(mod: CalJust) Elixir of Immortality

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
1. anonimity
2. perfect health.
3. regeneration.
4. the elixir must be in the form of yearly doses, not "take one dose, have it forever". i want to be able to stop

If you were offered an elixir that did not meet those specifications, would you turn it down? Would it need all those specifications, or are they nice-to-haves?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Taken at face value, that is a totally meaningless sentence. If given a choice, you would wish to die later rather than sooner. Yet you keep implying otherwise.

I will be content with a life that is ended by so called natural causes. So however long that is. I don't expect to die in the next few years. And I don't want to be killed prematurely by an accident or preventable disease. I don't invest any worry in how soon I am going to die (or how long I am going to live, for that matter) but probably would (or will) if/when the prospect of death looked set to interfere with the targets and achievements I mentioned earlier. I am not concerned about when I am going to die.

Originally posted by FMF
I will be content with a life that is ended by so called natural causes.

And I don't want to be killed prematurely by an accident or preventable disease.

A preventable disease, is 'natural causes'. Every cause of death is potentially preventable or can at least be delayed.
If some new discovery allows us to take a pill and live 50 years longer, will you not take the pill?

Originally posted by twhitehead
If you were offered an elixir that did not meet those specifications, would you turn it down? Would it need all those specifications, or are they nice-to-haves?

2 and 3 are deal breakers. it wouldn't be fun to be an immortal decrepit old man or have a crippling cronic illness.

if you don't have perfect health, it stands to reason that sooner or later you will get something nasty. having to deal with 100 years of alpha centauri brain fever until they develop a cure is not cool.

1 is for my paranoia. being immortal might mean that you regenerate. imagine being kidnapped by organ traffickers and constantly have your kidneys removed. i might be willing to

4. is optional.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
2 and 3 are deal breakers. it wouldn't be fun to be an immortal decrepit old man or have a crippling cronic illness.

Does this only apply if you are immortal? If you get to be a decrepit old man or have a crippling chronic illness, are you going to commit suicide, or does the thought that it will not last forever keep you going?

Originally posted by twhitehead
If some new discovery allows us to take a pill and live 50 years longer, will you not take the pill?

Yes, maybe. But I am not the slightest bit interested in whether such a thing is being developed. I am not particularly interested in a long period of infirmity or mental decline that creates a burden for those around me. I would hope that whatever ends up ending my life does so relatively swiftly. I cannot imagine ending my life by my own hand but I could imagine refusing treatment if I were in a hopeless terminal sickness situation.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Does this only apply if you are immortal? If you get to be a decrepit old man or have a crippling chronic illness, are you going to commit suicide, or does the thought that it will not last forever keep you going?

things change then. having finite time makes it precious. one should be inclined to fight for it for as long as possible. one could endure some finite pain knowing that if nothing else, release would come eventually.

an eternity is a very long time. (it could arguably become unbearable even if in complete bliss, let alone when in pain).

as for being decrepit, it would imply your body keeps deteriorating without organ failure (and dying). that again wouldn't be much of a life.

it would allow for some more debate though if it would be possible to transfer the consciousness in a machine of some sorts. then becoming decrepit wouldn't matter as the vessel would be abandoned (though then the elixir would be rendered worthless anyway)

Thanks, FMF. Just opened this post, sitting here in my bungalow overlooking the Sabie River in the Kruger Park. Some elephants just came to drink, with quite a few young ones.

Let's see where this goes...

Originally posted by FMF
But I am not the slightest bit interested in whether such a thing is being developed.

But if it was already developed, how much effort would you put into getting it?
You seem to be trying to get away with having no interest in extending your life span, yet admitting that you probably would given the opportunity.

OK, have now plowed through all three pages and most disappointingly, no insults and aggression to moderate! (Or even violent disagreements).

Since I cannot participate myself, I could just urge the respondents to consider the OP: clearly, FMF is talking about immortality and the pros and cons of such an existence.

As such, having it temporalised i.e. by being able to switch it off if it is not what it was cracked up to be, is inadmissable. If you could "cancel" it, you wouldn't be immortal, just very old.

So, the question remains "Who would want to live forever, and why?"

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
things change then. having finite time makes it precious. one should be inclined to fight for it for as long as possible. one could endure some finite pain knowing that if nothing else, release would come eventually.

I personally disagree. I do not have many memories of my childhood. If I were to live forever, its seems perfectly possible that I would still have a finite memory, and it wouldn't really matter that much how long my past life had been. It is of course possible that I would have total recall, but it is hardly a given.

