Is Hyperlongevity Immoral?
Over at Reason, Ronald Bailey tells us about a pair of philosophic treatises on the ethics of hyperlongevity. If Bailey's explications are correct, at least one of them seems, to this commentator, a bit abstract bordering on absurd. To wit: Bailey writes that Philosopher John Davis, in as essay titled Life Extension and the Malthusian Objection, says: "....assumes a population of two types of people: Lees and Seans. Lees who want to live a long time are 17 percent of the population and Seans who prefer shorter lives are 83 percent. Seans live an average of 100 years, while Lees using life extension treatments live an average of 600 years. Then you add up the life years of a population of 100 Lees and Seans, and find that 17 Lees would enjoy a total of 8,500 life years while 83 Seans enjoy only 8,300 life years."
And I should accept this premise why?
Meanwhile, again according to Bailey, Russell Blackford has written a response to claims by bioethicist Peter Singer that radical life extension is immoral. Bailey: "Singer begins by setting up a thought experiment in which researchers develop a pill that will double life expectancy to 150 years. He assumes that people have an average happiness level of 5 out of a possible 10 during the first 75 years. The life extension pill maintains its users at about the same level of health and mental acuity as a healthy 60-year-old for the next 75 years, reducing their happiness level to 4 for that period."
So what if I assume that happiness is cranked up to 11, but Lee and Sean died in a car crash and were sewn back together again with the inclusion of a nasty AI program to do the bidding of the Russian Mafia so they could prey upon the relaxed and happy long living populace? I mean, if being a credible philosopher means you can start with any premise and then build your case from there, where do I sign up?
I think most people will want hyperlongevity because the treatments will make them very healthy, or at least healthier. It may even come along at first as a side effect for treatments related to old age. We would probably not let people suffer from Alzheimers or cancer or heart disease for ethical reasons, but perhaps some of us would for economic reasons. There's your ethical debate, it seems to me... not whether to save healthy lives for as long as possible, but whether we let some people die from want of a ticket. And even there, the impact of other technologies on the degree of available real wealth will have some impact (hopefully, a big impact) on how people deal with that.
Editor's Blog
Read and comment on blog posts from h+ editor RU Sirius and others.
Recent Comments
-
By the way, know what? I said the whole "risk to being reduced to pets" was an idle question, but if you want me to play at this game, I will...
-
Don't want to hijack this thread in a Randian apologia direction, especially since I do find her elitism more than a bit off-putting (though I do...
-
>If we can't define intelligence then the project of attempting to create it will always be incoheren
No, we can't define exactly...
-
Have you actually read anything Rand ever wrote? Or did you get that idea purely from other people who also haven't read anything Rand ever wrote...
Comments
This article is deceptive
There are already plenty of life extension technologies available at a very high cost in spas in the alps for example, even simple things like blood cleaning and serum treatments. Only the rich can afford them. There is always research going on in new life-extension technology and as those studies show promise the rich will be using those products as well. It is entirely divided by class, and is therefore entirely immoral (most people get that rich by being corrupt, so it's not a great promise to know that the more corrupt, more rich individuals are going to be able to live longer and have more societal influence). However, we the middle class will never have a say in such things. The technologies are already put to use, the money has already gone into the research. That is the deceptive nature of this article, first of all to propose life extension is a hypothetical future technology when it is already grounded in the present, and to propose there will be any sort of ethical debate with the general populace if the technology suits the needs of the elite. Did we get to debate the atom bomb? Did we get to debate GMO corn? There was an illusion of discourse, yet half the world is armed to the teeth, and within a decade Monsanto managed to consume all that was left of traditional agriculture.
Go on proposing that you think it would be grand to get your own middle-class hands on the technology. This covetous attitude towards the elite is precisely what allows them to grow their power. Where do you think they get their corrupt money anyway? Indirectly from your taxes and the unthinkable suffering of so many workers, soldiers, and war victims around the world. Then they use that money to live longer and further subjugate the population of the world. Great plan.
I don't want to die. I don't
I don't want to die. I don't want anyone telling me when I should die.
Why is this unethical?
Availability
The first thing that comes to mind when I read something like this is the products potential availability. I have the small impulse to label this 'immoral' because this will most certainly be a luxury. It will be the magic tonic of the upper classes.
Hyperlongevity becomes a serious problem when it is selectively 'distributed'. One can argue that it can allow for great leaps in human understanding and technology, but not everyone who would take the pill/get the shot/drink the kool-aid would be an altruistic genius. One would have compromised politicians and self-serving execs lining up for this right off the bat (excuse this harsh generalization, of course :) . ) while the lower and middle class worker is doomed to suffer an early death.
