RE: "The first person to live to [200, 300, 500, 1000] has already been born"
December 14, 2015 at 5:21 pm
(December 14, 2015 at 4:54 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Amine, you seem to be getting into slippery slope territory.
Just because I think eventually dying and making room for new life is crucial and essential to the natural order of our world, doesn't mean I think that refraining from wearing glasses is.
That's what your principle is. You are advocating the principle of "letting nature do its job". Once you wear glasses, you don't get to use that principle anymore. You've told nature you know better. As you should, because you do.
Also, what you are saying, again, is tantamount to being suicidal. Take that for what it's worth. If you are going to die and you refuse a treatment that would easily cure you, that's committing suicide.
This happens to be a reason why I think it matters if people believe in an afterlife or not. Bad philosophy can literally kill you.
(December 14, 2015 at 5:00 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I'm curious, Amine, and sorry if you've addressed this already. But I wanted to know how you think this immortality thing would be implemented? Would everyone have access to this treatment or would it be tightly controlled by the government and only given to few special people somehow? If not, should it be covered by health care so that everyone could get it? Would people still be allowed to have kids? If so, how would we solve the problem of more people coming, without anyone leaving?
I wrote an essay about it that addresses most of those questions here: https://deanamine.wordpress.com/2015/10/...evity-day/
Briefly, though:
I think it would happen gradually, probably. It's not as if one day a pill will come out and that will be that. As with all technologies, the wealthiest people might get first access, but it will drop in cost and improve in performance, eventually to the point of being seen as a universal right.
I don't know if people would still be allowed to have kids. My guess is there might be some reasonable limitation, but we have to take into account how the carrying capacity of the world increases as our technology becomes more efficient. As I said above, 1000 years ago it would have been ludicrous for 7 billion people to inhabit this planet. The tech wasn't even close. We can point to a large number of revolutions on the horizon that will increase the sustainability of our civilization. I can be more specific if you want.