Some thoughts on death

So a couple of days ago, joreth, David, and I went to see the movie “Hancock.”

This isn’t actually a post about the movie; it’s a post about transhumanism, human dignity, and the inevitability of death. Hang on for a bit; I’ll get to that, I promise.

The movie is surprisingly good. I expected a kind of “Airplane!”-esque send-up of superhero movies, but that’s not what it is at all. It’s a thoughtful, and in some places surprisingly sweet, story. And it does something I’ve never seen a superhero movie do before; it makes characters with superhuman abilities (flying, immunity to bullets, super strength, all the usual ones) human.

One interesting twist is that the main character, Hancock, never ages.

And that’s pretty cool. In fact, I’d take a write-off on all the other superhero powers for that one. Which is good, because it’s the only superhero power that doesn’t violate those pesky laws of physics, and the only superhero power we’re actually getting close to in the real world.

To me, the value in this seems like a no-brainer. And yet, the majority–by large margin–of folks I talk to don’t want it. And I find hat kind of interesting.


When i talk about living forever, most of the people I talk to, at least outside the transhumanist community, react with varying degrees of shock and horror. “But why would you want to do that?” is the most common response, by a mile.

Now, it seems to me the answer to this question is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. Before I go into that, though, I think it’s probably a good idea to clear up what “live forever” means. That phrase can sound a bit scary, and seems to carry connotations of a kind of involuntary immortality to many folks.

When I talk about “immortality,” perhaps it would be better to say that I think death should be optional. I’m not talking about forcing people to live who don’t want to; I’m talking about changing the inevitability of death. Death should be an option to folks who want it, but it should not be compulsory.

I think that I may stop talking about “immortality” and instead start talking about “making death optional.” It might address some of the mental images that “immortality” conjures up with respect to a burdensome and unwanted life.

It’s also important to make clear that I’m talking about healthy life, as well. Any reasonable approach to solving the problem of death begins with solving the problem of aging. Life extension as an ever-increasing period of enfeeblement is a non-starter. For the purposes of radical longevity, what I’m talking about is a cessation of aging such that human beings have an indefinite lifespan with no upper limit, and that we will spend that time in healthy, strong bodies.


This kind of immortality, a life where people simply don’t age, is not the same thing as superhero, immune-to-bullets-and-everything immortality. If we solve aging, which is a biological process that operates like all other biological processes and is therefore subject to change, that’s what we will have.

As it stands now, we stop self-repairing and start falling apart in our mid 20s, and it’s all downhill from there. Conquering aging means keeping the physical strength and health of a 20something indefinitely. Which, honestly, doesn’t seem like a bad deal to me.

A person immune to the ravages of old age would still not be immune to death; accident, violence, and other misadventure is perfectly capable of ending even a 25-year-old’s life. It simply means that person no longer has a cap on the maximum time he can live, if he so chooses.

And that’s really what it’s all about. Choice.

Right now, we have no choice. The maximum possible human lifespan is somewhere around 120 years, if we make it that far, and that’s it.

This has been the reality of human existence for a very long time, and we’ve built entire philosophies around that reality. “Death gives life meaning,” we’re told. (What a load of rubbish! If I burn down your house, is that destruction the only thing that gives your house value?) “Death provides dignity,” we’re told. (Nonsense; decrepitude and death are among the least dignified parts of our existence. It is our choices, our freedom to make ourselves what we choose, that informs our dignity and our value. Anything which reduces our freedom to choose for ourselves what we want to be, including the inevitability of death, reduces human dignity.)


If you go into the doctor’s office, and he tells you that you have a bacterial infection, which will slowly grow progressively worse until it kills you painfully, then offers you an antibiotic pill that will completely eradicate the infection, I bet you’ll take it. Even if you don’t fancy the thought of living forever.

There’s an important point in that. Even folks who don’t much want to live forever still probably don’t want to die today. Or tomorrow. Someday, perhaps, if that “someday” is held in the abstract; some future time when things no longer seem interesting. But not today.

And that’s the point. A solution for aging puts the power to choose in your hands. Old age forces your hand; you don’t get the choice to see your grandkids graduate from school, or to celebrate your fiftieth anniversary…the choice is made for you. And I don’t see how that benefits anyone.


Now, some people have asked me why I would even want an extended lifespan in the first place. “Wouldn’t you get bored?” I’ve been asked. “Wouldn’t you eventually become too depressed at seeing everyone close to you die?”

The second question is easy. Presumably, if medical tech existed that could stop me from aging, it could stop the people around me from aging too.

The first question is a bit more baffling. Bored? With all the things going on in the world, all the time, who would ever be bored?

I think there’s an idea lurking in the subtext of that objection; namely, the sense that the future is just like the present, only longer.

Which is silly. One only needs to look at how much American society has changed in the last century to see that isn’t true. Within the lifetime of folks still alive today, we’ve gone from a largely agrarian society to a post-industrial society, with detours through powered flight, manned space exploration, and widespread electrification. A person born in 1900, in a one-room house with a dirt floor, has seen the advent of industrialization, the popularization of the automobile, manned moon landings, the taming of Niagra Falls, and the iPhone.

Who has time to be bored?


And that aint nothin’. Technology today, as interesting as it is, isn’t qualitatively different from the technology of the Victorians. We still make stuff by starting with a bloody great lump of stuff and whacking bits off, pounding, molding, stamping, cutting, and otherwise hacking away at the stuff until all that’s left is the bits we want.

Which is a wasteful, inefficient way to go about doing it. Smacks of stone knives and bearskins, really.

But what we’re closing in on is the ability to make stuff from the ground up, one atom at a time. And when that happens…jackpot.

Windows made of diamond (because carbon is cheap and easy to work with). Skyscrapers grown from a single metal crystal. Efficiency which allows the entire world, including those parts of it currently mired on poverty, to live at the same standard of living as us decadent Westerners, without imposing additional burdens on the earth’s resources or energy supply. Molecular assembly changes the name of the game completely.

Who has time to be bored?

And with that comes changes to all the assumptions we make about the Way Things Work. Many of the objections to improved longevity rest on assumptions that aren’t necessarily going to be valid in thefuture; you can’t anticipate the future by projecting current truths on it.

“But what about overpopulation?” I’m asked. Well, what about it? There’s a close connection between population growth and technological sophistication; post-agrarian societies have lower population growth than agrarian societies, because children are no longer needed to work the farms and care for enfeebled elders.

“But don’t we have to die to make room for the next generation?” I’m asked. No, we don’t, and thank you very much for implying that my life, and your life, and the lives of all the people who are here today are worth less than the theoretical lives of people who don’t even exist yet.

“But won’t longer life put more strain on the earth’s resources?” I’m asked. This assumes a continuation of the exponential population growth, when even now in the United States we actually have negative population growth, with immigration being what keeps the sum total population increasing. As lifespan increases, birth rate decreases; and, as I said before, nanotech manufacturing offers high standard of living with dramatically smaller environmental costs.

And if you find all that implausible, imagine what a person born in 1900 would say about owning a device that fits in your pocket, lets you talk to anyone in the world, and uses a network of satellites placed in earth orbit by rockets to help you find the easiest way to drive from your house to your friend’s house on the other side of the country.


