@bruxae said:
That sounds a bit shortsighted though, we are not just talking about a potential child but several generations to come.
Several potential generations, as potential as the son of mine which I sacrificed yesterday.I understand that these philosophical questions should be further investigated and discussed, but this should not stop us nor slow us down from saving the lives of billions of real, currently existing people.
With them comes more then lives they would also bring new ideas and fresh perspectives, can you imagine the stubborness of someone who has lived for hundreds of years?
New ideas and fresh perspectives could be accomplished by encouraging people to regulary switch their fields of study maybe each hundred years.I can't imagine the stubbornness of someone who has lived for hundreds of years, but can you imagine his experience, wisdom, knowledge?
We would grow apathethic and melancholy and eventually loose track of time and be stuck in our old destructive ways with no real purpose.
I disagree, but I think this is interesting hypothesis. Let's test it :)
A couple of centuries doesn't sound like much but considering that we have only had real technology for 200-300 years it's a very long time to hold off on a basic function.
We will not have to hold it off completely, just lower the birth rates and increase the earth's carrying capacity. Is it going to be hard for some people? Yes probably, but I feel like you keep getting stuck only to problems and fail to see the good sides to all of this.
It might sound like a good idea on paper and in theory but in the end alot of this comes down to morality, for an example forcing certain people into paying more or be criminalized for such a basic thing as reproduction would alienate certain groups of people for the good of the state, something that several historical events has proven to be a very bad idea, for an example communism - it looks great on paper despite the stigma, so why is the stigma there? Because it just doesn't work in practice.
How is it moral to let billions of people suffer and die? That's around hundred thousand people dying each day because of aging, and that's like thirty 9/11s happening each day and I feel like no one gives a shit. And not to mention that those people in a skyscrapers died a fast deaths, while aging brings you death after years, and sometimes even decades of suffering.
I live in ex-Yugoslavia which was a communist country and most people would tell you how life was better during the communism. I don't think we should go back to communism, but I doubt that capitalism will survive the end of this century, at least not in it's current form.
I'm not denying that there would be negative consequences arising from the creation of rejuvenation technologies, all I'm saying is that those negative consequences are incomerably smaller than the benefits we would get.
The fact that we would save billions of people from suffering and death is just one of the benefits. Economic benefits would be enormous since most of the money in healthcare goes on fighting diseases and disabilities of old age, there would be no need for pensions, young people would not have to take care of their parents, since they would be healthy, there would also be less children which would also result in a huge economic benefits, eventually we would get people with hundreds of years of knowledge and experience, we would be compelled to invest a lot into a space exploration, religions would be on a decline, we would have enough time to accomplish all the thing we planned (like to catch all pokemons and properly train them to a lv 100 :) , all the girls would look like they are 20-30 years old, people will start to appreciate their life much more once they stop being so short and filled with diseases, our children won't have to change our diapers etc. And have I mentioned yet that aging kills 100 000 people each day or that hundreds of millions are suffering each day because of it?
It's frustrating that we are likely to be the last generation to live a short life span and, while we could be the first to benefit from these therapies only if the world was united about recognising aging as the worlds biggest problem and pour hundreds of billions of dollars into developing them.
I think that over the thousands of years, due to our powerlessness to do anything about aging, we came to truce with it, we rationalized the suffering and death it causes as something good and we formed our world views, our religions our way of living around the fact that aging is inevitable. And that was a good thing hundreds of years ago, but it's not anymore, it's not now when we have a real chance of defeating aging.
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