Isn’t good to have a multiplicity of viewpoints presented?
The common position is one along the lines of “People should be able to live for as long as they wish.” And the response to concerns of overpopulation is often “Let’s hurry up and get ready to colonize space.
I find this point of view unsurprising as it reflects the greed and selfishness instilled in the population of the over indulgent western world today. Everything should be for sale, we should be able to have whatever we want, even though the consequences for the rest of humanity, the other species on this planet and the environment could be devastating. Death isn’t a problem to be overcome it’s the natural conclusion to life.
“I find this point of view unsurprising as it reflects the greed and selfishness instilled in the population of the over indulgent western world today.”
“Selfish” is more typically attached to those people who are okay with other people dying; not the people who are not okay with it.
Everything should be for sale, we should be able to have whatever we want, even though the consequences for the rest of humanity
I don’t know of any person here who wants immortality only for themselves and says to hell with everyone else. I suggest you actually read up on the actual views of the people in this community rather than strawmanning and making caricatures out of them.
Death isn’t a problem to be overcome it’s the natural conclusion to life.
You’re imbuing a moral quality to the word “natural” which isn’t actually there. By the same argument earthquakes and tsunamis are also not problems to be overcome, they’re the natural result of tectonic movement.
Nor is starvation a problem to be overcome, it’s the natural conclusion to the lack of sufficient food. Nor is infant mortality a problem to be overcome—after all women can make babies once every nine months, so it’s natural for so many infants to perish.
All problems to be overcome are “natural”. Until they’re solved, at which point they’re no longer natural, their solution is.
Selfish because if everyone on this planet chose to be immortal and continued to reproduce life on earth would be unsustainable unless major innovations in relation to problems such as the ones mentioned previously were realised. Even if they were the quality of life would inevitably be lower and eventually the human race would die out if the birth rate exceeded the death rate by such massive numbers.
If reproduction was stopped it may be feasible but this would probably have to be controlled and enforced which I don’t agree with due to the reasons stated earlier.
I suggest you actually read up on the actual views of the people in this community rather than strawmanning and making caricatures out of them.
I wasn’t actually addressing everyone in this community I was replying to a comment from one individual.
You’re imbuing a moral quality to the word “natural” which isn’t actually there.
Maybe you’re right about that, although you’re stretching it a bit with the infant mortality argument. And I don’t think tsunamis are problems to be overcome I think we can only deal with the consequences. Starvation in many places is a problem due to over population which would only be exacerbated if people stopped dying. And I do think that quest for immortality is ultimately a selfish goal. When considering immortality do you honestly think “it would be great if i could live forever” or “it would be great if me and everyone on the planet now could live forever”? Maybe you do think the latter but I think if immortality was discovered tomorrow it would be concentrated in the hands of a rich elite who judge their lives to be more important than the rest of ours. After a while it would be sold to those wealthy enough to afford it. Just another way for the wealthy elitists to conserve their power. These people would control the world through the generations and decide their own world order. This would help to cause the stagnation of political ideas, social change and innovation.
Maybe you’re right about that, although you’re stretching it a bit with the infant mortality argument.
Really? It was the chief method of population-control once upon a time, much like death by aging is now. They seem pretty analogous in most ways.
People were “selfish” back then to not want their infant babies die. People are the same sort of selfish now to not want to see their parents die.
Lack of death in both cases causes the same sorts of problems, but people adjust to problems. Fertility declined after infant mortality dropped—fertility per year will also be declined in people have their youthful years extended indefinitely.
Maybe you do think the latter but I think if immortality was discovered tomorrow it would be concentrated in the hands of a rich elite who judge their lives to be more important than the rest of ours. After a while it would be sold to those wealthy enough to afford it.
Do you understand that you just made two contradictory arguments—before you said there will be overpopulation, because it will be given to all. Now you say it will be given only to some (so there’s no problem of overpopulation), but these few will create an elite.
Those are two opposite problems—which one do you believe will be the actual case?
These people would control the world through the generations and decide their own world order.
