parts will eventually wear out regardless of what you try to do to mitigate the situation, and everybody will get terminal cancer sooner or later regardless of anything else. And even if THAT doesn't get you, an accident eventually will. Doesn't matter if it's a car wreck, a plane crash, someone coughing on you at the wrong moment, or you sneezing and bursting a blood vessel in your head.
The big assumption in this counterargument is that we stay biological forever. I see biological "immortality" (anti-aging) as a temporary stopgap while we develop gradual replacement and migrate to a synthetic/digital consciousness, hosted on nodes distributed throughout Earth orbit or beyond for fault tolerance and availability.
I'd be shocked if this didn't happen in the next thousand years.
Needing air/water everywhere we go is incredibly limiting as well.
I'd be shocked if this didn't happen in the next thousand years.
Needing air/water everywhere we go is incredibly limiting as well.
You won't "migrate", it will just be a copy of you. Your conscious perspective will not transfer to the copy of you. You will still be bound to the original, even if a simulacrum of your mind is created.
You can "migrate" with a technique such as gradual replacement, which in a simplified form replaces one physical neuron at a time with an uplink to a virtual neuron, and waits for your thoughts to equalize. Realistically you'd do clusters of neurons.
And how do you plan to deal with the latency of connecting the neurons of your brain to a remote virtual uplink? The speed of light limits the size of a virtual brain that is able to function in the same manner as a biological one. The truth is our understanding of consciousness and its neurological foundation is nowhere close to the level that would allow us to recreate it artificially. We don't even know how it works normally. It will not happen in your lifetime and you are going to die like the rest of us, and very likely this will not change even in the next thousand years.
And then when the hormones are also gone, you won't be you. You won't even be a copy. You'll be a husk pretending to be a person long after the actual person is long gone. You'll be a talking wikipedia article with no ability to anything but regurgitate some of what you already knew, and the vast majority of these things will be of no consequence or use to anyone. We will never need immortality badly enough to spend the kind of resources to come close to achieving it.
Mortality is not meant to be cured. Quality of life on the other hand..
I'm not sure any disease is "meant" to be cured. The fact that we can cure any diseases at all is a lucky accident.
Is this a religious conviction, or something else? I've heard that viewpoint a lot, but I've never heard anyone really explain where it comes from.
Is this a religious conviction, or something else? I've heard that viewpoint a lot, but I've never heard anyone really explain where it comes from.
Smallpox was not meant to be cured anyway, but we did, and we're better for it. One of the defining qualities of humanity is the ability to better ourselves and overcome challenges.
We've wrecked our habitat and keep most of humanity in some form or other of slavery, and there are exactly zero credible social movements aiming for another course. Why would we want to watch this deterioration and tyranny go on for centuries more?
As for 'non-biological' humans, I'm assuming you believe in some soul that could be transfered from your body to a computer? If so, that's clearly into deeply religious territory. You are an analog being, you view the world as analog projections onto a mammal cortex. That is fundamentally, ontologically very different from digitally virtual environments. The digital lacks identity, which is the source of security issues in the computerised society. There is no difference between 1011011001 and 1011011001 regardless of source, it can be a biometry reader sending an encoding of your thumb print or another computer hooked into a network sending the same bytes.
If we for the sake of argument ignored the problems with the transfer, then you still propose a deeply restricted existence, a machine prison, where there is no way for you to discern whether your experience actually comes from your sensors or some other source feeding digital signals into your machine. At best it is a simulacra of a dream you can't wake from. You'd be absolutely cut off from any possibility of freedom and immediate engagement with the universe.
Now, I do understand that many people enjoy living almost their entire adult lives mediated through digitally transmitted images and sounds, but at least they still have the option to look away and out of their own bodies and into the remnants of the world that birthed our and many other species. Removing that option entirely and replacing it with the most intimate and absolute form of imprisonment we have yet been able to imagine does not seem at all attractive to me.
