Immortality
March 30, 2006
It occurred to me the other day that I don’t really care about immortality. This may be a common theme to quite a few of my quirks.
Woody Allen is supposed to have said I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
It’s meaningless to ask the question whether I would choose to live forever if I had the option; a world where literally not dying was a possibility would be so different from this world that it’s impossible to guess who I’d be or predict what decisions I would make. But the point is that none of the usual consolations proposed impress me very much.
I’m not interested in an afterlife. I find it unlikely that personness, the soul if you don’t mind religious language, could persist after the death of the body. I’m prepared to be surprised, but it’s not a big factor in how I think or in my religious approach. I suppose this fits in with the cliched view of Judaism that Judaism focuses on this life (in contrast to Christianity which is perceived as being obsessed with reward and punishment after death). That’s an over-simplification of both religions, but the bit about focusing on this life is definitely true of my own religious approach.
I’m not too interested in the metaphorical kinds of immortality either. I’m not expecting that anything I have done or created will continue to have much impact after my death. I would hope that my friends will cherish good memories of me, but that’s only going to last for a short while after I die. As for my work, well, I’ve chosen a very fast-moving field where any contribution is likely to be ephemeral. OK, it’s part of the mythology of science that everything builds on what has gone before, but I suspect the extent that my experiments will matter in a hundred years will be so small that it might as well be random chance. It won’t measurably matter whether I existed or not. And that doesn’t bother me.
This possibly also explains why I’m not a creative person. I am quite resigned to the fact that my life will be irrelevant to the world within, at best, a few decades of my death. So I’m not attempting to make any art that might “live on” after I’m gone.
And I’m childfree, very. I have no interest in passing on my genes. I feel I’ll still be just as dead with descendents as without, so I might as well devote my life to my own interests, rather than nurturing random people who share some of my genes.
I’m not of course arguing that all creative people, or all parents, are trying to cheat death. But I wonder if I might take a different path through life if some shot at immortality were a motivation.
March 30, 2006 at 11:43 am
I have no belief whatsoever in an afterlife and no hangups about my life and work being forgotten and irrelevant a decade or a day after I die. But immortality… That’s another issue.
And no, it isn’t a fantasy. Keep fit, lay off the booze and fags, keep mentally active, and there’s a good chance we’ll be fully compos mentis fifty years from now. Anyone want to predict what medical and informational technologies will be available in 2056? I want to be as fit and active and intelligent and creative as I am now, a century from now: I reject the long slow decline from 30 onwards and I mean to defeat it. Or defer it for a very, very long time.
Should we all be ’slowing down a bit’ in twenty or thirty years? Today I see a select few people in their seventies breaking the athletics and cycling records of my youth: I’ve watched a man of 78 take the third Dan and stand calmly under the concerted attack of eight Dan-Grade Aikidokai and he’s still practicing, two years later. Ask what it’s like fencing with the ’seniors’…
These individuals are unusual, but not abnormal: anyone can put a bit of work in and, at the age of seventy, be fitter and faster than the vast majority of British twentysomethings. Right now we know that exercising the body slows the physical decline: does anyone care to predict how far this can go with in thirty, forty or fifty years of medical progress to assist your own efforts?
Mental decline is less well studied: we know that keeping the brain exercised defers senility - learning foreign languages being a particularly effective exercise - and the chemical mechanisms are being studied now. I give it twenty years before the ’secret’ is available as a course of injections: twenty years being an estimate, not a polite way of saying that, like fusion, it’s in some never-never land that we’ll only ever see in science fiction.
There remains the question: what will you do with those years?
A hint: if you seek new experiences and devote a part of your life to enriching the lives of the people around you in general - and one or two close friends in particular - you won’t want to stop. Not this century, anyway, and probably not the next.
PS: you know, I bet you are creative.
March 30, 2006 at 12:11 pm
(’s heard me say all this before…
But immortality… That’s another issue.
And no, it isn’t a fantasy. Keep fit, lay off the booze and fags, keep mentally active, and there’s a good chance we’ll be fully compos mentis fifty years from now. Anyone want to predict what medical and informational technologies will be available in 2056?
Hear hear! One thing reading Ken MacLeod’s The Stone Canal did for me is gave me belief we, of our generation, might actually make it to the deep life-extension tech. In chapter 2 we see the protagonists as students in a bar in 1970, discussing making it to such tech, and I thought “they’ll never make it; they were born too soon”—and yet they do. Now, that may not be achievable in that timescale, but we’ve got another twenty years plus on them, and it’s not impossible we might reach it ourselves. Well, either that or have to spend some time dead first (but even so, I reckon by the time we die (assuming we reach old age) cryogenics will be sufficiently further advanced that it will be possible to have faith corpsicles, at least recent ones, will be revivable in the future).
