Metaphysics anyone?

[LutiChris]

My Responses (Click to View)

Doctor A (Click to View)

If it wasn't for aging and death, we'd all be useless.

Ah yes, death is a motivator for some people. I would argue that if someone (not all of them just some) believed in an after life they wouldn't be motivated to do anything productive and just seek pleasure (or suppressing it if their dogma says so) Especially the people who believe in the upcoming raptures. The same can be said for someone who is a nihilist. but i don't think we should rely on the fear of death just to be useful.

One main reason for why people came up with inventions and discoveries is because they wanted to live even after they die, by their names carved in rocks or written in books for eternity.

It's acceptable for most people to want to be remembered for their discoveries, works and achievements. However, I don't think it's reasonable to leave your legacy to live on through your children since they are not you and may not even represent your ideas and even go at lengths to destroying the lineage simply because they don't want kids of their own.

If we were all to live forever, we'd live a life seeking pleasure and only pleasure, naturally.

if we have plenty of time to do anything we'll eventually get it done - or not (it's your choice). Yes, it may appear like we are not getting anything done at the moment but just because we are not forced to do it soon we can always do it later and focus on spending our time elsewhere "seeking pleasure". However, i fail to see why this is a bad thing. People can still do great things if they find it in themselves to go pursue their interests - whether it's finding alien life on other planets, or entertaining a couple of sex crazed chimpanzee's.

I think the negative thing about it would be doing things like homework, and job related deadlines (those are given to us - so thats easy) Now if you're not being told what to do then it's your responsibility to make your own schedule, and get into the habit of things that you should be doing (like your goals - whatever that may be)
 
if someone's life goal is to benefit their community with whatever the hell entertainment or knowledge they wanna present - i'm sure they would have to find it interesting themselves because - you know it's their life goal after all! they would let their interests and passion drive them to continue to inspire, inform and entertain others because they felt the need to do so. or if they didn't feel the need to carry any significance to the outside world other than just that's cool too. not all of us are inclined to pursue dreams or even have dreams of our own. In due time that may change. In the meantime someone is bound to take their place.

no one is obligated to go and look for something. most people find meaning on their own and that drives them to help the economy going, as well as other factors and causes that may be responsible for their actions. If people care about one another they would do stuff for each other. again it's not about obligation but because they want to do it. I mean that's why we do stuff for the most part. get money to do stuff. taking care of others, doing non profit organization to help someone's cause and needs. and in that sense we are also deriving a pleasure knowing we are doing some good out of it (or for whatever reason really)

i have a hard time believing everybody is going to be negatively affected by living forever that it won't help society, sure it creates more problems but the problems can be fixed as well as the ones that proceed it.

Are we really going to find ourselves bored by the age of over 9000?
I find it very hard for myself to be bored at all. I'm constantly engaged online. Opening new sources of information for me to read and learn about like the latest and greatest cooking recipes. And if i'm not learning i'm just fooling around doodling or playing games. I don't see how anyone can be bored. If they are ... then they need to make a change in their lives (could be as simple as challenging yourself to do things you don't want to do or haven't done before or you know - suicide if that's an easy way out of your problems)

if you brought back someone that lived in the dark ages they would not have thought it was possible for any of this to happen. Go and show them your cell phone and they would think it was magic - until they come across some articles explaining how such & such things worked. take a look at these interesting predictions

One thing I'd like to know your thoughts  (your, as LFE as a whole)  about is euthanasia. 

i don't think people should be allowed to die if they aren't ready to. And that also means dying of old age. I know that may seem crazy since nature programmed us to do that. And over the course of history we've been brought up and grown accustomed to accept that it's okay to die because it's "natural" and nothing about that can change. Things may change for the better when science comes around to it. I am skeptical if it can be done within our lifetime but who knows we'll have to wait and see.

There are three types of Classification for the term "euthanasia"

Voluntary (reasonably okay - depends on the circumstance)
Involuntary (illegal in all countries - not to be tolerated)
and Non-Voluntary (mixed feelings - again it depends on the situation).

I like to think anyone has the right to choose (except minors and other folks who are legally found to be irresponsible for their actions/crimes) Even if it's something i don't agree with, i don't know what i would do in the moment. if thats what they want to do it's a matter of choice and i don't want to physically interfere with that. All i can really offer is advice and talk them out of it. Now if a medical doctor says their is nothing they can do for them and the pain and suffering is too much for them to handle then i don't see why not.

I feel the same thing about abortion. Don't care if someone i don't know is doing it. If it doesn't directly affect me i don't care. it's their choice. If someone i knew was going to kill themselves, someone else, or their baby i'd like to think i would go confront them about it. It also depends on the situation. When someone is trying to kill you and they leave you with no other alternative, trapped in a corner and you're forced into a position where the only way to survive is to kill them or someone then in that circumstance - i would see that as fine.

Sänger (Click to View)

We will never beat death and aging...We cannot conquer, we can slow it down, try fighting to stop it for some amount of time but we will not conquer it. 

