Immortality vs. Society (2016)

With this said, the world is very small, but space is very large. Immorality would make the exploration of space and extra solar planets a workable idea.

> Oh yeah, egoism at its best lol. If I die, why shouldn't everyone else?

Why not consider it from an alternative, less demonizing perspective? The author might simply be pointing out the fact that no matter how nice the things that you'd leave behind you would be, you won't be around to experience them. Therefore, it would be in your interest to actually... you know, not die.

> Okay I am out. You really should get help. Definitely.

Perhaps the author doesn't convey his thoughts in the most reasonable manner, but having children is indeed a huge responsibility and one that will take both energy from the parents as well as a lot of resources over many years. Noone should be having children just because they feel like it, especially NOT just because they'd like to leave a legacy of some sort. As the author points out, those children will grow up to be their own people and you'll need to support them to the best of your abilities, regardless of how different their views and values could be from yours.

> Right now our gene pool is actively deteriorating because we managed to eliminate natural selection.

I'm not sure whether natural selection really has been made less significant, however this appears to be at least partially supported by the information that i could find: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf

Based on the graphs in page 7, it appears that approx 85% of women reproduce and 76% of men do (at least up to 40 years of age), though there is more detail in the following pages. Would anyone care to comment with other sources that either support or disprove the claim that natural selection isn't a (big) factor nowadays? What about the deterioration of the gene pool?

> Okay :D. Just dig yourself a concrete hole and live in there from bottles of Soylent and see what happens. There are tons of studies who show you how important a connection to nature is for the human body and mind, but well...

I don't believe that the author expressed that this is the optimal way to go about things. Other people who also advocate for longetivity also seem to actually suggest that people should lead more active and healthy lifestyles, have better diets with elements of intermittent fasting/caloric restriction and so on. Even if we as a species cannot have immortality now, it is definitely worth to pursue enjoying our later years and remaining functional for longer, is it not? In that regard, nature is indeed our enemy if we don't look at what can affect us negatively (be it alcohol, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, bad diets, lack of sleep, or anything else)

> But it definitely doesn't follow from the brainfarts that came before.

It seemed to follow the previous statements pretty well - it is pretty important (at least from our subjective point of view) to remain alive and little if anything else can substitute that.

Lastly, i'd like to quote the Hacker News Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Let's remain civil here!

> immortality creates conservatism

I want to refute this, but I have to back up a bit first.

The late Frank Schirrmacher (a German journalist and essayist who died in 2014) argued that German politics is getting more conservative over time because of demographics. Large-scale reforms or revolutions typically cause less prosperity in the short term (as societal institutions get rebuilt and investments in future institutions are required) and higher prosperity in the long term. That's a bargain that works well for young people: They get to reap the benefits for a long time and thus can tolerate austerity in the short term, but from the POV of an old person (e.g. age 60+), they get all the troubles and none of the benefits. Hence an older society is a more conservative society.

In other words, a significant part of conservatism [1] is caused by people knowing that they will die soonish (say, within the next 10-20 years) and therefore deciding that the best way to ensure prosperity within these remaining years is to defend the status quo as fiercely as possible. Immortality would fix this behavior, bringing personal incentives more in line with the incentives of society as a whole.

[1] The other part of conservatism can be attributed to people genuinely being unable to imagine a better society than the one they live in or genuinely not believing a better society to be attainable (whether justified or not). As far as I can see, that part of conservatism would be largely unaffected by the availability of immortality.

I have ruminated about the same topic as the author on immortality, society and children. My take is that as a society we may at some point establish a system where people can decide between a) Living forever and b) Have children.

In Biology there is this principle that all living organisms push to remain either by longevity or reproduction. We humans have gotten very good at longevity and if you think about it as a society we are focusing on that path.

Now with the COVID19 event, I have thought that, if the same serious focused research effort, time and money was put by humanity on aging/degeneration/death related issues, we could have amazing progress in very little time. But for some reason showing relevant ads and paying faster is more important.

Unfortunately we are focusing on "living faster" instead of "living more".

Without trying to imply any criticism of the life extension movement, when I read about arguments in support of technological immortality, they usually rest of the notion that death is a bad thing.

Which seems intuitive. But I frequently wonder to myself: why is life preferable to death?

Obviously we're all been programmed through evolution to fear and avoid death, since if we didn't we wouldn't be here reading this thread. Our entire society, all human society, revolves around avoiding death in nearly all circumstances. And with the invention of religion even death isn't really 'death.'

But the preference of being alive over being dead still seems arbitrary to me. In the same way it seems odd to believe that water is preferable to ice. People may argue that giving the people the choice of immortality lessens the suffering associated with dying. But what about the suffering associated with living? To be alive is to suffer, you can't suffer if you're dead. Perhaps if we really want to reduce suffering human extinction is our best bet.

I also feel like when most people imagine technological immortality they imagine it is 'them' that remains alive for hundreds of years, which involves a continuous static self that I'm skeptical of. I already change so much from year to year, it's hard to imagine that this body in a decade will be 'me'. And a hundred years? Maybe that future person would have some of my memories, but they'd be so different that I might as well be dead anyway.

What if tomorrow somebody offered you a lifetime supply of one of two pills.

One pill will prevent you from aging, you will be functionally immortal until you are killed by some other circumstance (like murder or an accident).

The other pill will completely remove your fear of death, or the death of your loved ones. You won't become suicidal or take irrational risks, you'll just be as zen as this guy: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Th%C3%AD...

Which pill would reduce suffering more in your life?