From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat May 30 1998 - 11:17:33 MDT
Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU> writes:
> He [Hayflick] closes, rather tendentiously,
>
> < Although aging and death put an end to the lives of good citizens, they
> also make finite the lives of tyrants, murderers and a broad spectrum of
> other undesirables.
It is interesting to note that it is always the same arguments, and
they are of course as usual wrong. I think we should learn to counter
them well.
The above argument is actually rather chilling; if we lived a shorter
time the "undesirables" would live even shorter, so that ought to be a
good idea.
> Much of the continuing massive destruction of this
> planet and the consequent ills that this destruction produces for humans
> can be traced to overpopulation, a phenomenon that appears to show no sign
> of abating. Extending the life of a population that already strains global
> resources is, in the view of many, unconscionable.
This is another of the "classics", and quite wrong (lifespan only
changes the size of the population, not the rate of increase; if
overpopulation is a problem then it has to be managed by family
planning anyway). But this is hard to explain, on my swedish life
extension website I'm going to add an applet where the readers can try
for themselves varying the lifespan and number of children and see the
effect,
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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