Spontaneous combustion, if it exists, could be kinda funny. Especially if you are watching some stupid TV show like “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, and your freind goes to get a coke, and comes back, and you are already ashes. And it looks like it would be over quick.

Anyone read Transmetropolitan?

Seems like all that cryogenically frozen nonsense is just another money making scam to me.

There’s a company near where I live that offers this service to rich white people with more money than brains. (there’s an epidemic of this,but I digress) Or as my grandma would have said”my,someone thinks they’re very special don’t they?”.

When I go,cremate me. Take my ashes and spread them out over a lovely place and for heaven’s sake don’t go broke on a funeral. I’d rather my kids had the money,I won’t need it.

If I’m popping Cialis, I’m not ready to go, I’m still enjoying myself. It’s when I pop the Cialis and it doesn’t work, and I don’t care that it doesn’t work, then you can take me out and shoot me. I’m done.

I want to die by taking out a dozen Islamocommies, who happen to be plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the Atlantic Avenue Subway station during rush hour … on a Friday … while the President is tossing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium.

Good tips for your comical death from GC:

Two-Minute Warning

Now, you might be wondering why I would even suggest that someone can affect the manner and style of his death. Well, it’s because of a mysterious and little-known stage of dying, the two-minute warning. Most people are not aware of it, but it does exist. Just as in football, two minutes before you die you receive an audible warning: “Two minutes! Get your shit together!” And the reason most people don’t know about it is because the only ones who hear it are dead two minutes later. They never get a chance to tell us.

But such a warning does exist, and I suggest that when it comes, you use your two minutes to entertain and go out big. If nothing else, deliver a two-minute speech. Pick a subject you feel passionate about, and just start talking. Begin low-key, but, with mounting passion, build to a rousing climax. Finally, in the last few seconds, scream at those around you, “If these words are not the truth, may God strike me dead!” He will. Then simply slump forward and fall to the floor. Believe me, from that moment on, people will pay more attention to you.

Copyright ©2001, by George Carlin.

And it looks like it would be over quick.

I’ve read that it’s actually supposedly very painful and that it lasts for hours.

But if it were a Spinal Tap-esque explosion, leaving nothing behind but a little green globule, then it would be pretty kickin’.

Dying before the end of humanity would be like not being able to finish the best book ever.

My 88 year old father is beyond the level you describe.

So far, he hasn’t killed himself.

I’m not making any sort of right-wing ‘sanctity of life’ argument, but you might check back with the group when you’re at the stage you describe. The odds suggest it’ll look different to you at that time. 🙂

I want to die by taking out a dozen Islamocommies, who happen to be plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the Atlantic Avenue Subway station during rush hour … on a Friday … while the President is tossing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium.

Bitchin’.

But did you have to save Yankee Stadium? (KIDDING, KIDDING YANKEES FANS, you know I love y’all :-))

OK, yeah Dr. Rev. Brad Phd etc., that’s pretty much what I was thinking- like an explosion and then all that is left is your shoes and glasses or something. Green putty is good too.

Choking on someone else’s vomit- not so good.

In a way, this might be one of the most interesting topics I’ve seen posted on any blog in a long time. It’s not an issue of immediate concern, to be sure, and we have a lot more important things to think about and take action on, but that doesn’t make this topic less intriguing. So cheers for posting this.

There’s a Heinlein story called “The Door Into Summer” that deals with something like this. Rather than dead folks, live ones who just want to “see the future” contract with insurance companies to be frozen and revived years later. Of course, it’s Heinlein, so the future is all anti-gravity and shiny suits with clear plastic panels over women’s breasts. But that aside, one of the interesting things in the story is how the “sleepers” are viewed by the contemporary society. Basically, they’re seen as losers who couldn’t make it in their own time. Many of the sleepers are revived and penniless due to poor financial planning, further cementing that view.

Anyway, for myself, I find it intriguing. I wouldn’t mind it, if I had the money, to give it a shot. But the idea that this is anything other than pissing in the wind is a bit comical, myabe sad and pathetic.

Even if we discover some way to reanimate dead folks whose to say we need just the noggin (shout out to john “five to the…” gibson-the fucking asshole)? It could just as easily turn out that we need some bizarre body part we had no idea actually stored the right genetic information.

As I said, the idea is intriguing. In practice, it’s just sad really.

I think the other thing about this that intrigues me is it’s one more way that generation has found to spend its money on itself and not pass it along. “I’m comin’ back” yells grandpa baby boomer, “fuck the kids, they can earn their money the way I did.”

Whatever.

Dying before the end of humanity would be like not being able to finish the best book ever.

But you’re dead. Why should you give a shit what happens on the earth when… you’ve stopped existing. You just won’t care. It will be over. Poof. Nothing left.

For some reason, I’m very comfortable with this thought. A lot of people aren’t, though, which I fully understand.

Choking on someone else’s vomit- not so good.

There’s no real way to dust for vomit.

“I’m comin’ back� yells grandpa baby boomer, “fuck the kids, they can earn their money the way I did.�

I think Maude had the right idea- live your life fully until you’re 80, have sex with someone sixty years younger than you, and gracefully pass away…

I’m referring to the film HAROLD AND MAUDE, for those of you who think I’m some John Derbyshire-type pervert, btw…

Door Into Summer is one of the few Heinlein books that doesn’t make me sputter incoherently, due to a relative and un-Heinleinesque absence of Women Exposing Their Breasts And Being Perky About Sex. Plus it stars a cat.

My aunt died at Easter, at the ripe old age of 95. She’d been wanting to die for a couple of years, and it was kind of hard to watch her not managing it. She’d been a very independent person for most of her life, and a bit of a local hero, so to see her in such circumstances was kinda painful. And she was fully aware till the end, and in some pain, both of which made it worse.

I don’t want to get there. I don’t want to live forever. Hell, I’m not even sure I want to make it to my next birthday, and that’s only just over a week away. My life contains a fair dollop of suckage just now.

Comedy deaths: I’m rather tickled by the one in Dead Like Me: killed by a falling shuttle toilet seat.

As for me, I’d like to go out doing something to save humanity. I rather fancy saving the world and being revered as the Second Coming Of Christ, although that would probably involve being tortured and murdered by right wing nutcases, so I’m not sure that would be ideal.

