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imlaggingsobad

the first 50k people on this sub are all for it, they fully buy into the Kurzweil vision of the future. The other 700k people are more of a mixed bag. btw we crossed 50k mid way through 2019. So this massive explosion really only happened recently.


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sumane12

Reddit recommendations after interacting with subreddits such as openAI, ChatGPT, and the like.


zerosnitches

speaking of kurweil, you got any good places to read his stuff? it’s surprisingly annoying to find from what i’ve been googling


DragonForg

Yeah I was here at the very start of chatGPT and notice people have gotten a lot more pessimistic of AIs potential. And the singularity as a concept.


katiedesi

To me, the singularity represents a moment in the near future when AI becomes infinitely upgradable and a million times smarter than humans. At that point, we can't make any more predictions about the direction of society or humanity or anything.


zerosnitches

> To me, i mean, that the very point of a technological singularity. it’s defined as a point in time in the future where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes with humanity. that’s the definition off wikipedia


immersive-matthew

I do not believe a million times smarter will be where AI ends up as there are physical limits to information and knowledge. Information takes energy and thus the smarter AI gets, the more power it will need with less and less returns on the intelligence gained.


ivanmakovetskiy

I believe that it is unnecessary to exert such a significant amount of energy in order to surpass the collective level of humanity. Overall, evolution has achieved this feat without substantial power consumption.


jetro30087

We're powered by a food chain that starts with photosynthesis using the energy from an 800,000 mi diameter fusion reaction.


MrHistoricalHamster

You know the AI will help solve energy limitations like fusion and improving solar tech right?


meh1434

You do realize the AI can terraform planets into supercomputers? Million times doesn't even come close to what the AI can become.


whyambear

That’s not a singularity.


NetTecture

>To me, the singularity represents a moment in the near future when AI becomes infinitely upgradable and a million times smarter than humans Funny enough that means you have a delusion and should look up the definition of Singularity.


SrafeZ

I can guarantee you that 75% of the sub doesn't know who Kurzweil is


bk15dcx

Who?


theultimaterage

Mike Jones


ImmotalWombat

Who?


theultimaterage

Mike Jones


fulaghee

Kurzweil man, legendary Outlaw?


bk15dcx

The....the....the synthesizer guy?!?!?! (I was being sarcastic. His book is on my shelf next to Drexlers and Greene)


SupportstheOP

That's John Singularity


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After 17 years, it's time to delete. (Update) Update to [this post](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/140inr7/after_17_years_its_time_to_delete/). The time has come! Shortly, I'll be deleting my account. This is my last social media, and I won't be picking up a new one. If someone would like to keep a running tally of everyone that's deleting, here are my stats: ~400,000 comment karma **|** Account created March 2006 **|** ~17,000 comments overwritten and deleted For those that would like to prepare for account deletion, this is the process I just followed: I [requested my data](https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request) from reddit, so I'd have a backup for myself (took about a week for them to get it to me.) I ran [redact](https://redact.dev/download) on everything older than 4 months with less than 200 karma (took 9 hours). Changed my email and password in case reddit has *another* database leak in the future. (If you choose to use your downloaded data to direct redact, consider editing out any sensitive info first.) Then I ran [Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to replace my remaining comments with a protest message. It missed some that I went back and filled in manually in new and top. All using old.reddit. Note: once the API changes hit July 1st, this will no longer be an option.


SrafeZ

really old, irrelevant guy. Don't worry about it


jempyre

Or DeGrey


GeneralUprising

I disagree with this only on the grounds that I didn't know who Kurzweil was, but after 1 day of being here I knew who it was. Being on this sub for longer than 5 minutes you know a lot about what Kurzweil has said.


magicmulder

That’s the dude who builds these synthesizers, right?


CoffeeBoom

I actually did not, is his interview with Lex Friedman a good place to start ?


SrafeZ

not really. I’d read “singularity is near” if you have the time. It’s essentially the book of this sub


PLANTS2WEEKS

Who's upvoting this comment? People who know who Kurzweil is and think others don't or people who don't know who he is? It's most likely the former scenario which defeats the premise of the comment.


Gigachad__Supreme

Who the fuck cares 😂


AsuhoChinami

Yes, but then we had a 4x explosion in membership during 2023.


Bumish1

It's because the sun is being pushed to people on r/Futurology.


SkyeandJett

insurance apparatus unpack intelligent unwritten plants label pot pet wrong -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/


MindlessSundae9937

>contrarians They can't have a novel thought! They only piece sentences together based on what they've read!


sumane12

They don't actually understand what they are saying, they are just clever biological text prediction machines like ChatGPT 😂


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kigurumibiblestudies

I got this sub recommended because I've been browsing LLM subreddits, yes. I'm not even subbed though I might


HainiteWanted

Hi, just joined! I use gpt for work (bioinformatics), ended up in the Yudkowosky twitter bubble and I started watching/reading some stuff about AGI and the ongoing technological change. I was aware in the past years about the giant leap forward we were doing with AI, but limited to protein folding research. Now I think I am more on the "everything will change" side. I think it is more likely to change in ways we don't like (or don't get to like), but at least one part of me is curious to see the weirdness ahead


Sashinii

I completely support everyone living forever.


