Can death ever be a good thing?

[°Leprechaun]

An alternate title for this thread would be what's wrong with wanting to live forever?
By live forever I am not talking about some afterlife, which is open to debate, but finding
a 'cure' for death so to speak. Most people just assume that eventually we will all 'die', but
literally death means becoming extinct, so a life after death is 'literally impossible'.
It is also literally impossible to live forever. It like saying you can memorize all the digits
of pi, that you can count to infinity and get to the highest number, or that you can know everything meaning know an infinite number of things at a point in time... of course all of
this is nonsense. So my point is that you are never going to meet a person who has 'lived forever'.
So, it is only logical in an erroneous sort of way to assume that since you have never met anyone
who has lived forever that we all must die. But if it sounds like nonsense to you that it is possible to put off death forever, at least why not put it off as long as possible. 100 years is not a long time to live and those who live 100 or less have a very short life.  to be continued....

[°Leprechaun]

part two... so I think that belief in a life after death is a very dangerous thing, because if it's true why fear death? But what if you are wrong and there's no life after death? Doesn't it make sense to want to extend life as long as possible, which is what some scientists are trying to do. and what about longevity escape velocity... is that possible?
This is all Paschal's wager turned upside down because he made the rather questionable assumption as do most people, that death is somehow inevitable. Words are inadequate way to express ideas, so if I am talking nonsense that's why.

[°Leprechaun]

and while we're at it I would like to know what people here think of near death experiences

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

No personal experience with near death experiences, tho I am highly skeptical.

As for death, it is a good thing.  If we lived forever, we'd quickly enough overpopulate the Earth (if we aren't there already there as far as sustainability is concerned).  If physical immortality ever did become possible, then we'd either have to severely limit the right to have children in a fashion that makes China's one-child policy look down right liberal, severely limit access to immortality, or make murder be a crime little worse than a traffic ticket as far as the law is concerned.

[°Leprechaun]

No personal experience with near death experiences, tho I am highly skeptical.

As for death, it is a good thing.  If we lived forever, we'd quickly enough overpopulate the Earth (if we aren't there already there as far as sustainability is concerned).  If physical immortality ever did become possible, then we'd either have to severely limit the right to have children in a fashion that makes China's one-child policy look down right liberal, severely limit access to immortality, or make murder be a crime little worse than a traffic ticket as far as the law is concerned.

so what about colonizing space?

[°Leprechaun]

the solution to overpopulation is to slow down ... we have to do that anyway...
homosexuality whether good or bad in a religious sense is part of the solution...
the more it is accepted the more the population rate slows down
hmmmm this raises a lot of interesting
questions
also if homosexuals are allowed to adopt perhaps there would be fewer abortions?
hope that doesn't offend anyone.. just a thought

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

so what about colonizing space?

Conceivably, it could put off the day of reckoning, but it couldn't prevent it from eventually coming.  No matter how good we got at space travel, we'd eventually reach a point where we couldn't get people off of Earth fast enough and we couldn't get them out of the solar system fast enough.

[afleitch]

'Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good an evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evil, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living and the dead no longer are – Epicurus'

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yes (sane). And it is so quite more often than most people think.

[The Mikado]

To quote a guy on Something Awful I saw discussing this (himself paraphrasing Harlan Ellison):

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There are things far, far, far worse than death.  Death is a null value, life can go positive or negative.

[Del Tachi]

Why would I ever want to live forever?

Life generally sucks and one day I'm sure I will want it to be over.  Existence is exhausting. 

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Of course.  Although I'm not against finding a way to cheat death and live forever.  Think about how much we will discover in the future.  The things we will see.  The quest for knowledge can be beyond painful, and I'm well aware of this.   Would it be horrible to live forever and see people I'm close to die, and live that over and over and over.  Yes.  But the way I see it; this will all be over at some point. 

I point to the opposite; I'm VERY afraid to die at a young age.  There is so much I've yet to experience. 

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Why in the world would I want longevity?  I simply want to make the most of the time I have in this world, because I know there's a much better life on the other side.

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