One can't justify hyperlongevity by arguing that it would be the individual's choice because not everyone would have the luxury of choice (this is all assuming that hyperlongevity would be available at a price, a very high one at that).
This gets even more complicated when one implicates international relations into the issue. How 'right' would it be to have the United States teeming with 1000 year olds while good 'ol Canada up north and Mexico down south have only the rare centenerian every once in a while?
This article reminds of Vonnegut's "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow". It deals with hyperlongevity. EXTREME hyperlongevity. Read it! :D
The issue you bring up is
The issue you bring up is nothing new, it's a reality that we're all ready living. The wealthy generally speaking have access to better health care, and better resources (education, food, etc), and tend to as a result have a greater chance of living longer (even quite significantly), and overall healthier lives than the poor.
Today there are people living in truly impoverished countries with dwindling resources and virtually no healthcare, in comparison to them people living in wealthier nations could all ready be said to have hyper-longevity, even if the difference in life-expectancy isn't one of hundreds or thousands of years, it's still a significant one.
So I agree that there is a resources, and wealthy vs. poor issue here, but I also believe that as a general rule people have a right to live and prosper for as long as they possibly can. Unfortunately as a species we haven't succeeded in the very careful, delicate balancing act that assuring everyone can live and prosper for as long as possible requires, and I have pretty strong suspicion that never will happen.
However that said, I certainly wouldn't conclude that because of this inequality that we should just throw out anything that would boost longevity beyond the "natural" human life-span (which if you think too hard about I think you will find becomes a somewhat meaningless term anyhow), after all if we really were to take that to it's full conclusion it would mean completely abandoning medical practice (which really is all about both increasing longevity and quality of life), which would be completely ridiculous, and few people would go for it anyways.
Educational opertunities
Imagine the extra time to expand knowledge. That's worth the extended lifespan. So if we learn to be better humans, how is that immoral? Plus that also doesn't mean we'd be immortal.
Granted we will always have those who will cause strife. We'll still perish from wars, accidents, crime, ect., ect. So in the longterm, we will die. Life/Death will have to snuff me out personally. And I'm going to give it any satifaction of expiring anytime soon.
Stupid opinions
If you argue like this, you could as well say it is immoral to live beyond pension age. Or age 60. Or 50. And it is immoral not to smoke, drink and jump off cliffs, because then you might just die faster. There is no limit to that argument, since everything you do or avoid to do to live longer is then "immoral".
I have no desire to die yet I
I have no desire to die yet I also like to think of myself as being considerate to others so I would feel guilty about taking more than my 'fair' share of life. I'm also not arrogant enough to believe that I represent some pinnacle of human development that deserves more time than future generations.
Assuming singularity level technology where longevity drugs are commonplace, where it is possible to transfer your mind to a machine (does that mean death? is continuity all that is needed to ensure that this new creature is me? I've no idea.)
then a few 'fair' solutions might exist. Uploading your oldies to a human created digital heaven that consumes limited resources is one idea.
Personally, just put my mind in a robot probe and send me out into the galaxy to find neat stuff.
Ultralongevity is not immoral
First, a treatment that "promises" an extended lifetime by decreasing or eliminating the aging process does not eliminate the possibility of death by disease, poison, injury, or other misadventure.
Second, longevity does not mean that a long-lived human's consumption of resources removes them from the biosphere. Unless the treatment completely alters the patient's metabolism so that all matter introduced into said human's system is never released *back* into the biosphere, the human will still excrete waste products (carbon dioxide, urine, sweat, etc.) which are then returned to the "circle of life". Resources are not "consumed", they are merely changed. And as long as the biosphere is reasonably intact, it can take those "consumed" resources and cycle them back into a form we can use.
Third, as a lifelong fan of space exploration, I can't take the Malthusian end as a given, since we've already proven that we can put people on the moon. Need more elbow room? Fine, take some of that training and experience that you've accumulated over your two-century-plus lifespan and figure out how to get a significant portion of humanity out to the rest of the solar system.
Fourth, while foolish people refuse to limit how often they produce more people, the problem of overpopulation is rather viciously self-correcting via wars, famine and plagues.
Finally, the ethics of longevity only come into question when we consider the ethics of the individual recipients, NOT the process itself. What people do with their doubled or trebled *potential* lifespans is none of the longevity-providers' business, especially when the newly-minted Methuselah can still be hit by a bus on the way out of the treatment clinic.
