Pain and pleasure give life its value otherwise we would not be motivated to live at all. — Nils Loc

Life Quality, primarily. Life has a level of quality, if it's unacceptable, life has no value. Life begins to have value when it's quality is acceptable. — Varde

Hm. I've met quite a few folk who are very motivated to live and yet are in constant pain.

Not sure what either of you are claiming here.

I conclude that left and right do not exist objectively. — Miller

However, what they indicate is objective: bilateral symmetry, dipolarity, complementarity, etc.

What makes God real? — _db

Same as every other real X: conditions that differentiate X from ~X; lacking such conditions renders X indistinguishable from ~X (i.e. fictional).

The fact that people believe that God is real?

If "God is real", then it is so independent of whatever "people believe".

The Principle of Relativity is fundamental to physics. — Banno

I'm not talking about the 'principle of relativity', im talking about up down, left right, fast slow, far close, long short, are all just relative measurements is the human mind and dont exist in reality.

Some argue that if we lived forever that life would be greatly depreciated in value. But does its value largely come from its brevity, finitity, and frailty? Is the argument that life in the universe is only possible within like 0.0000001% of the history of the universe an argument for the value of life, or its insignificance, and likihood that it was more of a mistake? Surely its value is mostly in the experience of life and not the relative span of time? — TiredThinker

If life's value is in its relative span of time, then God would probably be rather miserable, contrary to the teachings that God is in an infinite state of happiness. However, the perceived value of life can proceed from the brevity, finitity, and frailty of life. One may possible perceive that human life is valuable only because it is short, finite, and frail. Life may be treated as a mere commodity in which scarcity increases value and abundance decreases value.

On the contrary, the intrinsic value of life is independent of what humans perceive of it, and as such cannot merely come from the relative span of time of that life. I believe you are correct in saying that the value of life is mostly in the experience of life, how we live life, how we experience life, how we make our choices, those are all which makes life meaningful, instead of simply the relative span of time. In my own view, the value of life comes from the usefulness of life for us conscious beings, that is happiness and goodness (both may be seen as synonymous in our universe).

Things have value "objectively" because they lead us to the greater good that is the greater happiness. I sincerely think that the economic perspective of scarcity and value makes little sense in the greater framework of ethics and value theory. I believe the value of things are not determined by their scarcity, instead it is a general rule of reality that things which are of greater value require greater effort to attain and thus are generally more "scarce". Perhaps we may say that scarcity is a consequence of value, not the other way around.

As such, the value of life is in its capacity to lead us to goodness and happiness, and perhaps in some perspectives, life is the only way for us to attain goodness and happiness, outside of which we are faced with oblivion and nothingness.

So one could live forever (assuming they don't trip into a bus) and have a life full of value and joy? — TiredThinker

Immortality, in order to be fully livable, would have to consist in a memory limit of a mortal human lifespan – maybe a maximum of 100 years – new memories "rewriting over" +100 year old memories (regardless of their emotional weights) continuously. Such an immortal might want to offload her memories in journals, photos, videos, digital files, etc throughout centuries and millennia before she permanently loses the ability to recall them subjectively. Also, to keep track of lost friends and current rivals, stashes and secrets, etc. She will be a perennial stranger to the more-than-century-old aspect of her past self, living in a perpetual hundred year bubble of self-awareness. This might maintain an immortal's sanity and motivation to 'create new memories' – feeling alive "full of value and joy" – across endless millennia.

Hm. I've met quite a few folk who are very motivated to live and yet are in constant pain. — Banno

Was just trying to give a safe obvious and uninteresting answer, minus the eternal return bit. Pain and pleasure must also mediate the reason folks with chronic pain continue. The instincts must engage pain and pleasure to keep up the momentum of life. We might classify fear as a kind of pain (under the banner of suffering more like). The crisis of terror in suicidal ideation (as a pain, or motivating instinct) might deter us, among other expectations of future pleasure or avoiding harm (a pleasure), to continue living.

Being able to fulfill our needs must give life value. Which of your needs that aren't being fulfilled, Banno? Please share some personal juicy tidbits by which we can be enlightened while at the same time laugh a lot. Hopefully you are working hard to fulfill those needs in spite of the chronic pain. Live, laugh, love. Thanks.

I think sky diving can still be a powerful experience even if we were immortal. The force of the wind and being in a sky that is larger than even the oceans would surely be profound. We would still be very small in the universe.

