Will Death End?

Stanislaw Lem has an early novel called Magellan’s Cloud. I read it as a kid. ‘Twas an interesting exploration of what it means to be human & all that rubbish. Some of the philosophical speeches seemed profound to me as a child (but are now laughable). In one, a character defends death as a necessity for a meaningful life. Eternal life would mean the loss of memory and context due to the great timespans. And of course who wants to be a god when you can be a mortal being, dying for the sake of the next generation? A nice communist slogan but without much substance. (If you want to read the full drivel of the speech, I’ve translated it here.)

It’s amazing that many forceful proponents of medical research think about death as a necessity, as if it’s something we simply shouldn’t be working to eradicate (at least by a radical life extension). People make out death to be something positive as a result of a cognitive bias. As Eliezer Yudkowsky said, if people regularly got hit on the head with baseball bats, pretty soon everyone would rationalise “it’s not so bad, and it gives life meaning”. (Not despite the discomfort but because of it). The most annoying thing is that while such talk is false if you think about it for a sec, superficially it seems very deep.

Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) was raised in a palace, shielded from all suffering. One day (as an adult) he saw for the first time an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a wandering monk. He was so shocked that he left the palace (and family) to become a wandering monk himself. The rest is history. But what’s important is that him being sheltered meant he wasn’t complacent about death. For a much better illustration I highly recommend the Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant. We’re shocked by someone who kills five people, or that thousands die in car accidents, but is there any reason to treat people who died of “natural causes” any differently?

Some may say “I’ll get bored after 100 years”. Without speculating about what the world will be like, I’d say suicide will still be possible. At least having the option of a radically long life doesn’t impose one person’s desire for mortality on everyone else. And as per the above, a desire for mortality is self-brainwashing. People might object that there are a million things to do before we try tackle death such as improve quality of life (as if the two are mutually exclusive). Or that there are resource problems to be solved beforehand (as if we don’t need to solve them anyway). Or that while it’s possible to work on eradicating specific diseases how do we research life extension in general? (True, but having a pro-death attitude has probably tainted and limited medical research). Or that it’s impossible (this would mean a return to vitalism: impossibility requires life to be supernatural).

Radical life extension won’t be found tomorrow or the next day. But we should start spending a few billion per year (a relative pittance) from today if we’re to see results in centuries. And the first step is to overcome reluctance and complacency. Being in principle against radical life extension (as many are) is I think as harmful as being anti-vaccine or anti-space-exploration.