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Over at philosophical disquisitions, John Danaher is discussing Aaron Smuts’ response to Bernard Williams’ argument that immortality would be tedious. Smuts’ thesis, in Danaher’s words, is a familiar one:
Immortality would lead to a general motivational collapse because it would sap all our decisions of significance.
This is interestingly at odds with my observations, which suggests that people are much more motivated to do things that seem unimportant, and have to constantly press themselves to do important things once in a while. Most people have arbitrary energy for reading unimportant online articles, playing computer games, and talking aimlessly. Important articles, serious decisions, and momentous conversations get put off.
Unsurprisingly then, people also seem to take more joy from apparently long-run insignificant events. Actually I thought this was the whole point of such events. For instance people seem to quite like cuddling and lazing in the sun and eating and bathing and watching movies. If one had any capacity to get bored of these things, I predict it would happen within the first century. While significant events also bring joy, they seem to involve a lot more drudgery in preceding build up.
So it seems to me that living forever could only take the pressure off and make people more motivated and happy. Except inasmuch as the argument is faulty in other ways, e.g. impending death is not the only time constraint on activities.
Have I missed something?
Significance and motivation
I'm sorry but this discussion is so academic as to be useless. If man were immortal we would be entirely different creatures with an entirely different history and psychology. We also would have stopped reproducing a long time ago and would most likely have a perfect society because we wouldn't have had pesky deaths and falls of empires and history to repeat. This is just silly and pointless.
Good post Katja. Quoting the quote:"Immortality would lead to a general motivational collapse because it would sap all our decisions of significance."Made me think (and worry about) this (quote):"Science advances one funeral at a time." Max PlanckEither this is a brick wall for all future-tech and hyper-growth rates, or in the future, expert opinion will not be so highly regarded or cared about. Something has to give, or we will be stuck at current rates of growth and progress, or things might even get worse if life extension technologies become somewhat successful. What to do about this?"This is interestingly at odds with my observations, which suggests that people are much more motivated to do things that seem unimportant, and have to constantly press themselves to do important things once in a while."Are important things more effortful than the unimportant things (in general)? If yes, then the brain is an effort-minimizing device, not a utility maximizing one (or perhaps it's both). If no, then why would people avoid attending to important things if they were relatively easy to deal with?In regard to the last few paragraphs and the closing question; Is life too long, rather than too short? Whenever i see people standing on slow, mildly inclined elevators, i'm sure the general answer is 'yes'.