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Yes. Although I am in favor of life extension, I worry about the consequences for politics if people like Fidel Castro or Kim Jong Il were to live for 500 years

by xaa 14y ago

Yes. Although I am in favor of life extension, I worry about the consequences for politics if people like Fidel Castro or Kim Jong Il were to live for 500 years. Or for that matter, for tech if Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison lived that long.

reasonattlm 14y ago
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/08/a-terrible-reason-to-oppose-healthy-life-extension.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/08/a-terrible-reason... Here is a short piece on the immortal dictator argument that shows up from time to time as one of the reasons given to continue to let billions die of aging: "But what if, the critics continue, you had a dictator who could live more or less for thousands of years? Wouldn't it be a good thing if he was guaranteed to die at some point and the people he oppressed had a chance to start anew? Wouldn't the sacrifice be worth it? No, it wouldn't, and here's why. Basically, we're being asked to give a potential means of extending our life spans so we can be sure that just a small handful of people and their cronies would be dead at some point in time. We can't always kill them or depose them, so we'll be outsourcing the assassination to nature. Anyone see the problem here? Of the over seven billion people who aren't dictators, who do we think is expendable enough to die alongside our targets for the sake of the anti-dictator cause? If I may reach for a little hyperbole, how different is the logic that all the billions who will die in the process are fair game because their death helps the cause from that of all terrorist groups who believe that civilians of the countries they hate can be on the hit list because killing them hurts an enemy and may force him to retreat? This is a rather crass way of saying that the ends justify the means and I doubt that they really do in this case. We could take this logic further and cast all modern medicine as being a dictator enabling technology. Maybe last week Assad would've tripped, fallen, hurt himself, then got his wound infected and was soon dead from septic shock, helping to end the civil war in Syria. Does this mean we must now give up our disinfectants and advanced medical treatments to make sure bad people die easier?"
- xaa 14y ago
  A true dictator could reserve life extension technology only for himself and his cronies. It would be the ultimate weapon for political control. I actually agree that the potential benefits outweigh the risks. But as with all transhumanist technology, the risks are quite enormous.
  - jbverschoor 14y ago
    There is ALWAYS a way to assasinate someone
    - mikecane 14y ago
      And there is also Nature to do the killing: Flu.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  This is not quite addressing the point, I think. The appropriate thing is to bite the bullet - it's probably true and unfortunate that some dictatorial regimes would last longer. It's not a very hard bullet, though - if we are viewing aging as a weapon against dictators, it's a pretty poor one; a nuclear ICBM strike on Pyongyang would be, by comparison, surgical.

by xaa 14y ago

reasonattlm 14y ago

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/08/a-terrible-reason-to-oppose-healthy-life-extension.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/08/a-terrible-reason... Here is a short piece on the immortal dictator argument that shows up from time to time as one of the reasons given to continue to let billions die of aging: "But what if, the critics continue, you had a dictator who could live more or less for thousands of years? Wouldn't it be a good thing if he was guaranteed to die at some point and the people he oppressed had a chance to start anew? Wouldn't the sacrifice be worth it? No, it wouldn't, and here's why. Basically, we're being asked to give a potential means of extending our life spans so we can be sure that just a small handful of people and their cronies would be dead at some point in time. We can't always kill them or depose them, so we'll be outsourcing the assassination to nature. Anyone see the problem here? Of the over seven billion people who aren't dictators, who do we think is expendable enough to die alongside our targets for the sake of the anti-dictator cause? If I may reach for a little hyperbole, how different is the logic that all the billions who will die in the process are fair game because their death helps the cause from that of all terrorist groups who believe that civilians of the countries they hate can be on the hit list because killing them hurts an enemy and may force him to retreat? This is a rather crass way of saying that the ends justify the means and I doubt that they really do in this case. We could take this logic further and cast all modern medicine as being a dictator enabling technology. Maybe last week Assad would've tripped, fallen, hurt himself, then got his wound infected and was soon dead from septic shock, helping to end the civil war in Syria. Does this mean we must now give up our disinfectants and advanced medical treatments to make sure bad people die easier?"

xaa 14y ago
A true dictator could reserve life extension technology only for himself and his cronies. It would be the ultimate weapon for political control. I actually agree that the potential benefits outweigh the risks. But as with all transhumanist technology, the risks are quite enormous.
- jbverschoor 14y ago
  There is ALWAYS a way to assasinate someone
  - mikecane 14y ago
    And there is also Nature to do the killing: Flu.
dllthomas 14y ago
This is not quite addressing the point, I think. The appropriate thing is to bite the bullet - it's probably true and unfortunate that some dictatorial regimes would last longer. It's not a very hard bullet, though - if we are viewing aging as a weapon against dictators, it's a pretty poor one; a nuclear ICBM strike on Pyongyang would be, by comparison, surgical.