Why do I want to live forever? Because things now are better than they were in 1900, and things in 1900 were better than they were in 1462. Because the future is an interesting place, and I want to see it. Because death should be optional, not mandatory. Because the encroachment of old age and death is the ultimate insult to human dignity. Because we are the part of the universe capable of understanding itself, and that means that every single one of us has incalculable value. Because every death is a tragedy, and we have lost sight of that. And in the end, because I see us not for what we are now, but for what we have the potential to become, and we have potential that is beautiful beyond all imagination.

126 thoughts on “Some thoughts on death

  1. I like the idea of pushing choice as the key benefit.

    And I agree that speaking in terms of continuing health and longevity might seem a little more friendly to people who bristle about “immortality” (which also has religious connotations).

    ~r

    • The mention of religious connotations has me pondering whether there’s actually some sort of genetic/cultural fear of immortality related to the reason we invent religions to handle the fear of death.

      If you (tacit or anyone) haven’t read Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams (author of Aristoi, which I believe I lent you) yet, you’ll probably find it interesting. It’s intentionally a Singularity/Transhumanist work.

  2. I like the idea of pushing choice as the key benefit.

    And I agree that speaking in terms of continuing health and longevity might seem a little more friendly to people who bristle about “immortality” (which also has religious connotations).

    ~r

  3. The mention of religious connotations has me pondering whether there’s actually some sort of genetic/cultural fear of immortality related to the reason we invent religions to handle the fear of death.

    If you (tacit or anyone) haven’t read Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams (author of Aristoi, which I believe I lent you) yet, you’ll probably find it interesting. It’s intentionally a Singularity/Transhumanist work.

    • I’ve used “radical longevity” in the past, and got blank stares as a result. And the fact is, a lot of people have connotations of “bad” from the word “radical;” we will often refer to militants as “radicals,” for example.

      • You do have a point. The one thing I like about the radical phrase is its brevity. I feel that it has more of a potential to be a buzzword that the longer “making death optional”. However, in light of the connotation you mention, brevity may be too much of a writery nitpick to matter much.

  4. afterlife?

    When I read in your post about people who actually argue with you on this point, after my initial shock (“What?! But.. but… I thought this was obvious!”) I realized what their angle might be: they aren’t that passionate about living forever, because they believe they already do.
    Might that be the reason? You know better, you talked to them. Maybe they all just believe in the afterlife. This is an argument I heard a few times: if we live long enough, we’ll just get too curious about what’s waiting for us in the “next world”. I know what you think about it; but again, for some people, it’s a powerful argument. They think they live forever as it is, and they don’t want to be stuck on some “first plane of existence”, or something.

    – Ola

    • Re: afterlife?

      I am one of those that doesn’t see death as a problem and doesn’t want it solved. I do believe in an afterlife, but that is not the belief that makes me see death as a good thing. I also believe in evolution and little to no birth with really long lives gives our species a very low adaptive potential.

      • Re: afterlife?

        But in the horrible hypothetical scenario that an afterlife does not exist, that a personality is just destroyed by physical death — then would you say death is still worth it?

        I believe in evolution, too, I just think it is way too slow. We’d do a much better job in self improvement ourselves (on any level) if we could live longer. We already did! I made it through childhood thanks to the medical advancements of the last century much more than to what was left to me by evolution…

        – Ola

        • Re: afterlife?

          With an afterlife I personally prefer to keep living. But it would suck for the species as a whole.

          As much as we like to think we are above biology we are still a species. So I don’t personally like it, but I see death and reproduction as the only way we are going actually hold our weird little niche.

          And I am right there with you in having a childhood that I would not have survived if not for modern medicine. It is one of the reasons I am not planning on passing on my personal genes even if I do raise children.

          • Re: afterlife?

            The difference between you and I, perhaps, is that I don’t want to hold our weird little (or big, actually; we’re the most diversified species on earth, living in more climates and habitats than any other animal) niche. I want to see us bust out of that niche and spill out into the universe.

      • Re: afterlife?

        The problem with this is that the common conception of evolution is not really accurate.

        We tend to think of evolution as a process that makes organisms “better” over time. It doesn’t. Evolution is blind and completely without plan. It does not make organisms “better;” it merely makes them reproduce more successfully. That’s not always a very good definition of “better.”

        Let’s say, by way of one hypothetical example, that a strange new disease started killing large numbers of people tomorrow, and people with Down’s syndrome had a genetic resistance to that disease. Well, evolutionary processes would then begin selecting heavily in favor of people with Down’s syndrome. Would that be an improvement?

        The unique thing about human beings, alone among all other organisms on earth, is our vast ability to understand the physical world around us and to choose for ourselves what to do, while understanding the implications and consequences of our choices. Honestly, I think deliberate choice is head and shoulders above a blind process like selective adaptation.

        But that’s beside the point. As long as there are heritable differences between organisms, there will be adaptation. Longevity would slow that process, but not stop it. What’s the rush? Evolutionary biology isn’t a race. There re organisms on earth today, such as scrub pines, that have lifespans in the thousands of years and reproduce slowly, yet they’re doing just fine.

    • Re: afterlife?

      I’ve talked to a handful of folks who will answer questions about longevity with things like “but isn’t it better to be in heaven?”

      For a person who believes that life is a trial, an unpleasant ordeal to be endured so as to get to the grave as quickly as possible, no reasoning or conversation about life extension will make sense. There certainly are more than a few folks who seem to believe that once they reach the grave, nothing can go wrong; it’s these folks that make religions implement prohibitions on suicide (because if a person sincerely believes that life is a trail of tears and heaven is utter bliss, why would he stick around otherwise?).

      Now, it’s been my observation that folks who think they’re going to heaven forever really don’t understand what “forever” means; compared to “forever,” a two-thousand-year lifespan isn’t even an eyeblink. But that’s a whole ‘nother rant altogether.

      Seems to me that if there really is some blissed-out “forever,” it will still be there in a few thousand years. Meantime, i want to see what happens here. And a reverse Pascal’s challenge applies here–what if you believe in Heaven, and you’re wrong?

  5. afterlife?

    When I read in your post about people who actually argue with you on this point, after my initial shock (“What?! But.. but… I thought this was obvious!”) I realized what their angle might be: they aren’t that passionate about living forever, because they believe they already do.
    Might that be the reason? You know better, you talked to them. Maybe they all just believe in the afterlife. This is an argument I heard a few times: if we live long enough, we’ll just get too curious about what’s waiting for us in the “next world”. I know what you think about it; but again, for some people, it’s a powerful argument. They think they live forever as it is, and they don’t want to be stuck on some “first plane of existence”, or something.

    – Ola

  6. thank you very much for implying that my life, and your life, and the lives of all the people who are here today are worth less than the theoretical lives of people who don’t even exist yet.

    Also, they’re not worth any more, either.

    • I beg to differ. A life that exists is worth more than a hypothetical life that does not exist. Existence is always more valuable than non-existence. By definition, a non-existence holds no value.

        • Speculation is predicated on the idea that the potential becomes real, however. It doesn’t actually get its value until that happens; a speculator who gambles on something that doesn’t happen, like an oil strike that never comes, loses all his money.

          I think it is a fair and valid point that valuing the lives of real human beings who are alive right now at less than the value of human beings who might be born some time in the future is a little…odd. Some folks do do it; its the moral calculus that justifies, say, the murder of people who work in abortion clinics. But I still think it’s a very strange way to assign value.

  7. thank you very much for implying that my life, and your life, and the lives of all the people who are here today are worth less than the theoretical lives of people who don’t even exist yet.

    Also, they’re not worth any more, either.

