Being born is not a crime, so why must it carry a sentence of death?
Today more than 150,000 people lost their lives. At least 150,000 more humans will die tomorrow. Some of them will be elderly, of course, but why should that be a death sentence? Even worse, tens of thousands of youthful adults and children will be lost tomorrow—and the next day, and the day after that—to preventable or curable illnesses simply because treatment is not available to them.
"It is possible that the next few generations of humans will be among the last to die, and, if this is the case, future humans will regard the tragedy of death as an inconceivable horror and a cosmic waste. Aside from possible overpopulation the only challenge these posthumans will face will be the awesome, perhaps frightening, prospect of eternal existence. Then again, immortality may not be as existentially intimidating as it appears to us now—continuous self-transformation and an endless supply of new experiences might well compensate for the metaphysical paradox of virtual immortality. What's more, the future configuration of consciousness may be so different from our present, individual consciousness that the entire dilemma of perpetual selfhood will be transcended."
(from "Last Flesh" by Christopher Dewdney)
I believe the struggle against death, the unconditional and
self-willed determination to live, is the motive power behind the
lives and activities of all outstanding men.* NOTE: The term "immortal" is a bit misleading, because in the strictest sense it implies living forever. The problem with this is that according to cosmological physics, there will come a time in the far distant future when all matter will decay and all energy will dissipate (the Big Whimper). At that point, as far as we can tell, life of any kind will be impossible. Also, a truly immortal being would have no fear of accidental or catastrophic death, and that seems out of our reach for now. A more accurate term for what we are describing here might be "ageless", but of course that doesn't have the same sexy ring to it. In the Glossary, we define immortality as "a healthy and robust human lifespan of indefinite length (barring externally-caused destruction) achieved through thorough control and reversal of all significant aging processes".
"There is a joy, an élan, a spirit to life that is far more important than its duration. That spirit is so closely akin to our health that we might better wish to extend our healthspan than our lifespan. Watching those we love sicken and fail, we would wish them longer health over longer life. The enemy is loss and suffering, fear and tragedy. Many of us, therefore, are dedicated to the task of increasing not just a lifespan, but the quality of life. We wish to add joy and spirit, not just years."
(from "Reversing Human Aging" by Michael Fossel, PhD, MD)
When transhumanists seek to extend the human lifespan, they are not trying to add a couple of extra years of senility and sickness at an old persons’ home. That would be pointless. No, what they want is to create additional healthy, happy, productive years. Ideally, everybody should have the right to choose when and how they want to die—or not to die at all. Transhumanists want to live longer because they want to do, learn, and experience more than they can in a normal human lifespan. They want to continue to grow and mature and develop for much more than the meager eight decades allotted to us by our evolutionary past.
"The conduct of life and the wisdom of the heart are based upon time; in the last quartets of Beethoven, the last words and works of 'old men' like Sophocles and Russell and Shaw, we see glimpses of a maturity and substance, an experience and understanding, a grace and a humanity, that isn’t present in children or in teenagers. They attained it because they lived long; because they had time to experience and develop and reflect; time that we might all have. Imagine such individuals—a Benjamin Franklin, a Lincoln, a Newton, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, an Einstein—enriching our world not for a few decades but for centuries. Imagine a world made of such individuals. It would truly be what Arthur C. Clarke called Childhood's End—the beginning of the adulthood of humanity."
I love being in my body. I luxuriate in the exercise of my senses. I delight in being human.
I find it a loathsome and cruel trick, however, that nature takes such an exquisitely wonderful creation as the human brain and imprisons it inside the weak, inefficient, fragile, and short-lived structure that is the human body.
I do not want my enjoyment of being alive cut off any time soon, so give me physical life-extension (unlimited healthspan), give me robot/brain transfer, or give me VR upload—but also give me, in whatever form my immortality comes, the pleasure of sensory experience and sensual satisfaction.
Current evidence suggests that there are specific genes involved in aging. Some of these genes may become active (turn on) at some point in the human lifespan, thus programming cells to malfunction and die. Other genes responsible for maintaining youth may become inactive (turn off), thus preventing cells from performing metabolic functions necessary to sustain vitality and survival. There is also evidence that some genes necessary for youthful function may become lethal later in life.
For the first time in history, scientists have access to data that can provide clues about which anti-aging genes to stimulate and which pro-aging genes to suppress. The manipulation of genes is expected to lead to the greatest medical breakthroughs of all time, eclipsing all previous discoveries related to human longevity.
Genetic engineering is just one technology that could produce a healthy human lifespan of thousands of years, with no end in sight. Stem cell technologies also promise to lead to therapies to maintain youth and extend the healthy lifespan indefinitely.
When reviewing the history of medicine, it is apparent that once a fundamental discovery has been made, such as the role that bacteria plays in many infectious diseases, it doesn’t take long to turn that discovery into practical benefits for humans. We know that genes are a major cause of aging and many age-related diseases. Once we learn how to manipulate the appropriate genes, it shouldn’t be long before we develop therapies to slow and reverse human aging.
It shouldn't be long, but sadly, it won't happen soon enough for the 150,000 people who will die today. Almost all of us have lost loved ones who might have been saved and might have enjoyed nearly endless life if only these advances had taken place a bit sooner. There is an urgency about this work. There is also hope, of course, for those who fear they may not last long enough to benefit from research into anti-aging therapies: the hope offered by cryonic suspension and eventual rejuvenation.
For those who still believe that opposing death is somehow wrong or unnatural, please remember that opposition to human slavery was also once considered crazy and dangerous.
Every revolutionary idea evokes three stages of reactions:
At first people say, "It's completely impossible."
Then they say, "Maybe it's possible to do it, but it would cost too much."
Finally they say, "I always thought it was a good idea."Clarke's amusing observation is exactly on target. Staying with the analogy of human slavery, note that throughout most of history (and, no doubt, prehistory), it has been common for some humans to own other humans. The movement toward recognition of freedom as a fundamental human right is relatively recent.
During the drafting of the U.S. Constitution (an admirable document to be sure, but not without flaws), its framers debated how to handle the so-called slave issue. This was at a time, recall, when many progressive nations, particularly those in Western Europe, had already abolished the practice. Although a large number of American leaders abhorred slavery, totally eliminating it was widely considered to be "completely impossible".
As U.S. history proceeded and opposition to slavery grew, the debate changed to one of practicality. People said, "Maybe it's possible to do it, but it would cost too much."
A few generations after a bloody, costly, destructive and painful civil war, descendants of Americans who once owned other humans would say about abolition, "I always thought it was a good idea."
When the time comes—and it will—that humans are no longer enslaved by death, then our leadership on this issue will be recognized for what it is: courageous, honest, and humane.
"Death itself is more terrible than any 'punishment worse than death', because it is so final, and only acceptable because until now there has been nothing we could do to stave it off. . . Defeating death and planning rejuvenation are goals no more absurd than finding remedies for nearsightedness or asthma.
"Because we are intelligent, resourceful, imaginative and brave, we manage quite well without an evolved ability to read and write at birth, or to fly a jet by instinct. Instead of hard-wired instinctive patterns, we use our brains, and our collective memory, which is why humans reached the moon while moths merely fly into the candle flame. . . If we are truly the last mortal generation, perhaps in sight of becoming the first of the immortals, it surely would be best for us to refuse to bow in the face of ordinary fears and habitual scorn."
(from "The Last Mortal Generation" by Damien Broderick)
I sometimes hear people say, "Wouldn't it be boring to live forever?" But would it be more exciting to be dead? Indefinite life spans—just like the lives we have now—will be as boring or as exciting as we make them.
I find it hard to understand how anyone could ever become bored with life, no matter how long it might be. Of course, those who worry about being bored with eternity may also find themselves frequently bored in their current lives.
"Storage was where some people went when they had reached a certain age, or if they had just grown tired of living. It was one of the choices that humans faced toward the end of their artificially extended three-and-a-half to four centuries of life. They could opt for rejuvenation and/or complete immortality, they could become part of a group mind, they could simply die when the time came, or they could go into storage, with whatever revival criterion they desired.
"Some people slept for—say—a hundred years at a time then lived a single day before returning to their undreaming, unaging slumbers, some wanted simply to be woken after a set time had passed to see what had changed while they'd been gone, and some desired to come back when something especially interesting was happening, content to leave that judgment to others."
(from "Excession" by Iain M. Banks)
As for me, I would prefer to stay awake and active permanently, or at least as long as possible. There is so much to do, so much to learn, and so many people to meet and get to know—one hundred years will never be enough, nor, I think, would a thousand. Tell you what, let's talk about it again in 3003.
There is a philosophically acceptable way to have an infinite amount of fun, given infinite time.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, author of Singularity Fun Theory
In addition to the obvious hope of living nearly forever in our current human bodies (perpetually young and healthy, of course), there are numerous other ways we can imagine extending our lives. One way is to inject our personality into a virtually indestructible robot. This might be done by physically relocating the brain from our frail, vulnerable body and implanting it in a robot, but more likely it would be done by making a digital copy of our brain and downloading all the information into the robot's brain analog, probably a supercomputer. This method has the advantage of being able to preserve a backup copy of our personality, as insurance against the remote possibility that something catastrophic might destroy our robot body.
But why worry about implanting our personality in a physical body at all? As we have seen, a posthuman will be fully self-constituting, meaning we will be able to define our own reality. Among our many options (most of which we are not yet able to conceive), we could enjoy an existence in a virtual reality environment so finely detailed as to be indistinguishable from conventional reality. This really would give us effective immortality, as we could store backup copies of ourselves in places all over the solar system, the galaxy, or eventually even beyond.
At this point, we are getting into an extreme territory that requires us to question the very nature of reality and of personal identity. Forward-thinking philosophers, both amateur and professional, are currently debating the issues that arise when considering such radical, but plausible, possibilities. It bears saying one more time, however, that all of this is but childish speculation when compared with whatever will be the fantastic ultimate destiny of our species.
The last words on immortality: BEING DEAD SUCKS!