In Praise of Life (Let’s Ditch the Cult of Longevity)
That article would be better titled “In Praise of Death”, and is a string of the usual platitudes and circularities.
I’m now curious: where are the essays that make actual arguments in favor of death? The linked article doesn’t make any; it just asserts that death is OK and we’re being silly for fighting it, without actually providing a reason (they cite Borges’s distopias at the end, but this paragraph has practically nothing in common with the rest of the article, which seems to assume immortality is impossible anyway).
Preference goes to arguments against Elven-style immortality (resistant but not completely immune to murder or disaster, suicide is an option, age-related disabilities are not a thing).
I have a feeling a lot of discussions of life extension suffer from being conditioned on the implicit set point of what’s normal now.
Let’s imagine that humans are actually replicants and their lifespan runs out in their 40s. That lifespan has a “control dial” and you can turn it to extend the human average life expectancy into the 80s. Would all your arguments apply and construct a case against meddling with that control dial?
That’s a good argument if you were to construct the world from first principles. You wouldn’t get the current world order, certainly. But just as arguments against, say, nation-states, or multi-national corporations, or what have you, do little do dissuade believers, the same applies to let-the-natural-order-of-things-proceed advocates. Inertia is what it’s all about. The normative power of the present state, if you will. Never mind that “natural” includes antibiotics, but not gene modification.
This may seem self-evident, but what I’m pointing out is that by saying “consider this world: would you still think the same way in that world?” you’d be skipping the actual step of difficulty: overcoming said inertia, leaving the cozy home of our local minimum.
Inertia is what it’s all about. The normative power of the present state, if you will.
That’s fine as long as you understand it and are not deluding yourself with a collection of reasons why this cozy local minimum is actually the best ever.
The considerable power wielded by inertia should be explicit.
But dramatically fewer children? Much less of the total human experience spent in early learning stages? Would we become less able to make progress in the world because people have trouble moving on from what they first learned?
A world in which we have ended death … may be better than the world now, but I could also see it being worse. On one hand, not having to see your friends and family die, increased institutional memory, more time to get deeply into subjects and achieve mastery, and time to really build up old strong friendships sound good. But dramatically fewer children? Much less of the total human experience spent in early learning stages? Would we become less able to make progress in the world because people have trouble moving on from what they first learned?
I don’t think our current lifespan is the perfect length, but there’s a lot of room between “longer is probably better” and “effectively unlimited is ideal”.
As I wrote in that post, there are some factors that lead to us thinking longer lives would be better, and others that shorter would be better.
Maybe this is easier to think about with a related question: what is the ideal length of tenure at a company? Do companies do best when they have entirely employees-for-life, or is it helpful to have some churn? (Ignoring that people can come in with useful relevant knowledge they got working elsewhere.) Clearly too much churn is very bad for the company, but introducing new people to your practices and teaching them help you adapt and modernize, while if everyone has been there forever it can be hard to make adjustments to changing situations.
The main issue is that people tend to fixate some on what they learn when they’re younger, so if people get much older on average then it would be harder to make progress.
A rather important question here is what’s “ideal” and from whose point of view? From the point of the view of the company, sure, you want some churn, but I don’t know what the company would correspond to in the discussion of the aging of humanity. You’re likely thinking about “society”, but as opposed to companies societies do not and should not optimize for profit (or even GDP) at any cost. It’s not that hard to get to the “put your old geezers on ice floes and push them off into the ocean” practices.
The main issue is that people tend to fixate some on what they learn when they’re younger, so if people get much older on average then it would be harder to make progress.
That’s true, as a paraphrase of Max Planck’s points out, “Science advances one funeral at a time”.
However it also depends on what does “live forever” mean. Being stabilized at the biological age of 70 would probably lead to very different consequences from being stabilized at the biological age of 25.
Being stabilized at the biological age of 70 would probably lead to very different consequences from being stabilized at the biological age of 25.
This probably also depends a lot on the particulars of what “stabilized at the biological age of 25” means. Most 25 year-olds are relatively open to experience, but does that come from being biologically younger or just having had less time to become set in their ways?
This also seems like something that may be fixable with better pharma technology if we can figure out how to temporarily put people into a more childlike exploratory open-to-experience state.
does that come from being biologically younger or just having had less time to become set in their ways?
I think humans are sacks of chemicals to a much greater degree than most of LW believes. As a simple example, note that injections of testosterone into older men tend to change their personality quite a bit.