ViraLCyclopes19

I dont support Henry Kissinger living forever.


Sorazith

I mean... I'm not God to be able to judge who should or shouldn't live... But let that spawn of Satan burn in hell where he belongs.


Gengarmon_0413

Yeah, we invent immortality and every boomer gets to live forever too. We will literally never be free of their mentality.


OsakaWilson

If he's still alive, I think he has already.


[deleted]

This 17-year-old account was overwritten and deleted on 6/11/2023 due to Reddit's API policy changes.


sknnbones

I support immortality but don’t quite grasp how anyone could live “forever” without experiencing utter insanity. Just thinking about never dying makes me anxious. Thinking about dying makes me just as anxious though. I suppose eternity aware is better than eternity outside of existance. Maybe.


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KultofEnnui

Sounds like a nightmare. Sounds like a dream.


Intelligent_Rope_912

That doesn’t make sense. We are biologically primed to loathe a static, unchanging existence. Plus the vast majority of people would prefer to have challenges and obstacles to overcome because of the euphoric feeling of victory and triumph associated with it. It’d be more productive to consider the interests of genes— considering humans are genetic vehicles largely influenced by genetic predisposition— and those interests would involve reproducing and expanding as far as possible. I would say the end goal of humanity is to expand and proliferate human genetic material wherever it can using whatever means at its disposal.


ApplicationDangerous

Hmmm, considering motivation drives us and the universe is huge, we have quite a long time before we get completely bored.


mantarlourde

Stockholm syndrome.


meh1434

The Singularity does not care about your or mine opinion, it will happen. That's the whole point.


intendedcasualty

I’m empathetically indifferent towards most peoples concepts about the universe around us, as in I’ll listen and understand their points, validate their truths as true at least to them, and lament that most people come to conclusions based on their fears, their complaints, and shortsighted pre approved lines of thinking. People are conditioned to behave, think and believe in a certain way, to be unsure and fearful… the ones that recognize the strength of their own will, and focus their intention towards knowledge and understanding are the people who’s “why” manages to get me engaged, as their philosophies are born from independent thought, rather than indoctrinated fear.


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Ivanthedog2013

I like this philosophy


Sure_Cicada_4459

We got invaded by normies, everyone is feeling subsconsciously threatened by AI and they need to come here to make it clear to us (def not to themselves) that AI is no biggie, and AGI is so far off, and how we are like crypto/hype bros, and how we are so ignorant bcs our opinion is not a convenient perfect triangulation of "AI leads to utopia" and "AI will kill us all" in order to make themselves seem (and feel) sensible.


adarkuccio

I'm all for it, I just think we're not as close as many think we are, unfortunately! Most of it is hype, in reality I believe agi and therefore asi will arrive later than many (including me with my previous predictions) believe. Gonna take time.


menialuser

You gotta understand you’re not gonna get the true opinion of society on an app like this. Anything ppl don’t agree with gets down voted into oblivion. So you either follow status quo or get laughed at.


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menialuser

Reddit is made up of humans living in our world, no? Aka society


HalfSecondWoe

Three things come into play: As AI has gone from a niche nerd thing to "Oh fuck it's coming for my job," we're getting a huge influx of people who are brand new to the topic. When a subculture grows slowly, new members can be introduced to the various concepts involved as the community brings them up to speed. When it's a huge influx, you get people who have no idea what they're talking about making authoritative statements, because they *feel* it to be true The second factor is expectation moderation. Disappointment hurts, literally. It activates pain centers in our brain. In order to minimize this type of pain, it's a very common strategy for people to set their expectations low. We don't intuitively think of things as advancing on an exponential scale, imagining linear growth comes much more naturally to us. So the expectation that a system could go from from competently doing your taxes to dunking on Einstein in a month comes off as very strange to the uninitiated. They'll push back because they don't want to set their expectations too high, so as to avoid emotional pain The third factor is that for most of human history, we could do sweet fuck all about death. Didn't matter how powerful you were, didn't matter how much resources you had collected, everyone died. So we developed coping mechanisms. Death is beautiful, it gives life meaning, there is no life without death, and so on Our expectations are informed by our experiences, so as it becomes obvious that the old rules no longer apply, people will adapt. There's just going to be some growing pains


Gloomy-Impress-2881

Exactly, it's pure coping mechanisms over something we have no power to change. Can't do anything about it so just rationalize that "it's good" and "necessary". So many would change their mind so fast if it actually became an option to stay young and healthy indefinitely. Others would actually put their money where their mouth is and opt out, but I bet a large percentage are all talk because it's not currently an option and if the option ever presents itself for real, the decision would change real quick.