It's completely moral
If you believe in freedom as the highest ideal, there's nothing more moral than immortality. If we were truly free, we'd have the freedom to:
not get sick
not feel pain
not die
As it is, we're rendered quite un-free by our biology. Evolution, unfortunately, lags terribly behind human social development. The faster we can permanently change this, the better.
How can we think of ourselves as free when we're slaves to our own withering bodies and the constant wear of time?
You're positing a very loose
You're positing a very loose definition of freedom. You would also have the "freedom" to take more than your fair share of food, water, and whatever else sustains human and animal life on Earth. It's also awfully presumptious, selfish, and opportunistic to think that the world would be better if only you, me, or anyone else could stick around for another few hundred years.
People who are totally inured to pain are not alerted to damage done to their bodies. I also don't accept the notion that the pace of evolution is tyrannical or oppressive. "Slaves" is not a word you just throw around, and your body may be withering, but it also helped you to learn everything you know.
On Age and Freedom
What is one's "fair share" if not what one gains through voluntary exchange, thus contributing the value-equivalent of what one consumes? Increased longevity (and health in longevity) can only facilitate improved productivity, giving one the opportunity to continue earning a "fair share" indefinitely. You could even go a step farther and say that the two periods where one is consuming one more than one produces, early childhood and old age, are reduced in proportion to one's total lifespan when one's lifespan is increased, so living longer actually increases rather than decreases your equity position in larger society. I wouldn't make that argument personally; I believe children and elders DO contribute value even if in a non-monetary sense, monetary/material exchange is only one form of ecological interaction. It does make more sense than the argument that at some arbitrary age one's consumption becomes "unfair", though.
At an even more fundamental level, you commit a much larger conceit than you charge the potential hypergenarian: you suppose that your perception of value, fairness, and what is "best" for the world is so superior as to be a measure of when a person's further existence may be denied! - where the hypergenarian only supposes that his own value is sufficient to support his right to life. I would say that the assertion that you (or someone) has the right to determine when someone else has had enough life is extraordinarily presumptuous, selfish, and opportunistic. Given your implied premise that resources are so limited that one life necessitates the cessation of another, who are you, or is anyone else, to decide that you are more valuable than someone else simply based on age? You are after all part of your own equation. If one must die so another may live, perhaps you should be laying your head on the chopping block instead of presuming to push down another's.
Your response, for the most
Your response, for the most part, is fair and thoughtful. The final sentence was unecessarily violent considering that my primary objection was to disagree with the first definition of "freedom," but I apologize if anything I said came across as a personal attack. I won't be posting again. Cheers.
RE: Violence
The point was to make plain the inherent violence in the position that lifespans may be arbitrarily limited, rather than to offend. In interest of respecting your wish to not respond I won't elaborate :)
What if people get better at happiness with age?
While happiness research has come under criticism lately by Barbara Ehrenreich and Michael Shermer, I think the effort to study the causes of happiness remains worthwhile. And it could pay off by turning happiness into a set of teachable skills, which many people seem to acquire haphazardly any way just by living long enough.
Some of the research into happiness across the lifespan seems to show that. Singer could have looked at the empirical evidence about the happiness of 60 year olds compared with younger people instead of starting with an arbitrary assumption.
I get happier as I get older,
I get happier as I get older, but that is not as a result of my aging body it's due to wisdom and confidence nurtured be experience and is in fact threatened by my aging and eventually failing body. Have I misunderstood you?
RE: I get happier as I get older
That's a very good and simple point. What's the point of earning such wisdom and confidence if you can't enjoy it as you age? Imagine having difficulty passing it on as well. I make no difference between Life and Death. Our main purpose to living is to procreate. And afterwards, we simply (and for the most part) wither away and die. We're any other machine, we ware out. So if we can manage and fix the damage to our bodies, then reap the benefit of an extended life, why complain!?
I don't remember signing a contract before me being born. This is my life and I have rights to the same. If that makes me selfish, so be it. Everyone has the same right as I. If a person wants to wither away, that's their right. But no one has the right to tell another how long he/she should live. Plus it would a whole new meaning to the death penalty!!!!
One way to look at it, with our longivity increased, that would force us to the stars and take it seriously. People will continue to have way too many children. We're just any other species; we breed and breed 'til the ecosystem changes forcing us to either ruduce our population or die out. The planet will recover itself. It's up to us to be resposible.
It does make sense about another post stated we, as a whole, would have more years to be productive and contribute vastly more to society. And as time goes on, we will be more efficient and have a much less impact on our planet. More efficiency does happen naturally and means more with less and less pollution.
I hope all of this research is made availible in my "respective" lifetime. I want to know what future holds for humanity.
Post new comment