As for immortality, well, that’s a long time. Even when I was at my most determined to bust human limits, I never talked about living longer than five hundred years. It’s possible I may have found things to keep me interested in living longer beyond even that, and ways to transcend my limits, but for the time being five hundred years seems a reasonable time.
Since my late twenties, though, I’ve become more resigned to my own limits, and the slow ossification of personality that comes with increasing age (on which read Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire for some thoughts on to what extent breaking beyond this would leave you the same person), and am no longer certain I would want to live even that long.
There’s also a moral issue of population explosion: This planet’s already bursting at the seams with 6e9 people on it. Take away the population capping imposed by death, and things would get completely out of control. As I see it, there’s only three ways around this: start working now towards viable technologies for self-sustainable offworld colonisation (whether in orbit, on the Moon, other planets or wherever), start working now towards viable technologies for mind uploading (you can accommodate a million uploads with a hell of a lot less bodies than a million flesh bodies), or start working now towards viable cryopreservation, so that people can spend time dead until one of the first two possibilities has been achieved.
These individuals are unusual, but not abnormal: anyone can put a bit of work in and, at the age of seventy, be fitter and faster than the vast majority of British twentysomethings.
That said, a seventy year old is not, and cannot be mistaken for, a thirty year old. There is cumulative damage in all kinds of spheres, right down at the molecular level across the whole body. I’m a bit pessimistic about this; I reckon we’ll come up with preventative measures for this a long time before we come up with a cure: i.e. in fifty years twenty-somethings might have the prospect of living for five hundred years, but seventy-somethings will still only have a decade or two to look forward to.
Mental decline is less well studied: we know that keeping the brain exercised defers senility - learning foreign languages being a particularly effective exercise - and the chemical mechanisms are being studied now. I give it twenty years before the ’secret’ is available as a course of injections: twenty years being an estimate, not a polite way of saying that, like fusion, it’s in some never-never land that we’ll only ever see in science fiction.
There’s a paragraph in the mumbleth chapter of ’s Accelerando listing all the wonderful advances in technology that have been made by n decades in the future—being, in this Singularitarian future, more than the SF writers of a few decades ago would have imagined being possible for hundreds of years—but ending “Viable power from nuclear fusion is still, of course, fifty years away.” I found this hilarious.
March 30, 2006 at 12:16 pm
a world where literally not dying was a possibility would be so different from this world that it’s impossible to guess who I’d be or predict what decisions I would make.
But it’d be interesting to speculate about. :o) (ObSF: Daniel Keys Moran’s The Armageddon Blues, where one character really wants to die, but is incapable of it.)
As for my work, well, I’ve chosen a very fast-moving field where any contribution is likely to be ephemeral. OK, it’s part of the mythology of science that everything builds on what has gone before, but I suspect the extent that my experiments will matter in a hundred years will be so small that it might as well be random chance. It won’t measurably matter whether I existed or not. And that doesn’t bother me.
I don’t think that’s true. A drop in the ocean might only be a drop in the ocean, but you need the myriads of drops otherwise you won’t have an ocean. In that sense, a lifetime of work will be important, even though it be a drop in the ocean (though a handful of years in a field (such as my own Ph.D., before I dropped out of academia) will be extremely unlikely to count).
March 30, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Hmmm. I also don’t have any real desire for immortality - either for myself or for my memory, but I am both creative and want children. However, in both cases it’s because I (want to) enjoy the actual process and immediate rewards, rather than because either will ‘live on’ after I die. I don’t expect any of my creative work to outlast me significantly, and although I obviously wouldn’t want my children to die, I wouldn’t expect them to reproduce just to ‘continue the family line’ or whatever.
March 30, 2006 at 12:59 pm
“Viable power from nuclear fusion is still, of course, fifty years away.”
Yes, I remember reading that and chuckling.
A seventy year old is not, and cannot be mistaken for, a thirty year old.
Long before it’s poosible to be physically equivalent to a thirty-year old at the age of seventy, it’ll be possible to look like one. For all we might laugh at the ‘Bride of Wittgenstein’ and Joan Collins - when the facelift finally snaps her ears will go into orbit - the public failures of desperate rejuvenative plastic surgery conceal a great deal of progress in discreet skin work that succeeds in a less ambitious goal of taking five or ten years off your apparent age.
We’ll need to know a lot more about collagen renewal before fifteen or twenty years can be concealed, and stem cell technology and radical skin-replacement will probably be required to knock thirty years off your appearance. But there’s a massive demand for it and serious money is available for all and any research into cosmetic treatments.
I predict that it’ll be possible to make a sixty-year-old look thirty long before there’s a thirty-year extension on the active lifespan, because the skin is simpler than the brain and the musculoskeletal system and, most of all, because there’s so much more money being spent on cosmetics than genuine life-extension.
