Video Games are Training Us for Deathless/Extended Life

I have no idea why I have been having these esoteric ideas popping into my head at the most odd times. And I definitely know I love this community for at least being able to vocalize, get some traction on or feedback for them.

My latest musing is regarding the quality of life improvements that will radically change how we view life and death in the next 10-50 years. There are all these scientific advances such as the human genome mapping, finding the "age gene", 3D printing organs, genetic engineering your immune system, and re-purposing animal/plant toxins, that will allow us to extend life or slow/stop/revert aging.

These advances cause such concern that we have an extensive list of cautionary tales in film and books going back a few centuries. Many warn that life has no meaning without death. But if only there was something with decades of evidence, and so widespread to cover the majority of demographics that offered an opposing view...

Well there is. And it is such and interesting thought to explore that something so stigmatized and trivialized like video games, is telling us quite a different story and may even be training us on how to handle life in a death marginalized world.

I think back to my own game play experiences, and you see patterns of behavior that will more than likely manifest should I live to see these life extending technologies. The goal in these games isn't to avoid death completely, but to make each life as productive as possible. The goal is to improve and sometimes you know dying is inevitable so the strategy is to leave yourself in as best a starting place for your next life.

The strive then becomes to hit designed goals to earn extra lives or to go as far as you can with the fixed lives given. This I can almost guarantee will correlate into real life too. Perhaps people will seek out careers, or contests that will allow them access to other lives, whether they be higher up on the socioeconomic scale or just achievements like going into space, getting a higher or different degree in college or climbing Mt. Everest. I actually am going to guess that the socioeconomic scale will be less relevant because given enough time, it won't matter whether you are born into it or spent 100 years to get it if everyone lives to be 300 or 500 years old.

The best part is that if reaching a goal no longer becomes the great motivator, there will always be ways to reach them faster or better or with less resources. I have to laugh a bit at this part because the first thing that comes to mind is min/maxing. The seemingly geekiest of geekness may actually have real life value.

Another profound thing that struck is that death is not or perhaps not the only thing that gives life meaning.
As long as there is time, life will have meaning with or without death.

Another thought found its way into my consciousness: "respawning". During the early transition will the poor have to wait or wait longer to "respawn" after death? Will we get to a point where some will choose to sit out life for a period of time (5, 10 or 50 years) just to see the changes. Does that equal "death"? Will we be forced to in order to combat overpopulation?
What about criminals? Will part of their sentence be to "die" or "sit life out"? Will punishments be removing some of their "other life" achievements (a la revoking medals for doping athletes)

IMAGE(http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20131122.png)

fangblackbone wrote:

Another thought found its way into my consciousness: "respawning". During the early transition will the poor have to wait or wait longer to "respawn" after death? Will we get to a point where some will choose to sit out life for a period of time (5, 10 or 50 years) just to see the changes. Does that equal "death"? Will we be forced to in order to combat overpopulation?
What about criminals? Will part of their sentence be to "die" or "sit life out"? Will punishments be removing some of their "other life" achievements (a la revoking medals for doping athletes)

This was exactly my thought.

A respawn timer of 10 years is a big effing deal. You die at the wrong time, you miss your kids growing up, and your spouse marries someone else in the interim, because expecting them to sit by your cloning tank for a decade is bonkers.

You awake in your shiny new body with no job, difficulty finding one because all your skills are a decade out of date, assuming you don't need to re-learn everything from scratch anyway (which given the continuing acceleration of technological change, is going to be an even bigger deal), friends who have grown into different people, and family who've moved on.

That is an enormous hit to take, and everyone is still going to do everything they can to avoid it. It's a long way from Super Meat Boy insta-respawns.

But to switch tracks, how does the possibility of respawn affect suicide?

Jonman wrote:

But to switch tracks, how does the possibility of respawn affect suicide?

Ooh, damn. I mean, what are the ethics of it too? If you can "fix" the circumstances that caused it, would you respawn, want to be respawned, respawn someone else? Would you show the effects of their suicide 1,5 or 10 years later and give them the option to reconsider?

@tanstaafl - where is that comic from? It is awesome.

fangblackbone wrote:
Jonman wrote:

But to switch tracks, how does the possibility of respawn affect suicide?

Ooh, damn. I mean, what are the ethics of it too? If you can "fix" the circumstances that caused it, would you respawn, want to be respawned, respawn someone else? Would you show the effects of their suicide 1,5 or 10 years later and give them the option to reconsider?

You wanna get on the ethics of it? Let's get Black Mirror on it. Let's suppose a future political power decides that suicide offends it's religious sensibilities, so it mandates all suicidees be non-consensually respawned and punished for their crime by being tortured, then re-put to death.

Yay technology!

If it is Black Mirror episode then you find out that the head of the political/religious power is the first one to be revived from suicide