Well thats a pretty close minded statement. Why do you think we can not over come age? or even death?

Even if we extend lenght of life. Even if we stay young or look young in our 50s, like Japanese people. We will still age.

Think of our bodies as a car. if we replace every faulty problem in a car over it's life time then you can cheat death. check this video out our cells are always dying and changing into other cells. Also who says we even have to stay in these decaying bodies anyways. What are your thoughts on being a robot?

do you think it's something we can conquer or is it innevitable?

Nothing is innevitable.

So death is inevitable? unavoidable? unquestionable? there's nothing we can do to change it? there's always going to be a limit no matter how far we get?

Cryonics is like time travel, you awaken after some time and you have no memmory of the events because you were frozen, am I right? Or cryonics is just like cooling your body down so when doctor is fixing you, your body would die slower but not stop dying.

it's basically the idea that science will find a way to reanimate your body in the future. the process is through vitrification. "This differs from freezing in that 60 percent of the water inside the cells is replaced with protective chemicals called cryoprotectants before the temperature is dropped. Instead of freezing, the body’s molecules slow movement until all chemical reactions stop. (at approximately -124°C). If cryonics were simply freezing, ice crystals would form and damage the tissue. If you’ve ever frozen a banana and then tried thawing it out, you know it doesn’t rebound to its natural banana shape. This is because the formation of ice crystals (freezing) and subsequent deformation (thawing) cause changes in the molecules. However, while vitrification ensures there is no damage due to ice-crystal formation, reversing the process does not yet work quite the way cryonics is intended—the vitrification solution itself has some biochemical side effects." - valerie barbaro

i am skeptical about it, i'm not going to foolishly jump onto something that may not work. Something could happen in the future where they decide "oh no we don't have enough money to support your life" or a disastrous incident could occur where the entire facility in which im stationed in is destroyed by some crazy guy or we're at war.

i would have this as a back up plan if i was seriously considering it once i got up to the point where i am old, have no where else to turn to, and find there aren't any signs of a cure within my lifetime.

STM1993 (Click to View)

Conquering death itself however, I think is impossible. 

while i agree that some things are impossible because of our situation, it's only a matter of time, investigation, resources and the man power that can be the seed to conquer just about anything. I don't know how we'll conquer death since everything in the universe is trying to kill us but i can imagine a scenario where some guy in the future uploads his consciousness into a cyborg and if we get to that point where we can escape into another reality then he would have some sort of device attached to it programming him to travel to different worlds away from humanity and anything nearby that might lead to his demise. It'll anticipate, calculate risks and dangers to be avoided and when the end of the universe is about to happen just simply escape into another timeline or another fresh universe and repeat the process all over. and just for arguments sake in order for him to not kill himself we would make him brain dead, unconscious the entire time, or entertained forever. i'm sure there are other better scenario's since mine is pretty convoluted.

impossibilities occur in the moment, lack of knowledge of resources that prevent us from allowing us to get to that goal. calculating probability seems to be the only logical and pragmatic way of going about things. we're not left with 100% certainty. things are going to have to be estimated, even our best measuring tools have a marginal error. I think It's possible that the idea of defeating death can be accomplished but i guess the real answer would be is it likely as of now? no. How about in the future? who knows...

my point is in certain circumstances, in a different time, or in a different reality than our own, it's possible to could conquer death. very improbable as it sounds, it seems a little bit more likely for at least one individual sentient being to do it. again i don't have any proof that there is a god. but the possibility may still be out there even though it is very improbable since such a being is impossible to test. i feel like we could have the tools in many many years to come.

Marko (Click to View)

It would be impossible to live in Earth. (Yeah, i am curious as well what mind-blowing things humanity will find out, but you can't help yourself about it.) We will die sooner or later, deal with it.

arguments like "oh no you'll overpopulate the earth." sound more like excuses. Yes overpopulation would be a problem but i don't think we should stop and give up researching. Seriously what if there was an actual way to over come age, all manners of diseases, and even death. it just seems to me every time we found a problem we would solve it slowly but surely. We make scientific advancements constantly even things we couldn't dream about 100 years ago. overpopulation can be figured out later and we could even get to the point where we can breed and populate other planets and moons. maybe even cross between dimensions and other realities. it all seems like fiction but if we grabbed someone from the past they would not have believed what we as a society have amounted to in such discoveries. The idea that we are content with thinking that this is alright and that this problem will stay a problem, discourages people from thinking we can possibly cure it. same idea applies when someone hangs onto a religious idea and are content that there is an after life and make no effort in learning if they might be wrong.

What i am trying to say is that after your death you still live in memories of your loved ones so when we already got chance to live

I'm just going to copy what i told Doctor A
It's acceptable for most people to want to be remembered for their discoveries, works and achievements. However, I don't think it's reasonable to leave your legacy to live on through your children since they are not you and may not even represent your ideas and even go at lengths to destroying the lineage simply because they don't want kids of their own.

tl;dr (Click to View)

you thought it was that easy, didn't you? go read my rant
and if you did, thanks for putting up with me. here's a big cookie!