Irreverent Deathism
Over at TechCrunch, the resident jester shows himself to be a deathist - though one shouldn't take anything he writes terribly seriously. It's a funhouse mirror reflection of ill-thought and emotional attitudes to engineered longevity that are in fact held by a great many people. They knee-jerk in favor of what is, or against suspected privilege, without thinking about the mass suffering and death that we could work to prevent: "Oh yes, go to any Silicon Valley party right now and you'll find a scrawny huddle in the corner discussing the science of living forever: a topic that's gone from fringe to hot to cliche in - ironically - less time that it takes a tsetse fly to start getting interested in girls. But then why wouldn’t it when the science of ageing touches on so many valley obsessions? For a start, gerontology is a science. But it's also hacking: human bodies aren't supposed to live much beyond 80, and these are people who would gladly spend a weekend hacking a Furby to make it curse, just because it's not supposed to. ... And so the research goes on, millions more dollars are poured in to deathhacking startups by rich-mortal-and-terrified benefactors, dozens more books are published on the subject and every day countless startup founders jump into their Teslas and speed to their 'doctors' to pick up the latest batch of pills that they hope will keep them around until someone figures this shit out. And why not? Here's why not."
Link: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/01/what-kills-us-makes-us-stronger/