Point for a really eloquent rebuttal, but I wonder if this might actually hold some merit. I think that a theist who is looking forward to paradise is guilty of less (or at least, different) bad thinking then an atheist who embraces mortality, because the theist does have a goal that is achieved through death. Are there any secular goals that are only achievable through the continuing mortality of humans? What about human evolution?
Evolution in its conventional meaning of changes in a population caused by differential breeding success of individuals coupled with descent-with-modification arguably requires mortality, but I’m not sure I know anyone who values evolution in that sense as compared to some other mechanism that makes equally valuable changes in the population (e.g. via technology).
Some people do seem to have goals that involve killing other people; presumably eliminating mortality prevents them from achieving those goals.
Are there any secular goals that are only achievable through the continuing mortality of humans?
Well—“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” ; more colloquially “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
If we postulate that for any given level of scientific progress there are a number of existential risks it is not yet capable of addressing, it may well turn out that ubiquitous clinical immortality poses an existential risk to the human race.
Well—“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” ; more colloquially “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
I’ve heard this proposition before, but I find it extremely dubious. Looking at my own professors, for instance, considering the length of time they’d been teaching, some of them would have to have seriously altered their course content over time to reflect advancements in scientific knowledge.
Veteran scientists may not adopt new findings as easily as they should, but in general the notion that old scientists must die off for new information to become widely adopted seems to be false.
This idea about science progressing by funerals is generally ascribed to Kuhn, but his own views were more nuanced. His primary relevant work “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is definitely worth reading. Note that for most of history this claim is empirically false. For example, during the “Copernican Revolution” there are many recorded instances of astronomers who used Ptolemy’s model and then adopted the model of Tycho, or Copernicus or Kepler (or one of the many weird hybrid systems that was going around). Similarly, in the case of the chemical revolution, a major part of why Joseph Priestly’s insistence on the phlogiston theory to his dying day was so noteworthy was that all his peers had long ago given up on it, and so his work in his later years was to a large extent ignored. When Einstein came up with special relativity, many physicists who were quite old and had only worked in a Newtonian framework embraced it.
The notion that science progresses by the death of the elderly scientists seems to be empirically false. Moreover, in so far as there are limited problems of this sort they are likely due to the difficulties that arise when brains become old and have more trouble learning or adopting to new ideas. If life-extension keeps brains young and healthy (likely), or is accompanied by technology that increases general brain power (probably not as likely but not very unlikely either) the genuine parts of this problem will be alleviated.
If life-extension keeps brains young and healthy (likely), or is accompanied by technology that increases general brain power (probably not as likely but not very unlikely either) the genuine parts of this problem will be alleviated.
Will be easily alleviated, we imagine, anyhow. It is certainly true that ideology and moral progress seems to be a generational phenomenon, and while scientific progress might be able to overcome that problem now, I don’t know that general/popular ethics and politics are, yet.
So we need solutions. Rigorous instrumental rationality, to me, is a potential solution to that problem, though.
It is certainly true that ideology and moral progress seems to be a generational phenomenon
This empirically seems to be difficult to confirm. Let’s pick two major historical issues where attitudes are considered to have changed rapidly in the United States, attitudes towards interracial marriage and attitudes towards gay marriage.
I’m using Gallup as a rough estimate for historical interracial attitudes. In 1958, there was an approval rating of 4% for interracial marriage and a disapproval rate of around 94%. In 1969 that had changed to 20% and 73%. Now, the population was around 174 million in 1958 and 200 million in 1968. Using the estimated death rates from here, which gives about 2 million people dying yearly and assuming that about 2/3rds of all people who died were against interracial marriage and that about 2/3rds who were entering the population (for a year 10 year period, really not actual births but people who had been too young to earlier have an opinion or if have an opinion be asked about it in polls, but roughly the same as just new people), then one gets around 18 million people leaving the disapprove group and around 8 million entering, for a total delta of −10 million, which gives an expected value percentage of 164/200= .82%.
Of course, the most questionable number here is the 2/3rds. That seems like a safe estimate, but if one assumes a larger fraction then one gets other results. If one assumes that instead of 2/3rd it is nearly complete conversion (only disapproves dying and only approves entering the population) then one somewhat undershoots this. But at least from this sort of estimate it seems difficult to say that deaths were the only cause of the changing attitude. It does seem however that deaths were a major part.
