Tag: turritopsis dohrnii

Five Misconceptions About Radical Life Extension – Article by Arjun Khemani

Five Misconceptions About Radical Life Extension – Article by Arjun Khemani

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Arjun Khemani

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Below are five common objections to radical life extension with my responses to each of them.

#1: “Old people don’t change their minds.”

Elon Musk famously espouses this objection against immortality. He’s concerned about society getting static as a result of people living for a very long time because according to him, “the truth is, most people don’t change their mind. They just die. So if they don’t die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.”

This line of thinking is completely misconceived. Progress is not inevitable “one funeral at a time”. Society was static for hundreds of thousands of years before the Enlightenment. And in those days, humans used to live far shorter lives than today. The uneventful period before the Enlightenment was a result of irrational memes ingrained in society’s culture. These memes inhibited questioning what was known and survived by disabling the critical faculties of people that are responsible for advancing our knowledge.

Society getting static is a real concern. But letting people die is not the solution. As Karl Popper wrote, “We can let our ideas die in our place.” Additionally, even today, most leaders of anything are removed long before illness or death force the issue.

#2: “We’ll run out of the planet’s resources.”

People are our most important resource because only they create the knowledge required to turn useless matter into what we can call a resource.

As I wrote in a recent newsletter, “It is misleading to call coal a ‘natural’ resource. Without our knowledge of how to extract and use coal as a source of energy, it would remain just a rock. We find ourselves in an environment that is the product of ideas. Just look around you at the evidence of civilization. Look at how the natural world has been pruned and modified.”

Without technology, many parts of the Earth (and beyond!) would be uninhabitable for us. Mother Nature is far more threatening than she is benevolent. People will go on turning useless matter into something that can be utilized for their productive purposes. And since space is practically infinite, this transformation of matter into resources can go on indefinitely. People are the solution, not the problem.

#3: “It is unnatural to live forever.”

False. The Turritopsis dohrnii aka the immortal jellyfish is a jellyfish that’s virtually immortal. This marvelous creature can revert to its juvenile state after reaching maturity and then grow up again, repeating the process indefinitely. Evolution has its wonders.

The “immortal jellyfish”.

Besides, humans have been creating tools to increase their inherent abilities ever since they emerged in the African Savannas. That is how we came to the top of the food chain. It is almost unnatural for us not to go against—primarily to advance—our inborn capabilities or instincts.

And you know what else is natural? Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, floods, droughts, asteroid impacts, and many more threats to all life on Earth. “Natural” does not mean good.

Death is not a part of life. It is the end of it. There is nothing good about death. Parochially, it can be caused by this or that disease. But the deeper explanation for death is always ignorance. No fundamental law requires it. We should treat it just as it is: another problem to be solved.

#4: “We’ll all run out of things to do and life will get meaningless without death.”

Contemplating their mortality seldom pushes people to achieve things they want to achieve. People do things to improve their lives, and the life of an immortal can improve indefinitely. There is always more work to be done, more space to be transformed, and a better world to aim towards.

For some, infinity is a bit hard to comprehend. It can help to reframe the question “Do you want to live forever?” to “Do you want to live tomorrow?” Most people do. Most people don’t have plans to die. If they’re feeling physically and mentally healthy, most people would say yes to tomorrow.

Creativity knows no bounds. Our knowledge can keep on growing deeper and broader in all fields without limit. As long as this is true, life need not get boring, the fun need never stop. As Leonardo da Vinci, someone who lived up to the very end of his life like a child said, “Learning never exhausts the mind.”

#5: “Only the rich will be able to afford to live forever causing greater inequality.”

Initially, it is true that only the rich will be able to access the metaphorical pill to immortality. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on it! Almost any new revolutionary product or technology has high unit cost before it can be made affordable for the masses.

And it eventually always is made affordable for the masses. The time period depends on how fast we innovate. But indeed, as John F. Kennedy allegedly said about capitalism, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

In the pre-modern, poor world life expectancy was around 30 years in all regions of the world. Even the richest would have to see their children die before the age of five, and they wouldn’t live long either. Since then, the world has witnessed a rise in income inequality yet in every world region people today can expect to live more than twice as long compared to the 18th century. Not only do people live longer, but their lives are arguably better in every way today than 300 years ago.

Arjun Khemani is support lead at Airchat, a new audio-based social network platform founded by Naval Ravikant. On his Substack newsletter Arjun publishes weekly posts on science, philosophy, progress, and optimism. He also has a podcast and writes the Critical Rationalism Newsletter. You can find him on Airchat and Twitter.

In Defense of Human Exceptionalism and Immortalism – Article by Hilda Koehler

In Defense of Human Exceptionalism and Immortalism – Article by Hilda Koehler

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Hilda Koehler

This essay will be attempting to rebut some of the main objections raised to indefinite lifespan extension, technological immortality, and technological resurrection. The overwhelming majority of the objections to immortalism are based on arguments from naturalism. Devotees of religious traditionalism argue that death is a doorway to an afterlife or reunion with a higher deity in the spirit world. Some atheists argue that death is unavoidable because the limit of the human lifespan is the result of natural selection, and should thus be unquestioningly accepted. However, what if a different perspective were taken on death and the natural limits of the human lifespan?

