[extropy-chat] The Immortal Class: Admissions Criteria

Tue May 16 14:58:17 UTC 2006

I understand your comments and agree on main issues
but we are talking of a high irrational component.
Nobody would have imagined only ten years ago,
suicidal attacks by moslem extremists to prove a point
and keep a political pressure on certain countries or
societies.
But such warfare tactic have  become a mainstay of the
actual way of life and have caused  extreme terrorism 
prevention measures and other factors that have deeply
affect our everyday life.
To go to the USA today has become a nightmare just
because we need a digital passport while the US
diplomatic authorities are overburden with visa
requests by people who were used to travel without any
restriction.
With the same rationale, an immortality possibility,
which by technological, economical or other conditions
will initially have  effect in a limited amount of
population, will not only create resentment but will
be the fuel for more serious class revolutions that
can affect all of us, and the entire society,
jeopardizing the whole project and creating long term
negative effects.
And i am not mentioning the immediate ban by such
religious groups as the Roman Catholic  Church or
others, which will still hopefully remain in a 
reasonable cultural environment.
For that reason immortality, as a possibility, must
be, since the beginning a democratic choice, not
limited to any country, group or association.
The negative impact of a rejection by the majority of
the excluded population  can cause a long term class
warfare and have negative consequences for decades, if
not for centuries.
The day that immortaity,  a potential immortality
possibility, will be available, it must be accessible
to everybody.
That is the most important and essential condition for
its acceptance.
--- Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> ha scritto: 

> 
> giorgio gaviraghi wrote:
> > There must be no admission rules for immortality
> > Immortality must be for all, independently of
> wealth,
> > origin, race or religion.
> > Any sort of limitation could only generate a class
> > revolution, the non immortals will target and kill
> the
> > immortaals, there is no way that humanity will
> accept
> > rules or limitations to immortality
> 
> This is a very common claim, but I regard it just as
> unfounded as George
> Annas claim that the emergence of posthumans would
> inevitably cause
> genocidal war (and hence we mustn't create them).
> Maybe we could call it a
> Frinkian argument (after professor Frink:
> "Elementary chaos theory tells
> us that all robots will eventually turn against
> their masters and run amok
> in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting
> with the metal teeth
> and the hurting and shoving.") If we don't do X,
> then we get class
> revolution!
> 
> The problem here isn't that it might be true, but
> that people seem to
> accept just the statement of the argument as a good
> reason to do whatever
> suggested. But the rational thing to do is to
> evaluate the likeliehood of
> the risk and then try to act accordingly. I'm very
> annoyed by Frinkian
> arguments, so much that one of my main academic
> projects right now is to
> do a more careful analysis of them (in cognition
> enhancement). We'll see
> how it turns out.
> 
> 
> In the case of immortality, I guess one approach
> would be to look at
> likely scenarios of cost, how quickly the technology
> diffuses and becomes
> cheaper, and the impact of regulations and
> interventions. Add to this the
> desire for immortality in the population. Based on
> this we can make a
> start at looking at whether resentment is likely to
> become a major
> problem, whether social divisions are likely to
> increase and whether the
> moral problems are large enough to justify
> particular interventions.
> 
> For example, access to computers is limited by their
> cost. But I think few
> would claim that it is likely to produce class
> warfare, not even the
> people most worried about digital divides and the
> enormous importance of
> being computer literate in the digital society. It
> seems that the price
> and ubiqity is developing enough both within
> societies and worldwide to
> not be a huge problem (sure, we might wish to speed
> it anyway). Similarly,
> the gatekeeping control over much of medicine is
> also not assumed to be a
> major cause of resentment, although a lot of
> politics of course deals with
> health care issues - possibly health care altruism
> in industrialised
> societies is actually defusing resentment, although
> Robin's evolutionary
> theory for it also likely plays in IMHO.
> 
> How strongly would people want immortality? WE want
> it. But the
> impressively bad track record of cryonics recruiting
> and the popular
> deathist memes suggest the opposite. On the other
> hand, lots of people eat
> lots of alternative medicine to live longer (not to
> mention pray for it
> etc.) - when real treatments become available the
> interest is going to be
> far larger than in current theoretical discussions,
> no matter what they
> say today. But I think people are more likely to
> storm pharmacies for
> Tamiflu than for life extension drugs, simply
> because they consider a bird
> flu threat more direct and serious than ageing. It
> might very well be that
> people want immortality but are willing to wait a
> few years (if they are
> not too old). Especially if they have reason to
> believe the treatment will
> become cheaper and better. That is likely to soften
> the impact of a sudden
> development of an "immortality serum". And if life
> extension treatments
> instead evolve over a long time, giving one extra
> year here and there,
> then the effect is likely softened even more.
> 
> Just a first tentative attack on the Frinkian
> argument. I'm certain it can
> be done better by the other minds on this list.
> 
> -- 
> Anders Sandberg,
> Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
> Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
> 
> 
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