A Simple Question on Permanence

This forum is for discussion about anything else.
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

A Simple Question on Permanence

Post Post #0 (isolation #0) » Thu Feb 07, 2019 9:21 pm

Post by talah »

This is a thought experiment.

Tomorrow morning, a vaccine is announced which is highly available and which provides effective immortality.
Anybody who wants the vaccine can have it without cost or judgement and therefore will live forever.
The vaccine halts the ageing process and removes all disease and entropy, but does not protect from external physical harm.

For the purposes of this experiment, sexual reproduction is also rendered obsolete.
Anybody who elects not to become an immortal being on this plane will die a natural death and will not be replaced.
There are however tightly controlled methods of asexual reproduction which will only ever maintain the population at a number equal to the number which initially elected to live forever.

The question is:

How would this alteration affect approaches to "permanent" methods currently used to address actions such as murder - assuming the current approach is the death penalty or life in prison; is an infinite amount of time long enough to reform every circumstance?
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #3 (isolation #1) » Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:49 pm

Post by talah »

Well that's along the lines of the question I'm posing. If a person who had murderered someone could live forever, would they permanently be a danger?

The other side of the coin is, if a person who had never up until now murdered someone, lived forever, would it be inevitable that they eventually murder someone?
Although that's not the question being asked.
(those are at least the two logical extremes which likely describe the outer bounds of possibility in this hypothetical scenario.)
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #41 (isolation #2) » Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:19 pm

Post by talah »

In post 36, u r a person 2 wrote:i propose an experiment
facepalming and smirking at the same time.

So from an ethics standpoint having patronised a Catholic school, if you are a man and are faced with a "choose one of the two only" decision to save your wife or save your child, the religion says you save your wife, because you and your wife can produce more children. I presume that has all kinds of things to do with effective love and sanctity of marriage as well - but that's the answer I was given by a very clued-on Nun at the time.

I also presume (but do not know) along the same lines that men sacrificing themselves for women (primarily) has roots in the biological fact that the incubating sex has a grounding time factor. Reproducing females have 9 months of pregnancy and more in nurturing a new life afterward, whereas inseminating men have just the act. I'm sure it's way more complicated but I can see the mechanical efficacy of that - as to inbreeding in a sufficiently small sample size - well I'm not sure how the catholic church would deal with that in a Year 11 ethics class but they didn't cover it in mine.

In any case
In post 0, talah wrote:For the purposes of this experiment, sexual reproduction is also rendered obsolete.
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #42 (isolation #3) » Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:22 pm

Post by talah »

In post 6, PvtUrist wrote:
In post 3, talah wrote:Well that's along the lines of the question I'm posing. If a person who had murderered someone could live forever, would they permanently be a danger?
So murder = 100% dangerous, and not murder = 100% not dangerous? Seems flawed.
What I'm asking is - what do we do with people we currently punish by locking up for life, if that life is suddenly eternity?
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #43 (isolation #4) » Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:29 pm

Post by talah »

In post 7, PvtUrist wrote:Humanity as we know it would rapidly become... well, something that's not as we know it.

So immortality is the "gift" we've been given. What's the price we pay?

How much does this vaccine affect on psychological levels?
That's a very interesting way to look at things. It may or not be a "gift" at all.
I also hadn't really given consideration to a natural opt-out option - and as far as the price we pay - well that's mainly been covered in literature and movies and I'm not quite sure how you expect me to answer it :) Dorian Gray or Anne Rice I could give as references?

The constant is that when one person dies, for whatever reason, a new person is spawned.
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #44 (isolation #5) » Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:35 pm

Post by talah »

In post 5, Invisibility wrote:no, it wouldn't be inevitable
What then is the quality that inclines a human to cause the event of murder?

Nature/nurture?
Spirit/soul?
Something else?

I suppose you might propose that a person of infinite longevity would always become wiser as time passed and be less and less likely to harm another.

(and I'm also using "you" in the "royal we" form :P )
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #45 (isolation #6) » Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:50 pm

Post by talah »

In post 21, Oso wrote:The OP scenario would break down as I'm guessing that ALL crimes would be punished by death and the list of 'crimes' would extend to ridiculous extremes.
The original scenario could be modified to accommodate that kind of thing but it gets overly complicated I think.
I'm not considering life expendable, at all.

However, in imprisoning someone for the rest of their (previously) natural life, I would say harm is definitely caused, at least relative to the life they otherwise could have lived. (That harm or punishment is one side of the imprisonment, and future risk reduction is the other - along with some notion of rehabilitation I guess except in the case of the death penalty.) I'd argue that there's an equation differentiating a finite life of imprisonment to a certain amount (or proportion) of an infinite lifespan spent with the external harm of imprisonment, or risk reduction, applied to it.

The death penalty thing is a sort of option I intentially noted as something which exists. It also helps to make things a bit more black and white, or at least polarise scenarios and squeegee out what we think of as the nature of (say) murder and the punishment fit for it when the possibility of an infinite amount of rehabilitation exists.
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #51 (isolation #7) » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:39 pm

Post by talah »

In post 48, PvtUrist wrote:I feel the issue is that it's either something we're not capable of (accurately) considering, or something that's with too little context to be accurate.

Say, the crime of murder. Aside from one person killing another (and not classified as manslaughter), that's about the extent of context we'd get.

Who committed the crime? What type of person are they? What were their motives? That's before mentioning every other factor that "murder" doesn't give context to.
I don't know that more context helps, really.