  8. Well put. I think most of the objections I’ve ever heard come from Hollywood portrayals of immortality that people blindly assume make sense.

    Zardoz posits a decadent society of people bored of the endless routine of life but unable to die, busy subsisting off the contributions of barbarians fooled into believing they are appeasing their god. The Fountain (which I love) shows the vision of a man tortured for thousands of years by his failure to save his wife from an untimely death. The Highlander creates a world where immortality is attained by killing off all other candidate immortals and the endless life of fear it entails. Even “first ones” of Babylon 5 can’t seem to keep to themselves and ultimately feel the need to leave our galaxy to make room for humans and their contemporaries.

    In movies where there are immortal characters, the consistent message is almost always that it is death that gives meaning to life. Nonsense. I want to live forever.

  9. Well put. I think most of the objections I’ve ever heard come from Hollywood portrayals of immortality that people blindly assume make sense.

    Zardoz posits a decadent society of people bored of the endless routine of life but unable to die, busy subsisting off the contributions of barbarians fooled into believing they are appeasing their god. The Fountain (which I love) shows the vision of a man tortured for thousands of years by his failure to save his wife from an untimely death. The Highlander creates a world where immortality is attained by killing off all other candidate immortals and the endless life of fear it entails. Even “first ones” of Babylon 5 can’t seem to keep to themselves and ultimately feel the need to leave our galaxy to make room for humans and their contemporaries.

    In movies where there are immortal characters, the consistent message is almost always that it is death that gives meaning to life. Nonsense. I want to live forever.

  10. Of course, outside the mostly secular sci fi world, the other obvious objection is on religious grounds. Most monotheists (Christians, Muslims, Jews) believe there is an afterlife that is eternal. Most of them also believe the hardships they suffer now are a sort of payment for a one-way ticket into the better of two afterlife options (i.e., Heaven or Hell). Why would you want to live on this crappy world forever when a paradise awaits you after you’re dead? Or so the thinking goes.

  11. Of course, outside the mostly secular sci fi world, the other obvious objection is on religious grounds. Most monotheists (Christians, Muslims, Jews) believe there is an afterlife that is eternal. Most of them also believe the hardships they suffer now are a sort of payment for a one-way ticket into the better of two afterlife options (i.e., Heaven or Hell). Why would you want to live on this crappy world forever when a paradise awaits you after you’re dead? Or so the thinking goes.

  12. “Wouldn’t you eventually become too depressed at seeing everyone close to you die?”

    The second question is easy. Presumably, if medical tech existed that could stop me from aging, it could stop the people around me from aging too.

    “Do you want to see all your friends die?”

    “They’re already dieing. And I’m quite capable of making new friends. Aren’t you?”

      • Well, that original comment (“Do you want to see all your friends die?”) has always confused me. The question assumes that no-one can make new friends. I mean, I make new friends regularly and I’m a major introvert who lives way out in BFE Missouri; can’t anyone else, especially if you know you’ll be around for centuries? You replace a house if it burns down; you replace a car when it gives up the ghost; you get new friends to replace those who disappear. Isn’t that what everyone should be doing rather than just get more and more alone?

        • I never understood the original question either. People move through our lives all the time. No one lives a life where everyone they were introduced to at birth remained in their life until they all died together and no other connections are made at any time.

          Even small tribes see a fluctuation of people as everyone ages and dies at different times and new people are born.

          We make new friends. They don’t replace people, because people are not interchangeable, but they do contribute to the socialization of us as individuals and prevent us from being alone.

          Hell, there’s been a rash of nursing-home romances as people move into assisted-living situations and continue to meet new people while our lifespands continue to be extended!

          But I love the brevity of the response. I’m all into soundbites that can deliver a concept in a simple, easy to remember and understand format. Clearly, brevity is not my natural forte

  13. “Wouldn’t you eventually become too depressed at seeing everyone close to you die?”

    The second question is easy. Presumably, if medical tech existed that could stop me from aging, it could stop the people around me from aging too.

    “Do you want to see all your friends die?”

    “They’re already dieing. And I’m quite capable of making new friends. Aren’t you?”

  14. Re: afterlife?

    I am one of those that doesn’t see death as a problem and doesn’t want it solved. I do believe in an afterlife, but that is not the belief that makes me see death as a good thing. I also believe in evolution and little to no birth with really long lives gives our species a very low adaptive potential.

  15. It may not be boredom

    I know that as I reach a factor of 20 in my own life, I look back on the last 20 years and recognize that I’ve got about 2 or possibly 3 more periods of active living about the same duration.

    That 20 year span is filled with a lot of memories – the number of jobs, lovers, family members, children grown, interests, etc are quite literally staggering. I feel like I’ve already reached the point where I’ve forgotten more things than I remember.

    Right now – and mind you, it’s only right now, and occasionally it’s lifted – the thought of the amount of stuff left to do just makes me tired. And so I could see someone opting for death not because they’re too bored, but because they’re too tired.

    I also think that you may be being a bit optimistic of how things are going to get better, consistently. Yes, our quality of life has improved, yes the iPhone is miraculous. But what percentage of people actually have that miracle? What percentage actually will? And what is the quality of life for the people who produce it for people like you (and, yes, eventually me, I want to be one of the popular people too).

    I’m at the Baltimore Erotic Art Festival right now, and there’s a card that I saw here that makes me think of this. It shows an XKCD style figure on a globe as a fireball approaches. It says “On the day before the world ended…”

    (inside) “…some people were still optimists.”

    • Re: It may not be boredom

      Yes, our quality of life has improved, yes the iPhone is miraculous. But what percentage of people actually have that miracle? What percentage actually will? And what is the quality of life for the people who produce it for people like you (and, yes, eventually me, I want to be one of the popular people too).

      That’s one of those “projecting current conditions onto the future” things.

      One way or another, the gap between First and Third World countries won’t remain. Th best possible outcome is the advent of cheap nanotech, which would make bringing the rest of the world up to industrialized standards of living trivial.

      But in any rate, no matter how it shakes out, arguments against longevity based on the current gap between the industrialized world and the Third World are about like a citizen of the Persian empire arguing about longevity by saying “but what about the impoverished, undeveloped European countries?” The one thing we learn from history is that current conditions never map onto future conditions. 🙂

  16. It may not be boredom

    I know that as I reach a factor of 20 in my own life, I look back on the last 20 years and recognize that I’ve got about 2 or possibly 3 more periods of active living about the same duration.

    That 20 year span is filled with a lot of memories – the number of jobs, lovers, family members, children grown, interests, etc are quite literally staggering. I feel like I’ve already reached the point where I’ve forgotten more things than I remember.

    Right now – and mind you, it’s only right now, and occasionally it’s lifted – the thought of the amount of stuff left to do just makes me tired. And so I could see someone opting for death not because they’re too bored, but because they’re too tired.

    I also think that you may be being a bit optimistic of how things are going to get better, consistently. Yes, our quality of life has improved, yes the iPhone is miraculous. But what percentage of people actually have that miracle? What percentage actually will? And what is the quality of life for the people who produce it for people like you (and, yes, eventually me, I want to be one of the popular people too).

    I’m at the Baltimore Erotic Art Festival right now, and there’s a card that I saw here that makes me think of this. It shows an XKCD style figure on a globe as a fireball approaches. It says “On the day before the world ended…”

    (inside) “…some people were still optimists.”

