Theli

The point is that the birthrate would have to be very controlled, as the deathrate would dramaticly decrease. And many people would have to live very long lives not having any children. Ofcourse the option could exist to forsake your immortality to become a parent.

To be continued...

excreationist

Actually I don't think that would be the case...

To have a stable population, each couple could have two children during their entire lifetimes. I guess the birth-rate would go down then (since they would only be able to have two children in their ENTIRE lifetime), but on a per couple basis, they would still be able to have a normal amount of children.

excreationist

Theli:
What about this thing I posted though:

That is similar to what you said here:
If our lifespans were shorter than they are now, the birth-rate would be able to be greater while maintaining a stable population so more people would "have a chance to be, filling the slot".

e.g. if people had an average lifespan of 40 years and everyone had 2 kids, there would be a stable population where people are replaced about every 40 years. If they had an average lifespan of 80 years, then only half the number of people would exist in that society throughout time. And if their lifespan was 160 years, then a quarter would exist throughout time. (compared to the 40 year lifespan scenario, 3/4 wouldn't have a "chance to be").

Even if we eliminate death by natural causes, people will still eventually die by other causes, such as murder, suicide and accidents (car accidents are quite common - there are also freak accidents like falling objects). Though those causes of death have a low chance, if a person is around a long time, the probability would increase a lot. And perhaps some fundamentalists would seek out the really, really old people and assassinate them for going against nature. And if they still aren't dead after a few million or billion years, maybe the death of the universe would kill them.

So even if death by natural causes is eliminated, death would still happen and there would still be an average lifespan. So then it would be like those examples I talked about earlier.

If having less people experience life in the world is a bad thing, then what do you think about my idea about shortening current lifespans (by withholding access to medical help, etc)?

Demosthenes

No, not quite, the definition of a technoloical singularity is an acceleration of the development trends, it doesn't imply a stoppage of the society. In constrast, it's the other way around, at the moment of the singularity, there is so much change that in an instant, the world will be nearly beyond recognition. It can't last forever however, there has to be a breakway after the peak of the singularity there things settle down in its new patterns, by the simple fact that we only have a finite amount of information and resources. However, nobody knows what will exactly happen after the point.

The dinosaurs didn't die out due to a singularity. It only applies to a technological and social development, it's part of the definition. The dinosaurs became extinct partly because they reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac, then was killed off by external circumstances.

But can't people be immortal and have children at the same time? Yes, I know that we only have limited resources over any period of time, but we can easily substain a population boom for a given amount of sufficent resources. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. If anything, the future will certainly bring about a wide variety of different cultures with different ideas on how to deal with the problem of balancing immortality and population growth. Some people perhaps will have a child once every few centuries. If future technology is up to the task, maybe there'll be a form of reincarnation with people choosing to retire from life every few centuries and being "reborn" in some form of their choosing, somewhat like in Arthur Clarke's novel, "The City and the Stars".

Yes, there will be a new equillibrium in the society as people adjust to the new existence just as there have always been new equllibriums in the past as new social constructions were developed and introduced.

As for your last sentence about the death and birth rates getting back to "normal" what do you mean by that? If we acquire immortality, it's not going to be just for once, it'll be passed on to any other future generations. The birth and death rates will never be back to normal as we know it. Instead, there will be a new normal in the future.


yeah, death will still be with us, whether by accident or design. Immortality is a misnomer, since it impiles never ever dying at all.

Withdrawing medical treatments just to shorten people's lifespan is morally wrong. There simple is no reason to do that. it's equilvalent to withdrawing medical treatment from say, someone who has cancer which can be cured if he had the treatment. What possible reason could you use to justify the withdraw of the treatment?

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

Seraphim

"No, not quite, the definition of a technoloical singularity is an acceleration of the development trends, it doesn't imply a stoppage of the society. In constrast, it's the other way around, at the moment of the singularity, there is so much change that in an instant, the world will be nearly beyond recognition. It can't last forever however, there has to be a breakway after the peak of the singularity there things settle down in its new patterns, by the simple fact that we only have a finite amount of information and resources. However, nobody knows what will exactly happen after the point."

My reply : Either way, immortals (for those who wished to live forever) will die a very horrible death indeed - die of boredom!

"The dinosaurs didn't die out due to a singularity. It only applies to a technological and social development, it's part of the definition. The dinosaurs became extinct partly because they reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac, then was killed off by external circumstances."

