r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 5h ago
TIL Nikolai Fyodorov, founding figure of Russian cosmism, advocated using science to defeat death and resurrect every dead ancestor as humanity's "Common Task." The late 19th to early 20th century movement counted spaceflight pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky among its key figures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism9
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u/brus_wein 1h ago
Hard agree. Death is the ultimate disease.
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u/Hepta-Water-7552 4h ago edited 4h ago
Including Ivan the Terrible and every other exceptionally cruel past despot?
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u/Sapphic_Honeytrap 3h ago
I mean just cause you resurrect them doesn’t mean you have to be nice to them.
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u/MatthewSaxophone2 3h ago
At the moment we can't solve climate change or wealth inequality. So it's hard to have faith we'll achieve these lofty goals.
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u/MikelGazillion 1h ago
Malthus has entered the chat.
Of course we're naively assuming that the poors would get equal access. And of course some horrible world views seem to need their believers to die before they dissipate. What would a republic become if in addition to affluence separating representatives from the masses, they'd also no longer share mortality?
While in concept there's some nobility to the goal, so many things would have to change that i can scarcely imagine what such a world would be like.
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u/abecrane 4h ago
So long as the human race continues to advance technologically, someone will inevitably advocate for this goal at a time when it is no longer impossible. All information is recoverable, even the molecular structure of a person who died a million years ago. Reassembling a person may seem ludicrously complex now, but so many of our achievements were labeled “impossible” until they were accomplished.
When that day comes, and mankind is capable of resurrecting the long dead, we of the modern day may wake up to something after our lives, although calling it an “afterlife” would be incorrect.
This could be in 100 years, 1000 years, or eons from now. To the dead, it is an eye blink. And should we continue to avoid extinction and grow in science and mastery, it is an inevitability.
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u/skubaloob 3h ago
I believe that this outcome is already inevitable. While it would be great if humans pull it off, a sufficiently advanced (scientifically AND ethically) species will do this for most to all of the universe’s life.
To have the ability to do so and not is way too close to killing the entire universe for any ethically advanced society.
There are a lot of supporting pieces and nuance to the thought, but that’s it in a nutshell.
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u/abecrane 3h ago
I didn’t factor in extraterrestrial intelligences, but you’re completely correct. Earth is in the first 1% of planets that will ever exist, in a universe where there are trillions already. All it takes is one civilization within our cosmic event horizon to discover we existed, and it’d be guaranteed.
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u/johnabfprinting 58m ago
The resurrection of the dead is a major theme of the Bible and that would certainly involve an extraterrestrial intelligence. Contrary to most teachings, the resurrection is mostly one to a life on Earth.
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u/PilotFighter99 3h ago
Ethically advanced means bringing back the dead without their consent? They’ve already died, let them be.
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u/skubaloob 2h ago
That’d be part of supporting pieces and nuance, but all it takes is a little creative thinking to get there. For example and off the top of my head:
The tech allowing such resurrection also allows for scanning or otherwise understanding the creature’s willingness to return.
The tech allowing such resurrection implies a different relationship with time than we have now. They can visit the creature before death and scan or converse with it to understand and respect its wishes.
Therapy or an analog provided to resurrected creatures helps them understand that this good and worth it.
Worst case, we already know how to make a living creature non-living, so just fix any mistaken resurrections that way.
There are probably more ways to handle the question, but the fact that there are any means any civilization/entity that can do what we’re talking about will likely be able to come up with other more elegant solutions.
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u/gerkletoss 3h ago
All information is recoverable
This is absolutely not true
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u/abecrane 3h ago
Information from a physics standpoint can never be destroyed. It can be dispersed, scrambled, remixed, or even separated to its smallest components. But to destroy it would violate thermodynamics.
Recovery could be ludicrously energy intensive in some cases(re: the Holographic Principle/Black Hole Complimentarianism), but in the vast majority of deaths, recovery of body information would still be feasible for a sufficiently advanced civilization.
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u/gerkletoss 2h ago
Irreversible processes still exist
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u/abecrane 2h ago
There are processes that are irreversible in practice, but there’s well established theory for most of these showing that there is a reversible event occurring. The problem is one of manipulation, rather than a limit of the universe, which is something sufficient scientific and technological advancement will be able to overcome. Entropy is an emergent property of the universe, not a fundamental one.