How does that follow? In what way does medical immortality give these people greater powers of control than any current or medieval non-immortal dictator or monarchical dynasty?
Well actually I think you misunderstood me. The statement you’re basing your argument on is “Death isn’t a problem to be overcome it’s the natural conclusion to life.” I admit that I may have “imbued the word natural with moral weight”. However you are responding as if I had said “death is natural therefore it is desirable” which I did not and which would be a pretty meaningless statement to make. I merely used natural as an adjective, I could have used “inevitable” or “only” or many others instead. The adjective was obviously misplaced because it had unintended connotations in the context. I should have reread the comment more carefully.
In answer to your second point it depends when immortality was discovered. In the last example I said if the means to be immortal was discovered tomorrow. Obviously it is more likely that it would be discovered in hundreds or thousands of years when the world will probably be radically different to that of today. Therefore both are complete conjecture. Neither of us can know what the true impact on society would be. I think it will be negative for the reasons I’ve given, I’m not sure what your position is as you’ve not clearly stated it though I’m assuming you think the effects would be positive? It would be interesting to hear what your view s are.
Because they are able to maintain power for much longer. It is often when a dictator dies or is aging and infirm that their regimes are contested.
We don’t know what the true impact on society will be if medical immortality is discovered—but the thing is that the current impact on society of its lack is about 60 million deaths per year. A death toll of the scale of World War 2, every single year.
Can I condone such a death toll for reasons as uncertain as the fear of the possible formation of a immortal super-elite which will lead the rest of humanity to misery, or of the fear of overpopulation bringing misery, or of dictators lasting a bit longer in power than they otherwise would?
No, I can’t condone it. Yes, I’m sure lots of problems will arise if medical immortality is discovered. But as a rough calculation none of those problems is nearly certain enough to justify 60 million deaths per year in return. Your own calculations of this may be different.
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As a sidenote your concept of just the elite becoming immortal isn’t an automatic dystopia either. If anything, I think that might make them a bit more responsible in evaluating the long-term consequences of their policies.
If a Victorian thinker had challenged the appropriateness of medical advances like open heart surgery on the grounds that the Earth was dangerously close to carrying capacity, would you be persuaded that medical researchers were selfish or misguided.
Putting it slightly differently, there’s not yet a compelling case that the current average human lifespan or carrying capacity of the planet are set in stone by physical laws. Human science has increased both those numbers many times throughout history.
If you want to make the argument that a counter-factual world with 3 billion humans, all living the American standard of living would be more moral than the current setup, that’s a respectable position. But there’s substantial difficulty getting from here to there. If we’re both wishing for pie-in-the-sky, doesn’t it seem more pleasant to wish for the world of 6 billion sustainably American standard of living, and trying to think of how to get to that outcome?
No because life saving procedures are a different matter to procedures that ensure immortality which would effectively cut the death rate in a hypothetical situation where everyone in the world had access to them. My point is I don’t think this would be sustainable/ it would lead to dire consequences for the human race. As I mentioned to Mitchell Porter I didn’t say that experimentation in this area should be prevented I just think that it is not a desirable road for humanity in the event of success.
1) I’m doubtful that the distinction between lifesaving procedures and immortality will end up being a clear distinction. I’m optimistic that humanity will eventually have the capability to do things like replace lost limbs with new limbs. Once we have that level of capacity, most of the modern causes of death go away—if you survive to reach the hospital, you’re likely to be able to leave basically good as new.
2) Given our current levels of technology, Western-level standards of living for everyone are not sustainable. Nor do there appear to be imminent technological advances that would make that sustainable. But radical life-extension technology (of whatever form) is also nowhere near imminent. Why do you think that the kind of technology advances you dislike are closer to achievement than carrying-capacity advances?
Some of your comments suggest that you would oppose carrying capacity increases (like colonizing other planets) even if they were within humanities capacity because these technological capacities would be bad for humanity. Assuming you are correct that these technological revolutions would fundamentally change human society, why are these hypothetical changes worse than the changes caused by developments like selective breeding of livestock, practical steam engines, cell phones, the Internet, or agriculture itself?