My reply : I was speaking in metaphysical way. No need to answer.

excreationist

Demosthenes:
I thought you said it is immoral or bad in some way for people to have long lifespans because it means less people get to live on the earth in the long-run - due to a falling birth-rate. I thought that would mean that the government should then try and enforce that morality somehow.
But I guess you don't think it should be enforced.
Perhaps you think that people should just feel guilty about living a long time. Do you feel guilty that you probably have a life expectancy of 70-80 years yet if you relied on medieval medical practices you could reduce your life expectancy and so allow room for the birth rate to increase?

Theli

Tronvillian...
Does a human need to be granted rights by you for your deeds to affect him? What is the right you are stealing from him by planting the bomb?
The problem here is that by your logic, your action shouldn't be considered immoral as the victim doesn't exist at the point of your action, and thus you haven't deprived anyone of their rights. Wich leads me to think that this is the wrong approach, it sounds more like you have broken a rule rather than wronged someone. A technicality.

Then the same should apply to the rights of the children who whould have lived if you had not extended your own life.

In the example of the bomb: probable death. In the example of immortality: no birth.

Is this because of an understanding with the rules of our society, or an understanding of their needs and pain? Why can't you steal from a person?
About the job, this is a flaw in humanity that testifies the fact that we aren't fully developed socially. That we for some reason would consider one person more valuable than 1000 others, just because we know that person. I would clearly choose no on both those examples. Choosing a job that causes 1000 of people to loose theirs is grossly unbalanced.

This is a good point. If you have 1000 people standing in line awaiting death and the ability to save one of them, would that not be right? One could argue that 1 out of 1000 is insignificant, but it's certainly not insignificant for that 1, hence subjective value.

The problem is that the other unborn person never has a chance to argue for his life. And it might not stop at one unborn person, imagine that you live very long, 15 generations or so. You will now have 14 lives that you "swallowed" to add to your own.


Jamie_L...
Are you actually suggesting that we ought to save this discussion until we find a cure for aging? Why would we want to do that?


Psycho Economist...
Ofcourse, after awhile (if a upper limit is reached) the death-rate will return to normal. But as the average age always slowly increases the deathrate must decrease.


Excreationist...

A common lifespan (held by everyone) would eliminate the problem, but the example refered to a single person and his choice of immortality. And the question about a good lifespan is abit tricky. Obviously we should have longer than we have now, but having a too long would decrease the flow of new people coming into this world. And that might have a negative effect on our society and the people living in it.

excreationist

Any increase in the average lifespan would decrease the flow of new people coming into this world... (assuming there is a stable/non-growing population, unlike now)
What negative effects would there be if there are less people existing in the world throughout time? There would be lots of good things - e.g. people would be able to live to see their great-great great great great grandchildren, etc. They would care about the environment/sustainability a lot more since they would be there to deal with the consequences - rather than them doing it just for the good of future generations.
There would be a lot of newness still - there would still be billions of people, and people would still want to discover and try new things - like new career paths, etc.

Demosthenes

excreationsit, I never said that. It was Theli who brought that subject up. If you had read the rest of the posts closely I consider it perfectly to have unlimited lifespan. If we were also to have birth, then the population will increase with a rate. Obviously the problem is if the population ends up stripping our capablity to support it.

Contrary to what Theli is discussing about, I don't find it morally wrong to "deprive" children of lives when they don't even exist. In my gut feeling there's a flaw somewhere in that logic.

But we know that people will exist at the moment when the bomb goes off(of course we're assuming here that the school's still open at that time)

We can't apply that criteria to immortality because it does nothing to the children, you can't even say "deprive" them of life because they don't even exist, not even as sperm, ova, nothing. They aren't factorable in the equation at this point. Immortality does not hurt the future children, bombing does.

At least you're seeing the difference, the bombing will cause death, but immortality will not, you can't have it the both ways. No birth isn't the same as death. They may resemble eachother, but it's superficial. No birth does not take away anybody's rights, there are nothing in limbo because they hadn't been born. They are born or not, simple as that. I can easily make the argument that our birth is not justified in your context. What about all those potential children that our parents could have had if we weren't born? What about the all other possible combination of sperm and egg? Only one of billions of sperm will produce a baby. So that mean that's a billion of children who were never born because I took the boat. So shouldn't that mean I should have never been born so the others get a chance?