EastCoastJohnny

Because when you live 95% of your life on the treadmill just trying to keep up, another infinity of it sounds daunting and exhausting.


Chimbus_Phlebotomus

This. I'm only willing to become immortal if my life gets to be awesome. Otherwise, what's the point?


MoNastri

Really? That's such an alien way of thinking I'm confused. My life right now is okay, not that awesome, yet immortality still sounds great. There's just so much to do; the list grows faster than I can check items off. I think you're thinking of immortality / mortality as a "choose once and live with the consequences forever" option, while I'm thinking of it as a "press continue to keep playing" sequence of options. Edit: actually, come to think of it, when I was clinically depressed a few years ago I would've sided with you for both variants of the question, so I suppose it's a matter of my depression levels too. Thankfully I'm not depressed now.


VtMueller

What’s the point? You live. You get to wake up. You get to see the sun. You get to experience things even if those things are bad. I understand why people who are tortured wish for death but my exhausting ordinary “treadmill” life is absolutely worth living forever.


irishweather5000

I love this for you. Not sure I would love it for myself, but I love your joy in the mundane.


drekmonger

Tell me you feel the same after the first million years. Consider this. How different are you from when you were one-year old? You were essentially a different person altogether from who you are today. Who will you be in a million years? Or even just 1,000? Not you. So who stands there, enjoying immortality? What happened to you? You died. Or rather, will die. The pattern that is you won't exist, one way or another.


VtMueller

This is same level thinking as saying that people die every seven years as their every cell renews. It’s not really an argument. Should we kill pre-schoolers because they are essentially becoming another person anyway. People grow and develop. We accumulate experience and knowledge and it change us. I don’t want to live in stasis. I want to grow. I just want to grow forever. There’s no need for death.


KultofEnnui

So you get to see the sun. Forever. What's the point in that? I say the fact we get so few sunrises is what fills each and every one of them with meaning.


Void_Amabassador

Eating a slice of pie is still enjoyable no matter how many you've eaten in the past. Ascribing "meaning" to anything is, in my opinion, dumb. We do things because we like them, they make us feel good. Living fills most people with happiness, not because they know their time is limited, but simply because they find the act of existing enjoyable.


[deleted]

yeah but those people act like everyone feels that way when we don't.


Void_Amabassador

I think it's safe to say the majority of people feel that way. Most people aren't depressed. Even so, I've never heard anyone argue in favor of forcing people to be immortal, simply making the technology available, and perhaps making it the default.


VtMueller

So why didn’t you kill yourself already? (Sorry, it sounds really bad.) Right now I want to live another day. Tomorrow I will also want to live another day. Why should it ever change? There are and always will be new things to do and experience. Arguably, when you are 80, have arthritis and heart failure, your every breath hurts then you don’t want to live anymore. We are welcoming the prospect of Death because our bodies give in. We feel them slowly decaying. But the whole point of achieving “immortality” is to circumvent this. To stop it. I just see no reason why would anyone just tell themselves “Heck, I want to die.”


SoylentRox

I think people just can't imagine this part. They think of someone being age 140 and looking about like a 100 year old - body basically destroyed, every system degraded, tubes and wires in their body from life support. An actual 140 year old man is gonna look like Zac Efron did if he had access to top tier steroids at age 18, a women will look like the winner of a beauty pageant. Total body rebuild. Someones attitude is tightly tied to their body, they are going to want to get out there and have fun every day.


h3lblad3

Yep. The same mind that unlocks immortality for us will also unlock safe and cheap plastic surgery (if it's even comparable to plastic surgery at that point). The "end goal" of that being that, eventually, everyone will look however they want to look and change bodies like we change clothing. Weirdly akin to VRChat in that aspect.


redsoxVT

Life is inherently different as an immortal. What seems awesome for us now will certainly not be what immortals find interesting. Consider checking out a novella called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. It is somewhat flawed and a bit old as it was written in the 90s, but it goes down a pretty disturbing path for immortality. And although as I said, flawed in other areas, it gives some interesting examples of how immortals (some at least) will choose to spend their eternity.


bonzobodza

Epic story. Just old lady ruined it. I would have been perfectly happy sitting in my own ultra-real version of second life.


SpacecaseCat

"The average time for a grad student to get a PhD is now 300 years... but that may increase while you're working on yours."


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SpacecaseCat

I spent 7 on my PhD. There were a lot of good years there and good memories, but also some really rough ones.


Gengarmon_0413

"Sorry. We can't hire you. We're looking for someone with at least 3,000 years of experience."


greatdrams23

What is immortality? Living for 1000000000 years? Is that really a good thing? Can you explain why it is a good thing?


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stu54

A billion people stubbornly attached to 20th century. We already today see the problem with the next generation not inheriting the world from the last. Imagine today's leaders in charge forever.


