Huh? Does the ability to create, to love, to explore, to enjoy, to succeed, to fail, to learn and so on somehow lose its zest if one is unable to turn into inert matter that can do none of these things? I really don't see how. -- Samantha Atkins "Don't judge me so harshly, Mr. Sable. If there is a God, then He has passed a death sentence on every human being from the moment of conception. I am but a talented amateur." -- Conrad Bland - Michael Resnick, _Walpurgisnacht_, p. 140. I decline to accept the end of man. -William Faulkner "I'd like to see a world where people lived long enough to grow up." "Maybe people are right to cry at funerals. Maybe they're not just being inconsistent; maybe they're really losing something precious forever." "Life is better than death. Don't you wonder if you're on the wrong side?" "Why should happiness ever end? Why should love ever die?" Eliezer S. Yudkowsky Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you drunk your fill? -- Lady Deirdre Skye "Conversations with Planet", Epilogue There are 100 billion neurons in a human brain. 100 billion candles. Death blows them out. -- MUSE We know this much Death is an evil; we have the gods' word for it; they too would die if death were a good thing --Sappho O LIVING always--always dying! O the burials of me, past and present! O me, while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever! O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not--I am content;) O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at, where I cast them! To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind! -- Walt Whitman There are 100 billion neurons in a human brain. 100 billion candles. Death blows them out. MUSE "The individual uniqueness of each and every H2O molecule can best be preserved by cryonic suspension." --Jim We've never been anything but (biological) machines from day one, and it gives me the creeps that I go around all day without a backup. Lee Corbin Entropy is a *through* little hussie. She'll have us all *on our backs* in the long run. - Dekko the Mad Cyborg, Zot Our children's children may know cancer only as a constellation in the night sky. Clinton >Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 20:09:30 -0800 >From: Nicq MacDonald >Subject: Re: Reason +/-Faith > >What is the creation impulse without the destructive urge? What is life >without death? What is a beginning without an ending? I see that the Great Myth is being propogated again: the lie that because we see these dichotomies that they are necessary -- and not merely necessary but also good. What is the creative impulse with the destructive urge? It is the creative impulse. What is life without death? It is life. What is a beginning without an ending. It is a beginning. To demand that every thesis must meet its antithesis is the sort of statement that sounds philosophically deep but which, really, is nothing more than a profound failure of the imagination. -- "Andrew Lias" So long as any amount shall remain unpaid under this note, the Borrower covenants and promises to that Bank that the borrower will not permit or suffer to exist any of the following conditions: death of the borrower. -- American Security Bank loan agreement Live fast, freeze young, and leave a reanimatible corpse. Robert Bradbury I think the whole concept of "death" needs to be examined in more detail so we put the "cessation" of a personal "will-force" in the middle of a range of states that includes day-dreaming, meditating, sleep-dreaming, undreaming sleep, unconscious, comatose, cryonically suspended, recently dead and biochemically active, dead and disassembled (DnD) with offspring, DnD with no offspring, DnD with memories in books, films, photographs or other human memories, DnD with or without a "legacy", uploaded, downloaded with excess capacity backed up or suspended, downloaded with excess capacity deleted, uplifted, downlifted, self-will suspended, self-will deleted, self-will edited, self-will merged, etc. All of these have interesting aspects that make them appealing or unappealing depending on personal preferences. I envision a lot of situations where some people would prefer the old/safe DnD to the roller-coaster ride of some of the options we have coming down the road! Robert Bradbury I believe the first immortals are already walking the planet. Brian D Williams A vivid example of this is cryonics. A technology which has a good chance of lengthing the lives of most people who now "die" by orders of magnitudes is taken up by only a few hundred. What makes those people different is mainly their "humanity". Yes, these people tend to know science better than average, but millions of others know science much better. The few hundred cryonics customers, in contrast, seem to have taken the science seriously enough to let it join with their soul. They love life strongly enough to face their deepest fears head on. Robin Hanson Dead people don't suffer but they don't enjoy life much. To be frozen or not to be - that is the question. The Keynsian slogan, "In the long run, we're all dead," has, for some, been mutated into "In the long run, we'll all be immortal." --Tim May "Kevan, you shouldn't feel too distressed. Five million years is fifty times the length of human history so far -"

