Of course I want to live as long as possible! Because life is awesome! I want more of it!
The fear of death is of course real, but that's not the main reason for wanting to live longer. I want more experience, I want to see what happens in the future! I want to understand more, learn more and be able to do it at a more relaxed pace without the feeling that time will run out!
The modern technological world has a certain approach to the individual Self and its experience of the world - it ought to be focused on almost to the exclusion of anything else. Nothing else ultimately matters, as long as your personal life experience continues - is what this philosophy ultimates boils down to.
Other people, in other places, value different things. Merely existing as long as possible is not their primary goal. And in fact, the lack of such ways to “use” one’s life and death in a meaningful way other than simply existing is one major cause of the modern malaise affecting many developed nations. To live and die for a purpose other than extending your own personal experience is something many people hunger for in current times.
Conversely, in today's world plenty of people would like to lengthen their lives, without that being their primary goal. Just because someone wants to live longer does not mean that it's the only thing they care about; it's even possible that some larger purpose is a major reason they want to live longer.
From a Buddhist perspective, "if you are a practitioner of the Dharma, someone who is putting the teachings into practice, there is great significance to doing long-life practice."
https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Long_life_practice
If you're deaf and live in a Deaf community (i.e. with sign language), you will function normally in virtually every way. If you're deaf and live in a hearing community with hearing aids, you'll be forever impaired. With hearing aids and/or CI you will still be hard of hearing, you will still struggle with group conversations, at the beach or in a swimming pool, in noisy environments and so on.
Secondly, the Deaf community strongly objects to the notion that lack of hearing is a handicap and instead consider it a cultural difference. Somehow, when (we) hearing people think of the deaf we consider it a disability to e.g. have to use a vibrating wakeup alarm, but we don't consider our own inability to fall asleep in a noisy place a disability.
(For reference, deaf=impaired hearing, Deaf=sign language user)
Consider a similar example: if immigrant parents could instantly make their children forget their native languages and learn English fluently, many would choose to do so – as it would give the children more economic/social advantages. And yet I don't think we really want to say that not doing that, and instead retaining the native language and culture, would be a coping mechanism.
Culture and disability is a really complicated thing and deaf culture specifically should not be brushed away as just a coping mechanism.
(Side note: I am deaf in one ear and agree with the commenter above that it's actually a benefit for going to sleep, but of course this isn't considered a benefit by society at large.)
I'm trying to find something to compare to, but not sure if I'm getting this right.
I can't sense radio waves in the 87-110Mhz range, but let's imagine that most people can. This means that they can hear all the FM radios all the time.
Certainly, this would be very annoying, especially if you are not able to block it out. In this sense, I would be better off - one less annoying thing to deal with.
Of course, everyone else would be able to be up to date with all the news instantly, as they would always hear them from the radio. And, assuming you also had the ability to "tune the station" that you can hear, you would be able to listen to music or interesting shows all the time. This would be good and fun.
Would I miss the ability that everyone else has? This is a very interesting question and I don't know the answer.
But, I would think that if someone gave me a wearable FM radio that I could turn on/off at will, I would think that I certainly would accept that.
Again, I'm sorry if this is not a good analogy and as all analogies this doesn't really capture all the nuances of course, but would this be similar at least in theory?
Personally, I do think the sense of hearing is important enough to be worth acquiring. But the underlying point, I think, is that deaf culture is not just a rationalization or coping mechanism. It's a fully-fledged culture. And while gaining the sense of hearing is probably "worth it" and a net gain, you're also losing something in the process.
To use myself as an example (although I'm not completely deaf) – while I wouldn't mind having my deaf ear fixed, being half-deaf has also shaped my personality and sense of self. So I wouldn't want to just label it as an unimportant coping mechanism, as it's much more fundamental than that – even if I ultimately did want to fix it. I imagine deaf people getting cochlear implants feel somewhat similar.
Evaluating it purely as a broken thing that is now fixed doesn't capture that aspect. And it's worth reflecting on how this idea that "useful = always better" is just a default assumption.
The language learning example I used is a good one in this instance: while it's nice that people can communicate more by learning English, it's also a process of destruction as local languages and cultures are eliminated and assimilated into a global English-language culture. The assumption that vocal communication + hearing is superior to sign language is a similar situation.
In this way it is an apt analogy, since many deaf get CI. The implant process removes any residual hearing, so the moment they turn it off everything is completely quiet. It's nowhere near a fully qualified hearing, however, so it's useful as a supplement to sign language, not as a replacement.
I don't know of a good analogy for it, but sign language obviously also carries with it some advantages and disadvantages that vocal communication does not. You need a flashlight to talk in darkness, but you can talk (sign) as much as you want in a library, through a soundprood window or in a noisy environment.
The conversation dynamics are also completely different. Often everyone will sit in a big circle with multiple conversations going on at once, and you can "opt in" to the one you want by watching whoever is speaking.
No, it's not, and this claim just shows your ignorance and prejudice.
> If there was a cure for deafness, nearly all deaf people would take it
This is pure conjecture, and I frankly think you are wrong.
> almost no one intentionally seeks to become deaf
Do you genuinely not understand that this has more to do with culture, language, habits and the familiar, not to mention ignorance of what it means to be deaf/Deaf, than an accurate judgment of the qualities of hearing vs. silence?
[0] https://i.postimg.cc/13tjX46q/before-after-hair-transplant.p...
So what happens is that those who aren't eligible for a solution often tell themselves that a hypothetical solution isn't even desirable at all, as a way to cope. This is where I was making the analogy with people praising death in these threads. My contention is that they're just rationalizing to deal with the fact that death is indeed inevitable, for now.
By "hate" what I really meant was that a subset of those who aren't eligible for a solution will "hate" those who are, because they are a reminder that their situation isn't actually desirable. I really should have wrote "deaf community hating on people with hearing aids or bald people hating on people with hair transplants."
In your case, it seems you acknowledge that an actual cure would be nice, but such a cure doesn't exist right now. I feel similarly towards death. I'm not about to do monthly "young blood transfusions" to gain a year or two of life but I acknowledge that a real cure would be nice.
PS: I absolutely meant no disrespect and understand that it's perfectly possible to live a good life as blind or deaf person.
«I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of dying pointlessly.»
(Don't remember the attribution.)
This feels similar to the people who advocate for dictatorships because they picture themselves as the dictators, and end up having their faces eaten by leopards. Statistically, you’re overwhelmingly likely to not end up in the elite in this new deathless world.
And yes, of course there will be issues, difficult ones. But life is, was and will always be filled with difficulty, obstacles, struggles and failures. Mine certainly is.
However, I believe in progress and overcoming obstacles and I believe that if we ever manage to extend life, we will figure out ways to make it work.
There is a lot of talk how finding jobs is more difficult these days if you are young and do not have experience. That real-estate is so expensive that nobody is able to afford it.
And I'm sure it's true.
But I also see a lot of young people succeeding and thriving in ways that I could not even have thought of. Therefore, I think there is reason to believe that the next generation will be able to find a way to make it work. As has every generation before.
When I was younger I used to think that situations in the world are now radically different from what the previous generation had to deal with. And on the first level of abstraction, they are! Computers did not exist for the generation before me. So of course it was new.
However, that is just the first level of abstraction. Take the second level of abstraction and you can look back and identify things that are completely new for each new generation. I mean, how different was the concept of going to work in a factory with a loom from the previous generation where machines did not exist at all!
It’s worth remembering that many generations lost a significant percentage of their population to war, death, famine, etc. They didn’t always find a way to make it work without significant death and suffering. Many who died probably wouldn’t say “we made it work” for their own lives.
Rawls’ veil of ignorance is relevant here:
In the original position, you are asked to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society.
You also overestimate the power of entrenched interests and underestimate the political agency of those who live in a functioning democracy.
You have provided no evidence that the diffusion of technology will be different under an extended lifespan regime. You just make a bald statement.
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to provide evidence of a future speculative event, but as I said, more life is about as strong as an incentive as is possible. There are plenty of examples of powerful technology that didn't become more accessible. Nuclear weapons as a prime example.
Now I don't think longevity tech, if such a thing is even possible (and I'm skeptical) will be as restricted as nuclear weapons. But to think that there won't be massive inequalities in access to it + strong power incentives to not distribute it seems naive to me.
> As of 2022, 2.2 billion people were without access to safely managed drinking water (SDG Target 6.1).
I don't think this invalidates your general point, but your specific example is wrong.
[1] “It was very rare for a pipe to supply water directly to the home of a private citizen, since Romans would have to acquire an official authorization to validate the direct tap. Water mostly serviced the ground floor in buildings, rarely supplying the upper floors due to the difficulty this would provide in the gravity-powered system. Residents of apartment buildings who lived in the upper floors would have to carry water upstairs and store it in their rooms for sanitary uses” from https://engineeringrome.org/the-water-system-of-ancient-rome....
And yes, there is still many parts of the world still in poverty, but that is changing rapidly and doesn’t change the larger point that technology, by and large, democratizes and filters to the poor.
Also, on capitalism, economic growth is also dependent at some level on population growth.
Eternal life would probably require some kind of socialism.
Long-term, sure, maybe we end up with a social mobility problem. But solving that seems less difficult than solving aging. Even if we didn't solve it, I'm not convinced it would be a bad trade.
Imagine we lived in world with an average lifespan of a thousand years but little social mobility. And some prominent person said "hey I know how to fix this, we'll just kill everyone on their 90th birthday." I doubt many people would consider that a viable solution, rather than a ridiculously bad one.
I don't think I've ever heard of anyone saying this.
A group of skilled and motivated people who spend a small percentage of their lives on a ship, is going to be very different from a group that is trapped in a small town for generations.
My estimate would be that the mission to succeed is going to need 10-100x more people on generational ship compared to a transport ship. (million vs tens of thousands.)
However the "not how it works" comment ... well, you could make that pretty much throughout the time that humans have lived. We have been continuously changing the environment around us to suit our needs and wants. Early farmers burned down forests to get fertilized land. We domesticated crops and animals and bred them to grow the way we wanted them. We built things to make life safer, better and easier.
You could say "that's not how it works" about a tractor or wheat with multiple stems from a single seed.
But of course, there will be problems that need to be overcome if we ever do figure out ways of extending life. But again, there always have been problems with new inventions.
I firmly believe that humanity has the ability to overcome problems, develop, learn and improve. And that aligns well with wanting more life!