That man was my hero. If I achieve a fraction of what he accomplished in his life, I will be incredibly proud.
Against all odds, he lived a full and amazing life. It somehow feels even more painful to lose a man who cheated death. It just gives you that feeling that they can somehow live forever, until the moment when the illusion is shattered.
And underneath it all is that unshakable feeling. Memento mori. Slowly my childhood heroes will drift away until there's none left. Then it will be my turn to drift away.
I miss him already. The world is always going to be a little sadder without him. Though, maybe I can still make it to his party.
A RECEPTION FOR TIME TRAVELLERS
Hosted by
PROFESSOR STEPHEN HAWKING
To be held in the past, at
THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Gonville & Caius College, Trinity Street, Cambridge
Location: 52˚ 12' 21" N, 0˚ 7' 4.7" E
12:00 UT 28 JUNE 2009
NO RSVP REQUIRED
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee." -John Donne
I'll miss him and his wonderful stories of the cosmos.
I've been long familiar with that poem, but for the first time today I realize that its connected to our nature in how we're brought into the world. The long succession of mother and fathers springing forth new life. No human has ever just sprung up independent from prior human life or some lesser organism.
“We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.” - Alan Watts, I highly recommend his talks
It was both Professor Hawking and Carl Sagan that tought me how brief and unlikely our lives truly are. It was their cosmic perspective that helped me end my fear of death. While we want more time and see the death of others as tragic, I do feel less afraid of that time coming knowing how fortunate I have been to live.
I do not fear non-existence. For most of the history of the universe, I did not exist. I have considerable experience with that. Dying appears to be unpleasant, though.
In the context of your existing self, non-existing before and after existing are quite different thoughts.
The first one is like you don’t remember it, like you don’t remember a lot in your life that you know happened. With the second one you’ll never have the experience of feeling you don’t remember it and you know that.
It’s akin to the difference between one day you realising you forgot most of your life, and you now discovering you have Alzheimer’s and will never again hold a moment in memory. To your present self the former is not scary, but the latter is.
> For most of the history of the universe, I did not exist. I have considerable experience with that.
On the contrary, you have zero experience with not existing because experience implies an impression was made, even if you don’t consciously realise it. Not existing has made (and will make) no difference to you whatsoever, and as such provides no experience, preparation, or comfort.
It is the thought of not existing that makes a difference. It won’t by the time I don’t exist, but it does now.
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As a side note, if someone can recommend some good philosophy books on this, I’d appreciate it. I thought the branch that studies it might’ve been ontology, but I’ve read a bit of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and realised what he’s talking about it not exactly what I’m looking for.
I have a lecture to recommend: Shelly Kagan on Death by Yale. It's amazing and probably the most important course for anyone willing to open up to ideas around the notion of self and existence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2J7wSuFRl8&list=PLEA18FAF1A...
For most of the universe’s history you did exist, but were dead, scattered into atoms all across space.
The thing is, after a mere billions of years, you managed to consolidate into a form and became alive. Not a bad deal.
But to be dead, is to wait a trillion years for something to happen, only for it to turn out at the end you have to wait a trillion years more, and then you have to continue this forever.
Are we talking about atoms when we are talking about ourselves? I don't think so. I am not the same collection of atoms from moment to moment. There may not be an atom in my entire body that is original to my body; and there are vastly more atoms in my body now than then. When I say "me" I don't really mean my body or even my brain, even if that's where "me" is. We are really talking about our consciousness.
It's been awhile since I read it, but ... In The Zen of Physics, David J. Darling argues that if some other collection of atoms has a consciousness like our own, that is no different than ourselves. (His idea of consciousness is something like patterns in the brain, which is distinct, if reliant, from a collection of atoms.) We would have no memory of our past experiences, but in a real sense we would be alive again. His arguments are a bit more elegant than I have presented here. And there is some question to whether an identical consciousness with different memories is really you or me, but it would mean that waiting for trillions of years isn't necessarily the case.
This, of course, assumes that consciousness is an emergent phenomena. It is possible that consciousness is not emergent from brain processes, but is a fundamental property of the universe that the brain has somehow harnessed because it is an evolutionary advantage. (Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life by Evan Harris Walker is a fun read on this idea.) In which case, in some form you would exist as long as the universe exists, and always have.
As an aside, for those without consciousness (i.e. the dead and the unborn) time does not exist, so both "to wait" and "forever" are impossible. :)
> Darling argues that if some other collection of atoms has a consciousness like our own, that is no different than ourselves.
So if I cloned you, you would fully consider the other clone as "yourself" and "me"? I doubt it. The metaphysics are really complex here. A better attempt (if any can be made) is that the 'self' is both an evolving bodily mass AND an evolving sense of memories and perceptions. Ultimately there's good rational that self/me is just a non-real tool that allows you to operate in the world. You can not 'not believe' in self as you're human brain requires it, and animals do just fine without thinking of self (driven by nature). A better strategy is to minimize the view of self in order to reduce confusions caused by 'staring too intently in the mirror', but yet it's also useful to evaluate oneself as a separate actor.
Also I think you can have Consciousness without having a notion of defined self though, like a collective consciousness or a dolphin/octopus/crow form of awareness.
Regarding your first paragraph, I don't think that necessarily implies consciousness as an additional thing (not that consciousness doesn't require some explanation that is not forthcoming). You could be talking about a configuration of matter. Not an exact configuration, but one that would be recognizable to a powerful pattern matcher.
This is a common sentiment that fails to take into account the fact that, once you DO exist, you have a desire to continue existing which you did not have prior to your existence.
I would like to live indefinitely, but I do not want to. The cost to human society and our natural resources of a species of immortals is too much.