"Maybe ... But I have kids. I hope to have descendants still alive in five million years. Damn it, I hope to be sentinent still myself. Why not? It's only five megayears; we're out of the Dark Ages now, Lieserl." Stephen Baxter, Ring Är inte livet hundra gånger för kort för att ha tråkigt? --- Friedrich Nietzsche Human lifespan has risen 30 years this century People around the world are living almost 30 years longer now than at the start of the century, mainly due to the successful fight against infectious diseases, the director of the United Nations Population Division said Thursday. The average global life expectancy is now around 80, Joseph Chamie said. In the developing world, life expectancy has more than doubled this century to about 70. "Over the 20th century a silent and wonderful revolution has been taking place all over the world," Chamie said from a health symposium in Brussels. -excerpt from InfoBeat 21Nov. 1997 era vulgaris "This occupation with ideas of immortality is for people of rank, and especially for ladies who have nothing to do. But a man of real worth who has something to do here, and must toil and struggle to produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and is active and useful in this." Goethe Anders Sandberg: > kristen brennan writes: > > > "The thing about immortality is, you've got to remember how bored you've > > been up until now, and imagine that extending forever." > > > > - Grant Morrison [quoted from memory, so probably not verbatim] > > Wow! I want to become immortal NOW! :-) "The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes Frank Lloyd Wright Why can't one have the maturity, experience, wisdom, etc. and still have a 21 year old body to make use of it with? Frank Glover Cryonics: hacking death "One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die." - John Donne, Holy Sonnet 10 If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything. Cryono ergo ego - I am frozen, therefore I will be Art Quaife People are dying healthier now. "After all, we're all human." - Picard "Speak for yourself, sir. I plan to live forever!" - Riker Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. -Henry Van Dyke **** What is the point of life if it ends in death? **** John de Rivaz To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings. - Clifton Fadiman Fear of death is always at bottom a fear of potential rebirth. If you're going to be stuck inside a human-capacity body or mind, a 10,000-year lifespan is a strange thing to ask for. It would be like playing a tape loop forever. There's just not enough depth in humans to take advantage of 10,000 years. If you really want to live forever, you have to be growing. But if you become twice the person you are now, intellectually and emotionally, would you still be the same person? If you became a million or a billion times bigger than you are now, that new creature would bear about as much resemblance to you as you bear to your zygote. And, that's beginning to sound like death again. Vernor Vinge The fact: At very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely. The assumption: If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death. Hence we need only arrange to have our bodies, after we die, stored in suitable freezers against the time when science may be able to help us. No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us. Ettinger, the Prospect of Immortality Several other students volunteered opinions. At first, many seemed opposed to the notion of living forever. One said he had no desire to live in such a world. "What'll motivate people when their time on earth is no longer limited?" Pete thought it was a good point, although he was sure he would remain motivated and thoroughly ambitious no matter how long he could expect to live. Another said that immortality was "reserved for but one entity." Pete just rolled his eyes. "Besides," chimed in a pert blonde woman, "how would we control the population increase? If nobody ever died, there'd be too many people for this planet to support." "I see what you mean," said David West with a wry smile. "And what about all the out-of-work morticians, grave diggers, and obituary writers? Seriously, if halting--or better yet, reversing--the aging process were possible, we'd do it. We'd do it simply because we could, and because most of us would prefer not to die. The accompanying problems would simply need to be solved. It might be a scary concept, but dying is even scarier. I could get used to living forever and I'm sure everyone else in this room could, too." James L. Halperin Mortality is . . for mortals. I aspire for more than this. Aaron Kfir Det är bättre med ett långt och intensivt liv än ett kort och tråkigt. Felix Ego Accepting that identity is relative means two things: that immortality is impossible, and that immortality is inevitable. Eric Zetterbaum Planning to live for ever Living like death comes tomorrow MAX M Rasmussen