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I raised $27M for longevity research (SENS.org). Summary of pro death arguments: 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 nonexistent)
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)
Old people are expensive (50% of your lifetime medical cost occur in your final year. Delay is profitable.)
Old people suck. (death is an inferior cure to robustness.)
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.)
People will force you to live forever (they aren't able to do this now, why would they begin to be?)
Do you think less people make progress faster? What's your target level of depriving life of existence? How do you plan to keep mankind robust from extinction events on a single planet? You might just need more people. What do you think our technology would look like if we had 10x less people for the last 100 years?More people make more progress faster. Aren’t you glad your parents didn't decide the world would be prettier or work better without you in it? If great minds like Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc., were still alive and productive today, the world would be a better place. You're literally asking for others to die out of your fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage. If living longer comes with too many disadvantages, we'll know 100 years from now and decide then. Man up, save your family, save yourself. P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident, and if the parade of imaginary horrible things comes true, even earlier. |
> More people make more progress faster.
Really? Have you ever seen an urban slum, or an overpopulated rural area?
> Stop having kids
Even if this were a viable solution (history teaches us it is not) dont you think that this wouldnot deprive many from most of the meaningful aspects of their lives?
> If living longer comes with too many disadvantages, we'll know 100 years from now and decide then.
What if longevity causes social changes which are difficult or impossible to reverse? What about those who will suffer the many disadvantages?
> Old people suck.
No, they don't. Whoever makes this argument does not deserver a response. What is true however is that most old people seem to have less flexibility to adapting to change, and with accelerating progress the chasm between the generation widens. The generational conflicts may be very high in the ageless society you envision.