Similarly, approval rates for gay marriage and civil unions have changed faster than a simple population die off model would work.(source) Here it is worth seeing how extreme the numbers are. There’s been about a 10% decline between 2001 and 2011 in the fraction opposing gay marriage and about a 10% increase in the percentage who are ok with it. There are around 2.5 million deaths a year in the US in the last decade, meaning that about 25 million people died. (source) There were in 2001 a population of around 281 million, so with a 57% disapproval of gay marriage that translates to around 160 million people. So if all 25 million died off from that population then one gets around 135 million disapproving which out of 308 million population is around 44% disapproval, which is about the current rate. Now, it might look from that like die off is the only cause here, but this model assumes that almost everyone dying is in the disapprove category and that almost no new people are entering into that category. The second assumption is at least empirically wrong. From those numbers one sees that young people are much more likely to approve, but it isn’t enough to justify this sort of assumption.
So the data seems to suggest that death is a major cause of moral changes but at least for both these issues, a major part is people actually changing their minds. Now, it is possible that they are changing their minds in part because the older authority figures are dying off, but that’s a more subtle narrative.
Overall, crunching these numbers has made me update more in the direction of deaths mattering. When I started pulling up the numbers I expected it to be much more clear cut in the direction of deaths not being sufficient. This seems to suggest that they aren’t sufficient, but it does seem like in reasonably simple. plausible models deaths do explain a large fraction and possibly majority of the change.
Getting more detailed understandings might require much more careful demographic study.
Similarly, approval rates for gay marriage and civil unions have changed faster than a simple population die off model would work
I have noticed in the past that the majority of people allow their opinions to be swayed by a minority of individuals. So I suspect that ‘die off rates’ might be magnified in this manner—but I can’t really corroborate that. It’s worth investigating at some point, especially if I’m going to raise it as an issue.
the majority of people allow their opinions to be swayed by a minority of individuals.
I don’t see how to make predictions from this or easily modify it to be able to do so. Note that every majority opinion consists of slightly different opinions that are each minority opinions.
My intuition is that people have different thresholds of agreement around them to hold each opinion they have. If 60% of people are at least comfortable holding an opinion so long as at least 50% hold it, and a subset of them, at least 50%, are comfortable holding it so long as at least 40% do, etc., the belief will be stable.
But if support for an opinion is shallow and fragile, such that some people are only comfortable holding it if it is nearly universal, and others only if it is overwhelmingly popular, and others only if it is a supermajority opinion, etc., support for it could unravel quickly even if people change little.
Is the opposition to cochlear implants really an example of bad thinking, or merely certain deaf individuals having different goals?
Note: I do not necessarily support these goals.
Is opposition to life extension/immortality really an example of bad thinking, or merely certain individuals having different goals?
Point for a really eloquent rebuttal, but I wonder if this might actually hold some merit. I think that a theist who is looking forward to paradise is guilty of less (or at least, different) bad thinking then an atheist who embraces mortality, because the theist does have a goal that is achieved through death. Are there any secular goals that are only achievable through the continuing mortality of humans? What about human evolution?
Evolution in its conventional meaning of changes in a population caused by differential breeding success of individuals coupled with descent-with-modification arguably requires mortality, but I’m not sure I know anyone who values evolution in that sense as compared to some other mechanism that makes equally valuable changes in the population (e.g. via technology).
Some people do seem to have goals that involve killing other people; presumably eliminating mortality prevents them from achieving those goals.
Well—“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” ; more colloquially “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
If we postulate that for any given level of scientific progress there are a number of existential risks it is not yet capable of addressing, it may well turn out that ubiquitous clinical immortality poses an existential risk to the human race.
Definitely a problem that needs addressing.
I’ve heard this proposition before, but I find it extremely dubious. Looking at my own professors, for instance, considering the length of time they’d been teaching, some of them would have to have seriously altered their course content over time to reflect advancements in scientific knowledge.
Veteran scientists may not adopt new findings as easily as they should, but in general the notion that old scientists must die off for new information to become widely adopted seems to be false.
This idea about science progressing by funerals is generally ascribed to Kuhn, but his own views were more nuanced. His primary relevant work “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is definitely worth reading. Note that for most of history this claim is empirically false. For example, during the “Copernican Revolution” there are many recorded instances of astronomers who used Ptolemy’s model and then adopted the model of Tycho, or Copernicus or Kepler (or one of the many weird hybrid systems that was going around). Similarly, in the case of the chemical revolution, a major part of why Joseph Priestly’s insistence on the phlogiston theory to his dying day was so noteworthy was that all his peers had long ago given up on it, and so his work in his later years was to a large extent ignored. When Einstein came up with special relativity, many physicists who were quite old and had only worked in a Newtonian framework embraced it.
