Poll To die young or to live long?

[Artlav]

According to this xkcd-comic we reverse aging in 2029, become immortal in 2040 and can merge with machines in 2045, so you could be lucky:thumbup:

Death is the largest pandemic mankind ever faced.
Hopefully, we'll find a cure in this century.
In the worst case, there is liquid nitrogen and a hope for better future...

Or maybe just write a book or few with everything about you in it.
A century or two later your descendants would feed it to a supercomputer, which would print out a human nearly identical to you - poor man's immortality.

 

[MattBaker]

Or maybe just write a book or few with everything about you in it.
A century or two later your descendants would feed it to a supercomputer, which would print out a human nearly identical to you - poor man's immortality.

If you could write your personality in a book you'll end up with a Library of Congress for every single person in the world...

 

[Artlav]

If you could write your personality in a book you'll end up with a Library of Congress for every single person in the world...

Which would all fit onto a microsd card.
The brain is a fractal compression engine, so all your experiences could be stored in a few Gb of raw data.

 

[MattBaker]

If you find the 0's and 1's that save my thoughts and plug a harddrive into my brain...
I seriously doubt that we can extract thoughts in the next 100 years in any other way than currently...

 

[Ghostrider]

If you find the 0's and 1's that save my thoughts and plug a harddrive into my brain...

And then you wake up as a digital copy of yourself, and you are selected to serve the System on the Game Grid. I hope you practiced your videogame skills...

 

[fort]

If I could choose, I would prefer to die living. Which probably will arrive.

But I also think about this sentence of Jacques Lacan, French psychoanalyst: "If one was not solidly leaned on this certainty that that will finish… could you bear this history?"

 

[N_Molson]

Death is the largest pandemic mankind ever faced.
Hopefully, we'll find a cure in this century.
In the worst case, there is liquid nitrogen and a hope for better future...

That's not enough. You'll still have to find a way to prevent the Sun to die and the universe to expand to the point every grain of matter will disintegrate. There is time, but that's a challenge.

 

[martins]

Given that resources are limited, the number of people who get a chance at life is inversely proportional to the average life expectancy. So by living to 80 rather than 40 we deny somebody else the chance of a 40-year life. The point is of course that we don't feel responsible for somebody who never existed - but should we? Interestingly, religions which have a lot to say on the topic of life between conception and birth seem to be rather quiet on the period before conception.

Having said that, I don't intend on going quietly. I'll use all medical options available to me to hang around for as long as possible. I'm selfish that way.

 

[Codz]

Having said that, I don't intend on going quietly. I'll use all medical options available to me to hang around for as long as possible. I'm selfish that way.

You'd be crazy not to be.:lol:

 

[llarian]

What is old? What is young?

The past has already happened. The future is yet to be. All any of us has is the present moment.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

 

[Ghostrider]

The past has already happened. The future is yet to be. All any of us has is the present moment.

To quote Master Oogway: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."

And, to quote Po: Skadoosh.

Interestingly, religions which have a lot to say on the topic of life between conception and birth seem to be rather quiet on the period before conception.

Well, I'm no expert on religions but I have seen The Exorcist quite a few times so...

Buddhism (and any religion that contemplates reincarnation) must concern itself greatly on the period before conception because it's basically the state we living are in at the moment. We're all waiting to die and be reborn, so technically we haven't been conceived (again) yet.

Then, I seem to remember there's a concept in Jewish lore about a place called the Chamber of Guf (which is not a Zaku! Not a Zaku!) which is located in the Seventh Heaven (that's the place Jessica Biel and Beverly Mitchell lived, together with the chick from Star Trek IV and the guy who merged with V'Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and is - as I understand - the divine equivalent of a Swiss bank vault. Basically, all the souls that have ever been made by God are there and when it's emptied, the Messiah comes along and it's Universe Reboot Time.

Now, I learned of those concepts through the highest authorities possible (there was this movie with Demi Moore and Michael Biehn) but most religions have an understanding that the human soul is very ancient. All Abrahamic religions do have this concept in some form, with the underlying theme that every human is inherently unique and precious (yeah, should explain that to some practitioners) and the existence of each and every one of us has officially been decided at the moment of Creation.

Which would explain why sometimes I feel so old.

And that's where I stop, because the Basement beckons.

 

[Eccentrus]

To die in a very old age, at least after the first manned landing of europa, or better yet, to be enhanced and able to partake in the first manned inter-stellar mission. Even with all the technology that will come I know that a person will still die, if not a force of time then of nature whichever will come first, but for a person with an almost unlimited curiosity, to be able to see the far future and all the science it will bring is a very fanciful dream, and one I'd very like to see happening.

 

[Notebook]

N.