Regarding "longevity", currently billions are suffering under the rule of a few generations that refuse to let go of power even though they are well beyond what is the common age of retirement in vast parts of the world. If allowed they will for sure continue this refusal and they signal clearly that they are going to kill and maim a lot of people just to try and stay in power now. Locking borders against climate refugees, taking resources from things like education and art and medicine and pushing it into war industry, inventing new insidious forms of surveillance and control to try and make sure dissent becomes impossible.
If you get to watch them follow through on this, how do you expect to keep some semblance of sanity? Are you hoping to be able to ignore it, sitting on a server in a bunker being fed a constant soap opera of fiction and simulated conversations, humming away at some 200 watts or so?
As for 'non-biological' humans, I'm assuming you believe in some soul that could be transfered from your body to a computer? If so, that's clearly into deeply religious territory. You are an analog being, you view the world as analog projections onto a mammal cortex. That is fundamentally, ontologically very different from digitally virtual environments. The digital lacks identity, which is the source of security issues in the computerised society. There is no difference between 1011011001 and 1011011001 regardless of source, it can be a biometry reader sending an encoding of your thumb print or another computer hooked into a network sending the same bytes.
If we for the sake of argument ignored the problems with the transfer, then you still propose a deeply restricted existence, a machine prison, where there is no way for you to discern whether your experience actually comes from your sensors or some other source feeding digital signals into your machine. At best it is a simulacra of a dream you can't wake from. You'd be absolutely cut off from any possibility of freedom and immediate engagement with the universe.
Now, I do understand that many people enjoy living almost their entire adult lives mediated through digitally transmitted images and sounds, but at least they still have the option to look away and out of their own bodies and into the remnants of the world that birthed our and many other species. Removing that option entirely and replacing it with the most intimate and absolute form of imprisonment we have yet been able to imagine does not seem at all attractive to me.
Regarding "longevity", currently billions are suffering under the rule of a few generations that refuse to let go of power even though they are well beyond what is the common age of retirement in vast parts of the world. If allowed they will for sure continue this refusal and they signal clearly that they are going to kill and maim a lot of people just to try and stay in power now. Locking borders against climate refugees, taking resources from things like education and art and medicine and pushing it into war industry, inventing new insidious forms of surveillance and control to try and make sure dissent becomes impossible.
If you get to watch them follow through on this, how do you expect to keep some semblance of sanity? Are you hoping to be able to ignore it, sitting on a server in a bunker being fed a constant soap opera of fiction and simulated conversations, humming away at some 200 watts or so?
> You are an analog being, you view the world as analog projections onto a mammal cortex. That is fundamentally, ontologically very different from digitally virtual environments.
No it's not. If you accept "mind is brain" (i.e. consciousness is a phenomena within known or knowable laws of physics), a digital virtual environment that simulates the laws of physics (to arbitrarily good precision) could have brains (and therefore minds) running inside it that are indistinguishable (to arbitrarily good precision) from the real thing. [1] [2]
> currently billions are suffering under the rule of a few generations that refuse to let go of power even though they are well beyond what is the common age of retirement in vast parts of the world. If allowed they will for sure continue this refusal and they signal clearly that they are going to kill and maim a lot of people just to try and stay in power now. Locking borders against climate refugees, taking resources from things like education and art and medicine and pushing it into war industry, inventing new insidious forms of surveillance and control to try and make sure dissent becomes impossible.
I'd sure as hell rather be alive now than in the 1800's, or the 1700's, or the 1600's. Or the Middle Ages, or classical antiquity, or ancient times, or pre-history. Life sucks for billions of people compared to Western standards but life's also better for billions of people than it's ever been before. Humanity's mostly made forward progress over the long arc of time, and I'm skeptical of claims that such progress is doomed to permanently halt anytime soon.
[1] I could replace "to arbitrarily good precision" with a proper mathematical formulation. But the technical details of the epsilons and deltas don't affect the thrust of the philosophical argument. I'm happy to leave a more precise epsilon-delta phrasing of my idea as an exercise to the reader(s).
