Thread: Why The Human Race Will Commit Mass Suicide in the Far Future :)

Mass suicide. Oh, come on! What on Earth would we do that for?

Well: because somewhere in the distant future, we would reach the conclusion that it’s the best thing to do. The only thing that makes sense. We would decide to kill ourselves – and do it. We wouldn’t even leave a suicide note. After all, who will be there to read it?

Of course, it won’t happen tomorrow. First, a lot of dramatic changes will take place. Right now, we’re not too keen on dying. In fact, we hate it!

Luckily, that will change over time. Slowly, we will defy death. We will beat disease after disease, and live longer and longer. We will fool the Grim Reaper with anti-ageing chemicals and fantastic, new cures.

And in the end, we will beat Mr. Death. We will need technology to do it. In the long run, we will replace our entire bodies by technology. Already, we replace our teeth and the occasional limb that has gone missing with artificial stuff. In the near future, science expects to invent replacements for our organs. A little later, and we will be able to replace our brain by computer technology. Really! Already, some futures researchers expect that by the year 2050, we will be able to upload our mind into a computer! We will become machines – and be immortal.

Trust us: it’s gonna be fun. When our minds have become pieces of software, we will be able to copy ourselves! We will be able to upload ourselves into… well, whatever we like. We will go out in space, in the shape of a conscious space ship. Or in the form of a purple cloud of thinking smoke particles. No, seriously! Respected scientists like Freeman Dyson and Carl Sagan already wrote about it in the 1970s.

And we will interact with each other, big time. With our biological bodies gone, we will no longer need MSN, Hyves or Myspace to get in touch with each other. Rather, our minds will start to… well, blend, actually. We will become one consciousness. Some researchers have dubbed this The Singularity, as we detail elsewhere on this site.

Ok, that sounds very vague – but hey, it’s no reason to kill ourselves! Well: there is this one crucial detail. Once we’re immortal, we’ll be booooooored!

To us simple, mortal humans this may be a bit hard to grasp. But once we’ve reached Perfection and Singularity and Oneness and all that blah blah, we will have no goal in life. Yes, we will go out and discover the Universe. But after a while, we will have seen it all. With our mortal bodies gone, we will have all the time of the Universe. We will know every corner of the Universe and say: so what?

So there you have it. You’ve become a God-like purple space cloud, but only to find that it is soooooo depressing.

And in fact, it’s even worse than that. Once we will become machines, our processing speed will increase hugely. Simply put, we will think bloody fast. Within a split second, we will realise that our existence, literally, has become useless. A split second later, we will realise it’s best if we didn’t exist.

To a Purple God Cloud it will be as [vanzelfsprekend] as tossing away a scrap of [volgeschrveen] paper. As logical as getting off a train that has reached its final destination. And the final destination is what we will have reached: the endpoint of evolution.

Even harder to comprehend, the God Cloud won’t have any special feelings about it. When we think of suicide, we immediately think of terrible things like high buildings, speeding trains and shotguns. But to a Purple Cloud, it’s a different matter. Conscious clouds don’t feel pain have no reason to feel fear, least of all of death.

If you’re immortal, dying might seem like a fun thing to do. Just like to us it is a challenge not to die.

So, there we go. After a long period of contemplation – say, a whole millisecond – we will realise we have become useless. Right there on the spot, we will kill ourselves.

And hey, you’re doing it again! You picture a weeping purple cloud throwing itself in front of a speeding train. But it won’t be like that. Rather, we will terminate ourselves in a way yet beyond our imagination. We will step out of the Universe, fold ourselves up, switch ourselves off – something like that. In a split second after we’ve reached immortality and Oneness and all that, we will be gone. Click. Exit.

So – is that it? Is suicide the only inevitable outcome of evolution? Well, actually: there is another way out. But it is so strange and so disturbing, that it will blow your mind. Therefore we really urge you: if you’re mentally unstable or have a psychiatric history, please don’t read any further. It’s at your own risk.

For what else is there to do if you’re a Super Human that is Super Bored? What do you do when you’re bored? Indeed: you distract yourself. You play a video game, or watch TV.