Drowning in warm chocolate, that’ll do me.

Eternal life? What kind of sick moron wishes for that? I wish more people weren’t greedy selfish bastards who could realize that Death is just another piece of the puzzle, and not one that should be feared or fought. Who wants to pickle themselves with Big pharma meds until you are warehoused in some nursing home, shitting yourself and unaware of who the fuck you are or used to be?

Stand up for what you believe in. Don’t compromise your integrity, from this day, until the day you pass away, and YOU WON’T Fear Anything, much less death.

Harold and Maude was the bomb.

Don’t compromise your integrity, from this day, until the day you pass away, and YOU WON’T Fear Anything, much less death.

Yeah but, unfortunately I find myself having to compromise in this life, and I do fear death. But if you feel differently, then that is wonderful.

Beer truck for me.

I’ll probably be the same at the end of my life as I am right now, and not know when to quit. When I’m dead, though, I think that I’d like to stay dead.

Hmmm. I’ve always felt somewhat disconnected from the whole death and dying thing. When my father died, I was 15. I’ll admit to not really feeling anything that approximated ‘grief’ like other people show. Thirty years later, my mother died. Same thing. I just didn’t feel the deep sadness that I thought was ‘normal’ when someone you care about passes away.

I’ve lost dear friends. I miss them, and think about the good times we had, but I didn’t feel grief the way our other friends did. I had lengthy discussions with my therapist about this… is there some part of me that is broken, that just doesn’t connect with others, and therefore doesn’t feel that death is a disconnect?

After many false starts and hard stops, at 57 I’m in a stable, loving relationship for the first time in my life. And, for the first time in my life I feel the passing of time more accutely. I want more time with this man, with this part of my life. If I were to find out that I was dying, I would be very angry. If I were to find out that HE were dying, it would crush me.

I’m not afraid to die. I think that death is simply the end of life. I don’t think there’s much after death, but if there is – BONUS! My issues with death are more the fact that it is the end. I don’t want this part of my life to end anytime soon. I want to be an old woman, still holding hands with my old man.

Ah, Harold and Maude… Best. Movie. Love story. Evar.

The funny part about re-animation is that if they do manage to revive Mr. Williams in 100 years or so, they’ll be resurrecting an 83-year old. And unless “They” have figured out how to reverse aging and/or repair all of the damage his years of excess took out on his body, how much longer would he realistically have? IIRC he wasn’t in that good of shape before the cancer was diagnosed.

I’m not too fussed about how I go out, but I do hope my last words kick ass.

Sometimes I fear that someone like Mr. Ace O’Spades will write The Dumbest Blog Post Ever, and anyone with a brain who reads it will keel over dead in Monty Python-esque fashion out of sheer horrified hilarity.

Will there be snark in Heaven?

Really, sign me up for the “living forever” thing. I like life, I like forests and mountains, I like movies and books, I like seeing new things and meeting new people, and I can’t do any of that stuff when I’m dead.

I understand why people daydream about immortality, and I don’t see any reason to hold it against ’em just because it’s not possible.

You may recall that the big controversy with Williams was whether or not he even wanted this cryogenic nonsense done. There was much speculation that his son, whose idea this seems to have been, got a virtually catatonic Williams to “agree” to it.

But what if he’s revived in 100 years, and it turns out that the Splendid Splinter had actually wanted a normal funeral, will the revived Zombie Kid be able to sue his own estate for wrongful non-burial?

What say the rest of you?

As long as there’s interesting stuff in the world and my brain operates properly I want to stick around.

However, a class of immortal elite – only the rich, right? – seems like the wrong sort of thing for a reasonable world to tolerate. My suspicion is that children will continue to starve to death in many areas of the world once the technology makes eternal life possible…if I was the parent of one of those kids I think I’d be happy to strangle any immortal who got near.

I’m not too fussed about how I go out, but I do hope my last words kick ass.

I think yours might.

This is an interesting discussion.

I, at the moment, am terrified of death. But then again I am only in my third decade of life. I have the sneaking suspicion that by the time that I am oh, say, 70, that attitude may begin to change. When all my loved ones, friends, lovers, everyone I know and love, all that makes life worth living, has passed from the earth, I suspect that death may begin to look comforting.

I am reminded of Jonathan Swift (the real one, natch) who wrote about a mysterious species of man known as “struldbrugs” in his Gulliver’s Travels. They live long lives, and continue to age. The condition is seen as a curse – both due to the long extension of the effects of old age, and also from the loss of all that they know. Swift writes in poignant lines about the dejection of these creatures, as they watch all that they know and love pass from the earth.

Apparently Gore Vidal has been writing some interesting thoughts on death in his recent work which I have not had time to peruse as of yet. To paraphrase, he argues that to the young, death is unimaginable, but to the old, it seems constant, present, like a friend.

In an unrelated note, much of my politics, ethics, and art of living is linked to my acceptance of the inevitably of death, my profound doubts in an afterlife, and my belief that the world is all we have. This, too, is the fundamental argument of the young Marx. We can not overthrow the misery of the present until we overthrow the tyranny of God and eternity. The delicate uniqueness of each individual life is what drives my socialism and my fundamental belief in making the world better for all people.

It would only fit that selfish old narcissists and hedonists, while mouthing pieties, would be the most invested in living for ever. They don’t care about the present, they don’t care about those around them, they only care about themselves.

Still, one has to admit, it would be fascinating to see what the world looks like in, say, 3000, or even 10,000. Though I personally suspect that civilization will have collapsed by then.

Sorry, that all may have been too serious.

I’ll take living forever, thank you VERY much, if that’s an option. Death = missing things. I’d hate to miss anything.

I’d be happy to live forever, but I’d rather die than see my children predecease me. Never ever want to see that.

So I’ll go the way Homer Simpson suggested: “Naked girl avalanche!”

About four years ago, I almost died. Not a “near-death experience” or anything like that, but I went into the ER with some unusual symptoms, both like and unlike a heart attack, and found out I had an aortic aneurysm that was starting to dissect (i.e., rip open). I was very lucky — those things often tear open with no symptoms, making them hard to diagnose in time. The same thing killed John Ritter a few months later.