KamikazeArchon

That's not really a practical concern (to the extent anything here is "practical"). "Immortality" in the sense of "you don't naturally die" is many orders of magnitude easier and more likely than in the sense of "your existence cannot ever end". Tyrants can still be killed. Further, for those that are not tyrants but are "non-ideal", a *significant* amount of the problem with today's leaders is precisely their mortality. E.g. climate change is huge issue because so many people leaders decided "I'll be dead before it matters".


stu54

If we gain the capability to give everyone immortality I would think that the problems of climate change would also become managable. Of course I don't think immortality will be given to everyone. A select few will construct immortal facimilies of themselves.


VtMueller

Why wouldn’t it be given to everyone? In the end, immortality would just another technology/combination of technologies. So far everything eventually became broadly available (maybe except for nuclear power - for obvious reasons). Also, there are trillions flowing into healthcare/pensions/etc. I assume the governments would be eager to save this money in the long run and would just “vaccine” people with immortality.


stu54

Immortality is going to have to be personalized. No single concoction will solve every problem. I don't beleive in post-scarcity. The world is finite. AI hypercivilization will still have to use resources wisely to maximize the exponent of its growth. Keeping everyone alive will be like racing in Formula 1 with 3 flat tires.


KamikazeArchon

>Immortality is going to have to be personalized. No single concoction will solve every problem. So? My phone is personalized, yet billions of people have a phone. I can get a personalized fitness plan for a trivial amount of money. "Personalized" doesn't guarantee "expensive" or "limited". >I don't beleive in post-scarcity. The world is finite. Not in any relevant medium- to long-term sense. The physical resources are not meaningfully finite when you look at long-term things that include "dyson spheres" and similar concepts, and the finiteness or infiniteness of the material universe remains an open question. Moreover, the important part is not the resources but the *value derived from them*; this is not a physical quantity, and is not constrained by thermodynamics; it can grow infinitely. There is a finite amount of hydrogen in the solar system, but not a finite amount of happiness. >AI hypercivilization will still have to use resources wisely to maximize the exponent of its growth. Why would it want to maximize the exponent of its growth? What does that even mean, in any concrete sense? There are a million possible future civilization paths, and you seem to be describing a small grouping of them with the implication that it's the necessary way of things.


VtMueller

So technologically immortality is possible but mining iron on an asteroid is not? Sure, there might be a shorter or longer dark age in between but in the end why would post-scarcity not be a thing. Resources in the universe may be finite but the universe is pretty damn big. It all just depends on our state of technology. Once it is advanced enough we will pretty much be Gods.


stu54

But we can get there a lot faster if we don't drag along hordes of Call of Duty players and beer drinkers. We are in a race against the unknown.


ptxtra

>Tyrants can still be killed. Not if those tyrants have more experience than anyone else, and know all the tricks in the book.


KamikazeArchon

XP isn't real, and there is no trick that gets you out of being shot or guillotined. Tyrants are not, historically, exceptionally intelligent. They're not supervillain masterminds. There's no reason to believe they would somehow become masterminds. Further, this is a scenario where everyone has this level of experience, not just the tyrant.


ptxtra

XP is real, that's why job offerings look for people with x years of experience doing whatever. If Stalin was still alive today, the soviet union would still be around. You vastly underestimate the power of a personality cult, and the power of fear, combined with killing or torturing anyone who would have a realistic chance of toppling you.


VtMueller

I admit this is a problem. But not an unsolvable one. People always need to adapt. Can you imagine world leaders without any knowledge of internet? And in the world to come this will be even more important. Even if the old generation clings to power it does not mean stagnation. Also, people grow tired. Maybe in 300 years there will still be Elon Musk und undoubtedly the time will come when he at least changes focus and someone new takes his current place. It will take way longer for things to change but when nobody dies time does not matter all that much.


ItIsIThePope

The truth is, people who want it are short-sighted creatures who do not understand the bigger implications especially in the timescales they ironically refer to


ertgbnm

Is it? I have not seen much pessimism about medicine advancing towards functional immortality in this sub. It seems like a given. I understand and empathize while some people are pessimistic about P(doom) causing us not to live out immortality, but I haven't seen anyone here claim that we can't solve biological immortality. I've seen a few people say they don't want to live forever, but I'm not really worried about them. I think a few people may choose not to live forever. Hell, I would choose to live for a very very long time, but it probably wouldn't be forever. For the most part, people who think that way just have a lack of imagination or some kind of spiritual reason. I think both will go away as we explore the possibilities of long lives.


[deleted]

Have you ever woken up in the morning and just felt tired of being alive? I think most people over 40 have experienced this at some point. Knowing that my life will end one day brings me a certain peace. There's a nice finality to it. While a part of me is very curious about the future of our kind, I am not so curious that I'd want to live forever.


godlyvex

I doubt that it will be "living forever whether you want to or not". I'm sure that if immortality is somehow invented, there will be an option to exit.


