You don’t have to imagine, you already read Dagon in this comment section, who writes: “Death is neither bad nor good, it’s just a part of the world which has formed our ideas of identity and experience”.
Virtue ethics places intrinsic value in virtues, and deontology places intrinsic value in rules, so straight-forwardly neither of those ethical frameworks places intrinsic value in life and death as states of the world. That is a majority of philsophers, per this 2009 EconLog survey.
Also, religions that view death as a reunification with a higher power can place intrinsic positive value in death, or at least not place negative value in death. Or religions can place intrinsic value directly and solely in the higher power. Likewise, I roughly model Buddhism as placing intrinsic value on ending suffering and rebirth, with human life instrumentally valuable to achieve those goals.
If everyone placed positive intrinsic value on immortality, in addition to the convergent instrumental value of avoiding death, I imagine that immortality wouldn’t be a topic of debate like this.
[note: still thinking somewhat abstractly, and unsure of my own actual values on this topic—my revealed and introspected preferences don’t scale very well to global, let alone future quantities. ]
One can feel intrinsic value in life, without particularly caring WHICH lives are being valued. Being pro-life (or pro-intelligent-experience, or pro-qualia-level-complexity, or many other similar formulations) does not require being anti-death. It just implies that one hopes that creation happens faster than cessation.
One of the reason for this type of conclusions is thinking in “far mode”, as was suggested by Robin Hanson. If we speak, say, about the perspective that “your grandmother will die tomorrow”, we start to think in near-term mode, and we don’t like death in near-term mode. But every death will be eventually in near-term mode.
I can only wish my grandmother was able to die tomorrow, instead of years ago. It’s sad when people die. But that’s selfish and wrong, and only sees part of the context.
Her death was also freeing to those of us still healthy and alive. The amount of expense and effort to keep them alive a bit longer was significant, and it was on balance best. I think it was accepted and freeing for her as well, but of course it’s impossible to tell.
Extending healthy, creative, productive portions of individual lives seems like a pure good to me. If it results in immortality, great! If not, that’s probably OK to. I think it’s a mistake to focus on death as the problem, rather than the decay and loss of dynamism that currently comes with aging.
No apology needed—I appreciate the summary, and it gives me the opportunity to clarify (and to think further; as I say, I don’t trust my intuitions here).
You don’t have to imagine, you already read Dagon in this comment section, who writes: “Death is neither bad nor good, it’s just a part of the world which has formed our ideas of identity and experience”.Virtue ethics places intrinsic value in virtues, and deontology places intrinsic value in rules, so straight-forwardly neither of those ethical frameworks places intrinsic value in life and death as states of the world. That is a majority of philsophers, per this 2009 EconLog survey.
Also, religions that view death as a reunification with a higher power can place intrinsic positive value in death, or at least not place negative value in death. Or religions can place intrinsic value directly and solely in the higher power. Likewise, I roughly model Buddhism as placing intrinsic value on ending suffering and rebirth, with human life instrumentally valuable to achieve those goals.
If everyone placed positive intrinsic value on immortality, in addition to the convergent instrumental value of avoiding death, I imagine that immortality wouldn’t be a topic of debate like this.
[note: still thinking somewhat abstractly, and unsure of my own actual values on this topic—my revealed and introspected preferences don’t scale very well to global, let alone future quantities. ]
One can feel intrinsic value in life, without particularly caring WHICH lives are being valued. Being pro-life (or pro-intelligent-experience, or pro-qualia-level-complexity, or many other similar formulations) does not require being anti-death. It just implies that one hopes that creation happens faster than cessation.
One of the reason for this type of conclusions is thinking in “far mode”, as was suggested by Robin Hanson. If we speak, say, about the perspective that “your grandmother will die tomorrow”, we start to think in near-term mode, and we don’t like death in near-term mode. But every death will be eventually in near-term mode.
I can only wish my grandmother was able to die tomorrow, instead of years ago. It’s sad when people die. But that’s selfish and wrong, and only sees part of the context.
Her death was also freeing to those of us still healthy and alive. The amount of expense and effort to keep them alive a bit longer was significant, and it was on balance best. I think it was accepted and freeing for her as well, but of course it’s impossible to tell.
Extending healthy, creative, productive portions of individual lives seems like a pure good to me. If it results in immortality, great! If not, that’s probably OK to. I think it’s a mistake to focus on death as the problem, rather than the decay and loss of dynamism that currently comes with aging.
If aging will be defeated in 2030 (say, by superinteligent AI), then surviving even in poor state is reasonable.
[edited]
Generics will be soon available
Ack. Sorry for the misrepresentation. Scrubbed that line of the post.
No apology needed—I appreciate the summary, and it gives me the opportunity to clarify (and to think further; as I say, I don’t trust my intuitions here).