The War on the War on Death Begins

http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/12/02/the-war-on-the-war-on-death-begins/

by crayola • 13 years ago

42 72 13 years ago

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

"Tell me, Harry," said the Headmaster (and now his voice sounded simply puzzled, though there was still a hint of pain in his eyes), "why do Dark Wizards fear death so greatly?"
"Er," said Harry, "sorry, I've got to back the Dark Wizards on that one."

from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

http://hpmor.com/chapter/39

FBT• 13 years ago

"Okay," said Harry, "let me put it this way. Do you want to die? Because if so, there's this Muggle thing called a suicide prevention hotline -"

anon4• 13 years ago

Oh man, this one will be fun.

Every person must die!
But I don't want to die.
But thou must!
If that's your position, I respect that. I'll go on living and you can die, even right now if you want to.
Oh no no no, I don't want to die right now. I just want at some future moment to have died and be dead and have checked off every one of life's achievements, including death.

And it is at this point where I cannot continue this sarcastical mock-conversation -- it gets too surreal for me. As horrible as it sounds, at least the people who don't want to live past 80 will gradually die off and leave the rest of us to live.

XorNot2• 13 years ago

Articles and discussions like this seem mostly like trying to comfort ourselves on the fact that in our lifetimes we probably won't clinically cure death.

It'll matter a lot more when we've actually done it, and we're asking people to stop living voluntarily.

CmonDev7• 13 years ago

Some people "bet" on concept of accelerating progress. Also the ageing population issue has to be solved somehow. Making people immortal and work forever sounds like good option.

PavlovsCat4• 13 years ago

asking people to stop living voluntarily.

Haha, I would love to. Here's my argument: For any single living person "hogging" the universe, there are an infite number of possible persons waiting to get a shot at life. After a while of living, most people experience diminishing returns and get jaded. New people do not have that problem. So if you're really about life, and not just for your own tiny little sliver and interpretation of it, the choice is clear. The extreme of that would be "Logan's Run", so I guess the optimimum is somewhere in between that, and a bunch of people living forever just because they're either scared or selfish.

CmonDev7• 13 years ago

Next step would be genetic engineering to make sure that "shots at life" are more successful. And of course all the people with low chance of success (e.g. < 80 IQ) should be put out of misery ASAP.

summerdown24• 13 years ago

After a while of living, most people experience diminishing returns and get jaded.

What do you suggest should happen to the people who don't get jaded?

Also, what if it turns out that it's only pain, sickness and death that makes people unsatisfied. There is, after all, quite a body of research that suggests people get more satisfied the older they get:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_satisfaction#Life_satisfa...

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2012/08/30/get...

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2009/06/29/growing-old-in-ame...

mattmanser2• 13 years ago

Yes, I've come to think this too. It's a sobering thought given that we're probably going to be one of the last generations that's actually true for.

kayoone5• 13 years ago

Ive been thinking alot about the ethics of it and its really hard. Personally id love to live forever but i am not sure if any form of meaningful live extension is due within my generation (i am 30 now). Probably not. Would be kind of sad to be the last gen to have normal lifespans though. On the other hand dying from non natural causes in a world like that would be even more dramatic.

rwmj• 13 years ago

You probably wouldn't want to be born into a world where no one dies. You'd have loads of old people with enormous wealth, and no incentive to give even a tiny bit of that to the young.

(And please don't say "taxes" ... How do you tax people who hold a massive insuperable block vote?)

yardie• 13 years ago

With infinite life the entire concept of wealth changes then. At the moment most people work to better the lives of their offspring because that is how we handle mortality and immortality. You may not live forever but your genes and resources (money, property, photo albums) live on with your children and grandchildren.

With no reason to save I could do whatever I wanted. Walk all the way to Everest, swim the Atlantic, tell my boss to fuck off. As for wealth, I'd spend decades hacking into bank accounts, because why not? What are they going to do send me to prison?

If we could all be immortal it would kinda suck to be wealthy. No one would need your wealth, and if you they did you'd spend all your time trying to protect.

kayoone5• 13 years ago

People would still die from alot of different reasons, lives on average would just be longer.

