Theli

Psycho Economist...
Wouldn't you say that by killing a person, you would deprive him the chance of growing old, stealing his future? And isn't that the same situation for the child that will never live because you insisted on continuing your own existence beyond your natural lifespan?

Under the same principle, we shouldn't bother recycling garbage, using clean industries or any other enviroment preserving actions for that matter. Our future children doesn't exist yet, so there is no person existing now who will really pay for our neglectance yet. I don't see how this argument holds water.

Obviously there is a problem with unwanted pregnancies and overpopulation. Both are cause for suffering, and any such actions should be considered wrong. If you are going to have a child, it's your responsibility to care for it, obviously.

But, there could be a living person.


Seraphim...
Good point, but I think it would be ok if there was a way to erase your memories. So that you atleast think you are experiencing things for the first time.


Demosthenes...
Also a good point. The boredom and misery, is related to their "bodilly age", rather than their experiences. If we would be able to tamper with the genes so that people would never age, everyone would run around looking like they were 20. Noone would want to live a thousand years with a broken hip and tired old skin.


tronvillain...
Would you suggest any kind of rights for notyetborn people? Your great-great-great-great grandson for instance, if your actions would affect his life, his happiness and wellfare, wouldn't you have a moral responsibility towards him? Or would he have to be facing you for you to care?


excreationist...
Youthanasia, yes. Are there any arguments against it? Why shouldn't a person living through tubes plugged in his mouth, with no chance of recovery be alowed to die? Just so that his relatives can keep him like a living tombstone.

A geneticly altered person (that cannot age) would probably have immunity towards all common deceases, so there would not be any needed medicin. Tough luck, I guess.

Yes.
About the other examples, you are building a strawman. If you were to live 2 lifetimes (so to speak) it would mean that 1 person would not have a chance to be, as you would be filling the slot. As our average lifespan increases constantly, our birth-rate must decrease to avoid overpopulation.

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: Theli ]</p>

tronvillain

Theli:
No, I would not suggest any kind of rights for the not yet born, just as I would not suggest any kinds of rights for fictional characters. When they exist, they can have rights.

I have no moral responsibilities towards my distant descendents. They are nonexistent strangers with whom I share a few genes. Even if I could predict how my actions would affect them, their happiness would be of minor concern compared to my happiness and that of those close to me. Of course, that assumes that these descendents will eventually exist - it is an entirely different matter if they will not.

tronvillain

Theli:
No, that is not the same situation - in the latter case no one is deprived of anything. To be deprived of life, one must first possess it.

Jamie_L

Well, tronvillain's approach is one way to view those "not yet born". Here's another:

There's a difference between those who will be born and those who could be born.

For instance: we KNOW there will be future generations of people after we die (barring some cataclysm). One could therefore argue the morality of actions that would impact future generations. Those generations will definitely be there to experience the results of our actions.

However, that is different from talking about people who could be born: Specific individuals that would result from specific sperm-ova combinations that may or may not come to pass. We definitely have NO moral obligation to these potential people. Again, to say that we do leads to all sorts of ridiculous scenarios in which people can be held immoral for not procreating as much as the ecosystem will bear. A woman having a period becomes tantamount to murder. It's just an untennable position, as far as I see it.

Jamie

Psycho Economist

The important thing is not that you're depriving someone of a chance to grow old... it's that you're A) Ending his continued subjective existance without his consent, and B) Inflicting pain on those who are close to him. You are literally taking his life away from him and those he loves. Someone (and I use the term losely) who isn't alive has no life to take away.

Except that children do exist, and doubtless will be born independent of our personal actions. And they will have a better or worse quality of life (may even be demonstrably hurt) by how we (collevtively and individually, at the margin) choose to balance standard of living against environmental sustainability.

How come there is there a moral imperative for each of us, individually to have children? How many are we required to have? Is childlessness motivated by other reasons wrong?

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: Psycho Economist ]</p>

excreationist

Theli:
I thought this 20,000 year old you were talking about was healthy and didn't need tubes, etc, to stay alive. If they needed medical help to survive they could refuse it, like people can today.

I thought that was what you were talking about. Or do you mean that there could be 20,000 year olds who are shrivelled up living skeletons?
BTW, because of "telemorese" or something (a buffer at the end of DNA that stops damage during copying) we have a limited lifespan. Putting people on machines won't stop that. You'd need to make genetically engineered babies or use "gene therapy" on the living to stop that problem. I think it would stop the breakdown of the body which happens when people "go over the hill".