Wait I don’t think I said I “dislike” any technological advances. I’m not opposing the investigation into life preserving technology and I would be greatly impressed if a “cure for death” was discovered I just think that the effect on human life would ultimately be negative. I said the idea of colonising space would be depressing to me. By colonising space I don’t mean living on other planets as right now that is an impossibility, I mean living in space ships. This would in no way be comparable to living on planet earth and the psychological implications of remaining in an enclosed space for such a long period of time would be great. Even if these and other practical limitations could be overcome, I find this idea disagreeable on an emotional/ aesthetic level. I find the idea of leaving the beauty of the natural world in favour of a simulated reality within a spacecraft deeply sad. Particularly if this was a result of the irreparable destruction of planet earth rendering it uninhabitable for humans.
Regarding the question of technological revolutions you mention there have been many that have had an extremely negative impact on human society and the world itself, the most obvious being the utilisation of fossil fuels for energy sources. The examples you mention are pretty benign but in the case of agriculture: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/aug/26/food-shortages-world-vegetarianism?INTCMP=SRCH
Also : “Meat production accounts for about 5% of global CO2 emissions, 40% of methane emissions and 40% of various nitrogen oxides. If meat production doubles, by the late 2040s cows, pigs, sheep and chickens will be responsible for about half as much climate change impact as all the world’s cars, trucks and aircraft.”(Guardian) Human beings have engineered many impressive innovations in technology and science, unfortunately these have also had some terrible side effects that we need to overcome as soon as possible.
I find this idea disagreeable on an emotional/ aesthetic level.
Sure—but this sort of reaction is historically contingent—our culture could have developed such that you would feel differently. These sorts of judgments are very fluid over time—what the Victorians found aesthetic was different that what the Romans found aesthetic is different from us. This fluidity makes it very hard to tell when the judgments should be taken seriously. Whereas we know that almost all technological advances reduced poverty.
Even as a believer in AGW, I’m pretty confident that the Industrial Revolution (which started with coal and moved to oil) was a net benefit to human happiness. Separately, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the were a near term rise in the incidence of vegetarianism in the West for food shortage reasons. (Food is a zero-sum game: There’s a finite amount of energy per time that Earth receives from the Sun. Every calorie spent digesting grass to build cow bone is a calorie that can’t sustain a human).
Isn’t good to have a multiplicity of viewpoints presented?
I find this point of view unsurprising as it reflects the greed and selfishness instilled in the population of the over indulgent western world today. Everything should be for sale, we should be able to have whatever we want, even though the consequences for the rest of humanity, the other species on this planet and the environment could be devastating. Death isn’t a problem to be overcome it’s the natural conclusion to life.
“Selfish” is more typically attached to those people who are okay with other people dying; not the people who are not okay with it.
I don’t know of any person here who wants immortality only for themselves and says to hell with everyone else. I suggest you actually read up on the actual views of the people in this community rather than strawmanning and making caricatures out of them.
You’re imbuing a moral quality to the word “natural” which isn’t actually there. By the same argument earthquakes and tsunamis are also not problems to be overcome, they’re the natural result of tectonic movement.
Nor is starvation a problem to be overcome, it’s the natural conclusion to the lack of sufficient food. Nor is infant mortality a problem to be overcome—after all women can make babies once every nine months, so it’s natural for so many infants to perish.
All problems to be overcome are “natural”. Until they’re solved, at which point they’re no longer natural, their solution is.
Selfish because if everyone on this planet chose to be immortal and continued to reproduce life on earth would be unsustainable unless major innovations in relation to problems such as the ones mentioned previously were realised. Even if they were the quality of life would inevitably be lower and eventually the human race would die out if the birth rate exceeded the death rate by such massive numbers. If reproduction was stopped it may be feasible but this would probably have to be controlled and enforced which I don’t agree with due to the reasons stated earlier.
