The biggest thing we get wrong is living like we will live forever and assuming we will never die and therefore never prepare for it whether it be financially or spiritually
That could be a decade or more. For instance, some people are living longer because of medical advances. Alzheimer’s might be more of a problem as more people live into their 80’s, 90’s...
Many of us on HN are in professions where we are able to save enough money to live without being productive after the age of 65.
But also many of the people reading this will be 50 years old and have the option to purchase a second (vacation home), or a boat, or a fancy sports car, OR completely secure their retirement. Many of us will choose one of these luxury items and hope everything works out rather than saving for a retirement that could last into our 90's.
I'm 37 and am counting on effective anti-aging treatments to come along before I'm too old to work. Then I won't need to retire and can continue working for the man until the end of time.
Then you'll have to rely on your family. I have an elderly neighbor with no money/family and it's quite depressing. She often can't feed herself or clean her apartment due to chronic pain. She's bipolar, suffers from COPD, and lives in filth. She can't afford any kind of assisted living, and has to rely on her rapidly diminishing friends (who're old and dying) to help her get through the day.
Prepare for your end of life costs as well as what will happen to the remainder of your assets and debts. Write a will. Talk with an estate attorney. Consider adding names of your loved ones to your bank accounts and assets in order to avoid probate. I'm not a lawyer or accountant, but I had to deal with the financial aspects of an unexpected death in my family. Had there been any kind of planning, it would have made everything much easier for those who were survived, and saved a large amount of money that the estate had to pay out during the probate process.
As you get older and your loved ones (e.g. parents) start leaving, you become much more aware of your own mortality! I lost my last parent this year, and it bothers me a lot that my mom left at 59 and dad left at 70.
The biggest thing we get wrong is assuming we will live forever without taking specific steps to make that more likely to happen. By far the most important open problem to be solved, and not nearly enough attention or resources on it.
I wish we treated the elimination of aging and age-related degeneration the way we do traveling to the Moon, or Mars.
We treat them almost exactly the same. As the province of starry-eyed dreamers to whom we pay lip service while only allowing them a pittance in comparison to what we spend on wars, enriching the few at the expense of the many, and indulging our varied desires for swift gratification.
The biggest thing? Since arguably sometime in the 1930s the technological capacity has existed to store at least the brains of dead individuals at liquid nitrogen temperatures indefinitely, waiting on a future that can restore them. In a different, better world, the funerary industry was swept aside by mass cryopreservation, and the vaults of those who would one day live again would be now be vast. The biggest thing we get wrong is that we continue to equate clinical death to oblivion, rather than it being only the second worst thing that can happen to you, and acting accordingly.
Yes, but not the political will. Death in and of itself doesn't bother me since it's a natural process, albeit a sad one. I've had ample opportunity to consider my own mortality, having had quite a few brushes with death.
If anybody wonders why this is currently downvoted it might be because it shows a huge lack of understanding of the real issues here. Let me mention a couple:
Who decides people living now are more worthy of living than future generations?
There's not necessarily a "who is more worthy of living" judgment here. Future generations are free to turn off the cooling mechanisms which suspend the bodies or heads of the dying, if they deem it important to have the resources now. In the meantime, it doesn't take that many resources to suspend a head; and the burden would become less if suspension became common enough practice that the "extremely expensive, will either fail or make the rest of your life a hell" procedures were phased out and those resources freed up.
The problem I have with your sentences is that they prove too much. They can easily be read, for instance, as advocating that it might be worth abandoning medical science.
Surely a future generation which has the means to resuscitate cryogenically-preserved individuals, has the capability to decide whether to do it or not? "Who decides" - surely the generation of would-be resuscitators decides, how can it be otherwise? As to whether "people living now are more worthy of living than future generations" - why does it have to be an either-or proposition? I think you may be assuming that overpopulation is a permanent problem, but I think that this is far from certain in the very-long-term...
While that's a (tenuous) possibility, it flies directly in the face of the main argument of the article: that people, doctors included, need to fully come to terms with death, not shy away from it. It could be possible to do both, to calmly face your own death and also preserve your brain just on the off chance, but it tends to have more of a secular afterlife appeal to my eyes.
> it flies directly in the face of the main argument of the article: that people, doctors included, need to fully come to terms with death, not shy away from it.
I think flying directly in the face of that argument was the point. There's a third alternative: don't shy away from it, don't "come to terms" with it, fight it with every fiber of your being.
That's literally billions of brains for all the people that have died since that time. Who foots the cost for an indefinite time until technology becomes available to rectify the situation? And that's assuming technology does become available. There's no guarantee that freezing doesn't cause some irreversible problem with other aspects of the brain, so even if we can do something like this in the future, it doesn't mean we are preserving these brains correctly now.
Also, what about people that don't want to come back? Those that are content with their lot, or have religious beliefs that something like this would be in violation of? Should we go against people's beliefs because we think it's better for them?
If not, this seems like a personal decision for each person, and a complaint such as yours seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
>>Who foots the cost for an indefinite time until technology becomes available to rectify the situation?
Do you have any idea what the costs are, and how they compare to the rent-cost of the land occupied by cemeteries? I'm assuming these frozen heads could be stored with less pomp and decorum than dead bodies are today, so could be housed in multistory buildings.
>>Also, what about people that don't want to come back?
