[HaveCourage]

Summary of pro death arguments re: longevity progress

  Fairness
    Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.)
    Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.)

  Bad for society
    Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.)
    Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant)
    Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.)
      Stop having kids
      Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136)
    Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age)

  Bad for individual
    You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related)
    You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?)
    You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.)
    Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.)

More people make more progress faster. I'm glad my parents didn't decide the world would be prettier or work better without me in it. Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc, still alive and productive would be nice. You're literally asking for others to die out of your fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage. If living longer sucks, we'll know 100 years from now, and decide then. First 220 year old in 2136 unless you know how to make one faster than 1 year per year? And that's if you added 120 years to a 100 year old person starting TODAY.

Man up, save your family, save yourself.

Disclaimer: I'm half way done with a book on this topic. Mail me if you're interested. Scivive on the most popular email service.

P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident, and if the parade of imaginary horribles comes true, even earlier.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

  Fairness
   Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.)

Already, modern medicine expands lifetime and in particularly healthy lifetime significantly and the richer you are the more of it you can access.

Like, I don't have the same chances to get to 70 and still feel alright as someone born today in Bangladesh, or Zambia.

The world is already very unfair, and the only solution to that is to make it more fair, not to avoid developing treatments that, if the world was fair, would benfit everyone.

[AstralStorm]

Specifically, make the treatments cheap and scalable, then ignore IP.

[gaius]

Then you will have no new treatments, and be back to square one.

[waterhouse]

Adapting a suggestion that I've heard and haven't studied too closely: Find insurance companies that essentially bet that people won't die in the next N years, find very large companies of this sort or form some kind of aggregation of them, and make the case to them that if they spend a bunch of money funding the development of some treatments that work, then they will make a profit because their bets will turn out better.

[hueving]

These companies exist, they sell a product called life insurance...

[waterhouse]

Yes, I was referring to that. I'm just not aware of such companies doing large-scale funding of life extension research to increase profits. I suspect it could be done, just that you might need to aggregate a lot of insurance companies to make it profitable.

[naasking]

> Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.) [...] Stop having kids

This already happens. The more affluent a country becomes, with its better healthcare, better education, and greater career opportunity, the lower its birthrate. The big crisis in 50 years will be population decline.

[kpil]

Let's hope so.

I'm a bit reluctant to write this, but it made me worried, so here we go :

I had a chat with a taxi driver in Stockholm the other day, and we talked about the situation in Somalia and that he planned to move back there as it's getting better there.

He had 8 kids, but wanted another wife and 10 more kids when he became my age - 40.

I mentioned that I have been married before so I have 3 kids with 2 mothers and was quite happy with that number...

He actually laughed and looked at me and said - "man, you Swedish guys will disappear."

I don't know how representative this was but looking at some societies in Sweden, I'm guessing it's not unique. It would be nice with some research.

Anyway.I'm hoping that the Somalian women will get some say in the matter, because if they don't, looking at the demography and the socio-economic mechanisms, both Sweden and eastern Africa might end up in a spot of bother.

[Pica_soO]

Its all about having a lot of lottery tickets in the game theory device that is civil war. And religion is pro lottery-tickets, and infinite lottery cycles.

The horror, if you would adapt to this hellish circumstances, by speeding up the cycle, creating "specialists" for each cycle stage and survived through the hard times by reducing all that makes up human society. No arts, no compassion, no creation, no school, all of these are calories wasted, instead go full zombie and walk the earth till the cycle of strife ends.

PS: Before somebody yells racism. This behavior could be seen everywhere during world war 2. So one could claim that white racists are actually the pro-zombie equivalent found elsewhere.

[kiba]

Ending aging will reverse this trend. The crisis then won't be population decline but the side effect of population growth.

[naasking]

Ending aging will not reverse this trend. Many people only have kids due to age constraints and its effect on fertility and the health of offspring, ie. much harder to get pregnant over 35, and chance of birth defects or other problematic genetic problems increases dramatically, even for men.

This will no longer be the case, so there would be no rush for either gender to have kids. You can focus on your career for the first hundred years, and then have kids. At worst, there would be a minor uptick in population while people get accustomed to the new reality.

[Qwertious]

There's a really simple solution to this: Have a cultural policy that what's normal/acceptable is to delay having children for quite a while, and then to have only one child per couple.

One child per couple means that the total population caps out at double the current population (a population of 32 would have 16 children, who'd have 8, who'd have 4, who'd 2, then 1 person who's SOL - 32+16+8+4+2+1=63). A single order of magnitude is an acceptable loss, and everyone gets a child of their own.