  17. What a very bright and shiny post! 🙂

    I’m all for having options. Choosing more life will probably never get old to me. If it does, I can see the possible appeal of taking a break and coming back later, though it would suck to miss all the really cool stuff that would inevitably happen in the interim.

    It’s times like this when I wonder what purpose is really served by you and arching each other. I mean, seriously, he could’ve written this, though it might have been a good deal longer. (Or, perhaps he currently *is* writing a post with almost the identical sentiment, but it’s “in progress” while life continues to happen.)

    Anyway, thanks for the happy start to my weekend!

  18. What a very bright and shiny post! 🙂

    I’m all for having options. Choosing more life will probably never get old to me. If it does, I can see the possible appeal of taking a break and coming back later, though it would suck to miss all the really cool stuff that would inevitably happen in the interim.

    It’s times like this when I wonder what purpose is really served by you and arching each other. I mean, seriously, he could’ve written this, though it might have been a good deal longer. (Or, perhaps he currently *is* writing a post with almost the identical sentiment, but it’s “in progress” while life continues to happen.)

    Anyway, thanks for the happy start to my weekend!

  19. If I burn down your house, is that destruction the only thing that gives your house value?

    Occasionally, especially in today’s Housing market, this is true.

    So it is with people…

    A loser, a nobody, a failure can die fighting for his country, and he’s a hero forever.

    • I suspect that the desire on the part of folks who can’t succeed in any other way to find posthumous success by dying gallantly will be self-correcting.

      And given enough time, I think that anyone, even a loser by whatever standards one cares to apply, can succeed…

  20. If I burn down your house, is that destruction the only thing that gives your house value?

    Occasionally, especially in today’s Housing market, this is true.

    So it is with people…

    A loser, a nobody, a failure can die fighting for his country, and he’s a hero forever.

  21. Optional Death?

    huh, only for the rich and undeserving.
    I would much rather someone like Mandela live for 200 years than Bush.. but would that be likely? No.
    Power, greed, and a severe lack of ethics seem to go together. Thus, I see fewer human deserving of centuries of existance.

    Why would I turn down the pill of extended existance? Because I have glimpsed Bushido, only a glimps, and it is enough to spend the rest of my life attempting to perfect it. But I would never want to attain that perfection. I would rather not be faced with ‘What now?”
    Rather, I would chose to appreciate the cherry blossom that is life. Brief, unique and all the more valuable for it’s brevity. Too many people already care so little for human life, or any life for that matter to give them more. Damn few are those who have earned it. fewer still are those who deserve it, and none should have it.

    This is of course completely skipping over the whole cost to the world of undefined extention of life.

    • Re: Optional Death?

      “Thus, I see fewer human deserving of centuries of existance.”

      Then I am gratified by the knowledge that you are not in a position to make that determination and impose your judgment upon the rest of us.

      “Too many people already care so little for human life”“fewer still are those who deserve it, and none should have it.”

      I’m stuck trying to decide if I should be overcome with laughter at your brilliant stroke of irony or horrified by the possibility that you weren’t trying to be funny.

      “This is of course completely skipping over the whole cost to the world of undefined extention of life.”

      Franklin actually did touch upon this in his post.

    • Re: Optional Death?

      “All the more valuable for its brevity.” Why?

      And how brief does it have to be? Where’s the threshold at which it loses its value? Would you tell someone who lived one year past that threshold that his life had just lost its meaning?

      • Re: Optional Death?

        Two points; 1, I am mearly voicing a contrary point of view. I think it is a good idea that someone poke the idea to make sure it is solid.
        2, I am completely unconvinced that humanity is mature enough to warrent such a thing as ‘indefinate existance.’
        Provided humans as a whole, or at the very least as a larger majority can prove themselves socialy mature enough. fine and well. Let them live as long as they will.

        Until then, I am only sad that there are not more men and women like Mandela, may the gods grace him with ten more years of his good influence.

        Edit: Additionaly; Hitler, Stalin, Any number of people on this list: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/war_criminals.htm
        Would you REALY want to give them Indefinate years, decades, centuries of life? How about those who become deeply entrenched and powerfull, with little or no way to wrest them from the seat of rulership?
        How about Jerry Falwell and his ilk? Do you realy believe that centuries of life will bring them around to enlightenment, and finaly let go of superstitious bigotry? I am not convinced.
        I think you are an intelligent fellow, enlightened and in your own way highly spiritual. A free thinker.. And many other things for which I admire you. But your dream of a far future of advanced sciences, and medical wonders.. Needs must wait for humanity to mature a great deal.

        • Re: Optional Death?

          That doesn’t really address the questions, though. At what threshold do you draw the line? Does the existence of bad people mean that no human being should live past 90 years? 120 years? 167 years?

          The examples you give aren’t very compelling. Hitler? Lost the war he started and committed suicide. An end to aging would not have changed that outcome. Stalin? In 1953, just before he died, he announced a new plan of reconciliation with the West, German unification, and disengagement from Europe–but then died of a stroke before being able to put this announcement into action. Did he have a change of heart? We’ll never know.

          In any event, “there are bad people in the world” doesn’t really stand as a strong argument against longevity. Even if they live longer, that doesn’t necessarily mean that what they do will!

          Pol Pot? Lost his hold on power long before he died. Augusto Pinochet? Lost his hold on power long before he died.

          The argument you are making seems to be a form of projecting current conditions onto an indefinite future. History shows that there is no such thing as any person or entity that is so deeply entrenched it will not change. While it may seem like it from the vantage point of people with short lives–a citizen of Rome surely thought that the empire was solidly entrenched and would last forever–that’s merely myopia induced by a tiny lifespan. Everythig changes. Extending human lifespan won’t change that.

          • Re: Optional Death?

            I am completely unconvinced that humanity is mature enough to warrent such a thing as ‘indefinate existance

            It could be argued we aren’t “mature” enough to warrent anything we have already developed. Our lifespan has improved, and so has our capacity for violence and damage. Yet, we discovered the means for both anyway.

            I suspect that the “maturity” for handling the various misdeeds we can get up to can never come before the discovery of such a misdeed.

            When I was a child, I was told I wasn’t old enough to decide I didn’t want children. When I was 18, I was told I had to wait until I was 30 to make a permanent decision. When I was 31, I was told by a grandmother that I was still young enough to have kids and I will change my mind as my biological clock begins to “tick” so please don’t make the decision for permanent sterilization yet (and that I would understand what she meant when I had an “accident” and that would make everything look different). At what age am I old enough to make these kinds of decisions? At what “age” is society old enough to be able to handle the consequence of its choices?

            And, it’s only with the advent of medical technology that I can be told, at age 31, that I’m still too young to decide not to have children.

        • Re: Optional Death?

          That raises the question: Do you think humanity will ever mature if people continue to have the same life-spans they currently have? A person matures, learns by his experiences, then he dies and we’re back to square one. Groundhog day. If we’re lucky, that person will write his experiences down for future generations to learn from. Yes, we have history, terrible wars and tragedies, and people think “wow, that must have been horrible, let that be a lesson to us”. And yet wars continue to happen, on a larger scale and with more destructive weapons.
          Now, it could be that an extension of lifespan would not alter the fundamentals of human nature, people may always be greedy and self-serving. But if wisdom only comes through age and experience, surely a greatly extended lifespan would mature humanity much more than another hundred, short-lived generations? It’s like the quote “Learn from the mistakes of others: you’ll never live long enough to make them all yourself”. Well what if you did?

