For me, the biggest tell was how frequently older people report feeling completely at peace and ready to die.
As my own life progressed, the feeling of novelty became harder to find, and then less important. Grief became easier, death became lighter.
As I deepened my investigation into the nature of my own experience, I started to realize that "I" do not exist in the way that I originally assumed, and I started to wonder what we're even talking about when we talk about death. Who or what is dying?
The self, time, and consciousness are not well-understood in philosophy, science, or the experience of most people, and as such, most conversations about immortality are really about something else.
> For me, the biggest tell was how frequently older people report feeling completely at peace and ready to die.
That's because it's inevitable and at that point they've been sick or infirm for years to decades.
No one has run the real experiment because they can't: put that person in the body of a healthy 20 year old and see if they still feel that way. Except we already kind of know the answer because we regard being suicidal in your 20s as mental illness.
> As my own life progressed, the feeling of novelty became harder to find, and then less important. Grief became easier, death became lighter.
This has been my experience as well. When I was 20, I couldn't understand why someone would be ready to die outside of extreme illness or depression. Now, at 40, I am beginning to understand. I'm not ready to die yet, but I can envision myself being there someday. This world is tiring and I can understand how a person would reach the point where they welcome an end to their story.
if my body and mind were falling apart and all my friends/family went before me maybe I'd be ready... but I see that as a huge argument in favor of immortality since I want people I care about to be alive and healthy
This is the most maddening topic I've experienced in recent times. My guess is it's the ghost of ww2. Anything that looks or smells like a definitive reduction of a human being to numbers is to be opposed, regardless of utility.
What you are choosing, instead, is the management of the phenomenon you're trying to avoid by corporations—more or less emergent feudalism.
Consider the options: a corporation knows everything about you vs. no entity knows any information about you except for whether you're eligible for the service being provided, and that you exist. The former is the current state of affairs. The latter, I think, is a better state of affairs.
A major factor in my world: the coolest people don't use dating apps because they find the experience awful and they have no problem meeting people in real life
The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal
For what it's worth, I think this has always been true of the web in general (forums, chat, social media, comments sections, etc.)
It's even more stark if you weight it by sampling online content rather than a sample of people online (who are mostly lurkers). Certain types of people tend to post a LOT, so a random sample of online content will be biased towards the "high posting frequency" type of person, who is probably not a normal average type of person.
> A major factor in my world: the coolest people don't use dating apps because [...] they have no problem meeting people in real life
> The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal
I guess a lot of people you would call "cool" I would rather call "annoying self-centered people who are often very concerned about their public image (i.e. narcists)".
Yes, this people may have a much easier time finding dates in real life, but if you are rather into different kinds of people for a relationship and are more on the introverted side, I guess dating in real life is not the best idea for success.
> I would rather call "annoying self-centered people who are often very concerned about their public image (i.e. narcists)".
You're essentially describing almost the entire online dating userbase here though.
How are people who are marketing themselves as the best chance for sexual gratification through display of their usually either materialistic or pretentiously modest lifestyle, providing useless tmi list requirements from the other party not self-centered?
They have literalized the concept of dating market, they have no existential inhibition of identifying as a product to be desired to be consumed as much as possible and treating others the exact same way.
Of course we have to thank a handful of evopsych "researchers" for that who are gaining traction from mass consumption podcasts by promoting their absurd, academically dubious fringe "findings" about supposedly deterministic human behaviors whose effectiveness is irrefutable for sexual reproduction success (remember, according to them homo sapiens have no deeper intellect and are moving meat that solely care about maximizing their offspring # and will do whatever it takes to succeed, so if you don't fit this description you're disordered and destined to extinction). Ideas that end up being diluted and appropriated by groups to demoralize those psychologically vulnerable.
My personal philosphy is that dating is extremely hard in dating apps to the point that its not worth it
I personally just try to talk to people (girls) my age who have similar interests and maybe express if I feel any emotions to them and accept or embrace both rejections/acceptations.
