OFC Meeting 6

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12 June 2019: Philip Manders presents

DEATH IN THE FUTURE

Some questions I (Philip) can think of for the discussion are:

1. Is death as inevitable as taxes? Can we imagine living much longer?
2. Are there are worse outcomes than death, such as dementia?
3. What will our lives be worth as the population grows to 10 billion and beyond? Is human life sacred or are we becoming an unwanted invasive species and should be replaced by a more intelligent and moral life form?
4. Since we did not exist before we were born why do we fear not existing in the future? Do we value our lives just for the entertainment value?

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Comments from Jess:

Mark Twain had several things to say about death. I particularly like this one.

Another quotation I thought was his, but may not be: "Either death is like sleeping -- and I like sleeping -- or it's not -- in which case I have some questions."

Ah, yes... back around 1970, the Los Angeles Free Press ran a special report on Health and Death with a huge front-page headline that read something like this, with all sorts of fancy fonts:

"Regardless of how good your health care plan is, how healthy you eat and drink, whether you smoke, how much exercise you get or how carefully you avoid dangerous practices and hazardous materials, YOU, PERSONALLY, are going to DIE."

(I paraphrase, for lack of a copy of the original.)

This seemed to me at the time like an excellent starting point for any discussion of risks, health or safety; I used it in all my lectures on Radiation Hazards, for instance.

But today it's not so clear whether those of us with lots of money and at least a few decades left on our life expectancy have to take that advice at face value any more. See Longevity Escape Velocity. I look forward to a brisk debate on this topic! :-)

Added at the last minute: I've been reading Yuval Noah Harari's book, Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind, and found a section I wanted everyone to see; I considered making copies, and then found that Harari has put it online(!) along with an introduction to his next book, Homo Deus. See FUTURE, especially the section headed The War Against Death, where he describes the latest continuations of King Gilgamesh's quest. I think Harari is correct that our quest for immortality is likely to be overtaken by technology that will turn us into (by any previous standards) gods. This is the topic of Homo Deus, which I look forward to reading!

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Roland's Opinion:

Humans are the only species on earth that are conscious of their own fate. No other living thing on earth has the consciousness to realize that it will one day... Die.

When you combine such consciousness with a strong built-in survival instinct you will naturally produce a conflict within the mind where your rational mind will accept that ALL living things die -- and an extremely strong natural instinct to try to save yourself from death. This conflict (I believe) is what causes most of us to fear death.

I don't think most of us are in it for the entertainment value (as Phil suggested) but rather -- we are driven by our survival instinct to try to hang on to life on earth as long as possible. I know of people (including my father) who have made a rational decision to end their life when they felt that there was no longer a hope for even a semi-normal life.

There is often (still) a pervasive fear of what happens when you die -- even when you make a rational decision not to go on living. I believe this fear stems from our survival instinct.

Humans have feared death and the afterlife since the dawn of recorded history. I don't think that will change in the next 20 years. Right now we are willing to spend very large sums of money (resources) on extending human life even if the person can never fully recover and might just live a marginal existence. Some might say that we should expend our limited resources on those with the best chance at a full and meaningful life -- or those that would make the greatest contribution to society e.g. Steven Hawkings. Is it possible that in the future we might take a completely rational approach to human death and try to overcome the survival instinct and bonding sentiment that is built in to us at birth.

If we do look at death as an inevitable and rational thing -- will we then pick and choose who gets to live longer? Will the wealthy and skillful (or talented) among us survive well into their second century while the rest of us simply do the best we can with whatever resources we have. My guts tell me that the survival instinct is stronger than any rational thought and that if we start to pick and choose who lives longer - then you would see massive social unrest. So in my opinion our approach to death will remain with us for a considerable time.

Please feel free to disagree or correct any of my thoughts on death. -- Roland

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Comment from Hendrik:

I have come across an interesting website: Guy McPherson is a climatologist (if there is such a person!) with some interesting, though disturbing ideas. In his book Going dark Guy maintains that we as a species have less then ten years left on this planet. It's all to do with a tipping point that has been reached in the Arctic. As more and more ice melts, less sunlight is reflected back into space and more is absorbed in the water, heating it, causing yet more ice to melt, etc. etc. On top of this, large quantities of Methane are released in the atmosphere, causing an ever higher temperature and a accelerated looping effect.

McPherson says that this is a done deal: computer models have proven that even if we stopped all industrial activity today, extinction would still happen. His advice is to live to the fullest in the time we have left, and not waste our energy trying to change the inevitable.

Whether or not you agree with Guy, he has broached an interesting topic: How to deal with Death, not as an individual, but as a species. It would force us to make short term decisions, rather than long term, and re-evaluate our relationships with others. I thought this could be added to the topics for discussion in Philip's presentation. See you then. -- Henk

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Philip: Here is an updated copy of the introduction I gave on June 12:

Death in the Future

For the future we need to learn how to make the awareness/fear of death a positive force and how to handle life extension and the possibility of minds transferred to machines.

Ernest Becker, an anthropologist who taught at SFU for the last five years of his life (he died in 1974), wrote that the unconscious fear of death drives much of the good and evil that we do. According to this theory we strive to get some measure of immortality by becoming a "hero", which can take many forms, both good and bad: we could be a hero for helping the disadvantaged or by being a loyal member of a terrorist group. Ernest Becker’s theory has been supported by psychological experiments described in the documentary film "Flight from Death" (2003) that show how subjects given subliminal reminders of death will identify more strongly with their own groups and be less generous to others.

What can we do in the future to encourage people to use their fear of death more constructively? The fact that the fear is largely unconscious can make it uncontrollable and destructive. Talking about it, for example in a "death cafe", allows us to make the fear conscious, and thus amenable to motivating us to live our lives more intensely and wisely. It is to be hoped that this conversation finds it way into media and the general populace.

The fear of death can be consciously used to motivate us do all sorts of good things, though it would probably be best to think of this as awareness of death rather than fear. It also should motivate us to give and receive love more readily. And death is not virtual -- awareness of it should cause us to value the physical world more, including other forms of life.

A world in which death is eliminated or greatly postponed would be an obvious advantage for the individual -- there are few people who would not welcome more healthy years. But for society and the planet serious problems would arise:

1. We would have a world in which there would be little room for younger people with their fresh ideas and perceptions. It has been said that science advances one funeral at a time.
2. As I mentioned above, the awareness of death can be a powerful positive motivator.
3. If most people lived very long lives we would increase the burden of the large human population on the planet.
4. And practically, it is unlikely that aging will be totally conquered, which means we will have longer lifespans in total but also more years of decrepitude.

One radical non-coercive solution to the problem of many people hanging on and perhaps suffering would be to allow everyone over a certain age to have medical assistance in dying, on request. This has already been proposed in the Netherlands. But what a difficult, maybe impossible to solve, problem this is though -- because ethically we are obligated to respect all human lives.

It seems likely we will have Artificial General Intelligence in the future. Some have proposed to defeat death by uploading minds to to an AGI. Unless civilization is totally destroyed, an AGI would never die -- we could restore a backup if necessary. However without the human body and any fear of death, the uploaded minds would usually just be uninteresting simulations. In general the lack of a biological body and mind and the absence of death in AGI would have obvious functional advantages, but I think they also mean that humans will never become superfluous.

To recap: the fear, or at least awareness, of death can be positive if it is conscious. And death from old age is not a bad thing from societies’ point of view.