Couldn't people decide beforehand whether their brains are cryogenically preserved in the event of clinical death?
>>If not, this seems like a personal decision for each person, and a complaint such as yours seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
I don't think the parent comment is suggesting making this mandatory or done without explicit consent. Only that we would have benefited from having a cultural shift which makes this the primary response to death.
> Do you have any idea what the costs are, and how they compare to the rent-cost of the land occupied by cemeteries?
How about the one time fee for cremation?
> I don't think the parent comment is suggesting making this mandatory or done without explicit consent.
I admit that I was interpreting it along those lines originally. I'm not sure if that was my mistake based on local context or if it was edited afterwards to clarify their intended point.
I do still believe it's a bit naive to think we can assume the ability to rectify the problem of a frozen brain in a jar within the semi-near future, or even that we are preserving them correctly, but I'm all for giving people the choice as long as we ruthlessly weed out those who present their services as scientifically sound when they aren't (if they present it as mumbo jumbo, then whatever).
I've been pondering that and I don't think it would be much if you did a cheap and cheerful version. The cryonics institute charge about $30k/person for indefinite storage for whole body and only do about 4 a year. Chop the heads off and put them in a large refrigerated building and you could probably get it to a fraction of that. I figure you could get about 5 million in a WalMart sized building.
In the US lifetime healthcare costs were $316k in 2004. So now maybe 400k. Why spend 400k to die miserably when you could maybe spend 396k on that and 4k putting your head in the freezer and maybe beating the whole death thing for millions of years? Instead of the whole sad funeral thing it could be a more upbeat see you in the 22nd century party.
I'm assuming how this would play out is that post singularity there would be lots of resources for brain scanning and uploading and we'd probably have a largely virtual reality existence but with the ability to use robot bodies when wanted. But who knows...
How do you know you aren't already just a frozen brain in a liquid N2 canister, whose scan was uploaded to a simulation server with severely restricted outside communication?
Just a word of caution, however: if things around you seem to be reverting to an earlier era, get some Ubik, quick.
This will sometimes result in clinicians performing painful and pointless procedures on a dying child as weeping parents stand by, watching their child’s final moments in horror, having not understood what they were signing on for.
My father had cancer in his late 60s. He wasn't expected to live. He did live about 2 more decades. But following his surgery, he spent considerable time in ICU.
At the same time, another elderly patient spent the last two weeks of their life there in ICU. They repeatedly coded and had massive intervention. Doctors routinely did things like drain a gallon of fluid from the lungs, restart their heart, etc.
My mother was pretty disgusted. She felt the family knew this woman was never going home again and these torturous treatments were not extending life. They were merely dragging out her death horrifically because the relatives were not yet ready to accept it.
In many cases, this is the better answer:
...they tell us that attempting resuscitative efforts that are likely to be futile is not consistent with their values. In these situations, rather than asking for intubation and chest compressions, parents just want to hold their child and find meaning in those final moments of contact.
My dad had cancer in a lymph node that spread to the lungs, significantly reducing his lung capacity. After a few years of steady decline, he caught pneumonia.
After a day of treatment, he knew it was all downhill from there. Doctors said further treatment would likely make him recover from the pneumonia, but that could take months, and scar tissue from the pneumonia would reduce his lung capacity further. Even before the pneumonia he was reliant on oxygen supply at home just to sit in a chair.
So in the early hours of the second day, he requested they turn off the oxygen supply. A doctor got called in to ensure he knew what the consequences could be, which he did, and then they turned off the oxygen.
He passed away peacefully a few hours later.
Painful as it was to lose him, I'm so glad they respected his decision.
In Norway. The cancer he had did not respond to chemo, and radiation therapy was out since it was small clusters spread all over the lungs. So there was really not much they could do.
To be fair, I was a bit surprised myself, but as I said I really appreciate that he got the chance to make his own choice in the matter.
You're wrong and/or confused, it's certainly not illegal to refuse treatment in any free country as long as the patient has all their mental facilitates and there is no danger to public health. Nobody can force you to stay attached to a machine if you don't want to be.
In fact, preforming medical treatment against someone's expressed will is assult or battery and could land the doctor in prison.
I think you're confusing voluntarily withdrawing of life sustaining treatment with physician assisted suicide, they are nowhere near the same thing.
This reminds me of a particular article[1] I read on HN on how doctors themselves prefer to approach end-of-life care and the disconnect between the treatment patients and their families usually opt for.
> “Never forget, if you accompany your patients only until the battle is lost and they are dying, if you abandon them at that point and leave them alone, you have done only part of your job, and not done it well. Your job is to accompany your patients until they are either better or safely on the other side.”
Every once in a while you read something where there's a statement that so epitomizes the content, and seems to resonate so closely with the author, that it's obvious that what they are doing is presenting one of their core beliefs. And not just core as in "I strongly agree" but core as in it's become integral to their way of life and how they perceive the world.
Those are interesting pieces, as whether you fully agree with them or not, they are generally well thought out, as the author can and has put quite a lot of time into thinking about the subject.
Do we really get that part wrong, though? There are specialties like hospice care and anointing of the sick, which accompany patients after "the battle is lost" and ensure they comfortably and safely make it to "the other side." These tasks are just done by people other than your oncologist.
