[ExI] immortality can become an unhealthy obsession in some

[Lee Corbin]

Natasha writes

> The term immortality is a misnomer.  Immortality implies a No Exit
> syndrome(i.e. Satre) based on biological life.

Sorry---did you mean Sartre?  (I only ask because there is indeed
a web page devoted to Jean Paul Satre, and they do mean the same
French writer who lived 1905-1980.)

I don't follow the logic you're using at all---and I suspect
that I am not alone.

Literally taken, *immortality* means "failure to die", i.e., to
have some form of continued experience that persists indefinitely
over universe clock-time (though see [1]).

Indeed, I could understand that for some psychological, polemical,
and political reasons the term is not preferred, and not to be
stressed. But it is far from being *any* kind of "misnomer" so
far as I can see.

> Transhumanist prefer using terms like radical life extension or
 > superlongevity, etc. to suggest a continued state of existence
 > beyond biological parameters.

Not all transhumanists prefer any particular kind of terminology.

However, I heartily concur that immortality itself frequently
becomes an obsession. One extremely stalwart and forward thinking
transhumanist, who everyone on this list has heard of, told me
personally at one point many years ago that if he knew for
absolute certainty that at some future time he would die,
then he would be indifferent to continuing to live now.

I will go so far as to agree that we probably ought to avoid
use of the term. But we cannot deny its literal possibility,
unless we want to start skating far from the truth.

Lee

[1] Considering the chances of me making it out of this
century, I would be very happy to be downloaded into a
small grain of sand on the shore of Sicily, such that
I get my next year's experience during the next minute,
the following year's experience during the following
half-minute, and the year 3's experience during the
next quarter-minute, and so on. While unlikely to be
possible in terms of today's physics, I could not
resist such a genuine offer of subjectively never
reaching an end point, even if it meant being quite
objectively dead after two minutes.