Personally, I think immortality is overrated, at least by people who realize it’s important at all.
You’re not inherently more valuable than anyone else. Ergo, preventing your death would be no more valuable than replacing you afterwards. In addition, if we could replace you with a happier entity, it would be an improvement.
That said, replacing people is expensive. Immortality is still incredibly valuable for that reason.
Ergo, preventing your death would be no more valuable than replacing you afterwards.
Well, here’s the thing. My values and abilities today have taken 32 years to develop. I can identify several distinct stages where I was undergoing rapid change, and several where I was undergoing slower change; but nonetheless, replacing me today with an arbitrary newborn baby, a 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 8-year-old, or 16-year-old would not seem to be a one-for-one trade.
I certainly think the world would be worse off if my current 32-year-old self were replaced with my 16-year-old self. I was a bit of an asshole at 16.
(Sadly, I don’t know of any way to demonstrate improvement that doesn’t amount to either wealth signaling, wisdom signaling, or drama.)
I wouldn’t assert that the value of a human life necessarily rises with age — equating experience with value. First, some people do squander their potential; and some people do start with more potential than others. But worse is age-related decline. The fact that people whose lives, experience, and wisdom I value are succumbing to the failure of their evolved physiological substrate is a dreadful thing. It’s hard for me to read a Terry Pratchett novel today, knowing that his brain is right now literally falling apart due to Alzheimer’s disease.
The average 72-year-old has less to offer the world than the average 24-year-old — precisely because of age-related decline. And that’s a horrifying, disgusting fact. Preventing biological death without preventing mental decline is not a valuable outcome to me; I want people to retain their personality, their wit, their knowledge, and not just their metabolic function.
I don’t think this is any kind of uncommon view around here — but longevity with intact mental function is an obvious win for preserving the value represented by human cognition.
Good answer, but I think DanielLC probably intended to cover it with his final line “replacing people is expensive. Immortality is still incredibly valuable for that reason”.
At the moment, people have to squander effort [which could otherwise be spent playing video games] on finding food to keep their muscles working and their bodies at the right temperature. They also have to squander effort on feeding and educating youngsters and looking after the elderly. Curing aging will largely dispose of the second kind of wastage, which is a big win.
But I still think DanielLC is right—people do overrate immortality, believing that there’s something terribly important about their own survival into the far future, simply because it is their own, going way beyond any objective assessment of their value and importance in the world.
1.) An objective assessment says nothing of their value and importance in the world, because value and importance are assigned by individuals for themselves.
2.) To say wanting immortality is overrating the importance of your own life is like saying that liking the color green is overrating the importance of your own artistic ability—totally nonsensical.
3.) Technological immortality is not just for oneself; I think it is probably rated so highly important because it is for everyone. Everyone must die, and any death is as tragic as any other: to think one must only care about immortality for one’s own sake is fairly cynical.
4.) Finally, immortality is almost guaranteed to be more important than any other goal one could have. Anything else can be deferred and accomplished once you are immortal, but once you have died, that’s it.
You should give this article a read-through, I think:
1.) An objective assessment says nothing of their value and importance in the world, because value and importance are assigned by individuals for themselves.
From what I can gather, most everyone here is consequentialist, but some are egoist, and some are utilitarian. I’m a utilitarian. I think happiness is inherently valuable. I don’t really know how I can argue about it, and if I did, I’d make it a top-level post, but it’s good to at least find out exactly where we disagree.
2 is basically restating 1
3.) Technological immortality is not just for oneself; I think it is probably rated so highly important because it is for everyone. Everyone must die, and any death is as tragic as any other: to think one must only care about immortality for one’s own sake is fairly cynical.
I meant that immortality for anyone is over-rated. Death isn’t in itself tragic. It’s that once you die, you are no longer living, and thus no longer happy. If you replace the person who died with someone else, there’s still life, and there’s still happiness. The first person isn’t living anymore, but the second wouldn’t be living otherwise.
4.) Finally, immortality is almost guaranteed to be more important than any other goal one could have. Anything else can be deferred and accomplished once you are immortal, but once you have died, that’s it.
Is there any reason to believe that the next generation will be less rational than this one? In any case, this isn’t something inherently bad about death.
Insisting upon calling your own life unimportant is not rational, but perverse.
I consider my life very important. I just don’t consider it uniquely important. If you replace me with someone who’s life is equally important, there’s no net gain or loss.
I’m a utilitarian too; I posted arguments #1 and #2 because I don’t know how I could argue for inherent value either, and Aleph might not be utilitarian. Note, though, that happiness can be inherently valuable, yet the same event can still result in different utility (or importance) for different people: Aleph may not value his own life as much as I value mine, causing immortality to make me more happy than it would make him.
