SecularFuture

Luiseach
Ouch. And imagine the arthritis that you would have.

Very good point.

The same applies to buying a cheeseburger or a house. I don’t see the problem. Is it unfair that some people have to live in apartments? It is unfair that some people have to eat TV dinners? If you work hard enough, and have enough patience [etc], you can buy what ever you want.

SecularFuture

Jinto
Right. Low income families could always save up for it, like they would do for a child’s college payment.

What’s so great about being human? I think it sucks. I would rather be a machine with human qualities [ex. Emotions]. We get sick too easily, and we have too many limitations.

All for the better.

Maybe they could apply for a grant or a loan.

Living in space sounds kind of exciting. It would take some getting used to though.

Luiseach

Is it unfair? That depends on how 'fairness'/'unfairness' is defined, by whom it is defined, and in whose favour it is defined.

As for the hypothetical folks you mention (i.e. those who 'have to' eat TV dinners and 'have to' live in apartments), are you speaking about people living in poverty, or people who aren't poor but can't quite afford to buy a detached house, or...???

What justification would be offered for the exclusion of those people who would not be able to afford to buy immortality, seeing as this would include the vast majority of the world's population?

Furthermore, can we reasonably justify equating immortality with a cheeseburger?

Hmmm...it just isn't so that hard work and patience (or even merit) lead inevitably to financial empowerment...not everyone is or can be so wealthy as to be able to 'buy whatever [they] want,' even if they work hard and are patient.

These are just some potential ethical and financial problems that would be associated with a scheme such as 'immortalism.'

victorialis

yo, SecularFuture, I hope you're having a good Friday night:

1. If being human sucks, why would being human for an unlimited period of time be better? Would we be prepared to wait an unknown length of time for our personal utopia to become reality? (Those who are so inclined can actually do that now, without benefit of immortality.)

2. Luiseach said it! "can we reasonably justify equating immortality with a cheeseburger?" Do we really want immortality to be the aspirational apex of consumerism? No doubt lots of folk would cheerfully go further into hock than they already are; beyond a certain point, what does more debt matter? Especially if you have eternity to pay it off -- or not pay it off. That's why I mentioned adverse selection in the first place.

3. You asked, "If we had all of the time in the world, don’t you think that we would eventually find a way to solve every problem, or at least most of them?"

Immortality changes the paradigm, whether it's universally available or not. For this reason my answer to your question is
No. If we don't solve the problem set we've already got as mortals, it is even less likely we would do it as immortals.

The question appears to presuppose that there would be no pain involved in the solving -- which is unlikely. That pain could be of very, very long duration and produce some awful complications to the original problem set. Luiseach's got a handle on that. I don't see a qualitative difference yet between immortalism and what we've already got.

At best, immortality would move the goalposts for the whole species; in one worse-case scenario, it would set human rights back to before square one. What would save this project from creeping elitism?

4. A prison planet for sociopaths? This solution is only different in scale, not in its nature. If we could get 'em onto a prison planet, they could get themselves off the prison planet. And the near planets would say NIMBY.

Tasty topic, thanks for posting it. It's a good enough idea to be worth testing as hard as possible.

Jinto

Somehow, I get the impression that this technology will be substantially more expensive than a college payment.

What's so great about being human is that under our current system of laws, I have various legal rights. However, if I become something other than a human, then there arises a serious question as to whether I should have more rights than, say, your personal computer. I am almost certain that religous fundamentalists, who like to impose their viewpoints on everyone else, will use this issue to turn immortals into property, on the grounds that they are not human, and use this as a deterrent to people becoming immortal.

Will this be before or after corporations stop manipulating our trade policies to help them better exploit the people of these third-world countries?

Just remember that when you throw things they travel n a straight line, rather than a parabola, and you'll be fine.

John Page

But the immortals would procrastinate, given that the need to achieve within any particular timeframe is removed. The mortals, on the other hand, would be driven to achieve and would thus evolve (although immortals could try and evolve artificially) to beings superior than immortals who would be eventually slaughtered (survival of the fittest) so they wouldn't be immortal.

Cheers, John

SecularFuture

Luiseach
I was talking about all people. Nothing is free in this world. Maybe some things should be free. I don’t know. Houses aren’t cheap, and neither would the pricing for becoming Immortal.

Ugg… I don’t know.
[see comments below]

What? Should becoming Immortal be free? Should a house just be free so that everyone could get one? No. You get a job, save up money --- its all about being smart and productive, and working for what you want.

Its not a “scheme”.

SecularFuture

victorialis
If medicine and technology continues to improve, so will the state of humans. We’re already living longer, and healthier lives than we did 100 years ago. Imagine how it would be 1,000 years from now, or even 1,000,000. You have to put things into perspective. Same thing applies with space travel, and the idea of colonizing other planets.

I’m sure most [the ones who want immortality] would be. And if you don’t want immortality, you could always just die and not be bothered with it.

I don’t know. Everything else is. I have to think about this one.

Why are you making it sound so complicated? Why would the world have to radically change if people stopped dying? Why couldn’t things remain [fairly] the same, with some minor changes here and there, adjustments in schedules, etc.

Nah – there could always be some guards nearby in some space station, with their hands on a “planet self-destruct” button if things get out of hand.

You're welcome.

Luiseach

I have quite a few questions:

Then you realise that most of the world's population would be excluded from the prospect of immortality simply because they couldn't afford it? To repeat: how can we justify this ethically?

You are equating eternity with cheeseburgers again...how can we justify this comparison? What are the parallels between houses/cheeseburgers and immortality?

Are you saying that eternity should be a commodity (like a house or a burger)? Why can't we have it as a right rather than as a privilege?

What is it then?

SecularFuture

Jinto
Not really. Actually – a good bunch of the Immortalist / Transhumanist groups are nonprofit.

I see it like this: If you were the offspring of a human at one time, you should have the same rights as other humans. It’s that simple.

Huh?

Interesting theory.