          On the flip side of the coin, if people didn’t age and scientific advancement meant that everybody could remain fit and healthy, would that diminish our compassion or tolerance to those outside the norm? If we lived in a society of perfect individuals, would we look at elderly or disfigured people with fear and disgust? (I’m thinking of Brave New World here. And that freak-show episode of X-files.)

          • Re: Optional Death?

            Socialy, We have evolved, and continue to do so. It realy is a matter of time before we shed our superstitions (those detrimental religions, yes even my own paganism, which hold us as a species back from advancing toward awareness, and a more open and free thinking path. We do have history, and yet.. we don’t. Recorded history is only a little over 3000 years so far. And investigative history only a thousand more than that. Truely, in the big picture, we are still in the juvinile stage of species growth. We’ve a long way yet to go.
            At the point where we as a sopecies no longer look at someone else and cringe because of deformity, weight, age, color.. then I think we will have gained much more right to an extended existance.
            This is of course only my own opinion, and one that is purposefuly contradictory to the optimistic view of Franklin. *smiles*
            I could wish that humans were as advanced as our sciences have gotten.. but sometimes, we are a bit too smart for our own good.

  22. Optional Death?

    huh, only for the rich and undeserving.
    I would much rather someone like Mandela live for 200 years than Bush.. but would that be likely? No.
    Power, greed, and a severe lack of ethics seem to go together. Thus, I see fewer human deserving of centuries of existance.

    Why would I turn down the pill of extended existance? Because I have glimpsed Bushido, only a glimps, and it is enough to spend the rest of my life attempting to perfect it. But I would never want to attain that perfection. I would rather not be faced with ‘What now?”
    Rather, I would chose to appreciate the cherry blossom that is life. Brief, unique and all the more valuable for it’s brevity. Too many people already care so little for human life, or any life for that matter to give them more. Damn few are those who have earned it. fewer still are those who deserve it, and none should have it.

    This is of course completely skipping over the whole cost to the world of undefined extention of life.

  23. You pose an interesting argument, one many like and agree with. However, I think there is value in growing older, and in eventual death. I think there is importance in recognizing the cycle of life, and appreciating it in its forms and phases. The challenge is not to see new things, but to see with new eyes. I’ll take the deal I got and aspire to rise to the occasion of NOW.

    • What is that value? I mean, exactly, in concrete terms–what is that value?

      Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had an average life expectancy of approximately 22 years or so. In 1940 in the United States, the average life expectancy was 40. Today,, the average life expectancy is 72. Does that mean our lives have a little less than one-third the value of our forefathers’ lives, and about half the value of the lives of those born in 1900? If we extend the average life expectancy to 120, will the value of life drop even farther?

      I believe the value and worth of human life is not measured by its brevity, but by the choices people make while they’re alive.

  24. You pose an interesting argument, one many like and agree with. However, I think there is value in growing older, and in eventual death. I think there is importance in recognizing the cycle of life, and appreciating it in its forms and phases. The challenge is not to see new things, but to see with new eyes. I’ll take the deal I got and aspire to rise to the occasion of NOW.

  25. You said here that the idea of death “giving life meaning” is rubbish, but how about the related idea that having only a small amount of time to leave can make people appreciate life more? Or do something more meaningful with their time? I would think that optional immortality might make a whole lot of people far more lazy. Just a thought.

    • I’m not convinced it works that way. Most people know they are mortal, yet at the same time they behave as though they’re immortal. Humans are good at not thinking about the inevitability of our own death. I don’t find it plausible that extending lifespan will result in more couch potatoes or more person-hours spent per year watching “Friends” on TV; we’ve already reached saturation there.

      Think about it. People who know they are mortal already do things like smoke, drive drunk, and spend countless hours in front of the tube. They don’t do these things because humans are mortal; they do these things because humans are often prone to laziness and often prefer the path of least resistance. This is a part of human nature that’s got nothing to do with our lifespan.

      The sort of person driven to create or to succeed is not going to say “Well, medical science has now reached the point where I’ll live to be 300 years old, so forget it. Think I’ll watch Friends after all.”

      • There are far too many things for me to do to become lazy if my lifespan were to be extended indefinately. I don’t have enough time as it is. All an extended lifespand would accomplish is allow me the time to actualy perfect those things I want to try, not merely dabble in it.

        Imagine how many wonderful things I could do if I didn’t have to pick and choose and prioritize based on limited time!

        Life would be positively full-to-bursing of options!

  26. You said here that the idea of death “giving life meaning” is rubbish, but how about the related idea that having only a small amount of time to leave can make people appreciate life more? Or do something more meaningful with their time? I would think that optional immortality might make a whole lot of people far more lazy. Just a thought.

  27. Re: Optional Death?

    “Thus, I see fewer human deserving of centuries of existance.”

    Then I am gratified by the knowledge that you are not in a position to make that determination and impose your judgment upon the rest of us.

    “Too many people already care so little for human life”“fewer still are those who deserve it, and none should have it.”

    I’m stuck trying to decide if I should be overcome with laughter at your brilliant stroke of irony or horrified by the possibility that you weren’t trying to be funny.

    “This is of course completely skipping over the whole cost to the world of undefined extention of life.”

    Franklin actually did touch upon this in his post.

  28. It seems almost silly for me to comment on this post, since you and I have spent many, many hours discussing this very topic and I think it’s clear that it would be neigh impossible for us to be in greater agreement. Even so, thanks for the enjoyable read and for sparking interesting discussion.

    Just a thought on the evolutionary implications: assuming that fecundity correlates more strongly with socioeconomic status than it does with attitudes towards radical life extension, it seems to me that a desire for a finite life span (or even a weak aversion to death) is not a trait which will be selected for. Assuming it’s heritable (which I doubt), eventually the “death positive” segment will remove itself from the population. Even in the more likely scenario that it’s a psychological/cultural phenomenon, I think it’s fair to say that eventually “death positivism” will be a rare and alarming aberration rather than the expected norm.

    Oh, and Hancock was surprisingly good. They should expand the story with a comic or graphic novel series.

  29. It seems almost silly for me to comment on this post, since you and I have spent many, many hours discussing this very topic and I think it’s clear that it would be neigh impossible for us to be in greater agreement. Even so, thanks for the enjoyable read and for sparking interesting discussion.

    Just a thought on the evolutionary implications: assuming that fecundity correlates more strongly with socioeconomic status than it does with attitudes towards radical life extension, it seems to me that a desire for a finite life span (or even a weak aversion to death) is not a trait which will be selected for. Assuming it’s heritable (which I doubt), eventually the “death positive” segment will remove itself from the population. Even in the more likely scenario that it’s a psychological/cultural phenomenon, I think it’s fair to say that eventually “death positivism” will be a rare and alarming aberration rather than the expected norm.

    Oh, and Hancock was surprisingly good. They should expand the story with a comic or graphic novel series.

  30. Re: afterlife?

    But in the horrible hypothetical scenario that an afterlife does not exist, that a personality is just destroyed by physical death — then would you say death is still worth it?

    I believe in evolution, too, I just think it is way too slow. We’d do a much better job in self improvement ourselves (on any level) if we could live longer. We already did! I made it through childhood thanks to the medical advancements of the last century much more than to what was left to me by evolution…

    – Ola

  31. Re: afterlife?

    With an afterlife I personally prefer to keep living. But it would suck for the species as a whole.

    As much as we like to think we are above biology we are still a species. So I don’t personally like it, but I see death and reproduction as the only way we are going actually hold our weird little niche.