I think you are arguing against straw men, however. No one has said, as far as I’m aware, that one’s own life is necessarily uniquely important, nor was this implied. I have not seen anyone suggest that lives aren’t equivalent in importance, and neither is this required for immortality to be valuable. And what does the next generation’s rationality have to do with the fact that death prevents one from maximizing one’s own happiness? As my happiness is inherently valuable, it’s inherently valuable to me to maximize my own happiness, whether or not the next generation is happy. Surely it is better for our happiness to be added than for theirs to replace my own.
Even by your own examples, immortality is important. You make the argument that happiness would be the same if a death was mitigated by a new life—and this is true, but as an example, it is flawed: how often does that happen? In real life, death does not usually result in new life, so utility is increased dramatically by defeating death. But even if we assume that every death is balanced by a new life, total utility would be most increased if there was new life without the corresponding death.
It seems like you put aside all the drawbacks to death advanced so far—the sadness of others; the debility of age; the fact that we already know how to create new life, thus making death the main enemy of utility; the cost of replacement people; lack of happiness once dead—and wave it aside, saying “besides all those, death isn’t so bad.” Well yes—death isn’t so bad, without all the bad things about death!
I’m not sure exactly what you’re trying to say here. Your original statement was meant to point out that immorality is “not as important as people think”, right? Who is it that thinks immortality is overrated, then? Apparently not me, since we don’t appear to actually disagree that death is bad and immortality is good—which is all I’ve claimed. (We do disagree below, about death not being the end of the world, but that’s not any claim I’ve made before.)
Preventing my death would be no more valuable to who? A happier entity would be an improvement for who? Certainly not for me. Preventing the death of an already-conscious being would be more valuable to said being; probably to most other people, too—is it okay to murder someone if you’re going to have a baby to replace them?
We already have a method for making new people, so preventing the deaths of those already here has higher priority, I think.
Look at all the ailments old age brings with it, from physical frailness to dementia, and the fact that people may have to spend decades in nursery homes when they’d rather be living independent lives.
I spent a year working at a service home. This was a private institution with motivated staff, a good staff-to-customer ratio and customers who were all relatively physically fit. Yet few of them really seemed happy with their circumstances. I’m pretty sure they would all have preferred to be in a better shape.
According to The Happiness Hypothesis, the five external circumstances affecting your happiness are noise, commuting, lack of control, shame and relationships. A declining physical condition reduces your control and may cause you to experience feelings of shame due to your helplessness. It also erodes your relationships as the people you know die and it gets harder to go meet the living ones, and you have less energy to make new friends.
Age-related decline is one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes in our age.
Perhaps I should rephrase it. It’s quite likely that death cuts our total productivity in half, if not worse. Its cost dwarfs that of every government put together. It’s just not the end of the world.
Forgive me for saying the obvious, but death has indeed been the subjective end of the world for everyone not currently alive. If someone wants to save the world for the sake of its people (not just for its own sake), then it is needed that they don’t die.
I agree that if we’re only considering the person who dies and the replacement person, that preventing someone’s death and creating another person are pretty much the same, but I think the pain caused to others by someone dying is usually outweighs the happiness caused by bringing another person into existence. In any case, the costs of death to the people who are still alive need to be taken into account.
While there is sadness associated with death, that cost is dwarfed by the expense of raising and training replacements, and people getting less effective as they age.
My point wasn’t that death doesn’t matter. It’s just not the end of the world.
Well, as far as you know, it is the end of the world. Solipsism is a rationally defensible position, though I personally feel it’s only worth keeping in mind to remind one of the limits of knowledge, and is not a philosophy that should actually govern behavior. (Thus this is intended as a comment only, not a refutation).
This reminds me of a story Bertrand Russell liked to tell: (Quoting from Wikipedia allegedly from Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits)
I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd-Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician and a solipsist, her surprise surprised me.
Nope. You’d have to post an output of your reasoning to give us an opportunity to find a bug. Other than that, I can only direct you to the metaethics and zombie) sequences.
Also, using the word “rationally” here is a bad idea, since it doesn’t add anything other than misleading connotational gloss. (A position defensible “rationally” as opposed to defensible in what manner?)
Are you saying you disagree with my statement, or that positions can only be claimed to be defensible if reasoning is provided?
I’m saying that your statement is wrong, but I can only convince you of that if you give more information about why you believe it, and what exactly it is that you believe.
How rationally defensible? If you’re 99% sure, you’d effectively value everyone else at 1% what you value yourself. This would still be enough to make you dedicate your life to charity, for example.
Rationality is about finding the unique set of things to believe, and how strongly to do so. It’s not about defending ideas; that sounds like defending the bottom line.
I didn’t suggest it was about defending ideas. I only suggested that a particular idea could be defended by rationality. I don’t think that implies the sole use of rationality is to defend ideas.
Personally, I think immortality is overrated, at least by people who realize it’s important at all.
