“If we want to slow population growth, we should focus on reducing births, not on raising or maintaining deaths.” I profoundly disagree.
The purpose or meaning of human life cannot just be longevity for its own sake. Nor does extending lives “save lives” - unless we become immortal and engineer an immortal universe. We are all going to die, and I can’t think of a higher meaning or value for my death than to bow out gracefully and allow a new generation to try their hand at adding creatively to our history, rather than exerting themselves to prolong my largely unproductive decline. Most great musicians, artists, poets, scientists, mathematicians, and of course athletes, do their best work well before 40 - say, half my age. History is crowded with young achievers, young pioneers, and long may that continue.
Suggested reading:
1) “The City and the Stars” - Arthur C. Clarke. Even perfect health could not convincingly vindicate immortality.
You surely do not "profoundly disagree" with the statement you quoted. It is a simple mathematical truth. It seems clear that you disagree with something else -- the desirability of living longer. I think you are making unexamined assumptions such as about creativity that may not apply in a world where aging -- including cognitive aging -- has been reversed.
If you don't want to live any longer and will just accept your end, that's fine. Just so long as you don't prevent those of us who do want to live longer.
I have read The City and the Stars (twice). If you had read much of my writing you would know that I understand perfectly well that extended life is not immortality. So what? It does not follow that the right thing to do is let yourself die at a random time decided by biological accident.
“If we want to slow population growth, we SHOULD focus on reducing births, not on raising or maintaining deaths.” This is not “a simple mathematical truth” since it draws a moral conclusion. Let me give you an example of a simple mathematical truth: “If the entire human race were exterminated (by whatever means - cosmic accident or human contrivance) today, vast numbers of future human deaths would be avoided.”
Let’s be more philosophical, à la Philippa Foot. A runaway train is heading towards a crossing where a carful of octogenarians is stuck. There is an alternative: you have the power to switch a point on the track to a different crossing, where a little boy has his foot trapped in the rails.
Quantity may be the stuff of mathematical truth, but what about quality? The NHS supposedly applies an algorithm based on QALYs (quality-adjusted life years) to prioritize life saving (or quality enhancing) treatment. Bizarrely, this eminently sensible principle was totally ignored during the Covid emergency. Presumably it was an interpretation of Boris Johnson’s simplistic assertion - or diktat - that “One death is too many”.
We are all going to die. It’s no big thing. “Average costs of mild, moderate, and severe dementia are £24 400, £27 450, and £46 050, respectively, per person per year.” That’s just dementia, quite apart from all the other geriatric costs to “our” NHS. There are maybe half a million moderate-to-severe dementia patients in the UK. You can no doubt extract a simple mathematical truth from that. What I extract from it is that the typical significant dementia case requires the rough equivalent of one full-time carer to sustain a largely meaningless life. Your conclusion might be brutally paraphrased as: “When we have sorted dementia out, we won’t need to breed all those carers any more.”
You are definitely not understanding my perspective. I have no interest in extending years of ill health, misery, or dementia. That is not the point! The idea is to extend healthy years and to eventually prevent aging altogether. Imagine people in their second or third century with the health, vigor, and cognitive energy of youth.
There is no good reason to expect the quality of life to go down if we have more years. Certainly, that has not been the case historically.
Do you think life expectancy in 2025 is somehow the perfect lifespan? Would you advocate shortening lives (back to where they were 50 or a 100 years ago) to make life more meaningful or higher in quality?
Also, another question occurs to me: Do you think 1.4 kilos is the perfect size for a human brain? I find that mine is running out of capacity. I have forgotten so many important moments. I doubt it would be good for 300 years, even if the telomeres lasted that long.
I think our brain is far from optimal. That's why I advocate using technology to enhance our cognition and emotion. So, no, I do not accept the current situation as optimal.
The flip side of that coin is to minimize years of ill health, misery and dementia. What is the currently available solution? What is the guarantee of a radical solution.
And once more, how many lives should be sacrificed on the altar of your longevity?
What sacrifice? What are you talking about? I am talking about saving lives, extending healthy lifespan. No one needs to sacrifice anything. By wanting to limit people lives (as you seem to favor), you are one advocating sacrificing lives.
There are no great solutions to minimizing the unpleasant years as yet. The best we can do is to exercise, maintain a healthy diet, avoid obvious harms like excessive alcohol, tobacco, etc., reduce stress, and seek a supportive community. I strongly advocate massive research into life extension but I also understand that no effective means yet exists.
