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I am hoping for a better future.

But I am in no hurry to go and meet God, I enjoy my life. I will have plenty of time to be dead later.

I am also with Pascal in that I happen to be wrong, well I will no longer exist so that wont matter.

However if I happen to be in the wrong type of wrong and face an angry Allah or some such, well I am in the crapper then.

when I'm dead, I'm not here to care. but i plan to discover the secret to immortality, so I'll never die.

Nom

 Monster Rain wrote:
I consider death to be falling backwards into a dark and soundless void, screaming silently for all eternity.

I hope that makes everyone feel better.

...honestly I would accept that, cause I'd still be AWARE. It's the loss of that that scares me most

The only true fear is of dying with your duty undone...

This is actually very similar to my own opinion on death. Death doesn't matter, in fact, life is probably harder.

Oddly, I think not believing in an afterlife helped me come to terms with my own death.

Good luck with that, good sir!
I look forward to it.

P.S how do you deal with the population issues!

 blood guard26 wrote:
Good luck with that, good sir!
I look forward to it.

P.S how do you deal with the population issues!

Somehow...I get the feeling people will have reduced desire to have children the longer they live...

Well if we all upload our brains into a massive computer system that'll cut the breeding issue down pretty easily.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Well if we all upload our brains into a massive computer system that'll cut the breeding issue down pretty easily.

No...the consciousness is only uploaded at the moment of death, and then only temporarily, as it is quickly transferred to prepared clone body.

 blood guard26 wrote:
Good luck with that, good sir!
I look forward to it.

P.S how do you deal with the population issues!

If the being responsible can figure out dimensional travel or whatever you want to call it then I'm sure they'll figure out where to put everyone.

 Tadashi wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Well if we all upload our brains into a massive computer system that'll cut the breeding issue down pretty easily.

No...the consciousness is only uploaded at the moment of death, and then only temporarily, as it is quickly transferred to prepared clone body.

The memory may be the same, but the perception, the existence itself would not be.

 Fafnir wrote:

 Tadashi wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Well if we all upload our brains into a massive computer system that'll cut the breeding issue down pretty easily.

No...the consciousness is only uploaded at the moment of death, and then only temporarily, as it is quickly transferred to prepared clone body.

The memory may be the same, but the perception, the existence itself would not be.

The only one truly qualified to say who we are individually is ourself, 'Captain Kirk'...now, be on your way, for I have much to do.

Right that's my alternate option.

 Tadashi wrote:

The only one truly qualified to say who we are individually is ourself, 'Captain Kirk'...now, be on your way, for I have much to do.

That's a nice little way to avoid the problem. A copy doesn't extend your life, even if it pretends (and beleive) that it's still you.

In Infinity, they had to introduce a 'magical' substance, Silk, to explain how Cube technology could actually allow for true ressurection. I think there was even some pseudo scientific babble as to how it worked. The Cube (the brain chip registering your personnality) extended 'feelers' in your brain, and actually became part of it. Once dead, the feelers would retract, preserving the individuality centers.

Of course that didn't explain how Posthumans could also upload their consciouness in Maya (Infinity's universal Web) and survive there, but hey, at least they tried.

I am waiting for the real world to catch up with Scifi in terms of medical breakthroughs :

Uploading/downloading al la "Altered Carbon" and similar novels needs to be sorted out asap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon

to be honest its not sooo much my own death that worries me but deaths of a few others and the rather unpleasent aging process.......

There might be a way to do all of that, but we know so little about the human brain...

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
There might be a way to do all of that, but we know so little about the human brain...

We never believed it to be easy...we've always considered the possibility of failure and being condemned by the rest of society. Even so, giving up even before trying is not something we would do - the others aren't Nitzscheans like myself, but they have been influenced by The Alchemist by Paul Coelho, so even if they don't believe in the Ubermensch, they refuse to give up and will give everything for our dream.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Tadashi wrote:

The only one truly qualified to say who we are individually is ourself, 'Captain Kirk'...now, be on your way, for I have much to do.

That's a nice little way to avoid the problem. A copy doesn't extend your life, even if it pretends (and beleive) that it's still you.

Believe it or not, we've considered that as well, and so we've adopted the idea of viewing it as a 'new view on life from a different perspective'.

