It seems incredibly common in works of science fiction that touch upon technological immortality to focus on every possible way that such a technology could go wrong, create problems, or worsen social dynamics.

Among the negative outcomes that have attained trope levels of frequency, off the top of my head, I can name the following:

1. Immortality becomes available only to the ultra-wealthy, allowing them even more power to abuse everyone else, leading immortal people to be antagonists in a pretty generic dystopian plot.

2. Immortality subtly twists the morality of its beneficiaries, causing them to lose sight of "the real meaning of life" according to the author's worldview, and the protagonist usually fights for society to recognize how important death and endings are

3. Immortality causes people to go insane, become monsters, or otherwise utterly lose their humanity (this is more of an extreme version of case #2, but I feel it's distinct in the way a story plays out)

4. Immortality ultimately leads to the extinction of the human species due either to biological effects of the immortality technology in question, or due to cultural/societal shifts that lead people to stop reproducing

I'm sure there are many others that I'd recall if prompted, but my point is that I don't think I can name any science fiction that involves immortality technology that doesn't also decry it as ultimately a harmful development.

Are there any works of science fiction that any of you can think of that do more to celebrate the idea or look forward to it with some optimism?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I'm primarily a PC gamer with a library slowly approaching 1,000 games on Steam. While I have sometimes bought games through the other storefronts like Blizzard, GOG, Uplay, and EA Origins, I never really invested significant time in them to the point where I don't keep track of what is in those libraries. Suffice to say, I thought that I was so entrenched in Steam that I couldn't possibly play in another storefront for any meaningful amount of time.

This has changed for the past year. I hopped on one of those deals that gave me access to Game Pass since Microsoft added all the Bethesda games and partnered with EA Play. And I gotta say, I'm invested now. Invested so much that I bought a Series X despite having zero interest when the new generation of systems was announced. Game Pass on Xbox is an even better deal than Game Pass on PC. The library is larger and for the games that are Play Anywhere, I can continue my save file on my PC when my living room TV is unavailable.

I really think that Microsoft has a winning strategy with Game Pass this generation and it really surprised me how my attitude to the Xbox ecosystem changed this year. While I think both Sony and Nintendo have great exclusives, the value proposition for me of convenience and a rotating slate of quality games will likely keep me invested and subscribed, moreso than Xbox Gold or PS+ have in the past.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Weird question, but does anyone know of a simple tab viewer or organizer for Firefox (bonus points if it works on iOS)? I have... way too many tabs open, and I want to see what I can bookmark before closing rather than having to either close everything or manually check each tab.

If you had the option to add new features to your primary language, what would they be? Is there something from a foreign language you'd like to import to your primary language?

A couple examples:

• A prefix to indicate intensity or degree. BBS/early hacker jargon had terms like "k-rad" to mean 1000x (2^10?) as radical as "rad" without the prefix.
  That Montessori preschool was t-cool but why would they think calling it "Hobbledehoy" was a good idea?
• Making an indication of how confident you are in an a statement obligate and easy. I hedge all the time because I think it's important to convey, but it's clunky. We do a bit of that non-verbally but that doesn't translate to text, and has the other complications of non-verbal cues.
  It would be nice if there was an established vocabulary to quickly convey things like "experienced first-hand, repeatedly", "99% certain", "I've heard but never looked into", etc. From there it would be nice if this was as required as the gender, in gendered languages.

So, for this thread, I'm specifically not asking for detailed explanations about the spiritual or philosophical aspect that goes behind your motivations to meditate. A brief explanation is almost certainly required, though.

Mostly, I wish to know practical things, details that often go unsaid, like:

• What kind of meditation do you practice?
  • How can I Google it?
• Where and when do you meditate, and why?
• Do you do it alone?
• How do you prepare for meditation?
• What you do afterwards?
• How frequently do you meditate, and for how long?
• If you sit at all, in what position do you sit?
  • Where do you sit? The ground, a mat, a cushion, a chair, your bed?
• Do you keep your eyes closed or open?
• Do you concentrate on your breathing?
• Do you breath through your mouth or nose?
• Do you count your breaths or visualize them in any way?
• Is there any particular breathing technique involved?
• Do you use any aid such as noise generators, soundscapes, timers, meditation apps, etc?
• Do you push thoughts away?
• Do you concentrate on any object, physical or otherwise?
  • statues, amulets, images, mental images, mantras, etc.
• What do you do if...
  • your legs go numb?
  • there's a fly on your nose?
  • there's mucus on your mouth or throat?
  • you must cough or sneeze?
  • you're itchy all over?

I never considered myself an introvert or shy. I’ve always been comfortable talking with strangers, whether that was in my college class or just sparking up a conversation with someone next to me in line.

I haven’t talked to a stranger irl since the pandemic started and I’m running scenarios in my brain about how I would talk to someone when I just met them. And every situation I’m going through I’m being awkward and uncomfortable.

I can talk to my family and my cousins, who are essentially my only friends, just fine but that’s different since there’s already an established way of communication there.

I just feel like I’m gonna be so rusty at talking to people, which is a shame because I’ve spent years learning how to talk to strangers in a certain way to make them comfortable and to very easily have a conversation. And I feel like I lost all of that now.

I wouldn't say Tildes is wholly uninterested in philosophy, that is certainly not the case. You're a smart bunch full of intellectual curiosity!

I have been making an effort to share more philosophy articles on ~humanities for some time now. They always get a few votes, but discussion is not as common. This is in no way a complaint about our users, philosophy is often highly specific and long-form, and it is hard to predict if a long article will eventually pay off for you.

Generally, philosophy posts that are related to technology, computer science, consciousness/AI, and, to a lesser degree, social change, attract more attention. But there are not as many of those (and I'm personally interested in other stuff too...).

As I said, the purpose of this post is not to complain. I believe the lack of participation in certain topics reflects the size of our community, our most common interests, and our repertoire.

With that in my mind, I would like to know how could I better engage our community in discussions about philosophy. Apart from the themes I mentioned, what are you interested in or curious about?

I could make an effort to include a short introduction or conversation starter on every post, but I'm not sure what is the sentiment regarding that (would that be considered/labeled as noise?). Besides, I'm not a philosopher or anything of the sort, just a layman with a lot of philosophy websites on my feed. So my guess is as good as everyone else's.

It would be awesome if we had a ~humanities.philosophy someday, but I wonder if that is realistic at all...