I don’t know if being less open to new experiences is purely a function of the underlying hardware, but it certainly is to a large extent a function of physiology, hormonal balance, etc.
fixable with better pharma technology
I hope you realize you’re firmly in the “better living through chemistry” territory now.
if we can figure out how to temporarily put people into a more childlike exploratory open-to-experience state.
The idea of putting LSD into the public water supply is not a new one :-)
This also seems like something that may be fixable with better pharma technology if we can figure out how to temporarily put people into a more childlike exploratory open-to-experience state.
I’m now curious: where are the essays that make actual arguments in favor of death? The linked article doesn’t make any; it just asserts that death is OK and we’re being silly for fighting it, without actually providing a reason (they cite Borges’s distopias at the end, but this paragraph has practically nothing in common with the rest of the article, which seems to assume immortality is impossible anyway).
Preference goes to arguments against Elven-style immortality (resistant but not completely immune to murder or disaster, suicide is an option, age-related disabilities are not a thing).
Here’s my argument for why death isn’t the supreme enemy: http://www.jefftk.com/p/not-very-anti-death
I have a feeling a lot of discussions of life extension suffer from being conditioned on the implicit set point of what’s normal now.
Let’s imagine that humans are actually replicants and their lifespan runs out in their 40s. That lifespan has a “control dial” and you can turn it to extend the human average life expectancy into the 80s. Would all your arguments apply and construct a case against meddling with that control dial?
That’s a good argument if you were to construct the world from first principles. You wouldn’t get the current world order, certainly. But just as arguments against, say, nation-states, or multi-national corporations, or what have you, do little do dissuade believers, the same applies to let-the-natural-order-of-things-proceed advocates. Inertia is what it’s all about. The normative power of the present state, if you will. Never mind that “natural” includes antibiotics, but not gene modification.
This may seem self-evident, but what I’m pointing out is that by saying “consider this world: would you still think the same way in that world?” you’d be skipping the actual step of difficulty: overcoming said inertia, leaving the cozy home of our local minimum.
That’s fine as long as you understand it and are not deluding yourself with a collection of reasons why this cozy local minimum is actually the best ever.
The considerable power wielded by inertia should be explicit.
Huh? It feels like you’re responding to a common thing people say, but not to anything I’ve said (or believe).
I meant this as a response specifically to
More context:
I don’t think our current lifespan is the perfect length, but there’s a lot of room between “longer is probably better” and “effectively unlimited is ideal”.
Yes, but are you saying there’s going to a maximum somewhere in that space—some metric will flip over and start going down? What might that metric be?
As I wrote in that post, there are some factors that lead to us thinking longer lives would be better, and others that shorter would be better.
Maybe this is easier to think about with a related question: what is the ideal length of tenure at a company? Do companies do best when they have entirely employees-for-life, or is it helpful to have some churn? (Ignoring that people can come in with useful relevant knowledge they got working elsewhere.) Clearly too much churn is very bad for the company, but introducing new people to your practices and teaching them help you adapt and modernize, while if everyone has been there forever it can be hard to make adjustments to changing situations.
The main issue is that people tend to fixate some on what they learn when they’re younger, so if people get much older on average then it would be harder to make progress.
A rather important question here is what’s “ideal” and from whose point of view? From the point of the view of the company, sure, you want some churn, but I don’t know what the company would correspond to in the discussion of the aging of humanity. You’re likely thinking about “society”, but as opposed to companies societies do not and should not optimize for profit (or even GDP) at any cost. It’s not that hard to get to the “put your old geezers on ice floes and push them off into the ocean” practices.
That’s true, as a paraphrase of Max Planck’s points out, “Science advances one funeral at a time”.
However it also depends on what does “live forever” mean. Being stabilized at the biological age of 70 would probably lead to very different consequences from being stabilized at the biological age of 25.
This probably also depends a lot on the particulars of what “stabilized at the biological age of 25” means. Most 25 year-olds are relatively open to experience, but does that come from being biologically younger or just having had less time to become set in their ways?
This also seems like something that may be fixable with better pharma technology if we can figure out how to temporarily put people into a more childlike exploratory open-to-experience state.
I think humans are sacks of chemicals to a much greater degree than most of LW believes. As a simple example, note that injections of testosterone into older men tend to change their personality quite a bit.
I don’t know if being less open to new experiences is purely a function of the underlying hardware, but it certainly is to a large extent a function of physiology, hormonal balance, etc.
I hope you realize you’re firmly in the “better living through chemistry” territory now.
The idea of putting LSD into the public water supply is not a new one :-)
Anecdotally, LSD.
My take: there’s a big difference between calling something good and dealing with a fact.