[2] Of course the equivalence goes both ways; I hardly need to explain to HN that it's possible to build digital computers in our analog universe!
No it's not. If you accept "mind is brain" (i.e. consciousness is a phenomena within known or knowable laws of physics), a digital virtual environment that simulates the laws of physics (to arbitrarily good precision) could have brains (and therefore minds) running inside it that are indistinguishable (to arbitrarily good precision) from the real thing. [1] [2]
> currently billions are suffering under the rule of a few generations that refuse to let go of power even though they are well beyond what is the common age of retirement in vast parts of the world. If allowed they will for sure continue this refusal and they signal clearly that they are going to kill and maim a lot of people just to try and stay in power now. Locking borders against climate refugees, taking resources from things like education and art and medicine and pushing it into war industry, inventing new insidious forms of surveillance and control to try and make sure dissent becomes impossible.
I'd sure as hell rather be alive now than in the 1800's, or the 1700's, or the 1600's. Or the Middle Ages, or classical antiquity, or ancient times, or pre-history. Life sucks for billions of people compared to Western standards but life's also better for billions of people than it's ever been before. Humanity's mostly made forward progress over the long arc of time, and I'm skeptical of claims that such progress is doomed to permanently halt anytime soon.
[1] I could replace "to arbitrarily good precision" with a proper mathematical formulation. But the technical details of the epsilons and deltas don't affect the thrust of the philosophical argument. I'm happy to leave a more precise epsilon-delta phrasing of my idea as an exercise to the reader(s).
[2] Of course the equivalence goes both ways; I hardly need to explain to HN that it's possible to build digital computers in our analog universe!
Like I said, that is a religious view, and as I alluded to, I do not accept it.
I'm also not a fan of crypto-christian conceptions of historical "progress". Life was interesting and worth living in the past.
I'm also not a fan of crypto-christian conceptions of historical "progress". Life was interesting and worth living in the past.
> I'm assuming you believe in some soul that could be transfered from your body to a computer? If so, that's clearly into deeply religious territory.
Actually, I would say the opposite is deeply religious territory. Nothing fundamentally restricts this unless you think the analog nature of a neuron is a pre-requisite to consciousness, and no synthetic/digital consciousness could ever exist. But you have no reason to believe this. Such a belief is almost religious.
> where there is no way for you to discern whether your experience actually comes from your sensors or some other source
This is life today as well. How do you know you aren't part of some Matrix-style biological mind prison? You don't. It's pointless even trying to wonder.
> Regarding "longevity", currently billions are suffering under the rule of a few generations that refuse to let go of power even though
Social problems can be fixed. Death is final. Tyrants existing is not a reason to promote the death of billions of innocents. If Putin lived for another 1000 years, I certainly wouldn't kill myself. You will experience more net social progress being immortal, though it may be slower, than dying after a short 80 years.
Actually, I would say the opposite is deeply religious territory. Nothing fundamentally restricts this unless you think the analog nature of a neuron is a pre-requisite to consciousness, and no synthetic/digital consciousness could ever exist. But you have no reason to believe this. Such a belief is almost religious.
> where there is no way for you to discern whether your experience actually comes from your sensors or some other source
This is life today as well. How do you know you aren't part of some Matrix-style biological mind prison? You don't. It's pointless even trying to wonder.
> Regarding "longevity", currently billions are suffering under the rule of a few generations that refuse to let go of power even though
Social problems can be fixed. Death is final. Tyrants existing is not a reason to promote the death of billions of innocents. If Putin lived for another 1000 years, I certainly wouldn't kill myself. You will experience more net social progress being immortal, though it may be slower, than dying after a short 80 years.
I mean, you've given me an abused Russell's teapot in an attempt to mirror my position, just like a Jehovah's witness or charismatic christian would. At the very least you should hypothesise that you could anchor an argument in quarks and then pick a conceptual level of matter at which you believe you have enough control to be able to fully simulate human corporeality.
