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Do We Need Death?
Ron Bailey doesn't think so. Neither do I. And I sure hope we don't.
I've noticed this kind of "argument" a lot with people who want to hold back true progress (as opposed to the "progress" proposed by many "progressives"):
So what about the social consequences of radically longer and healthier lives? In that regard, Diana Schaub in her reaction essay raises many questions for reflection about those consequences, but curiously she fails to actually reflect on them. Schaub isn’t “willing to say that agelessness is undesirable,” but she simultaneously “can’t shake the conviction that the achievement of a 1,000-year lifespan would produce a dystopia.” She then simply recapitulates the standard issue pro-mortalist rhetorical technique of asking allegedly “unnerving questions” and then allowing them to “fester in the mind.” Sadly, all too many bioethicists think they’ve done real philosophic work by posing “hard” questions, then sitting back with steepled hands and a grave look on their countenances.
Yeah, these sorts of questions have been "festering" in my mind for decades. I don't ever seem to come up with the sort of scary answers that she won't tell us, though.
Posted by Rand Simberg at December 10, 2007 12:43 PM
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