It reminds me a bit (perhaps oddly) of technical consulting work. Sure you can check the box, deliver the letter of the contract, and collect your pay. There's a difference between that and building what the customer wants, not what they need; driving end user adoption to make the project successful; caring about outcomes and satisfying your stakeholders, not just about solving the technical challenge as it is presented. There are specialist techies who want nothing to do with half that equation, and don't need to pretend that they do because they are so valued for the specialized thing at which they are a truly expert professional. If you're not like that, another way to add value is by blending technical skills with the other half of that equation.
I think death can never be prevented. Just made less probable. Or forestalled. Even the universe dies at some point and I don't see anything outliving that.
A truly cathartic read. This soulful article's understanding of the process and trauma of bereavement touched me profoundly. Such empathy is rare in modern bureaucracy -- something about doing things at scale numbs us to the emotions of individuals.
I struggle to find enough words of gratitude for people like the author. The amount of trauma and stress they endure to do someone else some good is something I cannot even imagine myself doing.
"We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture suffers, and we notice it firstly in the way in which death is swept under the carpet.
This is one of the major problems in hospitals — when a family conspires with the doctor to keep from grandmother the knowledge that she is dying. Grandmother suspects that she is dying but probably doesn’t really want to know for sure and her family talk with her in such a way as to say, 'Well you’re probably be getting alright in a few weeks' — because they have this funny feeling that it’s important to build up courage and hope. And so they become liars and the mutual mistrust develops. So the person is left to die alone, suddenly, unprepared, and doped up to the point where death hardly happens. And there is no derivation from it of the peculiar spiritual experience that can come with death."
> We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us that to die is a terrible thing.
Not nearly enough, or we'd do more about it on a systematic basic. It's an abstract kind of professing of it being terrible (leaving aside people who don't even manage to do that much), without any of the concrete action that could take place if it was actually treated as a horrific tragedy on a species-wide scale.
Well, it's certainly acceptable to challenge it, but fear of death is rather dogmatic and polarizing. Many people, from diverse backgrounds of philosophy, have submitted world views where the quality of life and your impact matters more than your length of time. Others, like many on this forum, I suspect, have argued we should be investing in fighting death and aging, using war and financial metaphors, without establishing why this is such a worthwhile fight and/or investment. Why length of life and not quality of life? For sure, they're related, but how you frame these questions will dictate the response and interest in the conversation.
I doubt humans as a whole will ever feel strongly that death is a negative force. However, improving quality of life is one of the easiest pitches to make, and doesn't necessarily disproportionally value the rich. In fact, the least worthwhile place to spend improving the quality of life would be people with enough money to dictate it already.
But hey—the idea of living for centuries is cool, I always wanted to be an elf.
> without establishing why this is such a worthwhile fight and/or investment
I'd say it's fundamental, and on the short-term, we all understand that as a civilization. That's why every society protects its member from threats, including crime, fire, natural disasters, famine, war. It's not just about quality - you may live the happiest of lives, up until the point a bullet enters your brain[0].
I think there are three main moral reasons for fighting death:
- suffering in the process of death itself
- existential suffering of knowing your time is limited, and that of knowing you're about to die
- suffering of those who you leave behind
Efforts against #1 connect to quality of life, and with progress on that field, it could be resolved. #2 and #3 won't go away until we achieve (effective) immortality, and for many (myself included) they are the reason to support life extension. But maybe you're right, that a stronger pitch along #1 would help gather extra support.
Then there are economic debates about whether our societies could survive sudden doubling of expected lifespans, or whether we'll be able to offload people fast enough to off-world colonies. I say, we'll figure it out as we go along - it's a nice problem to have, as opposed to death.
--
[0] - probably one of the most humane ways to die; one can hardly leave this world without suffering during the process of departure.
What would a world without death LOOK like to you? How would people vie for this immortality treatement? For food? Seems like something only an absurdly rich person would want for the world.
> What would a world without death LOOK like to you?
People stop dying. We stop losing a hundred and fifty thousand people forever every single day. The vast majority of resources that would go to health-related (and death-related) industries briefly get redirected to getting the cure to everyone, then get freed up for numerous other things. The state of science and human knowledge improves because we no longer lose experienced minds to age and infirmity. People start checking things off their "bucket lists", and adding many more to their life goals, realizing that they have all the time in the universe now. People stop having to mourn the losses of those they love. (There'd likely be more than a few points where people have to stop and re-mourn past deaths, once it truly hits them that death could have been eliminated much sooner.)
> How would people vie for this immortality treatement?
Hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of people would dedicate everything they have to getting the treatment to everyone as quickly as possible, asking only for what resources that people can afford, and using all of those resources to accelerate reaching more people before it's too late.
> For food?
We have more than enough food for everyone. If you're attempting to imply overpopulation, that's been studied, and it's not an issue.
If people somehow magically stopped dying of old age tomorrow, would we choose to solve the resource problems that caused by re-implementing anything similar to death as it exists now? Say, for example, by executing everyone at the age of 75?
I think we'd be much more likely to prefer an alternative solution, such as restricting birth rates.
"Death is good" philosophical arguments are nothing more than hilariously overwrought cases of sour grapes.
> I doubt humans as a whole will ever feel strongly that death is a negative force.
We (correctly) consider death a strongly negative force in every single situation that we don't consider it inevitable. The only thing special about "inevitable" death at the end of a typical modern day lifespan is that we can't do anything about it. This is suggestive, to put it mildly.