The notion that science progresses by the death of the elderly scientists seems to be empirically false. Moreover, in so far as there are limited problems of this sort they are likely due to the difficulties that arise when brains become old and have more trouble learning or adopting to new ideas. If life-extension keeps brains young and healthy (likely), or is accompanied by technology that increases general brain power (probably not as likely but not very unlikely either) the genuine parts of this problem will be alleviated.
Will be easily alleviated, we imagine, anyhow. It is certainly true that ideology and moral progress seems to be a generational phenomenon, and while scientific progress might be able to overcome that problem now, I don’t know that general/popular ethics and politics are, yet.
So we need solutions. Rigorous instrumental rationality, to me, is a potential solution to that problem, though.
This empirically seems to be difficult to confirm. Let’s pick two major historical issues where attitudes are considered to have changed rapidly in the United States, attitudes towards interracial marriage and attitudes towards gay marriage.
I’m using Gallup as a rough estimate for historical interracial attitudes. In 1958, there was an approval rating of 4% for interracial marriage and a disapproval rate of around 94%. In 1969 that had changed to 20% and 73%. Now, the population was around 174 million in 1958 and 200 million in 1968. Using the estimated death rates from here, which gives about 2 million people dying yearly and assuming that about 2/3rds of all people who died were against interracial marriage and that about 2/3rds who were entering the population (for a year 10 year period, really not actual births but people who had been too young to earlier have an opinion or if have an opinion be asked about it in polls, but roughly the same as just new people), then one gets around 18 million people leaving the disapprove group and around 8 million entering, for a total delta of −10 million, which gives an expected value percentage of 164/200= .82%.
Of course, the most questionable number here is the 2/3rds. That seems like a safe estimate, but if one assumes a larger fraction then one gets other results. If one assumes that instead of 2/3rd it is nearly complete conversion (only disapproves dying and only approves entering the population) then one somewhat undershoots this. But at least from this sort of estimate it seems difficult to say that deaths were the only cause of the changing attitude. It does seem however that deaths were a major part.
Similarly, approval rates for gay marriage and civil unions have changed faster than a simple population die off model would work.(source) Here it is worth seeing how extreme the numbers are. There’s been about a 10% decline between 2001 and 2011 in the fraction opposing gay marriage and about a 10% increase in the percentage who are ok with it. There are around 2.5 million deaths a year in the US in the last decade, meaning that about 25 million people died. (source) There were in 2001 a population of around 281 million, so with a 57% disapproval of gay marriage that translates to around 160 million people. So if all 25 million died off from that population then one gets around 135 million disapproving which out of 308 million population is around 44% disapproval, which is about the current rate. Now, it might look from that like die off is the only cause here, but this model assumes that almost everyone dying is in the disapprove category and that almost no new people are entering into that category. The second assumption is at least empirically wrong. From those numbers one sees that young people are much more likely to approve, but it isn’t enough to justify this sort of assumption.
So the data seems to suggest that death is a major cause of moral changes but at least for both these issues, a major part is people actually changing their minds. Now, it is possible that they are changing their minds in part because the older authority figures are dying off, but that’s a more subtle narrative.
Overall, crunching these numbers has made me update more in the direction of deaths mattering. When I started pulling up the numbers I expected it to be much more clear cut in the direction of deaths not being sufficient. This seems to suggest that they aren’t sufficient, but it does seem like in reasonably simple. plausible models deaths do explain a large fraction and possibly majority of the change.
Getting more detailed understandings might require much more careful demographic study.
I have noticed in the past that the majority of people allow their opinions to be swayed by a minority of individuals. So I suspect that ‘die off rates’ might be magnified in this manner—but I can’t really corroborate that. It’s worth investigating at some point, especially if I’m going to raise it as an issue.
I don’t see how to make predictions from this or easily modify it to be able to do so. Note that every majority opinion consists of slightly different opinions that are each minority opinions.
My intuition is that people have different thresholds of agreement around them to hold each opinion they have. If 60% of people are at least comfortable holding an opinion so long as at least 50% hold it, and a subset of them, at least 50%, are comfortable holding it so long as at least 40% do, etc., the belief will be stable.
But if support for an opinion is shallow and fragile, such that some people are only comfortable holding it if it is nearly universal, and others only if it is overwhelmingly popular, and others only if it is a supermajority opinion, etc., support for it could unravel quickly even if people change little.