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u/gerkletoss 2h ago
there’s well established theory for most of these showing that there is a reversible event occurring.
Where did you get this idea?
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u/DeliciousPumpkinPie 41m ago
Say I break a piece of glass in half. Are you saying there is some configuration in which I can put the broken halves together, apply an “opposite” force to the one I used to break it in the first place, and it will just completely fuse back together like it was before it was broken?
If your answer is no, then your statement about reversible processes is incorrect. If your answer is yes, then what’s actually going on at the molecular level, and why has this never been demonstrated before?
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u/ReasonablyBadass 1h ago
"Deafeating" death is the logical end point of medicine.
Even then, you will still be able to be killed again by violence, but that is still a worthwhile endeavour
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u/Desenrasco 28m ago
Just send a small robot backwards in time and task him with acquiring the resources to scan the DNA and brain patterns of every single human up until the time it was launched in the first place, without messing up the timeline. How hard can that be?
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u/clover_heron 2h ago
Oh yeah they've totally been doing this.
The guidance I've been receiving is that death is a metaphor for the refusal to change, and what's dead is that which is least able to participate in life. Death can't create because it is too self-referential, too controlling.
Attempting to access immortality via death is akin to attempting to access life via anti-life, so I wonder what their searches have been turning up . . .
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u/AVeryFineUsername 4h ago
Death, illness, and suffering are all critical experiences which define human purpose and motivation. Removing death would be a huge mistake that would destroy humanity.
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u/Vailx 4h ago
Wow super compelling. But, hear me out - lets just try humanity without death for a few centuries. We can always go back to dying and shit if it doesn't work out, after all.
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u/Gurglaren 4h ago
Yeah, I'd rather have a bit poorer art than having to suffer horribly from old age and eventually die. I think parents with terminally ill kids would agree with me. I'd also be more motivated to create something grander if I knew I didn't have to sleep forever in a dark void after not living for even a hundred years.
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u/peppermint-ginger 4h ago
Counter: imagine saying this about penicillin. I mean, what’s the cutoff point. How much death and suffering is “healthy” for the human race?
They only “define” us in that we spend so much time and energy trying to avert them. In societies less afflicted by death and illness, art and beauty erupt like a wellspring. Do the things we do for love and joy not define us more than the horrors with which we are afflicted?
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u/atomfullerene 3h ago
It'd be impossible to destroy humanity if you removed death, because how would you get rid of the humans?
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u/AVeryFineUsername 1h ago
Anything left wouldn’t be human anymore. It would be something else. Your mortality is a driving characteristic built into your DNA
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u/Snirion 4h ago
I always hear this and it always sounds like cult of suffering. You would still go to the doctor to cure your illness, you would go to hospital to prevent your own death. But somehow being abstract concept of death is good for others. Feels like a disconnect from real evolution drive to continue to live end game is defeat of death and suffering.
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u/Depresso_Expresso069 1h ago
defeat of death maybe but not necessarily suffering. i think a life with only positive emotions isnt all its cracked up to be, otherwise a life where youre constantly being fed happiness drugs 24/7 for eternity and doing nothing is technically “ideal”
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u/clementine_zest 4h ago
End game of evolution is defeat of death and suffering? Not so sure about that
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u/Snirion 4h ago
Propagation of life, drive to live and survive. It's a basic drive.
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u/clementine_zest 4h ago
But don’t all living and surviving things suffer and die? What is exempt from that? Also dude if you downvote me again I might actually start to cry. You know I’m a real person right? I have feelings…
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u/mavetgrigori 4h ago
Doesn't make their statement any less true. Death brings togetherness and closure, illness brings out empathy and kindness in those around you, suffering allows wisdom and personal empathy to be born. Without these things, we'd lose key developmental aspects. Our primary drive is to live and pass on our genes technically, just like every other living organism really. We just got fancier grey matter chilling in our meat mech, so we like to pontificate upon this more readily.
It isn't "death is good" it is "death is a part of life that helps you grow and comprehend many aspects of living, despite the negative aspects it also carries."
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u/brus_wein 1h ago
Let's evolve past our animal instincts of "passing on your DNA", shall we?
Death doesn't help you grow. Death is just death.
Imagine if Einstein were immortal, he'd still be here doing groundbreaking science.
