Why do we care about a number in the grand scheme of things?

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I know that Acme, but it's not pedantic to differentiate between "chance" and something that is "not actually chance".

The actual issue is people are simply denying. If you're 70+ you simply have less mileage left on your engine than someone who is 15, you're not literally more (or less) likely to die. lol.
 
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The older you get, the more likely you are to die within a set space of time...
No, the likelihood of death doesn't change because it is a constant and a certainty, but the chance of death within a space of time does increase.

Eg. a 100 year old and a 10 year old both have the same chance of death. But a 100 year old has a higher chance of death within 1 year than a 10 year old.

Everyone knows what was meant by what was said, even you. So why start this argument over it? :p
 
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AndyCr15 said:
Is it just me that thinks actually that sounds a little sad? Whilst, sure it's not that important, I like to celebrate things with people. Are you saying it's your preference not to, or just that you didn't and that's fine?

I didn't do anything last night, but I think I would have preferred to if there was a decent option.
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It's sad from your perspective. I can sympathise with that. For me on the other hand it's liberating not having to waste time with things I have no interest in - or particularly care if people find it 'sad'.

Therefore, as long as everyone did what they WANTED to and not being forced into a celebration they have no interest in, or have interest in, there's nothing to be sad about. Everyone is happy. :p
 
Acme said:
I think we understand what you are getting at, but I'm not sure why you felt the need to start this semantics based argument in the first place?

We all know that everyone will die...

Substitute "chance of death" to "chance of death occurring within X amount of time" and we're there...

Can we stop now?
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Acme said:
The older you get, the more likely you are to die within a set space of time...
No, the likelihood of death doesn't change because it is a constant and a certainty, but the chance of death within a space of time does increase.

Eg. a 100 year old and a 10 year old both have the same chance of death. But a 100 year old has a higher chance of death within 1 year than a 10 year old.
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Two brilliant posts in all honesty. Finally some sensibility and rationality, without bickering/self-consciousness.

Acme said:
Everyone knows what was meant by what was said, even you. So why start this argument over it? :p
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Come on it was worth it just for the "religious nutjob" reply, I'm still occasionally sniggering at that :D
 
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I can manage it sometimes. :p

Where's your sig gone anyway you religious nutjob? Almost didn't realise who it was without the Rizla sig! :D
 
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asim18 said:
But the thing is the "chance" doesn't and cannot increase. There is no chance of dying. Not with time, not with disease, not with cancer, not with anything.
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yes, with respect to time, this has been explained to you already

Death is absolute to life, it is not relative to time. If you stop using words like "chance" then I'd assume you've understood what I'm saying.
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I understand what you're saying and I've explained that you're simply reading posts while ignoring context so have ended up arguing against a point the poster wasn't even making.


The amount of time an organism has been alive for has no relevance to its chance of dying. If it's been alive for 1 second or 20,000 days the chances of them dying are the same. 1.
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not necessarily not really, we're talking about chance of dying at a point in time, that varies
 
AndyCr15 said:
Is it just me that thinks actually that sounds a little sad? Whilst, sure it's not that important, I like to celebrate things with people. Are you saying it's your preference not to, or just that you didn't and that's fine?

I didn't do anything last night, but I think I would have preferred to if there was a decent option.
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I'd prefer to not celebrate them, I didn't NYE this year and glad of it.

My birthday I don't care about celebrating either. I'll happily join in for others though. But I have enough joyous moments through out the year without having to forcefully enjoy something just because of some sort of date.
 
asim18 said:
I know that Acme, but it's not pedantic to differentiate between "chance" and something that is "not actually chance".
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No, it's between 'chance' and 'chance before the next birthday' (or some other time frame) that everyone else understood and you just wasted a page and more arguing about. Anyway, I'm not helping by stirring it back up again I realise, sorry...

It's a little like me holding a dice and asking what the chance of rolling a 6 is. Almost everyone would understand and say 1 in 6. You would say, 'it's going to happen. Just keep rolling...'. It's technically true as I didn't specify how long, how many rolls, but we're not in a scientific experiment here.
 
sigma said:
I thought things can disappear at a quantum level?
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Sometimes appear too. A particle and its anti-particle will sometimes just pop into existence for the Hell of it and then annihilate each other. But get this, if that happens on the very edge of the event horizon of a Black Hole, one of the particles will get sucked in and the other have nothing to annihilate with. So it goes screaming off into the void. Meaning that the edge of a Black Hole actually gives off energy - it's called Hawking Radiation after the clever sod who discovered it.

Things get very weird at the quantum level. If you've reached the edge of Classical Physics, trust me - don't look down. ;)
 
FoxEye said:
I'm not sure we are getting closer to immortality. Our recent (relatively) longevity has been centered around disease control, etc, rather than tackling the underlying causes of aging and death (which are still unknown).
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Well, we are certainly getting closer to soft immortality, or else we are moving further away from it. With changing levels of technology it has to be one or the other unless soft immortality is actually outright impossible. But let us rephrase your statement to you not being sure we are drawing near to immortality which is what I'm sure all of us (bar asim ;) ) understood to be the intended meaning. I would say maybe we are.