If having lots of people live their lives on earth is important, maybe lifespans should be shorter than our current technology allows...
If the life expectancy was halved, 2 people would be able to have lived in the time 1 normally would have.
So should we stop using our technology that stops the average life expectancy being raised? Should research into the elimination of aging be outlawed?
What if someone like Einstein was genetically engineered so that he couldn't age... is he allowed to live as long as he wants or can the government stop helping him medically in an effort to kill him once he reaches a certain age?
So basically I'm wondering about the implications of actually implementing that kind of morality now or in the future....

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

Joe V.

Here's my 2 cents. I believe that offering indefinite lifespans would actually be a benefit to humanity as a whole. Think about it. If you knew you could live forever, yet still die by someone killing you, what do you think yourself and everybody would be willing to do to ensure that we all live forever? You certainly couldn't live forever if you fight in a war, and history shows that wars happen all the time. How many people are going to risk their immortality by fighting in one? How many people are going to risk angering others to the point of being killed? I'm sure some will, but the smart ones are those who will find a way to live and work together in peace, and they'll be the ones who live the longest. I believe the heaviest price of immortality will be mutual cooperation and as a result, world peace. It might just be the only way to achieving world peace.

And what would I want to do with my immortality? There's hundreds of billions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy alone. I could take up a pretty good chunk of my time visiting every single one of them. With so many worlds to visit, I can't imagine how a life of immortality would ever get boring.

- Joe

Seraphim

"At least you're establishing it as an option."

My reply : Yes, option made by the person who going to live forever, NOT their parents or the loved one. He or she must carefully consider immortality to be the right choice or not before making the decision.

"If it becomes possible and given the chance, I would do everything to ensure that I lived for as long as possible. There are too much things I want to do and I most of all especially want to see how the future turns out. There are people who wants to impose their idea of whether immortality is morally wrong on the entire population. The Bush bioethicist Leon Kass particularly wants to end all life extension efforts claiming that "life would be meaningless without death". How so? To me, it's nothing more than a rationalization of death and the powerful force it has been on the entire history of human civilization. Just because the past generations always died doesn't mean that the future generations have to."

My reply : You think the future going to turn out to be happy? Well, your choice to wait and find out. I personally have this annoying feeling that something big going to happen and it won't be an happy occasion ...

Yes, people would prefer to live a normal lifespan. It's fine by me, I'm happy for their choice and their decicion as long as they don't impose it on me. It is outrageous that there are people who would dicate how people chose to live based on their own concept of morality.

My reply : Yup, that's our choice to live and die, your choice to live.

"The basic definition of a singularity is a point where the laws and the predictive powers breaks down and we're incapable of predicting what happens within, during, or after the singulary. You can find it in mathematics and physics. But the particular one we're talking about concerns the evolution of a technological society. It was noticed that the development of technology and cultural innovation is an exponential curve. To be able to see it, recall that during the prehistory tens of thousands of years to millions of years ago, there were very little progression and it was slooowww. It took tens of thousands for significant changes to occur ranging from fire control to developing urban centers. "

"Now we've arrived to the 20th century where progression is moving so fast that we now see massive changes occuring on the scale of mere years, and it's still going fast, dropping to only months to days to see major occurances. That's not just for technology, it's also for social and cultural changes. There are many parallel trends all showing similiar development. Eventually everything will be occuring so quickly and hitting such a exponential growth that it receeds beyond our horizons and our ability to figure out what's occuring.

That's the basic outline of the Singularity."

My reply : I think I understand how it applied to Immortality. I think it is related to those trend I mentioned early.

If a person got used to making the same choice and mistake all the time, it will be a trend for him. A society with people who got used to trends can become a singular in every ways. In the end, what you have is a society that doesn't move forward or backward, but stays in one spot for eternity because they got used to that spot.

I think I understand now why the dinosaurs were wiped out now ... I believe it is because they have reach singularity where everything that can happen happens.

Putney Swope

Judging by the way society (worldwide) is heading, immortality will only be available to the wealthy, and they'll use the additional years to get even more wealthy. And from what I've seen of the current crop, I'd just as soon cash it in and let myself go. They aren't the most "Moral" bunch now, so I doubt it will be any different then. The "Golden Rule" will be in effect and overrule any reasonable concept of morality. Those with the "Gold" will make "The Rules", just like today, and I assure you that they will NOT be moral.

So to answer the question, it is NOT moral. Any way you slice it, "Imortality" will insure the eventual demise of "Morality".

"Sorry for the inconvenience." ~Douglas Adams

excreationist

BTW, a lot of dictatorship regimes last for as long as the dictator lives... so if people could live many centuries, etc, then so would those dictators...
That's assuming they can stop assassination attempts, but if they ruthlessly kill anyone who doesn't seem extremely loyal, including their family, then they would probably avoid that, as many famous dictators have. Some of those dictators, like Saddam, also have body doubles which look identical and make it harder to assassinate the real dictator.