If you could it'd be very, very slow, because your machine needs to embed more than the representation of the system you aim to simulate. Among other things to correct for the different complexity, similar to how you need to juggle ten extra decimals or rounding rules just to be able to compute 0.3 * 3 in the browser console.
I know that I'm not in a Matrix style prison because I've experienced pharmacologically induced dissociation and other disruptions of the nervous system. If my brain was a tube floater hooked up to whatever machine you're fantasising about, then I'd have noticed, just like I notice that I'm dreaming if I for some reason turn lucid when sleeping. You could, of course, spend so much time being introverted and deep in your own fantasies, e.g. by stimulating your brain with screens, that you lose the ability to discern between real and virtual settings. Some might claim that this is an ideal and spend their lives practicing such techniques in cloistered, monastic environments.
I did not "promote the death of billions of innocents". I claimed that watching the current trajectory play out isn't obviously attractive, to refute the opposite position, that it should be the "#1" priority of contemporary state administrations. But if you want an argument for death, sure, I'll give you one, because it's trivial. Death is part of the human condition, it is fundamental to who we are and always has been.
If you take it away, then we are no longer human and lose our connection with human history and recorded experience. Is it better to be a human than to be a machine? I'd say yes, because machines cannot have liberty and freedom, they're dead already.
The assumption that there will be "social progress" under conditions where people no longer die would need a very strong set of arguments for me to accept it. Currently, that we are born and die exerts a pressure on our rulers and injects volatility into our societies. If they instead could just say 'alright, we'll make things better, just wait a millenium', then they would. They are already very good at erasing dissent and the memory of previous dissenters, to a large extent by substituting for it with false ideas, or 'false consciousness'.
The assumption that "social progress" is inevitable has a religious background, it has its immediate roots in Enlightenment deism, i.e. christian protestantism, which were inherited by liberalists and early marxists. This position has suffered a lot since then, mostly because of modern takes on science, but also the global effects of mass extinction, disruption of the atmosphere and so on, which is quite tangible evidence against this view.
Whether eighty years is long or short from your perspective is up to you. Perception of time is highly elastic and especially under dissociative states you can feel like you've experienced centuries pass by. This is routinely exploited in televised media.
If you could it'd be very, very slow, because your machine needs to embed more than the representation of the system you aim to simulate. Among other things to correct for the different complexity, similar to how you need to juggle ten extra decimals or rounding rules just to be able to compute 0.3 * 3 in the browser console.
I know that I'm not in a Matrix style prison because I've experienced pharmacologically induced dissociation and other disruptions of the nervous system. If my brain was a tube floater hooked up to whatever machine you're fantasising about, then I'd have noticed, just like I notice that I'm dreaming if I for some reason turn lucid when sleeping. You could, of course, spend so much time being introverted and deep in your own fantasies, e.g. by stimulating your brain with screens, that you lose the ability to discern between real and virtual settings. Some might claim that this is an ideal and spend their lives practicing such techniques in cloistered, monastic environments.
I did not "promote the death of billions of innocents". I claimed that watching the current trajectory play out isn't obviously attractive, to refute the opposite position, that it should be the "#1" priority of contemporary state administrations. But if you want an argument for death, sure, I'll give you one, because it's trivial. Death is part of the human condition, it is fundamental to who we are and always has been.
If you take it away, then we are no longer human and lose our connection with human history and recorded experience. Is it better to be a human than to be a machine? I'd say yes, because machines cannot have liberty and freedom, they're dead already.
The assumption that there will be "social progress" under conditions where people no longer die would need a very strong set of arguments for me to accept it. Currently, that we are born and die exerts a pressure on our rulers and injects volatility into our societies. If they instead could just say 'alright, we'll make things better, just wait a millenium', then they would. They are already very good at erasing dissent and the memory of previous dissenters, to a large extent by substituting for it with false ideas, or 'false consciousness'.
