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by adamzap 5703 days ago
How is aging ridiculously unfair?
1 comments

It's likely that many people who are alive today will be around to take advantage of future anti-aging treatments. So if you're young enough, you win the birth lottery. Hooray, indefinite life span is yours. Otherwise, you wither and die.

How is that not ridiculously unfair?

It's not ridiculously unfair because you're in the same boat as everyone who has died before.
Who said life was fair? Why should death be?

I look at it this way: the near-eternity that occurred before my birth didn't bother me. So I won't be bothered by the eternity that occurs after my death. I won't be around to contemplate it.

You can take this line of thinking to either of its natural conclusions: the morbid one or the "seize the day" one. I'm somewhere in the middle. I try to seize the day, but I'm a realist.

Some days I grab life by the nuts. Some days I count the beads.

Life isn't fair but it should be.

I won't be bothered by the eternity that occurs after my death.

Would you mind if you died tomorrow? What about in a year? 10 years? 100? 1,000? If you had a choice in the matter, would you ever want to age and die? Would you condemn others to the same fate?

I want to be alive tomorrow. Tomorrow I will want to be alive the next day. And so on. So I want to be alive indefinitely. This may or may not be possible, but it doesn't change the fact that it is desirable.

Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't mind an eternal or greatly extended life. But seeing as how I will not be cognizant of my nonexistence upon my death, I don't think it's worth getting too hung up about. I am probably too old to make the cutoff for the singularity -- or whatever similar event might kick off the path to eternal or thousand-year lifespans. So I find that it's best to maintain a cautiously optimistic attitude about my mortality. I am not expecting immortality, but it would be nice.

Would you condemn others to the same fate?

I don't think that's a fair question, given that I haven't said anything of the sort. I would love for everyone to live as long as they could and prosper to whatever extent they could. I bear no animus to anyone who will win the birth lottery and be born into the age of 1,000-year lifespans. Similarly, I do not revel in the unfortunate fates of those who were born in the dark ages.