Well, a) death is not good, it just is, and b) it’s no less laughable than death being bad.
Is it inevitable? No. Is it worth “fighting”? Definitely not! What a waste of money. Get back to me when there is any path forward on this that doesn’t lead to increased social and economic stratification so rich people can live longer.
Death is useful to fear in that we make better decisions. It’s not useful to fear in that conquering it will not improve your life.
Btw the “death is good” philosophy you mock is just epicureanism.
And one day it will not be, and we'll be sad that it once was and so many people were lost forever as a result.
> Get back to me when there is any path forward on this that doesn’t lead to increased social and economic stratification so rich people can live longer.
You are assuming a great deal that is not in evidence. It's ridiculously hard to raise funds to cure aging and age-related degeneration. Demonstrate that a cure exists, and it'll be easy to raise funds to get that cure to everyone and make it more efficient to administer and distribute. The gap from "exists" to "universally available" will not last long.
> It’s not useful to fear in that conquering it will not improve your life.
On a scale from zero to non-zero, where death is zero, conquering it necessarily improves your life, by preserving it rather than allowing its senseless cessation.
I don't know...I see a silver line here. There are many situations where putting everything on the table might make the situation worse. Something like a negative placebo effect can occur here and, for patients that may still have a battle in them, the depression and fear resulted from knowing too many things might worsen things.
My father died 8 years ago and I remember that we all knew he had just a few weeks left in him. We didn't tell him and no doctor did either. He was still talking about how he can't wait to go fishing once he gets out of there. I think it was something nice to keep him from diving down in panic attacks and depression as I imagine I would knowing that my situation is that bad.
I'm not so brave and I don't know if I would like someone to tell if I'm about to die soon...maybe I would; this is hard to discuss from outside.
Panic attacks and depression are what we often imagine being told we'll die will do to us, but I've heard anecdotes that suggest the opposite: a sense of peaceful resignation and acceptance.
This is one of the reasons so many people in execution videos seem resigned to their fate; because they are. Just listen to stories people tell about narrowly escaping these kinds of deaths. Many of them talk about how they knew what was coming and had come to terms with it.
You are surely referring to the last moments of their lives and not the journey from finding out they're going to die until that moment you are talking about. There's a lot of adrenaline and other chemicals being released in such situations. I had a friend pass out 1 second before hitting a pillar with the car (her boyfriend had to pull the wheel and crash into a dog house). The brain finds ways to protect you from pain and it often shuts down in such cases when there's no room to contemplate. I think the subconscious kicks in/takes over.
I was talking about the long wait many have to go through from finding out...to their final breath. From denial to acceptance might be a long road that scares me and I'm not sure if every bit of information can be beneficial or detrimental.
I have personally been in a few of these moments in my life, when I was thought that I would be killed. I have never been a hostage on my way to my own execution, but I have narrowly escaped death in combat a few times when I thought beforehand that surely I would not make it. There is a lot of adrenaline, and the human mind definitely employs some tricks to shield us from realizing our own fate, or at least to stop us from applying much critical thinking about the situation. Being so close to death is a very base, very visceral, animal thing. Incidentally, this is closely related to one of the reasons I grew to feel at peace while fighting and at war -- and the chief reason I have such a hard time with civilian life afterwards -- and in a way, I came to enjoy it (I waited a couple of days to post this comment because the reality of it will shock the conscience of many, but I wanted to be honest). Not of course the moments where things are going quite badly, but the more base existence.
That feeling is totally unique, of being there on the edge of life where everything is so simple, and where nothing else matters, or nothing else seems to matter very much. From talking to people and hearing stories, I suppose most people think of family when they're close to death. I didn't so much think about family as much as I had kind of very simple and straightforward "aw-shucks" moments of regret about not doing the things I wanted to do in life before I got into those situations where thought I would be killed. Incidentally, after my tours, I traveled a lot in order to settle those regrets and ended up meeting a woman that became my wife. I also created some very deep and meaningful friendships. I'm kind of getting off track here, but my original point was that what you've said is true, but at least for my part, "the long wait" is only happening after the fact. Navigating through the civilian world has been a really tough experience after all that, specifically those times where I thought surely I was a dead man. That was something I didn't expect, "the long wait" coming after everything else.
I fully agree. I already have enough anxiety about my own inevitable mortality.
If I was in that position, I would not want to know. I'd want to think about getting better, and I'd want to appreciate the time I had with my friends and loved ones without an omnipresent feeling of impending demise.
Preamble: I assume that you are okay with critically discussing your comment. If you don't, please just stop reading here :)
This is the issue that has been described in the topmost comment, isn't it? Talking about ones own ongoing dieing process might be the hardest thing to ever do but by not talking about it a person is set to die alone. We can make assumptions about how a particular person feels about that and whether it benefits them (or us) but it is very unlikely the person is entirely oblivious to what's going on. There is going to be despair and sleepless nights and we could help with that.
How could this be the one thing on earth that talking intimately about doesn't provide comfort?
By the way I am a fucking coward and this is mostly me thinking out loud.
I've written and deleted this comment several times, I'm just not sure how to say all i want to say and I don't want to come across as arrogant or melodramatic but I disagree and I think that you underestimate your own capacity to adapt.
