Noting that death is valuable to life on this planet should be about as non-controversial as anything you might notice. Evolution itself is impossible without death and for a few billion years, evolution has been the most interesting game in town. Even within human culture, we know that most fantastic breakthroughs, especially in math, but to a great extent in the sciences and in engineering, are made by humans in their 30s or younger. In a world with finite resources to support humans, what were the realative surpluses provided by a 40 year old compared to an 80 year old or a 120 year old?
Jobs is not a hypocrite for wanting to live longer than 57 years no matter what he thought about the value of death for the race. Who can even begin to believe that Jobs in his 50s, driving the creation of the iPhone, was not producing a surplus beyond the wildest dreams of anybody on this board, and certainly above that of 99.9999% of the rest of humanity of any age? If you were to make a short list of minds you would want to keep around for a lot longer if you had the choice, who would not have had Jobs in at least the first few pages of that list? Jobs didn’t say death was valuable no matter when you died or who died. He said overall a finite lifespan for (culturally and physically) evolving creatures had been indispensable towards their evolution, that like virtually every other major feature of life, evolution had strongly favored death. Its also clear enough that evolution has strongly favored organisms who work effectively to delay their death. Its also clear that in our modern society, brilliant 80 year olds are more valuable than ever. Saying one obviously true thing hardly rules out believing and thinking about the ream of other, perhaps more subtle truths. Talking about Jobs as though he was just another guy, not something special, seems more a tactic than something anybody trying to escape biased thinking would ever do.
And you are talking as if Jobs’s moral stances do not hold especially more weight than other’s do, as if his opinions were just the opinions of another guy, not something special. That is, when Steve Jobs says “don’t mind death, it’s ultimately a good thing,” people listen.
If he had said “when people develop dementia, they are no longer able to contribute to society and thus we should accept their passing,” I would still disagree, but at least his (near mode) actions would not be inconsistent with his (far mode) words.
But no, he makes no attempt to distinguish whether an individual can still contribute to society in his unabashed glorification of death, and therefore we should (likewise) not forgive his hypocrisy because he was still able to contribute.
Jobs is not inconsistent or hypocritical.
Noting that death is valuable to life on this planet should be about as non-controversial as anything you might notice. Evolution itself is impossible without death and for a few billion years, evolution has been the most interesting game in town. Even within human culture, we know that most fantastic breakthroughs, especially in math, but to a great extent in the sciences and in engineering, are made by humans in their 30s or younger. In a world with finite resources to support humans, what were the realative surpluses provided by a 40 year old compared to an 80 year old or a 120 year old?
Jobs is not a hypocrite for wanting to live longer than 57 years no matter what he thought about the value of death for the race. Who can even begin to believe that Jobs in his 50s, driving the creation of the iPhone, was not producing a surplus beyond the wildest dreams of anybody on this board, and certainly above that of 99.9999% of the rest of humanity of any age? If you were to make a short list of minds you would want to keep around for a lot longer if you had the choice, who would not have had Jobs in at least the first few pages of that list? Jobs didn’t say death was valuable no matter when you died or who died. He said overall a finite lifespan for (culturally and physically) evolving creatures had been indispensable towards their evolution, that like virtually every other major feature of life, evolution had strongly favored death. Its also clear enough that evolution has strongly favored organisms who work effectively to delay their death. Its also clear that in our modern society, brilliant 80 year olds are more valuable than ever. Saying one obviously true thing hardly rules out believing and thinking about the ream of other, perhaps more subtle truths. Talking about Jobs as though he was just another guy, not something special, seems more a tactic than something anybody trying to escape biased thinking would ever do.
And you are talking as if Jobs’s moral stances do not hold especially more weight than other’s do, as if his opinions were just the opinions of another guy, not something special. That is, when Steve Jobs says “don’t mind death, it’s ultimately a good thing,” people listen.
If he had said “when people develop dementia, they are no longer able to contribute to society and thus we should accept their passing,” I would still disagree, but at least his (near mode) actions would not be inconsistent with his (far mode) words.
But no, he makes no attempt to distinguish whether an individual can still contribute to society in his unabashed glorification of death, and therefore we should (likewise) not forgive his hypocrisy because he was still able to contribute.