PavlovsCat4• 13 years ago

What would we need more life for? To consume more experiences, people and things? Do you really need 100 years to become what you are, learn empathy and letting go, and to get some perspective? Personally I think if you can't hack it in 50 years, you can't hack it in 5000 either. Health is nice, youth is fun, but living longer for the sake of living longer is something I pity rather than envy.

brazzy• 13 years ago

Status quo bias much?

If there are things worth living for and important to learn, it is incredibly illogical to postulate there there is a maximum length of lifetime after which they aren't desirable/important anymore. Especially one that just happens to be the currently normal one.

How would you react to the assertion that 20 years of adult life are enough to experience everything worth experiencing and everyone who doesn't commit suicide at 40 is greedy and pitiable.

PavlovsCat4• 13 years ago

Status quo bias much?

Randomness much? You could say that to anything said in response to a proposed change. Why is there no possible explanation for what I said in your mind? Why jump to something I can't possibly prove to not be the case, and which adds and asks nothing, right away?

I don't like the status quo in a thousand aspects. But from where I stand, stuff like this is an extension of the status quo, not a meaningful change, it's just another step down the rabbit hole of selfishness and delusion. And it's one I have been waiting for since the 90s, I was always astonished by the creepyness and emptyness of the people talking about such stuff, at least the ones I saw on TV. They talked about learning more languages or traveling a lot, and oh yeah, more time for shopping. It's gonna be great. We will never have to stop consuming!

I don't have anything against longer lifespans per se. I just also smell the petty spirit of this current dream. I see the people ruling this planet, I see our societies, and I say good luck.

By the way, we already live in a world in which people can get locked up and have their shoelaces and belts taken away. Are you really worried about people telling others to stop living? I wouldn't dream of that; but the idea of being forced to live, now there's some scary fucking shit. Let's assume costs go towards zero; fuck prison, let's put people in the eternal hell our forefathers dreamed up.

Nope, not envious. Not envious at all. Just, once again, thinking real hard about wether I want to have children.

On the plus side, combined with automation and current concentrations of power and wealth, what do you think would happen if the rich and powerful knew they could live forever? Do you really think they would share the already burdened and stinky planet with everybody? Haha! Oh wait, you're serious; let me curl up and cry.

If there are things worth living for and important to learn

I agree. I also still remember one night realizing that I will die one day, and that ENDLESS amounts of cool stuff, like discovering the universe and meeting aliens, will happen while I will simply not exist anymore... that was the first time in my life I felt real deep grief, incurable grief, I cried so hard. Thankfully I had no idea about the heat death of the universe then ^^ But on the other hand, I was a kid...

it is incredibly illogical to postulate there there is a maximum length of lifetime after which they aren't desirable/important anymore.

... and as I grew up, I intellectually came to "know" (as far as anyone can claim that about anything) that there is no free will, that everything is everything period, and all subdivisions just constructs and ultimately delusions. If you can reason about this and come to other conclusions, I'd love to hear them.

Although I'm far from achieving realisation of that, I think ultimately ego is just a fever to be overcome, that a joy and peace are to be found that way which are without equal, from what I can tell so far from random bright moments of the soul. And I think I can be forgiven for assuming that once one has overcome their ego, life and death and "doing important things" kinda loose their weight, since why would it be so terribly important that I do an important thing? If I still have to be continually fed with experiences, peoples and things, I still haven't found liberation and peace. Like Plutarch said, the mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled. Like Erich Fromm said, to have or to be.

50 years for that just sounded good, I wasn't actually trying to name a hard limit here, but I guess the whole point was lost on you anyway. I wasn't talking of lifespan either, but about 50 years to "become yourself, learn empathy, get perspective", etc.

You also have to consider that 5000 years doesn't just mean having 5000 years to go into whatever you would consider a good direction. It could also mean 5000 years to become more sadistic, intellectually dishonest, good at sociopathy, crazy, sad -- my point being, that in my books, if you go a good way, you trend towards a happy and content center, of both yourself and the universe, and once you roughly reached it, you only settle in better, but don't really move far away from it anymore. On the other hand, if you do NOT go a good way, you can basically run into the woods as far as you can run for as long as you live, build better and better walls and illusions. I'd even say the more deranged people are the more driven they are... Noam Chomsky is a super busy bee, but not really driven, like, say, Steve Ballmer.