If you were in the same situation as Stephen Hawking, would you choose to die?
(he has made it to 72, with much of his life being spent in a wheel chair).

an eternity is a very long time. (it could arguably become unbearable even if in complete bliss, let alone when in pain).
It could become unbearable, but it is not guaranteed that it would. How many years would you say would be the maximum you could endure with less than perfect health? Lets say you have arthritis. How long before you commit suicide? 100 year? 10,000 years?

Originally posted by twhitehead
But if it was already developed, how much effort would you put into getting it?
You seem to be trying to get away with having no interest in extending your life span, yet admitting that you probably would given the opportunity.

I have never really considered taking any extraordinary measures to increase the likelihood of extending my life other than to do most things in moderation. I don't try to keep particularly fit and I almost never go to the doctor when I get sick. Like I said, I'll die when I die, and there will be no regrets. I get the feeling you don't know what that means perhaps because it's not what you feel about your own mortality. Perhaps you could talk about yourself. I offered a caveat or two for your pill idea. The pill does not seem very exciting to me. Maybe I would change my tune if I were older or even at death's door. I don't know.

Originally posted by FMF
A related question, perhaps, is what proportion of one's family's wealth would one use to eke out an extra 5, 10, 15, 20 years of life having reached, say, 60 years of age. My spouse and I have discussed this question on occasions without reaching specific formulations and are certainly nowhere near the stage of creating a spreadsheet! It's one of those the-proo ...[text shortened]... I suppose. 🙂

Apologies to the moderator if I am committing Thread Drift here! I will desist.

No, I think its within scope, as it defines the conditions in which the elixir of immortality works. I think you've identified an ethics vs. comfort dilemma. An immortal individual with some form of savings account and a little frugality could accumulate such vast amounts of wealth (c.f. Douglas Adams method of paying the bill at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe) that their presence would severely distort the mortal economy. Obviously one could trim one's wealth every century or so, but after a while it would be tempting to start intervening. Also in the modern world, and presumably in the future, identity would be a problem. They'd notice a 3,000 year old bank account under the same name.

Originally posted by DeepThought
An immortal individual with some form of savings account and a little frugality could accumulate such vast amounts of wealth (c.f. Douglas Adams method of paying the bill at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe) that their presence would severely distort the mortal economy.

That is already the case with the super wealthy, and some of the families involved are near immortal as the wealth is passed from generation to generation.
But if it gets too bad, then its time for a revolution, either a peaceful one, with higher taxes for the rich or a violent one. I suspect that we will see something in between in the not too distant future as many first world nations are seeing an unsustainable wealth gap between the super rich and the rest.

One of the seminal philosophical works that inspired debate on this topic was Bernard William's The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality. Williams argued against the desirability of immortality, and his basic argument was as follows. He reasoned that what makes life meaningful and worthwhile are the deeply rooted "categorical" desires, projects, goals and commitments, etc, that we tackle and pursue. These can come in many flavors and forms, but Williams argued that it is a non-contingent fact for beings like us that these categorical pursuits are finite and hence subject to being exhausted, similar to how one could exhaust a rolodex. So he reasoned there would, out of necessity, come a time during an endless existence where life becomes intolerably tedious and not worth living.

All of his major premises are debatable. But even if they are granted, one objection that can be raised is something already touched on by FMF and twhitehead: if the immortal being does not have total recall on his categorical pursuits, then even if they are exhaustible, they could reoccur without tedium. It would be like coming back to the start of the rolodex and not having recall that you have already been there before.

With respect to contingent versus necessary immortality it is worth pointing out that much of William's essay was focused on a contingent variety, even though his argument was not really explicit toward one or the other. That is because he focused on the fictional case of Makropulos, who had the option of taking the elixir every few hundred years or so. I think necessary or essential immortality is the really difficult case, but it is still worthwhile to consider the contingent variety. The contingent case is like the necessary case but with the added option of ending if things go badly. So if you find reason to declare the contingent variety undesirable, I would think that declaration should transfer also to the necessary variety. Of course, if you find the contingent sort desirable, it would still be a further question about the desirability of the necessary sort.

I think the really difficult thing about this discussion is that our judgments of (un)desirability are typically made within the scope of recognizably human terms; and immortality is not recognizably human. If we try to make it more recognizably human and more fully described, then it is difficult enough trying to make it a conceivable thing, let alone a desirable thing. This is one criticism that gets lobbed at some theists, that their notions of everlasting life in heaven is a bunch of underdescribed handwaving. At any rate for some of these theists, humans already possess immortality whether we like it or not. It's just that the conditions of eternal life can vary dramatically as represented in the two extremes of heaven and hell. Indeed, it seems there is nothing conceptually about immortality that makes it immune from poor or even insufferable life conditions. Being somewhat risk averse, I would think that pulling the trigger on taking the elixir without having very strong assurances that constrain the life conditions would be an enormous risk.