PotterWhoLock01 t1_iz0n17z wrote
Being dead is like being stupid, it’s only painful for other people.
Protean_Protein t1_iz0of1u wrote
It’s an old discussion—goes back to antiquity (e.g., Seneca), and Bacon, and many others. There is a fairly common view that death itself can’t be bad, but dying is often quite bad. The ethical upshot of that is pretty obvious: making dying less bad is good. There are other arguments for the badness of death, in e.g., Parfit’s Reasons and Persons.
Here’s an article that denies that we can measure the badness of death for the person who dies: https://doi.org/10.1017/S135824612100031X
ferk t1_j00zzwv wrote
Honestly, not dieing would probably be worse for everyone else in the long run. I feel like it would be much harder for some technology and lines of thought to evolve if dictators didn't die and people who lived in times when certain forms of abuse were normal were still around. Wanting eternal life always stroke me as an egoist attitude. Not to mention the repercussions for the environment and planet resources. I feel like in order to have a new generation of people to be born and give them a fair opportunity to live their own lives you need for the older generation to give them space.
KillerPacifist1 t1_j1h1a76 wrote
Those are certainly problems that would come up if we were immortal, but are those problems worse than a global genocide every generation (aka the current status quo)? I think we underplay how brutal of a tragedy death by aging is simply because it is universal, (currently) inevitable, and we have been desensitized to it over the lifespan of our species.
Another way to look at the tragedy of death by aging to consider this thought experiment:
Imagine tomorrow we all wake up and by magic everyone is immortal and ageless. All of the problems you brought up would immediately manifest. However, these problems could also be solved immediately if we euthanized everyone once they hit 100 years old. Naturally, all of these euthansions will be done to a perfectly healthy person and often against their will, but for this solution to work there can be no exceptions.
If this "solution" seems incredibly unethical to you then I don't know how you can look at the current status quo and deduce it is the better that people die of old age.
I am also curious to hear your reasoning behind your feelings that wanting eternal life is an egotistical attitude. Is it an egotistical attitude for a 20 year old to hope to live past their 50th year in good health? If not, why would it be egotistical for a healthy 50 year old to wish to maintain their health until they are 80? Or an 80 year old to wish the same for 120? And so on?
Someone's life does not lose value as they age. They are not any less of a person nor any less deserving of a healthy future just because they are a few decades older. The death of an 80 year old is just as tragic as the death of a 20 year old and in my opinion neither would be egotistical in wishing for a long, healthy, and happy future.
ferk t1_j1sek6t wrote
In that thought experiment, wouldn't it even be more devastating the massive extinction of not only all human life but most life in the planet (or possibly universe, like in "the last question" from Asimov) when that "magic" of immortality leads us to our own self-destruction in an exponentially increasing immortal over-population that keeps consuming ever decreasing resources? That, or we'd have to be forbidden from birthing new life, so we'd be replacing death with the denial of life for future generations. Is that ethical?
Either way, that "magic" would be a problem, because it would make it much easier for a group of humans to mess things up. You can't just impose control over death and birth like that, not everyone is gonna agree with you, neither "sterilization" nor "euthanization" would really be a "solution" if people are not accepting it willingly. A system seeking control over life and death in a calculated and artificial way governed by humans is likely to fail horribly.
I believe that the needs of humanity as a species outweigh the needs of any particular individual human, or even any one particular generation of humans from a specific point in time.
Our evolution is proof that the death/birth cycle is extremely beneficial for our development as a species. If life were immortal it's likely we wouldn't have ever gotten past the primordial pond.
A life being replaced with the next allows for a sustainable stream of life... yes, I will ultimately die, but in doing so I'll be making space for someone else to be born, more human lives would exist, more opportunities of experiencing and enjoying life, new eyes to explore and learn from new points of view. In my mind those things are the whole point of us existing as a species. If you are stuck with a fixed set of immortal people then you are essentially denying a lot of new humans from their opportunity to exist. I don't think that would be good for humanity.
We cannot all exist at the same time... if we figured out a way to do that then things might be different, but that's not the same question as the one being discussed here. We can't just hand-wave the problems caused by immortality and assume that they will be fixed somehow sometime, cos with that logic one could justify almost anything.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments