Before I start my defense I propose a different more neutral term for deathism: Senexism—from the latin adjective senex—old.
I propose this because death is only the end of an aging process and by focussing on the ultimate and emotionally disturbing result one loads the topic with negative connotations.
Lemme quote some more from Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.
...Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
...
The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.
If you wanted to argue for aging separately from death, it would be fine to pick a word that dodged our emotional reactions to death. But you are arguing for death, and (by your own admission even) substituting something else because our emotional reaction to death bad.
We’re arguing over a matter of ethics. Of course emotions are going to be involved. Ultimately everything here reduces to “this policy will help us achieve ends which were chosen by things like our emotions.” This substitution seems transparently like an attempt to hack me, and I might be more charitable about this, but you have already admitted to another attempt to hack me.
So is rationality orthogonal to feeling? No; our emotions arise from our models of reality. If I believe that my dead brother has been discovered alive, I will be happy; if I wake up and realize it was a dream, I will be sad. P. C. Hodgell said: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” My dreaming self’s happiness was opposed by truth. My sadness on waking is rational; there is no truth which destroys it.
If I am okay with death because I envision aging instead, that feeling is irrational. It can be destroyed by the truth if I envision what I am actually thinking about.
For an efficiently working brain (that is set on the track of avoiding death at all cost) it is not hard to spot patterns that support the view that death is only bad.
I doubt many anti-deathist LessWrongers think death has absolutely no good consequences. It’s just that being made tougher by people we love dying is not worth people we love dying. Being driven to do things faster and be less mediocre (if that indeed happens, which I kind of doubt, and find your folk psychology arguments for unconvincing) because we know we’re running out of time until we die is not worth running out of time and dying. Making science go faster is not worth killing literally everyone. If someone is risk-averse because they have more to lose, taking away the thing they are trying to protect is not helping them. We could much more easily and effectively protect against diseases by limiting travel over long distances, than by killing off people whose genes are too common. Even if this group selection hypothesis is true, there are evolutionary adaptive things we don’t want to have in a modern civilization. And there are things that were adaptive in the ancestral environment that aren’t adaptive anymore.
I apologize for hacking you. I would have hoped that it to be understood as harmless and helpful. Nonetheless I apologize for not seeing that it was invasive.
I doubt many anti-deathist LessWrongers think death has absolutely no good consequences,
Probably.
I now see that I wrote the post in a state of rejection of unbalanced positivism I saw in LW posts. I should have written it as a pro-contra piece that would have argued for a balance better than trying to move toward a balance which is bound to trigger counterforce.
I probably shouldn’t have written it. I already wondered if there should be a warning of certain topics in LW. Like the no-politics policy.
I find your folk psychology arguments for unconvincing.
They are not convicing. I shouldn’t have used them.
There are evolutionary adaptive things we don’t want to have in a modern civilization. And there are things that were adaptive in the ancestral environment that aren’t adaptive anymore.
Agreed. Group selection benefits of aging apply beyond genes though.
These are different things that are only contingently related to each other, but conflating them lets you make arguments that fall apart once one notices the equivocation on “aging”. “Aging(3) is good, but aging(2) ends in death, therefore death is good.”
Interesting point. In the context of this post it is 2 (though you shouldn’t have chosen a derogative).
I don’t think someone would name 1 when asked about the biological (or colloquial) meaning of aging. And 3 would seldom be cited alone but probably more often as compensation aspect of 2.
Lemme quote some more from Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.
...
If you wanted to argue for aging separately from death, it would be fine to pick a word that dodged our emotional reactions to death. But you are arguing for death, and (by your own admission even) substituting something else because our emotional reaction to death bad.
We’re arguing over a matter of ethics. Of course emotions are going to be involved. Ultimately everything here reduces to “this policy will help us achieve ends which were chosen by things like our emotions.” This substitution seems transparently like an attempt to hack me, and I might be more charitable about this, but you have already admitted to another attempt to hack me.
From “Feeling Rational”,
If I am okay with death because I envision aging instead, that feeling is irrational. It can be destroyed by the truth if I envision what I am actually thinking about.
I doubt many anti-deathist LessWrongers think death has absolutely no good consequences. It’s just that being made tougher by people we love dying is not worth people we love dying. Being driven to do things faster and be less mediocre (if that indeed happens, which I kind of doubt, and find your folk psychology arguments for unconvincing) because we know we’re running out of time until we die is not worth running out of time and dying. Making science go faster is not worth killing literally everyone. If someone is risk-averse because they have more to lose, taking away the thing they are trying to protect is not helping them. We could much more easily and effectively protect against diseases by limiting travel over long distances, than by killing off people whose genes are too common. Even if this group selection hypothesis is true, there are evolutionary adaptive things we don’t want to have in a modern civilization. And there are things that were adaptive in the ancestral environment that aren’t adaptive anymore.
I apologize for hacking you. I would have hoped that it to be understood as harmless and helpful. Nonetheless I apologize for not seeing that it was invasive.
Probably.
I now see that I wrote the post in a state of rejection of unbalanced positivism I saw in LW posts. I should have written it as a pro-contra piece that would have argued for a balance better than trying to move toward a balance which is bound to trigger counterforce.
I probably shouldn’t have written it. I already wondered if there should be a warning of certain topics in LW. Like the no-politics policy.
They are not convicing. I shouldn’t have used them.
Agreed. Group selection benefits of aging apply beyond genes though.
What do you mean by aging?
The passage of time without dying.
Accumulating decreptitude.
Accumulating experience, knowledge, expertise, wisdom.
These are different things that are only contingently related to each other, but conflating them lets you make arguments that fall apart once one notices the equivocation on “aging”. “Aging(3) is good, but aging(2) ends in death, therefore death is good.”
Interesting point. In the context of this post it is 2 (though you shouldn’t have chosen a derogative).
I don’t think someone would name 1 when asked about the biological (or colloquial) meaning of aging. And 3 would seldom be cited alone but probably more often as compensation aspect of 2.
“Decreptitude” is descriptive, not derogative. Decrepit: wasted and weakened by or as if by the infirmities of old age (Merriam-Webster Online).
That’s decrepitude. Your use with “t” implied a derogative with “creep”. But it seems to have been a typo. Sorry for misinterpreting this.