Guaranteed death places a limit on the value of my life to myself. Parents shield children with their bodies; Casey Jones happens more often. People run into burning buildings more often. (Suicide bombers happen more often, too, I realize.)
I’m not sure I interpret this the same way you do.
My understanding is that parents are willing to risk their lives for their children mostly because that’s how we’ve been programmed by evolution by natural selection, not because we consciously or unconsciously feel that our death is putting a limit on the value of our lives. We could have the very same genes even if we became more or less immortal (say by curing aging), and the same actions would result.
Killing yourself for religious reasons is a whole other problem, but IMO it is more an example of valuing life (in a really misguided way) rather than feeling that the value of life is limited by a future death. By this I mean, people willing to kill themselves for religious reasons have usually been convinced that they aren’t really killing themselves, but will rather keep living in some supernatural afterlife.
We’re trying to develop the means to overcome weaknesses evolution has left in us. As life expectancy grows much higher, there will be an incentive to overcome those instincts that cause us to risk our life, no matter what our current moral instincts say about the reason for doing so.
That’s possible. But that wouldn’t happen in a vacuum.
Fewer people might risks their lives for others, but at the same time, society would probably put a lot more resources in making everything much safer, so the overall effect would be that fewer people will end up in situations where someone else would have to risk their lives to save them (something that isn’t reliable even now, which is why it’s so mediatized when it happens).
Yeah, I was mostly thinking about things like safer cars (more safety testing and more stringent tests, better materials, next generation ‘vehicle stability control’ and laser cruise control used for emergency braking, mesh networking, 4-point seatbelts, etc), better design of sidewalks and bike paths, the hardening of buildings in earthquake and hurricane-prone areas, automatic monitoring systems on swimming pools to prevent accidental drowning, etc.
But really, what do people die from in stable rich countries? It’s really the diseases of aging that we need to cure (see SENS.org). After that, your chances of dying from an accident are already very low as things stand, and there are still lots of low-hanging fruit ways to make things safer...
I don’t think making us very safe in the near-term requires a Big Brother state keeping us in plastic bubbles.
And if we take care of aging, most people will probably live long enough without dying in an accident to either see Friendly AI or some form of brain backup technology further reduce risk, or they’ll all die from an existential risk that we’ve failed to prevent.
I’m not sure I interpret this the same way you do.
My understanding is that parents are willing to risk their lives for their children mostly because that’s how we’ve been programmed by evolution by natural selection, not because we consciously or unconsciously feel that our death is putting a limit on the value of our lives. We could have the very same genes even if we became more or less immortal (say by curing aging), and the same actions would result.
Killing yourself for religious reasons is a whole other problem, but IMO it is more an example of valuing life (in a really misguided way) rather than feeling that the value of life is limited by a future death. By this I mean, people willing to kill themselves for religious reasons have usually been convinced that they aren’t really killing themselves, but will rather keep living in some supernatural afterlife.
We’re trying to develop the means to overcome weaknesses evolution has left in us. As life expectancy grows much higher, there will be an incentive to overcome those instincts that cause us to risk our life, no matter what our current moral instincts say about the reason for doing so.
That’s possible. But that wouldn’t happen in a vacuum.
Fewer people might risks their lives for others, but at the same time, society would probably put a lot more resources in making everything much safer, so the overall effect would be that fewer people will end up in situations where someone else would have to risk their lives to save them (something that isn’t reliable even now, which is why it’s so mediatized when it happens).
When I hear the word ‘safer’ I reach for my gun.
I assume “safer” means things like “Click It or Ticket”—what are you referring to?
Yeah, I was mostly thinking about things like safer cars (more safety testing and more stringent tests, better materials, next generation ‘vehicle stability control’ and laser cruise control used for emergency braking, mesh networking, 4-point seatbelts, etc), better design of sidewalks and bike paths, the hardening of buildings in earthquake and hurricane-prone areas, automatic monitoring systems on swimming pools to prevent accidental drowning, etc.
But really, what do people die from in stable rich countries? It’s really the diseases of aging that we need to cure (see SENS.org). After that, your chances of dying from an accident are already very low as things stand, and there are still lots of low-hanging fruit ways to make things safer...
I don’t think making us very safe in the near-term requires a Big Brother state keeping us in plastic bubbles.
And if we take care of aging, most people will probably live long enough without dying in an accident to either see Friendly AI or some form of brain backup technology further reduce risk, or they’ll all die from an existential risk that we’ve failed to prevent.