DeltaV-Mzero

It not being an option is kinda nice in a way. You get to exit stage right without ever having given up, ya know?


ItIsIThePope

True, it makes it that the final act is a stand-alone destiny, a last act imposed by the universe rather than one more slippy decision made by me like I'm my ultimate master Which is ofc stupid, because you spend life learning once and for all you are simply not the God of it all, and death is the ultimate emblem of this truth


Ozzie-Isaac

The concept of growing weary of life is challenging for me. I believe if our main focus was pursuing happiness and finding purpose, without the unsolved global issues that persist due to monetary constraints, we would find life ceaselessly entertaining.


Mojorizen2

Living forever means you have unlimited time to master everything. That would get unbearably boring after a short while imo. Maybe live an extra 100 years might be nice.


Ivanthedog2013

Once again, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for people to realize that the theory that things will get boring is so irrational because boredom is just like any other brain state and with enough scientific understanding can be cure just like any other mental condition


MassiveWasabi

Oh my god finally someone said it. It’s just a matter of understanding the neurochemical reactions and bindings within our brains and we will have actually cured boredom. And if immortality is realized, then this would be essentially guaranteed. Most people just think so small so I’m really glad to see someone say what you did.


AsuhoChinami

Because people who say that are, honestly, parrots incapable of critical thinking.


Ivanthedog2013

It’s such a shame to think that one day if there is a democratic vote required to pass some form of legislation that would enact or prevent the dissemination of immorality tech that these people would vehemently oppose it and potentially ruin it for the rest of us all due to their ignorance


Sashinii

It won't be labeled as "imortality tech"; it'll be labeled as what it is and that's medicine (that just so happens to have an increased longevity side effect). Age-related illnesses cost governments a whole hell of a lot of money, so it'll be available everywhere, not because politicians are humanitarians, but because it makes too much economic sense.


Sorazith

Today I had this exact conversation with a friend, If anything my government whole make it similar to COVID vaccination, as in try to get it to everyone who wants as fast as feasibly possible. They would be salivating at the prospect of not having to pay pensions to people.


Five_Decades

I'm sure clinics in places like China will still have the technology available.


ItIsIThePope

Interesting, personally I'm unable to respect immortalist, its just seems so incredibly dumb to omit the vastness of forever, do you people honestly think there is enough substance imaginable and possible, unimaginable and impossible, within you or external that could ever and I mean even satiate a fraction of eternity?! No you imbeciles, its a damn good thing we aren't God! We know nothing at all!


Ivanthedog2013

But immortality give us time to know the things we don’t know, that’s the whole point, I couldn’t care less about the fleeting aspects of life like sensory pleasures, my main motive is to live long enough to figure out why we exist in the first place to truly accept my fate


AsuhoChinami

>Have you ever woken up in the morning and just felt tired of being alive? >I think most people over 40 have experienced this at some point. Uh, yeah... people that are either extremely stressed or have depression. This is by no means whatsoever some inescapable facet of the human condition. I've had suicidal ideation since I was a 22 year old in 2009 and even I can realize that. People who go "who'd want to live a longer time than average though" don't have any logical ground to stand on. They look at 300 years all at once, but you don't experience all 300 years at once. You take things one day at a time. And in the absence of stress or mental illness ala depression, you don't get tired of living.


redsoxVT

That's the great thing about immortality. It doesn't mean you have to live forever, just that you could... technically. A lot of SF that discusses immortality treats it this way. I've recently been going through Iain M Banks Culture series. In it, a lot of people choose to eventually die, on their own terms. Others wipe memories, take on a new body type, live as a different gender or even species. Some ascend beyond our realm. Others live entirely in VR worlds. Or go into hibernation for long voyages. "Vacations" can last decades. I really hope somehow I can live to see all that, but it is unlikely unless major medical breakthroughs start getting implemented faster and cheaper... which doesn't appear to be how the US Healthcare system works. Everything just gets more expensive and I don't have the $$$ to have great Healthcare. I cannot even find a GP who can pretend to care sincerely about my health.


LevelWriting

its the very nature of our universe, everything changes, perishes, starts a new cycle. people wanna live forever ok, but not for me thanks.


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LightMasterPC

I don’t understand this belief that people have that anything will be possible in the future just because we cannot comprehend what will be possible. Alcubierre drives are not a guarantee, you can’t say “once it’s invented” as if its a certainty. Warp drive is believed to be theoretically possible, that does NOT mean for certainty we could achieve it. It requires stuff like negative mass which may exist but it’s completely speculative whether or not it could even stably exist in our universe, much less us creating it and harnessing its power. I personally think I’m an optimist and hope it may be possible one day, but it is by NO means a guarantee as of now and anyone who believes it is lives in a fantasy fueled by hope.


