What's that blinking light in your hand?

[elfs]

It's time to found Sanctuary.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Ban all scientific research aimed solely at increasing longevity past 70 years. A number of biotechnology companies (which cannot be named here) are trying to allow rich people to extend their lifespans to over 100 years using pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, this could take money from the poor and give it to the rich (in their long pensions) by increasing everyone else's pension contributions, and housing and healthcare costs. All health research directed towards extending longevity beyond 70 years should be banned to save our pension system and NHS from collapse and to give room for the wonders of the next generation.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that this is just one lone crank, and a few miscellaneous "undersigneds," one of whom is just messing with the system. But this is a commonplace attitude, and one that must be confronted and disdained whenever possible.

Comments

[kenshardik]

Is that a blinking crystal in your hand or are you happy to see me?

[atheorist.livejournal.com]

If the pension system assumes a specific retirement age or death age and breaks if those increase drastically, then the pension system needs to be redesigned.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Don't be absurd. We're here for the pension system, not the other way around. Your 'solution' would have us making major changes to our social structures, indeed our very civilization, every time there was a major technological change. What kind of filthy iconoclast are you?

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm not totally up on the American pension system, but if I'm not mistaken, rich people don't qualify for pensions from the government.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

We don't have Prime Ministers in the US either - that must be from Canada or another country with a Prime Minister and a NHS (which we also lack).

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Yes, but my point is that how can one steal from the poor by drawing pension benefits one does not qualify for?

Their argument is complete nonsense.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The argument is complete nonsense, and profoundly EVIL, on a deeper level.

It's saying that, if extended lifespans would cause financing problems in the pension system, that the solution is to make peolple die on schedule to avoid having to change the pension system.

Think about how horrible that is. It is literally like a bank offering you a reverse mortgage, then sabotaging your medications so that you die soon enough for the bank to make a profit on the mortgage.

There is another implicit and false assumption here: namely that lifespans will be extended but people will still become old and feeble on schedule around 65. This is not the first time I've heard the argument "If people start living to 120" (or whenever) then they'll be spending almost half their life retired and the rest of us will be paying for them." What this ignores is that the longer-living people would also be healthier to a later age, and hence would be working far longer than the shorter-living people who preceded them.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Given the phrasing, I would tend to assume UK origin. One of the things I greatly fear in this line of research, and most things transhumanist in nature is the likelihood that they will be only available to the wealthy, yet in many ways we will all be subsidizing them. One example being former Congress-critters and their lavish pensions. On the other hand, if life-extending technologies were viewed as a public good and made available to all, they would allow many of us who will never be able to retire to keep working longer, and so be able to survive on our own.

[norincraft.livejournal.com]

I'm not too worried, at least not initially.

Crank and friends are just exhibiting primate behavior. They don't understand it so they fear it. But they also don't understand that we've as a species never really said no to a profitable area of technology. They think if they put their finger in the dike it will stop the flow of progress, not realizing the whole ocean is out there.

On the other hand, we often end up cutting ourselves on technology's backstroke.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

(A) It is the UK. The NHS is a British gov't institution.

(B) In the UK (I work with many Brits), the heathcare system is free and accessable to all. Ditto the pension system.

(C) The UK healthcare system has its plusses and its minuses. Humans, being human, ignore the minuses until they fester into crises. The UK is facing its own healthcare crises, different from the ones in the US, down the road. Longevity drugs ain't one of 'em.

(D) Life-extension methods will be purchased and used exclusively by the rich. Duh! They're the ones who (1) will be most able to afford them; and (2) at least here in the US, are arrogant and self-important enough to think that they should live forever, everyone else be damned.
(Think US politicians. They have the best healthcare in the world, for free, and a pension that they can't even lose if they commit crimes.)

(E) The problem isn't life-extension drugs, but the design and mentality of the UK pension and healtcare systems.

If you want to live longer, then you'd damn-well better be ready to work longer and retire much later in life, too. If you're gonna have the priviledge of being around longer, then you will bear the responsibility for the consequences of that choice, direct and indirect.

(P.S. - I have very nonstandard opinions on "retirement", but that's outside the scope of this post. :grin:)

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

(D) Life-extension methods will be purchased and used exclusively by the rich. Duh! They're the ones who (1) will be most able to afford them; and (2) at least here in the US, are arrogant and self-important enough to think that they should live forever, everyone else be damned.

