Let's apply a reversal test: suppose we lived in a world where age doesn't kill people.
Do you still think old men should die? Then they have to be killed. Do you not? Then why should they die in this world?
Your ultimate values shouldn't change depending on the challenges that the universe throws at you. If people shouldn't die, and the universe says that they shall, well, the universe is a cold and uncaring place and it's our job to make it better.
Also, "I guess that mortality is something people struggle with" is kind of a condescending thing to say. Like, "you're downvoting me because you're not mature enough to understand the things that I understand".
suppose we lived in a world where age doesn't kill people. Do you still think old men should die?
Not only that, do you think they should die not by being humanely euthanized when they hit MAX_AGE, but by releasing a disease that slowly cripples everyone's body and mind over the course of several decades?
Death is bad, but at least one can make the case that a person doesn't suffer after they're dead. Aging is terrible for everyone.
Yes, I buy the idea that ageing is bad, it's the lack of a reset/times up factor that I don't fancy (in the sense of absolute disaster for everyone).
If the option was to enjoy (say) 130 years of middle age life followed by a sudden painless and invariably fatal brain seizure then I would agree that would be better than the current slide into a nightmare.
Let's apply that test. The old do not die (of old age) instead they live on, and what happens?
Does the world reach a new nirvana? Does peace reign? Or do things go on as they are now? If we're such a hot bunch where are the solutions for the wars that are currently pumping the news cycle?
Lay them on the page and I will listen and believe me, I will change my mind.
That's just what we have on our plate now, think on to the future. When society faces new challenges where will the new thought (and thinkers) come from to meet them?
But forget the questions and the species preserving game theory. The moral issue is that getting rid of ageing and installing a gerontocracy is selfish and penalizes all subsequent generations, actual and imagined, either through snuffing them out, or by subduing them and taking their chances from them.
I can live with a cold and uncaring universe, that's just the way it is (if you take the view that we count for anything on the scale of the Universe and anthropomorphizing something that we have neither the perception or cognition to form a proper understanding of). But, human arrogance (for example, imagining that human agents might be able to change the aforementioned non anthropomorphic, non perceptable, non cognitively encompassed universe) and overweening selfishness (ie. all future children count for nothing) is something I think is a matter of choice and something that anyone wise enough to merit living forever will be able to opt out of.
And here is the answer to the conundrum of let's kill the old. If we as a species have the intrinsic merit to live forever we will opt out of doing so to make way for our children. If we don't merit this then there will be no death camps and euthanasia programs, just nuclear war, famine, environmental collapse and all the rest of it.
I don't know what happens. I don't have the solutions. I don't know which world is better. I think that the problems you describe are real problems, but not obviously unsolvable, and not obviously worse than the problem of dying; but I don't know.
But if you think that in the world where people don't die of old age, we should kill them ourselves - I want you to come right out and say it. I won't tell you that you're wrong.
But you don't get to hide behind "the natural order of the universe". That's not how ethics works.
If we should let people die in this world, we should kill them in that one. If we should let people live in that world, we should try to save them in this.
> human arrogance (for example, imagining that human agents might be able to change the aforementioned non anthropomorphic, non perceptable, non cognitively encompassed universe)
This just strikes me as bullshit. What are you saying we can't do, exactly? In one sense, we can't change the universe: the laws of physics are constant and inviolable. And yet we went to the moon.
But eliminating aging wouldn't be changing the universe in that sense, any more than eliminating smallpox was. Was that arrogance? Was it bad to mess with the natural order of the universe like that?
> Your ultimate values shouldn't change depending on the challenges that the universe throws at you.
To the contrary, everything you are and believe depends entirely on the peculiarities of the universe we live in. To claim that you have a higher moral compass than that is like a brain in a vat talking about the weather outside the vat maintenance facility.
And I doubt that it would cause a population explosion either. The only countries that have a low enough non-aging-related mortality rate tend to be the countries that have a birthrate below replacement anyways.
Remember, ~2.1cpw is replacement rate. Even with no deaths, you'd need 2.0cpw for replacement rate. That's not a large variation.
My logic is thus: I believe that historical progression* has required the death of the establishment in order to turn over news ways of thought. Moreover, political power has historically been more concentrated than now. Think about how many times, in history, massive changes could not have existed without turnover of the establishment. I think progress demands turnover, because those in power tend both to stay in power and to think like they did before.
So I think innovation and progress requires turnover, fair enough. I also don't believe that "current human society" is necessarily any better at decision making than "Middle Ages society", so I wouldn't think that humankind is now equipped to deal with immortality.
So yeah, I guess I'm saying that old men should die. I wish it weren't awful as it so often is, and I wish that maybe it were a bit longer, but there it is.
* also fair to question the assumption of historical "progress"; I'm not sure but humans weren't better off as hunter-gatherers than what I fear our future could become.
Do you still think old men should die? Then they have to be killed. Do you not? Then why should they die in this world?
Your ultimate values shouldn't change depending on the challenges that the universe throws at you. If people shouldn't die, and the universe says that they shall, well, the universe is a cold and uncaring place and it's our job to make it better.
Also, "I guess that mortality is something people struggle with" is kind of a condescending thing to say. Like, "you're downvoting me because you're not mature enough to understand the things that I understand".