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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36366 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Aging is merely the ability of the body to repair itself breaking down. Who says we mustn't repair that one, too? (Rhetorical question, Christians!)

Death is a necessary and natural part of life. You don't repair what's not broken.

Death is a necessary part of one particular configuration of an ecosystem, and appealing to nature is pointless. Everything is natural.

edit: not even that. Like darkness is an absence of life, death is an absence of longevity. It is not "a part" of life, it is that longevity is not a (necessary) part of life based on sexual reproduction. "You have outlived your usefulness", says the gene once it is duplicated and recombinated into a fresh host. I'm sorry, but who asked?

I could start to argue metaphysics, because I definitely think your view is incoherent, but that's boring and not very convincing.

Let us instead drop merrily into the realms of practicality: immortality is heavily and obviously dysgenic. Stagnant organisms lose the possibility to change, and therefore to adapt. And no cultural process can replicate one's just anihilation once they have indeed, outlived their usefulness.

I'm sorry, but who asked?

Well your children presumably. I certainly think the boomers are robbing a few generations of their due by sticking around and holding onto all ressources for too long. Which is not fair, because they were themselves handed society in trust.

Immortality is just the extreme extension of this problem.

I for one would be ecstatic to have my parents around for longer, along with the rest of their generation, even if it robs my generation of its due.

I agree that greatly extending the human lifespan would cause massive societal problems. I am willing to struggle with those massive societal problems for as many centuries as it takes.

I think it's pointed out elsewhere in this thread, but this is where the bright line between immortality and anti-aging is fuzzy. Had we robust ways of dealing with those societal problems one might be able to consider integrating that technology.

But to remove death in the absolute is clearly over the line for me. I won't go into the minute details of why given there's seemingly endless art that explores the topic.

I don't think the ways to deal with those societal problems have to be particularly robust, at least not at first. If you eliminated aging today, the short-term (next 10 years) problems would look pretty similar to the problems we face today. On a fairly immediate timescale we'd need to deal with social security, as that would suddenly have a very different financial outlook. Over the time scale of decades or centuries, we would face new and interesting problems, but I don't think "we would have moderate political difficulties immediately, and we'd need to tweak some laws in 50-100 years" is a good reason to block anti-aging tech.

But to remove death in the absolute is clearly over the line for me.

To remove the ability to die would also be clearly over the line to me. But to remove the bit where the bits of my mind that make me me slip away one by one, and then the body that used to contain the person who was me stops breathing? And to do that for everyone who wants it? I think that would be massively good on the balance.

You say this, and yet my country is right now enthralled in chaos all because our ponzi scheme of a pension system couldn't even handle a fluctuation in demography that is so extremely mild compared to the change you're advocating for.

I don't think you've even begun to think through the changes to just the financial system that something like this would cause. Not to mention second or third order effects.

I don't think "if we save the lives of our citizens it might cause moderate financial distress to our country" is a good reason to consign those citizens to death. Obviously there exists an amount of financial distress where it becomes worthwhile. "plunge the country into poverty to save one life" is obviously a bad idea. I'd argue even the recent case of "devalue the currency by 20% to prevent the loss of an average of 2 weeks of life" went too far on that front.

But I think curing aging would be a massive boon even considering the second and third order effects. I think it would probably be worth it even if it led to a full Zimbabwe-level economic blowup, though I'm not entirely sure in that case.

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