I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that I’m mortal.
Weirdly, people have tried to console me on this subject by saying, “We’re all going to die someday.”
I always smile and reply, “Well, with that attitude you will.”
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Some species seem to possess biological immortality — if they don’t run out of food or become someone else’s dinner or get clobbered by a climate event or some other accident, they could theoretically live forever. For example, an ocean quahog (a type of clam) born in the year 1499 lived 507 years.
The mollusc’s long life came to an end in 2006 when the British researchers – unaware of the animal’s impressive age – opened up its shell to examine it.
(“Oops. Sorry, mate.”)
Google has a sister company called Calico (a biotech firm) which has been researching naked mole rats:
The first study to analyze the life histories of thousands of naked mole rats has found that their risk of death doesn't go up as they grow older, as it does for every other known mammalian species.
In their scientific paper, the researchers write:
This absence of hazard increase with age, in defiance of Gompertz’s law, uniquely identifies the naked mole-rat as a non-aging mammal, confirming its status as an exceptional model for biogerontology.
A naked mole rat in a zoo
In science fiction, some characters are immortal. Mr. Flint, in the original Star Trek series episode “Requiem for Methuselah,” says that he was born in 3834 B.C. in Mesopotamia and that he discovered he was immortal when his heart was pierced in battle and he didn’t die. Dr. McCoy surmises that a mutation afforded Flint “instant tissue regeneration coupled with some perfect form of biological renewal.”
So, you never know, right? Maybe your neighbor’s bratty kid will turn out to be an immortal mutant.
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But even if our species is incapable of immortality, it’s conceivable that we don't really go when we go. Shortly before the COVID outbreak, I was browsing in a bookstore and happened upon an intriguing title: “The Case Against Reality” by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman. (Here’s his TED Talk.) I had never heard of Hoffman before. It’s a fascinating book. His research has led him to conclude that each of us, and every object in the universe — and all of spacetime — is a mere representation of reality, like icons on a computer screen. How we humans perceive the universe is very different than, say, how a bat or a butterfly or an ant perceives the universe, but our perceptions are no more “true” than their perceptions: none of us creatures are perceiving the universe as it truly is — rather, we have evolved to perceive the universe in a way that increases our odds to reproduce. In fact, Hoffman demonstrates that an organism would have no chance to survive if its perception system favored truth over fitness. As Hoffman explains it, evolution and experience compel us to take seriously the icons in our “interface”: just as you know that you should avoid dragging and dropping the icon of an important file into the trashcan icon on your computer screen, you know you should avoid stepping off a cliff. We take the trashcan icon seriously but we don’t take it literally — we know there is not really a trashcan in our computer. Hoffman argues there is not really a cliff, either, nor do you actually possess an objective body that can step off it. Hoffman theorizes that consciousness does not arise from neurons, but rather the other way around: all the seemingly physical things we perceive — neurons, atoms, galaxies — arise from basic units of consciousness.
Now, you might think, “I want some of what he’s smoking!” But Hoffman isn’t high. His arguments are grounded in math and physics. Toward the end of the book, he writes:
Suppose you drive with friends to a virtual-reality arcade to play volleyball. You slip on headsets and body suits, and find your avatars clad in swimsuits, immersed in sunshine, standing on a sandy beach with a volleyball net, surrounded by swaying palms and crying gulls. You serve the ball and start playing with abandon. After a while, one of your friends says he’s thirsty and will be right back. He slips out of his headset and body suit. His avatar collapses onto the sand, inert and unresponsive. But he’s fine. He just stepped out of the virtual-reality interface.
“When we die,” Hoffman ponders, “do we simply slip out of the spacetime interface of Homo sapiens?”
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If we consider it just a matter of fact that everyone is mortal, that we all have to go sometime, then it’s certainly not wishing death on him to simply observe that Donald Trump is mortal, too. Wishing death on someone would be against the spirit if not the letter of the rules of this website, which expressly prohibit “endors[ing] or call[ing] for violence against anyone.”
And it’s not wishing death on him to simply note that the way Trump goes will probably be unremarkable. The odds would be against any unusual exit. For example, according to Wikipedia, the chances that the “average human being” will be struck dead by lightning is “roughly” 1 in 60,000 to 80,000.
You might read it in a novel, but no one would believe in real life (or in our “spacetime interface”) that an amoral demagogue who professes to be a religious person — and who has so many supporters who do — would actually be struck down by a bolt of lightning.
Still, we can easily imagine that scene in a novel because it would be so perfectly ironic. And it’s within the realm of possibility, though it would be extraordinarily improbable.
But not as improbable as someone turning out to be an immortal mutant.
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By the way: if anyone here says they wish that Donald Trump turns out to be an immortal mutant, that would, ironically, not be against the rules.