Maybe we need to work on how humans tend to prioritize longevity over things like whether your neighbor can eat. I don't think that the "aging problem" is even in the top 100 of "problems humanity needs to solve." Reproduction has been working great for keeping population up, and "defeating death" has always been seen as somewhat quixotic of a quest.
For an individual, why should he/she care about keeping the population up? If that's the only point to our existence, we sure waste a lot of time with arts and sciences. We should be training everyone to just grow food and mate as soon as possible.
Phrased like that, it's basically "myself before the children". A lot of people have an emotional response to that.
Most people want to have children, and many even see the cyclic regeneration of the entire population as a net benefit to humanity. If anti-aging is to become a popular movement, it needs to have better answers to the questions of how to solve overpopulation and what a world with nearly no children should be like to be livable.
I would rather die by my own choice, once I no longer feel I contribute to the world(s) that I and my progeny inhabit. Even then, there are things I might want to do -- learn languages, master calligraphy, etc. In a hypothetical diaspora of space exploration, the option to be immortal sounds like a HUGE benefit.
> many even see the cyclic regeneration of the entire population as a net benefit to humanity
Is life a team sport, where we're all just trying to get as many points as possible for "team human"?
The flaw in your argument is that at some point, you're going to have to pick a maximum allowable age. How old is "too old"? At what age should we set mandatory executions? And, on a side note, have you seen Logan's Run?
The question of overpopulation is a non-problem. You can't have children, period. It has to be regulated. There will have to be replacement for accidental death and people who choose to end their life early (or people that leave to space, which I think will never be a big number, but who knows). To replace those, either a random lottery or a lottery for "qualified parents" (who want to), whatever that is. I say lottery because anything other than basic requirements would get really controversial really fast.
I'm not sure what you mean "what a world with nearly no children should be like to be livable"? I don't see how it would be any more or less livable. That doesn't even seem to make any sense.
I'm not sure what you mean "what a world with nearly no children should be like to be livable"? I don't see how it would be any more or less livable. That doesn't even seem to make any sense.
Do you have children? I do. Given the choice of extending my own life indefinitely but having my daughter vanish from the world, or dying today but knowing her life will go on, I would undoubtedly choose the latter.
It's sentimental, but that doesn't make it any less true. To many people, children bring a fundamental joy to the world, and it's hard to understand why it should be replaced with neverending calligraphy practice in spaceships.
Have you considered that in a world without children, many people would likely suffer from serious depression and other mental disorders? There is a profound reason most humans choose to have children even though they're a lot of work and often a pain in the neck.
> There is a profound reason most humans choose to have children even though they're a lot of work and often a pain in the neck.
Pretty much everyone I've ever asked who have had kids wasn't consciously trying for their first child. I've personally always felt that a lot of parents later rationalise a decision they didn't really make.
According to the paper "Intended and Unintended Births in the United States: 1982–2010" where they interviewed 12 000 women, for women aged 15-24 either married or living together with their partner, a little more than half of all pregnancies were intended. I think it's safe to assume that most of those were first pregnancies.
Solving whether your neighbor can eat is not a technological problem. There's already plenty of food. I'm not sure why you'd waste everyone's time using that example.
If you don't want to work on that problem I understand. Which of the other top 100 problems are you currently working on? There are 7 billion people on the planet. There are more than enough people to work on all of the problems.
We do not have plenty of food. There are news stories today about predicted famines in South Sudan and Sierra Leone. What we have is mostly adequate food supplies, and that only until inevitable fossil fuel shortages cut into fertilizer and pesticide production. The green revolution has an expiration date.
Yes, and how do you get access to that food? It's more of a distribution problem than anything, especially given how little money there is feeding those with no resources.
