Death

 It’s a funny thing- death. We all die. It is the only certain thing they say. Apart from taxes. Religions have sought to make it easier, philosophers have written volumes on it, spiritual seekers have tried to confront their fear of it and most of us in fact deny it without knowing. This is because we human beings are 2 things - our physical body (including our brain) which is mere hardware, and the “person”, the abstract entity, the self-aware conscious being which runs on this hardware but is not defined by the hardware. The person is abstract, and does not die unless the hardware (i.e. the body) does. And currently, all bodies die. So death is inevitable. There is sort of a disjoint between these 2 processes - of the body deteriorating and the person trying to accept it. The person does not deteriorate at the same rate as the body. In fact, the person never deteriorates unless there are issues with the brain (i.e, hardware problems) which do happen with age. 

I have written about this before, how death is tragic since the program (the person, the consciousness) has to be shut down just because the hardware (body, brain) is not in a working condition. So all death, of knowledge creating entities (people) is tragic. Until we solve the hardware problem, so that the program can continue running. Or we find out a way of moving the program to another artificial body or upload it etc. 

Meanwhile, I do hope we solve the hardware problem in some form biologically. Or figure out a way to upload ourselves. I hope that happens in our lifetime. I would surely take that option, infact I say it would be irrational to not take that option.