    And I am right there with you in having a childhood that I would not have survived if not for modern medicine. It is one of the reasons I am not planning on passing on my personal genes even if I do raise children.

  32. I’m stealing your last paragraph as a personal quote for my Me Manual – with a link back of course.

    Once again, you’ve said exactly what I’m thinking.

    And I have to agree with on both points: “death positivism” will eventually weed itself out once the mortality actually becomes a choice and with Hancock being surprisingly good and should be followed up with a series of some sort.

    However, pretty raw deal he got. Still really liked the movie – much better than I expected, and I was expecting to like it.

  33. I’m stealing your last paragraph as a personal quote for my Me Manual – with a link back of course.

    Once again, you’ve said exactly what I’m thinking.

    And I have to agree with on both points: “death positivism” will eventually weed itself out once the mortality actually becomes a choice and with Hancock being surprisingly good and should be followed up with a series of some sort.

    However, pretty raw deal he got. Still really liked the movie – much better than I expected, and I was expecting to like it.

  34. Nice paradigm-poke.

    I like the idea of death being optional. If people want it (and yet aren’t in such a hurry as to expedite it themselves), great. They’re welcome to it.

    But purely an option.

    Think of all the huge and wondrous things people would do if they knew they could spend more than, say, sixty years of functioning brain doing it!

  35. Nice paradigm-poke.

    I like the idea of death being optional. If people want it (and yet aren’t in such a hurry as to expedite it themselves), great. They’re welcome to it.

    But purely an option.

    Think of all the huge and wondrous things people would do if they knew they could spend more than, say, sixty years of functioning brain doing it!

  36. I’ve used “radical longevity” in the past, and got blank stares as a result. And the fact is, a lot of people have connotations of “bad” from the word “radical;” we will often refer to militants as “radicals,” for example.

  37. Re: afterlife?

    I’ve talked to a handful of folks who will answer questions about longevity with things like “but isn’t it better to be in heaven?”

    For a person who believes that life is a trial, an unpleasant ordeal to be endured so as to get to the grave as quickly as possible, no reasoning or conversation about life extension will make sense. There certainly are more than a few folks who seem to believe that once they reach the grave, nothing can go wrong; it’s these folks that make religions implement prohibitions on suicide (because if a person sincerely believes that life is a trail of tears and heaven is utter bliss, why would he stick around otherwise?).

    Now, it’s been my observation that folks who think they’re going to heaven forever really don’t understand what “forever” means; compared to “forever,” a two-thousand-year lifespan isn’t even an eyeblink. But that’s a whole ‘nother rant altogether.

    Seems to me that if there really is some blissed-out “forever,” it will still be there in a few thousand years. Meantime, i want to see what happens here. And a reverse Pascal’s challenge applies here–what if you believe in Heaven, and you’re wrong?

  38. An interesting look at the subject of an indefinite lifespan…

    However, while for the individual it largely sounds like it’s a boon for the individual, some people worry about the reprocussions for society at large. While the rate of population growth may go down over time, I strongly doubt it’ll ever hit zero. There are people who want to be parents, and that’s no more likely to change than people no longer wanting any other type of family relationships.

    • Re: An interesting look at the subject of an indefinite lifespan…

      On the other hand, radical longevity won’t mean that nobody ever dies, either. Accident and catastrophe will still claim lives; the statistics I’ve seen suggest that in current society, with no aging, the average life expectancy would work out to be about 200 years. Car accidents alone kill about 48,000 Americans a year.

      Now, a solution to aging would change society, and over time we’d likely begin to address risk factors that we take for granted today.

      But the fact is, we’re really nowhere near the limit of the carrying capacity of the planet, and the advent of nanotech would increase the limit astronomically. Theres still plenty of room. And plenty of time to solve problems that seem, from our vantage point now, to be intractable.

      • Re: An interesting look at the subject of an indefinite lifespan…

        There’s plenty of room, but tell that to Ethiopia. You’re assuming we’ll fix the allocation of resources before we solve the lifespan problem. You’re also assuming that the changes in the birthrate/deathrate ratio will remain sustainable. It’s kinda been known to fluctuate.
        On top of that, the poor allocation of resources could mean some people having this longevity and some going without, meaning that those without this longevity would gradually lose the chance to one day have it; after all, having to afford prices that have been set for those who have had a few lifetimes to save up isn’t exactly easy for someone who’s only got one, and starts off in poverty. It could end up not being offered to them at all; imagine what a boon it would seem like for some tiny warlord in Africa or Afghanistan to be able to just outlive his enemies to death when he faces any opposition in his territory?

      • Re: An interesting look at the subject of an indefinite lifespan…

        Not to mention the possibilities of expanding beyond the planet – which are rapidly approaching reality

  39. An interesting look at the subject of an indefinite lifespan…

    However, while for the individual it largely sounds like it’s a boon for the individual, some people worry about the reprocussions for society at large. While the rate of population growth may go down over time, I strongly doubt it’ll ever hit zero. There are people who want to be parents, and that’s no more likely to change than people no longer wanting any other type of family relationships.

  40. Re: It may not be boredom

    Yes, our quality of life has improved, yes the iPhone is miraculous. But what percentage of people actually have that miracle? What percentage actually will? And what is the quality of life for the people who produce it for people like you (and, yes, eventually me, I want to be one of the popular people too).

    That’s one of those “projecting current conditions onto the future” things.

    One way or another, the gap between First and Third World countries won’t remain. Th best possible outcome is the advent of cheap nanotech, which would make bringing the rest of the world up to industrialized standards of living trivial.

    But in any rate, no matter how it shakes out, arguments against longevity based on the current gap between the industrialized world and the Third World are about like a citizen of the Persian empire arguing about longevity by saying “but what about the impoverished, undeveloped European countries?” The one thing we learn from history is that current conditions never map onto future conditions. 🙂

  41. I suspect that the desire on the part of folks who can’t succeed in any other way to find posthumous success by dying gallantly will be self-correcting.

    And given enough time, I think that anyone, even a loser by whatever standards one cares to apply, can succeed…

  42. Re: Optional Death?

    “All the more valuable for its brevity.” Why?

    And how brief does it have to be? Where’s the threshold at which it loses its value? Would you tell someone who lived one year past that threshold that his life had just lost its meaning?

  43. What is that value? I mean, exactly, in concrete terms–what is that value?

    Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had an average life expectancy of approximately 22 years or so. In 1940 in the United States, the average life expectancy was 40. Today,, the average life expectancy is 72. Does that mean our lives have a little less than one-third the value of our forefathers’ lives, and about half the value of the lives of those born in 1900? If we extend the average life expectancy to 120, will the value of life drop even farther?

    I believe the value and worth of human life is not measured by its brevity, but by the choices people make while they’re alive.

  44. I’m not convinced it works that way. Most people know they are mortal, yet at the same time they behave as though they’re immortal. Humans are good at not thinking about the inevitability of our own death. I don’t find it plausible that extending lifespan will result in more couch potatoes or more person-hours spent per year watching “Friends” on TV; we’ve already reached saturation there.

    Think about it. People who know they are mortal already do things like smoke, drive drunk, and spend countless hours in front of the tube. They don’t do these things because humans are mortal; they do these things because humans are often prone to laziness and often prefer the path of least resistance. This is a part of human nature that’s got nothing to do with our lifespan.

