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ozlikethewizard 2 days ago

Would people want this? Imagine waking up to a world where 200 years has passed, everyone you knew is dead, everything you knew is history.

thesmtsolver2 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Why do you assume that everyone you know will be dead? Won't some of them also be preserved.

As for "everything you knew is history", who wouldn't want to witness and be a part of a new world?

kxrm 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> who wouldn't want to witness and be a part of a new world?

Me?

This view is grounded in the assumption that the future will be better than today. There is no guarantee of that. This is, in my opinion, the same flaw in the thought process of wanting to live forever. The assumption being that, this "new world" is a better place than where you are now. That it is compatible with you as you are. That you will never grow tired of existing.

I know for a fact that I will grow tired of existence. Why would I want to continue it? The bar is very high for me to want to continue to exist in a "new world". I would need guarantees that the world will be a better place where I can thrive in ways I can not in this one. That I will be accepted in this "new world".

Can anyone guarantee those things?

thesmtsolver2 a day ago | parent | next [-]

> Can anyone guarantee those things?

No one can guarantee those things.

No one can guarantee anything in this world.

You are free to choose non existence but others are equally free to be brave enough to wake up in a worse world.

They may even feel responsible enough to try and fix it rather than requiring a "guarantee".

> The assumption being that, this "new world" is a better place than where you are now.

No one is assuming that. At least, I am not assuming that. Even if the world gets worse, I think it is rational to want to live longer and try and fix that.

Even if it is provably 100% unfixable and worse, any existence is better than non existence (certain forms of Hindu/Buddhist meditation teach you how to get into a state where that is obvious).

KronisLV a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> This view is grounded in the assumption that the future will be better than today. There is no guarantee of that.

It could be better, it could be flawed in the same ways, it could be flawed but in different ways, or it could be worse altogether. Compare our current lives with someone a century ago. Two centuries. A millenia. Plus hey if you wake up and the oceans have boiled off, there's solutions to your continued existence then.

> I know for a fact that I will grow tired of existence.

I think that's the main part - ceasing to exist should be a choice. It wasn't one to be brought into this world, but inhabiting it and going out of it should be done on one's own terms and when having lived as good of a long life as one might want to. For some people that will be close to a century. For others that might be a thousand years. Who knows, for some it might be a million years.

If this is all thought experiments, why not? At that point, why even care about waking up in a capitalist dystopian hellhole? Might take a few centuries to overthrow them but it's not like that sort of life is the end point of humanity. And if it is, at least you'd know that for sure. Or maybe it's nuclear winter. Or something closer to a utopia, or at least something where everyone's basic needs are more or less met. Asking for guarantees doesn't work either way.

simonask 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can recommend the comic “Transmetropolitan” by Warren Ellis, which deals with this and many other questions.

You have to imagine what it would be like for someone who lived in 1826 too wake up today, in a world where nothing they know is relevant, they have no connections, no idea what to do with any of it. Historians might want to interview you, or the first couple of people like you, but then what?

You will be an audience member to a show you don’t understand, until you die.

thesmtsolver2 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

If a large number of people get reanimated, I don't think this will be their fate.

I can imagine "educators" who can get them up speed. In a future where people get reanimated, I would think this shouldn't be a problem long term.

Any existence may be better than non existence.

graypegg a day ago | parent [-]

Retraining people once they're alive again not only requires logisitics and hiring N-centuries from now, but also requires that anyone really cares. You could imagine a world where 100s of people are being reanimated at once, but I don't think the economics would ever let that event happen.

Once this passes through a few generations of people responsible for tending to the needs of rich people's frozen brains, the empathy and money will be gone. Imagine inheriting a business funded from people wanting to skip over the entirety of your lifetime because they assume your time is too boring for them. Plus, your impact on that business will be null. There is nothing you can do except keep it going and get more rich people's brains in there. The only "innovation" that's going to drive business is bringing someone back to life... which for a large span of brain custodians, will only be possible AFTER their death. Maybe you need to model it after a religion; humanity has kept stuff going for long spans of time under that framing... but are you still just a servant to these ancient people who you have not met, and will actually NEVER meet since you'll die first... having spent precious time in your life taking care of them? Seems like an uninspiring religion.

Or... you do some fraud, which is much easier. They're already functionally dead, and you presumably have access to a lot of their money. Money that is worth more in your lifetime, than in their future.

People have historically cared very little about the personal feelings of the pharoah as they dust off his bones and take his nice things. Doesn't even need that long. Guess what, T+200 years, the brains are getting dumped in a river.

thebruce87m a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You will be an audience member to a show you don’t understand, until you die.

