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> we'll have to find another way You agree it is a problem, then. What are some solutions you can think of? I'm not convinced the gain is worth the pain, but

> we'll have to find another way You agree it is a problem, then. What are some solutions you can think of? I'm not convinced the gain is worth the pain, but maybe you have some ideas for me to think about.

card_zero 2y ago
I really don't know, unfortunately. It seems important that we go beyond merely maintaining people in a state of being not dead, and enable them to feel young as well. This may cure a certain entrenched resentfulness. It will not, however, prevent people from being asshats or provide a mechanism by which they will eventually go away. Perhaps the concept of limited terms in power would be made more general to fields outside politics.
- deleted 2y ago
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- coldpie 2y ago
  Yeah I don't know either. Thanks to modern medicine, we already have enormous and growing problems with the accumulation of power and wealth in individuals. Currently, death is the only (legal/ethical) check we have on the people who have accumulated so much power that they are above the law. If we remove natural death, how can we ever get out from under the thumb of the uber-powerful? I'd really like to see more thought put into solving these problems before I could be convinced that longevity research is ethical.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    It's only ethical because we have no power to prevent their death. If research could be done that looked likely to extend lives, but we chose not to because we'd rather people die earlier, that's equivalent to stealthily killing them. We might as well be upfront about it, and have them slain for being too old, except then they'd tend to resist.
    - coldpie 2y ago
      Right, so we have two competing ethical problems: extending life is good, but also, it removes the one (ethical) tool we have to handle the problem of accumulation of power in individuals. This is the conflict I'm grappling with. I don't have a good answer to the problem.

card_zero 2y ago

I really don't know, unfortunately. It seems important that we go beyond merely maintaining people in a state of being not dead, and enable them to feel young as well. This may cure a certain entrenched resentfulness. It will not, however, prevent people from being asshats or provide a mechanism by which they will eventually go away. Perhaps the concept of limited terms in power would be made more general to fields outside politics.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
coldpie 2y ago
Yeah I don't know either. Thanks to modern medicine, we already have enormous and growing problems with the accumulation of power and wealth in individuals. Currently, death is the only (legal/ethical) check we have on the people who have accumulated so much power that they are above the law. If we remove natural death, how can we ever get out from under the thumb of the uber-powerful? I'd really like to see more thought put into solving these problems before I could be convinced that longevity research is ethical.
- card_zero 2y ago
  It's only ethical because we have no power to prevent their death. If research could be done that looked likely to extend lives, but we chose not to because we'd rather people die earlier, that's equivalent to stealthily killing them. We might as well be upfront about it, and have them slain for being too old, except then they'd tend to resist.
  - coldpie 2y ago
    Right, so we have two competing ethical problems: extending life is good, but also, it removes the one (ethical) tool we have to handle the problem of accumulation of power in individuals. This is the conflict I'm grappling with. I don't have a good answer to the problem.