Against "Against Life Extension"

31–32 of 32 posts

Re: Against "Against Life Extension"

#31

Post by keiferski » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

marcodiego wrote: post #29

keiferski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My go-to oversimplified answer to this is: people in the past had a poorer material life, but a richer spiritual/purpose-driven one. I think it’s probably accurate to say that just because we have immense wealth, medicine, etc. that doesn’t necessarily imply we are psychologically healthier or happier. We live in an age of material abundance with a shortage of meaning.

> we have immense wealth, medicine, etc. that doesn’t necessarily imply we are psychologically healthier or happier. That may make sense if you compare us to a few generations ago because maybe we're almost in a "diminishing returns" phase and our lives aren't significantly better than our closest ancestors. Nevertheless, I'm not sure if we were happier during periods of famine, plague and inquisition. It is still po…

I’m sure you can pick any individual group of people today and compare them to an individual group from the past, and say that one was happier / less happier than the other.

I am speaking more in general terms, and to make the specific point that just because material conditions are better, that doesn’t imply that psychological / spiritual ones are too.

Re: Against "Against Life Extension"

#32

Post by GMoromisato » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #21

GMoromisato wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a logical flaw in that syllogism: Just because death creates change doesn't mean that death is the only thing that creates change. And if you can substitute some other process to create change, then death is not necessary. It's like this syllogism: 1. We must do something about unemployment. 2. Slavery is something. 3. Therefore, we must do slavery. Once the syllogism falls apart, it's obvious that there are…

But maybe death is necessary for change. It's cerainly necessary for evolution. It's not so much that I buy this argument...it's that I don't see a simple way to rebut it. To me, it's an empirical question that we can't answer a priori, i.e. "what would human civilization look like if everyone lived forever?"

Another argument is that death is a continuum. You can die after 80 years or after 120 or after 1,200 or after 1.2 million.

Sure, maybe if we lived 1 million years there would be problems. But it's a strawman to say that living for 1 million years is bad, so we should kill people at 100.

Honestly, (in my uninformed opinion) of all the potentially disruptive technologies, life extension is the least problematic. Disruption is worst when it happens quickly (witness AI). But life extension is not likely to happen quickly exactly because it is a complex problem with myriad causes.

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