The assumption that "social progress" is inevitable has a religious background, it has its immediate roots in Enlightenment deism, i.e. christian protestantism, which were inherited by liberalists and early marxists. This position has suffered a lot since then, mostly because of modern takes on science, but also the global effects of mass extinction, disruption of the atmosphere and so on, which is quite tangible evidence against this view.
Whether eighty years is long or short from your perspective is up to you. Perception of time is highly elastic and especially under dissociative states you can feel like you've experienced centuries pass by. This is routinely exploited in televised media.
Great book on the topic is "Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death" by Irvin D. Yalom. I suggest that anyone who struggles with fear of dying read it.
I don't fear death. I've been there, done that, and it was very nice. Bloody doctors and my implanted defibrillator keep bringing me back.
Death itself is fine, but the miserable (and often long) time before that much less so
Yes. In our modern "compassionate" society the goal is to keep people alive regardless of the quality of life of the individual.
This is why the study of physics and chemistry is important, so you can exit when it's no longer worth staying, with the help of Engineering.
This is why the study of physics and chemistry is important, so you can exit when it's no longer worth staying, with the help of Engineering.
I suppose that Catholic hospitals were in the business of "treating fear of death" effectively through evangelization of all patients. At this point in history, hospitals, whether secular or religious, stand between us and death at all times. They are practically the only portal to the other side, whether or not we are willing.
For me, perhaps I do not fear death so much as infirmity. Dying, for me, would be entrance into glory and bliss (at least that beginning of that process), but to live with illness, to be incapacitated, to suffer helplessly, that's a terrible and frightful thing.
So being admitted to a hospital, the beginning of that infirmity or incapacitation, that is definitely a traumatic experience for me that requires accompaniment and soothing. Unfortunately, modern hospitals are woefully equipped to allay our fears, but instead just run us through a meat grinder of paperwork, finances, poorly-informed decisions, and disappointment.
So it's laudable that palliative care and hospices are making efforts like this one.
On my own part, I'm gradually overcoming a visceral fear of hospitals and facilities by just waltzing in while I'm perfectly healthy. There are a couple nearby and so I've taken to eating in their cafeterias when it's convenient (very cheap, great selection of healthy food!); and the chapel where the Eucharist is reserved is a focus of peace and prayer; and there is actually a lot of art and history to admire in them, so it's become an interesting and unexpected diversion.
For me, perhaps I do not fear death so much as infirmity. Dying, for me, would be entrance into glory and bliss (at least that beginning of that process), but to live with illness, to be incapacitated, to suffer helplessly, that's a terrible and frightful thing.
So being admitted to a hospital, the beginning of that infirmity or incapacitation, that is definitely a traumatic experience for me that requires accompaniment and soothing. Unfortunately, modern hospitals are woefully equipped to allay our fears, but instead just run us through a meat grinder of paperwork, finances, poorly-informed decisions, and disappointment.
So it's laudable that palliative care and hospices are making efforts like this one.
On my own part, I'm gradually overcoming a visceral fear of hospitals and facilities by just waltzing in while I'm perfectly healthy. There are a couple nearby and so I've taken to eating in their cafeterias when it's convenient (very cheap, great selection of healthy food!); and the chapel where the Eucharist is reserved is a focus of peace and prayer; and there is actually a lot of art and history to admire in them, so it's become an interesting and unexpected diversion.
Humans don't have a self-preservation instinct. Instead, like all life, they properly have a reproductive instinct. We only have self-preservation instincts as far as is necessary to make reproduction possible. In an age where many are deliberately "child free" it might start to look as if terror management is the name of the game, but that's just an artifact of a bunch of other neuroses that have taken hold.
I need to die so that there's room for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
I need to die so that there's room for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The way Dutch people combat the admittedly scary process of dying is by treating it as an event.
I think the best comparison is a wedding. You do your rehearsals, pick out music and clothes, train the bridesmaids, pick a venue, call the catering.