This essay will primarily attempt to go toe-to-toe with scientifically-based objections against immortalism raised by prominent atheists like Massimo Pigliucci and Michael Shermer. As an atheist myself, I think that the objections to the claims of religious traditionalists that a spiritual afterlife exist are already well-worn and solidly established. Modern neuroscience has solidly established the fact that consciousness is wholly generated by the brain and that there is no empirical evidence to substantiate the claim that immaterial souls exist. Nearly the entire atheist and scientific community accepts this as having been conclusively proven time and again (in spite of this, those who believe in the existence of a spiritual afterlife still make up the vast majority of the world’s population).

One of the major scientifically-based objections to immortalism is the charge that human beings should not be spared from death because we’re not God’s special people, but merely a bunch of apes that were lucky enough to get smart. This is the argument against human exceptionalism or anthropocentrism. There are plenty of other natural entities that have far longer lifespans than human beings do. The turritopsis dohrnii, the famous immortal jellyfish, is known for being able to naturally live indefinitely. Bristlecone pine trees are known to live up to 5000 years old. To quote Michael Shermer, “even stars die,” although they can live for billions of years. But what separates you from the turritopsis dohrnii, or a star? Well, for one thing, the turritopsis dohrnii can’t create self-driving cars and pioneer the practice of modern dentistry. Stars, including our own sun, are wonderful and all, but they can’t do the mathematics and quantum physics necessary to give a full account of the Big Bang theory and the Planck epoch. Human exceptionalism exists because of the sheer degree of human intelligence, compared to every other existing organism in our solar system. There might ostensibly be highly advanced alien civilizations far more intelligent than us residing somewhere in the Milky Way, or in any other of the 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, but we can at least pat ourselves on the backs for being the smartest meat robots in our own solar system.

As Ernest Becker and pretty much everyone else in the history of modern homo sapiens has realised, two things set human beings apart from every single other species that has ever existed. These are the ability to question the story of our origin, and the ability to be cognizant of the termination of our own consciousnesses. Unless, of course, one day zoologists devise a way to read the minds of animals with perfect accuracy and will be surprised to find out that penguins and dolphins believe in heaven, hell, and reincarnation. But with that particularly odd possibility off of the table, homo sapiens are the only known creatures to be actively cognizant of the Eternal Oblivion all of us must face when our consciousnesses are terminated at bodily death. This is the basis of Becker’s arguments regarding terror management theory, and the basis of every single afterlife belief in every single culture throughout human history. Human beings have attained such a developed state of cognitive function that we can actually comprehend the concept of eternity; and we can comprehend the horrors of ceasing to exist for all of the rest of it.

But we shouldn’t think we’re special, the nihilistic atheists argue. We shouldn’t think we’re special because we’re just insignificant specks of protein within an extremely vast, indifferent universe that doesn’t give a rat’s hide about whether we exist or go extinct. Nothing human beings do matters, because we’re so ridiculously insignificant in the grand cosmological scheme. If that argument were taken to its logical conclusion, I can tell you about something else we can stop giving a damn about: the whole of the scientific enterprise. If nothing we do matters, all of us can happily abandon the scientific method and go back to believing that the Earth was made 6000 years ago, in seven days. If nothing we do matters, we can all happily wrap up our efforts to combat global warming and to prevent the utilization of nuclear weapons. For all intents and purposes, I’ve yet to actually meet a nihilist who will willingly let themselves and their family members stand directly in front of an oncoming truck.

I know some atheists who will respond to this with the retort that, “the universe doesn’t owe you a significantly longer lifespan just because human beings wish for it.” Well, the universe doesn’t theoretically owe us effective root-canal treatments, general anaesthesia, Reebok sneakers, hearing aids, or iPhones, but here we are, anyway. The universe may not owe any particular aforementioned desirable to human beings, but that shouldn’t in any way stop us from trying to attain it through our own ingenuity.

Death and a lifespan under three digits might be natural, but guess what else is? Giving birth without epidural. And cancerous tumors. And dying prematurely from various diseases in the absence of medical care. And spending your life stumbling about and squinting if you’re short-sighted but aren’t fortunate enough to have access to laser eye surgery or spectacles.

And plenty of our forebears accepted those aforementioned ailments as such. In every single pre-modern culture, a whole crapbundle of ailments we now have readily available medical treatment for were seen as “God’s will”. The agonizing pain of natural childbirth was, up till very recently, seen as the “curse of Eve” and a burden all women had to suck up and bear as punishment for being women. And then came epidural, and that long-held belief went right out the window. Ostensibly, cancer and viral infections are great ways for the forces of natural selection to keep human population in steady state; but that still hasn’t stopped us from inventing anti-viral medication and chemotherapy.

To quote Alan Harrington, “We must never forget that we are cosmic revolutionaries, not stooges conscripted to advance a natural order that kills everybody.”

Hilda Koehler is a fourth-year political science major at the National University of Singapore. She is a proud supporter of the transhumanist movement and aims to do her best to promote transhumanism and progress towards the Singularity.