Fight Aging!

A great many people believe, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that humanity is set upon a downward spiral into future far worse than the present. You will see this in any public discussion of rejuvenation therapies or efforts to slow aging: many participants couch their opposition to longevity therapies in terms of wishing to die before the world becomes worse. This sort of histrionic public display doesn't seem to be peculiar to our era. Dystopia has always held a greater fascination than utopia in literature, and heralds of the coming apocalypse have been around in one form or another for about as long as people have recorded their thoughts on the matter. Every story is the story of the Fall, as they say, in which the mythic past was better than the present, and in any given lifetime the combination of human psychology, degenerative aging, and the biochemistry of memory serves to make the past rosy with nostalgia in comparison to the uncertainties and pains of the present. Yet from an examination of the concrete data we are clearly not heading towards the abyss, or even a meaningful decline in the long term. Quality of life, longevity, and wealth has improved, steadily, for centuries. The pace is increasing, not decreasing. The future is golden and wondrous beyond easy measure. It is a fascinating and terrible aspect of the human condition that so many people reject this truth outright to find greater comfort in fear and self-sabotage.

The future looks grim? I would like to point out a few problems in the reasoning of the professional catastrophists who say that life won't be worth living and there's thus no point in extending it anyway. First, we need to take into account that the quality of human life has been improving, not worsening, throughout history. Granted, there still are things that are not optimal, but there used to be many more. Sure, it sucks that your pet-peeve politician has been appointed president of your country (any reference to recent historical events is entirely coincidental), and it sucks that poverty and famine haven't yet been entirely eradicated, but none of these implies that things will get worse. There's a limit to how long a president can be such, and poverty and famine are disappearing all over the world. It takes time for changes to take place, and the fact the world isn't perfect yet doesn't mean it will never be. Especially people who are still chronologically young should appreciate the fact that by the time they're 80 or 90, a long time will have passed, and the world will certainly have changed in the meanwhile. If we decided not to create rejuvenation because right now the world isn't as nice a place as it could be, in 60 years we may well end up as a bunch of sick, decrepit suckers with a foot in the grave, regretting our decision because in the meantime the world has become much better than we had expected.

Also, let's not forget that what we're talking about here is rejuvenation and that life extension is just a trivial consequence of it. Without rejuvenation, your health will eventually go below a critical threshold and the pathologies of old age will start to emerge. Even if the world did become a worse place to live in over the next few decades, frankly I fail to see how being sick and decrepit would make it any better. If death ever became preferable over life on this planet, painless suicide would be a much more humane and efficient option than going through the whole ordeal of old age. Additionally, if we're really so convinced that the world has no hope of being better in the future, then there's little point in making more babies. If we said we don't want to extend our lives because the world is and will forever be too horrible a place to live in, it would be rather contradictory - or even cruel, depending on how you want to see it - to bring more people into it. Either the world is broken beyond repair and we'd better not leave any progeny to live on it, or it can be fixed, in which case we may just as well stick around and start fixing it instead of complaining about how bad the world is.

Yes, we've got a problem with poverty, but it is not as bad as you might think. As a matter of fact, the number of people living below the threshold of absolute poverty has been plummeting over the last two centuries, going from somewhere in between 84% and 94% of the world population to something around 11% in 2013. Regardless of whether or not you think the world is going to be worth living in in the near future, odds are the present situation is better than your average Joe thinks it is. Maybe this is not your case - maybe you're well informed and you check your facts before jumping to conclusions - but you cannot possibly have not noticed the overall pessimism of people about issues like the ones above and the future in general. You don't believe me? Here's an example. In 2013, people in the UK were asked whether they thought extreme world poverty had increased, decreased, or stayed the same in the last 30 years. The correct answer was that, during that time, poverty had decreased faster than ever before in history. A whopping 55% thought that poverty had gone up. Only 12% got it right, and you should keep in mind that the interviewees were people holding university degrees. The US isn't doing any better, really: 66% thought extreme poverty had almost doubled over the course of the previous 20 years, while it had in fact almost halved. Why is this? Why is everyone prone to thinking we're doing so bad and that the future is grim, despite all the evidence indicating that we've improved a lot, we're doing far better than before, and we can expect to do even better?

We tend to see the details, but not the big picture. Most people understand the world by generalizing personal experiences which are very biased. In the media the "news-worthy" events exaggerate the unusual and put the focus on swift changes. Bad news sells. The media tend to magnify bad news over good news. We're more interested in bad news because of the potential danger they could represent for ourselves and our dear ones. Good news is generally less interesting, unless it touches us personally. Since the media live off selling news, they give out more bad news than good news. In that we have a flair for the dramatic. Personally, I think it's quite normal to feel uneasy and worried for the future whenever we hear bad news. Bad news puts us in a bad mood, and in a bad mood it is easier to see everything negatively. Further, when a lot of people all around you nod approvingly at stereotypes about poverty, tragedy, disgrace, all sort of catastrophes, supposed evilness of human race, etc, it is easy to think they're right just because they're many. Breaking from the crowd isn't easy, and a lot of people would rather just agree with the majority than having to go through the trouble of contradicting them. Further still, we tend to disqualify the positive. I wonder how many people, while reading this article, have thought something like: "Well, sure, poverty has diminished, but so what? It's still not zero." We need to appreciate any improvements we achieve.

In short, no, we're not doing badly. We're not doing perfectly, either, but we're doing pretty good. We have been improving for a long time now, and there's every reason to believe we will continue on this positive trend. If you want certainties, I doubt anyone can give you any; but there's sure cause for optimism. The best you can do is stick around with the rest of us and do your part, however small, to help make the world a better place.

Link: https://rejuvenaction.wordpress.com/answers-to-objections/objections-to-rejuvenation/why-live-longer-when-the-future-looks-so-grim/