It’s still false.

Eliezer, great post.

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff the enigmatic mystic/philosopher, or “teacher of dance” as he preferred to call himself, liked to remind his students what they could not do if they would but bear in mind their “death” at all times. Mr Gurdjieff was on his deathbed when asked by one of his pupils if he was leaving them he replied, “Yes I am leaving you, and what a fine mess I’m leaving you in!”

Death reminds us that somehwere in this cyclic process of decay which we know as the visible world there is the potential for life.

A question here arises: Assuming I am able to bear death in mind, which is highly doubtful, can I hope to stop this process of decay? Certainly the Buddha seemed to think so, as did a host of others in his good company. This is afterall what is implied by the term immortality (the cessation of linear space and time) commonly known as LIFE!”

A worldview which takes the agent out of the picture, doesn’t create the same obligations.

So, if I expect to come back, or I expect to be around, I’d want the future to be at least as good as today. If I’m out of here one day, then I would tend to trade benefits today for benefits later.

I’ve responded to it at my own blog, Strange Loops, if you are interested.

The short version of my main critique is that most peoples’ idea of personal immortality on Earth is akin to the religious idea of personal immortality in an afterlife like Heaven (that is, it is not a very well-formed idea). The fact is, we change throughout life, eventually to the point we’re not really the same person, so an immortal person is not the same as “me extended indefinitely forward in time” but rather “future evolutions of me”. In which case, we have immortality already in the form of genetic [or memetic or in the future some other] material passed on to life that evolves from us.

In other words, it’s not that I have a problem with the idea of extending life indefinitely (if we find that it is technically feasible, and we’ve no good reason to assume a priori that it’s impossible), but doing so doesn’t solve the problem of “there comes a point where I will not be around”.

More at my blog.

Of course, one inescapable fact of the human condition is our profound ability to rationalize. How else, after all, are we to deal with the sheer terror of the inevitable extinction of self that is the only outcome in this brief existence that is guaranteed?

One may ask is it courage or delusion that begets poets of those who dare to contemplate such things.

However, it is a necessary concession to the William Hurlbut’s of this world that the transhumanists or immoralists or whatever the current fashionable title is for describing those who are convinced that Aubrey de Grey’s/Ray Kurweil’s ‘escape velocity’ is a very real technological possibility, have them at a disadvantage.

I doubt that as a young man, Hurlbut never considered the prospect of living forever, or, at least, for a very long time. But in time, like most reasonable and sensible people, he would have had to come to terms with the tragic notion of mortality.

Such inflexible views are constructed and forged over time and it takes a paradigm shift to change one’s vantage. For that reason Huribut should be forgiven what may in time come to be regarded as an inane opinion.

It is remarkable, admittedly, for any sane person to consider that death actually gives meaning to life. Life gives meaning to life. Nothing is more symbolic and representative of life than the young who in most cases have yet to feel the cold touch of any notion of mortality.

However, it is a fundamental reality that most reasonable intellectuals past a certain age will share Hurlbut’s views and it is incumbent upon those on the other side of this ideological divide to understand with some sense of compassion, the forlorn and desolate vantage from which they regard life..

- indeed. And we will think about those that we lost along the way. I really should get around to telling my older relatives about cryonics.