Fight Aging!

As regular readers well know I think that fears of overpopulation following healthy life extension are essentially ridiculous, on a par with raising the prospect of boredom as a reason to reject longevity science and thus force billions to suffer and age to death unnecessarily. Led by the hairshirt teachings of environmentalism perhaps a majority of people believe the world to be overpopulated today, but the regions usually pointed out as examples are characterized by terrible governance, poverty created by war and kleptocracy in the midst of a wealth of resources, human and otherwise, that go unused.

The common Malthusian vision of overpopulation - that we will run out of oil, or food, or land, or any other resource because there are more people - is driven at root by the failure to appreciate economics, how the world works and what drives human action. The world changes and people react to potential shortages and rising prices by developing new technologies and new resources. Those who cannot look beyond what exists today will always cry that the sky is falling, as they think in terms of dividing a fixed set of resources that never changes. Those arguments were made in every past era: the Roman age had its authors who thought that doom lay ahead if there were too many more people. In reality these views are always wrong, time and again. Even land is effectively unlimited given access to the rest of the solar system and sufficiently advanced construction technologies.

Many worry that radical life extension or the elimination of death will lead to overpopulation and ecological destruction. In other words, while it may be best for individuals to live forever, it might be collectively disastrous. However, I don't believe that overpopulation and its attendant problems should give researchers in this area pause. So I argue that we should try to eliminate death, dealing with overpopulation - assuming we even have to - when the time comes. My suggestions may be considered reckless, but remember there is no risk-free way to proceed into the future. Whatever we do, or don't do, has risks. If we cease developing technology we will not be able to prevent the inevitable asteroid strike that will decimate our planet; if we continue to die young we may not develop the intelligence necessary to design better technology. Given these considerations, we shouldn't let hypotheticals about the future deter our research into defeating death. The tragedy of 150,000 people dying every single day - 100,000 of them from age-related causes - is a huge price to pay for speculative hypotheses about the future.

Note too that this objection to life-extending research could have been leveled at work on the germ theory of disease, or other life-extending research and technology in the past. Don't cure diseases because that will lead to overpopulation! Don't treat sick children because they might survive and have more children! I think most of us are glad we have a germ theory of disease, and treat sick children. Our responsibility is to help people live long, healthy lives, not worry that by doing so other negative consequence might ensue. We are glad that some of our ancestors decided that a twenty-five year life span was insufficient, instead of worrying that curing diseases and extending life might have negative consequences. Most importantly, I believe it is immoral for us to reject anti-aging research and the technologies it will produce, thereby forcing future generations to die involuntarily. After anti-aging technologies are developed, the living should be free to choose to live longer, live forever, or even die young if they want to. But it would be immoral for us not to try to make death optional for them.

Link: http://reasonandmeaning.com/2015/02/10/answering-the-overpopulation-objection-to-living-forever/