Claudia

Has any of you read the book "Le Grand Secret", from Rene Barjavel? (sorry, I do not know the title in disease). People there have discovered immortality (at least non-aging-after-sexual maturity) and it is a contagious disease!

excreationist

Claudia:
That sounds like a French book... I haven't read it... BTW, how is the disease spread?

Theli

excreationist...
Don't be dim, I wasn't refering to a 20.000 year old person here. We were on the subject of euthanasia (sorry about my terrible spelling, didn't have my dictionary available ).

I wasn't suggesting any practical solution or course of action, nor am I really interested in how we would achieve "immortality". That's why I posted it in the moral... forum. This post have strayed far enough from the topic.

Claudia

Yes, it is a French book, but sometimes it happen that these are translated .
It spreads by personnal contact. And the book for a large part deals with the initial question of this thread, in a novel shape.

Jamie_L

There's nothing immoral in achieving immortality. Any more than there is anything immoral in inventing the car. Bad things may come of it. Good things may come of it. It's the situational decisions that have moral choices attached to them. Pursuing indefinite longevity hurts no one.

Jamie

Theli

Tronvillain...
If you were to plant a bomb in a school and use a timer to trigger it, the timer is set on 30 years wich would mean that the children that would go to that school doesn't exist when you are setting up the bomb. It will however go off in 30 years and kill students who are in that building. Would you consider your own actions to be morally justifiable, because the consequences of your deed will affect people that doesn't live yet?
How do you explain that?

1. They are existent after you have died, and your actions might affect their lives.
2. Do you have no moral responsibilities towards strangers?
The notyet-born doesn't even need to be your descendents.

Obviously, this is one reason why my example is abit flawed. When it comes to future born children, we can assume that they will exist. But in the example of immortality, the might not depending on your own actions.

If you kill a person you are not depriving him of his life. He have already lived, and you cannot take that away from him. What you are depriving him is his future life, his future existence. Something he hasn't had. So, yes you can deprive a person of something he does not yet have. Something he would have had, if you had not acted the way you did (increasing your own lifespan).
Speaking within the example obviously, I mean, I don't think you have increased your lifespan dramaticly.
It's the question ofcourse, if we are required to have offspring whenever we can. But such a requirement would result in suffering for lots and lots of people, and isn't justifiable either.


Psycho Economist...
Obviously, taking a person's chance to be born away wouldn't have the same type of emotional pain on surrounding people as murder would. Although a pain would still exist, that of perhaps never be allowed to have children. Under hundreds of years. Point A would not exist, but B would.
About the right for the unborn, read my response to Tronvillian in this post.

Clearly less children than we have now would be adviceble, atleast in some places. About moral imperative, one could argue that by being given a chance to live by the past generation we owe the next generation the same. It is clearly in the interest of humanity, and isn't that the cornerstone for morality?


Joe V...
This ofcourse is a good question, what would be more beneficial for the society/community and for the individuals, a constant flow of new people or the same people.
By halting our growth are we helping humanity, or are there benefits of being a child (for a significant portion of your life) or growing old (bodywise)?
There would ofcourse be a choice for the individual, but that's off topic.

tronvillain

Theli:
Ah, but when the bomb goes off it will kill people who do exist and as a result actually do have rights. I would not consider those actions morally justifiable because of the rights those people are going to have, not because of any rights they have now. If no children are ever born who go to that school, I will be far more likely to consider those actions morally justifiable.

1) While my actions will certainly affect their lives, I have little idea what those effects will be. The only significant I could take that might reasonably be expected to impact there welfare would be how I raise my children and grandchildren, or leaving them some form of wealth.

2) I have a few moral responsibilities to strangers, but most of them involve things I agree to not do directly to them like steal from them or kill them. My more indirect impacts on them do not concern me significantly - if I could get a high paying job at the expense of the jobs of a thousand strangers I would take the job, while I might not take a high paying job at the expense of the job of a friend or family member.

3) You were the one who brought up my descendents.

Our every action results in the eventual non-existence of future children, but usually also results in the existence of difference future children. Apparently the problem you have with immortality is that it does not result in the same number of future children existing as it does not existing? We will exist in their place. Why is it important that someone else exist rather than simply someone existing?

tronvillain

Anyway, the solution is fairly obvious: if you want to have a child, you either wait until someone dies in an accident or you give up immortality and are permitted to have one child.

Jamie_L

Or - and here's a wild idea - you wait until there's evidence that a problem is actually going to exist before you start restricting people's freedoms in response to it.

Jamie

Psycho Economist

Tronvillain, Jamie_L... <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

I don't know why I chose to fight on Theli's ground instead of making sure we were all on the same page first.

Who am i inflicing pain upon by exercising my choice not to have children? It's not as if I propose those who don't get their immortality serum ought to be deprived of the right to have children.

I'd like to see you argue that... in another thread. I don't know if I have any good counter-arguments or not.

What is in the interest of humanity, really? What is our goal? Our purpose? I'm of the opinion that life is so abundant because life that was jealous of its existance was simply more successful. But that doesn't say anything about what life should do, from a rational standpoint. I agree, I wouldn't want to be in the last generation... but somebody will be.

I've been seeing this in the same way as Tronvillain... I thought we were all on the same page. "Immortals" go into a queue, and can have a kid whenever some other immortal dies. Sure, some people will be in that queue for a very long time, and sure more than a few will inevitably die (in homicides and accidents) before they can have their kids, but it seems a fair (free of systematic bias) system to me.

What's more, is there will eventually be a new equillibrium. Hyper-medical interventions might push lifespans out to 400 , 800 , 1,600 , or 32,000 years, but there will eventually be a new upper-limit on lifespan. So there will be a long pause, but inevitably, birth and death rates will get back "to normal".

[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: Psycho Economist ]</p>