Dolash and I were having a discussion...
[19:20] Dolash02: You know what? Fiction is wrong - living forever would rule.
[19:20] Dolash02: If I had eternal life I would love it. All the stories about people thinking it's a curse are dumb.
[19:22] beffpike: Is that so?
[19:22] beffpike: Would you not feel robbed of a part of life integral to the cycle of continuance?
[19:22] Dolash02: No.
[19:22] Dolash02: I am a total atheist. I know with the wholeness of my being that death brings oblivion.
[19:23] Dolash02: I do not want to cease existing. You can get new friends and you can have many loves, but try finding a new consciousness.
[19:23] beffpike: Interesting.
[19:24] beffpike: But leaving aside the issue of what happens after death...
[19:26] beffpike: What of death itself? The act of.
[19:27] beffpike: In a life everlasting you could do, quite literally, everything.
[19:27] beffpike: Everything BUT die.
[19:27] Dolash02: Yup. You could - and would - do everything infinite times.
[19:27] Dolash02: If you throw in invulnerability too, then you'll even last for the formation of new planets and the evolving of fresh life.
[19:28] beffpike: To be experienced from the human perspective? No thanks.
[19:28] beffpike: You understand, much more would be required.
[19:28] Dolash02: But to me, the alternative - nothingness - is infinitely worse than pain, suffering, or madness.
[19:28] Dolash02: Well yes.
[19:28] Dolash02: Expanded memory capacity.
[19:29] beffpike: For instance, a brain capable of storing infinite information.
[19:29] Dolash02: Youth, as well, lest your body become decrepit.
[19:29] Dolash02: I'd obviously desire those as well (though they're not necessary for me to preffer infinite life) but on the plus side, with infinite time you'd have as long as necessary to learn how to acquire them.
[19:30] Dolash02: Build a mechanical body to replace your failing biological one and replace it as often as necessary. Expand your memory with virtual or genetic augmentations. You will have millenia to discover them.
[19:30] Dolash02: Not to mention the millenia available to shape human history.
[19:32] beffpike: In every sense of the word, it would drive you insane.
[19:32] beffpike: Consider, from your human sense of things, spending a year locked in a box. No contact outside that box, none.
[19:33] beffpike: Now imagine the loneliness of living forever, and that box becomes the universe.
[19:33] Dolash02: I would preffer even the deepest depths of madness over nothingness.
[19:33] beffpike: I disagree.
[19:34] Dolash02: Oddly enough, the limited capacity of human memory could work in your favour.
[19:34] Dolash02: Forgetting periods of millenia might allow you to happily relive your life in blissful ignorance that it is a repetition.
[19:34] Dolash02: A sort of one-life reincarnation, if you will.
[19:35] beffpike: With age, Jack, I assure you that your opinion will change.
[19:35] Dolash02: And even with infinite memory, with infinite time to spend you'll inevitibly descend from madness after a while (get sick of it, perhaps) and have another period of sanity before being overwhelmed with the crazies a few millenia later.
[19:35] Dolash02: No, I think with age my actual beliefs will instead be warped by my desire to comfort myself.
[19:35] Dolash02: Eternal life is impossible, so inevitibly we try to console ourselves.
[19:37] beffpike: Imagine the thing you love most, a person, an animal, a thing...
[19:37] beffpike: Now take it away, forever.
[19:37] beffpike: Again, and again.
[19:37] beffpike: No matter how much you try to be a part of reality, you won't be. You'll be removed from it, isolated by your own immortality.
[19:37] Dolash02: I find this regrettable, but prefferable to that being me.
[19:38] beffpike: You will never again have a peer. Never.
[19:38] Dolash02: So?
[19:38] Dolash02: You don't need peers.
[19:38] beffpike: Do you enjoy this discourse?
[19:38] beffpike: That we share?
[19:38] Dolash02: Yes, but I wouldn't mind if it were a thousand years later and I were having it with another person, similar to you.
[19:39] beffpike: Yes, you would.
