Topic: On the meaning of life and the long-term merits of technologic improvement (Read 23746 times)

I can safely say that a psychopass like embedded chip technology will solve this mistaken identity crime committed bias. Imagine saving the lives of the innocents and the man without guilt by just reading one's part memory and neural hue outside its privacy ofcourse. I mean the part when people do crime will be detected while the other part is safe and not scanned for privacy.

I think that sometimes even the most convenient and advance technologic improvements can be added to the enduring issues list, though. humanity should be more reasonable towards technologies anyway

If you like the terror of death management theory, check any lecture from Sheldon Solomon. He explains all details like if everyone on the audience was a complete moron and so his interventions are understandable even if you sleep on the middle.

Actually, he will make you laugh a lot.

One of the most ridiculous points some men try to make about death is that, if a man shouldn't show that he fears death, he should also pretend that he doesn't care for death, are willing to accept it naturally and with a sincere smile on his face or at least indifference.

One pathetic example is this interview of Neil DeGrasse Tyson by Larry King: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiI-34PNsXY

Larry King is the courageous and honest one about the subject. Tyson the ridiculous liar.

Even David Sinclair, who spent years researching antiaging agents and takes them, lies about the subject and says he doesn't mind to die: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4

It's like saying he doesn't mind losing all the people he loves and even himself. He fears that a storm can bring down his house or that a stock-market crash takes his money, but if something takes everything from him, that is alright. Doesn't bother him at all. It's as natural as a storm. Carry on. No problem.

We are a part of the Universe who gained consciousness. So, the Universe gained consciousness of it self thanks to us.

On the meaning on life, I have to remind everyone that the answer to the question about life, the universe and everything is 42.
As stated by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

I wrote about meaning, but a lack of meaning isn't necessarily bad.

A life without meaning is a life without any goal constraints, where one can do anything one pleases with no wasting of time perception.

Time you loved to waste wasn't wasted.

A life without meaning is a life where we aren't slaves of any goal that we have to reach at any cost: is a life of freedom.

The irony is that meaning is an antropomorphism, it doesn't really exist out of our human models. This is even more depressing, actually.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/worlds-first-human-head-transplant-successfully-carried-132553590.html

Take this news with some caution, this hasn't yet been confirmed by any scientific article.

On the issue of symbolic immortality, let me quote this words of Miguel de Unamuno - Tragic Sense of Life:


“When doubts invade us and cloud our faith in the immortality of the
soul, a vigorous and painful impulse is given to the anxiety to
perpetuate our name and fame, to grasp at least a shadow of immortality.
And hence this tremendous struggle to singularize ourselves, to survive
in some way in the memory of others and of posterity.”

“We are more grateful to him who
congratulates us on the skill with which we defend a cause than we are
to him who recognizes the truth or the goodness of the cause itself.”

If a man despises the applause of the
crowd of to-day, it is because he seeks to survive in renewed minorities
for generations. (…) He wishes to prolong himself in time rather than in space. (…) those who win the
hearts of the elect will long be the objects of a fervent worship in
some shrine, small and secluded no doubt, but capable of preserving them
from the flood of oblivion. (…) he sacrifices infinitude to eternity.

Neither is this wish to leave a name pride, but terror of
extinction. We aim at being all because in that we see the only means of
escaping from being nothing. We wish to save our memory--at any rate,
our memory. How long will it last? At most as long as the human race
lasts.”

If the quantum fields that created the Bing Bang and our Universe are eternal and Bing Bangs will keep bursting forever (see https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.17423455), then, soon or later (very later), there will be a Universe exactly like ours, with an Earth exactly like this, with exactly the same history, up to everyone of us.

And, following the rule that says that everything possible will necessarily happen, we'll just need to wait enough time, this will keep happening forever.

We'll be mortals, but will keep borning again on other Universes and Earths exactly like ours.

But, probably, we'll have to wait for trillions of years between each "reincarnation".

And we won't ever remember that we lived before.

The another "We" will be us, since it will have to be an exact copy to be us. And we are just exact copies of ourselves, since our bodies (all its atoms) are changed more or less on one or two years (see https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/if-98-of-the-atoms-in-our-body-are-replaced-in-just-1-year-what-are-we-1432165).

It seems Modern Cosmology is saying "reincarnation" on an identical body can happen.

Of course, these are just theories. We have no evidence of a multiverse or that there are and will be forever new Big Bangs.

But the mere possibility that we are mortal, but eternal, has philosophical consequences.

If we are eternal, looking for meaning by trying to obtain symbolical immortality (by our deeds or kids/genes: see the OP) is less important.

No God didn't create anything. Man when something creates, he controls it. The people of God no longer controls. Or you want to say that God is for war? And if the God does not control man at least his equal.

This Space X post deserved an autonomous thread.

Space X and the prospects of Mars colonization.

The goal of 1 million inhabitants on Mars is unfeasible. With the Mars Colonial Transporter, at 100 passengers per flight, this would require 10,000 flights only to transport the people.

But the material support is about 10 times more demanding. So, as Elon Musk recognizes, the system would require 110,000 flights (see https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation; see his recent presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10gECHeMSds).

Even at one flight a day, it would take 301 years. And to be able to make a flight a day, taking in account that the voyage to go and return would take much more than 1 year (during times when Mars is more far away, it would be much longer), he would need 425 reusable spacecrafts. That is beyond the normal resources of any company or country.

To finance the passengers flights, he would need to find 1 million people willing to pay  200,000 USDs to go live permanently on hell. Only the poor would be ready to try their luck, looking for well paid jobs on hell. But they won't have 200,000 USDs.

Musk might find 1 million people willing to go and work there for very good jobs, but someone else would have to pay for the trip.

Selling tourism trips won't pay the voyages either. I doubt he will be able to find 20 people willing to pay 1 million bucks to pay the ticket of the other 80 for at least 14 months to go and return to hell, especially after the trip became more common.

It wouldn't be like a month on the Moon or on a tourist space station. With time to wait for the shortest return, it would be about spending more than two years on a living hell.

I don’t see many people eager to go live on Antarctica, the most similar place on Earth.

Therefore, unless there are on Mars very rich minerals, or other very valuable resources, that would pay for the trips (people and resources going to Mars and minerals coming back to Earth), with current technology of space flight, Mars will be dependent on Earth, with a few thousand or, probably, hundreds, of inhabitants.

We'll be a two planets species, but the second planet will end badly if the first planet ends badly too. Only with new technology on flight and energy, Mars will be able to be independent.
Even at 24 flights a year, 110,000 flights would take 4583 years.

The goal of making humankind a dual planet species is very worthy from the perspective of ensuring that we can endure millions of years more.

But normal people, who care first about how to pay their bills, just do what is practical to this goal and hope for the best. They won't ruin their life to go to Mars and ensure some of us will survive on the remote case that a catastrophe strikes Earth.

If massive colonization of Mars isn't economically feasible, it won't happen.

It will be fantastic to humankind in terms of pride and self-esteem to go to Mars and build a permanent station there for investigation and some scarce tourism, but we won't have more than that until we find economic reason to do more.

If Space X is able to send humans to Mars sooner than NASA, even if with NASA cooperation (if NASA figures out that Musk is really going to make it, they will jump on board), Musk will have his deserved place in History, side by side with Von Braun and Korolev (forget about Armstrong, beside courage, he had little merit).

Personally, I think that before God created the universe, He created an empty space for it that was filled with nothing. Jesus said that with God nothing is impossible, and that is why the creation came into being.


No not really. Jesus speaking, John 10:27-30:God has the method for retrieving any knowledge that He wants. However, He doesn't keep all knowledge sitting right in front of His face all the time, just as Jesus set aside a great portion of His power as God when He came to be born of a woman.

When you search the New Testament, you will find places that say that we have free will, and places that express that our faith is held by God and places that say that God hardens the hearts of unbelievers into their faith attitude. Put these things together, and you will start to understand the marvelous thing that God has done in giving us our touch of free will, and yet holding even that in place in us because our weakness is so great that we couldn't do even that little thing alone.


Again, it is God who works with our free will to allow us to have faith in Him. He says that we have free will. But He says that He hardens those whom He will harden.


Not at all. Consider yourself. Perhaps you haven't ridden bicycle in 40 years. But before that you rode it almost everyday. Did you forget how to ride bicycle? Of course not. But you don't think about it, maybe, for years at a time. God has the ability to hide things from Himself.