I'd be the first to agree I'm a simpleton in the black and white way I think about this stuff but it's simply false that I just "want stuff to stay as it is for the sake of stuff staying as it is". You don't know me, at all, and the fact that you come out with such a cheap shot right away says more about your end of the conversation than mine. Even if I'm utterly wrong and misguided, it's not for that reason.

How would you react to the assertion that 20 years of adult life are enough to experience everything worth experiencing and everyone who doesn't commit suicide at 40 is greedy and pitiable.

I already said I wouldn't agree with that, see the reference to "Logan's run".

But hey, let's say there is a pill tomorrow which makes you immortal (and, while we're at it, physically invincible) for 5000000000 years - would you take it? If not, you agree that there is some point beyond which it might not be desirable to live, at least not with our current psychological makeup, right?. 100 years, 1000, 10000, 100000000000 etc... we could squabble about that, and I think it really depends on what you consider worthy aims in life, and how you consider your importance versus others who live or could live - I tried to roughly answer that for myself, I appreciate that the mileage of others may vary, but I also reserve the right to frown upon some of the motivations and horizons that are to be found out there. Simply put, we're still stunted children in the big scheme of things, and to become immortal now would be the worst curse imaginable. It's not just the nice people, you know. It's not just you and your friends and Kurzweil. It's Henry Fucking Kissinger and Schwarzenegger, too. All the artists and actors who just don't know when to quit in dignity - forever.

And the people who are already ruthless cutthroats will react in a very predictable way to the stakes suddenly getting a lot higher. No more philantropy near the end of your lifetime, now it's literally the winner takes all. Good luck with all that, you'll need it.

summerdown24• 13 years ago

What would we need more life for?

If taken ill, I bet you'll want doctors to make you better, however old you are - providing they could actually make you well.

living longer for the sake of living longer is something I pity rather than envy.

So do I, but that's not why I'd like to live longer. It's because life is glorious and more of it (currently) would be more glorious. If that ever ends, I'll agree with you. But I don't think there's a flat number for everyone. What if the number for me turns out to be 5000 years? I'd like a shot at it.

mattmanser2• 13 years ago

I occasionally ask friends if they could take a pill to live forever, would they?

Most say No.

I then add that everyone else would have access to them too, so their friends and family would also be around. They think a bit more.

Some then say Yes, but some still say No.

I then say they'd go back to a 25 year old's body.

Then they pretty much all say Yes.

The war disappears as soon as you change the conversation. I'm from a secular country though, so I don't what the American Religious Right would say.

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

No one wants to live "forever" (and that's probably physically impossible)-- at least, not in this world-- but people definitely don't like getting sick.

The day-to-day decision won't be "live forever" vs. "die of old age". It will be "get sick" vs. "not get sick" and no one will take the former.

scotth2• 13 years ago

What makes you say it would be physically impossible? I don't know a lot about it, so I can't judge.

TausAmmer2• 13 years ago

What does it takes to enjoy your first ice cream in life, second time?

twobits2• 13 years ago

What does it take to enjoy your first ice cream in mars? ..While it floats away, and you jump 25m vertically, to grab it with your lips? :-)

spyder• 13 years ago

Amnesia

twobits2• 13 years ago

It's funny, I have also asked that to a lot of people, but I immediately tell them that they will stay young and healthy (but experiences and knowledge will continue accumulating) and that there are enough available pills for anyone wanting them.

99.9% say they wouldn't take it. The usual reason is "I'd get bored".

Then I ask them if the think the majority of other people would get the pill. 99.9% think that other people would take the pill.

I suppose that people really hate their lives, don't dare say that not even to themselves, and they think other people have a much better life.

benpbenp• 13 years ago

Here's something I like to point out any time the subject arises. Let's use 39 per 100,000 population as the current accidental death rate[0]. Perhaps you have reason to believe it is lower for you (you don't have a dangerous occupation, you aren't clumsy, etc. etc.) but that is hand-wavey and anyway you can consider it a rough order of magnitude.

Raise .9996 to 10,000th power and you find you will have a 2% chance of living 10,000 years. Raise it to the 100,000th and you get something very very close to zero.

You should also consider all the thousands of different rare diseases that we won't have figured out how to cure even if we do cure "ageing".

