If you took away the ticking clock and each person had thousands of years to write his novel, prove his theorem, or complete his masterpiece, would we continue to advance--or would we stagnate?

You also assume that a 1000 year old Einstein would still be Einstein. We have no idea what the impact on the brain of living that long would be. More than likely at some point previous memories would begin to fade away, and at some point you've replaced so many parts (memories) that there's nothing of the original left.

Additionally, society changes in large part because the people who make up society change. Would slavery have ever ended if older people hadn't passed away and younger ones with new ideas taken their place? Would we still be ruled by a thousand year old tyrant with a medieval morality?

Look, if you were designing a society and were trying to make the tradeoff of whether people should die or not, how would you weigh the arguments for and against death? "Hmm, on one hand, old ideas die off, so society might progress faster. On the other hand, we will snuff every conscious being out permanently, and they and their family go through years of suffering. Which should we choose?" Are you seriously arguing we would choose the former?

"travelling faster than 40 miles an hour is impossible" "communicate with someone on the other side of the world instantly? Impossible!" "fly to the moon?" "end death?"

I'm sure that if we sat down, we could come up with thirty things that we have daily today, but were 'impossible' a hundred years ago.

The entire frame of your questions shows the fallacy because you explicitly abandon all other notions to just come up with things that were thought impossible but are now mundane.

It's true that we don't know everything, but implying that because we don't know everything we know nothing is absolutely ridiculous. All current knowledge of physics points towards entropy, and moreover the second law of thermodynamics, as being one of the most important and consistent laws of physics. It's so important that one of the most well-known physicists in the world is so well-known because he created a theory of black holes that meshes with our existing theory of entropy, proving that the second law still holds. The idea that we should abandon this knowledge because, well, it's inconvenient strikes me as being disingenuous in the highest order.

Anyone can say, "Well, you don't know everything, so you may be wrong." That doesn't make it an informed or useful comment.

In my defense, I was not saying "since we achieved all these awesome things, we'll surely eventually avoid the heat death of the universe". Instead, I was claiming that right now, we're probably still to ignorant to know that with confidence. Perhaps we will find a way to escape into a different universe.

Thanks for the reminder (and good username!)

And also because it's true. The best science we have tells us that everything decays in the end. If you're going to start ignoring facts just because you don't like them, where do you stop?

But what you're describing sees no meaning in anything ever. Simply because you can say that eventually the sun will burn out and we'll all die anyway doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things as good as we can while we are here.

>If you're going to start ignoring facts just because you don't like them, where do you stop?

No, I'm ignoring facts that have no relevance or no useful action to take. If everything is going to end in a trillion years, what should I do about that exactly? Does that mean I should try to cure aging now?

Do you have a job? Why, the universe will end in some billions of years. Oh, you want to have as nice a life as you can while you are here? So do I.

Which is exactly what this article illustrates. Death comes for us all, and not facing that yields waste and suffering. Not in some abstract sense, either. As the author writes, "At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture." And the amount spent on futile end-of-life care is staggering.

As things stand today, of course it doesn't make sense to hang on when you're only going to get a few more years of agony. But more research could be done in eliminating the effects of aging, etc. We've already lost many great minds but if we can stop this trend or even slow it down then it's worth persuing.

I don't think this is an issue of point of view, entropy and thermodynamics are very real and as of now, the best models of reality point to it being a certainty.

imply that absolutely everything is completely without a point

I personally don't subscribe to that philosophical position, I brought up the topic of the eventual end or the universe as a thought experiment about the acceptance of death and at that point all relevance will be gone, but in saying that, I personally feel that, even if nature is temporal, things can have a point and have meaning now even if they don't have permanent meaning in this nature. Further we cannot rule out the existence of a higher natural order in which there is further purpose. That being said, meaning, point and the eventual lack of both have little to do with the reality that this nature will end, until it does end. Even if purpose is absolutely temporal it is significant in that temporal space, which is enough to give it a point. Acknowledging that a temporal space will end, does nothing to minimize the point of that temporal space and the actors within it. Rather it is a realization that it is a self contained system and that the point or meaning exists within that system, the value is within the system not external to it. Once the system is gone it has no value, but that does nothing to diminish the value inside of the system.

Who told you there was "a point?"

And why did he tell you that?

We live in a universe where all things decay. There is no known exception. Species go extinct. Stars die. As best we know, the universe itself will die: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe

You and I will die as well, and pretending otherwise causes a lot of harm. The best we know how to do now is to extend life a little; but we don't even do that as well as we could because we waste fantastic sums on futile end-of-life care. And that money also doesn't make it to the medical research that could help the next generation, or the one after that.

But I think the harm is deeper than that. Who do you think is more likely to be fully aware of how short life is? The next Einstein now toiling in a lab? Or somebody watching their third hour in a row of reality TV?

Don't throw out the Einsteins because of people like this. People who throw their lives away will end up killing themselves anyway (e.g. through horrible eating habits, smoking, etc.), and even if they don't, they'll be in their living room out of our way.

I find it highly amusing (if sad) that people who argue pro-death always like to point at people they don't think deserve to live...

In the coming decades, We may or may not be able to significantly extend life, but it's not clear why it's unlikely, or why it causes harm to even think about.

The point is that fantasizing about "curing" death is harmful to people making difficult decisions about their life and that of their loved ones. People need to face the fact that death is inevitable and part of life, and like everything else unpleasant that is part of life, they must handle it like an adult.

Because what I see people objecting to is not the raising of a possibility. It's the indulging of a fantasy that lets people avoid thinking about an empirical certainty.

The belief that personal death cannot be good for society is just as ridiculous as the belief that it always is.

Or is this a world where only nice people get to live forever?

Neither Hitler nor McCarthy were still 'dictating' when they died. Lack of death doesn't mean that everything would remain the same forever.

Stalin's death lead to a good change.

When somebody stay in power for too long it leads to stagnation.

Human civilization has other measures against such stagnation (such as 2 terms limit for presidential position).

However limited life span still adds extra protection against society stagnation.

It's not obvious if benefits of unlimited lifespan outweight potential problems.

I think that doubling life span would probably be beneficial overall, but it's hard to say if further life span increase would.

No, I'm talking about the elimination of aging and natural death. People would still be able to kill themselves and others.

The legions of true believers would be able to dictate terms to enlightened society with the mere threat of violence.

I really don't think you've thought this through.

Think about what you're saying here. You think no one in Germany was rational? They would have had the same risk of dying we would. Hitler was only powerful because there were people willing to follow his orders.

And there was no shortage of true believers on the Allied side either (think patriotism), in any case.

You would have to be pretty damn patriotic to want to give your life to preserve a nation-state you expect to outlive anyway. If I'm going to die anyway, it doesn't make much difference; it makes sense to risk my life for some things. If my life is eternal, what principle could I possibly, rationally put ahead of my survival?

Eternal life gives the insane an advantage over the sane, and the idea that the insane are as likely to be good as evil seems like a risky bet to me.