[19:39] beffpike: Because, no matter the depth of my knowledge...
[19:39] beffpike: Your wisdom would exceed it.
[19:39] Dolash02: It'd be pretty sweet.
[19:39] beffpike: Every person you ever met would be, in some fashion, inferior to you.
[19:39] beffpike: Find love when everyone in the world will die in the blink of an eye, so to speak.
[19:39] Dolash02: You don't have to need peers, or equals, or people better at you than things.
[19:40] Dolash02: There are these things, but they don't make us human.
[19:40] beffpike: Discuss the aspects of life, only you can't because where others are still learning, you already know.
[19:40] beffpike: I disagree.
[19:40] Dolash02: Okay, then consider this.
[19:40] Dolash02: Goldfish.
[19:40] Dolash02: People love goldfish.
[19:40] beffpike: Wrong.
[19:40] beffpike: People KEEP goldfish.
[19:41] Dolash02: Let's try dogs then.
[19:41] beffpike: Because Goldfish make them feel as though there is something in this world that depends on them, and from that they achieve reward.
[19:41] Dolash02: There are people who really love dogs.
[19:41] beffpike: It's exactly the same Jack.
[19:41] Dolash02: Well couldn't you do that with people?
[19:41] beffpike: Psychologically speaking.
[19:41] beffpike: Yes, you could.
[19:41] beffpike: Hitler did.
[19:41] Dolash02: Godwin's law.
[19:42] Dolash02: Anyways...
[19:42] Dolash02: I mean if you live forever so that other seem to pass quickly...
[19:42] Dolash02: ...you could surely derive enjoyment and satisfaction from seeing each unique life?
[19:43] beffpike: But would you? When you look at goldfish, do you love them for their uniqueness?
[19:43] beffpike: Or dogs?
[19:43] Dolash02: Help each person as best you can, see to it to the best of your ability that they live happily, and when they pass there will be others who will come next, each a unique individual regarldess how similar.
[19:43] beffpike: Or is it their similarity to one another that breeds comfort?
[19:43] Dolash02: My grandmother bred dogs her whole life, and she saw each one as an individual creature. She would recall to me the lives and traits of each with loving detail.
[19:43] beffpike: And that is to say nothing of human nature and you're need, as the immortal in question, to avoid being torn asunder by it.
[19:44] beffpike: Imagine, as an immortal, your secret is discovered.
[19:44] beffpike: What then do you think the rest of humanity would do with you?
[19:44] beffpike: Rest assured...
[19:44] beffpike: Your immortality would be less then enjoyable.
[19:45] Dolash02: An assumption grounded on no fact whatsoever.
[19:45] beffpike: Oh?
[19:45] Dolash02: Though it is inevitible some would try to harm me, experiment on me, or hate me, human population and our spectrum of thought is varied enough that just as many would be glad.
[19:45] beffpike: Historically, how has humanity reacted to those that are different? Or those who have something others want?
[19:46] beffpike: I disagree.
[19:46] Dolash02: Humanity as a whole has never reacted one way or another. Only the exceptional and the tragic stands out.
[19:46] beffpike: Incorrect.
[19:46] Dolash02: An immortal would have the advantage of being mostly immune to this persecution.
[19:46] Dolash02: Correct.
[19:46] beffpike: Only the exception and tragic prevail.
[19:46] beffpike: Jesus had a good go of it eh/
[19:46] Dolash02: I fundamentally and irrevocably disagree.
[19:46] Dolash02: Some loved him, others hated him.
[19:47] Dolash02: Were he actually totally immortal, he would have sat through the crucifixion and eventually through attrition succeed.
[19:47] beffpike: Were he immortal and that known...
[19:47] Dolash02: People will have to accept what they cannot get rid of.
[19:47] beffpike: Those that loved him would still love him.
[19:47] beffpike: Those that hated him... As is the case in society, would see their will succeed.
[19:48] beffpike: People have never accepted what they cannot get rid of Jack.
[19:48] Dolash02: You accept death.
[19:48] beffpike: Do I?
