Ask Lemmy

Ok, my “entropy machine” statement was very vague and only moderately clearer in my head. For the sake of the argument, could we assume there is no physical issue with our brains over long periods of time? Say it feels like a healthy 20-30 year old mind forever.

Yes and no. I am fine with assuming that there is no physical issue with our brains, but in a sense that only addresses the hardware end and not the software end. It is not a given that our minds, when viewed as information processing systems, have the ability to remain stable indefinitely, a bit like how AIs in science fiction stories often go insane because instabilities build up. In fact, in a way some of the problems you are describing with what it would be like to be immortal could be viewed as examples of how the mind could break down over time.

So given this, there is a good chance we will need to apply a software patch to the mind, or some other form of engineering, to make the experience of being an immortal livable in practice. One possibility is that the information system simply cannot inherently hold an arbitrarily large number of memories so we need to engineer it to forget over time--though again, this might not actually be that invasive since our minds already forget most of what happens to them. However, maybe there are other possibilities as well, and when you get the procedure to become immortal you get to choose which one you want. (I actually really liked the The Golden Oecumene series about a post-singularity society because a major part of the setting was that there were lots of different ways that people wired their brains.)

(All of this is pure speculation, of course! I find it unlikely that any of this will come about any time soon, if civilization ever figures it out before destroying itself in one of many various ways.)

What would be the point of trying to do everything apart from filing the time that you have? Maybe things would have meaning for N years with N very large? Doesn’t matter how large, it’s still nothing. And then you need to keep at it even though it’s lost meaning to you, or try something else, again, with the knowledge this is an inescapable cycle.

I think that it is important to distinguish having the freedom to do anything from the attempt to do everything.

It reminds me a bit of Groundhog Day: what made Bill Murray happy in the end was finding meaning and contentment in his repeating life, rather than fighting against it.

I wouldn’t call reincarnation “immortality” in the context of this argument because we have been talking about subjective experience, and subjectively, even assuming reincarnation, you only ever experience one incarnation with no knowledge of prior ones.

Oh, yeah, to be clear, I totally do not consider it to be immortality either. It's just that, completely as an aside, if reincarnation is a thing, then it is technically an alternate solution to the "novelty" problem, and it is often sold as such in Eastern religions. (I thought of this just because another commenter brought it up.)

Yes but it was more of an additional remark. I was just arguing death made for a meaningful experience. But it’s not the only meaningful experience one can have, so it does not reinforce my initial point.

If the conclusion is that death provides a significant element of meaning to your life, then fair enough!

For me, it just is what it is, and my life would not be any less meaningful if it were taken away. Having said that, if someone walked up to me and offered me immortality then I would be very hesitant because if things go bad then you might end up suffering from all eternity.