Disagree? Die Anyway!

By | May 19, 2006
2 Comments

That’s really the argument, when you get right down to it:

I do not see why the “death is meaningful” folks should get to decide the lifespans of those who disagree. As far as I am concerned, people who want to die are welcome to do so, but those who would rather stay around longer should have that option.

Via Fight Aging!

  • Karl Hallowell

    The quote that sparked Nydra’s article can be found here. It is actually a comment to the article that Nydra links to, and not part of the article itself.

    “The individual is by design a temporary entity manifested out of inherited diversity to temporarily express possible solutions to currently relevant hindrances to evolution. Technology is just such an example of a solution. A deathless society is not.”

    The poster appears to be claiming that the evolution of humanity is far more important than lifespan extension. Superlongevity will slow if not halt human evolution. Humans will be incapable intellectually of living extremely long periods of time with the brain becoming “entrenched”. And the human will attempt to preserve the environment as one that is friendly to it.

    Another interesting aspect is that this commenter actually considers themselves a transhumanist. So I guess it’s another example that transhumanism like most belief systems has a lot of variety in it.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Karl:


    From     an reproductive/evolutionary standpoint, there has always been tension between living long and prospering…reproductively. Within humans, there has already been evolutionary pressure to [live] longer than with other animals – to grant wisdom transfer time. Living long helps insure our reproductive success – the grandparent hypothesis.

    In a way it’s recognition by nature that individual humans are special. This “kindness” has a mercenary aspect. Individuals are imporant to nature because of what they can do to insure the survival of their genes (which in this case is the passing down of knowledge) not for who they are. Nature has also been cruel in that it has provided us the intelligence to contemplate our own demise.

    It’s poetic justice that our intelligence is about to change this. Using our intelligence to postpone death will be no more unnatural than taming fire or building flying machines.

    Its what we humans do…naturally.