That's very easy to say until it's your partner, mother/father, or child on the other side of that assertion.
If you're curious and have time, I'd suggest the following excellent exploration of the idea of extinguishing natural death by CGP Grey. He uses an interesting analogy to help challenge the ingrained belief that natural death is just
https://youtu.be/cZYNADOHhVY?si=oCqVGD5RX9Q0Cnrk
Living forever and living longer shouldn't be grouped together; living forever means unbounded existence and unbounded consumption over time. That's a fundamental paradigm shift for our entire system of being human.
Saving extending the lives of more children is unfortunately, a statistics change for our current world. Unlimited life means all models of economics, morality generally, class, etc will be affected.
> Unlimited life means all models of economics, morality generally, class, etc will be affected.
That's also going to happen with automation — and I don't just mean AI, as it has been happening continuously since the power loom led to Karl Marx inventing Communism, or possibly even earlier with the social and technological changes of Adam Smith's era and the end of feudalism.
CGP Grey doesn't explore what happens after death is defeated. I can't imagine how it can lead to anything but a stagnated society, with prejudices and inequalities enshrined forever.
Wouldn’t it be the other way around? Now, since the effects of our prejudice, inequality etc, are usually borne way after we die, we don’t get to see the effects of our decisions. If we get to live a lot longer, we’ll be wiser in making better, more balanced decisions.
As for stagnation, sure earth itself is quite overpopulated, but there is nothing technologically stopping humanity from colonizing the solar system.
If humanity gets it shit together and becomes slightly more organized, those experiments in society will just happen in geographically different places.
The “red mars, blue mars, green mars” trilogy explores this quite well, even if the science is a bit dated, the politics aspects of the books are quite interesting, tackling future colonization and longevity’s political pressures and opportunities.
That's a very rosy view of humans. The average person gets older, not wiser; they see the consequences of their actions and find someone else to blame. Real social and cultural change comes from new generations.
> That's very easy to say until it's your partner, mother/father, or child on the other side of that assertion.
The idea isn't that poor people will get life extension, it's that families of billionaires will get it. And no it won't "trickle down" life expectancy is actually decreasing in USA despite tech gains.
Didn't most of the additional deaths come from COVID, drug overdoses and suicides? While those are terrible and need to be addressed, those don't seem to be related to availability of medical treatment.
>Deaths of despair are linked to economic system configuration,[..]
Sure there is a correlation between deaths of despair and poverty. However, the argument here was that healthcare advances won't tickle down with the evidence being declining life expectancy. That's a totally different claim. As of 2021 over 90% of Americans had health insurance coverage and AFAIK the vast majority of proven, legitimate treatments are available to those insured people. (sauce: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...).
>pushed by the wealthy to remain static
What class war, conspiracy nonsense is this? Do you think "the rich" get together once a year, smoke cigars and discuss what policies to convince everyone of in order to keep the poors down because they are idiots who believe the world is a zero-sum-game?
> Do you think "the rich" get together once a year, smoke cigars and discuss what policies to convince everyone of in order to keep the poors down because they are idiots who believe the world is a zero-sum-game?
Sort of. No cigars though, just "how can we solve the poors without giving up what we have?" Notice no public policy or tax increases to actually solve the problems.
If each person would be better off if there were fewer people, then you're looking at a zero sum game.
If some groups have outsized resources to play that game, it wouldn't be surprising if they found themselves playing it. There doesn't have to be any conspiracy. Unless they take steps to interrupt the process, people's behavior naturally aligns with whatever is best for the group they feel they're part of.
It's how we got racism and lots of other toxic garbage. To pretend it doesn't exist is to give it a place to hide.
The rich and powerful need everyone to use any such tech, even if only to find the edge cases where it doesn't work right.
That the USA has a seriously messed up healthcare system and declining life expectancy is a problem for the USA, and part of the reason I didn't move there.
If there is a working longevity treatment, do you think that other nations will tolerate it being used for US billionaires and no one else?
Literally everyone ages. 8 billion potential patients on the planet, with the population still growing. If you sell the cure for USD 100 to half of them, you make a lot more money (real money, not just market value) than Elon Musk.
We only need to look at nature to see that everything dies. It is natural, and necessary.
I am not in any way saying that people should be euthanized or disease not treated or that people not live out their natural lives. But artificial extension of life will only result in those who can afford it staying in power forever.
That's a logical fallacy. The argument you are responding to is not logical, but rhetorical (argument by analogy, based on the premise that analogous systems behave in similar ways). Logical fallacies don't apply to rhetorical arguments in a logical way.
We can all do better than pedantically pointing out logical fallacies, as no argument outside of mathematics is completely logical.
We only need to look to nature to find the immortal jellyfish.
Much of medical science is "artificial" extension of life. Natural would be you dying of Smallpox at a young age. Instead you've artificially extended your life with a vaccine.
If you're curious and have time, I'd suggest the following excellent exploration of the idea of extinguishing natural death by CGP Grey. He uses an interesting analogy to help challenge the ingrained belief that natural death is just https://youtu.be/cZYNADOHhVY?si=oCqVGD5RX9Q0Cnrk