Classify murder as something equal between a person with a lifespan of (let's say) 100 years and a person with (because infinite is too hard) 100,000 years.

Then we've taken out that ambigiuity. The crime, whatever it is, results in us as a society, or a legal system, or as an individual judge, saying that a person spends their life behind bars.

What's the difference here? Are we talking now about different degrees of murder because the person who killed someone else has a longer lifespan?

To clarify - if the standard lifespan was 100,000 years, and you killed a person, would a just punishment be 100,000 years of imprisonment?
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #54 (isolation #8) » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:02 pm

Post by talah »

I think your point on longer lives being more capable of utillising better options was quite eloquent but the points you've surrounded it with seem a bit choppy :]
Not to say that's bad, at all, just that I don't get some of them.
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #55 (isolation #9) » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:10 pm

Post by talah »

So for example if we're saying that each crime has some price or consequence, what would be the cost for permanently damaging another person with an 100,000 year lifespan?
What cost are we assigning here? Would you be permanently indentured to the person you damaged?
In this scenario would we be talking financial dynamics or something else?
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #56 (isolation #10) » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:18 pm

Post by talah »

(this entire scenario is not far distant abstract if you consider the morals you would want to apply to an AI)
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #59 (isolation #11) » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:31 pm

Post by talah »

okay, let's randomly create a context then and try to apply it to a short lifespan compared to a long lifespan

person murders someone over a lover's spat, finds partner fucking someone else (just for pleasure obviously because reproduction is no longer relevant)

jealously over intimacy is the motivation. murder weapon is a coffee mug to the head repeatedly.

person is sentenced to (pre-vaccine) life without parole because of the viciousness of the crime and to make an example of all would-be coffee cup murderers
vaccine is administered, life changes for everyone and the sentence has to be reassessed because suddenly life means 100,000 years

what's the sentence?
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #62 (isolation #12) » Fri Feb 15, 2019 3:18 am

Post by talah »

Oh interesting.

Yeah the premise says stop aging and then says there is a method of reproduction to replenish any deaths.

So let's say that the reproductive method is cloning into adult form from pools of genomes.

Unless you want a shitload of infants wandering around. They're probably unlikely to become murderers.

As far as the existing infants, they can't have the vaccine untill they're like idunno 30? It fucks with their dna if they take it earlier and they melt into a messy pool of enzymes?
ymmv obvc
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #64 (isolation #13) » Mon Feb 18, 2019 8:56 pm

Post by talah »

That's a decent comparison as well - although - you would have to assume that the humans and elves were otherwise identical aside from lifespan.
(Otherwise you have all kinds of RPG comparisons and I'll refer you to the Dragonlance novels as an epitome of this difference.)

In this case you'd be wondering what recourse is appropriate if a 30 year old elf (with 470 years yet to live) maliciously killed a 30 year old human (with potentially 50 years left)
And whether that would be the same if a 350 year old elf killed a 30 year old human.
Should the elder elf bear more responsibility due to their longevity, and presumably wisdom?

In a sense it's a similar question to what should happen if a 70 year old human kills a 30 year old human - except I think what I've seen in the current system is that the 70 year-old's life is limited anyway and the sentence will extend beyond life expectancy, and also, with aging toward natural death, there are considerations like mental degradation. I don't think I've seen much consideration given to wisdom increasing culpability in the real world.
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #67 (isolation #14) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:26 pm

Post by talah »

ohcomon okay okay
natural reproduction just doesn't exist anymore but bernie sanders controls these now-defunct means.

the system of replenishment is automated by a means-friendly robot who plucks out deceased humans and plants new ones maintaining the current number.
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #72 (isolation #15) » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:40 pm

Post by talah »

Unfortunately they are already controlled by MatPat of the Game Theorists.

User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #73 (isolation #16) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 10:15 pm

Post by talah »

So anyway, slightly bringing this back to the original premise, I think we need to think about people as a bit more fliud and changeable than we do now - a bit more than we do when we lay down platitudes like 'old dogs can't learn new tricks' or 'a leopard never changes its spots', or when doctor phil (sorta validly?) compulsively says that 'past behaviour is the best predictor for future behaviour'.

We're all people is my overarching point; everyone human who is born onto earth, is. And I did want to underline that with longer lifespans we at least -should- as an evolving society of people, be moving toward addressing issues instead of dealing with symptoms.

And that covers things like understanding the causes of horrific things like terrorism and not immediately speeding past that into thinking that a flawed system of punishment will continue to be the best thing to do. If there's one thing I was hoping to get across in asking the question of punishments for folks with infinite lives, it's the distance between where we are now and where we may be someday.

We as people need to be constantly reviewing how we treat punishment with what we know, and striving to understand that when it comes to reasons that we would want to lock people away it is almost always a product of that individual's experience and not something inherent and permanently irreconcilable. At least that's roughly where I end up in thinking about how to treat others if they were permanent entities.
User avatar
talah
talah
Mafia Scum
User avatar
User avatar
talah
Mafia Scum
Mafia Scum
Posts: 3261
Joined: June 3, 2013

Post Post #75 (isolation #17) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:38 pm

Post by talah »

platitude = trite phrase unless i need to google the meaning. I reckon you're giving the phrases too much credit comparing them to metaphors. Newton sorted this particular example with the idea that objects keep the same momentum unless something changes it.
Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion”