The Purpose of Technology
balajis.com
balajis.com
This is natural, but also, myopic.
The dividends of research into immortality are incremental, but each breakthrough has the same outcome: increased quality of life. Humans become healthier; eventually, we last longer.
Yes, at the limit, there are problems with immortality: Sterling's Holy Fire is a great exploration of the problems a gerontocracy could pose, as is Morgan's Altered Carbon. Without older generations dying off, would there be any room for the young?
I submit that these would be excellent problems to have, that there is no guarantee we will ever have them, and that the dividends from trying to earn ourselves such problems would be considerable.
Across the entire planet there is unimaginable suffering everywhere one looks. Some of that suffering is obvious, while other suffering is hidden behind an illusion of prosperity. When considering how to invest finite resources, and claiming to seek a positive outcome for all, why not address the immediate problems?
Technology is knowledge of tools -- tools that provide leverage for solving (or causing) problems. As for why we have those tools, why we improve the ones we have, and why we invent new tools, aspirational goals are nice, but it seems callous to ignore applications that could significantly improve the quality of lives today; raising quality of life would also accelerate the rate of innovation.
Should we actively advance technology, and potentially spread out into space? Yes, I think we should. However, the more we spread out, the more advanced certain segments of humanity become, the more potential there is for others to be left out of the equation and relegated to the role of wasted human potential.
There is no problem more immediate.
There's no reason, at all, to sacrifice work on this problem to work on any other problem. There are plenty of industries and practices which actively make things worse. Let's divert resources from those instead.
- Adequate sanitation is an immediate problem.
- Adequate childhood nutrition is an immediate problem.
- Physical security in crime-laden areas is an immediate problem.
- Physical security in conflict zones in an immediate problem.
- Access to quality medical services is an immediate problem.
- Mosquito-borne illness is an immediate problem.
Religion - Among other things, religion's goal is to help people endure the inevitability of death. Thus, to many, this is a solved problem.
The age divide - Older people have the immediate need, but their ideas about tech are by now set in concrete. The young are open to more radical tech, but dying of old age isn't an immediate threat to them. Nor do these two cultures tend to mix.
Technological pessimism - There was a lot of overblown technological optimism in the mid-century, but the pendulum has since swung the other way. The word "chemical" no longer has positive connotations in popular culture, for example.
I find the article a bit naive, this question lies deep in the realm of philoshopy. What if technology and life merge at some point? It’s not hard to imagine that technology and life might become indistinguishable in the far future.
Unless you bypass the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Greg Egan's Permutation City provides a possible example), technology will get us asymptotically closer to true immortality. But even if we don't reach true immortality, reducing suffering caused by our current level of mortality is a noble goal.
As an example, an entity with a fractured consciousness that spans tens of thousands of lightyears (yet not necessarily dispersed enough to be considered immortal) would have a radically different concept of self. If one was uncomfortable with the concept of a few dying for the many, in order to perpetuate the species, then a dispersed consciousness devoid of a self seems equally unpalatable.
What technical studies often lose track of in their quest for perfection is a sense of balanced technique. If you want an immortalized thought you can very nearly achieve that by publishing a book. But an immortal body and mind is at odds with a developing body and mind. When we say immortality we surely don't mean "I can continue to be a glum and unfulfilled soul staring at a screen forever." And yet, with respect to our digital technologies it really is somewhat like that - more and more gets captured and archived. Does life improve? Depends on the measure. We address one set of traumas only to uncover others, at first dismissing them, and then gradually coming to afford them respect. It's extremely common not to recognize how screwed up we are.
If we were to say, instead of the preservation of your exact form, you get to be healed of past trauma and remain full of energy, but without controlling exactly where you end up, how you evolve, and maybe forgetting some of your past - would that still be immortal? And if so, then a existing healthy, fulfilled life is very near to that.
And I do believe philosophical thoughts like those are where we are going, since we have picked most of the low-hanging fruit leading to material comfort while still guarding it jealously and justifying a deficit in column A by pointing to spectacular achievements in columns B, C, and D. We have to realign the techniques and therefore the technologies to square it up.
Probably we would need to begin treating Coke'n'Pepsi like we treat tobacco: start with required warning labels, ultimately an advertising ban. Lead was a tough nut, but we cracked it. Tobacco was a tough nut, but we cracked it. Trans fats was a tough nut, but we finally got that one, too.
https://www.brainpreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...
Edit: I volunteer for the group that published that document
Here's a comparison though: War is another of those realities—like aging and death—that we seem to have normalized and accepted at a cultural level. It's fair to ask how economics, labor and allocation would play out once a civilization stops dumping a third of its resources into the destructive act of war, but to ask whether we should end the war, just because we're uncertain of the answers, strikes me as absurd.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aSQy7yHj6nPD44RNo/how-to-see...
That said, a reduction of suffering may naturally lead to extended lifespans. However, the elimination of mortality is something altogether different.
We have an entire universe to grow and expand into, along with the capability for long-term thinking. These problems are solvable problems and a critical part of reducing suffering.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . . . An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth." [0]
One can see Planck's Principle throughout human civilization, in practically every human endeavor. This is how we evolve as a species. Not just biologically, but culturally.