People who are afraid to die are afraid to live, or haven't yet found any meaning in being alive. They could live forever and remain in a spiritual desert the entire time. Salvation is a spiritual event, not a chronologic one.
It’s about the purest form of narcissism. You can bet your life if any of these techs actually work, it’ll be reserved for the elites. No joe plumber is going to get revived. This article made me like Elon more and confirmed that Thiel is Thiel.
I'm not particularly religious, but surely if there is an afterlife, trapping yourself in AI would be like consigning yourself to purgatory for eternity? I can't think of anything worse.
There is so much hubris among these transhumanists it is laughable. Their goals of living forever, defying death, uploading their brains, and curing all ills are reminiscent of so many science fiction stories that turn out - guess what - poorly! We are biologically created to DIE. Where is the consideration for the human psyche here, let alone the soul? The human mind is not meant to live forever, we cannot even conceive the concept of eternity and infinity, how would be able to deal with living beyond normal human years? Those who wish to fly on wings of wax and feathers will melt in the sun, and plummet into the ocean.
I see no good coming from this, just the concentration of human arrogance and narcissism. This is not an altruistic pursuit or project, it is a selfish and if that is the root of it, the motivator, what other dark human traits will be fed if such a venture is successful? It won't be the best side of us, it will be the worst. Transhumanism is an excellent example of the type of satanic thinking found in John Milton's Paradise Lost. There is a reason the greatest sin is human pride, whether you are a Christian or not there is much to be learned from that and it's a warning.
Talk about the ultimate conceit - that these brilliant minds and wealthy individuals are so important to society that they need to live forever and, I imagine, that many of these tech geniuses are also the very same people that worry about overcrowding and climate action yet they want to continue on in this “overheated” world!
Another excellent story from TFP! You're on a roll!
Downloading one's consciousness into a receptacle of some kind —a robot, another human being, a sophisticated server—has been a staple of science fiction plotting since the Golden Age of Asimov and Heinlein.
What I could never get beyond is this: The _receptacle_ might feel some sort of continuity with the consciousness that once was yours, but _you_ will not feel any continuity with that receptacle. Your consciousness will _still_ cease to exist the moment you die. Your sense of "you" is much more than the contents of your brain! So from the perspective of immortality, this has never seemed like a workable solution. 😀
Also, in my experience, there are developmental stages in adulthood just as there are developmental stages in childhood, and these stages all seem to be about preparing one for what comes next.
My last birthday was a Significant Number. And I can actually _feel_ myself beginning to separate out from the world around me, not in a dementia way, and not in any kind of negative way. (It's so difficult to describe!). But it seems to me that I _am_ beginning to prepare for death. It's kind of exciting, in a way!
So if Biden is a crook and an idiot. If we freeze him for a 100 years, does he still wake up looking for Corn Pop, his big rig truck, and is still the working man from Scranton? Or does his demented brain work for a 100 years trying to figure out how to screw things up even more?
Think I will take my faith, live, love, laugh and enjoy this life and not even consider being frozen, That's why old people go to Florida, they hate the cold.
I don't want to live forever; however, I do want to live as well as I can for as long as I am here. If proper exercise, nutrition and a balanced approach to stress can keep me moving and engaged I'm happy to live 80 or maybe even 90 years and then move on to whatever is next (insert your faith here).
One brief quibble before I get to the rest of the article -- Jasper’s parents are dogs. His owners are the ones paying for him to be cryogenically frozen.
It is the nature of life to die, intrinsically intertwined is the dance of life and death. It is the web of life. I know a lot of people fear it, but it is as natural as being born.
Didn't Juan Ponce de León try to find the mythical Fountain of Youth in the 1500s? Isn't this the same search (freezing huh?) but using science to try and stave off the inevitable? What these folks don't consider in their analysis, is that aging is in our cells at the deepest and most fundamental level. Leaving the aging bit aside, if I was frozen for 200 years, someone knocked the frost off me, figured out how to turn my -130 f degree frozen blood, heart, liver, gut and brain into something working again, would I want to live in that world?