And then ofcourse you have the administrative stuff to take care off- banking, house, taxes.
Time flies until the big day happens.
My Dad a blue collar worker all his life died of IPF. He stayed strong for decades but the last six months were hard and the last three weeks in palliative care the worst. The disease he handled the anxiety he couldn't.
(Edited to add: Sorry, too long of a post here. I didn’t bother to renew my domain this year)
A timely piece I can relate to. currently starting my second week in a (US) hospital oncology ward after my 11th cycle of chemo. I was first diagnosed with stage iv colon cancer and after chemo, surgery, resections and stubbornness was NED from 2018 to 2025. The return is inoperable and I was given “six months to a year”.
I asked if I’d be in pain when death came, and he said that I wouldn’t likely be - it would just be feeling more and more tired. That’s basically what’s been happening.
The chemo itself hasn’t given me direct side effects like skin lesions or mouth sores, nor much nausea. The secondary effects on my kidneys (which were already doing poorly before this started) and liver (cirrhosis) plus the metastases in lymph nodes and lung leads to edema. Diuretics helped but flushed out my potassium, so there several months where they trying to balance those electrolytes.
Anyway, a lot of my swelling was reduced (and they took 4L from two rounds of draining my lungs) but for some ungodly reason my scrotal sack decided it wanted to play too, and became the size and consistency of one of those half size basketballs you can win at fairs. it’s so bad that I actually requested a catheter. The swelling makes walking or anything else really painful.
The oncology wing I’m in doesn’t seem soaked in the kind of depressing, institutional green malaise of slightly older hospitals but it isn’t a “nice place” to die (I don’t expect to do that this visit in any case). The older woman (70?) two doors down though - seems to be in constant pain and in and out of lucidity, shouting at everyone. Usually a phrase gets stuck on repeat for a few hours - the most heartbreaking was “mommy get my mommy I’m sorry mommy I’m a bad girl mommy stop it” yelled loudly for hours.
This is a generic hospital though. Memorial Sloan-Kettering in NYC has a patient day lounge and lots of projects for child patients and patients families. Still not even approaching the quality described
Sorry, rambling. Probably my way of compartmentalizing the anxiety.
The other thing I wanted to say is that I really liked Christopher Hitchens “Mortality” and that Terry Pratchett’s very relatable death character shows up in all of his books. My favorite quote is from “Small Gods” as Death comes for the protagonist at the very end:
> “Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?” said Brutha. WHO KNOWS? “And what is at the end of the desert?” JUDGMENT. Brutha considered this. “Which end?” Death grinned and stepped aside.
Maybe I’m not afraid of death because as a devout atheist - well yea, we all get to do that at some point.
A timely piece I can relate to. currently starting my second week in a (US) hospital oncology ward after my 11th cycle of chemo. I was first diagnosed with stage iv colon cancer and after chemo, surgery, resections and stubbornness was NED from 2018 to 2025. The return is inoperable and I was given “six months to a year”.
I asked if I’d be in pain when death came, and he said that I wouldn’t likely be - it would just be feeling more and more tired. That’s basically what’s been happening.
The chemo itself hasn’t given me direct side effects like skin lesions or mouth sores, nor much nausea. The secondary effects on my kidneys (which were already doing poorly before this started) and liver (cirrhosis) plus the metastases in lymph nodes and lung leads to edema. Diuretics helped but flushed out my potassium, so there several months where they trying to balance those electrolytes.
Anyway, a lot of my swelling was reduced (and they took 4L from two rounds of draining my lungs) but for some ungodly reason my scrotal sack decided it wanted to play too, and became the size and consistency of one of those half size basketballs you can win at fairs. it’s so bad that I actually requested a catheter. The swelling makes walking or anything else really painful.
