20 thoughts on “Medical “Ethics””

  1. I remember when the original article by Ezekial Emanual came out, but I reviewed it just so I could make this comment: he didn’t say you have a duty to die at any age. He didn’t say anything about anyone but himself, other than this:

    “Again, let me be clear: I am not saying that those who want to live as long as possible are unethical or wrong. I am certainly not scorning or dismissing people who want to live on despite their physical and mental limitations. I’m not even trying to convince anyone I’m right. Indeed, I often advise people in this age group on how to get the best medical care available in the United States for their ailments. That is their choice, and I want to support them.”

    Ok? So you don’t have to say “F… Y…” to him. Shame on the reason.com author for misleading you, but as Elon Musk recently retweeted on twitter: “Reading the source material is better than reading other people’s opinions about the source material”

    Emanuel’s article is here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/

    Elon’s tweet is here:
    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/825936326264360961?lang=en

    1. I didn’t say FU to him (that I know of). I said it to whom I said it to. If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it.

      I do find him very creepy, however.

    2. From Emmanuel’s book review:

      But while O’Connell suggestively quotes Rilke, St. Augustine, Gnostic texts and Hannah Arendt in critiquing techno-utopians, he never goes very deep into understanding the pathology driving them. He feels no attraction to their philosophy and notes that his child playing horsy with his wife could not be “rendered in code. . . . Their beauty was bodily, in the most profound sense, in the saddest and most wonderful sense.” But he fails to translate that feeling into anything approaching a coherent social or ethical critique. This limitation may be most manifest in O’Connell’s failure to mention one of the most disturbing aspects of this immortality mania: its utter selfishness. If Thiel and others actually succeeded in achieving superlong lives, then reproduction would end. And with it, the possibility of creating new people with novel characteristics and perspectives. Life would become one long, boring rerun.

      It would not, as one of O’Connell’s characters thoughtlessly says, be because childbirth would become “a thing of the past, . . . with babies being produced by ectogenesis and whatnot.” It would be because with all those old Peter Thiels living on and on forever, the Earth would lack the carrying capacity for more people; there would be total resource limits precluding adding one more infant, much less the 130 million currently added each year. Maybe this is why the titans of technology want so badly to escape to Mars.

      So right there, he terms the desire to live longer as a “pathology”, “selfish”, and a “long, boring rerun”. So while he isn’t coming out and claiming a “duty to die”, it’s quite clear that he thinks the consequences of indefinite life extension are dire. And what’s the implication of action with such consequences? Obviously, he’s implying that we shouldn’t do it. Hence, an implicit duty to die.

  3. I think immortality would be a bore. Plus I think it would basically fossilize our society. Death is the great equalizer. What was that saying… Science advances one funeral at a time.

    I’m not against people trying life extension. But like I said here before, lots of resources have been spent on it, and lots of people thought they could escape death and be immortal in the past (Shi Huangdi being one notable example) only to get cheated by swindlers. Plus, and this is my own guess, if someone does develop a method for clinical immortality it is quite likely it will only apply to those born after the treatment is devised. So I certainly don’t expect to live forever.

    1. I think immortality would be a bore. Plus I think it would basically fossilize our society.

      I don’t know. As we get older, time appears to pass more quickly. People generally want to squeeze more in or at least keep busy. This effect wouldn’t change with a longer lifespan, but be exacerbated by it.

      Being older might not feel as if you had been alive a very long time as much as it would feel like time is passing by at an incredibly fast rate. People living beyond current lifespans could very well be very productive and energize society.

    2. I think immortality would be a bore. Plus I think it would basically fossilize our society. Death is the great equalizer. What was that saying… Science advances one funeral at a time.

      Part of growing up is figuring out how to deal with boredom. And that is an awful way to do science. You’re destroying the knowledge base.

      As to fossilizing our society, it depends on whether we want that or not. And if we do, who am I to second-guess?

  4. Oh and fuck the idea of living as a program in someone else’s machine. I already have one God to obey thank you very much.

        1. Me either but it presents a lot of interesting scenarios to imagine.

          Would a digital you have property rights or intellectual property and if so, how would that be managed between multiple copies? What if one copy made more copies, would they get a share?

          What about works created after an individual was digitized, would it have to share with other copies?

          Which one would get the dog and which one gets the lake cabin?

    2. Oh and fuck the idea of living as a program in someone else’s machine. I already have one God to obey thank you very much.

      Do you obey our ideas on what gravity is? Do you obey the strong law of large numbers? Ideas are merely that. There’s nothing to “obey”. Even if true, it’s a machine doing something. There is no obligation installed as a result. Same goes for God.

  5. Not much of a surprise coming from perhaps the principal architect of Obamacare. This is a guy for whom there is quite obviously no such thing as “Peak Statism.”

  6. I like the comment he makes about being ‘criminally obtuse.’

    People that think they would get bored being healthy and young can always choose suicide.

    But knowing you would remain healthy and young would make working for a better future so much easier. Compound interest doesn’t have to be much if you have enough time and time means you can visit and make new friends.

    1. It also vastly simplifies health care and retirement. The latter is particularly parsimonious: there’s no need any more for a state funded retirement system and hence, we can eliminate it outright. The former could still be a complex health care system, but the end goal is finally fixed. Do this thing, get this predictable result. There’s no incentive for piling on heroic health care theater at the end of one’s life, for a key example.

      But knowing you would remain healthy and young would make working for a better future so much easier. Compound interest doesn’t have to be much if you have enough time and time means you can visit and make new friends.

      I think compound interest would decline over time (though obviously I wouldn’t mind being pleasantly surprised). We may already be seeing the start of it with the low growth rates of developed world countries.

  8. Most viable visions of immortality, whether real or mythological, include eternal youth, which entails far more than mere physical youth. Rather than fossilize that would likely accelerate change. Not to mention allowing you to get aboard an STL starship and still be young and adventuresome when you got to your next port of call centuries later.

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