All of this “I’m going to live forever” talk reminds me of the demonic living head in C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength.” Like the members of N.I.C.E. In that story, these people sound absolutely miserable. I’m willing to bet that they’re also the types telling us that we all need to cut back while they freeze their dead bodies with energy intensive cryogenics.
This is what secular modernity brings: man attempting centering himself as God. It never ends well, either.
Maybe I'm being hyper-sensitive, but I can't helping thinking that Suzy chose to lead with Mills in this story so she could mock Mormons. She spotlights his patently false assertion: "Most Mormons are really just transhumanists." (We're not.) And she buries the information that Mills is not LDS anymore nearly two dozen paragraphs into the essay. And she highlights Mills' own mocking of the LDS faith in his supposed "plan" for a deathless future: "Living forever = eternal progression, we should become gods and create for eternity."
Suzy, if someone wrote an essay emphasizing a weird guy's Jewish identity in this same way, I'd call that antisemitic. What should I call this?
I feel bad for those that cling so tightly to this world. To have no faith in what lies in the sweet by and by...if you don’t have that, you don’t really live in this life
Suzy this was a really interesting article to read. I appreciated the angles and I like your humor.
My takeaways. 1) I wonder.....Mills only read a book at 21, dropped out of high school at 16, and unless I misread-his parents are footing most of this endeavor? He probably lives with them. I feel a little sad for this kid - he’s probably never kissed another person or had to problem solve getting to work by a bus schedule. I wonder if he’s really living life right now.
2) hubris. Spending kabillions on this so they can possibly be reanimated in 300 years, while kabillions of people, actual humans, all over the world, right this minute, need nutrition or medicine or a tin roof or shoes. I’m not particularly religious but I do wish people would see that the Kingdom of Heaven is here and now. Right at this moment.
3) in the words of my 83 year old father, “no one is getting out of here alive”.
People who are afraid to die are afraid to live, or haven't yet found any meaning in being alive. They could live forever and remain in a spiritual desert the entire time. Salvation is a spiritual event, not a chronologic one.
It’s about the purest form of narcissism. You can bet your life if any of these techs actually work, it’ll be reserved for the elites. No joe plumber is going to get revived. This article made me like Elon more and confirmed that Thiel is Thiel.
NO THANK YOU.
I'm not particularly religious, but surely if there is an afterlife, trapping yourself in AI would be like consigning yourself to purgatory for eternity? I can't think of anything worse.
There is so much hubris among these transhumanists it is laughable. Their goals of living forever, defying death, uploading their brains, and curing all ills are reminiscent of so many science fiction stories that turn out - guess what - poorly! We are biologically created to DIE. Where is the consideration for the human psyche here, let alone the soul? The human mind is not meant to live forever, we cannot even conceive the concept of eternity and infinity, how would be able to deal with living beyond normal human years? Those who wish to fly on wings of wax and feathers will melt in the sun, and plummet into the ocean.
I see no good coming from this, just the concentration of human arrogance and narcissism. This is not an altruistic pursuit or project, it is a selfish and if that is the root of it, the motivator, what other dark human traits will be fed if such a venture is successful? It won't be the best side of us, it will be the worst. Transhumanism is an excellent example of the type of satanic thinking found in John Milton's Paradise Lost. There is a reason the greatest sin is human pride, whether you are a Christian or not there is much to be learned from that and it's a warning.
Talk about the ultimate conceit - that these brilliant minds and wealthy individuals are so important to society that they need to live forever and, I imagine, that many of these tech geniuses are also the very same people that worry about overcrowding and climate action yet they want to continue on in this “overheated” world!
Another excellent story from TFP! You're on a roll!
Downloading one's consciousness into a receptacle of some kind —a robot, another human being, a sophisticated server—has been a staple of science fiction plotting since the Golden Age of Asimov and Heinlein.