March 30, 2006 at 1:04 pm
There’s also a moral issue of population explosion: This planet’s already bursting at the seams with 6e9 people on it. Take away the population capping imposed by death, and things would get completely out of control. As I see it, there’s only three ways around this:…
In Oxfordshire, which doesn’t contain the extremes of human economic inequality, there is already a 15 year difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas of the county. We are already in a situation where society is struggling to pay for the health technology currently available to be made available to all. If dramatic life-extention tech becomes available there are going to be some serious ethical and economic problems deciding who gets it, probably way before the population boom from mass usage becomes an issue.
March 30, 2006 at 1:26 pm
I’m in with the immortal afterlife crowd, Roman Catholic Version *snigger* I find there’s not really a lot of point in me putting my own words in these discussions because invariably there’s been some Church Father who says it much better, with longer words (a favourite of mine!) and yet conciser.
I’m under no illusion that something I might write will be lauded after my death, but I don’t preclude the possibility either. God works through and in me, and uses me to touch other people: who’s to say that in 400 years’ time or something someone will stumble upon an old diary of mine and folks will come closer to God through my paltry scribblings? If so, then I rejoice that they have done so; if not, then that’s how it is.
Utlitmately it’s not about whether or not I exist for ever in the afterlife, nor even if my work should do so: I’m just a small (but important, yay!) part of the Body of Christ, and my part in the life of that Body will make sense only at The End, outside time, when The Big Picture can be seen. Until then I’m happy to chug on, aches and pains and all, in the faith and hope of a happy death and an even better Eternity.
On a totally different point…location whatsit? This some kind of new field we can fill in when making a post? Woah, the wonders of modern technology. This is why having up to speed people like you on my flist is an excellent thing - I don’t keep up with the latest LJ devs so I learn them from others
March 30, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Thank you. There are times when it feels like I’m the only one out here who feels this way–life is, we will live it and should live it well (for values of “well” that vary from one person to another), and that’s almost certainly all.
I do feel that living it well includes leaving the world (physical and social) in good shape for those who will come after us–I will die, but Earth has a long time ahead of it.
March 30, 2006 at 2:45 pm
And relating what redbird said to raising children, that is closer to my philosophy than anything, and leaving abit of myself to go on as a form of immortality? Not in there at all, except maybe as a negative.
There’s a lot more to the child bit of course. Most of mine was arrived at on the way, not planned; no birthcontrol being perfect, even for someone like me, who was considered close to unable to have children.
Once that did happen and the choice was made to go forward, so many things changed, that I look back on the other self, and well, very different, like you say about imagining.
It isn’t the shot at immortality, and I disagree with you on your impact on others which I believe will go forward in some way, but having children did inspire a fair amount of change for me. I think that was change by choice btw. I’ve seen enough different ways of parenthood to know the child bit involves that. As is influence of others, maybe not entirely; but there is choice in knowing people and engaging and what we take from that. For myself, there has been change, and I know that Ben has changed because of that also.
This is posted in haste. I am into work early and went to look at a friend’s pictures of the eclipse, and got distracted by your post.
March 30, 2006 at 2:59 pm
There remains the question: what will you do with those years?
I don’t believe for a moment that will get bored. I’m pretty sure I won’t.
March 30, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Hee…do you remember the time you said something along those lines at CCJ, and JK was utterly gobsmacked?
March 30, 2006 at 3:35 pm
I was going to tell you to talk to , cos he also believes in keeping himself in good shape in order to live to see the Singularity. But I see he got there faster!
I don’t entirely share your optimism, partly because I think medical tech gets into diminishing returns. If you consider human history, the maximum age humans reach hasn’t increased significantly in several thousand years. Sure, medicine means that a greater proportion of the population reach that upper limit, and often in better health. I can imagine a world where pretty much everybody has 90 years of good health, but a world in which anyone at all lives to 200 seems much less feasible. (I’d be delighted to be proved wrong, of course!)
My second reason for pessimism is sociological. I don’t honestly see society remaining stable enough for fifty years to support the kind of technological advantages you’re postulating. If my life is as comfortable in 2056 as it is now (or even as comfortable as the life of an 80-year-old now), if we’re not in a planetary war and haven’t depleted resources to the subsistence level by then, I shall be pleasantly surprised.
Exercise is good, I’m so completely not arguing with that. But it’s not magic, all the same. People can live entirely healthy lifestyles and still be run over by buses, or even get completely random diseases. Lifestyle is a factor, but it’s not the only factor, as I’m usre you’re aware. To claim that is exaggerated, and heads in the harmful direction of assuming that only bad people suffer.
You’re right, it is important to decide how best to use the time you have. That’s just as true if you expect to be dead by the time you’re fifty as if you hope to live several centuries! I don’t want to die, to leave my friends and stop having new experiences and learning stuff. But I don’t really see it as optional.
March 30, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Ooh, that reminds me that I need to reread The Stone Canal. I’m also reminded of various SF dystopias where rather than your proposed solutions of off-world colonization or mind-uploading, tech has been applied to increasing the carrying capacity of this planet. There’s one in particular, a short story, where the authorities come round to kill off the last domestic animals in the world because the resources needed for pets could be used to squeeze in another couple of humans among the tens of billions. (Can’t remember anything about it beyond that plot summary.)