Any given life extension method will at first be "purchased and used exclusively by the rich," because every major new technology starts out expensive. What always happens is that, as the technology develops further over time, suppliers bring the price down to expand their markets, until eventually (sometimes over generations) it becomes cheap enough for the middle classes and even the poor.

This or course assumes that the technology is not strangled by prohibitions. If that happens, then the process of mass production and distribution takes a LOT longer.

By the way, if life extension is outright banned, the super rich will still have it. It will be the Millionaire Next Door, and eventually YOU, PERSONALLY who will wind up dying younger than was necessary in order to satisfy the envious and spiteful who prohibited the technology's application.

And why, exactly, is it "arrogant" or expressing a philosophy of "everyone else be dammned" to try to stave off death as long as possible? Are you claiming that you are willing to die on statistical schedule, even if you know and can afford a means of avoiding it?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

You misunderstand me. I'm not advocating bans of any kind. Please reread what I wrote.

And why, exactly, is it "arrogant" or expressing a philosophy of "everyone else be dammned" to try to stave off death as long as possible? Are you claiming that you are willing to die on statistical schedule, even if you know and can afford a means of avoiding it?

Again, you misread me. I'm saying the opposite: that it will be the arrogant, self-absorbed people who will most aggressively seek life-extension treatments, no matter what the consequences (if any) may be to everyone else. Because, you see, they are Very Important. More important than you.

You and I may want to live longer because there's so much more to see and do, so many languages we haven't learned, so many things we've started and not finished. But those like you and I and Elf are rather different. Those who are More Important Than You or I will deem such reasons as unworthy of access to Their Immortality Pills. And they will see any life-extension medication as a limited resource that is rightfully theirs, since They are Very Important. (Many of them see "marriage" as some sort of finite resource, after all.)

Or, to put it another way: There are those who would use a longer life to enrich their minds, share their experience with others, and try to make the world a better place. And, there are those who would use a longer life to do a few decades more damage, to impose their narrow views and bigotries onto others. (Would you really want Pat Robertson to live an extra 50 years?) Personally, I fear that there are far, far too few of the former and many more of the latter.


Nevertheless, banning technology won't do any good. Better to make people pay for the indirect as well as the direct consequences. (To whit: if you want to live to 150, don't expect the rest of us to foot the bill for it, and expect to be working until age 130.)

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I'm saying the opposite: that it will be the arrogant, self-absorbed people who will most aggressively seek life-extension treatments, no matter what the consequences (if any) may be to everyone else. Because, you see, they are Very Important. More important than you.

Oh, ok. I agree with you, then. By definition, no matter how much I would seek life extension for my hedonic reasons ("life is fun"), I will probably not seek it as aggressively as someone who sought it for egotistic reasons ("I am the center of the universe").

But those like you and I and Elf are rather different. Those who are More Important Than You or I will deem such reasons as unworthy of access to Their Immortality Pills. And they will see any life-extension medication as a limited resource that is rightfully theirs, since They are Very Important. (Many of them see "marriage" as some sort of finite resource, after all.)

Possibly, yes. However, I see any pressure that they could exert based on this belief as trivial compared to the immense market pressure that would be generated by the "immortality pill" manufacturers to expand their market by bringing production costs and hence prices down.

Understand, I do not regard the immortality suppliers as likely to do this for altruistic reasons (though, who knows, one or two might surprise us in that regard). They will do it for economically selfish reasons -- because, as the technology progresses, there will be money to be made at lower and lower prices, serving wider and wider markets.

Something similar has happened with every other good and service that has been around long enough to allow the principle time to operate: I don't see why anagathics would be any different in this regard.

Nevertheless, banning technology won't do any good.

Instead, it would do immense harm, the more as it was successful, and also because it would mostly be unsuccessful. You would get a black market commodity that people would be even more willing to kill for than they are currently willing to kill for narcotic drugs! You would get law enforcement struggling to ensure that people die. The corruptive possibilities of all this are terrifying.

Better to make people pay for the indirect as well as the direct consequences. (To whit: if you want to live to 150, don't expect the rest of us to foot the bill for it, and expect to be working until age 130.)

Past a certain point, anagathics would become cheap enough that they would be provided free at low-cost or free clinics, just like antibiotics in many cities and countries today. However, if they extend youth rather than merely forestalling death, this really isn't a problem, provided that one changes the allowable benefits collection ages in public pension plans to match the changes in life expectancy.

Admittedly this is a political problem, but should we let such a problem rob us of the chance at eternal, or even extended, life?