Well then you also change the meaning of immortality. Regardless of your play on semantics, you are no longer alive if you've ceased to exist and yet has transfered all your characteristics to another individual. You've just made a copy.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like life extension. But I don't beleive we'll ever dissociate the personnality from the brain, because the brain is the personnality. We would be better off trying to find ways to preserve the brain for as long as possible.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
Well then you also change the meaning of immortality. Regardless of your play on semantics, you are no longer alive if you've ceased to exist and yet has transfered all your characteristics to another individual. You've just made a copy.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like life extension. But I don't beleive we'll ever dissociate the personnality from the brain, because the brain is the personnality. We would be better off trying to find ways to preserve the brain for as long as possible.

I'll see you on the shelf in a few decades. I hope the other brains in jars on my row are cool.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
Well then you also change the meaning of immortality. Regardless of your play on semantics, you are no longer alive if you've ceased to exist and yet has transfered all your characteristics to another individual. You've just made a copy.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like life extension. But I don't beleive we'll ever dissociate the personnality from the brain, because the brain is the personnality. We would be better off trying to find ways to preserve the brain for as long as possible.

Oh please. Lets not involve religion, philosophy, morality, or ethics into this. As a purely scientific concept, consciousness is just an organized pattern of bio-electric impulses in the Human brain. In any case, its not like we would keep copies in the main supercomputer: 'Avalon'. That's what a real-time link is for, maintained either by cybernetics or nanomachines or both. We can draw on Avalon's databanks and network access any time, and at the instant of death, the consciousness is transferred via Avalon to prepared bodies. One moment, your collapsing or blacked out, the next instant, you're thrashing in rapidly draining incubation tube.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
Well then you also change the meaning of immortality. Regardless of your play on semantics, you are no longer alive if you've ceased to exist and yet has transfered all your characteristics to another individual. You've just made a copy.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like life extension. But I don't beleive we'll ever dissociate the personnality from the brain, because the brain is the personnality. We would be better off trying to find ways to preserve the brain for as long as possible.

I'll see you on the shelf in a few decades. I hope the other brains in jars on my row are cool.

Angrily strolls down the hallway and shooting at jars with a plasma pistol while laser-armed hover automatons follow watchfully.

Quite frankly, I wouldn't want to have my consciousness transferred into a clone at time of death.

I am an atheist, I don't believe in life after death, and one of the bitterest about it is that you constantly remind yourself that you will never see your loved ones again once they have passed on.

I cope with death by reminding myself that eventually I will die, and then I won't have to watch the gakfest of a mess the human race has become. All I see for the human race in the next century or two is a complete sociological meltdown. So once I am gone, I don't want to be brought back so I can watch the species screw things up for another 80 years.

It's not the destination, but the journey that counts.

Some people focus on the afterlife, if such a thing exists. I perfer to focus on living and enjoying every day to the fullest. For me that means spending time with my wife and kids, and spending free time gaming.

It means not working more than 42 hours a week 3/4 of the time. (There are burst periods for work). This is because one never lies on their deathbed and says "Boy I wish I spent more time in the office"

It means ensuring I get as much time on this rock as I can. Trying to eat healthy, not smoking, and driving carefully. Stastically your most likely to die from heart failure, cancer, a stroke. Hedge your bets so you don't get caught by one of small values on this chart and you get hit by the higher ones later in life.

It means trying to ensure that those people who come after will have as good of a shot as possible. I do this by recycling more than my neighbors, buying food from the local farm, and voting both with my ballot and my dollar.

Death is a part of life. Everyone dies in the end. Even the sun and stars will all die in the end. The trick is making sure that our journey is a great one.

 labmouse42 wrote:


Death is a part of life. Everyone dies in the end. Even the sun and stars will all die in the end. The trick is making sure that our journey is a great one.

Rest assured...it will be AWESOME...

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
So I've been having a series of panic/anxiety attacks recently, mostly focused on the fact that I am quickly growing older and that shortly, before I even think about it I will die. Obviously this is a whole bunch of fun, but it's something we all have to face/deal with.

How do you face your mortality?

I face death with the fact that i know it is not the end for me. I have lived before and will live again. admitedly my memories of past lives are hazy(all i can remember about my last one is that i was the loader of a Tiger 1E late model and i died somewere in Normandy/France and that i burned to death in my tank when the hatch wouldnt open after we were hit[by a sherman i think]) That said i do have things i wish to acomblish BEFORE i die... losing my V and seeing some of the great natural beauties(landscape NOT women though im fine with them to ) for instance.... But yeah i have lived before and will do again.....