Note: Not as in "literally force people to have only one child", just make it frowned upon like smoking generally is - most people won't care enough to defy it, and in the long term it should be enough. Although IMO families like the Duggars[1] shouldn't be provided immortality unless they start using birth control.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_Kids_and_Counting

[jacalata]

Ending aging won't stop accidents, homicide, suicide or (probably) even most modern physical failures like diabetes and heart attacks.

[AstralStorm]

It might fix the latter. The mechanisms involved in heart disease and diabetes are related to general aging as well.

Accidents and suicide could be handled too. Former by outlawing machines of murder (cars) and spare or artificial organs, latter by improving our understanding of neuroscience and psychology.

[patall]

yes and no. Aging research wont, but that does not mean other science stops. Traffic accidents are at all time lows (in comparison to the amount of traffic) and will continue to do so (via automated driving, imidiate ambulance dispatching, etc.), homicide as well (maybe not in US but certainly in europe), and depression is under active research like being partly caused by the microbiome etc. Nothing is endless but getting 600 years old would still change a lot.

[closeparen]

How about: bad ideas get to remain in power for much longer, because the generations of administrators/voters/executives that enforce them don't turn over.

Death ensures adaptation. For example, climate change denying oil barons have done much damage to the world, but we can take some comfort in the knowledge that they will soon die (or at least retire) and that their successors will probably be a little more enlightened. It may be too late by then, but at least it will happen.

>Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant)

One resource we are running out of is housing in economically productive areas, and it's not for lack of ingenuity, but by choice. The choice of the established, whose grip on power you propose to extend. Similarly, there is plenty of food to go around, just not enough value to trade for it in some parts of the world. What we're missing is not farming methods, but economic systems and power structures to implement then.

>You're literally asking for others to die out of your fear

The currently powerful, propertied generation is in a position to hold onto that power and property forever, via compound interest and seniority. If the current crop of 60-year-olds gets to be 600, the age of majority for voting will be 540 by the time they get there. And we will never outspend them on anything; even 20 years is a significant head start on saving and investing.

If they continue in their policies of environmental destruction and the monopolization of critical resources, like the underdevelopment of city land on aesthetic grounds, then we might not just be asking them to die, but going to war to claim those resources (and the helms of government, business, etc) for the young, to manage in different ways.

Not to get too bogged down in the specifics of particular issues, but age-related death does ensure a peaceful transition of power towards people more concerned with the present era's challenges and realities, rather than trying to, i.e., save the jobs of the last century or the sexual morality of the one before it.

Maybe age doesn't come to them soon enough to prevent the damage, but it does mitigate it.

[JulianMorrison]

An encouraging counter-argument is to watch the way that age cohorts have changed their attitudes to gay marriage in successive surveys. Society as a whole has become a lot more supportive, very fast, and all ages have been changing their attitudes. It's not just that young supportive people are aging upward into older cohorts, but also that old people who had negative attitudes have been softening their opposition, and many have crossed over from opposition to support.

The idea that the old have fixed bad ideas is mistaken. All ages of people can be persuaded.

[HaveCourage]

It's better to make new productive areas than to fight diminishing returns and force there to be fewer productive areas. The founding of California and the USA are the result of such thinking.

The powerful, propertied generation dying and being replaced by people that look and do nearly the same hasn't cured any of the ills of which you speak so far. The rich have continued to get richer, and the poor richer at a much slower rate, death hasn't solved any of that, nor is it likely too. What you want is better marketing of good ideas, because that actually works. Wishing people dead for disagreeing with you is at least immoral.

[gaius]

How about: bad ideas get to remain in power for much longer, because the generations of administrators/voters/executives that enforce them don't turn over.

But also: you can have people with literally double or more experience, working on your hard problems. You also have a government that will look out much further into the future, because they will see the outcomes themselves.

[closeparen]

Sure, but. Look at the state of the world 600 years ago, and imagine that the people at the helm were starting to hand over power just now.

I think the world would look a lot more like it did 600 years ago. Perhaps more moral by some standards, but probably also unable to replicate a technological breakthrough like the eradication of aging.

[ceejayoz]

> Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.)

Virtually every tech starts that way, though.

The societal upheaval of rich people getting smartphones a few years earlier is probably not something you can extrapolate to the societal upheaval from "you could live forever but you don't have enough money right now".

[naasking]

> The societal upheaval of rich people getting smartphones a few years earlier is probably not something you can extrapolate to the societal upheaval from "you could live forever but you don't have enough money right now".

I'm not sure that would happen. Consider that they have an eternity to pay it back -- or really, a few hundred years given everyone will likely experience at a fatal accident on such a long timeline. What person couldn't pay back an exceedingly high price on an installment plan lasting a few hundred years?

