Curious: what are the best args against increased human healthspan which pass the status quo bias test?
(I've heard lots of reasonable-seeming args against increased longevity, but none survived "imagine the avg lifespan is 200 yrs; would you propose halving it with this arg?")
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A huge chunk of the life extension stuff we’ve got going in seems a lot closer to prolonging death and even if we figured out how to make death take 100 years I’d be against it
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Basically current life extension doesn’t provide for extra years of quality living, just extra years of rotting above ground instead of below
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None of our social welfare systems in the US are designed for that population distribution and I’m skeptical that the government would be able to pass something that would raise retirement ages proportionally.
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Checking: does this pass the status quo bias test for you? If we lived in a world in which avg healthspan was 200 years, would you propose halving it in order to have a better social welfare system?
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If people lived to 200 but spent 100 years with the body of the average geriatric, unable to work or provide for themselves, that'd be a pretty massive drag on societal progress.
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I do think this thought experiment hijacks our logic a bit by triggering loss aversion (which of course is as human a heuristic as any).
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This is a good point. Maybe stacking the deck too heavily.
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Another test one should apply in this context:
Solving any problem leads to new problems, and immortality will lead to new problems.
But, are those problems worse than experiencing the death toll of WWII *every year*?
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Replying to @DavidDeutschOxf and @chlodulfmaximi1
The threat from elders’ bad ideas, even *if* serious, cannot compare to the present annual death rate of 55,000,000 - roughly equivalent to experiencing WWII *every year*.
Also, most of our best ideas were *created* by our Enlightenment ancestors. I’d keep them around!
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Because it's fundamentally insane to believe living longer would make us happier.
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