#mattering — Public Fediverse posts

Rough And Twisted Quest For Immortality: Why Some Invert All Values

Abstract: This philosophical essay explores the existential friction between human mortality and the age-old quest for immortality. It argues that the psychological rebellion against the inevitability of death drives some individuals to invert all values, turning suffering and destruction into intrinsic goods to achieve a perverse sense of “mattering.” 

Contrasting human consciousness—with its capacity for feeling—against classical, non-quantum machines like AI, the text posits that the drive for life extension is intrinsically linked to the development of wisdom. 

Ultimately, the essay presents a counter-intuitive, mathematically backed defense of a “modicum of evil” (Schadenfreude) as a necessary stabilizing mechanism for human society, warning that pure altruism can be destabilizing and that arguments focusing solely on “human cost” are often deeply disingenuous.

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…”human cost is the only question that matters. “

A reader of mine opines, speaking of space.

But it is more pertinent and immediate to ask the same question about AI…… 

And I reply: How do you evaluate the cost… And what is human anyway? The cost of being human is that all we learn to cherish will die all too soon. 

Many, most, say: accept it, and live accordingly. We love, then what we love dies. It is the cycle of life. 

Sure. 

But is this the cycle the soul really wants? Does the soul want to see what it loves die? Many disagree. Many hallucinate that they will be reincarnated (whatever that means) in something different. 

Other souls, and there are many of those, they rebel. 

So what those rebels do is to invert all values. Instead of cherishing what they truly originally cherished, they raise rage, pain and destruction to the status of overwhelming values. If annihilation is the greatest value, then the ultimate annihilation which is a human life is an intrinsic value.

This rough and twisted logic is the main subterranean psychological mechanism below the thirst for conflict, war, mayhem. Life is bad, and that’s right, they decide, because it needs to be made worse… For the object of their hatred… But actually what they pursue is a more general aim: by making pain. If suffering and annihilation are made into intrinsic goods, life’s horrors become achievable goals which keep on giving all the way down the abyss..

Some professional psychologists may object that, as they age, and death looms closer and closer, many individuals value “mattering” in the eyes of others more. Sure, no doubt. Mattering is the feeling of being important to others in ways that give people the sense that they are valued and other people care about them. This  contrasts with the opposite feeling of not mattering and being expendable and disposable due to ageism.

Indeed mattering can be achieved through goodness… This is the most frequent case… Considering the existence of law enforcement.

But mattering can also be achieved through horror and terror, for those who can afford it… Think of the descriptions left by historians of Tiberius on the island of Capri  (those descriptions may have been entirely false and a way to justify the assasination of Tiberius by Caligula, if that happened…). Verily, perverse mattering is how to explain old tyrants going into cruel madness or invading other countries: 

“I think, therefore I am” said the other one, Descartes, rather strangely (because he felt before he thought… And one can very much feel without thinking… But one cannot engage into thinking without feeling….). Does AI think? AI is certainly not thinking, because it is a conventional classical machine… By classical I mean no Quantum MAGIC (“magic” has become a technical term in Quantum Entanglement science!) A canal system or an avalanche cannot think. An electron is another (state of) matter, entirely…

What is the cost of eternal life? We don’t know, because we don’t have it. Yet. Immortality is an ancient carrot, already brandished in the Gilgamesh, the oldest known story, Gilgamesh sought eternal life after losing someone he loved, only to have the plant of youth stolen by a serpent as he bathed. Leaving him to accept his mortality.

Asclepius became skilled at rejuvenation and raised the dead. Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt to enforce the authority of death. If humans are eternal, they would be gods.

Jesus sold immortality. Pontius Pilate offered to save the criminal or the immortalist, selling the false promise. The crowd demanded the execution of the charlatan, because if a crowd finds fun in the pain of others, the crowd is training itself to find fun in one’s own pain.

Now we are facing many forms of extended life, be it simply through the culture we contribute to. What is human? Satisfying the most specific human instincts? Like debating?

Each civilization had a notion of what it meant to be most human. But now civilization is in the process of singularization. Earth is not an immense world anymore, it’s a house and some neighbors have nukes and threaten to use them. In such a world, what is morality? How do we deal with crazed out neighbors armed with nukes? Should we go arrest them, is that the human thing to do? Should we do nothing and collaborate with their madness?

The greatest cost, obviously, would be to let the maniacs sort it out. So the good guys need, as was long the case, to make it so that madness does not take hold on a worldly basis… And that is done with technological superiority.

Reciprocally, the better but weaker one is, the more one presents a target for those who want to practice evil onto others.

And what is the evolutive advantage in all of this? The quest for immortality is deeply ingrained because it incites the individual to value life, his or her life, and thus the lives of others. That in turn incites to develop further wisdom, as life extension is the number one effective value of wisdom.

The will to eternal, or greater wisdom will not make it without the will to eternal or longer and better life. Extending life will need, and will induce, greater wisdom. 

Meanwhile, life being, so far, rather short and brutish, a modicum of Evil, including Schadenfreude, is playing a crucial stabilizing role in society… And, as I just explained, it is an important consolation. 

Thus, ironically enough, people are often nasty to people for the best reason, species-wise: a more ecological society. And it is actually easy to demonstrate with pretty sturdy mathematics. Counter-intuitively, altruism is found to be destabilizing! https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2026/02/20/mathematical-proof-of-stability-provided-by-evil-explains-why-plutocracy-is-stable-ubiquitous/ 

Evil, the Dark Side is all over, and often invisible. That has been well-known, Hades and Pluto could already make themselves invisible. Arguments about the “human cost”, especially regarding new technology, are often deeply disingenuous… To be human is to be technological. Inventing and deploying new tech is very distinct from its potential adverse consequences. The latter have to be mitigated, sure. But one does not want to do like the Roman emperor Vespasian, who blocked new tech on the ground that it would cause unemployment. Verily, within decades, Rome would be running out of the technologies it should have developed to keep on going…. . 

Patrice Ayme

12th century Menthon Saint Bernard Fortress Haute Savoie: The potentiality of Evil rose high towers…

Woman portrait (pen plotter drawing, acrylic ink on watercolor 300g paper, 200x200mm).

Note: ink still drying.

The term 'mattering' meaning: give matter to, in this case, giving matter to a digital generative portrait.
#penplotter #mastoart #mattering #tezos #nft #objkt
(link below)

Woman portrait (pen plotter drawing, acrylic ink on watercolor 300g paper, 200x200mm).

Note: ink still drying.

The term 'mattering' meaning: give matter to, in this case, giving matter to a digital generative portrait.
#penplotter #mastoart #mattering

"When people feel irreplaceable, they act irreplaceable. They show up. They commit. On the flip side, when people feel replaceable, they act replaceable."

https://zachmercurio.medium.com/how-to-create-mattering-at-work-bef6b78fbe40 #mattering #human #showup