I don’t have a problem with imagining ways to keep myself occupied and interested for several centuries. We should only have such problems! Perhaps I’m still enough younger than you to be foolishly optimistic, but I’m definitely not one of those people who would refuse serious life-extension if it were on offer!
March 30, 2006 at 3:49 pm
That’s a very good point, that cosmetic tech moves faster than medical, because it’s demand and market driven. This is why I get impatient with people who naively claim that medicine shouldn’t be mixed up with nasty filthy commercial concerns. I take your point also that it’s easier to look half your age than be so, but yeah.
March 30, 2006 at 3:53 pm
There’s a 15-year gap in life expectancy within Oxfordshire? That is truly shocking, and thanks for bringing that statistic to my attention. I’m enough of a capitalist that I wouldn’t want to deny life-extension to the lucky few just because it wasn’t available to everyone, but even so. I’m thinking that the gap you’re talking about is largely to do with long-term lifestyle effects, as opposed to poor people not having access to acute medical treatment, but that doesn’t make it any fairer, of course. Definitely food for thought.
March 30, 2006 at 3:57 pm
*smile* No, I definitely can’t imagine worrying that I might live too long to stay interested. Even an order of magnitude more would still feel like I don’t have enough time with my friends. But none of the proposed non omnis moriar alternatives solve that problem, which is why I don’t think they’re really worth having.
March 30, 2006 at 4:06 pm
It’s limitedly interesting to speculate about the effects of immortality; that’s something I enjoyed about Down and out in the Magic Kingdom, for example. But I still argue that it’s too fundamental a change in what it means to be human, possibly even in physical laws, for any such speculation to be productive in the way that a lot of good hard SF can be.
And don’t get me wrong, I do think my scientific work is important, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I just don’t think it will “live on” after I die, because I in fact doubt that what I’m doing now will be relevant even in ten years’ time. I completely agree about the myriads of drops model; that’s why לוא אלך is so meaningful to me as a motto [].
March 30, 2006 at 4:12 pm
That makes sense to me. It’s definitely possible to enjoy things for their benefits in the here and now, even if they happen to have the side effect of extending your influence beyond your death as far as that is possible. It does annoy me a bit when parents expect their adult kids to get married and reproduce so that they can have descendents, but it’s very embedded in the culture, and I can’t tell how I would feel in the unlikely event of finding myself in that situation.
March 30, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Do you think that your belief in a religious afterlife changes your attitude to these more temporal forms of immortality?
And yes, you can add your current location when you’re updating posts, and it’s a field like mood, music and tags. But watch out because whatever you type will automatically turn into a link to Google maps, which means that you need to choose quite carefully what text you put into that field.
March 30, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Mm. I like the way you phrase it. And yes, the fact I am resigned to my own future non-existence doesn’t excuse me from trying to preserve the Earth for the people who will be around then. Perhaps I should plant a tree or several, not because the tree will outlive me but simply because, as Honi the circle-drawer learnt, .
March 30, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Hm. I think so, yes, but I’d have to make a remark about your question, if I might: it’s not the case that I had an opinion on the possibility of either an afterlife and/or immortality in this world, and then a Cardinal came along, thwapped me upside the head, and told me to change my opinion. There isn’t that kind of dichotomy between what I think and what my religion dictates: I wouldn’t be much of a Catholic otherwise. Not that I’m much of one right now, mind you.
That I look for the eternal life after this one has passed isn’t to put this one down: this planet, galaxy, cosmos and all the dark matter in between is part of Creation and as such is breathtaking in its beauty. But this isn’t the be all and end all: the tiny particles speeding around an accelerator somewhere beneath Geneva, the furry lobsters at the bottom of the ocean, the classification of finite groups - yes, all this is admirable and exciting and awe-inspiring (depending on how verbose you are about scientific work), but they point beyond themselves to the God who created them.
As I understand things, the Sun has a limited life span. I’m not sure how feasible it would be to fit a pacemake-type thing to keep it going indefinitely, nor to actually build a warp core and populate some other planet either in this system or beyond. However dear and precious this present world is to us (and it damn well should be), it will pass, and we will be then in its perfection, its glory, in the company of the Brain behind it all.
Blabberblabberblabber.
Eh, direct Google linking hm? I’m not sure I’m too keen on that. Not that I have a problem with people knowing where I am, just that most people already do!
March 30, 2006 at 4:45 pm
This is a really interesting perspective, thank you. I’m still young enough that most of my peers don’t have children (yet), and it’s very different to plan whether you intend to have children, from actually being a parent. Of course it’s true that children influence their parents as well as the other way round.