[19:48] Dolash02: We fear it, we loath it, but we accept it.
[19:48] Dolash02: We try to avoid it, but in the end, what can we do?
[19:48] beffpike: There is no foundation for that statement.
[19:48] beffpike: That we "accept" death.
[19:48] beffpike: Any more then we "accept" life.
[19:49] beffpike: And, stoping there...
[19:49] beffpike: You've just made an argument for aspects of life and death which exist beyond those mere borders.
[19:49] beffpike: Which flies in the face of your firm belief that death brings only the cessation of life.
[19:50] beffpike: So, given that, and your own admittance to expanding knowledge, how can you believe immortality would be somehow a good thing for you despite that?
[19:50] beffpike: You live, you learn.
[19:50] beffpike: Imagine, in your immortality, the things you would learn.
[19:51] beffpike: And how your perspective would change.
[19:51] beffpike: It is impossible to argue for such a thing when you cannot know what it would bring where-as the arguments standing against it hold true simply due observation.
[19:51] Dolash02: That perhaps, were I to live together, I would find evidence of life after death?
[19:52] beffpike: Perhaps so.
[19:52] Dolash02: I cannot argue my perception might shift in the future and I might rue the day I chose the "curse", but I can certainly argue my present faith in eternal life.
[19:52] beffpike: /smile
[19:52] beffpike: Just like Christians can argue their firm belief in heaven and hell.
[19:52] beffpike: And yet, you'd refute them.
[19:52] Dolash02: Not exactly.
[19:52] Dolash02: Hold on.
[19:52] beffpike: Let me just say this Jack...
[19:53] Dolash02: hold on.
[19:53] beffpike: If you were able to live forever, you would. We are not, and so we die.
[19:53] Dolash02: hold on.
[19:53] Dolash02: Wanted to finish my thought.
[19:53] beffpike: Naturally.
[19:54] Dolash02: Were I faced with the option of eternal life in the present, I would favour it now because so far as I presently understand it, it is prefferable to eventual oblivion. During this long life, I would inevitibly feel periods of regret (Many want to die at times for one reason or another) but my reasoning goes that right now I see it as prefferable even with the prospect of later suffering so why would I turn it down?
[19:55] Dolash02: For fear that, were my perspective to shift later, I might regret it? You might as well fear anything just in case in the future it turns out to be a lie of your senses.
[19:55] beffpike: Contrary to yourself...
[19:55] Dolash02: We must always act on that which we think is right, and not fear that the future will see us change into people who think it wrong.
[19:55] beffpike: Were I offered such an option, I would turn it down.
[19:57] beffpike: Because, simply put, I feel that what makes life special is that it will not last forever. And because my imagination is so much more grand then reality... proved time and again, that I would fear my imagination of such immortality would pale in comparison to the reality of it.
[19:57] beffpike: I would be tempted, as would anyone I think...
[19:57] beffpike: But given the depth of my limited life experience I know, for a fact, I'm not equipped to make such a choice.
[19:59] beffpike: Dolash...
[19:59] beffpike: Jack, I'm going to C&P this to a thread at TRF if you don't mind. I want to see what others think.
[19:59] Dolash02: Go ahead.
[19:59] beffpike: Nice.
[19:59] Dolash02: If there was an election tomorrow, who would you vote for?
[20:00] beffpike: Jesus. What sort of election?
[20:00] Dolash02: Let's say national.
[20:00] Dolash02: The purpose is mostly rhetorical.
[20:01] beffpike: I would abstain from voting. Do you want to know why?
[20:01] Dolash02: Why?
[20:02] beffpike: Because, in a true democracy only those with the knowledge to vote are allowed. And I would not have the information required. Simple.
[20:03] Dolash02: Ah, clever. So you would not choose eternal life because as a finitely-lifed mortal, you could never have the knowledge to make an informed decision.
[20:04] beffpike: Exactly.
And so, the discussion still on-going, I have selected the choice meat to post and hopefully provoke a debate on the issue. Note that this is not the entire discussion, just enough... I hope.