I want human society to include births, children, growing up, dating, marriage and raising families. I want my children and our species generally to have a dynamic, continuously renewing culture. I just don’t see how those things are compatible with immortality. Just don’t see how I can weigh personal immortality against the lives of perhaps millions of people that could live in my place, choose myself over them and maintain any sort of moral credibility.
If you're immortal, then the "climb on a starship for 1000 years" deal starts looking a lot better. That would open up a lot of new resources to turn in to living people with lives to experience.
(P.S. we're not anywhere near close to using our current resources completely or efficiently, so please stick around and help us get a little closer!)
Your starship would have to be something similar to Rama[1] for me to even consider it. A thousand years on anything similar to an upscaled contemporary spacecraft sounds like torture.
Our existing lifespans are arbitrary. They are largely based on the length of time needed to procreate and ensure a successful subsequent generation or two; and on our ability to overcome that limitation. Saying, "I would not take immortality treatments if they were available" is different from "I will not accept medical help for my heart condition" only by a matter of scale. Having more humans on the planet and for longer does come with challenges, including resource usage issues, but it also comes with the tools to conquer those challenges and other benefits besides.
The cost of mortality is having Albert Einstein around for a meager 76 years, instead of hundreds or thousands. Multiplied by all the other great minds our species has produced, this is an incredible cost that, in my opinion, vastly outweighs your assumptions about the cost of immortality.
In my opinion, culture can only be threatened by homogeneity, but even print, radio, television, film, and internet haven't managed to kill it. Immortality will necessitate and possibly facilitate cultural change. First, because our culture will have to adapt to accepting immortality. Second, because immortal beings will likely become bored. We really have no indication that culture will stagnate or die. I suspect it will slow, but I suspect most things will slow when we are no longer so bound by time. And, due to resource issues, immortality will likely require (and possibly result in) a great diaspora of humanity. More humans, living in more places, having more experiences, and being more separated, means a more diverse culture, even if a lot of those humans are the same humans.
Finally, immortal humans will likely be far better caretakers of resources. They will have personal incentives to make sure there are enough resources, that those resources are renewed, and that they are used in a way that preserves the planet. Humans have a very difficult time even conceptualizing what the world may be like for their great-great-grandchildren (and modifying their behavior accordingly), but they understand fear for their personal safety far better.
If Einstein lived forever and society reorganized around sustaining the elderly instead of having children, there would be no Hawking.
That’s the point—there are dozens of Einsteins born every year, and growing up as children amidst the new theories actually makes them stronger than 130 year old Einstein would be.
If you are really concerned about Einstein’s immortal embodiment, you would see that he is alive, and he is 10 years old and he lives in an abusive household in a bad school district. Go find him (her?) and get her into a good physics classroom and make sure she has a safe place to eat dinner and do her homework.
Keeping Hawking alive is both harder and less valuable.
"When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it... Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?"
— Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Creeping Man
None of that precludes the case in which you’re the one immortal in existence, and you are immortal by chance and not choice[1]. And you could live in a way that has zero impact on the natural resources of the planet[2], or even a positive one.
Right now the only thing that somewhat limits the accumulation of wealth by the wealthiest in our society is that they eventually die. Even if they pass it on to their offspring, those offspring are often ill-equipped to run their parent's business empire. Eventually the dynastic wealth fades away and others can take their place. If people could live forever there would be no limits on how much wealth individuals could concentrate in their hands. It would be like the meths in Altered Carbon. I don't want to live in a world where Jeff Bezos possesses more wealth than the bottom 90% of the planet.
Our laws and economic system currently lead to extreme inequality. That would have to seriously change to allow for immortality.
Ultimately, we should just have a redistributive, progressive wealth tax with a basic income and optional state provision of staples like Healthcare. It's the only longterm stable system that sets incentives correctly. We should also completely ban negative things that cause feedback loops, like high net worth individuals subverting the political process via money.
But if Steve Jobs clone 2.0 is 400 years old and still turning over his $200b at 10% per year, and 9% of that is getting redistributed while the average person is generating 1% then that's still ultimately better for humanity. The reason it needs to be a progressive wealth tax is to limit power accumulation.
That is part of the solution, but you're dreaming if you think you can tax people at 90% and expect them to continue to produce. I've packed up and relocated for less. I've also turned down work that I otherwise would have accepted, just because I know the government will take half. There would have been no Steve Jobs (at least not in the US) at 90% marginal tax rates.
And we need better international coordination. In this future scenario the super rich that take their marbles and go home will be banned from travelling into the countries that co-operate. The super rich act like they gain nothing of value from our social safety nets, but they do. Happy liberal cities cost money. I don't want a world where the Koch Brothers can leisurely enjoy a city like Toronto, Paris, or Tokyo without contributing a dime to the others around them that made them rich.
The other huge check on older wealthy players is “the world moves on”. Often the latter phase of their life they are collecting rent on outdated business models. That is profitable for many years, but not forever. Later generations often switch to a forward thinking competitor.
Combined with cognitive decline, that makes it hard for 150 year old tycoons to grow new revenue...
Although under capitalism (property law) rent-based revenues will typically grow large scale holdings even without smart development.
Sure, but you have to balance the potential bad with the fact that humans have an inborn drive to continue existing, and that death has profoundly negative effects that induce unnecessary suffering. If Jeff Bezos was your son and he was afflicted with a terminal disease, you'd have a very different outlook on his potential death, no matter what views you held at a high level societal perspective.
Against all odds, he lived a full and amazing life. It somehow feels even more painful to lose a man who cheated death. It just gives you that feeling that they can somehow live forever, until the moment when the illusion is shattered.
And underneath it all is that unshakable feeling. Memento mori. Slowly my childhood heroes will drift away until there's none left. Then it will be my turn to drift away.
I miss him already. The world is always going to be a little sadder without him. Though, maybe I can still make it to his party.