(July 11, 2015 at 4:26 pm)excitedpenguin Wrote: ...
Pyrrho Wrote:Being continuously tortured for life. I think that would be one that most people would agree with. In my case, I think not having a good life is worse than death, but I know that many will disagree with that. I have made a living will and have instructed my wife to have the doctors "pull the plug" as soon as it is legal to do so. I do not want to have a bad life, and have no fear of death. Once one is dead, nothing bad can happen to one. So I think a bad life is worse than death.
Losing the right to bear children, as per context, is not the same as being tortured for life. Nor is being tortured for life as likely to happen as death, given certain variables, such as population growth and unavailability of resources.
I don't see what it brings to the conversation to point out that there might be worse things than death or extinction.
I was expressing disagreement with a principle that you claimed:
(July 11, 2015 at 12:07 pm)excitedpenguin Wrote: ...
If I had the choice between extinction and anything else at all, I would choose anything else. This is obviously the thing to do.
That is why it was brought up. If you believe your principle is irrelevant to the topic, why did you bring it up? And if it is relevant, then whether it is true or not is surely relevant.
(July 11, 2015 at 4:26 pm)excitedpenguin Wrote: ...
Pyrrho Wrote: [i]Of course, some people would be upset by the fact that humanity would go extinct, but humanity is going to go extinct eventually anyway. I do not see the extinction of humanity, per se, as a bad thing. That "per se" is essential for my meaning. I can certainly think of bad ways in which humans could become extinct. [/i]
How can you claim to know that the extinction of humanity is inevitable? We don't know what lies in the future, nor do we know for sure that the universe is finite in time. As for the sun going out, we don't know that we couldn't get around that in the billions of years left for it to burn. We might either learn how to manipulate the sun into subsisting, find a way to protect ourselves from its engulfing us and replacing it's energy or manage to travel to other solar systems before any of it happening.
Why do you have such a borderline nihilistic view of life?
The best current scientific evidence suggests that everything will die. That is why I believe it.
Regardless, I will be dead anyway, so it is irrelevant to my life.
(July 11, 2015 at 4:26 pm)excitedpenguin Wrote: I know you are. I meant if the site still showed you that you got a reply from me, regardless of my replying to you in this manner. I am asking about the Alert feature, to be precise.
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I have over 500 "alerts." I ignore them.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