Long story short, you should be prepared to die at some point.

[0] http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/leadingcauses.html

kayoone5• 13 years ago

Thought about that too, thats why i think the approach should be finding a way to transfer the human consciousness onto machines, or find a way to backup your mind. That has a whole different set of other ethical implications of course.

CmonDev7• 13 years ago

I say we should go as far as it's possible: multi-body eventually consistent minds distributed across galaxies.

randallsquared• 13 years ago

I think this assumes that technology improvement for all these things stops immediately upon stopping aging. At some point, we should be able to back up and restore brain state, which might raise the average anticipated[1] lifespan considerably, even if accident rates didn't change.

[1] wording this to avoid arguments about identity, if I can.

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

The idea is that the accidental death rate will also go down.

I'm not fully a believer. I think mind uploading is ridiculous and that death of the whole brain will always mean what it does now. However, I also think that-- especially if indefinite healthy lifespans become feasible-- accidental death rates will go way down over the centuries. Those numbers aren't constant.

I could see, 10000 years from now, people storing their neural tissue in extremely safe repositories and interacting with bodies remotely.

dennisgorelik2• 13 years ago

I already interact with your body remotely -- over Hacker News.

Vektorweg• 13 years ago

As long as humans are so forgetful, people will experience forever, which is a good reason to live forever.

kayoone5• 13 years ago

How about transferring human consciousness onto machines? I think its much more probable than to stop the human body from aging and its also more secure. Id at least have two offsite backups of my mind somewhere, just in case you know. And dont forget the encryption in case the NSA gets ahold of it!

jk49302• 13 years ago

The idea is usually to approach several paths (e.g., regenerative or rejuvenative medicine, mind uploading) in parallel, because we have only so much time and there's no guarantee that the one we'd prefer will work.

rartichoke3• 13 years ago

It would be nice to spend trillions of dollars on eliminating death instead of spending it on pointless wars and other retarded stuff.

I don't understand how anyone would want to die. I believe when you die that's it. You cease to exist and rot in the ground until you decompose into nothing. How could you want that rather than to run around for a few thousand years at some prime age without pain or disease?

flycaliguy3• 13 years ago

If people never die then we will never be able to see phrases like "retarded stuff" finally disappear.

rartichoke3• 13 years ago

Yeah but the upside is you get to live forever, potentially see humanity expand outside of Earth or even come across life forms outside of our galaxy.

Snap call all-in?

Udo5• 13 years ago

Wow, a personal attack for a phrase you don't like, implicitly expressing joy over the prospect of a commenter's death - and you still got upvoted for it. Amazing what people get away with here lately.

CmonDev7• 13 years ago

Most people are stupid though.

TausAmmer2• 13 years ago

"I believe" is the problem. Not everyone believe as you do. Working together to respect each other beliefs, that is the big stepping stone.

Don't let your fear stop accepting others.

rartichoke3• 13 years ago

Who said I don't accept others? I don't care if people believe in religion or not.

My opinion is we could be spending our resources as a whole (ie. all of humanity) on much more important things. Unfortunately this will never happen because most people are power hungry greedy pieces of garbage who only care about themselves in the short term.

falcolas• 13 years ago

The recent Torchwood miniseries Miracle Day spent a good 6 episodes talking over this very point. It's worth watching, if only for some good speculative fiction about how humanity would really respond if we suddenly were immortal.

In short, we have a lot more pressing problems to address with the basic human condition before we make ourselves immortal... Removing things like homelessness and poverty would be more beneficial first steps (and ironically would go a long ways to increasing the average lifespan of our population).

robinhoode2• 13 years ago

Homelessness and poverty in developed nations are typically symptoms of mental illness, so I would assume they would be on the target list of diseases to correct on the way towards indefinite lifespans.

eru2• 13 years ago

You can learn from what people are doing in more successful countries against homelessness and poverty. These are not such hard problems.

Udo5• 13 years ago

There are always more pressing problems. There are always more pressing problems than, say, engaging in space flight, or do a lot of research.

In fact, there is a whole class of problems that cannot be meaningfully tackled by addressing them directly. I imagine a physician in the dark ages "treating" people suffering from acute pestilence would say there are more pressing concerns than research into invisible microbes. An aid worker in Africa fighting disease and poverty would say there are more pressing things than life extension and nanotechnology.