Well, free will has to do with free thinking. What does that have to do with removing my post?


Everyone makes mistakes - you, me, the churches. Yet we are all forgiven, even though we die in some of those mistakes, if we believe in the salvation of Jesus.


Now what are you going on about? You need to get into the Bible a little more, and allow the Holy Spirit to work understanding in your mind.



Now you are simply joking around.

I bet you took that idea of limited free will out of nothing.

Actually, you are risking your "eternal soul".

By stating that we have limited free will about our faith you are implying god doesn't know what we are going to do about believing him or not.

Because if he knew we were going to believe him or not, we wouldn't have free will on this subject. We would be determined on our actions.

So, you are saying god isn't omniscient. He doesn't know everything.

It might be wise to remove your post, because it's evidence that you are a free thinker.

On other words: that you are an heretic that will (according to main churches) burn in hell.

Of course, god knows (according to you, almost) everything, so he already knows you are a heretic and, therefore, you are already so very much nailed...

Perhaps, if you repent, remove your post and pray 100 our fathers he will forgive you.

Free will in mankind is free only in one little area. And it is only partially free in this area. This area has to do with the strength of faith that a person has in God and the salvation He provides.

God looks at this free will in every person, and examines how the person uses it. Then He goes back to the Beginning of the universe, and tweaks cause and effect in everything, to match changes in the little piece of free will faith in God or not, that each person uses, so that results of that free will are effected in everything.

Mankind totally, completely and entirely underestimates the strength and control and understanding that God has and uses in all things.

Free will is incompatible with the omniscience of god.

If he knows the future, he knows what we are going to do and, therefore, everything we do is already determined.

Determined by god, since he created (allegedly) us exactly as we are and determined to do what he knew we would do.

But you DO have a choice to repent and follow God, right now. So it is you who are guilty if you won't change.


God gave Hitler and his parents and those who worked with him the choice to be on God's side or against him, but just like you they made the wrong choice. They don't have a choice any longer, but you still do.


God gave the ability to choose, and mankind chose... this way or that. Now that you understand this, are you going to continue to make the wrong choice?



God sent Jesus, the Son of God, as God and man, to take the punishment for all the bad things mankind did. Jesus, the God/man, did this when He died on the cross.

In other words, the only reason God was guilty, was that He took on the guilt when He was in the form of Jesus... in the form of both God and man. Being God, after He paid for the wrongs of mankind, He went the next step. What is the next step? The next step is this.

God is creating a New Universe for people who decide to be on His side to be moved into. After He moves them there, He will destroy this universe along with all the people who are against Him, in the smelting pot of the Lake of Fire. Once this universe is destroyed, it will not be remembered or brought to mind, because even the history of it, and the time of it will be made to be completely nonexistent.

Blame God in your own mind if you like. But He is showing you how you and mankind in general are the ones to be blamed... and how He is erasing all the evil completely in such a way that it will never have been... by removing even all of the dimensions of the universe when He destroys it all in the Lake of Fire.

Your choice is yours. God is holding it open for you... except, of course, if you have died before you have a chance to read this.

   Since god (allegedly) created all of us, knowing very well what we would do and believe (the good book say he is omniscient, knows everything: Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"), he created us as we are.

   When god (allegedly) created humankind, he already knew who would be the ancestors of Hitler and knew that Hitler would born on 20 April 1889 and do all the things he did.

   Any insignificant change on the current of events would avoid the existence of Hitler (a few seconds could be the difference that would allow a brother to be born created by a different spermatozoid and not Hitler).

   But god decided to create his ancestors exactly the way that allowed Hitler to be born.

   So in the end, god planed and created Hitler with full conscience about whom he was creating (see also Marshall Brain, http://godisimaginary.com/i6.htm).

   He is guilty for everything Hitler did as an individual is guilty for creating a chain of events with the clear conscience that those events will necessarily provoke a catastrophe or even any damage.

God gave us what we needed to make technology, we decided to make weapons out of the materials God gave us.

You can't always blame God for the choices of man.

God gave us noses, but some use it to sniff cocaine. Is that God's fault?





What Satan gives man appears to be good but it's rotten at its core.

If you want to kill a rat, you get a nice piece of steak and sprinkle a tiny amount of rat poison on it, isn't that so?



God tries to save us from ourselves the same way you would save your toddler from hurting himself.

God is far more intelligent than we are, creation attests to that.

Actually, Bakunin, writing about the tree of knowledge, makes satan the hero and god the villain.

Satan (assuming the form of the talking snake) is the one that tries to teach humans, giving us access to knowledge.

God is the one that tries to keep us ignorant and expels us from paradise for becaming what we are, sapiens.

Hahaha. I agree with this. Whenever good thing happen theist people say "it's the work of god" but when there's horrible event happened people says "That's the work of Satan" like they never knew all things is because of God's divine plan.

The fate of the Universe

 I already posted about the beginning of the Universe and wrote also on its end. Let me add something more on it (it’s not my field).


The consensus about the fate of the Universe is moving into the Big Rip or the Big Chill. And that is good, since the Big Crunch would be the worst of the scenarios.

The precise numbers change from author to author, but the numbers about the composition of the Universe are more or less around these:

Normal stuff: 4.9% (the numbers go around 4.6 and 4.9%: mostly, 4%, are hydrogen and helium; with stars amounting to about 0.5% and neutrinos for approximately 0.3%).

Dark matter: 25% (the estimations oscillate between 22% and 27%).

Dark energy: 70% (the opinions swing between 66% and 73%).

See, accessible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe#Contents https://www.spacetelescope.org/science/composition_of_universe/ http://space.about.com/od/astronomybasics/a/Composition-Of-The-Universe.htm

This composition changed during the life of the Universe. It seems that dark energy has been gaining preponderance.

Clearly, now it is this energy that is controlling the Universe.

Basically, the specialists only know well regular matter. They know little about dark matter and know almost nothing about dark energy.

It’s known that dark matter responds to gravity and constitutes the back bones of the Universe, around which galaxies are formed (with a strong help from black holes, since every galaxy seem to have one on its centre).

So, dark matter is what keeps galaxies united.

However, what is controlling things now is dark energy and it has the contrary effect. This energy is pulling apart galaxies.

It seems that some time ago the velocity of the expansion of the Universe was decreasing.

But, currently, the Universe is expanding faster, because of the increase of dark energy.

Therefore, once, the Universe was dominated by dark matter, but now is controlled by dark energy.

The issue is still debated (it depends on the intensivity of dark energy, on the reason for its increase and its rate and possible limit), but now specialists are saying that the galaxies will expand faster and faster.

Some controversial calculations point out for 22 thousand millions years from now as the date of the Big Rip.

In due time, if humankind is still here, our descendents will only see the stars of our galaxy, Milky Way, on the night sky. All the other galaxies will be out of sight.

Then, at about 60 millions before the Big Rip, even our Milky Way will be ripped apart. All solar systems would follow the same path a few months before the final Rip.

On that time, our Solar System won’t probably be here.

Our Sun will start expanding and destroy all life on Earth on one or two thousand million years and will explode on about five thousand million years.

But these are not the only problems, even if the Solar Systems could resist the growing speed of expansion, it’s also confirmed that the Universe is dying.

The number of stars created has been diminishing. One day, the Universe will be a dark place, because, one by one, stars will die and less and less ones will be created.

So, what can kill us first? The Big Rip, caused by the speed of expansion of the Universe, or will it be the Big Chill, provoked by the slow death of the Universe?

From a natural perspective, one or both of these situations seem inevitable.

But no need to feel gloomy about this.

A touch of human magic might be possible.

If we won’t screw up and end destroying ourselves, we know for sure that we shall be very far from this planet and solar system long before the end of the Sun.

And, if we accept the theory of the Multiverse (saying that there are other universes besides this one) we might also find a way out of this Universe long before he fails us.

Michio Kaku argues that it's (theoretically) possible to create a wormhole to another universe.

Nothing like keep hoping for some meaning by dreaming we “can” endure forever (we won’t, because forever never ends).

It was a contractual thing. God gave us freedom in the Garden. We made a deal with the serpent. Of course, the serpent couldn't fulfill his part of the deal. But as long as we don't know that...

The second thing was that God had said that the day that we eat of the fruit, we will die. God in mercy commuted the sentence to a lot longer, because in the form of God and man, Jesus came. Jesus didn't sin, thereby upholding the length of days to the new amounts He gives us.

