Quick! All it takes for this to become a meme is for some people to post this on a few other askreddit threads, then other people to spam it on /r/circlejerk! We can do it Reddit!
You cells die and replace themselves constantly. The atoms that make up your body are fully cycled every 10 years. "You" are beyond these material things. We are software, and one day our bodies won't be the only hardware that we can live in.
Who cares if the flow breaks? We go through long periods of unconsciousness daily, and we don't dream for all of it by a long shot. Also, people go into long comas and often come out with their personality wholly intact.
More to the point, you're just stuck on the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you replace the ship all at once, it's obviously different, but if you replace the parts gradually, that calls it into doubt. But the only reason that paradox exists is for want of a clear definition of what makes that ship "that ship".
The gradual approach seems more feasible to you because you don't know what makes you "you". It's plagued philosophers and scientists both for centuries, but we're lucky in that now we live in a time when we've realized what consciousness is, how to describe it. The software analogy is essentially bulletproof, and it provides a blueprint for transference to new hardware.
Obviously you just need a slow transition. Interface human and machine, combine the two into one inseparable entity, then slowly phase out the biological components until there is only machine. It's still you as much as you will still be you in ten years.
Shout out to Ghost in the Shell, the movie that introduced this concept to me, and made it my life's goal to live long enough to put my mind in a full prosthetic body.
Really, the only way the illusion that the copy is somehow actually you the individual is only maintained if they get rid of the original. Either by only booting up the copy when you die or through a more complicated shell game of murder like the teleporters in Star Trek.
A good thing to think about is you being sat down at a table with the copy and have a gun put in the middle. If you believe the copy is actually you then you'll be fine being shot by the copy.
Or to think of it another way, can you see out of the copy's eyes or feel what it feels? If not, that's another person who just so happens to be exactly the same as you. It sure seems like it's you walking about but the situation gets questionable when they don't find a way to get rid of you in the making of the copy.
Or, yet another way to think about it, what if instead of uploading your consciousness to one body you did it to multiple. Are there somehow many of you running around at the same time while actually being you?
Uploading your consciousness to a robot body is nothing other than a fancy, talking, walking gravestone.
That's exactly how I've always felt about it. If your copy can exist at the same time as you then it is not you because you cannot be in both places at once.
Basically what it is is a bunch of work to trick the viewers' (not the original who will be destroyed but the new copy and anyone else that might be involved) object permanence in order to get something that seems close enough to immortality.
If you're dying of cancer uploading your mind will not save you. Your new self gets to go off and fuck bitches and you're going to be left to die of cancer.
And the line of logic that cellular death means you aren't the same you as yesterday ignores causality. If I go back in time and kill yesterday you, today you isn't here. While you're constantly changing you're still linked to past you through cause and effect. If I make a copy of myself and kill myself or the copy, the one left alive is unaffected by the death of the other.
A copy of yourself is about as tied to the original you as a child would be. If you kill the original before the act of conception the copy or child does not exist, after the point of conception the two are individuals and their identical nature is irrelevant.
if you upload your mind to a computer you will still die, you will not become immortal, you will not live forever. you will however have a lasting concision imprint of yourself that may last forever.
But if you upload your mind to a computer YOU are still going to die. For all your friends and peers it'll be like you never went anywhere, but you're still dead.
But it still won't be your conciousness, it'll be a copy of it. It's as if we created a clone of you, with all your memories and experience and then killed you. You are dead, but there's a nice copy of you for the rest of us to enjoy.
I am god! For what do I need milk? Milk was the meaning of my life. It was my goal. Milk. What am I without it? How can I live forever, with nothing to live for? What I'm I now? fucking reddit
This is why older people have such a well-deserved reputation for being frank and abrupt. It's because the older you get, the more you realize what bullshit stupid social niceties are. You start to get sick of dancing around the subject or being elaborately polite. You start to just say what you think and do not care whether the other person finds you direct or not. Personally, I find it very freeing.
My life was miserable. I thought no one was ever really happy. But now I'm happy as fuck and everyday I just learn about new interesting things and discuss them with my husband and watch movies and drink and enjoy my children and I don't give any fucks. We have plans to buy a farm and not give any fucks there, and we work toward that but we also don't stress about it. Life can be a pretty good fucking time.