As for my impact on the other people I interact with, well. I do agree that that influence will extend somewhat beyond my death. But after a while the effect becomes so dissipated that it gets lost in stochastic noise. Which isn’t immortality, it’s doubling the time when you matter at best.
March 30, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Ooh, yes, I do remember that discussion. I suppose the thing is, if you really believe in eternity, how can it be other than extremely important? But if you don’t believe in it, or only believe in it as a philosophical abstract, then it doesn’t really have much impact. (That’s why I think there is a huge flaw in Pascal’s silly old wager.)
When my ex gave up being Christian, his sister said to him, Which is the same kind of thing; obviously he didn’t believe that it would make an eternal difference whether he was Christian or not, otherwise he would in fact have continued being Christian.
March 30, 2006 at 5:00 pm
In Oxfordshire, which doesn’t contain the extremes of human economic inequality, there is already a 15 year difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas of the county.
Could you source that statistic for me please? The ONS doesn’t AFAIK produce life expectancy data at below Local Authority level* due to sample sizes and margins of error and a 15 year gap in life expectancy is massive.
* And won’t produce it for the Isles of Scilly or the City of London either…
March 30, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Of course it’s true that children influence their parents as well as the other way round.
Yes thank you. They influence directly also. Ben has two close friends he has known since they were about ten. They spend so much time with me, that they have become an extended family, and they don’t really see me in the negative ways that sometimes happen when people hit the teen years. There’s quite a bit of influence that comes from them, and also awareness of their lives that my parents never had with us.
As for my impact on the other people I interact with, well. I do agree that that influence will extend somewhat beyond my death. But after a while the effect becomes so dissipated that it gets lost in stochastic noise. Which isn’t immortality, it’s doubling the time when you matter at best.
I will think about this. I am not sure. When I talk to older people in the family, it isn’t just the physical traits or gifts for music or such that can be traced back. What about things like patterns of communication or family models; we’ve an awful lot of rebels or now you would call them draft dodgers.. Those aren’t direct and there are shifts too.
Some people I have known only in the last two years have influenced some strong changes for me. I have talked to ben quite a bit, not to require but he has picked up from me, and those things have stuck. He may be doing quite a bit of changing the next couple of years; but I’d speculate (and I know it is speculation) that some of those will stick. He already does plan to have a family some day. It is very possible that through me there are people that will influence him and his children and who knows? And these are not people like Michelangelo.
It is probably not the type of creation you are really referring to though. Thanks for the post. I will continue to think on this.
March 30, 2006 at 5:31 pm
It does seem rather humungous doesn’t it.
*goes to have a look*
There are no references as such on this document, just a statement that baselines are available…(its a document relating to local government targets, I’m not sure if its in the public domain or not, I think it must be or will be but er, I’m not 100% sure I should be quoting it now I’ve got into this…). It’s by ward. I’m guessing its local PCT data. I could further guess that the margins of error are indeed wide.
Since I’m not in a position to defend that one with raw data, I withdraw it.
I think the general argument still stands though. The NHS is in financial crisis and so far improvements in health care that have increased life expectancy have not had the effect of lessening the financial burden of healthcare on our society. I suppose the unlikely event of a cheap wonder drug that completely wiped out all age related conditions would be one thing, but an expensive cocktail of measures that merely stretched things out another 50 years would be another. It seems to me that the latter scenario is more likely but I may be mistaken.
March 30, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Er sorry, the above was me forgetting to log in.
March 30, 2006 at 6:19 pm
This is a bit of an odd argument; clearly, improvements in healthcare by definition don’t lessen the financial burden of healthcare. If you have no medicine, it doesn’t cost anything to treat people! And the more conditions are treatable, the more healthcare can potentially cost. But I think one should take into account the real financial burden of sickness. Improvements in healthcare mean a greater proportion of the potential workforce are actually productive, because they’re not either sick or looking after sick people. Or dead. I don’t know how it balances out, because there are also more old people who may need more care and are less financially productive.
That said, I do agree that any hypothetical cures for old age are likely to be expensive, at least initially. And it’s obvious to everyone that the NHS has financial difficulties. The system already seems to be moving, fairly quietly because it horrifies the public, towards prioritizing younger patients. And I can see that happening more, and perhaps even becoming palatable to some, if such a thing as were developed.
March 30, 2006 at 6:28 pm
Thanks for this expansion. I didn’t mean to imply that your religious thoughts and opinions are separate from your general thoughts; I agree that would not make sense. I really like what you’ve written here though, it’s a beautiful expression of some of your beliefs.
And yes, it’s not just people who are mortal, planets and stars and galaxies are too. The reason I think that immortality is too radical a change to speculate about very usefully is that it’s just part of the fundamental nature of everything (material, obviously not including God here) that it is impermanent. But hey, if I live long enough to see the sun explode, even that would be way beyond anything I have any sensible hope of.
