Problem: Guaranteeing the right to life for everyone, in the infinitely long term (part 1)

TL DR

Everyone who want to live must have the guarantee from society they can do it.
Every mortal being will die, so if there are mortal beings forever, there will be infinite mortal beings thus there will be infinite non voluntary deaths, making the scale of the problem infinite.
Life extinction on Earth wouldn’t make this problem disappear because of the possibility of reappearance of conscious life and the possibility of conscious alien (extraterrestrial) life.
I have not found direct efforts to address this problem, but there are many efforts trying to make humans immortal or to expand their lifetime. However, I care about every conscious being, not just humans.
I think on many methods for solving this problems. Some of them include making every conscious being immortal or making them reproduce only into immortal beings.

Introduction

Everyone has the right to life. That implies everyone who wants to live has the guarantee from society they can do it, even if the cause of otherwise not living is natural (example: dying by ageing). However, most living beings are mortal, so they will die anyway, even if we do the most we can do to care about them. So, considering a longtermist perspective (we must care about all future generations, when it comes to doing good), as long as there are mortals beings living in the universe there will be non voluntary deaths, so if there always exist mortal beings then we are talking about an infinite number of non voluntary deaths in the long run. In this post I’m going to address this issue considering a few different perspectives, possible solutions to this problem, and some existing indirect but related efforts.

Note: I write about non voluntary deaths because even if society has to ensure the right to life to everyone, holding a right to X does not imply holding an obligation to X. Not everyone wants to live, and even if you think everyone should try or want to live, this problem is about ensuring everyone who needs it or wants it can have a life, not about ensuring everyone who can live is actually alive. With this I’m not saying we have to stop treating conditions that make people prone to wanting to die (example: depression, or severe disability).

Note: In this post I’m going to write about conscious beings, referring to every conscious being who is deserving of rights. When I use people, I’m referring to every conscious being who is deserving of rights too, not just humans and some non human animals. This is to consider the expanding moral circle.

Note: This if my first post. Please feel free to give constructive criticism so I can improve and reach the truth more easily :)

How this is a problem

It is likely that an infinite amount of mortal people will exist in the future

Let’s informally define a mortal being as a being who will die unless we do something to make them immortal. An immortal being is a being who will never die.

We all know humans and many other animal species are mortal, they will die some day (within a finite amount of time). They can also reproduce into other mortal beings. If they continue to reproduce endlessly, then at every time in the future at least one mortal conscious being will exist. Hence, an infinite amount of them will die, because at every time in the future a mortal conscious being is going to die within a finite amount of time. This does not need to be limited to humans and non-human animals, I’m considering every conscious being whose life is finite (maybe intelligent alien life forms). Thus, human extinction won’t necessarily end this issue.

It is likely that an infinite amount of people who is willing to live will exist in the future

Assume the probability of a mortal conscious being i wanting to be alive is P_i. Considering an infinite amount of people, because of the stated before, is almost sure that the number of moral conscious beings who want to live is infinite if P_1 + P_2 + P_3 + … = infinite, because the expected value of the number of people who want to live is equal to the sum of the probabilities, because it is equal to the sum of expected values for each conscious being. So we can assume there is always going to be at least one mortal conscious being who does not want to stop living (I know this is not a formal mathematical proof, but it is enough to get the main point).

Summing up, there is a non zero probability of infinite people and a non zero probability of infinite people wanting to live. Thus there is a non zero probability of infinite people who will want to live. And since the scale is infinite, the expected number of people who will want to live rather than die is infinite.

How this could not be a problem

Only a finite amount of conscious beings will want to live, others won’t care or will want to stop living

Above I used some basic probability tools and logic reasoning to conclude it is expected an infinite number of conscious beings affected by non voluntary deaths. However, we can become aware of something that should make us conclude the number of non voluntary deaths is finite because at some time in the future people could get bored of living or would prefer death (maybe for spiritual reasons?). But for now, this is not clear.

We are all immortals, or life after death exists for everyone

There are many theories (like the theory of the immortal soul from Plato) and belief systems (like religions) that say we have an immortal soul, and when we physically die, we continue to exist. Another ones say when we die, we reincarnate in another body. However, these theories, from what I know are not proven since religions are based on faith, and philosophical theories are not necessarily absolute and immutable truths. Infinite non voluntary deaths would probably not constitute a problem if the idea of life after death or no actual death was true (it could continue to be a problem if we want to avoid infinite non voluntary physical death, but in this post I’m talking about life in general).

We will go extinct

It is possible to think that the annihilation of Earth-originating intelligent (or conscious) life in the next few centuries is (almost) inevitable and that will stop with infinite non voluntary deaths because living beings from our planet won’t exist anymore. I’m going to briefly evaluate this possibility considering that the scale of this problem is potentially infinite, so even the smallest probability of infinite deaths, if it is modelled as a real number, will make the expected number of non voluntary deaths infinite.