Let's see if I can explain myself: I was diagnosed with leukaemia three years ago and now I'm on the last weeks of the treatment, for the moment (and waiting for the last bone marrow tests), it looks like the treatment has worked (although there's a decent chance of cancer coming back in the next few years).
Speaking for myself, one of the things that frustrates me is the reluctance from doctors to give a straight answer. I had to ask several times to get a decent idea of the worst case scenario[0]. For me, having a clear vision helped me frame all the other possible scenarios, from the best possible "cancer is gone forever" to the more probable "treatment will work but in 10-15 years I'll develop another cancer" as well as lining up the available treatments[1].
I don't consider myself specially brave, but I prefer to know the truth, no matter how painful it is. Most of the cancer patients I know think along the same lines (some really brave people there). I accept that some people might not handle the situation well[2], but based on my limited observations, there may be less than you seem to think.
To finish this, I don't know about your father's situation (I'm sorry for your loss, btw) and I might be completely wrong on this (and I apologize if this offends you, it's definitely not my intention), but I'd consider the idea that your father knew and that at least part of his talk about going fishing was his way of trying to cheer you up and protecting you. I know I've done that with my own family.
---
[0] The question was "Assuming the treatment doesn't work, what can I expect?". The most direct answer I got (after all the evasives) was "It will be painless", which is code for "We will pump you full of morphine".
[1] If the leukaemia is not completely gone or it returns I still have the option of a bone marrow transplant (although it will probably destroy my liver and will need a liver transplant too), I could also go for immunotherapy, which has shown very good results with my type of leukaemia but, as far as I know, only one hospital in Europe has the equipment necessary to do it. Worst case... well, we'll see, but even then I have 2-3 options that don't involve being a husk full of morphine until the lack of oxygen in blood kills me.
[2] And that's why there's a team of psychologists with specific oncology training in my hospital, as well as religious support for the people that want it.
Sorry to hear of your condition and I wish you a full recovery. I don't want to sound arrogant either nor do I wish to take anything from you.
I gave it an extra thought and, for me, it may also be the system that's at fault. When he died they (the hospital) made me gather at least 5 liters of blood donated (friends, family etc) otherwise they won't help him. I also had to buy even the syringes and other super-basic stuff because "they were out". I probably lost my trust in the medical system we have here and I'm simply horrified at the idea of having to rely on it.
Wow... just... wow. That sounds horrible and I can't imagine having to go through that. No, I haven't lived that and in my case the medical staff (nurses specially, but even normal hospital staff) always went above and beyond their duty.
Do you mind if I ask what country was this in? It might be because I'm specially sensitive, but any system that allows that to happen to terminal patients and their families is definitely broken.
There are several things we -- as a broad generalization over many societies -- get wrong about dying, and this article illustrates one of them in the medical, caregiver sense.
While there are several contributing factors, like an activist reading of the Hippocratic Oath and fear for malpractice claims against the caregivers, this reckoning is consistent with the value system of many societies that assumes that one's informed choices must always tilt towards their continued life, and any feelings to the contrary are morally corrupt or simply misinformed, and therefore don't confer valid consent.
It's impossible to separate analyses of one's own medical death without considering wishes of one's death in the general case. Modern societies tend to make discussing death taboo, not just because it's an uncomfortable topic to grapple with, but also because people who can control the terms of their own exit have an opportunity to do great harm in ways that can't be disincentivized by punishment. It's no accident that religions attempt to rectify this loophole by ensuring that mortal deeds will determine one's fate after death.
We live in a world where death is inevitable. All of our systems wear out. Within the various cultures across the globe, death is viewed in very different lights.
Sometimes we can do something about it, sometimes we can't. Death can, in some cases, be quick and painless and in others slow and painful. How an individual handles this is very much up to that individual's internal being. What doesn't help is other people acting and living their lives in such a manner that brings hopelessness to the individual affected.
The medical fraternity is one group that regularly hides death from themselves and the patients and their families. Yet they will also regularly kill those who they feel have nothing left to live for and without regard to those individuals themselves.
When I was at university all those decades ago, the medical students of the time had courses in handling death - how to deal with death themselves and how to deal with patients who are dying and how to deal with families so affected.
It didn't seem to help those medical students.
My own wife has survived four different kinds of cancers. The treatments she has undergone over the years has adversely affected her body and she suffers much now from those treatments from the past. We have been blessed that we are together and that we have seen and are seeing our children grow and our grandchildren grow.
Just by living, each of us will face both good and bad. How we live each day is predicated on what gives us hope and what we see for the future. If there is no hope then death is a dark time ahead.
For me and mine, death, when it comes, will be a doorway into a better, greater future in the glorious presence of my God and Saviour. Till that time, we are here to live as examples to those around us with hope, joy and love.
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https://www.livescience.com/59261-alzheimers-deaths-increase...
Many of us on HN are in professions where we are able to save enough money to live without being productive after the age of 65.
But also many of the people reading this will be 50 years old and have the option to purchase a second (vacation home), or a boat, or a fancy sports car, OR completely secure their retirement. Many of us will choose one of these luxury items and hope everything works out rather than saving for a retirement that could last into our 90's.
It’s a balance.
Money, Age, Enjoyment. Most can choose two, some can choose all, and some can choose none.
I wish we treated the elimination of aging and age-related degeneration the way we do traveling to the Moon, or Mars.
Who decides people living now are more worthy of living than future generations?
Who decides who will live forever?
