[ExI] Life extension

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Thu Oct 24 20:43:54 UTC 2013


On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> For some reason, a lot of people tune out to radical life extension, but
>> do not tune out to radical health improvement.
>>
>
> Easily explained, if we put aside our own viewpoint and honestly accept
> what their viewpoint is.  (Not that we agree with it, just that we
> accurately recognize it.)
>
> They believe that death is inevitable, period.  They think that one can no
> more achieve immortality than reach the Moon merely by flapping one's arms,
> or exceed the speed of light through conventional Newtonian thrust.
> Further, they have a heavy bias toward believing in the impossibility of
> things quite unlike what anyone has achieved before.  Therefore, living to
> 200 is "obviously" impossible and anyone saying otherwise can be dismissed
> without thinking too hard about it, just like anyone proposing another
> perpetual motion machine.
>
> On the other hand, many people *are* alive at 90 today - and some of them
> are generally physically capable, if past their prime.  That's not
> speculation.  Therefore, there is existing proof that this is
> possible...and so the same could be made true for more people.
>
> They might have logical dissonance at the likely consequence of a lot of
> super-healthy 90 year olds (i.e., people living to 150+), but they don't
> reject the possibility of many super-healthy 90 year olds itself.
>

I agree, but I do think that's only PART of the problem. In my own
discussions with people, I also run into these objections:

The religious element. Why would I WANT to live 500 years if heaven awaits
me?

The "I've lived through enough change already" point of view. Why would I
want to live 500 years? I wouldn't understand a damn thing when I got
there. Look at grandma, she can't even work an iPad.

The grumpy old man avoidance POV. "When I was a kid, we played with rocks,
and we were grateful!" Do I want to be THAT guy for 400 years?

The "I'd be useless" POV. I don't want to draw on society from 65 to 500.

The "I'd get in the way of change" POV. If I lived to 500, I would probably
be rich and influential, which would stop young people from making changes
that need to be made. That can only be made when the previous generation
passes away.

And of course, "Wouldn't the earth fill up?"

This last one I address by noticing that despite 4 billion years of death,
700 million years of multicellular death, and thousands of years of human
ritualistic death, we haven't run out of room to put graveyards.

-Kelly
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