Against "Against Life Extension"
alexkesin.com
Against "Against Life Extension"
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#2I agree with this article's arguments, and find in general, arguments philosophically opposed to extending human lifespan to be trivial to knock down (Ones listed in the article and otherwise). The elephant in the room appears to be more can we do it? And if so, will this involve genome modification (Through molecular bio techniques, or directed evolution as suggested by Dawkins). Optimists hope for treatments for the still-living... I'm not sure if this will ever be possible for significant extensions; we'll see.
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#3the same Fukuyama that told us the fall of the berlin wall was "the end of history" (his words)?
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#4> Dr. Fukuyama, when you plant the word "against" adjacent to the phrase "life extension," you've earned an "F" in Longevity Strawman Arguments, Volume 1.
> ...
> Fukuyama's syllogism boils down to:
> Change is necessary
> Death creates change
> Therefore, death is necessary
> By that logic, we'd still accept smallpox as the price of social dynamism.
If your first sentence accuses your opponent of using a strawman (I think that's what that sentence means... the double negative metaphor of failing a strawman class is confusing me), you had better make sure your conclusion isn't a strawman.
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#5I get the sense that the problem with "longevity" research per se is that it is largely driven by the desire of extremely wealthy and selfish people to live forever no matter the cost, rather than to extend every person's healthy lifespan incrementally. The biggest hurdle for the latter is not new research. It's lack of access to affordable healthcare, which would be easy to provide if society weren't so obsequious to the welfare of the most wealthy. I think medical research is generally a good thing (and full disclosure I am tangentially involved in it), but extending the lifespan of the ultrarich is generally going to be bad for society.
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#6I read the original article. I feel like the author of this retort got nerd sniped. “Cracks knuckles”? I can find better things to grind an axe about.
The original article is an opinionated rant. It’s not a scientific or a philosophical treatise, so bringing up things like how diabetes is being cured is far, far outside of the subject matter. So for me this retort is invalid from the get go.
The crux of the original article can be summed up as: “I don’t want to be lorded over by morons who pay their way to live to 200 years.” Hard to argue with that.
In particular I’m amused by this line from the original article:
> I am not looking forward to living in such a world, and indeed I think that such a world might constitute an immense disaster for humankind.
I’d argue the world/humankind is already an immense disaster and things can’t get much worse in any real way. It’s run by sadists and we don’t even know why we are here.
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#7I'm in favor of research into life extension. But I don't think this response really deals with the fundamental objection of:
"Change is necessary
Death creates change
Therefore, death is necessary"
Perhaps humans are not very capable of change once we reach adulthood and so significantly (or indefinitely) extending human lifespan would result in civilizational stasis. I don't see a simple way to overcome this argument.
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#8I agree with this article's arguments, and find in general, arguments philosophically opposed to extending human lifespan to be trivial to knock down (Ones listed in the article and otherwise). The elephant in the room appears to be more can we do it ? And if so, will this involve genome modification (Through molecular bio techniques, or directed evolution as suggested by Dawkins). Optimists hope for treatments for t…
I think the "can we do it" can only really exist if you purposefully ignore the fact that we've been doing it for thousands of years and it has been undeniably working.
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#9I agree with this article's arguments, and find in general, arguments philosophically opposed to extending human lifespan to be trivial to knock down (Ones listed in the article and otherwise). The elephant in the room appears to be more can we do it ? And if so, will this involve genome modification (Through molecular bio techniques, or directed evolution as suggested by Dawkins). Optimists hope for treatments for t…
Here’s a counter argument: I don’t want to live in the kind of world implied by a focus on life extension. I’m okay with it “happening in the background” in the way that modern medicine has improved lifespans over the last century. But I wouldn’t want it to be a direct imperative part of everyday life.
I don’t inherently have a problem with the idea of people living longer, and I don’t really have an issue with research going into it - but I do have a problem with the cultural environment that would exist under such a philosophy. All adventurous spirit would evaporate, all dangerous activities banned or strongly discouraged.
If the only way you can die is by getting physically injured, you can expect social pressure against doing anything that is even the slightest bit physically dangerous. The world would be a scared, fearful place, and I think this is a net negative for the human spirit.
I don’t worry about that too much though, as I do think you’d get a major counter cultural backlash to such a cultural situation. You can already feel echoes of it today: white collar workers looking for a job that is “more real” or with their hands; kids wanting to be Navy Seals or join the military purely because they can’t stomach the office lifestyle. A certain percentage of people will always prefer adventure to safety and cold rationality, and you can see this emerge as a trend frequently throughout history (e.g., Romanticism coming after Enlightenment rationalism.)
That also touches on a second point, which is that the entire life extension project is basically a domain of the rich in hyper individualist Western countries, functioning as an ersatz replacement for a heaven they no longer believe in. It’s fundamentally a rejection of the reality of death in human existence, and that is partially why it may simply be outcompeted by more group-oriented cultures that aren’t as centered on maximizing individual experience as long as possible.
I’m just guessing here, and perhaps there is no data to support this, but: I get the impression that people with robust family and community lives are less concerned with maximizing their individual lifespans as much as possible. This is probably because they derive more meaning from their place in that community than in their individualist existence. And you could probably also bring in religion and the belief in an afterlife here (see birth rates correlated with religiosity, for example.)
Re: Against "Against Life Extension"
#10People love to have opinions about how technologies should develop, but time and again, market realities are what guide their development. People easily get emotional about life extension, and it grabs a lot of attention because of that, but all those feelings don't measure up to the impossible to extrapolate tertiary effects of any technology which transforms lives, life extension definitely being one.
I'd argue that it's pretty clear that lipitor is partially to blame for our present gerontocracy muddle, but the issue there is that lipitor transfers mortality from the heart to many other conditions, some of which impair thinking. Life extension isn't a monolith, nor are the mechanisms of cellular age in animals. It's a blanket for 1000s of possible technologies. Productive conversations about it would be nuanced, and related to details about a particular technology, which these conversations never seem to rise to the level of. Definitely not this piece or fukuyama's either.
I come to HN for nuance.