I've noticed the anti-immortality and longevity streak in sf, especially fantasy. I assume it's sour grapes.

Some people start dying in the womb.

Here's what I wrote:

Perhaps it would help you to see the horror that your assertion evokes if it were restated as such:

Honestly I just think there's too many damn [Jews], and not enough [Jews] dying."

If you agree that this is a horrific sentiment, why would it be any less horrific if you substituted the superset [humanity] for the subset [Jews]?

People grow old and die. That is life as we now know it. A friend of mine just sent me a blurry picture of her father and her daughter taken five days before her father died. He died on Father's Day. He was 72-years-old and had a number of heart related ailments. In the picture, he had a tube around his face from being on oxygen. My friend's daughter was in the foreground looking thoughtful. Her father was always funny. He was an obstetrician and had served in some war. I am assuming Vietnam. I haven't met her daughter yet.

How much is someone's consumption related to their productivity. This is why the whole social security thing is going to bite us. The productive part of the population is going to spend a lot of its resources supporting a less productive part of the population. Should 80% of the wealth be used to support 20% of the population? If the cost of extending life was lower, the issue would be different. Right now it is quite expensive. The idea that you consume less when you are retired typically underestimates the medical costs.

It reminds me of some of the arguments against David Pearce and hedweb.com (if you haven't heard of them, I think you'll enjoy it). People say its unnatural or "you can't be really happy without being sad" or "nonstop happiness is boring" or any of those arguments.
So like with the abolition of negative feelings, people rationalize and come up with positive aspects of death as well, since it is/was inevitable too.
"How can you enjoy life without the threat of death?", etc. The arguments will get more complicated if the arguer is more intelligent, but its still just a rationalization; trying to say eternal life is bad because, most likely, you can't have it.

Its actually a very common viewpoint in society, but just like with religiosity, I think its less likely as you go higher up the intelligence scale.

also, Bryan Caplan agrees

I had an argument about this in the lj feminist community last week, and I found it equally mind-boggling. I also was called a eugenicist several times (I still don't get it).

There's not enough people dying? I mean, what? Where are these people with their pro-death rhetoric after a natural disaster or a terrorist attack?

I think that life extension is so outside the realm of what people consider feasible in the near future that very few people have done some serious hard thinking about it. I'm not surprised that less reasoned arguments for life-extension are out there. Especially since death is such a charged topic.

Since you mention homosexuality, I'll use it as an example. Tolerance of homosexuality is reaching fixation in western intellectual world and I assume soon in the western mainstream because the idea that tolerance won't make the world end is testable and it's been explored thoroughly, so tolerance is prevalent. Most people have considered the morality of homosexuality. There is lots of art out there to help people think about it. So they have better and better opinions on the matter. I think there are plenty of people in our social circles who would have been perhaps violently homophobic if they'd not been exposed to good arguments on why homosexuality is just peachy.

In contrast, there's not that much out there to vet our ideas on immortality. as dan4th said, he was influenced by a lot of fantasy that say that short life spans are good for humans creativity and more. Personally I think that's authours' sour grapes explanation, but hey.

I also think it's different to make a bold assertion on something you have little control over than one you potentially do. An offhand comment like "a comet should just hit the earth and irradicate humanity" is not psychotic. To use the word psychotic is... a bit extreme. It's a callous statement for sure. I think it's more callous to call someone who's making casual fanciful suppositions on the someday world a psychopath. I think we ought to have the freedom to imagine scary or ugly things without being told we are bad people for it. It's a far cry from doing those bad and scary and ugly things. Like I hardly think dan4th would take measures to eliminate immortality research.

Coincidentally, just last night I read The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, which starts with an awesome premise about immortal humans living inside an Asimovian near-omnipotent computer that caters to their every whim, and somehow ends up with a hamfisted Adam-and-Eve scenario and a heavy-handed "the meaning of life is that it ends" message. (I'll be posting a more detailed critique soon.) Just sad, really.

As far as I know, we're the only species who thinks our individual lives are so uniquely fascinating that we should be immortal.

That said, I fully support extending life (especially quality life) when possible and desired. Taken to its extreme conclusion, I think practical immortality for everyone would run up against serious problems with the supply of usable matter in the universe, but the universe is pretty big, and who knows, perhaps with immortality we'd have the opportunity to solve that problem as well.

This reminds me of a rant amanda42 had a few years back. In one of her classes in Harvard Law School, a professor asked a hypothetical question along the lines of:

"Would you prefer to live in a world where nearly everyone had the intelligence of Einstein, but you still had the same intelligence you have now? So instead of being toward the top of the intelligence bell curve, you'd be at the bottom."

Less than 10% of the class thought this would be a good thing. So 90% of Harvard Law Students are such elitist pricks that they value being better than other people over all the unfathomable benefits that a world of super-geniuses would bring.

