I have seldom read such an amazing load of (sorry, to say it this way) bullshit and disdain of the old/being old.
I am in my thirties and I really am in awe the live, the doings, the stories of a lot of elders around me.
Sorry, but how young are you?
Getting older and eventually dying is imho, what defines our humanity. Granted, we have learned to extend live by a reasonably amount and have also, in a lot of cases, learned to lengthen it in a way, that gives people a lot of life-quality during their elder years.
In former times, being 40 to 50 meant you were frail, old, broken by hard work, and so on. Now, in most cases, that happens probably in your 70ies.
Anecdotal: Looking at my stepfather, who is helping us renovate our home and being 78, I wonder, how I will ever be able to do that much, when I am his age. Or my slightly younger stepmother.
By the way, he rides his bicycle for 4.500 miles every year, just for fun...
> If you doubt this, consider that practically any old person would be willing to give up all of their material possessions to inhabit the body of a 20 year-old.
Oh yeah, I really doubt this - I know a lot of older people and most of them would not want this trade in.
You are arguing from a very dangerous standpoint, as you argue, that cognitive decline makes live unworthy (and with that every old person). Thinking your argument through you arrive very fast at a point, where we have to get rid of older people, as their lives are "ineffectual life", I really feel only contempt for this race for efficiency, when it is used to divide people into categories like worthy/unworthy or lives in effectual/ineffectual.
Sorry, but I have to take a stand here, as your inhuman comment is the most upvoted here, standing on top. For me, that stains the whole of this community.
So now, let the downvotes beging. ;-)