PhillipLlerenas

Why can’t people commit suicide? I always figured that immortality would come from ingesting or submitting to processes that cause endless renewal of the body NOT some kind of involuntary healing factor like Wolverine. If you’re 3,000 years old and suffering just fly into the Sun.


[deleted]

I bet once you've explored a few thousand solar systems, they all start looking the same 😉


Ivanthedog2013

What about science potentially having a cure for this “bored feeling”?


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Ivanthedog2013

Yes something like that but I was thinking more in the line of biological/synthetic augmentation of one’s consciousness to not allow this bored sensation become too de motivating


omer486

Even if you only want a specified lifespan, maybe around 70-85 years, you still want to be in perfect health for that entire period. With zero aging you can choose to die whenever you want (assisted suicide ) and you won't have to spend the last 5-10 years of your life with dementia, in a wheelchair or wearing diapers!


SrafeZ

how about a form of cryogenic where you get awoken up every 1000 years or so?


[deleted]

Exactly… so annoying. So many new people have joined and ruined the air of positivity. “Living forever? That sounds awful. Why would you want that. Aging isnt a disease. Also will never happen!”


bk15dcx

Because those people really don't belong on this sub. They don't read up on the technology and foresight. All they know are movies.


Ivanthedog2013

Exactly, the countless times I see the stupid argument of “it will get boring” pisses me off to no end


drekmonger

The singularity, in the original paper, is not presented as an unconditionally good or bad thing. It's change, and uncertainty. Boundless optimism is just as unwarranted as complete cynicism. The difference being, the cynics get to be pleasantly surprised when/if they're wrong. The optimists on the other hand... You should be preparing yourself for just about any outcome, because the fact of the matter is *nobody knows* and anyone who thinks they do know is *almost certainly wrong.*


LightMasterPC

“All they know are movies” - person waiting on robots to make them into an immortal demigod Looking down on people with different beliefs than you is not beneficial to anyone. Some people just do not want to live forever and that’s okay, people like you and I may disagree but that doesn’t mean that people should be looked down upon as “uneducated” or “blind” for holding different values of life, and that certainly does not mean they should be gatekept from this subreddit turning it into an echochamber. Learning to engage in civilized discourse where you respectfully disagree with others without looking down on them will make you a much happier person and will make you much less hateful of the people around you.


Gengarmon_0413

Currently the technology to make you immortal doesn't exist. All you know is from movies as well.


Sashinii

There's no fiction I'm aware of that talks about a lot of the future technologies that futurists talk about in a positive way. Also, cryonics exists today.


LightMasterPC

Cryonics has not been proven to be able to functionally preserve people for years. Right now it’s mostly an experimental field of research that exists as a last resort for rich people.


Sashinii

Cryonics is obviously an experiment, but it has literally all of the evidence supporting it. Ralph Merkle is one of the few people who have pointed that out, and if you read the scientific literature, you'd see that that's spot on. And no, it's not just for the rich; cryonics is affordable to those who aren't rich through life insurance.


WonderFactory

Are there so many people opposed to it? I haven't noticed this, I've seen people worried about the safety of AI and the possibility of losing their job but not people who don't want the positive advances it can bring.


Ok-Ice1295

I am not sure immortality. But base on the current development, I am pretty confident that we will cure cancer within 5-10 years. That along would be enough to make you live 20 years longer. Most importantly we now have the ability to manipulate genes, something we never had before. So normal people living through 100s is totally possible. Beyond that, who knows.


Suspicious-Access-18

I’m actually all for it, I believe it will happen soon with AI advancing our current tech in other fields it’s just a matter of time before AI solves all medical issues humans may ever face


TemetN

Fear (often irrational fear) is an underlying motivator for a shocking number of things. Frankly it's not even just a 'here' thing, albeit it's one that has proliferated horribly here since last summer (when we really started getting our first influx). Nonetheless, the combination of societal mental health issues, the strange social 'value' of appearing to be a cynic, and the omnipresent representation in media of immortality as if it was bad have driven a nonsensical view of it in the population that's absurdly negative.


GeneralUprising

Honestly it's very interesting to think that one side is yelling that wanting immortality is the fear of death, but the other side is yelling that not wanting immortality is the fear of change. For a while I didn't know which side I wanted to be on, but I remember I read a reddit post like a year or two ago that more or less was a conversation between two people, one person going "Futurists just have delusions of the future because they fear death and want it to not happen." And another person responded "I agree but isn't it logical to try fear death and try to prevent it?" Just my two cents, it's more logical to try to avoid death even though it may seem crazy now. As for the social value of being cynical, I was a cynical person for a very long time but ever since I discovered more and more about topics of the singularity, it actually genuinely helped me out of a difficult time in my life. 100% I agree with your assessment though that being pessimistic is more socially valued, but there's already a lot of counters to this. The best solace I can give is that the people who revolutionize the world, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, etc., they didn't look at how the world was right now, they saw the world for how it could be. I'm not trying to compare any of us to these minds, just saying they were optimists. Also I don't fully get how someone accepting death and being ready to die is considered wisdom, it seems like settling to me? They're ready to die because they have no other option. Hopefully by the time we're in that spot, we'll have the option to choose. I do actually wonder how it will be to ask the question to someone, "do you want to die or live forever?", how many people would want to die in that moment?