You’re not inherently more valuable than anyone else. Ergo, preventing your death would be no more valuable than replacing you afterwards. In addition, if we could replace you with a happier entity, it would be an improvement.
That said, replacing people is expensive. Immortality is still incredibly valuable for that reason.
Well, here’s the thing. My values and abilities today have taken 32 years to develop. I can identify several distinct stages where I was undergoing rapid change, and several where I was undergoing slower change; but nonetheless, replacing me today with an arbitrary newborn baby, a 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 8-year-old, or 16-year-old would not seem to be a one-for-one trade.
I certainly think the world would be worse off if my current 32-year-old self were replaced with my 16-year-old self. I was a bit of an asshole at 16.
(Sadly, I don’t know of any way to demonstrate improvement that doesn’t amount to either wealth signaling, wisdom signaling, or drama.)
I wouldn’t assert that the value of a human life necessarily rises with age — equating experience with value. First, some people do squander their potential; and some people do start with more potential than others. But worse is age-related decline. The fact that people whose lives, experience, and wisdom I value are succumbing to the failure of their evolved physiological substrate is a dreadful thing. It’s hard for me to read a Terry Pratchett novel today, knowing that his brain is right now literally falling apart due to Alzheimer’s disease.
The average 72-year-old has less to offer the world than the average 24-year-old — precisely because of age-related decline. And that’s a horrifying, disgusting fact. Preventing biological death without preventing mental decline is not a valuable outcome to me; I want people to retain their personality, their wit, their knowledge, and not just their metabolic function.
I don’t think this is any kind of uncommon view around here — but longevity with intact mental function is an obvious win for preserving the value represented by human cognition.
Good answer, but I think DanielLC probably intended to cover it with his final line “replacing people is expensive. Immortality is still incredibly valuable for that reason”.
At the moment, people have to squander effort [which could otherwise be spent playing video games] on finding food to keep their muscles working and their bodies at the right temperature. They also have to squander effort on feeding and educating youngsters and looking after the elderly. Curing aging will largely dispose of the second kind of wastage, which is a big win.
But I still think DanielLC is right—people do overrate immortality, believing that there’s something terribly important about their own survival into the far future, simply because it is their own, going way beyond any objective assessment of their value and importance in the world.
Rethink that last paragraph.
1.) An objective assessment says nothing of their value and importance in the world, because value and importance are assigned by individuals for themselves.
2.) To say wanting immortality is overrating the importance of your own life is like saying that liking the color green is overrating the importance of your own artistic ability—totally nonsensical.
3.) Technological immortality is not just for oneself; I think it is probably rated so highly important because it is for everyone. Everyone must die, and any death is as tragic as any other: to think one must only care about immortality for one’s own sake is fairly cynical.
4.) Finally, immortality is almost guaranteed to be more important than any other goal one could have. Anything else can be deferred and accomplished once you are immortal, but once you have died, that’s it.
You should give this article a read-through, I think:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1yi/the_scourge_of_perversemindedness/
Insisting upon calling your own life unimportant is not rational, but perverse.
“Insisting upon calling your own life unimportant is not rational, but perverse.”
I think it’s a signaling function. leaders almost universally seem to push this sort of line forward.
From what I can gather, most everyone here is consequentialist, but some are egoist, and some are utilitarian. I’m a utilitarian. I think happiness is inherently valuable. I don’t really know how I can argue about it, and if I did, I’d make it a top-level post, but it’s good to at least find out exactly where we disagree.
2 is basically restating 1
I meant that immortality for anyone is over-rated. Death isn’t in itself tragic. It’s that once you die, you are no longer living, and thus no longer happy. If you replace the person who died with someone else, there’s still life, and there’s still happiness. The first person isn’t living anymore, but the second wouldn’t be living otherwise.
Is there any reason to believe that the next generation will be less rational than this one? In any case, this isn’t something inherently bad about death.
I consider my life very important. I just don’t consider it uniquely important. If you replace me with someone who’s life is equally important, there’s no net gain or loss.
I’m a utilitarian too; I posted arguments #1 and #2 because I don’t know how I could argue for inherent value either, and Aleph might not be utilitarian. Note, though, that happiness can be inherently valuable, yet the same event can still result in different utility (or importance) for different people: Aleph may not value his own life as much as I value mine, causing immortality to make me more happy than it would make him.
I think you are arguing against straw men, however. No one has said, as far as I’m aware, that one’s own life is necessarily uniquely important, nor was this implied. I have not seen anyone suggest that lives aren’t equivalent in importance, and neither is this required for immortality to be valuable. And what does the next generation’s rationality have to do with the fact that death prevents one from maximizing one’s own happiness? As my happiness is inherently valuable, it’s inherently valuable to me to maximize my own happiness, whether or not the next generation is happy. Surely it is better for our happiness to be added than for theirs to replace my own.