    The sort of person driven to create or to succeed is not going to say “Well, medical science has now reached the point where I’ll live to be 300 years old, so forget it. Think I’ll watch Friends after all.”

  45. Re: An interesting look at the subject of an indefinite lifespan…

    On the other hand, radical longevity won’t mean that nobody ever dies, either. Accident and catastrophe will still claim lives; the statistics I’ve seen suggest that in current society, with no aging, the average life expectancy would work out to be about 200 years. Car accidents alone kill about 48,000 Americans a year.

    Now, a solution to aging would change society, and over time we’d likely begin to address risk factors that we take for granted today.

    But the fact is, we’re really nowhere near the limit of the carrying capacity of the planet, and the advent of nanotech would increase the limit astronomically. Theres still plenty of room. And plenty of time to solve problems that seem, from our vantage point now, to be intractable.

  46. Re: Optional Death?

    Two points; 1, I am mearly voicing a contrary point of view. I think it is a good idea that someone poke the idea to make sure it is solid.
    2, I am completely unconvinced that humanity is mature enough to warrent such a thing as ‘indefinate existance.’
    Provided humans as a whole, or at the very least as a larger majority can prove themselves socialy mature enough. fine and well. Let them live as long as they will.

    Until then, I am only sad that there are not more men and women like Mandela, may the gods grace him with ten more years of his good influence.

    Edit: Additionaly; Hitler, Stalin, Any number of people on this list: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/war_criminals.htm
    Would you REALY want to give them Indefinate years, decades, centuries of life? How about those who become deeply entrenched and powerfull, with little or no way to wrest them from the seat of rulership?
    How about Jerry Falwell and his ilk? Do you realy believe that centuries of life will bring them around to enlightenment, and finaly let go of superstitious bigotry? I am not convinced.
    I think you are an intelligent fellow, enlightened and in your own way highly spiritual. A free thinker.. And many other things for which I admire you. But your dream of a far future of advanced sciences, and medical wonders.. Needs must wait for humanity to mature a great deal.

  47. Re: afterlife?

    The problem with this is that the common conception of evolution is not really accurate.

    We tend to think of evolution as a process that makes organisms “better” over time. It doesn’t. Evolution is blind and completely without plan. It does not make organisms “better;” it merely makes them reproduce more successfully. That’s not always a very good definition of “better.”

    Let’s say, by way of one hypothetical example, that a strange new disease started killing large numbers of people tomorrow, and people with Down’s syndrome had a genetic resistance to that disease. Well, evolutionary processes would then begin selecting heavily in favor of people with Down’s syndrome. Would that be an improvement?

    The unique thing about human beings, alone among all other organisms on earth, is our vast ability to understand the physical world around us and to choose for ourselves what to do, while understanding the implications and consequences of our choices. Honestly, I think deliberate choice is head and shoulders above a blind process like selective adaptation.

    But that’s beside the point. As long as there are heritable differences between organisms, there will be adaptation. Longevity would slow that process, but not stop it. What’s the rush? Evolutionary biology isn’t a race. There re organisms on earth today, such as scrub pines, that have lifespans in the thousands of years and reproduce slowly, yet they’re doing just fine.

  48. Re: afterlife?

    The difference between you and I, perhaps, is that I don’t want to hold our weird little (or big, actually; we’re the most diversified species on earth, living in more climates and habitats than any other animal) niche. I want to see us bust out of that niche and spill out into the universe.

  49. Re: Optional Death?

    That doesn’t really address the questions, though. At what threshold do you draw the line? Does the existence of bad people mean that no human being should live past 90 years? 120 years? 167 years?

    The examples you give aren’t very compelling. Hitler? Lost the war he started and committed suicide. An end to aging would not have changed that outcome. Stalin? In 1953, just before he died, he announced a new plan of reconciliation with the West, German unification, and disengagement from Europe–but then died of a stroke before being able to put this announcement into action. Did he have a change of heart? We’ll never know.

    In any event, “there are bad people in the world” doesn’t really stand as a strong argument against longevity. Even if they live longer, that doesn’t necessarily mean that what they do will!

    Pol Pot? Lost his hold on power long before he died. Augusto Pinochet? Lost his hold on power long before he died.

    The argument you are making seems to be a form of projecting current conditions onto an indefinite future. History shows that there is no such thing as any person or entity that is so deeply entrenched it will not change. While it may seem like it from the vantage point of people with short lives–a citizen of Rome surely thought that the empire was solidly entrenched and would last forever–that’s merely myopia induced by a tiny lifespan. Everythig changes. Extending human lifespan won’t change that.

  50. You do have a point. The one thing I like about the radical phrase is its brevity. I feel that it has more of a potential to be a buzzword that the longer “making death optional”. However, in light of the connotation you mention, brevity may be too much of a writery nitpick to matter much.

  51. Don’t count out death so easily…

    After coming back to this entry I started giving some serious thought to what society will look like with substantially longer life and/or a true “making death optional” solution. For one, much will depend upon the specifics of the technology and to social context around it. Consider the vast differences between the scenarios presented in Joe Hadleman’s Buying Time and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I do think i can say a number of things. For instance,

    I do not think we will ever get rid of death as an idea.

    As graydancer mentions, a long life can be tiresome. This strikes me as especially a problem if one is prone to live richly. If physical death is optional then we’re going to have to develop new cognitive techniques/adapt old ones to accommodate the different+extenuated pressures. One of those new/old pressures is memory. How is our memory going to look if we live to 120? 150? Perhaps Ars Memoriae will be the must-have for anyone over 100.

    Metaphorically death can be seen as change, transition, a break…in this sense death is the ceasing of the status quo and a beginning of something wholly different. I imagine a society of long-lived folk will need those kinds of seperative experiences to fashion their life in a meaningful manner. If physical demise is optional, perhaps we might then have technologies to produce deaths of personality? What if, as mentioned, the current person simply gets *tired*? Perhaps a way of dealing with that would be to implement radical entropic change in their life, change to the point where they become excited about living again. If you have a generation or even a culture without physical death, might they come to use the word to describe such radical breaks in time?

    Whatever the case, I would argue that a society in which death is optional will have to have greater self-change competency probably to the point of developing more complex strategies of self+social manipulation.

  52. Don’t count out death so easily…

    After coming back to this entry I started giving some serious thought to what society will look like with substantially longer life and/or a true “making death optional” solution. For one, much will depend upon the specifics of the technology and to social context around it. Consider the vast differences between the scenarios presented in Joe Hadleman’s Buying Time and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I do think i can say a number of things. For instance,

    I do not think we will ever get rid of death as an idea.

    As graydancer mentions, a long life can be tiresome. This strikes me as especially a problem if one is prone to live richly. If physical death is optional then we’re going to have to develop new cognitive techniques/adapt old ones to accommodate the different+extenuated pressures. One of those new/old pressures is memory. How is our memory going to look if we live to 120? 150? Perhaps Ars Memoriae will be the must-have for anyone over 100.

    Metaphorically death can be seen as change, transition, a break…in this sense death is the ceasing of the status quo and a beginning of something wholly different. I imagine a society of long-lived folk will need those kinds of seperative experiences to fashion their life in a meaningful manner. If physical demise is optional, perhaps we might then have technologies to produce deaths of personality? What if, as mentioned, the current person simply gets *tired*? Perhaps a way of dealing with that would be to implement radical entropic change in their life, change to the point where they become excited about living again. If you have a generation or even a culture without physical death, might they come to use the word to describe such radical breaks in time?

