251–260 of 400 posts
*Google announces Calico, a new company that will harvest your private medical data in to the Google panopticon, in order to sell you to advertisers.
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Of course it's horrible. Life is all there is. When you die, from your perspective, that is the end of all things. That's pretty horrible. Just because it's natural doesn't make it good.
> Life is all there is. When you die, from your perspective, that is the end of all things. So? Why does that matter? From my perspective, before I was born and after I die are equivalent on account of me not being able to have a perspective. 13.8 billion years of the universe where I didn't exist wasn't horrible before so I don't see why it will be so horrible in 60 or 80 more years when I don't exist again.
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Okay, let's attach numbers to the scenario. Assume there are 1 million people in Group A and 990 million people in Group B. By voting no, you just condemned 900,000 people in Group A to eventually die, simply because you wanted to prevent them from becoming the ruling elite. Stated differently, you had the power to prevent 900,000 deaths (and in fact many more than that, moving forward), and you chose not to because…
Surely it is better for people to not die - to not cease to exist - even if that means they rise to the top of the social hierarchy? Not unless they're going to be benevolent rulers, no. I will not grant people immortal life so that they can make everyone else's lives into a living hell.
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Some more context: 61% lack Internet access [1] 35% lack basic sanitation (e.g., toilets) [4] 26% don't have plumbing (e.g., water they can get from pipes in their house or yard) [2] 23% don't have electricity [2] 14% lack access to clean water [2] 14% lack access to health care [2] 13% suffer from chronic undernourishment [5] 11% can't read [3] 14% is about one billion people. Maybe you look at that and think, hey,…
Keep in mind when discussing internet access that effectively for the general public, the internet has only been with us for 20 years. And that was just the birth of its public mindshare - significant penetration would still take quite a few years yet in developed countries. It also doesn't really fit in with the rest of the stats you're presenting - people can and do live quite luxurious lives without using the inte…
Most of the world suffers from the health problem of never even reaching a ripe old age, and much of the rest from the problem of not being able to afford it, and increasingly so. This is not about making the world a better place. This about allowing the elite that can afford it to live forever.
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I'd rather live in a world where my great-grandparents are in charge than not live at all.
It's worth considering that extended lifespans could have very well result in you not living at all - the Earth can only sustain a limited number of people, and extended lifespans would result in a necessary decrease in new lives brought into this world.
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In his example, he did not suggest that there were any downsides to voting yes. What was your basis for voting no?
Simple: indefinite lifespan for the members of tiny minority Group A will turn them into a ruling elite even if they're not one already. You can't separate the issue of lifespan from social hierarchy.
Evidence or rationale supporting this conclusion?
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There's a pretty substantial body of opinion that dying of untreated cancer is, in fact, kind of horrible.
I was referring to the act of turning the lights off...the big empty. No doubt some things that precede and result in death are nasty, but those aren't death. For example, if death was embraced and voluntary euthanasia was allowed, people could just opt-out as the nastiness started (I'm not suggesting we do that, though). Anyway, the point is that we shouldn't fear the ending. It's the things that precede it that we…