I think you are missing the point. Maintaining the mortality rate has much less effect on future population than does reducing births. The "should" is not a moral should but a practical one. If you want X, then choose the much more effective means of achieving X.
I think you are missing the point. What is life for? You seem to believe that we can get an ought from an is. In philosophy that is known as the Naturalistic Fallacy.
However, the first great difference between us is that you think human existence is a good and a right by definition. I think that our existence is a great debt to be creatively, meaningfully repaid with pride. The second difference is that I know what you are missing. You need to read Viktor Frankl.
You can stop telling me what to read. I have read Frankl and plenty else on the topic. I also know what the Naturalist Fallacy is and I am not committing it. It has nothing to do with practical oughts. These are means-ends statements. They don't commit the Naturalistic Fallacy because they do not tell you what to do. They tell that that IF you want X then the best means to achieve it is Y. In that sense, IF you want X, you ought to do Y. No fallacy.
No, I do not think existence is a right. Where do you get that from? How can it be a right? There is no life giver to claim the right from. Life is an accident. It is up to us to make the most of it, if we do choose. I so choose. Unlike you, I also do not believe that our existence is a debt of any kind. Our existence is a fact and it is up to us what we do with it. Debt or gratitude are irrelevant. We have an *opportunity* to make our life good (by which I mean virtuous) and to encourage others to do the same.
You have read Frankl - good that will save some time. I think my life is a privilege and an obligation because of the “concept of man” I have arrived at. What is your “concept of man”? What do you take to be the meaning of your life? Do you think George Bernard Shaw is worth more than John Keats, Frank Ramsey and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart combined? Never mind the quality, feel the width.
Well… This can’t all be done in one post. I’ve had a long think, and clearly the sticking point (another Macbeth quote) is the issue of idealism v materialism (physicalism if you must).
I gave you two quotes, which you haven’t yet addressed here - though you must have done at some time. Schrödinger clearly thought Democritus’s argument was obvious and unassailable. Planck clearly thought his own parallel argument was beyond challenge.
I think there was a 20th century materialist turn traceable to 1928.
In 1924, reflecting on the brand new account of reality in terms of quantum mechanics, Sir James Jeans had famously written: "The universe looks more and more like a great thought rather than a great machine." Introducing his Gifford Lectures in 1938, Sir Arthur Eddington wrote: “I have settled down to the task of writing these lectures and have drawn up my chairs to my two tables. Two tables! Yes; there are duplicates of every object about me - two tables, two chairs, two pens.” Let’s be 100% clear: the substantial, material table according to Eddington is the table of everyday perception. (He continues: “One of them has been familiar to me from earliest years. It is a commonplace object of that environment which I call the world. How shall I describe it? It has extension; it is comparatively permanent; it is coloured; above all it is substantial By substantial I do not merely mean that it does not collapse when I lean upon it; I mean that it is constituted of ‘substance’ and by that word I am trying to convey to you some conception of its intrinsic nature. It is a thing…”) By contrast, the theoretical objects made up of quantum-mechanical elements are thoughts or ideas.
But Eddington’s “two tables”, a literary device, took hold of the imagination of the scientifically aware laypersons - that includes philosophers! - and they did a strange thing. They decided that the theoretical table was the real thing, while the perceptual table was just a mental impression - an idea - of the real thing. (I partly blame Schopenhauer for this, or at any rate the English translation of his title: “The World as Will and Representation” - carrying on Kant’s notion of the noumenal world and its phenomenal presentation.)
Schrödinger repeatedly rejected this dual assumption, writing: “The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.”
That is what the ordinary person knows, until he is bewitched by confused accounts in popular science or in the philosophers’ similarly confused musings.
So I think I need you to defend that view of materialism. I know that some philosophers - Daniel Dennett in particular had a huge flock of lay groupies - tried to repair the damage by asserting that the perceived world is also the world out there: that “plants have patches of green [qualia] on them.” Wittgenstein had pointed out that, if so, then nettles have patches of pain on them… Schrödinger - who made a scientific study of colour vision - showed that it is possible to mix two wavelengths of colour (a yellow and a blue) to make a green indistinguishable from an actual (single specific wavelength of) green. Well, I’m wandering off into arcane detail.
What, then, in tight language, is your view of the two tables and the two worlds?
Great essay Max, and dead on. I am going to feature this one as a "Worthwhile Read" at Risk+Progress.