Jesus was a trust Person in the Garden. God trusted that this new form - the God/man - would uphold godliness when He came. And Jesus did it. So, the authority was given to Jesus, and Jesus commuted the sentence.

Of course, we made the nasty things, but he made the good ones... the usual "peculiar" logic...

Actually, it seems it was the serpent that gave us the ability to develop technology (at least, that is what the "good book" says: the story of the tree of knowledge and the talking snake...) and we were expelled from paradise because of that.

Perhaps He did. I don't know.

He gave us the ability to make technical advancements. He also maintained much of the freedom for us that He always had for us. We made the nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

I think we have all technologic improvement because people are never comfortable with what they have right now,
they target is to get something better,to improve every day,to just get better,richer or more popular.
People are greedy,you cannot change human minds.

Therefore, God gave us also nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

The only reason that we have technological improvements is because God felt sorry for us. Entropy is advancing so rapidly that people have neither the stamina or the intelligence to live a decent life without technology. God wasn't ready to bring the universe to an end in the judgement, yet, so He gave us technology to help us with our physical and intellectual weaknesses. But as usual, we reject giving Him the credit for this, just as people have been rejecting giving Him credit for the creation of the universe almost since the Beginning.

People are so depraved.

Good quote. The problem is this terminology isn't consensual and, especially, it's generally ignored. Even specialists publish papers saying that a species from who we most certainly descend, like the Homo Ergaster, are extinct (not pseudoextinct).

Anyway, I prefer outevolved than pesudoextinct.

I wrote evolution is gradual. Being slow or fast are relative concepts. Evolution can be pretty fast, but it's always gradual, because depends on the build up of multiple changes on at least a few generations.

Insular dwarfism is a well know case of fast evolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism). There are reported cases of major changes on just a few generations: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080310-palau-bones.html

That is made possible by epigenetics. Studies show that if children have a poor nutrition, the boys, when they start producing semen, activate a gene of lower height on their semen. The girls activate the same gene during their gestation, when they produce their ovules.

In short, if the parents had a poor alimentation during the gestation of their children, or, in the case of boys, they were poor nourished during its infancy, their grandchildren shall be of short height.

Actually, poor nutrition during gestation has several other serious consequences on the children and the grandchildren, affecting the lifespan of both generations.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-an-1836-famine-altered-the-genes-of-children-born-d-1200001177

"Transgenerational effects of prenatal exposure to the Dutch famine on neonatal adiposity and health in later life"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.2008.01822.x/abstract;jsessionid=66FCC69C3D042F971C65143D76B50FBC.f02t02
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I think where it is known that one species was replaced by a descendant species is called pseudoextinction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoextinction the wiki gives the example of dinosaur and bird species. Problem is it is not always easy to know that is what happened. Or if both descend from a common ancestor or something.


Evolution may not be always so slow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyletic_gradualism is more what you describe. Small changes accumulating over time. And where a species ends and a new starts is not well known. But there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_gradualism don't know if they are more accepted. But those theories say new species appear when drastic changes occur. When members of the species reach a new environment and quickly adapt to it. Or when catastrophes happen for example. This can end in more extinctions and not pseudoextinctions.

I agree that we are all created beings but still our creator, God, gave us freedom and free will to choose our life.
We can live in the harmony with creation and our creator, God, and such way of life will bring us happiness, joy and love, and eternal life in spiritual world.
If we choose not to live according to god's will, our way of life will not bring us happiness, joy and love and we will not have ternal life in spiritual world.

There isn't any sense on classifying as extinct a species (or subspecies) that evolved into another one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction).
Doesn't make sense because the species is still alive, since its descendants are alive.

Also doesn't make sense because since evolution is gradual, it's impossible to mark the exact point where the subspecies was converted into another one, so it's impossible to identify the last individual of it and, therefore, when "extinction" occurred (actually, even the classification of outevolved species is very problematic because of this; think on all the discussions on the classification of certain fossils as Homo Habilis, Homo Rudolfensis or as Australopithecus; as more fossils are found this problem will increase).

Moreover, extinction has terrible consequences that outevolution hasn't.

Being outevolved is inevitable and positive. It means that the species is alive and is adapting itself successfully to its environment.

In contrast, extinction is a catastrophe. It means that the species ended completely and lost any meaning to life (read the OP).

It's absurd to say that the Homo Erectus or the Homo Heidelbergensis are extinct (as we see on most papers on evolution or encyclopedias' articles, like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis or at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus), since we, under all accounts (in relation to the Homo Erectus, from his African subspecies, sometimes called Homo Ergaster), descend from them.

It would be preferable to qualify these species that evolved into us as outevolved or something similar. They were outevolved by their own descendants, us, but not extinct.

We could discuss if the Neanderthals can be qualified as extinct, since they didn't evolve into us, rather were absorbed by us, as dominant species, and left only tiny parts (2-4%) of their genes on each one of us that are not from African recent origin.

However, since those 2-4% are not identical, in reality taking in account all traces of their genes on us, it seems more than 20% of their genome is still alive (https://www.washington.edu/news/2014/01/29/neanderthal-lineages-excavated-from-modern-human-genomes/).

In any case, since we have their genes and, therefore, we are their descendants, even their absorption by us doesn't allow qualifying them as extinct. They are an absorbed species, not a extinct one.

There's 0% luck and 100% of God's creation to be alive.

Even 300 years from now, the technology that uploaded people into pcs will be obsolete and forgotten. But really, there is life after death...

   Enjoy your luck to be alive like if you had a chance on a trillion of quadrillions to be born, since your actual odds were even worst than these.

   Make the most of life like if it was a single drop of water tumbling on your thirsty lips on an infinite desert.

   Value every day of it as if you were on a death row, because you are; you just have a wonderful cell and no one told you yet when it's going to be your turn.

More news on fighting aging:

Scientists create mice with hyper-long telomeres without altering the genes
"The cells with hyper-long telomeres in these mice appear to be perfectly functional. When the tissues were analysed at various moments (0, 1, 6 and 12 months of life), these cells maintained the additional length scale (they shortened over time but at a normal rhythm), accumulated less DNA damage and had a greater capacity to repair any damage. In addition, the animals presented a lower tumour incidence than normal mice."
"The next step that the CNIO Telomeres and Telomerase Group is already working on will be to "generate a new species of mice in which the telomeres of all the cells are twice as long as those in normal mice", explain Blasco and Varela. "Then, we will be able to address some of the important questions that remain unanswered: would a mouse species with telomeres that are double in length live longer?"
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-06-scientists-mice-hyper-long-telomeres-genes.html

Less relevant:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v530/n7589/full/nature16932.html
Naturally occurring p16Ink4a-positive cells shorten healthy lifespan

No need to wait 500 years. Things might be going faster than what I expected on fighting aging.

This was old news, but a remarkable achieving:

On 2012, a telomerase genetic therapy was able to successful rejuvenate mice.

According to a scientific paper, the treatment "had remarkable beneficial effects on health and fitness, including insulin sensitivity, osteoporosis, neuromuscular coordination and several molecular biomarkers of aging. Importantly, telomerase-treated mice did not develop more cancer than their control littermates (...). Finally, telomerase-treated mice, both at 1-year and at 2-year of age, had an increase in median lifespan of 24 and 13%, respectively".
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22585399 (abstract)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3494070/ (full text)

But this is more recent:

On September, 2015, the CEO of a genetic company (well, she just used what was discovered by others) took the same therapy. She went to Colombia to escape American regulations.
She is still alive (https://www.facebook.com/BiovivaSciences) and is claiming that the telomeres of her white blood cells increased from 6.71kb on September 2015, before her took the therapy, to 7.33kb (http://bioviva-science.com/2016/04/22/promising-results-from-the-first-human-gene-therapy-against-aging/).

This allegation can be explained by different means:

a) She didn't take any gene therapy, her telomeres still have the same length (the increase is decisive to allow cell multiplication) and this is just a publicity scheme (trying to get some desperate customers).

b) She indeed took it, but the therapy is armless (and worthless) or, at least, armless on the short-term, and her telomeres still have the same length.

c) The increase on her telomeres is accurate (she claims she made an independent measure of her telomeres before taking the treatment), the treatment is safe and positive and things will move way faster than what was expected.

