Comment by unfitted2545

5 hours ago

A complete human experience is to have relatively little time, no point in doing anything if you have 500 years to do it IMO.

Edit: Maybe there wouldn't be nilihism, but I don't think you could get more fulfilled with the extra time. I feel like an insect that lives 24 hours and a shark that lives several hundred have an equal feeling of accomplishment.

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unfitted2545

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jbstack  2 hours ago

You seem to be implying that at after a certain number of years (e.g. 79) you wake up one day and say "I'm fulfilled and have nothing left I'd like to achieve".

As someone who occasionally works with terminal patients, I've never seen that in practice. In reality most people desperately wish that they could carry on living, and have plenty of unfinished business that they'd like to see through. The only exception I've seen is when someone is in so much pain that they just want to end the suffering.

If we turn your argument on its head, a person who dies at 20 is just as fulfilled as a person who dies at 79. So why should anyone bother trying to live a long and healthy life?

unsupp0rted  5 hours ago

500 years is as arbitrary a number as 79 is.

A Craig Venter that lives (a healthy life) to 158 is quite likely to accomplish at least 1 more great thing than one who lives to 79.

  • mcmcmc  4 hours ago

    More likely that he would live most of those years with compounding mental and physical health issues, quality of life degrading to the point where most would wish for death instead.

    • jbstack  2 hours ago

      This is a common misconception. Namely, that increasing lifespan just means extending the part where your health degrades continuously. That's actually a very unrealistic outcome for life extension technology. In general, the things that cause your health to degrade as you age are interlinked with the things that cause you to die. If you find a way to increase lifespan, chances are you've also found a way to increase healthspan. In fact, all of the best methods we currently have to live longer do exactly that (e.g. exercise, eat healthily, avoid smoking, etc.).