X-Message-Number: 2128
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: cryonics: #2123-#2126
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 93 22:28:03 PDT


Hi:

On rereading what I said about evolution, I think one point needs more 
elucidation: the one about "it shows we will not destroy ourselves..."
Many people reading this short piece might wonder just how we could 
destroy ourselves by fixing ourselves so that we do not age... a very
reasonable question.

To see how a theory about the evolution of aging relates to making such a 
change, you have to put yourselves (in imagination only) in the shoes of
someone who believes that human beings should NOT be immortal. The justificat-
ion of such a belief, if that justification could be reached by the study of
biology itself (rather than the Bible, the Koran, etc ... to which I have no
answer other than a question) would be that our PRESENT lifespans are somehow
optimal ie. in competition between one variety of humans who did not age, and
another variety which did, the AGING variety would compete more effectively and
so finally eliminate the non-aging ones.

And I suspect that among nonreligious opponents of immortality, some such idea 
does lie behind their opposition, at least in the sense that their opposition
is something they try to articulate and explain. And in fact until recently 
there would be some sense to such a claim: until about 300 years ago, fixing
people so that they would not age would come lower in priority to finding 
ways to keep people from starving or dying of smallpox or any of the other 
plagues --- each of which would make the issue of whether or not people aged
a triviality. But things DO change. We do not suffer from widespread smallpox,
nor is even AIDS a plague in the sense that bubonic plague was, and although 
there is still poverty outright starvation has become exceptional in peaceful
developed societies. (And where it does occur, the reason isn't technology but
political conflict). And it is because things change that we can argue that
what once was optimal is optimal no longer: it is now time to eliminate aging.

Of course there are other signs that the time for doing away with aging has
come. The number of elderly people has been increasing rapidly in Europe, the
US, and (if anything, even more) in Japan. And since these people don't just
have a chronological age, but suffer from all kinds of diseases and conditions,
the cost of maintaining them goes up and up and up. There does not seem much
interest in the other choice, that of lining all the elderlies up against a 
wall and shooting them: so the only really moral solution is to fix them so 
that they no longer suffer from all those diseases and conditions. And to do
that, we must make them young again. (Note that this is an argument about
SOCIAL value, usable to those who are not already immortalists but not to us.
I want to live for myself, I don't want to live just so I can benefit some
faceless Society. But I am discussing, here, arguments for immortality and
their basis in general, not those which convince ME to try for immortality).

				Best and long life to all
					Thomas

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