I mean - I barely understand what I’m seeing in the world now. Maybe I can look back on now and understand it with the benefit of unclassified files and whatnot?

abecode a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Fall, Or Dodge in Hell (Neil Stephenson) and The Waves (Ken Liu) are two other good stories about brain scanning and transhumanism. The first one is a ridiculously long novel about a future where the cloud is increasingly used for uploading souls of scanned brains, and the second one is a short story where people on a spaceship eventually evolve into noncorporal beings.

janwirth 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I just got an app idea

windowliker 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even worse, imagine waking up in a world where 200 years have gone by and nothing has changed, everyone is still here that you knew in your 'first' life. All the self-serving bosses, all the mendacious politicians, all the mediocre entertainers. Like a groundhog day from hell, forever.

bluefirebrand a day ago | parent [-]

The beauty of groundhog day is what we can accomplish when we have unlimited time and no real responsibilities

People overemphasize the "time loop trap" piece but seem to overlook the fact that he eventually uses the time to better himself in almost every way. He's a much better, much more enriched and happy person by the end.

windowliker a day ago | parent [-]

Groundhog day was perhaps the wrong phrase to use. In any case I don't believe people would spontaneously attempt meaningful self-improvement with any seriousness if there was no expected finality to our existence. Don't forget, Bill Murray's character has to kill himself numerous times before he makes any kind of worthwhile progress.

bluefirebrand a day ago | parent [-]

Another way of looking at it is that Bill Murray's character learns over and over that there are no consequences to failure.

The biggest thing holding people back imo is fear of failure, fear of consequences.

If your dream is starting a business but if it fails you'll be broke, it's understandable if you're hesitant

Fear of failure cripples people because setbacks are so costly. Many people never attempt anything because they are afraid they will fail. Or more accurately because they cannot afford to fail

windowliker a day ago | parent [-]

It's nice that a fictional character in a fictional scenario could come to such an understanding, but in real life there absolutely are consequences to failure, in a multitude of ways.

If you mean it in the sense that 'ultimately, nothing really matters', then the subtext to that is that nothing ultimately matters because we all die in the end. Which would be completely negated by immortality.

7oi 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or imagine waking up in a world where “ownership” of your mind has exchanged hands as the company who started this has gone through “structural changes” etc and you’ll basically be commandeered to be the brain of someones coffee machine or something for an eternity.

Or, as in the Bobiverse books, the brain of a space probe, but I have a bleaker view of the future than that…

joshstrange 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

More time to pursue hobbies and see the literal future? Uh yeah. Especially if friends/family also opt in.

615341652341 2 days ago | parent [-]

Make sure to read those terms and conditions!

semitones 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fry found a way to make it work

SmirkingRevenge a day ago | parent | next [-]

Just beware of the suicide booths

ranger_danger 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's dolomite, baby

2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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bluefirebrand a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've thought about this a bunch

I don't necessarily want to live forever. But I am very curious about Humanity's ultimate fate. I want to see how things play out

I want to know if there is life out in the universe, if humanity ever meets other intelligent life, or even if we ever meaningfully leave Earth

I don't know. I love the good in humanity, I hope we eventually wind up more good than bad, and I just want to see.

Edit: Also, if we ever actually build a society that is a lot more meaningfully ethical and good than our current society, maybe I would want to live forever in it, or at least a very long time. Maybe it would just be nice to have the choice of when I go

tasn 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just buy the family pack and get your wife and kids on it too.

As for traveling to the future: that sounds like fun!

cdrnsf 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I imagine there's plenty of appeal among the zero introspection set.

colechristensen 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Futurama and the Bobiverse series investigate this pretty well.

Same question as if you'd like to drop everything and create a new life on the other side of the world, not for everyone.

ranger_danger 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I quite enjoyed the original run of the docuseries "Futurama" on this concept.

alex_suzuki 2 days ago | parent [-]

Remember to have a little something parked on your savings account. Compounding interest works in your favour over a few centuries.

2 days ago | parent [-]
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asah 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

see Altered Carbon (netflix), amazing story.

dfxm12 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm infinitely curious, so it's almost a perk that everything I knew would be history, implying there's a ton of stuff to learn/catch up on.

I've dealt with loss. It sucks, but it's part of being alive (I say with just a hint of irony).

I do recognize that not everyone feels this way about this topic though. That's ok.

jlarocco 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, count me out. I don't even like how the world's played out in the 40 years I've been here. Imagine waking up in 200 years and finding out 90% of the world is still poor, we can't feed everybody, the rich still get to do whatever they want, we're still warring for no good reason, etc.

colechristensen 2 days ago | parent [-]

So... same as the whole of human history? You're upset that your generation isn't going to fix all of the problems of civilization that have existed forever?

dexwiz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This assumes you wake up and are given liberties. There are much worse fates. Waking up and owing your life to the company forever is pretty awful.

Worse even is never truly waking up but instead being replicated and turned into the brain for a servitor. If you believe the Roko Worshippers, you might be woken up just to be tortured.