Exactly this is what a superhuman intelligence may do. But of course, it will do so in a superhuman way: it will create a new Universe, break down its intelligence, and seed it with the spores of its Presence. Basically, such a ‘game’ will be a Universe that is destined to bring forth life and intelligence.

But wait a minute… Isn’t that exactly the kind of Universe we’re living in?

As we outline elsewhere on this site, it is. Scientists have noticed for long that our Universe has unmistakable clues that it is artificial. Everything around us, everything you do or see or feel or experience, may be fake! We may be part of a kind of Sims Game, an illusion, set up by some kind of Superhuman intelligence long before the Universe began…

Well, at least it would be a weird choice if we reach Superhumanity again. We’ll ask ourselves: “Ok, what’s it gonna be? Another game of Universe? Or should we go to bed now and kill ourselves?”





Discuss.

Yeah. That's the funny theory from Exit Mundi (That's where I've seen it before anyway). Makes sense if you ask me. But would the pink cloud be smart enough to do all that?

Originally Posted by Bonsay

Yeah. That's the funny theory from Exit Mundi (That's where I've seen it before anyway). Makes sense if you ask me. But would the pink cloud be smart enough to do all that?

I'd think it would be pretty smart, no?

It's a kind of infinite conciousness like; with functions trillions of times more complex than anything we can imagine today..


Oh, hai there definition of god.

Commiting suicide might look like a reasonable decision for smoke, but I think doing nothing would be a better one. A purple computer cloud could have emotions and everything else, but by god I imagine just a simple consciousness. And a consciousness is nothing, does nothing, it just is, unless you have a subconscious to give it stuff to do. In the end the universe would stay the same.

Some stupid hacker will virus us and that's how we all die. A virus! Anyway i would never become one of these, i rather die and hope there is soemthing then live not knowing.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

...Mass suicide...Of course, it won’t happen tomorrow...

You can die.
I got me an umbrella.

I personally feel that it is an unlikely scenario.
It is very difficult to get five people in one room to agree on anything.
Even if a circumstance arose that would seem to point in all direction that death is inevitable and it is in a horrible manner, belief AND disbelief comes into play.

I understand your scenario though. Like many science fiction movies, the machines feel we are unnecessary and obsolete.
If we became that much machine, we would not be us.

Originally Posted by ClouD

You can die.
I got me an umbrella.

mr.faded_glory


Last Activity: Today 07:19 AM

Originally Posted by Howie

mr.faded_glory


Last Activity: Today 07:19 AM

Biography:
I am no longer serious, YAAAAYYY!

Ugck.. I only just saw that.

Suddenly the curious humour is dissolved.

I'll have to do something.

/me plans something to completely debunk mr.fadedglory...

far out.

I was reading something today.

Brought up the idea, that eventually once people come to a certain age, they want to die. Ie. possibly bodily suicide.

I thought maybe a loss in material purpose would be the cause.

Then i got into thinking why there are so many teen suicides... next i got into rambling endlessly like willy wonka on some thread at DV which i happen to have barely remembered.

I've alreadt determined existence is basically pointless, but I still feel no inclination to commit suicide.

You could argue I simply still have some stuff left to do, but I don't. I just put myself in a state of mind where I see the world as I'm seeing it for the first time. Its called mindfulness, and its the next stage of evolution, not turning ourselves into robots.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

As we outline elsewhere on this site, it is. Scientists have noticed for long that our Universe has unmistakable clues that it is artificial. Everything around us, everything you do or see or feel or experience, may be fake! We may be part of a kind of Sims Game, an illusion, set up by some kind of Superhuman intelligence long before the Universe began...

That sounds pretty interesting... where did you get that source?

^^

Ha lol that reminds me of something i noticed and said to a friend three 3days ago. We were at the bus stop in the morning and when i looked up at the clouds, it looked like the same repeating texture over and over. These three thin cloud layers with clear sky in between repeating and repeating. I said " Lol looks like the graphics designer was stingy with his update today eh, repeating textures, lazy bastard!"

Kinda made me think that we could be like AI in a computer game. I mean lets look at something like COD4, thats like the War in Iraq now. So while the gamer is playing the life of a soldier( since in the future games could be long term) we are just the rest of the worlds AI getting on with our life.....?