Q: How do you feel about facing your death?

A: Existential Angst.

When my gran died about fifteen years ago I actually had a moment when I thought I was going to lose it big time, go over the edge. I was in bed alone, the wife was away at her sisters for the weekend, and the mind started wondering. Now, I'm not a believer and it actually hit me that there is nothing after you have gone. The actual realisation of this at the time really pushed me to the edge mentally, I felt trapped with these thoughts. I have no idea how I processed them, but I did and I stepped back from the brink, but I still dwell on it on a regular basis.

I wonder what the whole point is and why bother. IMHO we are just animals who are aware of our surroundings, we breed and mulitply like any other animal, it's just that we are more successful and we are self aware. I realised that the reason I worry about it is because I do it from another perspective. I'm feeling emotions about how I know my loved ones will feel when I'm gone, when in fact this won't matter as I won't exist to be able to dwell on these feelings. For me my mental fight is "what is the purpose?" People say ablout living your life and having all these wonderful memories, but what is the point as they will mean nothing once my heart stops beating. The memory of me will only really last as long as anybody who knew me is alive, after that, nothing, just a name on a family tree.

I can understand why people hold on to their religion or find religion when close to death, as a self away species we are scared and it provides an answer. It would be great if there was something as I'm nosey and would love to know what the future holds Do we make it to the stars? Is there life out there?

For me I just fight it on a day to day basis, try and keep myself distracted so that my mind has nothing to dwell on when I go to sleep. It works alot of the time, but I still have those moments and they aren't fun. All I can do then is fight my way through it and then hope I'm so knackered the next night I go to sleep straight away

As others have said before me "death isn't the problem dying is."

I'd rather go out while i'm still me, than to slowly fade away in a nursing home or something.

That's a while a way and I have plenty of opportunities to snuff it before we get to that point. So looks like i'm on to a winner.

 Monster Rain wrote:
I consider death to be falling backwards into a dark and soundless void, screaming silently for all eternity.

I hope that makes everyone feel better.

If anybody wants to meet up in MR's version of death we could be the best god damned ethereal sky diving team.

This thread has cheered me up, some of you lot are proper mad fethers!

I am glad that I have no mental issues, and the idea of being six foot under holds no fear for me at all.

The idea that somehow being "aware" even if you were being tortured or in pain, is great compared to nothingness is truly baffling to me! I mean, really, you would prefer torture as long as you knew it was happening?! When you have one of those nice, deep, dreamless sleeps where its all just ignorance and blackness, do you wake up and go "That sucked!"

Of course you don't.. 5 or 6 hours just passed, and I go "Ahh.. that was nice" so I figure death is just, you know.. that exact same thing but longer.

Being aware IS the scary part.. its why heaven and hell are scary. Even heaven might suck after a long time. I mean, think about it.. I love my dog and my dad, but if I was with them for 10,000,000,000 years... they would start to piss me off.. and thats just the begnining? I have another million trillion billion years to go?! That sounds like some sort of real actual torture for a sentient being. I think its that realisation that shows that the short sighted "reward" of the Theist was merely invented by cynical men at a time when we didn't live very long lives.

I reckon after 5 or 6 thousand years of anything I would be bored off my fething tits, and more than welcome the embrace of wonderfully satisfying bliss of ignorant, blessed nothingness.

maybe but all the people who don't want to carry means more space and resources for the rest of us

Also you can have an extra 500 years and then turn yourself off - the Culture novels are the closest to utopia I have seen

My outlook is that death isn't something, it's simply and end, and whatever you've done before then is all you'll ever have done unless there's something afterwards, which is improbable. Yeah, it's scary, but that's only because we've never done it before, and it's in our DNA to be scared of death. Just worry about what happens before then, and it'll all be fine.

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
Quite frankly, I wouldn't want to have my consciousness transferred into a clone at time of death.

I am an atheist, I don't believe in life after death, and one of the bitterest about it is that you constantly remind yourself that you will never see your loved ones again once they have passed on.

I cope with death by reminding myself that eventually I will die, and then I won't have to watch the gakfest of a mess the human race has become. All I see for the human race in the next century or two is a complete sociological meltdown. So once I am gone, I don't want to be brought back so I can watch the species screw things up for another 80 years.

That seems unrealistically pessimistic.