We will very soon be able to deal with organ failure by means of cloned organs. That's imminent. Cancer is trickier but in some cases can be solved by the availability of cloned organs and in any case is the subject of massive research. Which for the most part leaves us with aging and cell replication. There's a woman who, iirc, is the CEO of a genetic research company who lacking the legal ability to carry out human tests in the USA, simply nipped down to a South American country and injected herself with a treatment that restores telomeres. We're all very interested to see what effect that actually has on her aging as shortening telomeres interfere with cell replication. Additionally, stem cell research gives us the possibility of regenerating our bodies even in the brain (the one part where organ replacement is unlikely to be viable).

I think the two big questions for me are not whether we can grossly extend the lifespan of the human body in the foreseeable future (I think we will), but the availability of it and the definition of the self. The former is of staggering importance as we could be facing an immortal class of rulers if we're not active in preventing that. The second is a wild tangent because we are ALSO moving in fits and starts towards the technology to have a reasoning brain implemented digitally rather than biologically. One could even teach it ones own values and beliefs, perhaps. How do we handle the transference of sentience to a non-human embodiment? Legally speaking, that is?

EDIT: I used the term "soft immortality" above. For anyone not familiar with it, "soft immortality" is not dying of old age, probably not dying from the flu or cancer, etc. "Hard immortality" is not being able to die under any reasonable circumstance. E.g. you have your brain backed up on a computer every week, you're a sentient gestalt ecosystem, whatever. Any remotely feasible discussion of "immortality" should be presumed to relate to "soft immortality" unless there's some good reason to think otherwise.
 
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asim18 said:
The fact is the more birthdays you've had the closer you are to death.
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Incorrect. The above presumes that the future exists as a thing and that there is a set date on which you will die which you inevitably draw closer to. This is not the case. The future does not exist and at any given point in your life there is a greater or lesser chance that you are about to die. Further more this chance does not increase in proportion to age. It starts off (relatively high) then drops, then rises a bit, falls again and then after a time finally starts to rise once more. Thus in so far as one can be said to get "closer" or "further away" from death, i.e. the likelihood that you are about to die, it is NOT true that the more birthdays you have had the closer you are to death.

To make the argument that you do requires an article of faith that there is some prescribed date on which you will die. This is false to the best of my knowledge and a faith-based argument reliant on the idea of destiny.
 
Not really. Whilst the future is not set, the future is always coming and becoming the present. It's already been agreed that death is in this future for all of us, but we don't know when. Given this to be the case, where ever this certainty is, as we pass through all these 'present' times, we're getting closer to the one in which we die. We're not talking probability (like you describe as changing through you life) we're talking about reaching the end.

It's like driving up the M1. We might not know it, but Sheffield could be death. As I set off from Watford, every mile I drive I get closer to Sheffield. It could well be that Leeds is more likely to be my death, and tbh, even if Leeds was... I'm still getting closer to it with every mile.

Okay... even I'm not sure that makes sense now :p
 
Shall we bring Entropy into the conversation or will it result in more pages of Asim pedantry?
 
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AndyCr15 said:
Okay... even I'm not sure that makes sense now :p
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It does but it is flawed, see the posts re: infant mortality for example. If you've got a higher chance of dying between 0-1 years old and you make it to 1 then your chance of dying decreases given that you've survived that vulnerable stage. You were closer to death at age zero but it didn't happen then and given that it didn't happen between 0 and 1 you're now further away from it. Like the other poster said it isn't a predetermined point in time. To use your motorway example think of it more like there being many possible routes, some of which get there very quickly indeed and which you may or may not manage to avoid on your jourmey.
 
I think the thread has lost its way (thanks Asim) it could have developed into a reasonable thread but it's just turned into pointlessness.
 
h4rm0ny said:
Sometimes appear too. A particle and its anti-particle will sometimes just pop into existence for the Hell of it and then annihilate each other. But get this, if that happens on the very edge of the event horizon of a Black Hole, one of the particles will get sucked in and the other have nothing to annihilate with. So it goes screaming off into the void. Meaning that the edge of a Black Hole actually gives off energy - it's called Hawking Radiation after the clever sod who discovered it.

Things get very weird at the quantum level. If you've reached the edge of Classical Physics, trust me - don't look down. ;)
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Discovered?

I believe (like most of Hawkins work, to my knowledge) Hawkins radiation remains unproven.
 
AndyCr15 said:
Not really. Whilst the future is not set, the future is always coming and becoming the present. It's already been agreed that death is in this future for all of us, but we don't know when. Given this to be the case, where ever this certainty is, as we pass through all these 'present' times, we're getting closer to the one in which we die. We're not talking probability (like you describe as changing through you life) we're talking about reaching the end.

It's like driving up the M1. We might not know it, but Sheffield could be death. As I set off from Watford, every mile I drive I get closer to Sheffield. It could well be that Leeds is more likely to be my death, and tbh, even if Leeds was... I'm still getting closer to it with every mile.

Okay... even I'm not sure that makes sense now :p
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Wrong. The future is a concept, nothing more. If you want to dispute what I said then the only way to do so is to challenge that premise. And I would be interested to see an attempt to show that the future has an objective reality.

It is not "always coming" and analogies to Sheffield are flawed because Sheffield is a real thing you can calculate a distance to. Also, if you liken your future to Sheffield, you really need a dose of optimism. Attempting to argue that you are always moving closer to death relies wholly on the idea that the future exists and one is approaching it (or it you). The only genuine way one can say one is closer or further from death is by means of saying whether it is more or less likely at any given time and that does not increase linearly with age.

Your argument depends on an artificial human construct - the notion that something has a set future point. The future is set therefore your argument is false. My argument is material and objective. It is not flawed.
 
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