I’m a relatively young middle-aged guy, and at the time, I had a 2-year-old and an infant, and goddammit, I did NOT want to die. I still hate the idea of dying too soon. But what’s too soon? There’s the rub. On a small scale, I’d like to watch my kids graduate from college, get married, have their own kids, and so on. I hate the idea of not knowing how my family will move forward.

On a larger scale, humanity in general is still very young, and there is a huge universe out there to learn about. We are continually making new discoveries about the way the universe works, bringing science fiction closer to reality (yes, for better or worse), and the best part about that is, everything new we discover leads to more mysteries to solve. There’s always another horizon to look and travel beyond.

So put me in the “live as long as possible and then some” camp. Hell, we sure don’t want to cede immortality to the rich wingnut assholes, do we?

I’ve got a bad attitude about death also. I don’t want it.
On the other hand, thoughtful philosophical examinations of the subject, a la “Highlander,” make compelling arguments that eternal life can also suck.

Maybe at some point in the future, I’ll be ready to go. But I’d prefer to have that be my decision. So…indefinite life, until I’ve had enough, would be just fine thank you.

Seriously, I need to live long enough until virtual reality is sweet enough that we can experience anything by sitting in a full-body suit in a gel-filled suspension tank somewhere.
That, plus comical robots like Bender.

I want to see that shit, and I’ll be pissed if I don’t. Somebody is going to get sued.

The whole thing probably won´t work at all.
Back in university, I worked for a time at a research institute experimenting with frozen human blood. Just as a lowly student. 🙂

Blood is simply a 0.9% salt solution with some cells, plates, hemoglobin etc. thrown in. You have to freeze at a pre-determined temperature gradient. If you freeze too fast, the cells can´t loose enough water and when they freeze, they burst and damage the cell membrane (ice = higher volume than water). If you freeze too slow, the cells will loose too much water (while retaining the salt) and poison themselves with the resulting high percentage salt solution inside the cell.
The problem was that different cells have different optimum freezing gradients. So while one cell type would have high survival rates, another one wouldn´t fare so good. And remember, human blood contains only a very limited number of different cell types (red and white blood cells, plates etc.). The human body on the other hand …

You can improve the situation with some additives but you won´t get a 100% survival rate for even all cells in human blood. And that was with small samples with perfect temperature control. The volume of a human body would practically insure that not all cells would experience optimum circumstances.

“Re-awakening” with 5%, 10% or 30% of your brain cells dead for example probably wouldn´t constitute a satisfying consumer experience. 🙂

Eternal life? What kind of sick moron wishes for that?

This one?

And I’ll take death by orgasm*, thank you. Whether that means having sex with Death or not is left as an exercise for the reader.

(* = not the death metal band, if there’s one by that name. And if there isn’t, why the hell not?)

Living forever would take the zest out of life.

Maybe zest isn’t the right word. But why fight and work to make a difference. If you know you’re going to live forever, there’s no incentive to live every day as if it’s your last.

Maybe I’m not getting this right. But it’s the ephemerality of life that makes it precious; it’s the impending, overhanging moment of doom for all of us that makes it important to do things, to attack life, to Sieze The Day.

Im surprised no one has said this: I just want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and crying, like his passengers.

Ted Williams will be back! Sure! Right after they find a cure for…decapitation! (Not to mention cell damage from the freezing.)

What I don’t get is if these people believe in a soul that survives bodily death, what makes them think it’s going to hang around for a hundred years or so, until their erstwhile headsicle is thawed out and jump-started again? Elvis has long since left the building, dood!

But that aside, one of the interesting things in the story is how the “sleepers� are viewed by the contemporary society. Basically, they’re seen as losers who couldn’t make it in their own time. Many of the sleepers are revived and penniless due to poor financial planning, further cementing that view.

See also Larry Niven “The Defenseless Dead”. In a future where organ transplants are routine, a law is passed that declares cryopatients (“corpsicles”) to be legally dead if their trust funds aren’t large enough to support them… so they can be broken down for parts.

I don’t know. I think I’d like to see Williams come back and manage the Red Sox again. You know, one of those glass jars on a robot body, like in Futurama?

Think this is too weird? Well, I bet it will happen before the Sox next win the World Series.

However it happens, I hope its a surprise.

But that aside, one of the interesting things in the story is how the “sleepers� are viewed by the contemporary society. Basically, they’re seen as losers who couldn’t make it in their own time. Many of the sleepers are revived and penniless due to poor financial planning, further cementing that view.

That’s more or less how it happens in Transmet too, except that pretty much all of the revived people end up unable to deal with the societal changes (not surprising given how fucked up and in your face the City is).

I’ve got no desire to live forever – the obsession with longevity is one of the few things I dislike about RA Wilson and Timothy Leary – but I can utterly sympathise with wanting to see the future. Of course the proper way to do that is not cryogenics but near-light-speed spaceflight. That way you get to be an astronaut as well.

The whole thing probably won´t work at all.

Yeah, I’d think unlimited life extension will happen well before anyone bothers to figure out how to revive a frozen Ted Williams.

You know, death scares a lot of people, and I can understand thier desire to beleive that they can be frozen and thawed out later when death has been conquered. However, as much as I beleive that one day death may very well be conquered, it aint gonna happen any time soon and this corpsicle idea is really just a security blanket.

What I fear most is that I’ll see my death coming in, like, 2 seconds and I’ll have a really witty comment to make about it, but there’ll be no one around to hear it. Now THAT’S scary.

I would like to live forever out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

I dunno. Over the years I have taken my life for granted, or risked it unnecessarily. Just basically didn’t care which way it went. But then, in those situations where it was actually LIKELY I was going to die, hard and ugly and WAY too young, I discovered how passionately I wanted to cling to life. And I discovered the things one sometimes has to do, selfishly, to stay alive. Then you’re alive, and feeling somewhat guilty, but really glad to still be here, just glowing with the joy of life.

But with time, that glow fades and the ambivilence returns. Until the next opportunity to look in the buring coals of the reaper’s eyes. And once again, to suddenly discover that life is something to be valued, to be fought for, to keep at any cost.

Now I’m old, kinda sick and hurt a lot. Yet I’m in no hurry to call it off. A warm summer breeze, a pretty girl’s smile, a perfect pasta, a long motorcycle ride up the coast, sitting in front of a fire watching it snow. Lots of little things I’d like to continue to have, to keep forever. So when my time comes will I cry out for one more day? Or will I be ready, and close my eyes and go to sleep? Can’t say.

