> I think it's important that we don't accept death as inevitable, because if people don't hold out hope of conquering death, then it's less likely that we'll conquer it in time.
I agree it's important and rational to push back against death even if it's impossible to conquer death.
I think you have to believe that Life is Good, and thus we should want More Life. Life extension tech is worth pursuing because additional healthy years give us more life. That's valuable even for relatively small gains.
In fact, I think the "conquer death" argument is counter productive! Nobody has ever successfully avoided death[0]. If you start your argument with "yeah, but what if we STOPPED dying" nobody will take this seriously. Because even if you're right, it's outside the realm of literally all human experience to date, which is a lot to sell someone on.
Better to just say "life is good, here's some tech that could produce more healthy life. Want some?" Because people definitely want some. Health and Wellness is like a $3B market[1]. Why make it more complicated than that?
[0] Maybe Jesus, but if you buy that one it implies a whole different world view.
I agree it's important and rational to push back against death even if it's impossible to conquer death.
I think you have to believe that Life is Good, and thus we should want More Life. Life extension tech is worth pursuing because additional healthy years give us more life. That's valuable even for relatively small gains.
In fact, I think the "conquer death" argument is counter productive! Nobody has ever successfully avoided death[0]. If you start your argument with "yeah, but what if we STOPPED dying" nobody will take this seriously. Because even if you're right, it's outside the realm of literally all human experience to date, which is a lot to sell someone on.
Better to just say "life is good, here's some tech that could produce more healthy life. Want some?" Because people definitely want some. Health and Wellness is like a $3B market[1]. Why make it more complicated than that?
[0] Maybe Jesus, but if you buy that one it implies a whole different world view.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-health-wellness-market...