[19:20] Dolash02: You know what? Fiction is wrong - living forever would rule.
[19:20] Dolash02: If I had eternal life I would love it. All the stories about people thinking it's a curse are dumb.
[19:22] beffpike: Is that so?
[19:22] beffpike: Would you not feel robbed of a part of life integral to the cycle of continuance?
[19:22] Dolash02: No.
[19:22] Dolash02: I am a total atheist. I know with the wholeness of my being that death brings oblivion.
[19:23] Dolash02: I do not want to cease existing. You can get new friends and you can have many loves, but try finding a new consciousness.
[19:23] beffpike: Interesting.
[19:24] beffpike: But leaving aside the issue of what happens after death...
[19:26] beffpike: What of death itself? The act of.
[19:27] beffpike: In a life everlasting you could do, quite literally, everything.
[19:27] beffpike: Everything BUT die.
[19:27] Dolash02: Yup. You could - and would - do everything infinite times.
[19:27] Dolash02: If you throw in invulnerability too, then you'll even last for the formation of new planets and the evolving of fresh life.
[19:28] beffpike: To be experienced from the human perspective? No thanks.
[19:28] beffpike: You understand, much more would be required.
[19:28] Dolash02: But to me, the alternative - nothingness - is infinitely worse than pain, suffering, or madness.
[19:28] Dolash02: Well yes.
[19:28] Dolash02: Expanded memory capacity.
[19:29] beffpike: For instance, a brain capable of storing infinite information.
[19:29] Dolash02: Youth, as well, lest your body become decrepit.
[19:29] Dolash02: I'd obviously desire those as well (though they're not necessary for me to preffer infinite life) but on the plus side, with infinite time you'd have as long as necessary to learn how to acquire them.
[19:30] Dolash02: Build a mechanical body to replace your failing biological one and replace it as often as necessary. Expand your memory with virtual or genetic augmentations. You will have millenia to discover them.
[19:30] Dolash02: Not to mention the millenia available to shape human history.
[19:32] beffpike: In every sense of the word, it would drive you insane.
[19:32] beffpike: Consider, from your human sense of things, spending a year locked in a box. No contact outside that box, none.
[19:33] beffpike: Now imagine the loneliness of living forever, and that box becomes the universe.
[19:33] Dolash02: I would preffer even the deepest depths of madness over nothingness.
[19:33] beffpike: I disagree.
[19:34] Dolash02: Oddly enough, the limited capacity of human memory could work in your favour.
[19:34] Dolash02: Forgetting periods of millenia might allow you to happily relive your life in blissful ignorance that it is a repetition.
[19:34] Dolash02: A sort of one-life reincarnation, if you will.
[19:35] beffpike: With age, Jack, I assure you that your opinion will change.
[19:35] Dolash02: And even with infinite memory, with infinite time to spend you'll inevitibly descend from madness after a while (get sick of it, perhaps) and have another period of sanity before being overwhelmed with the crazies a few millenia later.
[19:35] Dolash02: No, I think with age my actual beliefs will instead be warped by my desire to comfort myself.
[19:35] Dolash02: Eternal life is impossible, so inevitibly we try to console ourselves.
[19:37] beffpike: Imagine the thing you love most, a person, an animal, a thing...
[19:37] beffpike: Now take it away, forever.
[19:37] beffpike: Again, and again.
[19:37] beffpike: No matter how much you try to be a part of reality, you won't be. You'll be removed from it, isolated by your own immortality.
[19:37] Dolash02: I find this regrettable, but prefferable to that being me.
[19:38] beffpike: You will never again have a peer. Never.
[19:38] Dolash02: So?
[19:38] Dolash02: You don't need peers.
[19:38] beffpike: Do you enjoy this discourse?
[19:38] beffpike: That we share?
[19:38] Dolash02: Yes, but I wouldn't mind if it were a thousand years later and I were having it with another person, similar to you.
[19:39] beffpike: Yes, you would.
[19:39] beffpike: Because, no matter the depth of my knowledge...
