>"We exist because other creatures pass away. They must so that we can eat them."
Irrelevant.
>"Why is it a tragedy when the top predator dies, but not its prey?"
Because you're rephrasing to include irrelevancies. It has nothing to do with prey/predator. A life-form spends countless years perfecting knowledge-processing and then has to die.
>"It certainly isn't wasteful"
Information / knowledge gets lost and gets wasted into oblivion. Dictionary definition of wasteful, bud: (of a person, action, or process) using or expending something of value carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
>"The earth's ecosystems are perfectly efficient in reusing every atom of a perished being."
Let me know when the earth's ecosystems can magically recycle the bits stored on a hard drive that gets thrown out because a component failed. In fact, that is a perfect analogy to what we're discussing. Knowledge is inherently intangible.
>"Otherwise, it's just a fetish for the thoughts in our head, egocentricity."
It's not egocentricity or fetishism to value the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge that could save the world, solve problems.
>"Yes, rich dummies are an easy target, it's likely everybody would sign on if it's available. That doesn't make it noble."
The conclusion of your argument is that nothing less than immortality is acceptable. What's the difference between 70 and 700 years? If anything, the loss should be all the greater at 700 -- losing 700GB hurts way more than 70.
Check it out: I would have loved Charlie Parker to have lived into my lifetime so I could hear him play. Same for Brahms, or even Bach. That doesn't mean that their passing was "wasteful" -- instead it encourages us to celebrate that they ever existed in the first place.
The uniqueness of a human's achievement is not invalidated or "wasted" by their passing.
Yes, those who pass are lost, and all their precious thoughts and unwritten masterpieces are gone forever. But "wasted"? The definition above says "carelessly, extravagantly, to no purpose". Death is neither "careless" or "extravagant" but simply the inescapable truth that all things must pass. Whether it has a "purpose" is a religious question.
Just because death is terrifying and a total drag, doesn't mean it doesn't have an important role in the totality of our existence. It's part of the picture, reminding us that we're just animals, no matter how bright our shiny toys are.
Importance doesn't imply goodness. WW2 was important, but it was still a waste; we didn't learn anything from it that our best people didn't already know.
So what is the point of letting people die? What _reason_ do you have to do it? Some vague appeal to nature/tradition isn't going to cut it.
Irrelevant.
>"Why is it a tragedy when the top predator dies, but not its prey?"
Because you're rephrasing to include irrelevancies. It has nothing to do with prey/predator. A life-form spends countless years perfecting knowledge-processing and then has to die.
>"It certainly isn't wasteful"
Information / knowledge gets lost and gets wasted into oblivion. Dictionary definition of wasteful, bud: (of a person, action, or process) using or expending something of value carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
>"The earth's ecosystems are perfectly efficient in reusing every atom of a perished being."
Let me know when the earth's ecosystems can magically recycle the bits stored on a hard drive that gets thrown out because a component failed. In fact, that is a perfect analogy to what we're discussing. Knowledge is inherently intangible.
>"Otherwise, it's just a fetish for the thoughts in our head, egocentricity."
It's not egocentricity or fetishism to value the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge that could save the world, solve problems.
>"Yes, rich dummies are an easy target, it's likely everybody would sign on if it's available. That doesn't make it noble."
There is nothing noble about waste.