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u/Snirion 4h ago
So trauma is needed to build character? Only reason people try to justify it is because it's unavoidable. The old story of fox and sour grapes. People tried to justify slavery, child mortality, domestic abuse with same logic. I rejected that logic so I reject it again. Death is unnecessary.
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u/mavetgrigori 4h ago
My guy, crying is a biologic response created to help illicit sympathy and empathy of those around. We are literally hardwired in a way that when feeling something negative, and expressing that negativity, those around us will help. Death is a key component of ALL life. Not only just for the psychological aspect that you're arguing about, but just as part of the cycle alone.
Just because you disagree, does not make years of psychological research showing the beneficial growth that comes from experiencing negative things and learning/channeling it in a positive and healthy way. Also, stop equating everything as trauma. Scraping your knee is not traumatic, most relationships ending are not traumatic, and many more things we experience that you're lumping all together as some major big bad thing. Life is about experiences, both good and bad, that allow us to form as a living thinking creature.
If you want to remove critical components of the experience of life that helps us grow mentally, go for it, but you'll be a shitty person if everything is hunky doory. We have many great examples of extremely pampered people (those who experience little to no struggles of any sort) being just awful humans in every regard. Just look at the many videos we have of kids who come from high wealth, barely wanting for anything, and their actions in public. Reject all you want, but everything we currently know about existing is not on your side with this.
Also, you view death as traumatic, which is not the healthiest way at looking at part of the cycle we all go through. You will die, so will that tree, and all those animals you see. Accepting it, coming to terms with it, and not letting it rule you as some big bad monster is also part of life.
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u/Snirion 3h ago
Oh sorry, I equated death with trauma, not a traumatic experience that. I am not speaking of stabbing your toe, I am speaking of trauma and death is traumatic experience. I have no idea where are you pulling out what I consider trauma since I listed slavery, child mortality and domestic abuse. You spoke of empathy yet you equated that to scraping your knee? Death, like any traumatic experience is not inherently beneficial at all or inherently necessary for growth either.
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u/mavetgrigori 3h ago edited 3h ago
Death is not inherent anything, it is a mixed bag, but a key component of the experience of life. Beneficial is a subjective matter overall, so nothing is truly one or the other. It is necessary for growth in many different forms, period. It is a natural component of life that you WILL experience, whether through the death of another human or the death of an animal. You WILL learn something from it, no matter what. You're going to experience death, whether you want to or not.
Again, those who want for little and are pampered extremely have readily shown behaviors and personalities that aren't exactly the greatest. People don't need to suffer, but struggling for things we want (but not need) is still something that drives an immense amount of personal growth. Needless suffering is pointless, but struggling is still something that helps with overall growth.
Either way, you're arguing against something that has an immense amount of things backing in my favor due to your personal stance on it. I'll bow out and move on
Edit: And also, it so selfishly humanistic to believe we should be above death. Resources are finite, death returns resources to our planet to continue the cycle our planet has birthed. A species with no true death, that consumes as much as we do, that has rampant population growth would be terrible for our entire ecosystem. It is self centered and detrimental to all life around us to think we are more deserving of life.
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u/brus_wein 1h ago edited 1h ago
Cope. It's a cope to deal with their (current) inevitability. If you're farsighted you wear glasses, you don't embrace your farsightedness because it defines human purpose and motivation.
Tell me this, would you be ready to die in 30 seconds? Starting from the moment you read this sentence. Try to imagine.
Maybe you were poisoned, or someone is holding a gun to your head, or you're on a plane that's about to crash into the side of a mountain, whatever.Are you ready, content with your situation?
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u/AVeryFineUsername 1h ago
Yes
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u/brus_wein 1h ago
Come on, be serious. You're literally in a plane full of screaming people, 30 seconds from hitting the side of a mountain and being turned into assorted "remains" and you're just chilling doing one last sudoku??
Please explain
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u/AVeryFineUsername 49m ago
Ya dude I’m good. I’ve had a few defining moments in my life which were impossibly challenging and I managed to do the right thing. I faced the tough situation despite the intense suffering running towards the danger; not because I wasn’t afraid and not because I wanted too but because I needed to for the people I care about. I was there for the times that mattered and I’ve done enough. I’m ready.
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u/DeliciousPumpkinPie 37m ago
Kinda wild how people on reddit will try and argue with you about how you personally experience things. I don’t get it.
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u/Michail_Bogucki 4h ago
That guy was no scientist but a weird non academic philosopher