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[New person: Pre-emptive apologies for inadvertent breaches of
listequette etc.]<br>
<br>
I think it's at least controversial whether indefinite life
extension (or any life extension) would be a pro tanto good thing
from a utilitarian perspective. Although extension does avoid
upfront 'investment costs' in terms of making a new human, and
limits the incidence of the badness of death if everyone lives
longer, there are come concerns in favour of not extending lives and
having more rapid cycling of persons under a given resource
constraint.<br>
<br>
1. Given we time discount, and possible 'low hanging fruit'
concerns, lifespan may have decreasing marginal value. So (depending
on investment costs, and degree of decay) many short lives might be
better than a single long life, even on strictly aggregative
consequentialism.<br>
<br>
2. If you're a prioritarian (hold that a given increment of value is
better given to someone with less value than someone with more, all
else equal; or that the welfare to value function is concave), then
you might prefer many shorter lives over one long one even at the
expense of some total value. It might be generally fairer/better to
package lifespan in many small packets than one large one, so fewer
potential people 'miss out' on the goods of having existed at all.<br>
<br>
Obviously, lots of complicated ethics (esp. population ethics)
underlie all of these (should we value those who *could exist* with
similar weight to those who actually do? Is not-existing harmful, or
bringing into existence beneficial?) And all sorts of empirical
things can change the calculus (AIs, rejuvenation, etc.). Despite
all that, there seem a fairly large plurality of scenarios where
life extension is not a good thing.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/06/13 11:37, Florent Berthet
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAA9DTzS4ud8TxndtnyevxNCXbf1dWOn7qv4nfhkvqMGgVQ7uCg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">2013/6/12 Eugen Leitl <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:eugen@leitl.org"
target="_blank">eugen@leitl.org</a>></span><br>
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">If you need other arguments: t takes
about 30 years to<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">produce
a borderline usable human, and then she dies<br>
and you have to start from scratch again. That's<br>
wasteful.<br>
<br>
In terms of IPD, sticking around longer results in<br>
nicer people overall. You like environment? There's<br>
more incentive to keep this planet in good shape.<br>
Etc.<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div style="">I agree, and this is the kind of arguments I'm
asking for. Thanks for bringing that up, and while I'm at
it, thanks to Anders for his explanations and honesty. If
there is a place where I expect people to be able to
debate freely and without having to justify every word
they say, it's this one. Let's keep it that way.</div>
<div><br>
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