But I don’t need to know the answer today. Knowing that the answer will come is enough, somehow, for now…

mikey

I’m going to memorize a nonsensical phrase in German and spew it out right before I kick the bucket. Why shouldn’t I be as frustrating an enigma to my loved ones in my final moments as I have been all my life?

I’m not ready to go quite yet, but when I am I plan to do it hilariously, and hopefully on video. Being able to die bringing a little bit of laughter to others, to me, is far better than quietly expiring in a hospital bed.

The naked lady avalanche does have some appeal, I’ll admit.

If they do figure out a way to revive Teddy Ballgame and reverse the aging process, I’m sure he’ll sign with the Yankees.

I have no idea how I will die, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. However, I have told my family how I’d like my remains to be handled. I have requested that my corpse be brought out to the woods and left for bears to eat. I’d rather provide a picnic for a hungry grizzly than take up space in a gravesite somewhere.

You pick up things from the oddest places sometimes. An image that has stuck with me for years actually came from an old videogame called “Colony Wars”, which was a ‘dog fighting in space’ thing from the late 90s.

You spend the whole game in the far-flung depths of space, but the last battle occurs directly over the Earth, which is only recognizable for the shape of its continents — the water and greenery is all gone (hense the need for colonies).

The interesting idea is that the whole deal didn’t get un-fuckupable until people figured out a way to extend the lifespan to 250 years, and boom – population explosion because the old fuckers stopped dropping out of the equation and people were fertle for much longer.

I think on average, people would probably embrace a 300 year lifespan, and fuck the sustained viability of life on Earth.

“Life is short and its filled with stuff, so let me know baby when you’ve had enough, we’ll do the dead, turn blue”
– The Cramps – Surfin’ Dead

Been dead. Don’t recommend it. Wouldn’t mind not going through that again.

Living forever or even just a very long time is a different kettle of sushi to having your noggin stuffed in a freezer until some future janitor accidentally switches the power off. I mean, you’ve got to be very trusting to assume scientists of the future are going to have nothing better to do than defrost some old codger who’ll probably complain about there still being no jetpacks and how the new money doesn’t feel right….

My grandfather killed himself just before Christmas this past year. He told my step-grandmother he was tired of living with the pain, and before she could call anyone in to help, he took his old service pistol and blew his brains out. He had emphazema and other lung issues, most stemming from serving on aircraft carriers as a radio instructor during World War II.* He’d also had three heart attacks and two strokes – one during a two-week power outtage post-Katrina – and numerous skin cancers.

I don’t like that he didn’t give anyone a chance to say goodbye, especially members of the family that were closer to him than I was. I think it’d been an option for him for quite a while, but the actual action was just a spur-of-the-moment. I understand wanting out and wanting to call your own shot. I reserve the right to do the same if the urge ever strikes and I’ve seen all this world I care to see.

Or I might decide to live forever, I haven’t come to a conclusion on the matter yet. To be quite honest, I’m sorta hoping Terrence McKenna was onto something with the whole “Timewave Zero” thing. Wouldn’t that be neat?

* And because he was only an instructor and not a combat vet, and even thought the military was responsible for the conditions he worked in (that is, walls loaded with asbestos and whatnot), the VA never give him a nickel.

Hysterical Woman said,

Anyone read Transmetropolitan?

Yeah, and it’s the first thing I thought of too.

Mixing anti-matter with my bare hands like Spock did in Wrath of Khan.

I’d like to die crossing off the last entry in this book.

This book is far too short.

I remember a science fiction story during the 70’s entitled “living among the dead” where the narrator’s job was to watch over the cyrogneticly frozen – then there was a necular war and to survive he ended up eating them. The story amused me in a very grim way.

what always puzzled me about the whole deal was that it seemed they were making a huge leap of faith that in the future people would want to thaw them and cure them. I mean why? surely they would have troubles of their own and to resurect people from a 100 years ago seems a bit much for anybody to do just out of the goodness of their hearts..

No matter what you think about living forever, becoming a popsicle is just plain stupid, as the odds are likely that you end up either as a slave to your great great great grandchildren, an unvoluntary organ donor or reclassified as subhuman and used in place of cuddly rabbits in medical experiments…

“Re-awakeningâ€? with 5%, 10% or 30% of your brain cells dead for example probably wouldn´t constitute a satisfying consumer experience. 🙂

As opposed to…?

I’m not terribly afraid of having to deal with my life ending, but all in all I’d rather put it off for as long as possible (as long as I haven’t degenerated into misery). This cryonics idea sounds a bit silly, but at the moment it’s the only alternative in town, so the question has to be asked:

Why the hell not?

Mixing anti-matter with my bare hands like Spock did in Wrath of Khan.

Awesome!

This post is extremely ignorant and I’m rather disappointed with sadlyno.

Lacking another world war and given technological progress further accelerates, we are likely to reach superintelligence and radical life extension very, very soon. Already there is a guy with a chip in his brain who can control computers with his thoughts alone. Not long and we will be able to transfer our minds onto hard disks and achieve quasi eternal life.

The Alcor procedure aims to prevent any freezing damage to the cell structure as well as possible, and it is not at all unlikely that nano-technology will allow extensive repair work very soon. It is very likely that with the cell-structure of the brain largely intact, your memories and personality are still there to be brought back.

If you are satisfied with dying with 80, believing in some non-sense heaven and all that religious bullshit, fine;

I, for one, will at least try to see the end of the story and I can unerstand that old fart very well.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4396387.stm

two years ago already; If this kind of stuff doesn’t astonish you, doesn’t make you wish to see what is to come within the next decades, then I can’t help you.

> I wish more people weren’t greedy selfish bastards who could realize that
> Death is just another piece of the puzzle, and not one that should be feared or > fought.

“piece of the puzzle”? For all we know, you just disappear into a void. If you damage your brain, your personality disappears; if you are dead, everything disappears. you go on and welcome that “piece of the puzzle”. I’ll gladly try to avoid it as, indeed, almost all humans do until they are forced to go.

