New lives are not inherently more valuable than old lives. You can already see this reflected in contemporary morality and the discourse around preventing human lives. After all, a life not lived is a life free from suffering.
A lot of the suffering inherent to human life is caused by moral compromises made for the sake of future generations' well-being. Instead, if the norm was living long enough to have to face the long-term consequences of your actions first hand, maybe old people could not afford to be so rigid. They would not be able to "wash their hands" by dying (and possibly leaving any wealth amassed through immoral means to their innocent heirs.)
Personally, what I'm looking forward is augmenting human cognition over long periods of time. I do worry that the result would not necessarily be any more agreeable, or even comprehensible, from our current standpoint, than (post-)modernity would be comprehensible to a caveman; but what I fear is something else entirely: I fear that people would occupy their expended lifespans with centuries of technologically augmented personal drama and sociopolitical "4D chess" - an advancement in complexity of our fundamental primate nature, but otherwise not different from what we do now.
I already find it disappointing that the most valuable thing most people have going on is their "personal" life. And an extension of this principle towards (comparative) eternity would be supremely so.
> I fear that people would occupy their expended lifespans with centuries of technologically augmented personal drama and sociopolitical "4D chess" - an advancement in complexity of our fundamental primate nature,
You've probably read it already, but Frans de Waal's _Chimpanzee Politics_ ends with the (thoroughly demonstrated by that point) claim that politics is older than humankind.
Chimps practice filial cannibalism too. Unless someone proves that the principles behind politics are inherent to the universe at large, I guess I'll keep my hope for transcendence.
Hadn't read that book but I'll check it out, thanks!
Well, I can tell you that the book isn't about cannibalism.
It isn't pessimistic about us transcending chimp-ness either. The point is that when it comes to politics, we very definitely are not there yet. Not even close. We've done a better job of transcending our chimp-ness in just about every other field of human endeavor than we have in politics.
* Officials accepting bribes to approve unsustainable (and sometimes directly deadly) projects, so that they can fund their kids' education
* Regular folks not speaking up against injustice because "they've got a family to feed"
* The "think of the children" card (a.k.a. "we've forcibly cultivated a set of behaviors in our offspring in order to ensure ourselves a comfortable old age, and your radical novelty threatens to disrupt that, dammit")
* Genghis Khan propagating his genome through the reprehensible acts of rape and military conquest. (Although that's not really a "compromise" but the actual essence of a kind of "warrior ethos" that some contemporary populists derive their tripe from)
Point being, it's a sort of norm to excuse acts that negatively affect the well-being of our peers by saying we're doing them in the name of the well-being of our successors. (Not like anyone's asking the successors, who might not even be born at that point. It's just "how life is".)
Barring a "Chinese brain" interpretation, the "entire world" is not a coherent decision-making entity; the majority of human beings living at any point in time have had very little say in "how the world is". World-changing economic decisions are made by a minority - who probably don't have the diabolical motives that conspiracy theories ascribe to them, but are most likely just working in the interest of their children, too (consequences to everyone else's children be damned - which is a possible symbolic meaning of the popular "paedophile cult" conspiracy theory, presuming "lizard folk" symbolize disillusionment with representative democracy, etc.)
>New lives are not inherently more valuable than old lives.
From an evolutionary standpoint, they absolutely are. The whole idea of life is to produce a variety of mutations in the hopes that at least some of them will be able to overcome hostilities that their predecessors couldn't win against.
>A lot of the suffering inherent to human life is caused by moral compromises made for the sake of future generations' well-being
Well, future generations' well-being is exactly the goal of life and evolution. Any species that fail at ensuring future generations' well-being get wiped out. Whether they like it or not.
To me the rigidity seems biological, not because people aren’t “living with their decisions”. That explains why old people become more conservative as they age. The “I do it for ma kids” argument feels weak because the behavior would be very different if that were actually the case.
Preserving the status quo is the valuable piece. To me this is an evolutionary behavior. If you’re old, the status quo has likely been good to you and your offspring. Change risks that. When you’re young, your fear of death is non-existent and you’ve had fewer life scars (whether literal or figurative). If you add protection against death, you’re just increasing the risk-averse population whereas traditionally we’ve used death to weed that out over the long-term. In other words humans are naturally biased towards balancing generating change (youth) and resisting change (aging) since change often has risks or harm and you’re less able to weather it well and adapt in old age (at a minimum your brain’s elasticity helps you significantly while you’re young). Keeping people alive will distort that balance.
The question will be whether society can adapt fast enough relative to how quickly life extends. On its face a medical breakthrough that radically shifts aging for everyone would be pretty bad. A similar breakthrough that shifts it for wealthy people would also be bad on any number of fronts. Our legal and tax systems are designed around existing mortality and as you can see, at least in the US, it can take a long time for any changes in reality to be reflected there nor do those changes typically risk upsetting current power and wealth balances.
A lot of the suffering inherent to human life is caused by moral compromises made for the sake of future generations' well-being. Instead, if the norm was living long enough to have to face the long-term consequences of your actions first hand, maybe old people could not afford to be so rigid. They would not be able to "wash their hands" by dying (and possibly leaving any wealth amassed through immoral means to their innocent heirs.)
Personally, what I'm looking forward is augmenting human cognition over long periods of time. I do worry that the result would not necessarily be any more agreeable, or even comprehensible, from our current standpoint, than (post-)modernity would be comprehensible to a caveman; but what I fear is something else entirely: I fear that people would occupy their expended lifespans with centuries of technologically augmented personal drama and sociopolitical "4D chess" - an advancement in complexity of our fundamental primate nature, but otherwise not different from what we do now.
I already find it disappointing that the most valuable thing most people have going on is their "personal" life. And an extension of this principle towards (comparative) eternity would be supremely so.