[fapjacks]

Oh, interesting. Like a whole new kind of financial indentured servitude that you can't even die your way out of.

[EGreg]

Look people, it's very simple.

Many countries are currently addicted to population growth. Their mentality hasn't adjusted to the rise of automation and the decline of demand for human labor. They still think we need to keep high birth rates to fund social security schemes.

What will happen in the next few decades is that fewer people will be needed to do anything really productive. More people will study and raise their kids. A smaller, richer population would be more sustainable when it comes to overfishing, overpolluting etc. We will turn the world into farms and hopefully plug all the holes that will result. Ecosystems will be much different with less variation, and humans will be trying to constantly keep the balance.

It is in this environment that we place advances in longevity.

[AstralStorm]

The converse is that a size of the group required for taking over the world will get ever smaller.

[naasking]

Of course you can die your way out of it. What an absurd thing to say.

[fapjacks]

Whoosh!

[anigbrowl]

What fear is motivating me to ask other people to die, as you put it?

Eternal life would be sort of cool but I dispute your proposition that more people automatically make more progress faster. More people increases competition which incentivizes some kinds of progress but arguably retards others - consider our lamentable record of environmental destruction.

I don't think your aspirations are morally wrong in any way but your thesis seems unproven and I could just as easily argue that your efforts are primarily motivated by your own fear of death. Having had far more near-death experiences than most people I've met. I'm broadly OK with it because my experiences suggest to me that there's a lot more to consciousness than the everyday world, and that if and insofar as life has a purpose, it may be to reach some higher level of knowledge within finite constraints. I sometimes consider that life-as-we-know-it might be like some elaborated version of a book a film or a game (similar to but not the same as Bostrom's simulation argument).

Would you enjoy a book or a movie that never ended? Obviously there's a market for such things based on the continued existence of daytime TV soap operas, but nobody seems to think those shows have much cultural value.

[Splines]

> Would you enjoy a book or a movie that never ended? Obviously there's a market for such things based on the continued existence of daytime TV soap operas, but nobody seems to think those shows have much cultural value.

There are thousands of things I know I have never done, and likely never will. There are millions of things I don't know I have never done. Don't you have even the tiniest bit of regret of where your life has led you, and wondered if you did things differently, where you would be today? Wouldn't you want to find out?

[anigbrowl]

Oh sure, a little bit. But then I'd be wondering about what if I'd done things the way I actually did them, so maybe I'm regretting that in some other time stream. I try to be stoic about it.

It really comes down to whether you have more of a drive to be happy or to be right. On bad days I often wish I'd opted for the former, but I enjoy cultivating my inner garden and it gives me pleasure to see ideas grow over time.

[developer2]

What makes you think that someone who "can't find the time" to do anything interesting in an 80 year lifespan would accomplish anything with another 100+ years? The majority of the population would still be stuck slaving away for minimum wage for their entire life, regardless of the length of that life. If the key to immortality were to be found as part of a universal enlightenment that completely abolishes the concept of money and power, then maybe something could change. If it's business as usual, with individuals having an incentive to claw their way "above" others, then the concept of immortality is entirely depressing to me.

I'm also not interested in the eventuality of the "treatment" being cheap and available to all. What, are we going to label people as suicidal and mentally ill if they refuse to take the treatment? The "pro-life" agenda would spiral out of control.

[HaveCourage]

Kids aren't too productive till they age. Perhaps we discover that 40 is the new 18. Or maybe there's more value to life than productivity. There must be polarity for movement. Some must have more than others. Excellence comes only from competition. You're inborn desire to find equality is beaten by natures desire for fitness. You may be less depressed when you see that a game where some win and some lose is better than a game where all lose, or no game at all. You will never be able to complain your way out of the game. If reality starts selecting for equality instead of fitness, we will live in a gray goo of equal. That's no game at all.

Taking a look at all the lives that could be affordably saved saved in Africa right now at low cost. Yet no "pro-life" agenda is currently spiraling out of control biting at that low cost. It is unlikely this more expensive and farther down the road longevity research would cause the hysteria you describe.

[anigbrowl]

Excellence comes only from competition.

I reject that premise as overbroad and dismissive of historical examples of artificially limited supply (eg craft guilds) or other arbitrary constraints which nevertheless resulted in high output quality, and I could point to examples of that in nature too.

You're inborn desire to find equality is beaten by natures desire for fitness

This sounds like a very individualist approach to evolution though. I think there's good reasons to consider the idea of humans as eusocial animals that can operate as individuals but are biologically driven to group up, and that groups themselves are distributed organisms capable of collective thought.

