Episode 149: Death, Immortality, and Porn (Intuition) Pumps

Is living forever a good thing? Could we maintain our values and personal attachments throughout eternity? Would we be motivated to accomplish anything? Can we make sense of a human life that doesn't have a fixed endpoint? We try to alleviate David's paralyzing fear of death by examining two articles - one on how immortality is worse than we think, and the other providing evidence that dying might be better than we think. Plus,we examine some famous thought experiments - if they were porn. And a special bonus: after the outro music, Eliza Sommers joins her Dad at to give her theory about Twin Peaks: The Return (contains spoilers).

Special Guest: Eliza Sommers.

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Links:

• Intuition pump - Wikipedia
• Very Bad Wizards Episode 52: Thought Experiments (Huh!) What Are They Good For? (Part 2)
• Frankfurt cases - Wikipedia
• Gettier problem - Wikipedia
• Russell's paradox - Wikipedia
• Veil of ignorance - Wikipedia
• Buridan's ass - Wikipedia
• There's a big problem with immortality: it goes on and on | Aeon Essays
• Goranson, A., Ritter, R. S., Waytz, A., Norton, M. I., & Gray, K. (2017). Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive. Psychological Science, 28(7), 988-999.
• Williams, B. (1973). The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality (pp. pp-82).