Intergalactic Summit

So, according to kim, we are all just over developed children..... accurate enough.

I should probably do Saede the kindness of offering a real response, rather then just using her thread as the latest front in my hypocritical battle against miss Kernher's philosophy on mortality. I'll try to keep this short. ...Well, short-ish.

Humans are irrevocably tragic creatures. Though we almost always intrinsically despise transience and unpredictable fluidity in the world we perceive around us... We, ourselves, are fundamentally defined by these two qualities. Sadly, though we may well achieve multiple degrees of functional immortality in the years to come, I do not think it is possible for us to truly create a world without loss.

There are two reasons, or rather, two fears that govern peoples desire to seek immortality. The first is for oneself, out of simple fear of death and ceasing to exist. This is a relatively easy problem to solve, although arguably one formed on false pretences, as many people have already argued. There's probably not much left to say about it.

The second fear, which seems to be Saedes focus, is where we stumble, and where I don't think we can never truly succeed. That is, the fear of the people we love dying, and us being left behind. To explain, let's take a step back and look at the human condition as a whole.

Hands up if you're religious - Do you remember when you were first being taught about the afterlife, a realm where everyone is reunited with the people they love, and unconditionally reconciled with them, and asked a question like, "What happens when someone who has divorced and remarried dies? Are they married to both?" Or perhaps, "What if x person still won't forgive me when we get there?" These are pointless questions in the context, of course, as ultimately there doesn't need to be an answer for the religion to function - All that matters is the notion that it is a place of universal happiness and fulfilment. Where nothing can ever be taken from you.

There's a reason this is such a common idea in theology, as it appeals to that same fundamental fear, in much the same way that transhumanism does. But if you think about it, the very idea is rather self-centric. In rejecting a conventional afterlife and taking on the responsibility for ourselves, do we really have the capacity to actually answer those questions? Could we truly create a "heaven on earth", where we all somehow get what we want?

Without radical changes to the human condition, well... Of course we couldn't. Human relationships are paradoxical, hypocritical, selfish things, because while we all ultimately desire for ourselves to change - to grow as people and explore new sides of ourselves constantly - In order to do this, we depend on other people staying the same, to affirm our own identities and give us a friendly and stable environment. For them to wait for us. For the world itself, even, to wait for us. This inherently leaves us at odds.

However much we might believe in it, the persistent self, as Verin and miss Blackwind have already done a good job pointing out, is an inherent falsehood. Not even touching upon the biological realities that support the point, the truth is, even in down-to-earth terms, we murder ourselves a little every day. Whenever we grow tired of and throw away an old outfit, whenever we lose the taste for a certain food, whenever our opinion on a political matter is slightly shifted... A part of us dies, and is replaced by something that, to those around us, is new and alien. The fact that this is happening gradually doesn't mean that we can't transform into completely different people, effectively destroying our original selves. It just means that we, personally, are left content, rather then horrified, by it happening.

And removing obstacles to our existence (disease, hunger, death) does not lead this to slow down, either. If anything, it only increases the rate in which it happens. That is why "love" withers so easily in lives without strife or want. Why divorce rates (or estranged marriages, where that's not convenient) soar alongside prosperity. Because the more we are able to reach for our dreams, the more we "die", and alienate others. And the more the people around us change to the point that, functionally, the ones we knew have utterly ceased to be.

The end of human mortality would not have saved Saede from heartbreak, as she described. It would have delayed it, for certain. But it would have come eventually. And the end of death will not free us from the irrevocable loss of others - Indeed, it will only prolong the agony as we watch all the people we have ever been close to transform into strangers, as the endless decades roll on.

We may all live forever, but all we have ever known will still be dead before too long. You cannot defeat flux with technology, as it is inherent to the universe. Only accept it, or be it's victim.

Miss Vizage,

I fear you've taken my logic and run with it a bit further then I had intended. When I said the persistent self was a falsehood, I didn't mean literally that there is no such thing as continuity in human identity - I thought I made that pretty clear when I stated the process was gradual. Obviously, we retain memories and experiences for a very long while, and even when and if we eventually forget them, the self-reinforcing lessons they have imparted on our psyche can last even longer than that, which is how we usually end up with our ingrained belief systems. Indeed, without our often stubbornly long memory, we wouldn't even be able to really experience loss at all, as we simply wouldn't hold anything in any value; Fish don't experience sentimentality.

However, the word "persistance" generally implies a degree of staticness, wheras the human mind is incredibly dynamic. The brain is constantly forming new connections to information it stores as old ones entropy and fall out of use, based on how useful that information is to us personally - I very much doubt you could today recount to me specific idle conversations or things you learned about 20 years ago that you haven't thought of since. (Even people with photographic memories are not saved from this, as however perfectly retained, the brain eventually simply forgets how to access the information.)

And as time goes on, the brain tends to find newer information more useful, and though paticularly important recollections may remain intact effectively forever, they will be eventually overwhelmed by the sheer quantitiy of new experiences in the present. And that changes who we are, whether we want it or not. You seem to think of humans as towers, where our old experiences serve as foundations for our new ones, ever building upwards towards greater and greater things... But in truth, this is giving us too much credit. Functionally, we're more like gardens; Things grow, things die, things get replaced, and only a couple of old trees in the corner survive it all.