[19:39] beffpike: Your wisdom would exceed it.
[19:39] Dolash02: It'd be pretty sweet.
[19:39] beffpike: Every person you ever met would be, in some fashion, inferior to you.
[19:39] beffpike: Find love when everyone in the world will die in the blink of an eye, so to speak.
[19:39] Dolash02: You don't have to need peers, or equals, or people better at you than things.
[19:40] Dolash02: There are these things, but they don't make us human.
[19:40] beffpike: Discuss the aspects of life, only you can't because where others are still learning, you already know.
[19:40] beffpike: I disagree.
[19:40] Dolash02: Okay, then consider this.
[19:40] Dolash02: Goldfish.
[19:40] Dolash02: People love goldfish.
[19:40] beffpike: Wrong.
[19:40] beffpike: People KEEP goldfish.
[19:41] Dolash02: Let's try dogs then.
[19:41] beffpike: Because Goldfish make them feel as though there is something in this world that depends on them, and from that they achieve reward.
[19:41] Dolash02: There are people who really love dogs.
[19:41] beffpike: It's exactly the same Jack.
[19:41] Dolash02: Well couldn't you do that with people?
[19:41] beffpike: Psychologically speaking.
[19:41] beffpike: Yes, you could.
[19:41] beffpike: Hitler did.
[19:41] Dolash02: Godwin's law.
[19:42] Dolash02: Anyways...
[19:42] Dolash02: I mean if you live forever so that other seem to pass quickly...
[19:42] Dolash02: ...you could surely derive enjoyment and satisfaction from seeing each unique life?
[19:43] beffpike: But would you? When you look at goldfish, do you love them for their uniqueness?
[19:43] beffpike: Or dogs?
[19:43] Dolash02: Help each person as best you can, see to it to the best of your ability that they live happily, and when they pass there will be others who will come next, each a unique individual regarldess how similar.
[19:43] beffpike: Or is it their similarity to one another that breeds comfort?
[19:43] Dolash02: My grandmother bred dogs her whole life, and she saw each one as an individual creature. She would recall to me the lives and traits of each with loving detail.
[19:43] beffpike: And that is to say nothing of human nature and you're need, as the immortal in question, to avoid being torn asunder by it.
[19:44] beffpike: Imagine, as an immortal, your secret is discovered.
[19:44] beffpike: What then do you think the rest of humanity would do with you?
[19:44] beffpike: Rest assured...
[19:44] beffpike: Your immortality would be less then enjoyable.
[19:45] Dolash02: An assumption grounded on no fact whatsoever.
[19:45] beffpike: Oh?
[19:45] Dolash02: Though it is inevitible some would try to harm me, experiment on me, or hate me, human population and our spectrum of thought is varied enough that just as many would be glad.
[19:45] beffpike: Historically, how has humanity reacted to those that are different? Or those who have something others want?
[19:46] beffpike: I disagree.
[19:46] Dolash02: Humanity as a whole has never reacted one way or another. Only the exceptional and the tragic stands out.
[19:46] beffpike: Incorrect.
[19:46] Dolash02: An immortal would have the advantage of being mostly immune to this persecution.
[19:46] Dolash02: Correct.
[19:46] beffpike: Only the exception and tragic prevail.
[19:46] beffpike: Jesus had a good go of it eh/
[19:46] Dolash02: I fundamentally and irrevocably disagree.
[19:46] Dolash02: Some loved him, others hated him.
[19:47] Dolash02: Were he actually totally immortal, he would have sat through the crucifixion and eventually through attrition succeed.
[19:47] beffpike: Were he immortal and that known...
[19:47] Dolash02: People will have to accept what they cannot get rid of.
[19:47] beffpike: Those that loved him would still love him.
[19:47] beffpike: Those that hated him... As is the case in society, would see their will succeed.
[19:48] beffpike: People have never accepted what they cannot get rid of Jack.
[19:48] Dolash02: You accept death.
[19:48] beffpike: Do I?