The problem I have with your sentences is that they prove too much. They can easily be read, for instance, as advocating that it might be worth abandoning medical science.
2. Everyone we can save.
That's not an either-or, it's a false dichotomy.
> Who decides who will live forever?
Once we have the technology, who is going to try murdering people by trying to make them not live forever?
The very obvious answer for "who should live forever" is everyone.
I think flying directly in the face of that argument was the point. There's a third alternative: don't shy away from it, don't "come to terms" with it, fight it with every fiber of your being.
Also, what about people that don't want to come back? Those that are content with their lot, or have religious beliefs that something like this would be in violation of? Should we go against people's beliefs because we think it's better for them?
If not, this seems like a personal decision for each person, and a complaint such as yours seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
Do you have any idea what the costs are, and how they compare to the rent-cost of the land occupied by cemeteries? I'm assuming these frozen heads could be stored with less pomp and decorum than dead bodies are today, so could be housed in multistory buildings.
>>Also, what about people that don't want to come back?
Couldn't people decide beforehand whether their brains are cryogenically preserved in the event of clinical death?
>>If not, this seems like a personal decision for each person, and a complaint such as yours seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
I don't think the parent comment is suggesting making this mandatory or done without explicit consent. Only that we would have benefited from having a cultural shift which makes this the primary response to death.
How about the one time fee for cremation?
> I don't think the parent comment is suggesting making this mandatory or done without explicit consent.
I admit that I was interpreting it along those lines originally. I'm not sure if that was my mistake based on local context or if it was edited afterwards to clarify their intended point.
I do still believe it's a bit naive to think we can assume the ability to rectify the problem of a frozen brain in a jar within the semi-near future, or even that we are preserving them correctly, but I'm all for giving people the choice as long as we ruthlessly weed out those who present their services as scientifically sound when they aren't (if they present it as mumbo jumbo, then whatever).
I've been pondering that and I don't think it would be much if you did a cheap and cheerful version. The cryonics institute charge about $30k/person for indefinite storage for whole body and only do about 4 a year. Chop the heads off and put them in a large refrigerated building and you could probably get it to a fraction of that. I figure you could get about 5 million in a WalMart sized building.
In the US lifetime healthcare costs were $316k in 2004. So now maybe 400k. Why spend 400k to die miserably when you could maybe spend 396k on that and 4k putting your head in the freezer and maybe beating the whole death thing for millions of years? Instead of the whole sad funeral thing it could be a more upbeat see you in the 22nd century party.
I'm assuming how this would play out is that post singularity there would be lots of resources for brain scanning and uploading and we'd probably have a largely virtual reality existence but with the ability to use robot bodies when wanted. But who knows...
Just a word of caution, however: if things around you seem to be reverting to an earlier era, get some Ubik, quick.
My father had cancer in his late 60s. He wasn't expected to live. He did live about 2 more decades. But following his surgery, he spent considerable time in ICU.
At the same time, another elderly patient spent the last two weeks of their life there in ICU. They repeatedly coded and had massive intervention. Doctors routinely did things like drain a gallon of fluid from the lungs, restart their heart, etc.
My mother was pretty disgusted. She felt the family knew this woman was never going home again and these torturous treatments were not extending life. They were merely dragging out her death horrifically because the relatives were not yet ready to accept it.
In many cases, this is the better answer:
...they tell us that attempting resuscitative efforts that are likely to be futile is not consistent with their values. In these situations, rather than asking for intubation and chest compressions, parents just want to hold their child and find meaning in those final moments of contact.
After a day of treatment, he knew it was all downhill from there. Doctors said further treatment would likely make him recover from the pneumonia, but that could take months, and scar tissue from the pneumonia would reduce his lung capacity further. Even before the pneumonia he was reliant on oxygen supply at home just to sit in a chair.
So in the early hours of the second day, he requested they turn off the oxygen supply. A doctor got called in to ensure he knew what the consequences could be, which he did, and then they turned off the oxygen.
He passed away peacefully a few hours later.
Painful as it was to lose him, I'm so glad they respected his decision.
(nothing judgemental in this comment, I'm genuinely curious)
In Norway. The cancer he had did not respond to chemo, and radiation therapy was out since it was small clusters spread all over the lungs. So there was really not much they could do.
To be fair, I was a bit surprised myself, but as I said I really appreciate that he got the chance to make his own choice in the matter.
In fact, preforming medical treatment against someone's expressed will is assult or battery and could land the doctor in prison.
I think you're confusing voluntarily withdrawing of life sustaining treatment with physician assisted suicide, they are nowhere near the same thing.
[1] http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die...
Worth reading for this line alone. Beautiful.
Those are interesting pieces, as whether you fully agree with them or not, they are generally well thought out, as the author can and has put quite a lot of time into thinking about the subject.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/
One of the most impactful things I've read in my life.
https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
For another keen perspective on how doctors deal with terminal illness in personal life, as humans, rather than as professionals, see this: http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/03/06/in-the-magazin...
This is one of the major problems in hospitals — when a family conspires with the doctor to keep from grandmother the knowledge that she is dying. Grandmother suspects that she is dying but probably doesn’t really want to know for sure and her family talk with her in such a way as to say, 'Well you’re probably be getting alright in a few weeks' — because they have this funny feeling that it’s important to build up courage and hope. And so they become liars and the mutual mistrust develops. So the person is left to die alone, suddenly, unprepared, and doped up to the point where death hardly happens. And there is no derivation from it of the peculiar spiritual experience that can come with death."