March 30, 2006 at 6:29 pm
I have much the same outlook as you do. I have no belief in an afterlife, and think we should do the best we can with this one. I have no interest in immortality, and frankly, I’m horrified by people who believe that if they just do everything right–foods, exercise, etc.–they won’t die.
I do have children, but didn’t pass on my genes, by choice. I have children because I wanted to be a parent and because I thought my spouse and I could be good parents, not because I want to live on in them.
March 30, 2006 at 6:32 pm
I like that quote. I’m also deeply impressed that it only takes six characters to express itin Hebrew.
March 30, 2006 at 6:45 pm
These are fascinating thoughts, thank you again. I think the influence of a particular person goes wider and deeper than most people realize, definitely. I may be thinking on a longer scale than you in some ways. I know quite a few people who do want to be Michaelangelo, as it were, they want to create art that really resonates many centuries after they’re dead.
As for the children thing, it seems possible that generations you won’t meet will be influenced by you in some ways, just as Ben’s friends’ friends will be influenced by your influence on Ben even if they don’t meet you. But it seems like it’s a small effect among so many influences, like asking whether the flow of a river is influenced by a particular pebble. Of course it is, but it’s not how we normally think about influence. It seems difficult to deny that one has vastly more presence while alive than afterwards, and I’m not sure that the difference procreation or actual creation makes is that great.
March 30, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Er, no, sorry. I was alluding to the quote rather than actually writing it out in full. The six characters only say . Which still makes Hebrew a bit more concise than English, but that’s because Hebrew doesn’t bother with vowels, mostly. But I do like the quote, it’s from the Ethics of the Fathers in the Mishnah, probably dates from around the time of Jesus or a little later.
March 30, 2006 at 7:58 pm
There’s one in particular, a short story, where the authorities come round to kill off the last domestic animals in the world because the resources needed for pets could be used to squeeze in another couple of humans among the tens of billions. (Can’t remember anything about it beyond that plot summary.)
I’m familiar with the story, and have just spent quarter of an hour going up and down my reading list trying in vain to identify it.
March 30, 2006 at 8:09 pm
You also misspelled it horrendously. *ahem*לא עליך המלאכה לגמור, ולא אתה בן חורין ליבטל ממנה׃
Your לוא amused me; it’s how the copyists of the Qumran sect (who didn’t yet have the concept of the Scriptural text being fixed down to the last letter) spelled לא, to stop readers pronouncing it “lā”, as “not” was in their vernacular (Aramaic).
March 30, 2006 at 8:12 pm
You’re right. I really did. Which goes to show I should never ever ever try to spell anything in Hebrew without looking it up. *hug* Thank you for riffing some fun linguistics geekery off my inability to spell even the most basic words, though!
March 30, 2006 at 8:14 pm
And don’t get me wrong, I do think my scientific work is important, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I just don’t think it will “live on” after I die, because I in fact doubt that what I’m doing now will be relevant even in ten years’ time.
If it provides a basis in a few years time for further work, which goes on to provide a basis for still further work, and so on, your work is significant, even if it does become in no signficance of itself in a few years.
Of course, one could argue that if you hadn’t done it, someone else would, maybe a few years later, but why indulge in a pessimistic way of looking at it. The exponential increase in the rate of change of technology is driven by the population explosion, and hence there being more people who could do the work in each era than the last. If nothing else, your work counts in building up the numbers, i.e. even if your work does not have any lasting effect whatsoever, well, x% of all work doesn’t count, but (100-x)% of all work does, and (100-x) % of n + 1 researchers is likely to be a little bit higher than (100 - x)% of n.
March 30, 2006 at 8:20 pm
All this makes a lot of sense. People have been trying to attain immortality for all of human history, so an excessive faith in medical progress is probably no more surprising than an excessive faith in magic or religion or whatever.
I really like your comments about children and parenting. It strikes me that I can just about imagine myself changing my mind about adopting, in the way that I absolutely can’t imagine ever wanting to have biological children.
March 30, 2006 at 10:36 pm
But I see he got there faster!
That’s the singularity for you…
March 31, 2006 at 2:01 am
There may be quite a bit of variance in cost. I haven’t explored the written work but our ED (Excutive Director) went to a local symposium in which there were some comparisions drawn between publicly administered systemd in different countries, and also public and private in ours. I cannot validate the figures; but the range was large.
The symposium is a series proposing a test universal healthcare system for our state.
March 31, 2006 at 2:20 am
(smile) one of my gardening books says that one of the true tests of a gardener is planting trees. They were speaking to creating a future you’d never see, about caring and hope and responsibility, I believe. That last got me going as a practical (or maybe it is lazy) gardner because it really is hard to think that far in terms of space and size and effect.
One of the funny things about gardening is how often it gets used as a metaphor, and also, how many things about it can be taken and related to other parts of a person’s life. And it seems to attract a fair amount of writers. One of my favorites is Henry Mitchell who used to be a columnist for the Washington Post.