“If we want to slow population growth, we should focus on reducing births, not on raising or maintaining deaths.” I profoundly disagree.
The purpose or meaning of human life cannot just be longevity for its own sake. Nor does extending lives “save lives” - unless we become immortal and engineer an immortal universe. We are all going to die, and I can’t think of a higher meaning or value for my death than to bow out gracefully and allow a new generation to try their hand at adding creatively to our history, rather than exerting themselves to prolong my largely unproductive decline. Most great musicians, artists, poets, scientists, mathematicians, and of course athletes, do their best work well before 40 - say, half my age. History is crowded with young achievers, young pioneers, and long may that continue.
Suggested reading:
1) “The City and the Stars” - Arthur C. Clarke. Even perfect health could not convincingly vindicate immortality.
2) The parable of the talents…
You surely do not "profoundly disagree" with the statement you quoted. It is a simple mathematical truth. It seems clear that you disagree with something else -- the desirability of living longer. I think you are making unexamined assumptions such as about creativity that may not apply in a world where aging -- including cognitive aging -- has been reversed.
If you don't want to live any longer and will just accept your end, that's fine. Just so long as you don't prevent those of us who do want to live longer.
I have read The City and the Stars (twice). If you had read much of my writing you would know that I understand perfectly well that extended life is not immortality. So what? It does not follow that the right thing to do is let yourself die at a random time decided by biological accident.
“If we want to slow population growth, we SHOULD focus on reducing births, not on raising or maintaining deaths.” This is not “a simple mathematical truth” since it draws a moral conclusion. Let me give you an example of a simple mathematical truth: “If the entire human race were exterminated (by whatever means - cosmic accident or human contrivance) today, vast numbers of future human deaths would be avoided.”
Let’s be more philosophical, à la Philippa Foot. A runaway train is heading towards a crossing where a carful of octogenarians is stuck. There is an alternative: you have the power to switch a point on the track to a different crossing, where a little boy has his foot trapped in the rails.
Quantity may be the stuff of mathematical truth, but what about quality? The NHS supposedly applies an algorithm based on QALYs (quality-adjusted life years) to prioritize life saving (or quality enhancing) treatment. Bizarrely, this eminently sensible principle was totally ignored during the Covid emergency. Presumably it was an interpretation of Boris Johnson’s simplistic assertion - or diktat - that “One death is too many”.
We are all going to die. It’s no big thing. “Average costs of mild, moderate, and severe dementia are £24 400, £27 450, and £46 050, respectively, per person per year.” That’s just dementia, quite apart from all the other geriatric costs to “our” NHS. There are maybe half a million moderate-to-severe dementia patients in the UK. You can no doubt extract a simple mathematical truth from that. What I extract from it is that the typical significant dementia case requires the rough equivalent of one full-time carer to sustain a largely meaningless life. Your conclusion might be brutally paraphrased as: “When we have sorted dementia out, we won’t need to breed all those carers any more.”
You are definitely not understanding my perspective. I have no interest in extending years of ill health, misery, or dementia. That is not the point! The idea is to extend healthy years and to eventually prevent aging altogether. Imagine people in their second or third century with the health, vigor, and cognitive energy of youth.
There is no good reason to expect the quality of life to go down if we have more years. Certainly, that has not been the case historically.
Do you think life expectancy in 2025 is somehow the perfect lifespan? Would you advocate shortening lives (back to where they were 50 or a 100 years ago) to make life more meaningful or higher in quality?
Also, another question occurs to me: Do you think 1.4 kilos is the perfect size for a human brain? I find that mine is running out of capacity. I have forgotten so many important moments. I doubt it would be good for 300 years, even if the telomeres lasted that long.
I think our brain is far from optimal. That's why I advocate using technology to enhance our cognition and emotion. So, no, I do not accept the current situation as optimal.
The flip side of that coin is to minimize years of ill health, misery and dementia. What is the currently available solution? What is the guarantee of a radical solution.
And once more, how many lives should be sacrificed on the altar of your longevity?
What sacrifice? What are you talking about? I am talking about saving lives, extending healthy lifespan. No one needs to sacrifice anything. By wanting to limit people lives (as you seem to favor), you are one advocating sacrificing lives.
There are no great solutions to minimizing the unpleasant years as yet. The best we can do is to exercise, maintain a healthy diet, avoid obvious harms like excessive alcohol, tobacco, etc., reduce stress, and seek a supportive community. I strongly advocate massive research into life extension but I also understand that no effective means yet exists.