It's not that I'm against individualism, but I'm saying that there may well be selection pressures that do favor altruistic behavior, and there's certainly research documenting its persistence in the wild. Finally, it's rather odd that you talk of an 'inborn' desire but then contrast it with 'nature.' I feel you view of this topic is a little simplistic.

[HaveCourage]

Grouping effectively is a competition. Dogs have tails they wag, humans have eye whites and emotional attachment to eye movements, even language.

Competition requires 3 things. 1. A win condition 2. A contest 3. Participants. Pretending that equality amongst creatures exists anywhere that an individual can be discerned from the masses is futile. Equality of outcome moves indirectly proportional to freedom or individuality, tautologically. Equality is the enemy of specialization. You can't win a football game with 11 quarterbacks on the field.

The group out performs the individual, its why we're multicellular. It's also why you have natural and other monopolies. Notice the diversity of organs in your body, each good at what they do and little else. Would not equality dictate perhaps you be filled with bladders for the heart has it too good?

Team good. Specialize good. Win competition good. Have fair game to not rob potential winners of chance, good. Force equality down throats so winners lose and losers win. Bad.

[HaveCourage]

You never step in the same river twice. If life gets too boring for you, remember the saying, cut down the tracks, not across the street. Might it be easier to cure boredom than decay? You need only become forgetful right? You wouldn't ask the restaurant to take items off the menu because you might not like them, would you?

[AstralStorm]

I would expect a great cultural and scientific renaissance because you could devote a lot more time to creative pursuits. Even if many people are too lazy, the few geniuses with much longer lifespans would turn the world over.

An interesting side effect could be that public figures would become more careful, because if you're sunk, you'd be done forever.

Plus the shift from old people retirement driven politics. Much bigger focus on handling employment.

[wallace_f]

> I would expect a great cultural and scientific renaissance because you could devote a lot more time to creative pursuits. Even if many people are too lazy, the few geniuses with much longer lifespans would turn the world over.

Genius appears to decline with age. Prolonging life would not necessarily preserve genius, even if it preserves life.

[HaveCourage]

Unfortunately, you are correct in that brain deterioration progresses faster than other forms of deterioration, which is why it's smart to focus on it over some other age dependent diseases. Your brain is a part of your body like your heart. Any cure for aging would obviously include the cure for mental deterioration.

[wallace_f]

> Any cure for aging would obviously include the cure for mental deterioration.

I respectfully disagree. Also, the article in question, and my comment, are really pointing to prolonging life, not a cure for ageing--that may be very far off. In either case, it is not at all obvious why prolonging or curing the ageing process in life would necessarily maintain optimal neurological function.

There's also problem's outside the scientific challenge itself. One being that genius is almost always only genius after the fact, raising interesting hypothetical questions about who exactly is preserved in their genius state - a promising 20-something, or a proven 40-something?

[wallace_f]

> What fear is motivating me to ask other people to die, as you put it?

I interpreted that as meaning that because, especially over a long period of time, preserving your life would decrease opportunity for other's to have a life.

[andrewfelix]

This is a bit of a straw man technique. You've framed the argument to suit your counterpoint.

[HaveCourage]

A straw man would be more something like "since no one has ever seen how badly immortal societies have gone, no one can say they're bad."

[andrewfelix]

From Wikipedia: "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent."

I'm probably what you would describe as 'pro-death'. But I would never have made any of the arguments you listed.

I could just as easily frame your positions to suit my argument.

For example; 'More people make more progress faster.' (India has not made as large a contribution to modern technology as the USA)

[naasking]

> For example; 'More people make more progress faster.' (India has not made as large a contribution to modern technology as the USA)

Only if you take the statement as some immutable law and not the intended meaning as a description of a general trend.

[djsumdog]

For you Sci-Fi fans out there, I highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. In his fictional world, humans do discover how to extend longevity and it goes into many of the social issues that arise (who gets treatments? The rich? The poor? How do we deal with over population?).

[gaius]

But other than a couple of concepts, the books are excruciatingly bad. Without giving the plot away too much, his characters literally cure cancer, fix pollution, and invent an economic system that everyone in the world agrees is fair, in between taking loads of drugs and having loads of sex. It's wish fulfilment for 14-year-olds who are bored in science class. I'd give all 3 0 stars on Amazon if I could.

[AstralStorm]

Dealing with overpopulation is best done the Elon Musk way - go to space, it is empty.

A trip to Mars of three months in a lifetime of few hundred could be considered an interesting interlude.

[copperx]

So in a few decades there will be two camps: Pro-Death and Pro-Lifers?