I wasn’t actually addressing everyone in this community I was replying to a comment from one individual.
Maybe you’re right about that, although you’re stretching it a bit with the infant mortality argument. And I don’t think tsunamis are problems to be overcome I think we can only deal with the consequences. Starvation in many places is a problem due to over population which would only be exacerbated if people stopped dying. And I do think that quest for immortality is ultimately a selfish goal. When considering immortality do you honestly think “it would be great if i could live forever” or “it would be great if me and everyone on the planet now could live forever”? Maybe you do think the latter but I think if immortality was discovered tomorrow it would be concentrated in the hands of a rich elite who judge their lives to be more important than the rest of ours. After a while it would be sold to those wealthy enough to afford it. Just another way for the wealthy elitists to conserve their power. These people would control the world through the generations and decide their own world order. This would help to cause the stagnation of political ideas, social change and innovation.
Really? It was the chief method of population-control once upon a time, much like death by aging is now. They seem pretty analogous in most ways.
People were “selfish” back then to not want their infant babies die. People are the same sort of selfish now to not want to see their parents die.
Lack of death in both cases causes the same sorts of problems, but people adjust to problems. Fertility declined after infant mortality dropped—fertility per year will also be declined in people have their youthful years extended indefinitely.
Do you understand that you just made two contradictory arguments—before you said there will be overpopulation, because it will be given to all. Now you say it will be given only to some (so there’s no problem of overpopulation), but these few will create an elite.
Those are two opposite problems—which one do you believe will be the actual case?
How does that follow? In what way does medical immortality give these people greater powers of control than any current or medieval non-immortal dictator or monarchical dynasty?
Well actually I think you misunderstood me. The statement you’re basing your argument on is “Death isn’t a problem to be overcome it’s the natural conclusion to life.” I admit that I may have “imbued the word natural with moral weight”. However you are responding as if I had said “death is natural therefore it is desirable” which I did not and which would be a pretty meaningless statement to make. I merely used natural as an adjective, I could have used “inevitable” or “only” or many others instead. The adjective was obviously misplaced because it had unintended connotations in the context. I should have reread the comment more carefully.
In answer to your second point it depends when immortality was discovered. In the last example I said if the means to be immortal was discovered tomorrow. Obviously it is more likely that it would be discovered in hundreds or thousands of years when the world will probably be radically different to that of today. Therefore both are complete conjecture. Neither of us can know what the true impact on society would be. I think it will be negative for the reasons I’ve given, I’m not sure what your position is as you’ve not clearly stated it though I’m assuming you think the effects would be positive? It would be interesting to hear what your view s are.
Because they are able to maintain power for much longer. It is often when a dictator dies or is aging and infirm that their regimes are contested.
We don’t know what the true impact on society will be if medical immortality is discovered—but the thing is that the current impact on society of its lack is about 60 million deaths per year. A death toll of the scale of World War 2, every single year.
Can I condone such a death toll for reasons as uncertain as the fear of the possible formation of a immortal super-elite which will lead the rest of humanity to misery, or of the fear of overpopulation bringing misery, or of dictators lasting a bit longer in power than they otherwise would?
No, I can’t condone it. Yes, I’m sure lots of problems will arise if medical immortality is discovered. But as a rough calculation none of those problems is nearly certain enough to justify 60 million deaths per year in return. Your own calculations of this may be different.
--
As a sidenote your concept of just the elite becoming immortal isn’t an automatic dystopia either. If anything, I think that might make them a bit more responsible in evaluating the long-term consequences of their policies.
To ask the natural followup question:
If a Victorian thinker had challenged the appropriateness of medical advances like open heart surgery on the grounds that the Earth was dangerously close to carrying capacity, would you be persuaded that medical researchers were selfish or misguided.
Putting it slightly differently, there’s not yet a compelling case that the current average human lifespan or carrying capacity of the planet are set in stone by physical laws. Human science has increased both those numbers many times throughout history.