I was in an abusive relationship, where I had been with the guy since I was 16. He was 4 years older so I learned to look up to him an unhealthy amount. That's what contributed to my staying. I was beaten for everything, for years, badly. For example, feeding our daugter corn that wasn't organic by mistake...massive beating. Crying? horrible beating. He nearly killed me several times and I worked to support him while he stayed at home doing nothing. Eventually he got a job in another town and started a whole other family that was kept secret from me until she was a few months pregnant. I was pretty suicidal and my life was a black hole. But I did not let it ruin me. I didn't let it ruin being able to trust someone or fall in love and what changed was that I finally left that horrible man and I met my now husband. I didn't let all the awful things that happened to me ruin my happiness, on the contrary I completely let go and stopped worrying about a thing. After so many brushes with death and so much despair I enjoyed every happy day to the absolute fullest and over two years later I am still doing so. Long answer, but maybe someone will read this and it will change how they feel about life and give them some hope.
It's ok, this is true wisdom. Imagine if you'd been one of those poor suckers who went to the store only to procure meaningless milk. How our precious time would have been wasted had we succumbed to such trivial temptations as milk-from-the-store!
It's not what's on the list that counts, just the idea that it's all laid out there in front of you as inevitable. It's like a cell in the womb which is full of possibility and could turn out to be anything getting assigned to be a heart cell, or an eye, or whatever else, and the potential being lost.
I'm not interested in half those things (especially not milk and death), but they could very well be in the future for me. I just feel better thinking about the future as a mystery, and that anything could happen.
You know there are milk alternatives like almond milk, rice milk, coconut milk, and soy milk. So maybe you just haven't found the right one for you yet. It's not all so bad.
I'm not sure, I've graduated college, and plan to go to grad school next year but besides that I don't have a clue and it's great. So much room for possibilities when you don't make a list of it.
I can't remember the link exactly - it was a response to a prompt on /r/writingprompts where people made all their significant life choices at age 18 - in one of the responses to the prompt, the protagonist died getting milk at a convenience store at age 54. I thought your mentioning dying right after getting milk was referencing that story.
I skipped the college part, saved myself tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and freed up years of time.
I'm now successful in my industry, pulling in $120k, and have it pretty easy, generally speaking.
I think that, with some sciences aside, college has turned into a scam.
I remember just how hard they pushed into our heads that we HAD to attend college when I was in HS. They pushed it so hard that it seemed like a con, and it kind of is, so it seems.
• Done college and uni
• Career
• GF
• Lost career
• Gained Career
• Lost career
• Can't marry
• No Kids please
• I can do milk, milk can be afforded
• When do I need a car? I can't really afford a car.
• I gots me a load of milk
• Still no career
• Cannot even figure out how to format Reddit properly.
If I remember to get milk at the store at some point before I die, I can die a happy man. All of those other life milestones seem like mere child's play compared with my inability to remember to pick up milk while I'm at the store. And then I'm left thirsty and having to eat dry cereal. Ugh.
Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance.
Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments.
Choose a starter home.
Choose your friends.
Choose leisurewear and matching luggage.
Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves
I've gotten up to #4, and I've come to the realization that the to-do list is pure shit. It's a hell I want no part of. Plenty of people are happy to pair up and pump out some broodlings and ride that train until they die, but it's not for me, and it sounds awful. I just wish I had realized it sooner.
Of course, I have no alternative, so I'm depressed and desperately looking for a path to follow. Hooray for being different.
You dont have to do any of those things. Each has its pros and cons which you (and no one else) should consider rationally and logically. For example I went to uni, but skipped the gap year and (currently) intend to skip marriage and kids, because commitment and kids are shit.
Yeah, but most of us will do this with a relatively small amount of excruciating pain, illness and personal tragedy (at least when compared to 99.9% of human beings who have ever lived). We'll do it with pizza, and Netflix, and red wine, and sunsets, and lots of quiet little moments that are each lovely in their own way.
That was basically exactly what my teacher outlined for us all in my planning class minus the care for healthy bones. It all just seemed really depressing.
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u/pomporn Jul 13 '15 edited Jul 13 '15
It's totally miserable. Like making a to-do list.
Die
P.S. get milk at store