Even by your own examples, immortality is important. You make the argument that happiness would be the same if a death was mitigated by a new life—and this is true, but as an example, it is flawed: how often does that happen? In real life, death does not usually result in new life, so utility is increased dramatically by defeating death. But even if we assume that every death is balanced by a new life, total utility would be most increased if there was new life without the corresponding death.
It seems like you put aside all the drawbacks to death advanced so far—the sadness of others; the debility of age; the fact that we already know how to create new life, thus making death the main enemy of utility; the cost of replacement people; lack of happiness once dead—and wave it aside, saying “besides all those, death isn’t so bad.” Well yes—death isn’t so bad, without all the bad things about death!
I’m not sure exactly what you’re trying to say here. Your original statement was meant to point out that immorality is “not as important as people think”, right? Who is it that thinks immortality is overrated, then? Apparently not me, since we don’t appear to actually disagree that death is bad and immortality is good—which is all I’ve claimed. (We do disagree below, about death not being the end of the world, but that’s not any claim I’ve made before.)
Preventing my death would be no more valuable to who? A happier entity would be an improvement for who? Certainly not for me. Preventing the death of an already-conscious being would be more valuable to said being; probably to most other people, too—is it okay to murder someone if you’re going to have a baby to replace them?
We already have a method for making new people, so preventing the deaths of those already here has higher priority, I think.
Preventing your death would be exactly as valuable to you as replacing you would be to the guy who replaces you.
I don’t really know any good way to argue against egoism.
Look at all the ailments old age brings with it, from physical frailness to dementia, and the fact that people may have to spend decades in nursery homes when they’d rather be living independent lives.
I spent a year working at a service home. This was a private institution with motivated staff, a good staff-to-customer ratio and customers who were all relatively physically fit. Yet few of them really seemed happy with their circumstances. I’m pretty sure they would all have preferred to be in a better shape.
According to The Happiness Hypothesis, the five external circumstances affecting your happiness are noise, commuting, lack of control, shame and relationships. A declining physical condition reduces your control and may cause you to experience feelings of shame due to your helplessness. It also erodes your relationships as the people you know die and it gets harder to go meet the living ones, and you have less energy to make new friends.
Age-related decline is one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes in our age.
What goes before the comma?
Fixed, thanks.
That’s what I meant about it being expensive.
Perhaps I should rephrase it. It’s quite likely that death cuts our total productivity in half, if not worse. Its cost dwarfs that of every government put together. It’s just not the end of the world.
Forgive me for saying the obvious, but death has indeed been the subjective end of the world for everyone not currently alive. If someone wants to save the world for the sake of its people (not just for its own sake), then it is needed that they don’t die.
I agree that if we’re only considering the person who dies and the replacement person, that preventing someone’s death and creating another person are pretty much the same, but I think the pain caused to others by someone dying is usually outweighs the happiness caused by bringing another person into existence. In any case, the costs of death to the people who are still alive need to be taken into account.
While there is sadness associated with death, that cost is dwarfed by the expense of raising and training replacements, and people getting less effective as they age.
My point wasn’t that death doesn’t matter. It’s just not the end of the world.
Well, as far as you know, it is the end of the world. Solipsism is a rationally defensible position, though I personally feel it’s only worth keeping in mind to remind one of the limits of knowledge, and is not a philosophy that should actually govern behavior. (Thus this is intended as a comment only, not a refutation).
This reminds me of a story Bertrand Russell liked to tell: (Quoting from Wikipedia allegedly from Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits)
Nope. You’d have to post an output of your reasoning to give us an opportunity to find a bug. Other than that, I can only direct you to the metaethics and zombie) sequences.
Also, using the word “rationally” here is a bad idea, since it doesn’t add anything other than misleading connotational gloss. (A position defensible “rationally” as opposed to defensible in what manner?)
Suggestion noted. I posted it because I felt that it was tasty connotational gloss, but accuracy is more important than “taste”.
“Nope. You’d have to post an output of your reasoning to give us an opportunity to find a bug.”
Are you saying you disagree with my statement, or that positions can only be claimed to be defensible if reasoning is provided?
I’m saying that your statement is wrong, but I can only convince you of that if you give more information about why you believe it, and what exactly it is that you believe.
How rationally defensible? If you’re 99% sure, you’d effectively value everyone else at 1% what you value yourself. This would still be enough to make you dedicate your life to charity, for example.
Agreed. That’s why I think it’s incorrect to use solipsism as a basis to decide ethics.
Rationality is about finding the unique set of things to believe, and how strongly to do so. It’s not about defending ideas; that sounds like defending the bottom line.
I didn’t suggest it was about defending ideas. I only suggested that a particular idea could be defended by rationality. I don’t think that implies the sole use of rationality is to defend ideas.
Yeah it is. The end of the world for the person that’s dying.