The oncology wing I’m in doesn’t seem soaked in the kind of depressing, institutional green malaise of slightly older hospitals but it isn’t a “nice place” to die (I don’t expect to do that this visit in any case). The older woman (70?) two doors down though - seems to be in constant pain and in and out of lucidity, shouting at everyone. Usually a phrase gets stuck on repeat for a few hours - the most heartbreaking was “mommy get my mommy I’m sorry mommy I’m a bad girl mommy stop it” yelled loudly for hours.
This is a generic hospital though. Memorial Sloan-Kettering in NYC has a patient day lounge and lots of projects for child patients and patients families. Still not even approaching the quality described
Sorry, rambling. Probably my way of compartmentalizing the anxiety.
The other thing I wanted to say is that I really liked Christopher Hitchens “Mortality” and that Terry Pratchett’s very relatable death character shows up in all of his books. My favorite quote is from “Small Gods” as Death comes for the protagonist at the very end:
> “Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?” said Brutha. WHO KNOWS? “And what is at the end of the desert?” JUDGMENT. Brutha considered this. “Which end?” Death grinned and stepped aside.
Maybe I’m not afraid of death because as a devout atheist - well yea, we all get to do that at some point.
You're a warlord man! Atheist or not, I'll be honored to meet you on the other side. I wish you many blessings inbetween and appreciate the courage.
My dad chose hospice over dialysis and constant potassium problems. I feel you there.
The quote that really has stuck with me was also from Pratchett:
"What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?"
This caught me in two ways:
1. Death is the release. Whatever suffering you're undergoing, it won't follow you into whatever comes next, even if that is absolute oblivion. The relief would be welcome, I assume. So that's at least one positive way to look at it.
But moreso:
2. Everyone's death is individual and special. The process of getting to it is different for everyone, and the journey is just as much a part of the process as the destination. It isn't something to fear, because you cannot stop it, but it is something to consider as you move through your life.
Cancer is the fucking devil. I, myself, have been lucky enough to avoid it for now, but we spent the last year with my father and lymphoma. It's a fucking nightmare of cancer treatment and chasing side effects from the cancer treatments until the end. He chose to die with hospice on the family farm; it wasn't the most dignified death due to the symptoms of his cancer, but it was peaceful and with family/friends. So that's something.
His treatment didn't really bother me, and his process didn't really depress me; it was the people like the older lady in your write-up that really stuck with me. In his first month on the cancer floor, his across the hall neighbor was just like that. Her only lucid moments were either screaming in pain, or nonsense phrases on repeat from what I assume was her childhood.
Terrifying.
I hope that your life goes well all the way to the end. I genuinely do not know what to say other than that.
"What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?"
This caught me in two ways:
1. Death is the release. Whatever suffering you're undergoing, it won't follow you into whatever comes next, even if that is absolute oblivion. The relief would be welcome, I assume. So that's at least one positive way to look at it.
But moreso:
2. Everyone's death is individual and special. The process of getting to it is different for everyone, and the journey is just as much a part of the process as the destination. It isn't something to fear, because you cannot stop it, but it is something to consider as you move through your life.
Cancer is the fucking devil. I, myself, have been lucky enough to avoid it for now, but we spent the last year with my father and lymphoma. It's a fucking nightmare of cancer treatment and chasing side effects from the cancer treatments until the end. He chose to die with hospice on the family farm; it wasn't the most dignified death due to the symptoms of his cancer, but it was peaceful and with family/friends. So that's something.
His treatment didn't really bother me, and his process didn't really depress me; it was the people like the older lady in your write-up that really stuck with me. In his first month on the cancer floor, his across the hall neighbor was just like that. Her only lucid moments were either screaming in pain, or nonsense phrases on repeat from what I assume was her childhood.
Terrifying.
I hope that your life goes well all the way to the end. I genuinely do not know what to say other than that.
Thanks for your comment. Wishing you the best, especially a life free of pain.
life is so beautiful and so tragic
It’s good we are starting to develop dignified death laws. With the world population as it is, more people will die in the next decade than any other in history (even the plagues). Just looking at population graphs, 1B might die between 2050 and 2060. Much suffering can be avoided.