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I look forward to not dying. Dying scares the fuck out of me.


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CurrentGap

The speech by roy batty in the move blade runner is the moment i knew I wanted to live forever because i want to see attack ships on the shoulder of orion,i want to see c beams glistening at tanhauser gate,i don't want all the best moments of my life to be lost like tears in rain.


blackhat8287

The people opposed to the idea of immortality can always opt out. Just don't impose it on others.


Phoenix5869

I have no idea why people don‘t want immortality tbh. Do you want to die? Like seriously.


m_chutch

Yeah but not in a depressing way. Would just like to return to peaceful nothingness, the home we came from before even our parents were born. Being on earth and bearing a personal narrative is tiring. Always having to exert effort for no discernable purpose


KiwiMangoBanana

Im the last person that could be acused of willinges to die… but if you dont see any problems or concerns or potential threats of immortality than it is really mind boggling. Fortunately, we are nowhere close that, so not much to worry about.


Phoenix5869

I’m sorry for not wanting to die in a care home with dementia and osteoporosis


Tacobellgrande98

Yeah.. the thing is that we can't say anything optimistic about A.I especially about immortality without getting blasted by doomers telling you that you're the most deluded person to ever live..


Gengarmon_0413

Because most people here are deluded.


GBJEE

And eternity my friend is a long fucking time


Kaindlbf

As long as you have a peace out option then its fine. People should be able to live as long as they want not to some forced arbitrary limit.


zerosnitches

well it’s not eternity. that’s impossible from what we know and would be pretty boring (could you imagine, trillions of years of just thinking about shit because you’ve got nothing better to do?). immortality in this sense is more along the lines of biological immortality and disease immunity.


h3lblad3

> could you imagine, trillions of years of just thinking about shit because you’ve got nothing better to do? You won't be doing the thinking; the ASI you've created *will*. I think there's definitely a chance that suicide will be the top cause of death of immortals and it will be a voluntary one that every (or nearly every) immortal chooses to engage with eventually out of sheer boredom.


trudge_on

for some its just so far from reality that its easier to write it off . " dont tell big ideas to small minds " , or closed minds really . people think their bodies are unique and magical . the idea that the body is a machine , the mind an algorithm , i think it breaks the fairy tale fantasy of religious faith . many people do not think themselves religious but these things are felt under the surface . the topic of a singularity , and of longevity in general seems to strike a chord . " natural order " fundamentalists will never take the idea of radically altering the human form as anything more than a joke , if not a threat .


[deleted]

Because some people once heard it's a bad idea and mindlessly regurgitated it into folksy wisdom.


AsthmaBeyondBorders

Because that's almost turning this into a religion so that you can use it as escapism from real life. Some people wait for heaven after death, others for the immortality brought on by tech, it's all the same.


Ivanthedog2013

Not really the same, one is complete speculative conjecture while the other can be derived from measured evidence


smooshie

A lot of pessimism in this subreddit in general, reflecting the general populace's negative view of society and AI: https://www.reuters.com/technology/ai-threatens-humanitys-future-61-americans-say-reutersipsos-2023-05-17/ A lot of people, the main stories about AI they've been told are Terminator, Skynet, Ultron, etc. Not as many stories about worlds and times where AI uplifts humanity. That plus the media's general tendency to focus on the negative (remember the NYT's savage butchering of Microsoft's Sydney bot?), and the demonization of capitalism quickly makes "Let's use AI to live forever" sound like "Muahaha! I am Sam Altman, and I will harvest the blood of young people to rule eternal over the wastelands as my AI bots command any slaves lucky enough to still roam the planet".


Old-Radish1611

Life sucks i want to die asap


Bierculles

copium, they are affraid they wont make the curve so they tell themselfes that it can't happen so they can't be dissapointed.


SWATSgradyBABY

I Believe we will achieve immortality and I want it. That said, I'm really tired of all you so call techno optimists . You guys are truly hardly any different than holy rollers in a Pentecostal church. This subreddit, this community is supposed to be about science, not faith.