I don’t want to spam your thread here, so pulling in the bit from below. Thank you. I am enjoying the poking to think in this. It has been on my mind since read Collapse by Jared Diamond. This is a book I don’t not recommend; but, it did get me thinking about individual influence and groups and changes that go on beyond whether that is art or science or cultural, and I think it would be difficult to box those in as not affecting each other. I was already headed that way having read a book by Steven Pinker in which he proposed that peer group influence is actually slightly stronger than either genetics or family influence.
I apologize that I cannot make a good response on that without trying to pull together a lot of stuff that I really do not have the grey cells for. And the Pinker like my Brusts are up in the attic. And again, I know it wasn’t really what you were after in the post. But, thanks for the discussion.
March 31, 2006 at 2:24 am
I have already made a difference by living. So, I feel I have left my mark. It doesn’t matter if that mark gets forgotten; I still left it. It still happened. And it still exists. It exists in specific places and times. Nothing exists in all places and times, and I don’t give the future more weight than the present except for it being longer. But a 50 chunk period of the future is equally valuable as a 50 chunk period of my life.
March 31, 2006 at 2:25 am
This is a book I don’t not recommend
do not recommend. And I probably should clarify, I picked it up originally because his prior work Guns, Germs and Steel came highly recommended by several people I respect, for the Iceland chapter which I know a small amount about, so I was very curious. I was discouraged by his lack of research there. I didn’t go further than that chapter just to be clear but it made me question what he may have done with other areas I know less about. He did get me wondering again about what actually were the factors in Iceland’s success, and that was good.
March 31, 2006 at 10:40 am
I don’t know what it was called, but I’m pretty sure it was an Asimov.
March 31, 2006 at 5:45 pm
This is very likely, because I remember the story from a period when I was reading a lot of Asimov shorts.
March 31, 2006 at 5:45 pm
The furry shuttle icon is too cool!
March 31, 2006 at 5:52 pm
I don’t think we actually disagree here. I’m rather amused by your expressing the concept as an algebraic formula, but I do entirely agree with the underlying concept.
The thing is, I don’t think what you’re talking about is what people usually mean by achieving immortality through their work. It’s possible that I might be as famous as, say, Mendel, who is still talked about hundreds of years after his death. But it isn’t very likely, and the point is that I don’t care. If I did something that good I would enjoy it during my lifetime, but it wouldn’t make me feel any happier about dying.
And yeah, the thing with scientific creativity as opposed to the artistic kind is that there always is this assumption that someone else would probably have done the same thing at some point anyway. But I’m not sure how true that is, I do think individual researchers have an impact on the exact shape of scientific progress. My discoveries come from a mixture of something about me personally with the general (scientific) culture I’m part of, and I think something similar is true of, say, your stories. Maybe the proportions are different, but it’s hard to quantify.
March 31, 2006 at 5:54 pm
I really like that way of thinking. , of course not. Because that would be the definition of immortality. And I think you’re right; it doesn’t matter if my impact lasts only my lifetime, or even only part of my lifetime, or if it lasts a few hundred years; a few hundred years still isn’t forever. I hadn’t thought of the issue this way, but I think this does help to make sense of what I was saying in my post, thank you.
March 31, 2006 at 10:21 pm
This is one of those issues I spent a lot of time thinking about when I was younger, and finally resolved to the point where I was content.
March 31, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Uh… not anyone. You even emphasize anyone can do it.
Sure, people are not just living longer - they’re being healthier at older ages. But not everyone can reach that. Since you’ve got a chance, by all means go for it. But please try to remember that not everyone can. I just dislike being so excluded as to appear as if I didn’t exist.
My body started significant decline at age 23 and my brain at age 24. I can’t exercise and keep fit, because exercise makes me more ill and causes further decline to both. I can do the best with what is left, sure. But by no means will I be fit and healthy when I am in my 30s, much less in my 70s… if I get there. According to a little health quiz, it says were I 50, I’d be at a fairly increased risk for dying within 4 years, so I figure my odds of getting into my 70s and 80s aren’t that great.
And doctors are fun. They look at me and go, “hmmm, that’s odd” And sometimes they go, “So, did your retinologist say what may have caused it?” And I say, “Idiopathy” and they go “hmmm” or “oh”. Yes, medical advances may end up helping me in my lifetime, and that would be nice. (They already have which is why I have some vision in my right eye, even though it’s extremely poor.) But it’s going to take a while, and meanwhile I’ll be using a body that cannot do any aerobic exercise and cannot think clearly and is constantly screaming that it needs energy and air, which it’s probably not getting, doing who knows what damage throughout.
March 31, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Okay, looks like I’m going to be the first massively selfish, egotistic, vain person to say it - I want kids that are genetically mine.
I think something weird happened in my genetics. I’ve been unusual at least since I was 2, and not all of that really makes sense as culture. I have fairly good evidence that it’s not just my own opinion that I am unusual, since pretty much everyone comments on it.