Always a scary thought to lose memories. 90 year olds often forget ever having had parents which is utterly crazy. Lets just assume memories aren't lost.

My concern of a life of roughly known duration can be cut into sections by society by what we should be doing when in order to be productive for society at the highest level before we're too old to be useful anymore. But if we never really get old we can't be squeezed so hard in the first half of life and have less to show for it.

Lets just assume memories aren't lost. — TiredThinker

That way leads to madness for an 'immortal'.

Memories are plastic so I wouldn't worry about 'losing' them if they cannot be retained.

Surely its value is mostly in the experience of life and not the relative span of time? — TiredThinker

But what value would each experience have if we were likely to experience everything an infinite number of times? Experiences are precious only if they're... well... precious.

Except that some experiences seem to be innately preferable, and not really dictated by their rarity. A walk along the beach or in a forest, bonding with friends, watching your children play, or a truly monumental shag.

But where does those innate proclivities come from if not the finitude of life? Those innate, universally positive experiences have been hewn over millions of years because they kept our DNA thriving (the need to stay close to water and food, social cooperation, the need to care for our children or have them in the first place, etc.) And for that to happen, we have to reproduce and die.

If we were immortal we wouldn't need to choose as carefully what gives us a strong dopamine dense experience. Sure things would be repeated many times, but their sense of novelty doesn't really need to fade. We can probably think outside of the box if immortality is also outside of the box.

bilateral symmetry — 180 Proof

Humans and most animals exhibit bilateral symmetry, but mind you, only externally (superficially); our innards are, relatively speaking, a mess, symmetry-wise that is. Beauty is only skin-deep.

Returning now to what is an intriguing possibility if we take a person and look at him directly from the front or the back - two halves as if there's a mirror going right through the middle (medical professionals know this as the sagittal plane), from the crown of a person's head down to the perineal (what I call a) knot (the point where all your ass muscle fibres form a knot-like structure). What if...one half of us live in one universe and its mirror image, the other half, lives in another universe. I haven't had time to iron out the wrinkles but I'm going Goldbach, offering a conjecture for those smarter than me to figure out. :grin:

Gibberish.

Gibberish — 180 Proof

Immanent and not transcendent, I get it! :up:

Remember Keyser Söze from The Usual Suspects? :wink:

I remember "Mister Kobyashi" and Verbal Kint.

I remember "Mister Kobyashi" and Verbal Kint. — 180 Proof

:up: Good to know it all works out in the end for you. Lucky you!

Well, I kinda blurted mine out over here, even though this could have been a better thread for it. Oops.

Some argue that if we lived forever that life would be greatly depreciated in value. — TiredThinker

Others have pointed out that if our lifespan were only longer and our vitality thus extended, we could grow as a society past the problems of our egos and all the trouble they bring. Thus life would have more value.

Anything to back that up, or just sticking with the "probably a thing will happen"?

Anyway, if you were immortal, you'd never have evolved a dopamine response. Or indeed any response. Or indeed a central nervous system.

We have evolved already though. I am forward thinking here. Age researchers think we may someday slow or reverse many aspects of aging so it isn't as hypothetical. I am just wondering how it might change our perspective of life. Will we be happier and more free in our lives, or will it be more like Futurama (the show) when antiaging technology exists but suicide booths are a thing. Lol.

We have evolved already though. I am forward thinking here. — TiredThinker

That's not really the way it works. The values we have are based in large part on the qualities we evolved. Answering questions about what we'd be if eternal on the basis of value judgements of finite beings doesn't really make much sense. It would be like a hoover imagining what it would do if it could become human and deciding that it would vacuum much bigger floors. :D Also it's not really forward thinking, since you're not about to become immortal, or about to have the option. Unless you know something I don't.

Immortality is not the same as immorbidity. The latter requires periodic therapeutic maintenance whereas the former wouldn't. Non-suicidal immorbids who tire of living on and on would simply stop undergoing antiaging treatments in order to live out the rest of their lives aging and dying naturally. Also, immortals won't need religion and immorbids would probably worship only the ultimate perfection of antiaging biotech: immortality; in either case, the apotheosis of (metaphysical) naturalism.

One way, look at your room, storage house, to much uselles stuff. In Life, some good things, and a lot of uselles things, death happens, recycling. After 40y you try to convince younger generations, its make sanse good if not, hmmmmm

What gives life value is the cost of living.