A reasonable account can be read here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542371/a-tale-of-do-it-yourself-gene-therapy/
Also http://www.geekwire.com/2016/bioviva-liz-parrish-reports-progress-controversial-gene-quest-reverse-aging/

I agree with you. I also think that in the future humans are capable to travel trough time. Maybe humans have some teleportation machines too that can be used in travelling from one country to another. 

Time will come human technology will cure aging and death. We think we are modern but we belong to the ancient. You don't see what human is capable to do. Give humanity another 100 to 500 years.

You mean god felt lonely and insecure and decided to create the universe and men in order to be adored?

So, besides being an entity with clear anger management problems (just see the punishments from Yahweh on the Old testament), god also has an inferiority complex? (the need to be worshiped)?

Look at what God said when He created the earth, etc. From the beginning of Genesis in the Bible:In other words, God looked at everything that He created and made, and He saw that it all was very good. God saw that it was all very good.

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God made man in his own image. From Genesis 1:26,27:
When we want to use software to make or download an .iso program, we say that we make an "image" of the program file on our computer. This image is not the fully operational end-program. Yet it has the potential to be, because it is an image of the fully operational end-program.

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Solomon, who was probably the wisest man ever, wrote in Proverbs 25:27:Some translations say "glory" rather than "honor."

This brings us to the point of why mankind exists.

God looked at his own honor and glory in the creation. Now, remember. Mankind was made in the image of God. This means that both man and God have some similarities, share some qualities. So, perhaps in some ways, if God had not made man, it would not have been honorable or glorious for Him to look at the creation that He made... to look at His own glory and honor.

What does man have to do with maintaining God's honor and glory in this? One of the major purposes of mankind is to praise, honor and glorify God for all the wonderful things He has done. Thus people, who are similar to God in some ways, use their God-likeness to uphold God's honor and glory. Yet, because it is God who made mankind, it is God upholding His own honor and glory in a wondrous, fabulous way... through mankind.

Then, when mankind turned away from the thing that we were supposed to be doing, God didn't destroy us. Rather, God sent the Savior, Jesus, so that mankind could be saved, when there was no apparent reason or even desire for saving mankind, but so that God's glory and honor could become even greater. Mankind now has even more reason to glorify God. Not only did God make man, but He saved man when man turned against God!

This whole creation is all about the honor and glory of God. And there is a whole lot of pleasure and joy right along with the honor and glory.

Did you see the "Up Like Trump" post here - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.15069587 ?  Seems that there are a lot of "me" people protesting against some of the things that Trump is suggesting.

The only time the meaning of life has any significance is when "we" willingly use the "me" to help the "we." And the "we" we help first is our family, and then our neighborhood, and then those far away.

If the media uses the word "we" as a human race thing, it really doesn't have any meaning, because nobody interacts with the whole human race. If you are trying to speak for the whole human race, go with "42" from Doug Adams's  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy:


EDIT: In the Wikipedia article(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy), Adams as noted as saying regarding "42"
What's interesting about this is, we live in a universe controlled by cause and effect. Pure random seems likely, but it has never been found. So, what caused Adams to select 42?

Questioning our fear (or, at least, a negative feeling about it) of death is like asking why we don't like to be dumped by a girlfriend (unless we are tired of her).

If one doesn't have negative feelings about death, this means one doesn't love life.

Someone can realize everything he wanted on life, but, if he still loves being alive, death will be a tragedy.

Someone that doesn't fear or dislikes death, as the end of his own life, is someone who loves nothing or anyone, not even himself.

No one likes unhappy endings. Therefore, all happy stories about life have to be relatively short ones.

Romances and princess tales always end on the marriage. But, actually, they don't end there, but on a funeral.

Theories, philosophy, religion and science all have one thing in common that makes solving the riddle of life impossible: they tackle the 'problem' as a group.
Death is an intimate affair. As a matter of fact it is the most intimate affair anyone will ever experience from their time on earth. When you're born you're physically linked to your mother but when you die you are completely alone.
No need for textbooks or professors here, the only question that can help each and everyone solve the age old riddle is: "Why do I fear death?" The answer to this intimate question is unique to each and everyone
Ultimately your death is the culmination of how you lived your life.

 feel that the issue of the meaning of life is analogous to the issue of the definition of chaos. As we know, there is no definition of chaos, because at the moment that someone formulates such definition, chaos ceases to be chaos. Similarly, at the moment that someone formulate the meaning of life (do not forget that it covers not only humans), it will become meaningless.
 

All that technological improvements mean is that somebody will be able to use technology to control someone else easier. Government will use technology to make government people rich at the expense of poor ignorant people who don't have technology.

One of the few pieces of technology that might help poor people from being plundered is a good gun in their hands.

Can the generations alive now really trust on science to postpone death for a long period?

Better don't hope too much.

The time of the simple scientific problems ended. Now, a genius working alone won't be able to do much, like in the past.

As humankind goes deeper and deeper, each scientific problem increases extraordinarily in complexity. Current times are times of big teams of scientists banging their minds for years trying to solve a problem.

Isn't just a question of money. Humankind has been burning billions on serious scientific issues for years (cancer, nuclear fusion, increasing the output of solar panels, understanding the human brain, aging, cryonics, etc.) with small results.

Other issues, only after decades of investigation are giving some results (AIDS, genetics, stem cells, space exploration, robotics, artificial intelligence).

Some went as far as saying we already are more or less at the top of scientific development (John Horgan, The Final Frontier: Are We Reaching the Limits of Science?: http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/cover; he is author of a famous book on the issue: The End of Science).

Others on more reasonable terms, taking in account the increasing on complexity, say we are risking reaching a stalemate on scientific development by 2050, unless we double or triple the financial and personal resources dedicated to investigation.

The so-called revolutionary nature of modern society because of scientific development as been exaggerated. Technological development had must more social consequences back on the XIX century.

All facts occurring on our life under light are reflected and "conserved" by photons (the basis of light). Many of those photons are reflected to space.
 
Our all life (even some occurring on the privacy of our homes, when there is light) might be out there on the universe.
For someone that loves History, the idea that all our History and pre-History is out there and "could be seen like a movie" is interesting.

Alpha Centauri is the closest star system (it has 3 stars) to Earth. It's at 4.37 light years (the light at 300,000 kms per second takes 4.37 years to reach it) from Earth.

Therefore, the light reflected by Earth that is reaching it now parted Earth more than 4 years ago. Any "intelligent species" on a planet there (there seems to at least one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri#Planets) would see Earth as it was 4 years ago. With a "powerful enough telescope", they could even see us.

Of course, they had to have a telescope working on completely different principles than, say, the projected James Webb Space Telescope, able to "pick" most of the stranded and relatively few photons reflected by Earth (being a planet, those photons are lost on the middle of the ones emitted by the Sun).

Someone on a planet 5000 light years away from Earth with the same "powerful enough telescope" could see and record all human history.

Since (as far as what modern Physics says) it's impossible to travel faster than light (and "wormholes" are still science fiction) we couldn't go there faster than light and "grab" those stranded photons. But as a science fiction possibility is an interesting idea, if indeed we could travel faster than light.

I confirmed that this idea was already an old idea:
https://www.quora.com/If-we-aimed-a-telescope-at-a-planet-that-was-light-years-away-and-it-hit-a-mirror-aimed-perfectly-at-Earth-could-we-see-into-our-past

Another possibility would be for the light reflected by Earth to be intercepted by a black hole on the right angle in order to be turned 180º (or on the necessary one) and sent back to the place Earth is now. That light could then be captured by our "powerful telescope":

See Holz and Wheeler, Retro-Machos: in the sky?, The Astrophysical Journal, 578:330–334, 2002 October (published at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/342463/pdf;jsessionid=64EA46FFE08D91BFA15CEF374C3F5F64.c5.iopscience.cld.iop.org

http://rein.pk/gravitational-lensing-to-observe-ancient-earth/ (still available at https://archive.is/MCgtn).

Specialist says that we will see first a head transplant to an artificial body than to another human body: http://www.livescience.com/50074-head-transplants-wont-happen.html

On the controversial neurosurgeon claiming he will do a head transplant to another human body before the end of 2017:
http://www.alphr.com/science/1001145/what-are-the-chances-of-a-human-head-transplant-working
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/science-or-science-fiction-how-an-italian-doctor-hopes-to-perform-first-human-head-transplant-a7007676.html
http://europe.newsweek.com/we-ready-human-head-transplant-423757

I wonder if saying we will all have to die, soon or later (including after using all the means science is expected to give us to postpone it) is being pessimistic...

you are completely right .. this post is very interesting but there is no need to be so pessimistic about future at all.. maybe,  science can find solution today's biggest problems in the future .. who knows ?