In any case, should the old guy be brought back, he can still kill himself 2000 years later if he so wishes.

richard dawkins has an interesting discussion of the religious (particularly christian) mindset towards death. given that no one here has mentioned god or anything like it (and some of you are even called “atheist”) i’m assuming we are all thinking “this is it”. and chances are we are right. but it is interesting that those who believe their future post-death includes pearly-gates and wings and blah blah blah all seem so fucking terrified of dying. if they really believe all that specious crap they should welcome death with open arms. as for me, i agree with many above that i want to live as long as possible because i enjoy consciousness much better than its opposite.

but when i do go out, i’d prefer it be on a spaceship as i travel through the oort cloud on my way to somewhere else, surrounded by some sort of VR sensorium that makes it all seem like a non-stop naked girl avalance party.

Ya think the last will & testament has some kinda I’ll-Be-Back clause? Just in case.

I, being of sound body and mind, do bequeath my estate to my loving family…until I get back. And, in the meantime don’t f*ck it up cause I’m reclaiming the instant I draw breath again.

These assholes need to get over themselves and die like everyone else. It’s going to happen anyway- the chances of being brought back in a manner that would be anything other than a living hell are slim to none. And it’s not like they’re going to write a symphony or something- they’re just going to hang around and suck on a feeding tube, or at best wheel themselves around in the park and listen to the birds. Fuck you.

I’m thinking of just falling down a manhole or something- that could be pretty funny.

Ed: That’s no way for a man to die.
Frank: Ehhh, you’re right, Ed. A parachute not opening… that’s a way to die. Getting caught in the gears of a combine… having your nuts bit off by a Laplander, that’s the way I wanna go.

Put aside death and these cyrogenic fools and have a laugh. A comedian who regularly performs at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre calls phone sex operators with fantasies like …I’m into the “helpful” paper clip from Microsoft Word or Jewish mother stereotypes. Very funny.

forgot to close tag

has anyone ever read “a history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters” by julian barnes? the last chapter is all about a conception of the afterlife. that’s how i wanna go:

“last night i dreamt that i woke up. it’s the oldest dream in the world, and i’ve just had it.”

of course, the very thought of being without my husband, the venerable ben in VA, is highly unsettling. i’m right fond of that boy, and would much prefer to spend as little time as possible on earth without him.

“Already there is a guy with a chip in his brain who can control computers with his thoughts alone. Not long and we will be able to transfer our minds onto hard disks and achieve quasi eternal life.”

Hahahahaha. Extremely cool as the recent developments in mental control of devices are, they’re simply not in the same league as downloading your mind. It’s not only way beyond our scientific knowledge and technical capability, it’s a category error. What we can do, in a very basic and cumbersome manner and after extensive training, is measure patterns of activity and distinguish between a limited number of them, more or less arbitrarily chosen. In a similar way, we can train a chimp to learn symbols and correlate them with items and actions. A chimp, however, cannot understand quantum mechanics.The difference between what Donoghue is working on and digitising the contents of our minds is of the order of the size difference between a pea and the solar system. I’m not saying it’s never going to happen, but certainly not for hundreds of years at the very minimum.

While we’re dreaming the impossible I would like to be functionaly immortal – live young and strong until some external force/event kills me. There is too much to see and do on this planet for one lifetime. As for last words, I can’t help but thinkng about the old joke about Socrates’s last words – “I drank what?”

Another point is that sooner or later, and to me this is a depressing thought, life in the universe will die out. Whether its by heat death, or from a big crunch, or what have you, the universe too will die. So even if we have ‘conquered death’, where exactly will these quasi-immortals hang out when the universe dies?

I suppose futurologists will argue that we will one day be able to travel between universes, but color me skeptical.

I’m not saying it’s never going to happen, but certainly not for hundreds of years at the very minimum.

I disagree: I think it’s going to happen sooner than that, and not actually because we’ll have the expertise to understand what the hell’s up but because we’ll be able to map and simulate a human brain operating well before we figure out how the brain does what it does. In other words our computing power is going to make miracles happen that we won’t have a hope in hell of really understanding.

This leads to wonderful ethical dilemmas: I put Bimmler in my brain scanner, it does its bit, and I have a working copy of Bimmler’s brain. Then I shoot him. Is he dead? Or I don’t shoot him: now I have two Bimmlers, one of which I force to operate my Roomba. Should it be legal to back him up? Is it negligent homicide if the power goes out and I don’t have a UPS operating?

Thanks, Ginger Yellow. The representative language, data structures, file system and algorithms for writing the contents of the human mind to hardware storage not only haven’t been invented yet, until we understand the difference between a few hundred petabytes of data and human conscienceness they CANNOT be invented. The idea that something like this is “just around the corner” is beyond silly. Maybe once we get nationwide wireless coverage…

mikey

Awww…love you too, honey! Okay, let’s not nauseate the Sadlynauts.

I think it’d be pretty awesome to go down in a blaze of glory, “Top of the world, Ma!” style. Perhaps my brother could fly me up to the stratosphere as I explode.

The representative language, data structures, file system and algorithms for writing the contents of the human mind to hardware storage not only haven’t been invented yet, until we understand the difference between a few hundred petabytes of data and human conscienceness they CANNOT be invented.

My suspicion is that they never will be “written” or “invented” but instead living things will be “read” or “scanned” and simulated after such scanning.

The funniest way to go that I can think of is for Brad to die right after he shoots himself with one of those novelty guns which put out a little flag with the word “Bang!” on it*. It would be great if it happened at a funny location such as on stage at the Wang or on one of the Swan Boats in the Public Gardens.

Can’t you just picture it? Funny and surreal!

* I’m sure Brad’ll use his MD/Ph.D. caliber mind to figure out how to make it work!

This has got me thinking – for which I blame all of you.
My grandfather was born in 1902, just before powered flight. The following science fiction style “miracles” occured durring his lifetime:
Powered Flight
Jet power
The theory of relativity
Rockets capable of leaving the atmosphere
Humans walking on the moon
Probes to Mars and Venus
Communications sattelites
Routine blood tranfusions
Human organ transplants
Television
Atomic wepons
Atomic energy
Spaceflight
Industrial robots
Penicillin
Radar
Computers
Lasers
Magnetic data storage
Solar power
Etc. Etc. Etc.
He just missed cloning.
Aren’t we in the same sort of situation?
I could guess what will be possible in the near future, but if I’m like my grandpa, my guesses will be wrong because they are not wild or crazy enough to fit the comming reality.