And I think it is good. I don’t think everyone should be like me, but I want a chance at whatever happened to make me becoming a part of the human race. I want it to have a chance of surviving and populating and mingling and affecting humanity.
And I want to reproduce with people I admire, so that their genes too become a part of the available gene pool. Sure, those genes are probably out there. I’m more likely to be an unusual combination of genes than a mutation. But by reproducing directly, I increase the odds of combinations like that coming up.
I don’t want exact copies of me. I want some of my most valuable traits to live on. And I really do think I have some very valuable traits to offer humanity. Ones I don’t see very much of. And ones I’ve had all of my life.
Yes, my genes have problems - migraines, predisposition to auto-immune disorders, bad vision, etc. But I’ll be mating only with people genetically fairly far from me, and my health problems are significantly easier to prevent from being massively bad things if you are aware of the predispositions. The worst of my problems had to be triggered. I think if I had it to do all over again, I probably could have prevented the worst of my problems. So, I want to pass on my genes. Because I’m an elitist and think mine are better than average. And I think some of them suck. But that’s what mixing genes is for, to help the better ones spread and the worse ones die out. But first you need a good concentration of the better genes, and I want to create that.
And no, I won’t pressure any children of mine to have children. It’s their choice. Although if enough of my genes do pass through; they’ll have to. We have a strong internal pressure to reproduce in my family. It must be hormonal. So, they’ll likely want to.
April 1, 2006 at 9:01 am
Oh, Leora. Thank you for posting this. I was well aware when I read ‘ geek credo that there are plenty of people on my friends list, let alone in the world in general, who are ill or disabled through no fault of theirs. It’s not a moral thing; I would venture that most people who are unhealthy are not unhealthy because they are lazy slobs who “can’t be bothered” to eat a decent diet and get enough exercise. I didn’t want to embarrass anyone, so I’m particularly glad that you’ve decided to speak up.
I suspect there’s an underlying, most likely unconscious, quasi-Christian morality going on in some of the beliefs expressed in this thread. It’s very comforting to believe that virtue is rewarded. (In this case, virtue consists of following medical advice as opposed to some arcane religious law, but I think it’s very much the same thing. It’s bad science and it’s bad religion, reducing either to magic, but it’s very prevalent.) The trouble is that people don’t think through the obvious corollary, which is that anyone who has troubles must have brought them on themselves. (OK, some people do think through the corollary and hold the belief anyway, because it’s too distressing to accept that sometimes random bad shit happens, and it might happen to you too, no matter how virtuous you are.)
It’s similar, I think, to the meme that comes up in discussions of rape. People really want to believe that if you don’t do hideously stupid things, like get off-your-face drunk with a crowd of frat boys, or wander down dark alleys in the middle of the night wearing sexy clothes, you won’t get raped. And they often don’t realize that that stance is not only factually wrong, but implies that people who do get raped must have done something hideously stupid.
I would wish you courage, except you obviously have it already.
April 1, 2006 at 9:14 am
Eek, I didn’t mean to imply that anyone who wants biological children is a ! I know there are quite a few people on my flist who do want to engender [that's not quite the word, but I mean, have children who carry their genes] children or already have chosen to do so, just none of them have commented here. I’m childfree, but I’m not a child hater or one of those awful people who make their identity about despising “breeders”. Ick.
And I really like your reasoning. You’re weird, so you want to see some of that weirdness passed on and in new combinations. (It helps that you’re arguing from a position of understanding how genetics works, which sadly isn’t something that is common knowledge.) Also a lot of chronically ill people say they don’t want to inflict their horrible genes on offspring, so I’m glad to see you don’t feel that way.
April 1, 2006 at 9:37 am
You didn’t say or imply it - I said it, but only about myself. It is a very vain stance to say my genes are so special that they need to be passed on. But I do think that. I don’t think it’ll be a disaster if they aren’t, but I think it’d be good if they are. I don’t think I’m the only one this is true of. But generally, I want people with good traits who want to have children to have children. I do care about population control, but I don’t think the solution is for all of the responsible people to stop having children, because that leads to the people who do have children and thus create the next generation being the least responsible people, which is bad - moreso from a nurture standpoint than a nature one, as I think most of the issues will be environmental, but it doesn’t matter, because it’ll be bad either way. I also strongly want anyone who doesn’t want to have children to not have children, because I think people who don’t want to have kids are less likely to make good parents.
But yeah, I want kids of my own (although I’d also strongly consider adopting if I thought there were any way I could do so, since I don’t fit the profile of what an adoptive parent should be like, and if I had the resources to raise more children). And I think I want them for very egotistical reasons. But at least I’m honest about it.
April 6, 2006 at 8:44 am
Further to which, as I was reminded by ’s latest post, last week in shul I saw an instance of לוא sitting there in the sedra, taunting the reader (well this one at least), but completely ignored by the commentaries; right there in the Torah!