If you want to make the argument that a counter-factual world with 3 billion humans, all living the American standard of living would be more moral than the current setup, that’s a respectable position. But there’s substantial difficulty getting from here to there. If we’re both wishing for pie-in-the-sky, doesn’t it seem more pleasant to wish for the world of 6 billion sustainably American standard of living, and trying to think of how to get to that outcome?
No because life saving procedures are a different matter to procedures that ensure immortality which would effectively cut the death rate in a hypothetical situation where everyone in the world had access to them. My point is I don’t think this would be sustainable/ it would lead to dire consequences for the human race. As I mentioned to Mitchell Porter I didn’t say that experimentation in this area should be prevented I just think that it is not a desirable road for humanity in the event of success.
Two points:
1) I’m doubtful that the distinction between lifesaving procedures and immortality will end up being a clear distinction. I’m optimistic that humanity will eventually have the capability to do things like replace lost limbs with new limbs. Once we have that level of capacity, most of the modern causes of death go away—if you survive to reach the hospital, you’re likely to be able to leave basically good as new.
2) Given our current levels of technology, Western-level standards of living for everyone are not sustainable. Nor do there appear to be imminent technological advances that would make that sustainable. But radical life-extension technology (of whatever form) is also nowhere near imminent. Why do you think that the kind of technology advances you dislike are closer to achievement than carrying-capacity advances?
Some of your comments suggest that you would oppose carrying capacity increases (like colonizing other planets) even if they were within humanities capacity because these technological capacities would be bad for humanity. Assuming you are correct that these technological revolutions would fundamentally change human society, why are these hypothetical changes worse than the changes caused by developments like selective breeding of livestock, practical steam engines, cell phones, the Internet, or agriculture itself?
I’m not sure that regrowing limbs is much like rejuvenation. Most people die of aging, not accidents.
Wait I don’t think I said I “dislike” any technological advances. I’m not opposing the investigation into life preserving technology and I would be greatly impressed if a “cure for death” was discovered I just think that the effect on human life would ultimately be negative. I said the idea of colonising space would be depressing to me. By colonising space I don’t mean living on other planets as right now that is an impossibility, I mean living in space ships. This would in no way be comparable to living on planet earth and the psychological implications of remaining in an enclosed space for such a long period of time would be great. Even if these and other practical limitations could be overcome, I find this idea disagreeable on an emotional/ aesthetic level. I find the idea of leaving the beauty of the natural world in favour of a simulated reality within a spacecraft deeply sad. Particularly if this was a result of the irreparable destruction of planet earth rendering it uninhabitable for humans. Regarding the question of technological revolutions you mention there have been many that have had an extremely negative impact on human society and the world itself, the most obvious being the utilisation of fossil fuels for energy sources. The examples you mention are pretty benign but in the case of agriculture: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/aug/26/food-shortages-world-vegetarianism?INTCMP=SRCH Also : “Meat production accounts for about 5% of global CO2 emissions, 40% of methane emissions and 40% of various nitrogen oxides. If meat production doubles, by the late 2040s cows, pigs, sheep and chickens will be responsible for about half as much climate change impact as all the world’s cars, trucks and aircraft.”(Guardian)
Human beings have engineered many impressive innovations in technology and science, unfortunately these have also had some terrible side effects that we need to overcome as soon as possible.
Sure—but this sort of reaction is historically contingent—our culture could have developed such that you would feel differently. These sorts of judgments are very fluid over time—what the Victorians found aesthetic was different that what the Romans found aesthetic is different from us. This fluidity makes it very hard to tell when the judgments should be taken seriously. Whereas we know that almost all technological advances reduced poverty.
Even as a believer in AGW, I’m pretty confident that the Industrial Revolution (which started with coal and moved to oil) was a net benefit to human happiness. Separately, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the were a near term rise in the incidence of vegetarianism in the West for food shortage reasons. (Food is a zero-sum game: There’s a finite amount of energy per time that Earth receives from the Sun. Every calorie spent digesting grass to build cow bone is a calorie that can’t sustain a human).