With finite resources, increasing life expectancy requires a decreased birth rate. Why are you against babies?

(tongue firmly in cheek)

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time to build up,a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear its not too late

I have nothing against life extension, but I think the whole debate is rather theoretical.

Death is not an accident: we are designed to die, its part of the mechanism that got us here. Without dying, wed still be single cellular organisms. That doesnt imply any 'oughts' of course, but life extension with far reaching practical consequences (not just a few extra years) is going to involve redesigning life from the bottom up. I dont quite expect to live to see the day.

Much like seasteading, you could easily write pages and pages refuting people's common misconceptions, fallacies, and fear-based rationalizations about why it won't work, why it's bad for humanity or the environment, et cetera, et cetera.

"how small a portion of our economy is natural resources (a few percent)"

Oh this wonderful chestnut. Size is the only measure of importance?

Here is a suggestion, you live your life using only the non-natural resources part of the economy, and you can live as long as you want (good luck with that).

I wouldn't say I'm against life extension, per se, but I'm not for it for myself. I don't fear/hate aging and death the way you seem to. I'm not looking forward to those I love dying--and I intend to fight the physical decline of aging with everything I have--but I also have no wish to live forever. My family often lives to the upper 90s with mental facilities intact and that seems like a good length to me. Maybe if the world were one of more equitable resources and justice, I would want to live longer, but I doubt it. My reasoning for this is not something I expect that I could ever articulate so that you would understand, though, because I don't really understand it myself. Maybe it's partially the difference between being someone who finds happiness/optimism a natural state of being (as you do) and between someone who finds it a struggle to obtain and keep (as I do).

However, I am certainly not opposed to people doing research and seeking to extend their own lives. This is the type of thing I consider an individual choice. I don't see how I'm hurt at all by someone else choosing to live to 300 or 400 or whatever.

Your life expectency is already double the life expectancy of a man living in Swaziland. At your tender age of "almost" 32 you have already beaten the expected life expectancy of a male in Swaziland. If it isn't contention over natural resources, what does it take to double their lifespans?

What does more time give you? In many of your other posts you're talking about living in the now, seizing the moment, and from your seasteading, poker and fitness I would say you're doing a good job of that, but how many people can say the same?

How many people waste their time with soulless activities? And giving them more time helps them how? Creating consumers to an infinite amount or reruns?

I suppose at the end of the day it depends on your view of humanity. If you're basically happy with humanity, then immortality seems a generous gift. If you have a more caustic view of your fellow man, then why would you want them all around forever? If you think the government and associated bodies are conservative now, wait til they've had a 200 years of status quo in their lifetimes.

Do I want to see the my loved ones decline and pass away. I've seen it a bit already. Wasn't thrilled about it. Would I prefer that they didn't have to decline and pass. Yup! Would I hold that preference for everyone on the planet? No. Am I ready to pick which ones we keep and which ones we lose? No. Will I do everything I can to keep those near and dear to me from passing too soon? I wish I knew. I complain about their smoking, I don't over harass about drinking soda, or eating poorly or not getting enough exercise. So I guess not everything in my power. I'm working on the changes I need to make sure I'm around as long as I can to help my loved ones, but what is life without limits?

On a less serious note -- so you're looking for the only constant to be taxes? ;)

Man I've babbled for a while on this one. Lots to think about.

I don't see immortality giving rise to any new forms of heavy metal, so I'm against it all the way. So is Cannibal Corpse.

I think that much of it stems from our intuitive and erroneous zero-sum view of the world, where more people means less to go around. This is the exact opposite of the truth, as you can see by seeing how small a portion of our economy is natural resources (a few percent) and looking at the history of the human race. A history of increasing population and increasing wealth going hand in hand, because the benefits of trade, specialization, and the sharing of ideas far, far outweigh the increased competition for fixed resources.

This is more or less the argument Eric A. Davidson refutes in You Can't Eat GNP: Economics as if Ecology Mattered. The carrying capacity of the Earth for our species is not infinite; if we develop practical immortality, we'd better develop practical large scale colonization of space along with it, and pretty quickly.

Another issue with immortality is that it may be available, at least initially, only to the very wealthy. The potential social impact could be a huge increase in inequality, with an immortal elite controlling an increasing proportion of resources while the rest of the population sinks further into relative (and possibly absolute) poverty. Not saying it has to happen that way, but I think it is a plausible scenario. It might even appeal to an Objectivist, but from the standpoint of Rawlsian ethics it's pretty repugnant.

The most classical argument against immortality is that murder rates will go up, presumably because the "great equalizer" would no longer be extant. As indicated by the Subject heading, you can try to bend this into an economic-esque paradigm if desired.

Try eating the 98% of our economy that doesn't depend on natural resources for dinner.