– Alan Watts
Not nearly enough, or we'd do more about it on a systematic basic. It's an abstract kind of professing of it being terrible (leaving aside people who don't even manage to do that much), without any of the concrete action that could take place if it was actually treated as a horrific tragedy on a species-wide scale.
I doubt humans as a whole will ever feel strongly that death is a negative force. However, improving quality of life is one of the easiest pitches to make, and doesn't necessarily disproportionally value the rich. In fact, the least worthwhile place to spend improving the quality of life would be people with enough money to dictate it already.
But hey—the idea of living for centuries is cool, I always wanted to be an elf.
I'd say it's fundamental, and on the short-term, we all understand that as a civilization. That's why every society protects its member from threats, including crime, fire, natural disasters, famine, war. It's not just about quality - you may live the happiest of lives, up until the point a bullet enters your brain[0].
I think there are three main moral reasons for fighting death:
- suffering in the process of death itself
- existential suffering of knowing your time is limited, and that of knowing you're about to die
- suffering of those who you leave behind
Efforts against #1 connect to quality of life, and with progress on that field, it could be resolved. #2 and #3 won't go away until we achieve (effective) immortality, and for many (myself included) they are the reason to support life extension. But maybe you're right, that a stronger pitch along #1 would help gather extra support.
Then there are economic debates about whether our societies could survive sudden doubling of expected lifespans, or whether we'll be able to offload people fast enough to off-world colonies. I say, we'll figure it out as we go along - it's a nice problem to have, as opposed to death.
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[0] - probably one of the most humane ways to die; one can hardly leave this world without suffering during the process of departure.
In my experience, this is largely limited to the young and sheltered. Mature people can proces death in healthy ways.
People stop dying. We stop losing a hundred and fifty thousand people forever every single day. The vast majority of resources that would go to health-related (and death-related) industries briefly get redirected to getting the cure to everyone, then get freed up for numerous other things. The state of science and human knowledge improves because we no longer lose experienced minds to age and infirmity. People start checking things off their "bucket lists", and adding many more to their life goals, realizing that they have all the time in the universe now. People stop having to mourn the losses of those they love. (There'd likely be more than a few points where people have to stop and re-mourn past deaths, once it truly hits them that death could have been eliminated much sooner.)
I would also recommend reading https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html .
> How would people vie for this immortality treatement?
Hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of people would dedicate everything they have to getting the treatment to everyone as quickly as possible, asking only for what resources that people can afford, and using all of those resources to accelerate reaching more people before it's too late.
> For food?
We have more than enough food for everyone. If you're attempting to imply overpopulation, that's been studied, and it's not an issue.
If people somehow magically stopped dying of old age tomorrow, would we choose to solve the resource problems that caused by re-implementing anything similar to death as it exists now? Say, for example, by executing everyone at the age of 75?
I think we'd be much more likely to prefer an alternative solution, such as restricting birth rates.
> I doubt humans as a whole will ever feel strongly that death is a negative force.
We (correctly) consider death a strongly negative force in every single situation that we don't consider it inevitable. The only thing special about "inevitable" death at the end of a typical modern day lifespan is that we can't do anything about it. This is suggestive, to put it mildly.
Is it inevitable? No. Is it worth “fighting”? Definitely not! What a waste of money. Get back to me when there is any path forward on this that doesn’t lead to increased social and economic stratification so rich people can live longer.
Death is useful to fear in that we make better decisions. It’s not useful to fear in that conquering it will not improve your life.
Btw the “death is good” philosophy you mock is just epicureanism.
And one day it will not be, and we'll be sad that it once was and so many people were lost forever as a result.
> Get back to me when there is any path forward on this that doesn’t lead to increased social and economic stratification so rich people can live longer.
You are assuming a great deal that is not in evidence. It's ridiculously hard to raise funds to cure aging and age-related degeneration. Demonstrate that a cure exists, and it'll be easy to raise funds to get that cure to everyone and make it more efficient to administer and distribute. The gap from "exists" to "universally available" will not last long.
> It’s not useful to fear in that conquering it will not improve your life.
On a scale from zero to non-zero, where death is zero, conquering it necessarily improves your life, by preserving it rather than allowing its senseless cessation.
My father died 8 years ago and I remember that we all knew he had just a few weeks left in him. We didn't tell him and no doctor did either. He was still talking about how he can't wait to go fishing once he gets out of there. I think it was something nice to keep him from diving down in panic attacks and depression as I imagine I would knowing that my situation is that bad.
I'm not so brave and I don't know if I would like someone to tell if I'm about to die soon...maybe I would; this is hard to discuss from outside.
I was talking about the long wait many have to go through from finding out...to their final breath. From denial to acceptance might be a long road that scares me and I'm not sure if every bit of information can be beneficial or detrimental.
