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There will be challenges and struggles and costs to be paid to significantly reduce death, but my personal philosophy is that involuntary death is bad and shoul

by tene 9y ago

There will be challenges and struggles and costs to be paid to significantly reduce death, but my personal philosophy is that involuntary death is bad and should be fought, and that the costs of increased crowding are worth paying to cut down on the deaths of billions. The general principle, to me, is that whatever the "ideal" rate of death is, for any given set of values and preferences, it would be an astonishing coincidence if it coincidentally happened to be exactly the current rate today. If we woke up tomorrow to a world where humans didn't suffer degenerative aging and the vast majority of fatal illness (cancer) were treatable, would you start by advocating for mass executions, or would you advocate for increased birth control, renewable energy, reduced resource consumption rates, finding ways to make productive use of otherwise-uninhabited areas of earth, space travel, etc. before you started advocating for murdering billions of humans?

s73v3r_ 9y ago
"would you start by advocating for mass executions" The very idea that this would cross your mind after reading my comment shows that you are not interested in having any kind of serious discussion about this topic.
- tene 9y ago
  Re-reading your comment, I did overreact, and assumed that you were implying a position that you didn't actually assert. I'm sorry for assuming that you were advocating for a pro-death position. If your comment wasn't intended to advocate for pro-death policies, I'm very confused about what you were trying to communicate here. My reading of your comment is that you first asked the reader if they can imagine what the planet would be like if nobody died, then implied through what appears to be rhetorical questions that it would be much more crowded and much more of a strain on the earth's resources. There's a lot of diversity in the use of English, so we may have experience with different rhetorical traditions, but my experience is that rhetorical structures like that are pretty exclusively intended to express condemnation of the subject and anyone who would support it, implying that they're ignoring the disastrous consequences of their policy. The assumptions I inferred from your questions, stated directly, are something like the following. If you're uninterested in engaging with me after my earlier reply, I understand, but if not I'm curious which of these you disagree with. 1) If life-extension technology manages to dramatically reduce nonconsensual death, we will have a population explosion on Earth. 2) If we have a population explosion on Earth, quality of life for most humans will drop significantly. 3) If we have a population explosion on Earth, consumption of nonrenewable resources will increase dramatically, leading to resource shortages dangerous to human civilization. 4) In order to avoid a population explosion, we should stop work on life-extension technology. 5) It is better for the majority of currently-living humans to die after less than 100 years of life than for Earth civilization to undergo a population explosion. By my best attempts at moral reasoning, withholding life-saving medical technology is morally equivalent to murder, and although I've fortunately never been in a situation to make such a decision, I hope that I can be the kind of person who would never decide for people to die through inaction that I wouldn't be theoretically willing to kill myself for the same benefits. I hope that's given you enough perspective on my position that it doesn't seem completely hostile to serious discussion. [edited for formatting]

by tene 9y ago

s73v3r_ 9y ago

"would you start by advocating for mass executions" The very idea that this would cross your mind after reading my comment shows that you are not interested in having any kind of serious discussion about this topic.

tene 9y ago
Re-reading your comment, I did overreact, and assumed that you were implying a position that you didn't actually assert. I'm sorry for assuming that you were advocating for a pro-death position. If your comment wasn't intended to advocate for pro-death policies, I'm very confused about what you were trying to communicate here. My reading of your comment is that you first asked the reader if they can imagine what the planet would be like if nobody died, then implied through what appears to be rhetorical questions that it would be much more crowded and much more of a strain on the earth's resources. There's a lot of diversity in the use of English, so we may have experience with different rhetorical traditions, but my experience is that rhetorical structures like that are pretty exclusively intended to express condemnation of the subject and anyone who would support it, implying that they're ignoring the disastrous consequences of their policy. The assumptions I inferred from your questions, stated directly, are something like the following. If you're uninterested in engaging with me after my earlier reply, I understand, but if not I'm curious which of these you disagree with. 1) If life-extension technology manages to dramatically reduce nonconsensual death, we will have a population explosion on Earth. 2) If we have a population explosion on Earth, quality of life for most humans will drop significantly. 3) If we have a population explosion on Earth, consumption of nonrenewable resources will increase dramatically, leading to resource shortages dangerous to human civilization. 4) In order to avoid a population explosion, we should stop work on life-extension technology. 5) It is better for the majority of currently-living humans to die after less than 100 years of life than for Earth civilization to undergo a population explosion. By my best attempts at moral reasoning, withholding life-saving medical technology is morally equivalent to murder, and although I've fortunately never been in a situation to make such a decision, I hope that I can be the kind of person who would never decide for people to die through inaction that I wouldn't be theoretically willing to kill myself for the same benefits. I hope that's given you enough perspective on my position that it doesn't seem completely hostile to serious discussion. [edited for formatting]