Since many of us live under the immortality delusion (death only happens to others), let me ruin your day once more and make you think again about death.

As Freud wrote "It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death; and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators. Hence ... at bottom no one believes in his own death, or ... that in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality "
(Sigmund Freud-Reflections on war and death (1915), Part II - Our Attitude Towards Death: https://archive.org/details/reflectionsonwar35875gut )

Death is just a return to our natural state, our only real "home", where we already spent an eternity, before being born: nothingness.

It's life that is extraordinary, not death/nothingness, which is a normal state.

As Freud on the same quoted book said in great terms: "Everyone owes nature a death and must expect to pay the debt".

But the idea of being forced to be again nothing for another eternity, after experiencing this fabulous life, is something so catastrophic, that one can't avoid a well known, but still pathetic (because pointless), overwhelming sentiment of imminent and irreversible loss.

Imagine what future generations would think about us if it were found a mean to avoid aging and our usual mortal diseases and people normally lived thousands of years.

They probably would say that we were people who lived their life like shooting stars, burning intensively and illuminating everything around for just an instant.

People, who faced with the most certain looming destiny, kept going unremittingly.

Who were able to leave their pre-historic caves, imagine and create deliberately the most beautiful, intelligent and admirable things known on the Universe and even create means to leave this planet and conquer the stars despite the conscience of their pending fate.

There is something glorious on being able to do all of this despite the conscience that our life is little more than a blink of an eye between two eternities of nothingness.

It's like the last and pointless charge of a doomed battalion.

Probably, this destiny was in many cases precisely an incentive to do all these things. But that doesn't diminish its merit, on the contrary.

Death makes any meaningful* life gloriously tragic. Not only because all these admirable things done are pointless to avert this fate, but also because it interrupts the creative process. Think about all the things that Da Vinci, Mozart or Einstein could have done more.

Don't think for a second that this text has any depressive objective or expresses any negative perspective on life. What makes the human condition tragic is precisely the wonderful nature of life, despite death.

Rather this text is praise to all the atheists that face their destiny openly, keep doing meaningful things and dare to be happy.

Don't criticize life, because the problem isn't life, but death. Being our life a wonderful "miracle", because of its improbability (a part of us had literally the run of his life to live, the spermatozoid, and won over millions of his brothers), not enjoying it is much more absurd than our destiny it self.

Yes, time flues unrelentingly fast. And, yes, we have a short life. But it isn't that short on comparative life terms. Even if you, fellow reader, are still a teen, think about your first memories: probably, it looks like if it was another life, because of how long ago it seems.

* In the sense of a life with positive consequences to others: see the OP.

The text was updated with some details and quotes.

The quest for "immortality" I write about on the OP is called by some authors as "symbolic immortality". The main creator of the concept was Robert Lifton, The Broken Connection - On Death and the Continuity of Life (1983).

One day, I will update the OP with quotes of this study and several others that elaborated on it.

I posted here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/if-98-of-the-atoms-in-our-body-are-replaced-in-just-1-year-what-are-we-1432165 a text about the issue of our identity as a specific pattern (DNA) of organization of atoms and if a replacement of our cells with an exact artificial copy would affect this identity.

The so-called theory of A Universe from nothing.

The main creationist argument is based on the point that since the universe is made of "physical stuff" (notion that comprehends not only particles, radiation and energy, but also their space-time structure of support) this stuff had to have an origin. God had to be it.

The theory that the Universe emerged from "nothing" was defended by Lawrence Krauss on his 2013 book A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing (you can watch here a presentation from him that is worthy watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwzbU0bGOdc).

Krauss argues that the difference between "nothing" and the everything we can watch now (planets, stars, galaxies, etc.) is much more thin than it was thought and that "physical stuff" can emerge from "nothing" because, inter alia, the quarks (particles that compose subatomic particles like protons and neutrons) almost have no mass and earn mass by the way they interact with other particles. Since nothing is unstable, soon or later, nothing will convert itself in something.

That means we are made of particles without almost mass composed mostly of nothing ("empty"/free space), as are all the rest of the "physical stuff".

But, as have been pointed out (David Albert, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html), the "nothing" from which the stuff emerges isn't really nothing, because it's made of quantum fields able to create virtual particles (particles and antiparticles that destroy each others in fractions of a second) and real particles.

On this aspect, and on some others about Philosophy, the reply from Krauss was a disaster (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/ "Well, yeah, I mean, look I was being provocative, as I tend to do every now and then in order to get people's attention"; see also http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.fr/2012/04/lawrence-krauss-another-physicist-with.html).

So, this theory still forces us to ask from where the quantum fields came and why they obey to some specific laws.

On the Laws, the criticism seems unwarranted. The real philosophic problem of the physical laws is the fine tuning character of some of them. A slight change in some variables and stars and galaxies would never form. This precision makes some wonder if it wasn't planned.

By asserting (like others have done) that there might exist a Multiverse (or a Universe with billions of inaccessible parts that follow different laws) with many other Universes that follow different laws, Krauss eliminates the fine tuning problem. We simple emerged on a random universe with laws that allowed for this to happen.

Claiming that even the Multiverse would have some basic laws that would be the base to the other specific physical laws of each Universe (again, David Albert) doesn't bring back the same problem, since those basic laws are not fine tuned to humans. They are compatible with billions of different Universes. They can just be a random reality.
 
But about the quantum fields, as the origin of "physical stuff", believers still can claim it was god that made them. So, the problem is far from solved.

The issue has been discussed on many places over the Internet and elsewhere:
https://philocosmology.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/an-explanation-from-nothing/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/04/28/a-universe-from-nothing/

But, of course, ignorance is no reason to say it was god. Our ancestors made this god claim in mistake thousand of times about simple things, like thunders and lightning.

Another interesting claim (from a meaning perspective) made by Krauss is that the Universe is flat, will keep expanding forever and will die slowly. The dying claim seems to have empirical confirmation (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13036508)

The way "nothing" can be converted to "everything" makes one wonder if, if the universe becomes "nothing" again, the process can be repeated and everything started again.

Also leaves open the question if, since this entropic process happens in different moments on each universe of the Multiverse, it might be possible to "cross" to another universe with identical or compatible laws in order to escape from the end of ours.

Well, humankind probably won't be here to see it anyway. We'll fade away long before that.

Or, perhaps, we won't. Meaning is made also of these hopeless hopes.

Most human beings live their life ignoring or denying death, like if living forever was their destiny. Some even real believe that something will happen that will allow them to escape death (let's forget about religious people). It's part of the terror of death management mentioned on the OP.

Camus had a different opinion on the cause, but also wrote: "I come at last to death and to the attitude we have toward it. On this point everything has been said and it is only proper to avoid pathos. Yet one will never be sufficiently surprised that everyone lives as if no one “knew.”" ("The Myth of Sisyphus").

Underlying this instinctive reaction is the idea that thinking about death will make us die not one time, but a million times. Every time someone contemplates his death, is like if he were dying again and again. Under this perspective, death can be much more oppressive from an intellectual point of view than physically.

Anyone that already faced certain death (for instance, an accident in which you really thought you were going to die) probably remember feeling fear, but mostly a simple sad resignation. That's nothing as harsh as the frequent conscience of the inevitability of death.

Even faced with the most terrible news ("you have 3 months to live") human capacity to adapt and accept what is inevitable is remarkable. Face it: what has no remedy is necessarily and automatically remediated as is, liked or not.

Dying is no big deal, but thinking about its inevitability can be, because of its coercive nature and feelings of unmeaningfulness.

Thus, the old quote saying the philosopher is unhappier than the simple farmer that lives each day caring not for anything more than his family.

Of course, no philosopher would change place with him. It seems there are people which prefer to die mentally a million times than live in oblivious.

Reposting this on this thread, to concentrate here my posts on death and meaning:

Since there can't be any immortality, and death is our destiny, unfortunately, the issue of the effect of immortality on the value of time can't be really tested. Clearly, being able to live thousand of years would lower the value of our time. But I surely wouldn't mind to have time to be able to real waste it.

In the end, the only positive way to part from this life would be if we were completely bored with it. Think about it: life is like a relationship, the only happy way to end it is if we were tired of it. If we still love it, death will always be a tragedy.

