Note that even for those of us who strive for legibility of action (“live in the causal world”), it’s not clear that aging and death CAN be solved in humans at all, and seems downright unlikely that any strategy or action can solve it fast enough to avoid the pain and fear of the death of my loved ones and myself.
Whether a loved one dies at 65, 85, 105, 205, or 1005, it’s going to suck when it happens. No amount of clamoring in the streets (or directed research into biology) is going to avoid that pain. Some amount of effort and sacrifice toward life extension _CAN_ have positive average and top-percentile lifespans, and that’s great if it applies to the people I care most about. And much research and behavior change is useful in improving the quality of the limited years of many people. Note that “quality” includes other people’s acceptance and support, so mixes social reality in with the definition.
It remains really unclear to me whether I should prefer that strangers live longer or that there are more strangers born to replace the dead ones. My intuition and initial preference is that fewer/longer is better than more/shorter lives, but I don’t have much rational justification for that, and with my current evidence for stagnation of beliefs and reduction in interest as people age, I suspect I may actually prefer more/shorter. I’m not sure how much of more/longer is possible as long as we’re limited to the current earth ecosystem.
Oops, went too far on the object level, sorry—my point is that there are many reasons someone might not spend much effort on eradicating aging, and “they live in social reality and don’t consider causal reality” is a very weak strawman for their choices.
They get progressively more theoretical as distance increases. It seems l care about my n-degrees-removed cousin (in the present or future) who I haven’t met and know no specifics about, about as much as any n-degrees-connected stranger. Note that I have no theory or considered belief that I _SHOULD_ care about some strangers or distant relatives more than others, this is pure introspection on what I seem to actually feel.
Note that even for those of us who strive for legibility of action (“live in the causal world”), it’s not clear that aging and death CAN be solved in humans at all, and seems downright unlikely that any strategy or action can solve it fast enough to avoid the pain and fear of the death of my loved ones and myself.
Whether a loved one dies at 65, 85, 105, 205, or 1005, it’s going to suck when it happens. No amount of clamoring in the streets (or directed research into biology) is going to avoid that pain. Some amount of effort and sacrifice toward life extension _CAN_ have positive average and top-percentile lifespans, and that’s great if it applies to the people I care most about. And much research and behavior change is useful in improving the quality of the limited years of many people. Note that “quality” includes other people’s acceptance and support, so mixes social reality in with the definition.
It remains really unclear to me whether I should prefer that strangers live longer or that there are more strangers born to replace the dead ones. My intuition and initial preference is that fewer/longer is better than more/shorter lives, but I don’t have much rational justification for that, and with my current evidence for stagnation of beliefs and reduction in interest as people age, I suspect I may actually prefer more/shorter. I’m not sure how much of more/longer is possible as long as we’re limited to the current earth ecosystem.
Oops, went too far on the object level, sorry—my point is that there are many reasons someone might not spend much effort on eradicating aging, and “they live in social reality and don’t consider causal reality” is a very weak strawman for their choices.
What about descendants of you/your loved ones?
They get progressively more theoretical as distance increases. It seems l care about my n-degrees-removed cousin (in the present or future) who I haven’t met and know no specifics about, about as much as any n-degrees-connected stranger. Note that I have no theory or considered belief that I _SHOULD_ care about some strangers or distant relatives more than others, this is pure introspection on what I seem to actually feel.