And then, unexpectedly to a lot of people, whole classes of problems just disappear because of the consequences of a newly discovered technology. Right now, fighting poverty with advanced 3D printers seems like lunacy or heresy, because our society is based on scarcity. Eliminating unwanted death and disease looks like a maniacal pipe dream that frightens a lot of people, because our civilization is based on death and superstition.

From a psychological perspective it's interesting that heroically fighting a losing battle against certain consequences of our deficiencies is considered good and honorable, while eliminating the root causes is strictly taboo.

As an aside, I liked Miracle Day (but not as much as The Children of Earth, by a long shot), but it portrays a very gruesome and technically implausible form of "immortality". It's clear why they chose to do it like this, because the whole plot hinged pretty much on the monstrosity of that effect. That's however not what it would look like if/when we become adept at life extension.

drjesusphd• 13 years ago

There's something that I don't think gets discussed enough when this topic is risen. One reason why death is good is that the ideas of old people die with them. Often, it's the only way to scourge ourselves of bad ideas. Imagine a country of people still stuck in an 1850s mindset.

jk49302• 13 years ago

As we'll find ways to extend life, we'll find ways to enhance cognitive flexibility. I'm pretty sure about that.

eru2• 13 years ago

The Victorians are our moral betters.

robinhoode2• 13 years ago

This much we know:

* Brain cells die. * Brain cells hold ideas. * We need to regenerate brain cells to continue to support the brain past 80-90 years. * Each new brain cell will probably adopt the ideas of the surrounding culture.

So I would suspect that over time, an aging but renewed brain will adapt to the conditions of the culture it lives in. Some brain cells are more stubborn than others, but a serious and dedicated effort to not adapt will be met with obvious survival constraints.

Kequc• 13 years ago

The current generation of old people have to die and they will. Some of them actually hold modern views and have bothered to keep their minds active from youth into their old age. The ability to change one's mind and empathise with modernity can be learned.

Udo5• 13 years ago

I believe the idea that people never change is probably somewhat misguided. Right now, as a culture we reward people for doubling down and never admitting to being wrong. And no matter how wrong a person is, if they are loud enough, they'll always have supporters.

That culture would probably begin to change with the advent of life extension, because you no longer have to make your life about one thing, this one card you have to choose once and then play until you're dead. I admit it's somewhat idealistic, but I hope we'd be more rational in the long term. Being alive does mean constant change.

But even if it doesn't turn out that way, there are certainly a lot of important voices we have lost over the centuries, a lot of ideas and thoughts that we never even got to hear about, and people who would have contributed great things if they had lived long enough. I for one would gladly live in a world where some ancient philosophers are still alive.

Let's go with the worst case and pick, oh let's say religious bigots, they'll somehow muster the intellect to extend their lives, remain prolific spouters of nonsense, and never change for 10000 years. It's a small price to pay to live in a society where I and the people I care about get to live 10000 years! I could just filter the bad elements out, just as I do today, and everything would be absolutely fine.

An argument could be made that those people are bad for society because they hinder progress or steer it in destructive directions. But on reflection, those people carrying 2000 year old ideas in their heads are here and active in our society right now, and we're still moving forward.

squozzer• 13 years ago

Three conditions would make life extension practical for me.

1) Cost of living becomes negligible or earning a living is still possible at 100+. 2) The additional years are healthy ones. 3) Breeding is reduced or resource availability is increased.

But even then, I think Asimov's premise that a longer-lived person doesn't have the urgency of a shorter-lived person has merit (The Naked Sun.)

If you have hundreds of years to live, why do something risky (or even expressive) RIGHT NOW?

summerdown24• 13 years ago

If you have hundreds of years to live, why do something risky (or even expressive) RIGHT NOW?

If we transitioned into a post-scarcity society (your point 1), then why do we need people to take risks? How about a society living for self-actualisation?

wcbeard10• 13 years ago

Callahan seems in no hurry to let his own death have its day, and I can’t blame him.

Reminds me of a (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) warning against the universal condemnation of suicide that those who have discovered the most compelling arguments for it aren't around to give it a proper defense.

The War on the War on Death Begins

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