What I could never get beyond is this: The _receptacle_ might feel some sort of continuity with the consciousness that once was yours, but _you_ will not feel any continuity with that receptacle. Your consciousness will _still_ cease to exist the moment you die. Your sense of "you" is much more than the contents of your brain! So from the perspective of immortality, this has never seemed like a workable solution. 😀
Also, in my experience, there are developmental stages in adulthood just as there are developmental stages in childhood, and these stages all seem to be about preparing one for what comes next.
My last birthday was a Significant Number. And I can actually _feel_ myself beginning to separate out from the world around me, not in a dementia way, and not in any kind of negative way. (It's so difficult to describe!). But it seems to me that I _am_ beginning to prepare for death. It's kind of exciting, in a way!
So if Biden is a crook and an idiot. If we freeze him for a 100 years, does he still wake up looking for Corn Pop, his big rig truck, and is still the working man from Scranton? Or does his demented brain work for a 100 years trying to figure out how to screw things up even more?
Think I will take my faith, live, love, laugh and enjoy this life and not even consider being frozen, That's why old people go to Florida, they hate the cold.
I don't want to live forever; however, I do want to live as well as I can for as long as I am here. If proper exercise, nutrition and a balanced approach to stress can keep me moving and engaged I'm happy to live 80 or maybe even 90 years and then move on to whatever is next (insert your faith here).
One brief quibble before I get to the rest of the article -- Jasper’s parents are dogs. His owners are the ones paying for him to be cryogenically frozen.
It is the nature of life to die, intrinsically intertwined is the dance of life and death. It is the web of life. I know a lot of people fear it, but it is as natural as being born.
Didn't Juan Ponce de León try to find the mythical Fountain of Youth in the 1500s? Isn't this the same search (freezing huh?) but using science to try and stave off the inevitable? What these folks don't consider in their analysis, is that aging is in our cells at the deepest and most fundamental level. Leaving the aging bit aside, if I was frozen for 200 years, someone knocked the frost off me, figured out how to turn my -130 f degree frozen blood, heart, liver, gut and brain into something working again, would I want to live in that world?
All of this “I’m going to live forever” talk reminds me of the demonic living head in C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength.” Like the members of N.I.C.E. In that story, these people sound absolutely miserable. I’m willing to bet that they’re also the types telling us that we all need to cut back while they freeze their dead bodies with energy intensive cryogenics.
This is what secular modernity brings: man attempting centering himself as God. It never ends well, either.
Maybe I'm being hyper-sensitive, but I can't helping thinking that Suzy chose to lead with Mills in this story so she could mock Mormons. She spotlights his patently false assertion: "Most Mormons are really just transhumanists." (We're not.) And she buries the information that Mills is not LDS anymore nearly two dozen paragraphs into the essay. And she highlights Mills' own mocking of the LDS faith in his supposed "plan" for a deathless future: "Living forever = eternal progression, we should become gods and create for eternity."
Suzy, if someone wrote an essay emphasizing a weird guy's Jewish identity in this same way, I'd call that antisemitic. What should I call this?
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
I feel bad for those that cling so tightly to this world. To have no faith in what lies in the sweet by and by...if you don’t have that, you don’t really live in this life
Suzy this was a really interesting article to read. I appreciated the angles and I like your humor.
My takeaways. 1) I wonder.....Mills only read a book at 21, dropped out of high school at 16, and unless I misread-his parents are footing most of this endeavor? He probably lives with them. I feel a little sad for this kid - he’s probably never kissed another person or had to problem solve getting to work by a bus schedule. I wonder if he’s really living life right now.
2) hubris. Spending kabillions on this so they can possibly be reanimated in 300 years, while kabillions of people, actual humans, all over the world, right this minute, need nutrition or medicine or a tin roof or shoes. I’m not particularly religious but I do wish people would see that the Kingdom of Heaven is here and now. Right at this moment.
3) in the words of my 83 year old father, “no one is getting out of here alive”.
3)