Hahahahaha. Extremely cool as the recent developments in mental control of devices are, they’re simply not in the same league as downloading your mind. It’s not only way beyond our scientific knowledge and technical capability, it’s a category error.

i, Simulate one neuron as a virtual black box- conceptually possible.
ii, Simulate one neuron in step with an actual neuron, so that they produce the as the actual neuron gets teh inputs – conceptually possible.
iii, Do the same for all the neurons in a human brain – conceptually possible.

DOING these will be difficult – but I don’t see it as impossible.

“I could guess what will be possible in the near future, but if I’m like my grandpa, my guesses will be wrong because they are not wild or crazy enough to fit the comming reality.”

– American Idol TWO
– Porn websites with sophisticated algorithms that can generate fake images to suit your own perversions, but are completely indistinguishable from authentic photos
– Hamburgers with FIVE meat patties
– Ultra-zima, which is indistinguishable in taste from Mountain Dew, just in case there were any high schoolers of the future who weren’t man enough to handle current zima
– Virtual NASCAR

Come to think of it, I’d like to die laughing like the weasles in “Who Framed Roger Rabit” …. OR by having nothing but an anvil or silverwear fly out of my pack, instead of a parachute after jumping out of an airplane.

i, Simulate one neuron as a virtual black box- conceptually possible.
ii, Simulate one neuron in step with an actual neuron, so that they produce the as the actual neuron gets teh inputs – conceptually possible.
iii, Do the same for all the neurons in a human brain – conceptually possible.

Talking completely out of my ass, but may also not be necessary to simulate a neuron in all its glory either: just what it does that relates to the function we’re interested in and not its internal maintenance.

When I get that old, I’ll be asking myself:

Is it Over Yet?
Dr BLT (c) 2007
http://www.drblt.net/music/Over.mp3

Ted can never come back. First, they only froze his head. And second, his head allegedly cracked when warm air came in contact with it. He’s severely damaged goods. And it is a sad end to the greatest hitter who ever lived. His son (whose idea it was to freeze his father in the first place) has a better chance of being revived.

Porn websites with sophisticated algorithms that can generate fake images to suit your own perversions, but are completely indistinguishable from authentic photos

Nim,
Links please.

But seriously, we need legal euthanasia in this country. Individuals should be able to decide with their doctors when it is the right time to go. A ‘culture of life’ should also protect the right to terminate fetuses or the right for ill elders to self-terminate. That’s how it would be in my perfect world, and it is very nearly the way life is in such places as Holland and Norway.

Porn websites with sophisticated algorithms that can generate fake images to suit your own perversions, but are completely indistinguishable from authentic photos

The guy gets a license to imagine the future and asks for still images. Jeez.

Anyway, once the simulated porn starts you can bet it’ll take artificial intelligence to make ’em fuck properly and then it’ll be a case of exploiting other beings all over again. Unless we’re just shooting all these new beings in Doom XXXIV in which case they won’t have a chance to protest when I shotgun their heads off, by jiminy.

I don’t like that he didn’t give anyone a chance to say goodbye, especially members of the family that were closer to him than I was. I think it’d been an option for him for quite a while, but the actual action was just a spur-of-the-moment. I understand wanting out and wanting to call your own shot. I reserve the right to do the same if the urge ever strikes and I’ve seen all this world I care to see.

I was there when a dear friend died in hospice care, and it confirmed my desire to go swiftly once it’s time for me to go. She was a far, far better person than I will ever be, she had the “best” death possible under the circumstances, and it was both joyous and humbling to see how many people’s lives she’d touched. But I don’t have her gifts, or her strength, or her patience, and there are fewer people by a factor of at least ten who’ll miss me when I’m gone.

Since I’ve been able to understand the concept of “death” — around the time I was 6 or 7 — I’ve always wanted to die swiftly, with a minimum of pain & tedium, and hopefully under circumstances where the people who might care will say something like “Well, dang, hard cheese for us, but at least she was consistent.”

At the same time, I’ve always believed in reincarnation, which Hasenkatz will probably say invalidates my philosophy, but heck… if bodily death really *is* The End, it’s not like I’m gonna be all embarrassed about my mistake, right? {grin}

So, since I may be the nearest semblence to a Religious Believer you’re liable to “out” in this thread: When I go, I want to go. Whether I get to press the Reset button, or just disappear into the Big Dark like an extinguished match, the concept of freezing my corpse or loading my consciousness onto a computer chip just seems desperately childish and rather silly, rather like refusing to eat solid food or accept toilet-training. I’ve always had a much higher threshold for pain than for humiliation, so I just can’t imagine anything more tedious than hanging on to some crippled, compromised version of Me while the rest of the universe keeps changing and evolving!

“A ‘culture of life’ should also protect the right to terminate fetuses or the right for ill elders to self-terminate. That’s how it would be in my perfect world, and it is very nearly the way life is in such places as Holland and Norway.”

Sorry. In America, the privileges associated with the “culture of life” only apply to those whom God has deemed morally worthy, i.e. those who can afford the best care available.

His son (whose idea it was to freeze his father in the first place) has a better chance of being revived.

Well, if the news coverage about Ted Jr. has anything to do with reality, he’d need to get a life first, wouldn’t he?

That’s my real objection to all the “virtual reality” scenarios… it’s not that I consider them impossible, just tedious. I found it physically painful to sit through ninth-grade trigonometry, much less a seeming eternity of Virtuality. The current immortality quests just strike me as desperate attempts to hang onto the least interesting bits of life; I have no interest in living “forever” as a novelty item in some incorporeal futurama display. Maybe I was just permanently damaged when I read about Swift’s struldbrugs at an impressionable age…

But it’s the ephemerality of life that makes it precious; it’s the impending, overhanging moment of doom for all of us that makes it important to do things, to attack life, to Sieze The Day.

That’s a rationalization arising from the fact that, currently, life is ephemeral. I think it’s only when viewed from the perspective of a short-timer that we think “If I lived ten times as long, I’d just put everything off until later” or something similar. If we lived orders of magnitude longer, we’d have just as much incentive to “seize the day,” or we’d have other rationales for doing things. Instead of the stick of “impending doom,” we might do important things for the carrot of exploration and discovery, for instance. Why stay home and be bored for 10,000 years when you can get out there and discover 10,000 years’ worth of new stuff?