That feeling is totally unique, of being there on the edge of life where everything is so simple, and where nothing else matters, or nothing else seems to matter very much. From talking to people and hearing stories, I suppose most people think of family when they're close to death. I didn't so much think about family as much as I had kind of very simple and straightforward "aw-shucks" moments of regret about not doing the things I wanted to do in life before I got into those situations where thought I would be killed. Incidentally, after my tours, I traveled a lot in order to settle those regrets and ended up meeting a woman that became my wife. I also created some very deep and meaningful friendships. I'm kind of getting off track here, but my original point was that what you've said is true, but at least for my part, "the long wait" is only happening after the fact. Navigating through the civilian world has been a really tough experience after all that, specifically those times where I thought surely I was a dead man. That was something I didn't expect, "the long wait" coming after everything else.
If I was in that position, I would not want to know. I'd want to think about getting better, and I'd want to appreciate the time I had with my friends and loved ones without an omnipresent feeling of impending demise.
This is the issue that has been described in the topmost comment, isn't it? Talking about ones own ongoing dieing process might be the hardest thing to ever do but by not talking about it a person is set to die alone. We can make assumptions about how a particular person feels about that and whether it benefits them (or us) but it is very unlikely the person is entirely oblivious to what's going on. There is going to be despair and sleepless nights and we could help with that.
How could this be the one thing on earth that talking intimately about doesn't provide comfort?
By the way I am a fucking coward and this is mostly me thinking out loud.
Let's see if I can explain myself: I was diagnosed with leukaemia three years ago and now I'm on the last weeks of the treatment, for the moment (and waiting for the last bone marrow tests), it looks like the treatment has worked (although there's a decent chance of cancer coming back in the next few years).
Speaking for myself, one of the things that frustrates me is the reluctance from doctors to give a straight answer. I had to ask several times to get a decent idea of the worst case scenario[0]. For me, having a clear vision helped me frame all the other possible scenarios, from the best possible "cancer is gone forever" to the more probable "treatment will work but in 10-15 years I'll develop another cancer" as well as lining up the available treatments[1].
I don't consider myself specially brave, but I prefer to know the truth, no matter how painful it is. Most of the cancer patients I know think along the same lines (some really brave people there). I accept that some people might not handle the situation well[2], but based on my limited observations, there may be less than you seem to think.
To finish this, I don't know about your father's situation (I'm sorry for your loss, btw) and I might be completely wrong on this (and I apologize if this offends you, it's definitely not my intention), but I'd consider the idea that your father knew and that at least part of his talk about going fishing was his way of trying to cheer you up and protecting you. I know I've done that with my own family.
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[0] The question was "Assuming the treatment doesn't work, what can I expect?". The most direct answer I got (after all the evasives) was "It will be painless", which is code for "We will pump you full of morphine".
[1] If the leukaemia is not completely gone or it returns I still have the option of a bone marrow transplant (although it will probably destroy my liver and will need a liver transplant too), I could also go for immunotherapy, which has shown very good results with my type of leukaemia but, as far as I know, only one hospital in Europe has the equipment necessary to do it. Worst case... well, we'll see, but even then I have 2-3 options that don't involve being a husk full of morphine until the lack of oxygen in blood kills me.
[2] And that's why there's a team of psychologists with specific oncology training in my hospital, as well as religious support for the people that want it.
I gave it an extra thought and, for me, it may also be the system that's at fault. When he died they (the hospital) made me gather at least 5 liters of blood donated (friends, family etc) otherwise they won't help him. I also had to buy even the syringes and other super-basic stuff because "they were out". I probably lost my trust in the medical system we have here and I'm simply horrified at the idea of having to rely on it.
Do you mind if I ask what country was this in? It might be because I'm specially sensitive, but any system that allows that to happen to terminal patients and their families is definitely broken.
There are many avenues of research to achieve radical life extension, and it's a worthy thing to pursue.
While there are several contributing factors, like an activist reading of the Hippocratic Oath and fear for malpractice claims against the caregivers, this reckoning is consistent with the value system of many societies that assumes that one's informed choices must always tilt towards their continued life, and any feelings to the contrary are morally corrupt or simply misinformed, and therefore don't confer valid consent.
It's impossible to separate analyses of one's own medical death without considering wishes of one's death in the general case. Modern societies tend to make discussing death taboo, not just because it's an uncomfortable topic to grapple with, but also because people who can control the terms of their own exit have an opportunity to do great harm in ways that can't be disincentivized by punishment. It's no accident that religions attempt to rectify this loophole by ensuring that mortal deeds will determine one's fate after death.
Sometimes we can do something about it, sometimes we can't. Death can, in some cases, be quick and painless and in others slow and painful. How an individual handles this is very much up to that individual's internal being. What doesn't help is other people acting and living their lives in such a manner that brings hopelessness to the individual affected.
The medical fraternity is one group that regularly hides death from themselves and the patients and their families. Yet they will also regularly kill those who they feel have nothing left to live for and without regard to those individuals themselves.
When I was at university all those decades ago, the medical students of the time had courses in handling death - how to deal with death themselves and how to deal with patients who are dying and how to deal with families so affected.
It didn't seem to help those medical students.
My own wife has survived four different kinds of cancers. The treatments she has undergone over the years has adversely affected her body and she suffers much now from those treatments from the past. We have been blessed that we are together and that we have seen and are seeing our children grow and our grandchildren grow.
Just by living, each of us will face both good and bad. How we live each day is predicated on what gives us hope and what we see for the future. If there is no hope then death is a dark time ahead.
For me and mine, death, when it comes, will be a doorway into a better, greater future in the glorious presence of my God and Saviour. Till that time, we are here to live as examples to those around us with hope, joy and love.