[19:48] Dolash02: We fear it, we loath it, but we accept it.
[19:48] Dolash02: We try to avoid it, but in the end, what can we do?
[19:48] beffpike: There is no foundation for that statement.
[19:48] beffpike: That we "accept" death.
[19:48] beffpike: Any more then we "accept" life.
[19:49] beffpike: And, stoping there...
[19:49] beffpike: You've just made an argument for aspects of life and death which exist beyond those mere borders.
[19:49] beffpike: Which flies in the face of your firm belief that death brings only the cessation of life.
[19:50] beffpike: So, given that, and your own admittance to expanding knowledge, how can you believe immortality would be somehow a good thing for you despite that?
[19:50] beffpike: You live, you learn.
[19:50] beffpike: Imagine, in your immortality, the things you would learn.
[19:51] beffpike: And how your perspective would change.
[19:51] beffpike: It is impossible to argue for such a thing when you cannot know what it would bring where-as the arguments standing against it hold true simply due observation.
[19:51] Dolash02: That perhaps, were I to live together, I would find evidence of life after death?
[19:52] beffpike: Perhaps so.
[19:52] Dolash02: I cannot argue my perception might shift in the future and I might rue the day I chose the "curse", but I can certainly argue my present faith in eternal life.
[19:52] beffpike: /smile
[19:52] beffpike: Just like Christians can argue their firm belief in heaven and hell.
[19:52] beffpike: And yet, you'd refute them.
[19:52] Dolash02: Not exactly.
[19:52] Dolash02: Hold on.
[19:52] beffpike: Let me just say this Jack...
[19:53] Dolash02: hold on.
[19:53] beffpike: If you were able to live forever, you would. We are not, and so we die.
[19:53] Dolash02: hold on.
[19:53] Dolash02: Wanted to finish my thought.
[19:53] beffpike: Naturally.
[19:54] Dolash02: Were I faced with the option of eternal life in the present, I would favour it now because so far as I presently understand it, it is prefferable to eventual oblivion. During this long life, I would inevitibly feel periods of regret (Many want to die at times for one reason or another) but my reasoning goes that right now I see it as prefferable even with the prospect of later suffering so why would I turn it down?
[19:55] Dolash02: For fear that, were my perspective to shift later, I might regret it? You might as well fear anything just in case in the future it turns out to be a lie of your senses.
[19:55] beffpike: Contrary to yourself...
[19:55] Dolash02: We must always act on that which we think is right, and not fear that the future will see us change into people who think it wrong.
[19:55] beffpike: Were I offered such an option, I would turn it down.
[19:57] beffpike: Because, simply put, I feel that what makes life special is that it will not last forever. And because my imagination is so much more grand then reality... proved time and again, that I would fear my imagination of such immortality would pale in comparison to the reality of it.
[19:57] beffpike: I would be tempted, as would anyone I think...
[19:57] beffpike: But given the depth of my limited life experience I know, for a fact, I'm not equipped to make such a choice.
[19:59] beffpike: Dolash...
[19:59] beffpike: Jack, I'm going to C&P this to a thread at TRF if you don't mind. I want to see what others think.
[19:59] Dolash02: Go ahead.
[19:59] beffpike: Nice.
[19:59] Dolash02: If there was an election tomorrow, who would you vote for?
[20:00] beffpike: Jesus. What sort of election?
[20:00] Dolash02: Let's say national.
[20:00] Dolash02: The purpose is mostly rhetorical.
[20:01] beffpike: I would abstain from voting. Do you want to know why?
[20:01] Dolash02: Why?
[20:02] beffpike: Because, in a true democracy only those with the knowledge to vote are allowed. And I would not have the information required. Simple.
[20:03] Dolash02: Ah, clever. So you would not choose eternal life because as a finitely-lifed mortal, you could never have the knowledge to make an informed decision.
[20:04] beffpike: Exactly.
And so, the discussion still on-going, I have selected the choice meat to post and hopefully provoke a debate on the issue. Note that this is not the entire discussion, just enough... I hope.