I think you are missing the point. Maintaining the mortality rate has much less effect on future population than does reducing births. The "should" is not a moral should but a practical one. If you want X, then choose the much more effective means of achieving X.
I think you are missing the point. What is life for? You seem to believe that we can get an ought from an is. In philosophy that is known as the Naturalistic Fallacy.
However, the first great difference between us is that you think human existence is a good and a right by definition. I think that our existence is a great debt to be creatively, meaningfully repaid with pride. The second difference is that I know what you are missing. You need to read Viktor Frankl.
You can stop telling me what to read. I have read Frankl and plenty else on the topic. I also know what the Naturalist Fallacy is and I am not committing it. It has nothing to do with practical oughts. These are means-ends statements. They don't commit the Naturalistic Fallacy because they do not tell you what to do. They tell that that IF you want X then the best means to achieve it is Y. In that sense, IF you want X, you ought to do Y. No fallacy.
No, I do not think existence is a right. Where do you get that from? How can it be a right? There is no life giver to claim the right from. Life is an accident. It is up to us to make the most of it, if we do choose. I so choose. Unlike you, I also do not believe that our existence is a debt of any kind. Our existence is a fact and it is up to us what we do with it. Debt or gratitude are irrelevant. We have an *opportunity* to make our life good (by which I mean virtuous) and to encourage others to do the same.
You have read Frankl - good that will save some time. I think my life is a privilege and an obligation because of the “concept of man” I have arrived at. What is your “concept of man”? What do you take to be the meaning of your life? Do you think George Bernard Shaw is worth more than John Keats, Frank Ramsey and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart combined? Never mind the quality, feel the width.
Well… This can’t all be done in one post. I’ve had a long think, and clearly the sticking point (another Macbeth quote) is the issue of idealism v materialism (physicalism if you must).
I gave you two quotes, which you haven’t yet addressed here - though you must have done at some time. Schrödinger clearly thought Democritus’s argument was obvious and unassailable. Planck clearly thought his own parallel argument was beyond challenge.
I think there was a 20th century materialist turn traceable to 1928.
In 1924, reflecting on the brand new account of reality in terms of quantum mechanics, Sir James Jeans had famously written: "The universe looks more and more like a great thought rather than a great machine." Introducing his Gifford Lectures in 1938, Sir Arthur Eddington wrote: “I have settled down to the task of writing these lectures and have drawn up my chairs to my two tables. Two tables! Yes; there are duplicates of every object about me - two tables, two chairs, two pens.” Let’s be 100% clear: the substantial, material table according to Eddington is the table of everyday perception. (He continues: “One of them has been familiar to me from earliest years. It is a commonplace object of that environment which I call the world. How shall I describe it? It has extension; it is comparatively permanent; it is coloured; above all it is substantial By substantial I do not merely mean that it does not collapse when I lean upon it; I mean that it is constituted of ‘substance’ and by that word I am trying to convey to you some conception of its intrinsic nature. It is a thing…”) By contrast, the theoretical objects made up of quantum-mechanical elements are thoughts or ideas.
But Eddington’s “two tables”, a literary device, took hold of the imagination of the scientifically aware laypersons - that includes philosophers! - and they did a strange thing. They decided that the theoretical table was the real thing, while the perceptual table was just a mental impression - an idea - of the real thing. (I partly blame Schopenhauer for this, or at any rate the English translation of his title: “The World as Will and Representation” - carrying on Kant’s notion of the noumenal world and its phenomenal presentation.)
Schrödinger repeatedly rejected this dual assumption, writing: “The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.”
That is what the ordinary person knows, until he is bewitched by confused accounts in popular science or in the philosophers’ similarly confused musings.
So I think I need you to defend that view of materialism. I know that some philosophers - Daniel Dennett in particular had a huge flock of lay groupies - tried to repair the damage by asserting that the perceived world is also the world out there: that “plants have patches of green [qualia] on them.” Wittgenstein had pointed out that, if so, then nettles have patches of pain on them… Schrödinger - who made a scientific study of colour vision - showed that it is possible to mix two wavelengths of colour (a yellow and a blue) to make a green indistinguishable from an actual (single specific wavelength of) green. Well, I’m wandering off into arcane detail.
What, then, in tight language, is your view of the two tables and the two worlds?