Death and not being born is not the same thing. Death takes away the person's life and if by malicious design, theur rights. Not being born does no such thing, so you can't apply the same criteria to it.

But that person does not exist at all, you can't have nonexistant people making an argument, so he's irrelevant at most. The only time when we must and rightly worry about the unborn people is when there is something in the future which will impact them directly and when they're living. Such as the environment, new dieases, whatever you have it. We worry about the unborn people, because we know that if they're born, they'll affected by something. Immortality doesn't entail that kind of impact so unborn people can't be taken into consideration.

In way, won't that be a better way? At least we will face the consequences of our actions rather than hiding behind the veil of death and handling the children our mess that we won't clean up because of lack of time or inclinations. If we were to become immortal then we will most definitely have to care about the future and the looong-term.

[ December 14, 2002: Message edited by: Demosthenes ]</p>

Theli

excreationist...

I'm not so sure people will have that many grand grand grand children, although that would be a good factor. A bad one ofcourse is that the "children" wouldn't actually be children for any significant portion of their lives. And I'd hate to see the effect a 2000 year life would have on a person's memory. Though, if we were to dance around in blissfull ignorance (heaven?) all our lives, then it wouldn't matter too much. There's ofcourse the problem with injuries. There might be injuries that cannot heal and you will have to spend the next thousand years in a wheelchair.

Yes, such a person would be more responsible. Although, would that do him good?

A person would be able to live several lives under his own lifespan, with the ability to start over.
Greatly prolonged life would be a perk for most people, but how would the society form by it? And I'm also worried about the psychological wellfare of a person like that. Neither our minds or our bodies were made to live that long.
I don't suppose anyone here have seen Lexx?

Demosthenes...
And you know that people would have been born if you had not increased your lifespan.

Back to my unanswered question: What excacly are you depriving a person of if you kill him?
Anyone would ofcourse state: His life.
But I think that's a missconception, you don't take his life away from him. He was born and he lived, and that is life. You cannot take that away from him. But what you are depriving him of his future life, the part he had lived if you had not acted the way you did.
Have you played Red Alert 2? There's a soldier there called a chrono legionnaire that has the ability to phase people out of existence, make it so they never been born. This raises a moral and philosophical dilemma, would phasing a person out of existence be considered murder? If you murder someone the victim is specific, if you plant a bomb in a school the victim isn't. Anyone could have gone to that school and fallen victim, and that person doesn't exist now. If I have understood your argument correctly, a person must have been born having a specific identity for your action towards him to be considered immoral.
And ofcourse morallity isn't just about not doing wrong. Increasing your own lifespan in such manner could be compared to being at a birthday party and eating all the cake. You didn't excacly steal cake from the others, as they never had it. But your actions prevented them from getting their peice.

The only difference between death and no-life is the seconds of pain and fear before death, other than that death is no-life.

How is that superficial?

Is killing wrong only because it deprives a person of his rights? That seems abit strange, I would think that living is more important than having the "right" to live.

I have gone over this before, if we are able to "save" one out of a million would that not be better than not saving anyone? I don't think we should be blamed for things we cannot control, and death of a million sperms is one of those things. Unwanted pregnancies isn't a happy story for either the parents or the child.

Did I say that? Did excreationist say that?
Obviously you cannot have any control over that, so you cannot be blamed for it. And it was not caused by your actions.

What is this obsession with rights? Can I wrong a person without taking away his rights, and does "rights" matter to a dead person?
If my actions would prevent a future person's chance of happiness would I not wrong him? I don't see how rights enter into it.
There are 2 basic ways to wrong a person. One is causing hurt and the other is preventing happiness (loose term). If I played the lottery using a friends ticket and won, the winnings would belong to my friend. Now, if I were to burn the ticket and tell him that there was no winning that would be wrong. Yet I didn't excacly hurt him, as he will never know what I did. So, what rights did I deprive him of?

Irrelavent? He's the person who never even got to exist because of you. The only reason you consider him irrevalent is that he had no chance to beg you.

Then shouldn't it be better to never give birth to any children, it would be the ultimate cure to shield them from the pain of their life. If you are suggesting that moral sense ends with not causing pain, then aren't humans morally inferior to rocks?

No, you are right. It doesn't cause them any pain. But it takes away their chance for happiness, something much worse.

That's true.

[ December 14, 2002: Message edited by: Theli ]</p>