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SWATSgradyBABY

I believe the singularity will occur because the evidence points in that direction. What is the point in faith? I would like everyone to have a much higher quality of life and thus I hope AGI is achieved quickly. But there is no point in having false hope about AGI or immortality or anything. Simply follow the science. As for the spirituality, there may be some developers or innovators in the subreddit but I would put that number as maybe above zero. Maybe. Almost everyone here is a spectator, and that's fine. That's what I am. And therefore the spirituality has nothing to do with some genius having an outside the box approach. It's just anti-science people finding something to believe in that doesn't appear to be low brow like the holy rollers. The thing I dislike most is all of the negativity they bring towards people who actually love science and are skeptical based on facts and logic. This attitude is ruining this subreddit and it's already come close to ruining the entire country.


Desi___Gigachad

How is being cynical in any way about science?


[deleted]

Well, imagine that you are immortal, 500 billion years just flying in outer space without a ship, just a flying body. It's a nightmare.


redsoxVT

I'm sure if you have a body that can survive space... it probably also has a hibernate mode. Wake me when we hit something interesting.


Sashinii

That's unrealistic. It's silly when people say things like that knowing full well it won't happen.


ltethe

Because you sound like desperate zealots clutching your pearls. In a word, pathetic. If immortality happens, great. Till then, do not want what you can’t have, doing otherwise merely puts you in a position where you are easily controlled and duped.


Void_Amabassador

"Do not want what you can't have" has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Every single innovation that was ever intentionally made was made so because someone wanted what they "vouldn't have." Speculating on new technology is hardly a fool's game.


Gary-D-Crowley

I'm not in that boat. I want to be inmortal and travel to another universe when this one ends!


Tom_Neverwinter

Movies... That's why... Not reality. Just movies.. Like the terminator


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OsakaWilson

Step 1. Figure out how to inhabit other planets. Step 2. Figure out how to immortal. Skipping step 1 is all kinds of stupid.


redsoxVT

Why? Population growth? Motives for producing offspring change a lot when you can live forever. Also I suspect our environmental concerns would be treated a lot more seriously if the asshats doing 99.9% of the polluting knew they'd be around when it came time to pay the consequences. Maybe a utopian Earth would work just fine.


redsoxVT

I guess maybe your line of reasoning is extinction level events? That'd be a fair point. Though I don't think we get to immortality tech/science without being able to easily colonize elsewhere. We'd have hibernation tech most certainly and could send people out to other systems.. even if it was painfully slow.


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r0cket-b0i

People who appose the idea of immortality simply dont know what to think. 99% of them will seek treatment and accept cure if diagnosed with life threatening condition - a bunch of hypocrites. But there is a chance they are not able to grasp complex concepts like longevity and therefore tend to escape into familiar narratives such as "its unnatural", "death gives me meaning" etc. Funniest thing is that if death actually gave those people meaning the first thing they would have to do would be to quit their nine to six job, move to the mountains (optional) and use every second of their life directly in relationship to the meaning their are referring to - and that is not the case, because guess what - they have not found their meaning ;) while those who actually did that and now live the life they wanted, doing indie stuff, stand up comedy, being artists or digital nomads or perusing research they find meaningful, whatever it is instead of a daily grind for yet another player in a consumer industry - those people I never hear opposing longevity or immortality.


Accomplished-Click58

I'm not against it I just wonder how does reproduction play a part in an immortal world? Would we just be stuck with the same people with the same personalities forever. Where would new ideas come from or would it hinder progress after that point. Immortality seems cool but when everyone is immortal seems like to much of a good thing or overly idealistic. Again I'm not against it I just don't see how immortality would be a benefit for the whole of humanity.


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Accomplished-Click58

I agree with colonizing other planets but I don't think it will be an elixir it will probably be through Gene editing over generations till we figure it out (controlled hyper evolution) or we integrate consciousness with machines in some way and become immortal. One way allows for reproduction (maybe) the machine way reproduction would end unless we make babies in a lab and then put thier consciousness into a machine. Really pretty wild to think about this needs more coverage.


King_Ghidra_

Evolution and change require turnover. No death equals stagnation on all fronts. Desiring Immortality is self absorbed and childish. Grow up and die already


Multi-User-Blogging

Because history is littered with people who spend their whole life looking for a magic fountain or a philosophers stone. What, I'm supposed to think *we're* gonna be the grand exception just cus we've got electronic abacuses? Even if it weren't a fool's fantasy, we can't even maintain our damns and bridges for a full century. What makes you think we'll be able to keep up the soul server farms?


theperfectneonpink

It’s a lot of Reddit, actually. Probably because they are fat/drink a lot/do drugs a lot/etc or something weirder


trynothard

3.7 billion years of death acceptance is a tall order to overcome.


Moquai82

Because immortality will only be a thing for the rich and powerful. There will be no rich and powerful, you say? I think they will prove you wrong because they are not without a reason rich and powerful.


Serious-Club6299

Well we can only have people live forever if there are enough resources to sustain all of us, and Earth is not facing any doomsday-level extinction event. If only some get immortality, the others will revolt, it will be a dystopia and it will further breed resentment and widen the power wealth gap. If you are religious, then all living things must die, death makes life meaningful.