    Whatever the case, I would argue that a society in which death is optional will have to have greater self-change competency probably to the point of developing more complex strategies of self+social manipulation.

  53. Re: An interesting look at the subject of an indefinite lifespan…

    There’s plenty of room, but tell that to Ethiopia. You’re assuming we’ll fix the allocation of resources before we solve the lifespan problem. You’re also assuming that the changes in the birthrate/deathrate ratio will remain sustainable. It’s kinda been known to fluctuate.
    On top of that, the poor allocation of resources could mean some people having this longevity and some going without, meaning that those without this longevity would gradually lose the chance to one day have it; after all, having to afford prices that have been set for those who have had a few lifetimes to save up isn’t exactly easy for someone who’s only got one, and starts off in poverty. It could end up not being offered to them at all; imagine what a boon it would seem like for some tiny warlord in Africa or Afghanistan to be able to just outlive his enemies to death when he faces any opposition in his territory?

  54. i look forward to being able to die again some day. i might want to wait an extra thousand years or so, but i think death to be worth experiencing, at least twice… afterall, what is your great fear of tragedy. pain can be pleasurable, and tragedy can be joyous: it is all about context.

      • that depends on how you are defining death. brain-death? cardiopulmonary death? i’ve had the latter upon drowning at age eight; i think my parents would agree that i continue to suffer from the former, though i maintain that in that sense i am alive, if a bit unwell ;-D

        anyway that is all beside my point. i would enjoy being able to delay my death indefinitely, but i am fairly certain that when the time is right, i’ll want to die; i will likely want someone i trust to help me along the way.

  55. i look forward to being able to die again some day. i might want to wait an extra thousand years or so, but i think death to be worth experiencing, at least twice… afterall, what is your great fear of tragedy. pain can be pleasurable, and tragedy can be joyous: it is all about context.

  56. that depends on how you are defining death. brain-death? cardiopulmonary death? i’ve had the latter upon drowning at age eight; i think my parents would agree that i continue to suffer from the former, though i maintain that in that sense i am alive, if a bit unwell ;-D

    anyway that is all beside my point. i would enjoy being able to delay my death indefinitely, but i am fairly certain that when the time is right, i’ll want to die; i will likely want someone i trust to help me along the way.

  57. Re: Optional Death?

    That raises the question: Do you think humanity will ever mature if people continue to have the same life-spans they currently have? A person matures, learns by his experiences, then he dies and we’re back to square one. Groundhog day. If we’re lucky, that person will write his experiences down for future generations to learn from. Yes, we have history, terrible wars and tragedies, and people think “wow, that must have been horrible, let that be a lesson to us”. And yet wars continue to happen, on a larger scale and with more destructive weapons.
    Now, it could be that an extension of lifespan would not alter the fundamentals of human nature, people may always be greedy and self-serving. But if wisdom only comes through age and experience, surely a greatly extended lifespan would mature humanity much more than another hundred, short-lived generations? It’s like the quote “Learn from the mistakes of others: you’ll never live long enough to make them all yourself”. Well what if you did?

    On the flip side of the coin, if people didn’t age and scientific advancement meant that everybody could remain fit and healthy, would that diminish our compassion or tolerance to those outside the norm? If we lived in a society of perfect individuals, would we look at elderly or disfigured people with fear and disgust? (I’m thinking of Brave New World here. And that freak-show episode of X-files.)

  58. Re: Optional Death?

    Socialy, We have evolved, and continue to do so. It realy is a matter of time before we shed our superstitions (those detrimental religions, yes even my own paganism, which hold us as a species back from advancing toward awareness, and a more open and free thinking path. We do have history, and yet.. we don’t. Recorded history is only a little over 3000 years so far. And investigative history only a thousand more than that. Truely, in the big picture, we are still in the juvinile stage of species growth. We’ve a long way yet to go.
    At the point where we as a sopecies no longer look at someone else and cringe because of deformity, weight, age, color.. then I think we will have gained much more right to an extended existance.
    This is of course only my own opinion, and one that is purposefuly contradictory to the optimistic view of Franklin. *smiles*
    I could wish that humans were as advanced as our sciences have gotten.. but sometimes, we are a bit too smart for our own good.

  59. I beg to differ. A life that exists is worth more than a hypothetical life that does not exist. Existence is always more valuable than non-existence. By definition, a non-existence holds no value.

  60. Re: Optional Death?

    I am completely unconvinced that humanity is mature enough to warrent such a thing as ‘indefinate existance

    It could be argued we aren’t “mature” enough to warrent anything we have already developed. Our lifespan has improved, and so has our capacity for violence and damage. Yet, we discovered the means for both anyway.

    I suspect that the “maturity” for handling the various misdeeds we can get up to can never come before the discovery of such a misdeed.

    When I was a child, I was told I wasn’t old enough to decide I didn’t want children. When I was 18, I was told I had to wait until I was 30 to make a permanent decision. When I was 31, I was told by a grandmother that I was still young enough to have kids and I will change my mind as my biological clock begins to “tick” so please don’t make the decision for permanent sterilization yet (and that I would understand what she meant when I had an “accident” and that would make everything look different). At what age am I old enough to make these kinds of decisions? At what “age” is society old enough to be able to handle the consequence of its choices?

    And, it’s only with the advent of medical technology that I can be told, at age 31, that I’m still too young to decide not to have children.

  61. There are far too many things for me to do to become lazy if my lifespan were to be extended indefinately. I don’t have enough time as it is. All an extended lifespand would accomplish is allow me the time to actualy perfect those things I want to try, not merely dabble in it.

    Imagine how many wonderful things I could do if I didn’t have to pick and choose and prioritize based on limited time!

    Life would be positively full-to-bursing of options!

  62. Re: An interesting look at the subject of an indefinite lifespan…

    Not to mention the possibilities of expanding beyond the planet – which are rapidly approaching reality

  63. Speculation is predicated on the idea that the potential becomes real, however. It doesn’t actually get its value until that happens; a speculator who gambles on something that doesn’t happen, like an oil strike that never comes, loses all his money.

    I think it is a fair and valid point that valuing the lives of real human beings who are alive right now at less than the value of human beings who might be born some time in the future is a little…odd. Some folks do do it; its the moral calculus that justifies, say, the murder of people who work in abortion clinics. But I still think it’s a very strange way to assign value.

  64. Well, that original comment (“Do you want to see all your friends die?”) has always confused me. The question assumes that no-one can make new friends. I mean, I make new friends regularly and I’m a major introvert who lives way out in BFE Missouri; can’t anyone else, especially if you know you’ll be around for centuries? You replace a house if it burns down; you replace a car when it gives up the ghost; you get new friends to replace those who disappear. Isn’t that what everyone should be doing rather than just get more and more alone?

  65. I never understood the original question either. People move through our lives all the time. No one lives a life where everyone they were introduced to at birth remained in their life until they all died together and no other connections are made at any time.

    Even small tribes see a fluctuation of people as everyone ages and dies at different times and new people are born.

    We make new friends. They don’t replace people, because people are not interchangeable, but they do contribute to the socialization of us as individuals and prevent us from being alone.

    Hell, there’s been a rash of nursing-home romances as people move into assisted-living situations and continue to meet new people while our lifespands continue to be extended!

    But I love the brevity of the response. I’m all into soundbites that can deliver a concept in a simple, easy to remember and understand format. Clearly, brevity is not my natural forte

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