Beside, being able to make our own decision to end life is also a positive thing. Death wouldn't be imposed by nature, but would be our own decision. One of the major problems of death is that is imposed on us against our will.

Of course, parting this life because one is bored with it wouldn't be exactly a happy moment. But it might be less unhappy than to parting it when we are still in love with life.

I'm not making an apology of suicide. In our current conditions, where life is a blink of an eye of awareness, in between two eternities of being nothing (before being alive and after being dead), suicide seems absurd. Even if life was a pain (not literally; if it was really a pain, euthanasia would make completely sense), why rush things?, we'll be dead "soon". But if we could live thousands of years, suicide could make more sense.

Contrary to Camus, who says the first question one has to ask is if life deserves to be lived, I think the first question is if there is anything else than the present life (an after life, a god, etc), because the answer to it will affect the answer to Camus's question, as well as all issues about meaning.

For a believer, life has already his determined meaning, usually to be a test for an afterlife.

What believers don't answer is what is the meaning of the afterlife. Are people really happy forever on "heaven" or do they ask for the meaning of their afterlife, bored to death, without even the last resource of terminating their own immortal life?

Very interesting topic.
In my opinion, in seeking the meaning of life we should not rely on changeable human values but we should rely on God's absolute and unchanging values.
Human thinking is constantly changing, during day, month, year, life, 100 years, 1000 years etc.
Can we create stable and happy society if our values are not stable and we are in conflicts all the time?
Meaning of life we can find only in God, our Creator.
Technology should serve and help man, their creator.

More quotes on meaning and death:


A dead atheist is someone who is all dressed up with no place to go. ~ James Duffecy


A friend of mine stopped smoking, drinking, overeating, and chasing women --all at the same time. It was a lovely funeral.


"Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened."   — Terry Pratchett.

"Want to know what happens after death ? Go look at some dead things."    — Dave Enyeart.

"Your worst day when you're alive is better than your best day when you're dead."

"One thinks one's something unique and wonderful at the center of the universe, when in fact one's just a slight interruption in the ongoing march of entropy."    — Aldous Huxley

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is, or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."    — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Somehow, you are right but Tech will make you to be remembered after you died in both sides.. perfect and bad sides of you... seconds one is the worst i guess

"Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back."    — Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), roman emperor.

Stating the obvious, being death just a state, mostly caused by the weakness of the human body (a real treason against the conscience), doesn't make any kind of sense interactions with it. It doesn't have any kind of conscience. But if it were possible any meaningful interaction, except in the case of suicide, smiling to it would be like kissing Judas. It would be smiling to an odious being, that imposes it self on ourselves and on our love ones.

Laughing or mocking our tragic destiny is a much better reaction:

"Life is a sexually transmitted, fatal disease" (this one is brilliant, thanks Neil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman)

"Health /n./ The slowest possible rate at which one can die." (don't know the author, but it's excellent).

"They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days."    — Garrison Keillor.

"The first thing you should do when you get up is read the obituaries. You never know when you'll see a name that will just make your day."    — Ed Salisbury.

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."  Jack Handey

I hate funerals and would not attend my own if it could be avoided ~ Robert T. Morris

"I swear on my dead relatives — and even on the ones who are not feeling too good." Jacopo in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), probably the author is Jay Wolpert

"Everybody knows that the great russian poet Maiakovski commited suicide. What is not so well known is that his last words were: 'Comrads, don't shoot'..."    — Fred Botten.

"I told you I was sick." — Tombstone of Spike Milligan (1918—2002), British actor.

"That's All Folks !"    — Epitaph of Mel Blanc, The Man of a Thousand Voices.

Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do! ~ Lord Palmerston

"Life sucks, but Death swallows!"

"Half of all adults in the United States say they have considered registering as an organ donor, although only some have purchased a motorcycle to show that they're really serious about it."

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.
 from Will Rogers

"Support the American Kidney Foundation. Don't wear your motorcycle helmet."

"I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers."    — Emo Phillips or Will Shriner?

"100 000 lemmings can't be wrong." [animals famous for throwing themselves to death from precipices fowling hordes of thousands]

"Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

"After a year in therapy, my psychiatrist said to me: 'Maybe life isn't for everyone'."    — Larry Brown.

"The last thing we'll hear is some scientist saying 'It works!'"    — Jon Stewart about how the world will end.

The annoying thing about being an atheist is that you'll never have the satifaction of saying to believers, ‘I told you so.' Mark Steel

"Without the threat of death, there's no reason to live... at all."    — Marilyn Manson

The quote has some merit. One of its points is that we need bad things in life to give value to the good. If one does only what one wants, one gets bored. Beside, the conscience of the shortness of life is a serious motivation to do things now and not tomorrow.

However, death will be always with us. Humans might only be able to postpone it for very long.

Small update in the OP.

I'm convincing that, if we don't screw up, our descendents will live hundred of years, probably thousands of years, thanks to new technology, including on aging.

The idea that our bodies are like machines that will necessarily slowly decay is wrong. We are programmed to get old and die, to leave resources to the young. That is the most efficient way for a species to survive on a world with scarce resources. But they are working not only on stopping but even reversing aging (see https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13000982).

But, sorry for being negative, death will wait for all our descendents patiently, a million or a billion years if necessary. Soon or later, something will go wrong to each and everyone of them. Death will be their final destination also, even with several of your SF solutions.

I wouldn't count on a heaven waiting for us. Deep down, even religious people normally don't count on it.

One of the most astonishing things is the importance religious people give to all the details, material resources and honors they have in this life and how scare they usually are of dying. Even suicidal bombers hesitate or give up some times.

For a real believer, this life of, say, 100 years, should be irrelevant compared with the next immortal one. That all of them (more or less, at least in some moments) are ready to sin against others and god, risking their immortality, seems completely absurd. Unless, deep down, they feel this is really the only life they will get.

We should reconsider what we mean by ourselves and conscience. Death our final destination? We have to be open minded.
Let me give you some science fiction ideas to become immortal:

replacing our hardware.
We have some early technology: pacemaker, fake legs. If we completely replace all of our our hardware, we would live for 100s of years or perhaps even longer.

fixing our hardware.
The vary traditional method. In the event of sickness use pills etc. Can we stretch life this way to infinity?

time travel
Live your life from young to old. Everytime you get old travel back in time to being young.

brain transplant
transfer the brain into new body. Humans would have a new body every 50-100 years.

components
We divide our conscience (brian) into components. We implement these components into a new living human being. In practice there are cases known of human beings losing part of themselves due to brain damage (left/right disconnection and others). What if we could simply take components and put them in any human being? This also implies you can become a mix with your wife or friend. That is to say, to become one.

recreating ourselves.
In the event we die, we print ourselves exactly as we were.  Yes, I do mean a 3d printer that prints human beings. This means an exact copy of our body. This also implies that you could be alive in several bodies, all across the world or space. Different versions of yourself could be alive at the same time (Young, adult).

reincarnation
We download our conscience (brain, about 2.5 petabytes of data and additional structure / system). By uploading you can then literally be reborn as any animal, machine or space system. Download and upload could be simultaneously, so any type of traffic would be obsolete (Trains, cars, planes etc).

The later two have severe consequences. Here are some thoughts:

• You could meet yourself and shake hands.
• You can see yourself die and go on with your life
• You can be at zero or more places at the same time
• You can be anywhere in the world within a split second
• You could be half of you if merged with another brain
• You could be a bird on monday, a dolphin on tuesday and a giraffe on wednesday.
• You could be everything that lives in different shapes

These are truly fantasies but as a scientist you should remain open minded. But why be immortal when everyone else goes to heaven  

Yes, and I like to pretend the things I do have meaning.  If I didn't have my little illusions and delusions, I would have committed suicide years ago.  I do despair for the future generations though.  I see technology bringing about a lot of really shitty things.

My post was made under a scientific perspective. From this perspective, death is our final destination. Freezing ourselves only delays it (but if it increases our life, while we wait for a cure for our problem, go for it).

I didn't write that waiting for our turn is fair or necessarily always enjoyable.

But in this case, it's better to be on a long line than to be our turn next. Death is the proof that delaying the inevitable might be a sound decision.

Interesting post. It's a very pessimistic way of viewing life. I'm very critical about the view of 'entertain our selves while we wait for our turn', as we age the quality of life worsens. I think at some point some of us can no longer entertain ourselves. In some lives there is no space for entertainment at all.