Immortality, or even just extreme longevity, would obviously change social structures, from the family unit on up; but I think it would also force a change in how and where we find our incentives.

“Immortality, or even just extreme longevity, would obviously change social structures, from the family unit on up;”

Per Richard Dawkins, it might very well make us a lot more cautious.
The odds of a weird accident killing or maiming you increase a lot as your lifespan increases.
Like, if there’s a 1 in 10million chance of getting hit by a car when you cross the street, that’s a risk you can take, if you only live 75 years. If you live 750 years, the odds that you’ll be hit crossing the street -at some point- increase a lot. Ditto drowning in the bathtub, dying in a plane crash, etc.

Much safer to stay at home and enjoy the virtual porn.

Also, per Ernest Becker, a longer life span would increase the anxiety of dying early. Checking out at age 30 when the bubonic plague is rampant a kind of comedy, as Boccaccio shows us. Dying at age 30 when you could live to 750 is an absolutely terrifying prospect, as well as cruel, pitiless, and soul-crushing to loved ones around you. Again, time for the virtual porn (which, per MIT, will soon enough include virtual smells and textures).

Also, per Ernest Becker, a longer life span would increase the anxiety of dying early. Checking out at age 30 when the bubonic plague is rampant is a kind of comedy, as Boccaccio shows us. Dying at age 30 when you could live to 750 is an absolutely terrifying prospect, as well as cruel, pitiless, and soul-crushing to loved ones around you. Again, time for the virtual porn (which, per MIT, will soon enough include virtual smells and textures).

Well, part of the problem is that what constitutes a good death for the ….er….Honoree is often not a good death for the survivors.

My dear friend Bob had what I would call a pretty good death for him, but it was not so much fun for his family. Bob was in his 60’s; had already had 3 grown kids and a long-defunct marriage when he re-encountered an old flame from the past; they had a whirlwind romance, married, and he went off to live with her in a tropical paradise. He’d been there about 1 year when, spending a lovely morning in his beautiful garden, he had a sudden and massive heart attack and all was over.

Now – that’s not a bad way to go. Having achieved happiness; being in the presence of beauty, a sudden strike from above and the end.

It wasn’t so hot for the family, though.

My friend’s dad’s death was similar – he suffered a heart attack while having a beer and a sandwich between teaching his university classes. He was gone before he hit the floor.

It was horrendous on the family – Dad just didn’t come home from work. My friend was 17 and his brother was 10.

Now, my own dad’s death was not as sudden, but in comparison to what it could have been, it wasn’t bad for him. Due to his dislike of doctors, he allowed a winter cold to turn into pneumonia, suffered an episode of respiratory failure, and never came out of sedation. Went on his own terms, too; we sat at his bedside but he waited until we took a dinner break to pass.

Mom hasnt been the same since, however.

OTOH, when the family gets the chance to go through the 7 stages or whatever, the estate planning has been seen to, they can sit by the bedside and have heartfelt talks, come to acceptance, and ease someone gently out of the world, it’s usually after the Honoree has experienced quite a lot of pain, distress, indignity and suffering.

Me, I’m going for the marooned on a hillside and have the animals scatter my bones option.

what’s wrong with cialis and diapers? other than that nasty, protruding hard-on causing leakage out the side.

in all seriousness, c’mon by and let’s discuss this in more depth–forget this net stuff, i like your blog. let’s take it to that next step. unless you’re prejudiced against filthy old queers hopped up on boner pills.

I’m pretty keen with the concept of dying. Frankly, my overall plan says that I need to take myself out when the system begins shutting down and I’ve got a fake heart, 3% of my lungs, paper-thin skin, and firing blanks.

The idea that “I’ll miss man’s next advancement” doesn’t mean much to me. Seeing the consistent cycle of man’s cruelty to man repeat over and over again is depressing after the first go around, so why further the pain and suffering by seeing it 10, 20, 30 times over and never being done with it?

Further, like most things, I suspect that the only time a valid treatment for death comes along, it’ll be so expensive that the upper 0.5% of the country will be the only ones who can afford it. And ‘resurrected Ken Lay’ scares the bejeezus out of me.

Further further, this young Marxist suspects that an immortal class would be even more difficult to overthrow than the mortal, sickly Old White Men class we have now as oppressors.

And further further further, I have an afterlife that supposedly exists! So hurrah for me. What that afterlife entails exactly I’m not too certain on, but I’m pretty sure it’s there.

I want to live as long as possible. Not because I fear death, but because if it’s inevitable why be in a rush. So long as my mind is clear and my body isn’t reduced to a source of pain, I’ll hang around. An old family friend, who passed last year, lived to be 102, and was rereading Bloom on Shakespeare for the fourth or fifth time when she died. Read the NYTimes in large print every day. Had a crisp, active mind that allowed her to never get old in the sense of hating new things, as my own grandmother inevitably did. If I can have something close to her quality of life at that age I’ll take it.
I do, however, know that I want to be cremated and have my ashes spread across the tiny bay in front of our old family place on an island in Lake Placid in the Adirondaks. That’s fer certain.

i’m a writer, among other things, so i have a rather over-active fantasy life. yeah, i’ve done it all: what if i could live forever, what if i could be a vampire, what if i had super powers, what if i could change sexes at will, etc. etc. my favorite one lately, though, hasn’t been the living forever one, although that certainly is a gas; instead, my favorite fantasy has been what if i could go back and do it all over again, except knowing what i know now?

for instance: begin studying japanese swordcraft and electric guitar at age 5….that kind of thing.

and that girl i was too stupid to ask out in high school? man oh man.

the possibilities are endless.

“referably not tomorrow, but by the time I’m wetting my pants and popping Cialis, I should be ready to go.”

D’oh! Game over man, game over!

I would like to have Angela Basset sit on my face until I smother to death. That means of death might not be comical but I sure would enjoy it.

I tried man, I really did. But I just kept visualizing Fred Bassett instead. It was funny, in a dogs-ass-gross kinda fashion….

mikey

It’d be funnier if Angela Bassett was dead at the time.

Ted Williams may not be back, but his eyes will.

If you had a medical need, and had your choice of cloned eyes, you would ask the lab to go with the best. Ted had ridiculously good eyesight, something like 20/10.

Oh, also, devoured by tigers.