That being said, there is this idea of desperation of constantly needing someone to love you or is it too much to ask for being loved etc. I had created a place even whose intentions was to help people struggling in finding relationships but that made me realize that people just used it to ship each other or have controversies or use it as a way to meet/date and I was none the wiser/ didn't think much of it as I was decently happy thinking that some people connected because of my efforts yet i personally felt really weird with my niche hobbies and my place felt so mainstream that I couldn't be myself in my own place or didn't feel like it so I quickly abandoned it and now its just abandonware really
I personally feel like dating irl is the best thing after all my experiences or talking to people in general online, Even in dating irl, I would consider for many reasons that dating apps are still net negative. As I said, personally the best thing I feel like doing right now is maybe working on myself to be more confident and if i find a girl attractive and want to know more, then to directly approach her. Atleast, that's my goal in dating to be confident enough and to work on. myself on being a better partner.
The people I had in mind were the ones who are just friendly, kind, loving people (think: Miyazaki film character or something), but there are certainly self-centered people who would be embarrassed to be seen on a dating app too.
I think the core difference is whether you're connected into a healthy community or not, or whether you're outgoing enough to find yourself making friends in circles outside your own regularly.
I get this post is a bit of a hot take, but you make a good point. If you listen to "alpha women" (the most attractive), a common humblebrag that they use is: "Oh, I'm not even on the (dating) apps. I've got plenty of hot guys approaching me public."
I don't know your relationship with the former person, but as for drawing general conclusions, I—as a reader of your comment—can't assume that you have assessed accurately whether their case is better. You might not be aware of subtle abuse in the home, masked depression, overt narcissism, suicidality, etc.
Years in the trenches have taught me that many people who seem successful, put-together, and happy are deeply struggling or causing harm to the people closest to them.
You are free to be as skeptical as you like. You might even imagine I made up both of those people. For all you know, I'm actually one of your split personalities who made that comment just to troll you, and this one too.
I spoke in generalities because the specifics of their stories aren't really mine to tell.
You are right that people are more than the facade they present to the public world. Objectively, though, it's clear that they had very different reactions to traumatic experiences, and healed (or didn't) very differently.
If you can at least assume I didn't make both stories up, then we can at least agree that drawing universal generalizations about trauma, recovery, and what is "best" for people (or what they are "good at") is a fruitless endeavor.
Yea, this seems to be an issue with this entire thread. Lots of people making lots of assumption about others.
As a kid into my teens I had plenty of my own trama, but was quiet and generally didn't interact with many other people my age, generally having friendships with people much older than I was. Once I got into my late twenties this turned around and I ended up being the person who many other people my age and younger would come and talk to about their lives. In general I'm just quiet and let them talk. Listening to a lot people talk about their lives has let me see one thing.
A lot of people are really screwed up from their childhood and bring it into their adulthood
The number of women that have been sexually assaulted or raped that disclose it is downright depressing, especially in their childhood. More depressing is the number of 'high status' people that cover it up.
The number of men that have some kind of depression coping mechanism such as alcoholism or hidden drug use is disturbing too. And a lot of these people are the ones you can't tell. They have successful jobs and make good money, have a wife and kids. All the checkboxes of supposed happiness. But so often these are things they had to do at some point after being driven by narcissistic parents for years. Trama driven workaholics with no at home coping mechanisms are common too.
I have no idea how much people that have had trauma can be fixed. What I'd really like to see is the signs if it taught younger so kids and learn how to avoid it and call it out.
I think what people miss about bloat, and about what's changed with software over the years, is that a vast variety of niche use-cases are now supported. Software runs on dozens of different systems, every aspect is customizable and programmable, and thousands of different programming languages and approaches are supported.
To give a random example, I use Neovim with SuperCollider, and music programming language. This involves launching a runtime, sending text to the runtime, which in turn sends commands to a server. The server generates a log, which is piped back into a Neovim buffer. There are all sorts of quirks to getting this functional, and it's a somewhat different workflow from any traditional programming model.
I'm not sure there's an easy solution to keeping things simple while also supporting the unimaginable variety of personalities, skill-levels, environments, and tasks people get up to. I do, however, think it's worth continued imagination and effort.
As my own life progressed, the feeling of novelty became harder to find, and then less important. Grief became easier, death became lighter.
As I deepened my investigation into the nature of my own experience, I started to realize that "I" do not exist in the way that I originally assumed, and I started to wonder what we're even talking about when we talk about death. Who or what is dying?
The self, time, and consciousness are not well-understood in philosophy, science, or the experience of most people, and as such, most conversations about immortality are really about something else.