Hal Finney is cryonically frozen. Perhaps death is not the final destination.  

meaning of life..

To make new worlds.. travel threw space..This planet will blow up one day..LIFE..
meaning survive.. you don.t survive you have no life..so its important we have space science..
new energy systems.. new means of propulsion systems..new ways of feeding our selves I.E a pill with all the nutrients we need to survive..

the long-term merits of technologic improvement
3D PRINTING WILL CHANGE THE PLANET
the only thing you need to save is your brain and heart in an accident I.E if you get run over if your heart and brain survive its almost certain you live
but if no accident you only need your brain if you get old ..one day we will 3D print body parts all from our own DNA it will replicate you an arm or a new leg if we have accidents..

But if we get old we could replicate the whole body and put our brain in a whole new body..
So as long as we keep our heart and brains safe.. i know we will live for as long as we want too
So much much much more to discover..you could say man and women are still in the womb..

And now back to the meaning of life..

if you were to study all those sciences i have mentioned then you would never be bored to ask what is the meaning of life because you be to busy to ask why

SO THE MEANING OF LIFE IS KNOWLEDGE..
Know knowledge  and the long-term merits of technological improvements will come

Think about it your asking the meaning of life because your bored ..
I.E what is it all about
If your busy there is not enough hours in the day to be thinking what is it all about..because your wishing for more time..
So if your asking what is it all about then you got to much time on your hands or are bored with your life or the situation your in..
SO THE MEANING OF LIFE IS KNOWLEDGE LEARN KNOWLEDGE AND YOU WILL THEN KNOW THE MEANING OF LIFE

On the issue of "our" origins, it seems the multiverse theory found another support on observation, beside being a good explanation for the fine tuned physical laws we have and the String Theory and its several new spatial dimensions: clusters of galaxies are moving fast to certain directions without visible cause ("dark flow"). One explanation is that there is matter attracting them from outside of our universe: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100322-dark-flow-matter-outside-universe-multiverse/

If this was correct, it would mean that different universes can attract each other, even if they are ruled by different laws, including on the force of gravity.

One of the issues is a semantic one.

But no argument from me on the others. Nothing like a researched post.

^ like genetic engineering. But other species do something like it. Bacteria for example. They clone themselves to reproduce. But then they can do horizontal gene transfer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer This lets some genes pass along to other bacteria or even completely different organisms. And it's one of the reasons for antibiotic resistant bacteria being a problem.


There was no assumption. It's just the way it turned out during the course of evolution.


It doesn't have to be one or the other. There are species that use both. For example hydras. In good conditions with lots of food they use asexual reproduction. When in bad conditions sexual reproduction.

Still on aging, a few creatures (animals, plants and bacteria) simple don't get old. Their bodies are continuously repairing themselves. They have what is called Negligible senescence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence)

From an evolutionary and capacity to endure as a species perspective, this isn't good. These creatures normally clone themselves, therefore there are little gene variation in the species. A climate change or a disease can wipe them all more easily.

Our species (and most of them) evolved under the assumption that to make the species more resilient it's necessary to promote differentiation between individuals. Different individuals can resist better general diseases that could wipe out the species if we were all clones (even the black plague couldn't kill all of our ancestors) or better resist changing conditions in the environment. To avoid the cloning system normally used by creatures with negligible senescence and promote differentiation it's more adequate a reproductive system based on the mix of genes of two individuals.

But that comes with a heavy cost. With every kid being the result of the mix of two individuals, after a few generations the trace of us in our descendents is very small. After several generations, the genes from us that survive in each of our descendents are almost irrelevant.

Anyway, our mortality is a condition for allowing the species collectively to endure on better. Of course, both things might be possible, with a touch of human magic.

On the issue of aging, there were some recent news about the hopes on a drug already available to diabetes: metformina

Trials on humans were just approved:

www.nature.com/news/anti-ageing-pill-pushed-as-bona-fide-drug-1.17769

http://wjbf.com/2015/12/02/us-fda-approves-diabetes-drug-metformin-for-anti-ageing-human-trials/

It seems the existence of midlife crisis has been confirmed by research:

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-11-midlife-crisisevidence-wellbeing-early-40s.html

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/21/midlife-crisis-is-real-happiness-u-shaped

But the reason doesn't seem to be the feeling that one wasted half of his life and death is approaching, but rather the burdens of midlife: “You are looking after your children, your parents, yourselves".

No need to change all your fiat into bitcoin and run to your bunker (if you have one), since this won't happen in the next few billions years, but it seems the universe is dying:

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1533/
http://www.icrar.org/news/news_items/media-releases/the-universe-is-dying2
http://www.gama-survey.org/
http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1533/eso1533a.pdf (full paper)

Anyone wanting to explore the different theories on the ultimate fate of the universe can check an introduction here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce

Reading the all text (yes, it's long, but I already highlighted in bold the more important parts) might help understanding what is the relation between meaning and technology.

The question is determining if technology has helped us reaching a more meaningful life, not argue that technology changes the meaning. If the meaning of life was to  support the subsistence of the human species, technology has a word on this.

If there is a meaning to life I don't see a problem with it changing with time. And as societies change and technology advances. Don't know about your ladder idea though. It implies there is a direction to it with new generations getting closer to the right meaning. To me each generation adapts to the situation it sees and creates the meaning of their lives from that. There is no higher goal. Only other goal is what biology or genes set. But we'll be able to change that in time.

I have yet to see a relation between technology and the meaning of life. If there's one, it's a dangerous idea because technology continually improves. That would mean the meaning of life now isn't the same as what it was 100, or 1,000 years ago. Could we be on a ladder, with each new generation getting closer to the top? It's a different idea, as it gives 2 meanings of life. One for the individual, and another one for the human race.

Anyone waiting for real revolutionary discoveries on anti-aging medication, better don't wait standing.

They already know that aging isn't inevitable: it's just an evolutionary option. The death of the old generations allows space and resources to new generations. The new ones are more adapted to the environment, since evolution occurs mainly between generations. Therefore, individual sacrifice increases the capacity of the species to endure.

So, aging is more or less the result of the activation of certain genes. Genes that can be deactivated.  The problem is identifying those genes and anticipating other negative consequences: http://www.sciencealert.com/japanese-scientists-reverse-ageing-in-human-cell-lines; http://time.com/3841620/scientists-discover-the-secret-to-keeping-cells-young/

But after balancing the state of the art on the issue, some specialists are pointing for 150 years of life at around 2050: http://www.antiagingage.com/anti-aging-medicine/state-of-the-art-anti-aging-medicine-specialty-report

Welcome to the human condition. It seems we are the only species that is conscious of the inevitability of his own death.

As I state in the revised text, to leave trace doesn't mean that we have to be remembered. No one knows the name of the individuals that invented agriculture about 10-9 thousand years ago. Or that invented writing. But they had very meaningful lifes.

A digital copy of ourselves wouldn't be us. It would be like a digital clone. Identical, but autonomous. We still would perish, even if leaving serious trace. Anyway, soon or later, someone would "remove the plug on the computer" (that is, something would happen that would destroy it). But I'm not saying that this wouldn't be very meaningful.

Bah.

Go stand on a street corner.  In a downtown.

How many peoples' work do you see?

This is true. If we invent something, that will be remembered, if not we will all be forgotten.

Which is kinda sad but it's the truth, i've always had this one question in my mind as to why do I exist? What's our purpose if our life is meaningless?

I wanna add some,
Just think about future. If you don't hold place in people's hearts and minds; you will be completely forgotten in 300 years. Even everyone remembers you will be dead. So actually, life race in many ways is meaningless because we die physically also die when we don't get remembered.
Technology plays good role in second stage, uploading people into pcs. So there may be no real death.

Decided to mix both posts.

Warning: this text might depress you. Read at your own risk.


Traditionally, a philosophical or religious question, the issue of meaning is starting to be the subject of scientific studies.

Meaning is important because we are self-aware and we are conscious of the certainty of our death. Meaning is one of the ideas that help us dealing with death. Is part of our "terror from death management" (V. Cicirelli, Fear of Death in Older Adults: Predictions From Terror Management Theory, Journal of Gerontology, 2002, Vol. 57B, No. 4, P358–P366; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory).

It helps us dealing with the fact that we live in a death row (for a crime we didn't commit), trying to entertain our selves while we wait for our turn to be executed (A. Camus). Or, to use more crude words, said clearly to shock the reader, that we "are corporeal creatures—breathing pieces of defecating meat no more significant or enduring than porcupines or peaches." (Solomon: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fear-death-and-politics/).

Questions of meaning are as important as we are more aware of our death. Therefore, the death of a close person or a life threatening situation or disease make us give more attention to the issue of the meaning of life. And makes us invest in "meaningful" things.

Actually, some empirical research indicates that a simple conversation about death can change our behaviour (N. Kelley, B. Schmeichel - Thinking about Death Reduces Delay, Discounting PLoS ONE 10(12):e0144228. Doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0144228 (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144228); http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fear-death-and-politics/; https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big-questions/201106/does-death-awareness-heighten-the-meaning-life;). It seems we are conditioned to avoid thinking about death and to be forced to do that can have some impact.

If once a 7 year old kid asked you if when he will be old and about to die doctors will invent some medicine to make him young again, you would realize the impact the realization for the first time that our own death is inevitable can have on us. Even if, probably, you can't remember the day you first realize that you are going to die.

Having meaning means being an instrument to help/build something that transcend us, that will survive us and give some sense to our existence. It can be working in favour of a collective organization (society, corporation, etc.), to work on something that will endure after our death, having kids or, of course, for believers, religion (to them, the meaning of this life is being a test to access the afterlife).

Meaning means assuming some kind of "immortality" (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/to-feel-meaningful-is-to-feel-immortal/). The main idea is that something that disappears without any trace can't have any meaning.

As Miguel de Unamuno wrote: "Nothing is real that is not eternal.". (Unamuno, Tragic Sense Of Life, 1913, III - The Hunger of Immortality: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14636).

Take in account that even something "immortal" won't have a meaning in it self. The only conclusion one can reach is that something that perish without trace won't have any meaning. Therefore, to escape this fate, something of us has to endure. But that doesn't mean that something that endures will have a meaning in it self.

Of course, because nothing is immortal (immortality is living for all eternity, without end; we couldn't say we were immortals not even if we survived for all the more than 13 thousands million years that the Universe has; soon or later, something would go wrong; death would wait patiently "almost an eternity" to catch us), down under, we all know that meaning is meaningless. Immortality is logically impossible to achieve no matter how much we endure.

But the simple idea that something from us, or related to us, will survive us, at least for much time more, still gives us some sense of meaning. Therefore, if, objectively, meaning is meaningless, subjectively, it still makes sense. We don't have to be certain or even believe that some part of us or the result of our activity will be immortal. To feel subjectively meaningful we only need to have the expectation that it can endure thousands of years and hope it will endure for million of years.

Moreover, even if an immortal being wouldn't have a meaning in it self and, anyway, there can't be immortal living beings, this doesn't mean that enduring doesn't have some objective meaning, at least in the sense that allows the being to avoid losing all meaning by perishing without trace. Something that endures will always be ready to find a meaning. In terms of meaning, enduring is neutral-positive, because avoids the clear negativity of perishing without trace. If anything has any (objective) meaning, enduring on has to be it.

In this sense, when each generation carries on, it takes on his shoulders the meaning of life of all the previous generations that are gone.

This kind of "immortality" is called "symbolic" (Robert Lifton, The Broken Connection - On Death and the Continuity of Life, 1983), because it isn't a real immortality (we die), rather is an immortality based on social or genetic basis.

When based on reproduction, on children and their descendents, this symbolic immortality assumes a biological (genetic) structure. The individual dies, but his genes (or a small part of them) will go on.

But also human creative role can create a creative immortality. Human work (artistic, scientific, etc.) might make an individual legacy endure on beyond his death.

Take in account that to leave a trace of our existence is not the same thing of being remembered. Asking for an enduring memory normally is asking for too much. The inventor of the mouse I'm using will endure on even if his name is forgotten (tribute to Engelbart), the same can be said on the several inventors of writing or to any person that is an ascendent of any person alive today, etc.

The search for meaning force us to invest in "altruist" things or, at least, things related to other people, because we need them to keep going on when we are gone to give meaning to our existence (social exclusion removes feelings of meaning: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103109000791?np=y).

Thus, death force us to be less selfish or, at least, to try to invest in things with more complex egoist goals. Therefore, a meaningful life can be less "happy". Think in all the sacrifices people do to have kids. Happiness is about taking, about the present; about irresponsible relations; and enjoying yourself; meaningfulness is about giving, linking past, present and future and about duty in front of others (see http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2013.830764 , only free abstract; https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/january/meaningful-happy-life-010114.html).

But this division can't be taken too seriously. Even taking aside the question of objective meaning, doing meaningful things is important also from a subjective point of view; even if these things can be stressful, they also increase self-esteem. Therefore, they also increase happiness. Someone that sacrifices his life for other people will get his reward when he looks to the mirror and/or when he receives some gratitude from them.

One could say that living only to our selves is living a life without meaning. Not only because as individuals we are condemned to a short life and by living only to our selves everything we did will die with us, but also because nothing seems to have a meaning in it self.

But it's hard to live only to ourselves. Even the most selfish person will normally have to work and will do something positive to others. But the subjective feeling of doing meaningful things will increase as one dedicates him self to someone else: one or more individuals he loves, an institution, a society, some work, etc.

Now that you read this text, research says you are going to think about meaningful things you can do.

P.S. Not all people are sensible to meaningful things in identical terms. Some think (and they are more or less right) that meaningfulness is meaningless. That the only thing that makes sense in this short human life is to enjoy every moment without much care for responsibilities for others or to do things that endure. I still haven't find any empirical research on it, but perhaps the idea of death makes some people try to live the moment even more intensively. But I suspect that as time goes by, and they get older, the idea of meaning will come back with a revenge. Perhaps when it will be too late for them.

***


As almost all people here, I love technology. But our love for it shouldn't cloud our judgement about its long term effects.

We take as granted that technology is good. And that improved technology is even greater.

Since enduring is essential to meaning and only collectively we can real endure, taking in account our short life, one has to wonder if technology has helped us endure on as a species.

Enduring is indeed the meaning of evolution/adaptation. From this perspective, it isn't very important if we are an intelligent or powerful species. The real important thing about a species is: for how long has it endure and for how long can it endure in the future. The champions are the Cyanobacteria (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanofr.html), Stromatolites  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite), Sponges and the Jelly Fish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish).

Humanity on all its forms has been here for about 2.8 million years (with the Homo Habilis; see also the "new" Homo Naledi; more ancient relatives are not considered part of the Homo family). We survived all this time with limited technology, just some stones and wooden tools and, during some of this period, also fire.

But thanks to improved technology, we created weapons that might extinguish humanity. Probably, even an all out nuclear war wouldn't extinguish us, but we can accept this would increase seriously the risk that extinction could happen. At least, many parts of Earth would be completely inhabitable. Moreover, the sky (especially in the north hemisphere) would be covered with debris (nuclear winter) and that could ruin crops for years, creating a devastating famine (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_holocaust; http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82cab/; http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/129966; http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warconsequences/).

Thanks to the same technology, we are on the brink of ruining the world environment and, if we go on like this, that might even threat our own existence (leaving aside the extinction we are provoking on other species, many much older than us: http://www.livescience.com/51280-the-new-dying-how-human-caused-extinction-affects-the-planet-infographic.html).

We are also close of creating artificial intelligence that might be a real threat to us, even if the issue is controversial (http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/28/technology/ai-weapons-robots-musk-hawking/). We don't know if an intelligent software could break any security safeguards that limited it and change it self. It make sense to think that it would be able soon or latter to break them. It would be a being as intelligent as the best of us and with quantity capacities much greater than us.

On the other hand, technology gave us better conditions to survive threats that could end us as a species, like asteroids (remember the Dinosaurs, 65 millions years ago, and the Asteroid that stroked Yucatan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater), super-volcanoes (remember Mont Toba, 73,000 years ago, that almost extinguished us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory) and diseases.

Is technology granting us better conditions to endure (forget about quality of individual life, that is not relevant from the perspective of the "meaning" to endure on)? Taking the threat of nuclear weapons, the risks on environment and artificial intelligence, I have some doubts.

But if technology allowed as to expand to other worlds (Mars for start), this would improve our capacity to "endure on" even against the threat of nuclear weapons or other human created threats. Of course, that would increase remarkably our capacity to survive natural catastrophes, like the ones mentioned above. But we are not there yet (http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html/2#part2).