The 16-ton weight is a bit of a classic.

“When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather,
not screaming like the people in his car.”

-Jack Handy

I think i’d like to drown in a vat of Guatemalan rum, but I’d settle for Irish whiskey. Hell, even Canadian whiskey. At this point, a puddle of Schlitz would be a decent compromise.

My wife and I long ago decided to shoot for living 300 years (now, 245 years away). Of course, that was long before we heard about December 21, 2012 (11:18 GMT), which may be more satisfying in the long run anyway. See you there!

He died the way he would have wanted to go. At home, surrounded by his family, and with his mouth stuffed full of schoolgirls’ hockey socks.

P.S. If you have not yet read “Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition”, you should go and do so on the first opportunity. It has more interviews and background stuff on the Alcor crowd than you can shake a stick at… but wait, there’s more! From an overlapping intellectual milieu, it also has explosions!
There is a cameo appearance from a group of loons who think nothing of pouring liquid propane into abandoned mine shafts, waiting for it to evaporate, and lighting the fuse. Mikey, I’m thinking of you.

“iii, Do the same for all the neurons in a human brain – conceptually possible.

DOING these will be difficult – but I don’t see it as impossible”

It’s conceptually possible, alright. It’s just that there’s a universe of difference between capturing a few brain waves and mapping and recreating billions upon billions of neuronal connections (and their varying potentials). And that’s before we get into the endocrine system.

By the way, spontaneous human combustion is apparently a myth. The most likely cause of the mysterious immolation deaths is the decedant passing out near a fire source, which cooks the person slowly, over a period of many hours. A test on a hog corpse produced results similar to that of “spontaneous human combustion.”. Ok, so enjoy your breakfast and all.

How will I go? Of course, I have no idea.

As someone who’s seen more than his share of dying and death (it comes with the territory), I have some idea of what ways seem to be better (or worse). I guess I’d just hope that I not die alone, or in pain.

But, as for how to go out funeral-wise, that’s easier to think about, and more interesting:

1. Wrap my naked body in a nice white shroud (high thread count cotton, please)

2. Cremate my body on an open pyre, preferably in some kind of ampitheater setting, and definitely with an audience (if they don’t want to watch, they’ll still feel the heat and hear the crackle of the fire)

3. Divide my ashed into three parts
a) one part gets scattered in my beloved yard/garden

b) one part gets distributed by my lovely wife in little trinkets for selected family and friends
c) one part gets packed into a firework of the chrysthanemum variety, then launched out over water – say like Race Point on Cape Cod, or Watch Hill in Rhode Island. In the absence of a nice shoreline, a funky mountaintop (Mt. Chocorua or Mt. Monadnock in NH) would be swell.

Next step: Big Party! (and you’re all invited!)

Aww, thanks rubDMC! And that does sound like a very nice funeral.

Better dead than an asshole. Sendahole.com

LMAO @ Irion

Dude that is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard but I cant blame you. Angela Bassett is one sexy woman, that wouldnt be a bad way to go out. 😀

maybe you could have angie bassett in her role as the bodyguard/limo driver in “strange days” kick, stomp, beat, and karate chop you, and finish by slamming your head over and over in the limo door. might not be as much fun for you as it would be to watch, though.

[i say this with only love in my heart.]

if i get to choose, please fire me out of a cannon into a swimming pool full of chocolate pudding. or was it ice cream? i forget. it was in a movie i saw once, the entertainment at a kid’s party.

The usually-unspoken problem with the “download my brain” idea is that YOU STILL DIE. So you make a copy of yourself? Big deal! The copy laughs at you as your organs fail, then goes off and makes love to your spouse: this is progress?

I don’t hope to live forever, but I DO hope to live long enough for the aliens to show up. Maybe they’ll zap me into atoms, but I’ll be on top of the skyscraper with the exotic dancer, waving the “Welcome Aliens” flag. And if they’re not of the “Independence Day” variety, I’ll hitch a ride and never look back. I mean, where better to die beneath a naked girl avalanche than on the distant pleasure-planet of Orgasma-7?

[…] this one: The usually-unspoken problem with the “download my brain” idea is that YOU STILL DIE. […]

Excellent RubD, excellent.

OK, so instead of the whole “download my brain” thing, I have an alternative: rebuild the tissue in my brain with stem cells, then transplant my brain into a vat-grown clone body that had had its brain growth deliberately stunted, so that I don’t feel guilty about having it scooped out to make way for my own gray matter.

Oh, and I’d like it to be a female body. No point in going through it all again with the exact same equipment, wot?

“Excellent RubD, excellent.”
and
“Aww, thanks rubDMC! And that does sound like a very nice funeral.”

And I forgot the best part:

ssssshhhhhhhhhhh – – – – – – KABOOM! – – – – — oooooooo, aaaaaaaah!

I’m not afraid of death. I mean, it wasn’t all that bad for me (or you) during the Pleistocene or the Dark Ages or Civil War was it? Similarly, it’s going to be equally not so bad during the upcoming Man-Kzin wars or the collapse of the TechnoCore.

No, it’s the transition to death that worries me. And don’t start with the downloading, duplicating, cloning, whatever. None of it is going to extend “me” and my experience of life by one second.

The thing about this cryo-storage thingy is that I don’t get it. How do you know you’re not going to come back with a painful and painfully ironic case of brain frostbite?

I long ago figured out that I want my ashes kneaded into a wedge of clay and fired into a brick, but I keep changing my mind about which window I want the brick thrown through and what message should be taped to it.

i’m a writer, among other things, so i have a rather over-active fantasy life. yeah, i’ve done it all: what if i could live forever, what if i could be a vampire, what if i had super powers, what if i could change sexes at will, etc. etc. my favorite one lately, though, hasn’t been the living forever one, although that certainly is a gas; instead, my favorite fantasy has been what if i could go back and do it all over again, except knowing what i know now?

_Replay_, Ken Grimwood. Read it.

And as regards the idea that an upload is not you, that’s only true in the most obvious case. What happens if you’re uploaded by replacing each neuron in situ while maintaining continuity? At what point do you become not you? Isn’t this what happens to us anyway as cells are replaced?

atheist said,

Harold and Maude was the bomb.

Word.

When I die I want my wife to mix me in her douch powder and run me thru one more time.