You haven't really justified anything you've said. What is the ethical question? Why must it be fear of death rather than simply wanting more of life -- more time to spend with people you love, to do exciting things, to learn everything there is to know?
> Why must it be fear of death rather than simply wanting more of life
The only thing you are capable of is converting time into something else. Time is always the scarcity factor.
So what if we had unlimited time? Would you pursue greatness and projects that take hundreds of years to complete?
Unlikely.
Let's take a look at something that is also scarce and that everybody is familiar with. Money. Would you say that the overwhelming majority of people who have lots of money engage in long-term projects to do interesting things ... or do they spend it on vain things like mansions, expensive cars, yachts, planes, etc?
If you had an infinite amount of time, the first thing you would do is re-watch every episode of Star Trek, not embark on the discovery of warp drive. That's the truth nobody wants to face. The overwhelming majority of humanity is unbelievably vain and the part that isn't, is primarily motivated by scarcity. They understand they have a very limited amount of time to live and they want to get something amazing done within that time. Removing that scarcity factor will make them just as vain as you and me.
EDIT: Fixed my inability to use the English language.
I hate to be "that guy", but you misspelled a certain word three times in your comment. I leave it to you to figure out which one.
But I agree with you, in the sense that having a "deadline" is what motivates people to accomplish things. Like if your boss or teacher doubles the length of time to finish a project, it doesn't mean you'll work twice as hard, but rather that you have more time to put it off.
> It's really depressing knowing that I just don't have time to do them all.
If you let go of your ego a little bit, you'll realize that 99% of the ideas you have are moronic. That applies to all of us.
Knowing that you can't pursue all of them forces you to pursue the 1% that aren't absolutely asinine. People don't realize just to what extent our mortality filters out the garbage from our lives.
Easier said than done. How will you know which are the 1% worth pursuing? There have been a lot of ideas that people have thought to be moronic and despite that ended up being extremely important.
So, because people would watch too many star trek episodes, we should have them die? Doesn't sound too ethical. There is no moral argument for death. As Aubrey de Gray explains, will you ever come to a point where you are perfectly healthy and happy and then decide to just die because the date of your birth was "too" many years ago. I don't think you would decide to do that, even if you had been alive a million years.
I would encourage you to be skeptical of arguments of this form, "I can't imagine X, ergo it's probably not true."
There are many things that people at age 10 can't imagine about people at age 20, or 20 imagining 40. There's no particular reason to believe that problem goes away.
Aubrey de Gray's argument is more like - when would you choose to die. You're sitting there, perfectly happy and healthy, your existence has no negative impact on anyone else's. Will you just get up and say - I'll die now, for no apparent reason.
For the record, I'm entirely in favor of serious long-term investment in medical research, and I agree that infinite X (where X is lifespan, health, or any other thing we like) sounds pretty swell.
That said, I'm pretty sure that's the same sort of argument I'm suspicious of. It's not an honest question that "will you"; it's an argument that the answer to that must be no. Not because of any evidence that has been presented, but because you can't think of any answer.
And I think it works because he's assuming an answer to the question he's purportedly asking. We don't really understand what minds are or why bodies age. We don't even understand exactly what happiness is. And he's presuming that a choice like that is possible.
What we do know is that a choice like that is currently unavailable, and I think it's dangerous to build too many sky castles on the assumption that it is.
I'd guess your argument against immortality is one of those covered many many times: overpopulation, overlords yadda, yadda.
If you believe in 1000 years humans are still living to 80 years old, and are STILL bound to ONLY this planet ... well I think you're crazier than your love of death ( the norm ) suggests.
It requires a bit of human insight to realize that the slice of cake religion advertises IS escape from the vast darkness of a perception-less void.
I'll give you that both arguments are borne of a desire to rationalize. Death is serious business for us. That said, I believe we live and die for a reason, and that death gives life purpose. You don't have to agree with me, but you should at least acknowledge that the statement "death is bad" represents a certain worldview, and can by no means be taken axiomatically.
My argument is that if we could develop functional immortality we could preserve the lives of the next Newton, Einstein, or even some currently living scientific minds like Hawking. Rather than have the great generational risk of losing all the collective knowledge such people accumulate and then suddenly have them die and expect their void to be filled by bright young minds interested in the same material, who then have to commit half a century just catching back up to where their progenitors were, it would be a never ending cascade of innovation and progress.
I agree with your optimistic stance however everyone has at least a small amount of valuable knowledge. I trust we will extend the lives of all those wish to remain alive.
Since you're an optimist, you'll probably be one of them :-)
dasil003 doesn't say what the ethical question is, but I think he's got it the wrong way around with motivation. As Aubrey de Grey has argued, it is the fear of death, coupled with the pessimistic assumption of death's inevitability, which makes talk of life extension taboo in many circles.
('If you can't avoid something unpleasant then embrace it' is a viable psychological strategy.)
One ethical objection to not researching life extension is that huge amounts of healthcare budget go into extending the lives of frail, sick people in their final years. When we know how to keep people healthy indefinitely this problem will be solved, although pessimistic individuals will then have to take the responsibility of choosing when to die (if ever).
The collective knowledge of Newton, Einstein, Lagrange, Maxwell, Bohr, and hundreds of other physicists are written down and more or less distilled into the brains of thousands of physics students within a decade. We already have a never ending cascade of innovation and progress. Getting new perspectives and fresh minds on the problem are more valuable than wringing another year of work out of the aging geniuses of yesterday, which is why many of the greatest physicists like Hawking and Feynman were so focused on teaching and popularizing the field. Yeah, it would be great to still have Newton around, but it turned out to be even more useful to have Lagrange around instead.
Besides, if you look at the actual lives of these people, most of them stopped producing useful output eventually. Newton spent more of his life arguing about theology than inventing calculus and physics.
we could preserve the lives of the next Newton, Einstein, or even some currently living scientific minds like Hawking
No we couldn't, because its not up-to you or anyone else to decide how long another person should live. How do you know if Newton or Einstein would have wanted to live longer?
If a choice was available to increase ones lifespan, the choice should lie with the individual.
Perhaps artificial intelligence is a much saner choice than immortality.
I think quite the opposite. Everyone's lifespan should be increased at birth. Then once they're sentient adults, they can choose to reduce their lives to the so called 'natural' expectancy, or even below it if they wish.
Under current US law suicide is illegal and so on so forth. Mainly because it is mental illness to want to end ones life in most cases, but mercy killing is also forbidden, so on so forth.
And I do agree, people should have the choice to end their lives whenever they wish it. However, having the potential available for immortality means we don't need to have the upcoming intellectuals spend half their lives catching up to where the last generation died off at. If they don't want to, nobody forces them, but having the option means so much potential knowledge.
And then we overpopulate the planet in a decade and everyone dies of starvation, global warming, or world war 3 nuking everything into oblivion due to the breakdown of society.
Personally I don't think immortality is a good thing, and I suspect most arguments in its favor our heavily driven by fear of death.