Our questions
- Is the human lifespan about the right length, just as is, despite death and disease?
- Or would we better off if we could "cancel old age" (as Steele proposes) and make it much longer?
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Fischer and Cave, Should You Choose to Live Forever?
Living forever (definition, p. 62-69)
- True immortality (not what he's interested in)
- impossible to die
- Radical life extension
- no aging, disease, or internal catastrophes like heart attacks and strokes
- can still die due to external causes
- normal lifespan would be about 6000 years
rejuvenation & permanent youthfulness- Q: will people look different as they get older?
- Radical life extension PLUS favorable circumstances
- resources
- fellow travelers
Some of these details rule out key problems in our movies
Problem of isolation
- Age of Adaline, In Time, Man from Earth
- solved by fellow travelers
- Q: is it completely solved?
- Will Salas's mother appears to be his age (In Time)
- Adaline's daughter appears to be her mother (Age of Adaline)
- John Oldman's son appears to be his father (Man from Earth)
- problem solved by no rejuvenation, no permanent youthfulness
- Q: is generation blurring actually a problem?
- Q: will it be completely eliminated by RLE as specified by Fischer?
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Should we choose RLE under favorable circumstances?
Thomas Nagel's thought experiment (p. 61-62)
- If you were offered one more week of life, you would always choose it.
- Those extra weeks could add up to 6000 years, if RLE existed.
- Therefore, RLE is choiceworthy.
Fischer--this argument is suggestive but sort of cheats -- it circumvents problems with 6000 years by considering them week by week (p. 73)
Compare Thanksgiving Dinner dilemma--should I eat everything on the table? Problem vanishes if you consider the issue bite-by-bite.
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Are there huge problems with living for 6000 years?
Fischer--here are the alleged problems -- but I will show that none of them are serious problems
- Personal identity -- the 6000 year old person one day inhabiting my body won't be me
- Death is motivating -- RLE will lead to procrastination
- What does Fischer say?
- Narratives create meaning, and a 6000 year long life will be narratively deficient
- Life has stages -- but a super-long life won't have stages
- Boredom
Bernard Williams, "The Makropulos Case"
An argument about both personal identity and boredom
- To stave off boredom, I will have to shift to one activity after another.
- Either I will be unsuccessful, so incredibly bored, so life won't be worth living.
- Or I will be successful, but no longer me.
- One way or the other, I won't be better off choosing RLE
Next part of book will respond to this