First, the probability of this problem not existing because of global extinction is equal to the probability of global extinction multiplied by the probability of less than infinite non voluntary deaths given global extinction. Will McAskill estimated the risk of extinction this century at around 1%. And in his 2020 book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, Toby Ord gives his guess at our total existential risk this century as 1 in 6 (or about 17%) — a roll of the dice (extracted from The case for reducing existential risks). But no extinction this century does not necessarily imply no extinction after this century. Some sources say extinction is inevitable at some point in the future. But the article linked talks about an optimistic (according to it) prediction of one billion years referring to the extinction of humanity when the expanding envelope of the sun swells outward and heats the planet to a Venus-like state. However, humanity could habit other planets, as stated in works like Michio Kaku’s The Future of Humanity, and projects to send humans to Mars already exist in the present. It is not impossible that, in less than a billion years, humanity could develop technology to habit other planets outside the solar system to survive. That means it is not 100% sure conscious life forms will go extinct, and it is not even 100% sure if humans will go extinct.

However, even if humanity and non-human animals go extinct, that does not necessarily mean infinite non voluntary deaths won’t be a problem. There is still the possibility of conscious alien life, remaining conscious life on Earth after human extinction, or the reappearance of conscious life on earth or elsewhere (this already happened, and we have to consider intelligent life formation on Earth occurred many years after the formation of planet Earth). Thus, it is not sure whether extinction will end with infinite non voluntary deaths, since it is not proven all of these scenarios have a probability of zero. I think more research about these possibilities is needed anyway.

Note: I found this study that estimates the probability of intelligent alien life beyond Earth at around 50%, combining what we know about life formation and Bayesian methods. I don’t know whether intelligent → conscious, but it hints a non-zero probability of conscious alien life existing (I guess the probability of intelligent → conscious is more than 0%).

Civilization will dye of old age (no mortal conscious being will reproduce anymore)

Read the section from above.

The general population is gradually ageing because of a gradual decrease in the reproduction rate in humans. But that does not apply to non-human animals, and at least from what I know, there is no known motives of making all non-human animals infertile or not wanting to reproduce (there even are incentives for increasing animal reproduction, like factory farming or species conservation). Moreover, even if all life on Earth disappears (which is very unlikely), there is still the possibility of conscious alien life.

How we can solve this problem

Making everyone immortal

Someone could think that if every mortal being becomes immortal, then the problem is solved. However, we have to consider that immortals may reproduce into mortal beings, so we have to make sure all descendants become immortal too, if we are going to take this approach.

Even if this approach works and solves the problem, some challenges persist. For instance, some people could be trapped into eternal suffering, because they won’t never die. On the other hand, if there are non living (physically living) conscious beings who exist, they have the right to live and making living conscious beings immortal wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem. In this last case, it depends whether non living conscious beings are existent. But if it is real, we would need to build and maintain a system that brings to life non living conscious beings who want to be brought to life.

Making mortals (and immortals who reproduce into mortals) reproduce only into immortal beings

We can make everyone who can reproduce to do it only into immortal beings. For example, conscious beings X and Y are mortal but they reproduce into beings A and B who are immortal.

This last approach is another way of making everyone immortal, but this time since birth, since if we make everyone reproduce only into immortal beings, then mortal beings would gradually disappear and everyone would become immortal. Nonetheless, we have to make sure to apply this to new mortal conscious life forms who may (and probably will) appear in the future.

Mix both approaches, or with other approaches not mentioned here

The implementation of approaches for solving this problem is for another, more detailed post.

Discovering other forms of conscious life

If we consider every conscious being as deserving of life, then we need to apply these approaches to each of them. But we don’t know about all conscious beings existent. It is necessary to explore and research more about them. That includes discovering conscious alien life forms, and conscious life forms on Earth we don’t know about (not limiting ourselves to humans and some non-human animals).

In addition to the above, I think we need to research whether there are existing non living conscious beings, and how to bring them to life in case they want to.

How this problem is trying to be solved

From what I know and researched for this post, there is no known person nor organization trying to explicitly solve the problem of infinite non voluntary deaths. However, there are many organizations trying to extend the human life span as much as possible, using a variety of methods. There are others using cryopreservation in hope to reverse death in the future. Some of these organizations are:

2045 Initiative (47701 members as of August 15, 2024, according to its website): aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality.
Altos Labs (500 employees according to Wikipedia): Its goal is to create therapies that can halt of reverse de ageing process in humans.
Calico (number of employees not disclosed): Subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
Unity Biotechnology (70 employees as of 2018 according to Wikipedia): ( develop drugs that target cellular senescence (the stopping of cellular division, causing ageing)
Alcor Life Extension Foundation (234 patients and 1444 members as of August 15, 2024, according to its website): A cryopreservation organization.
Tomorrow Biostasis (10 patients as of February 7, 2023): A cryopreservation organization.

Note: this list is far from exhaustive

As you can see, these are all indirect efforts for solving the problem, because they focus on human immortality. They don’t directly address the issue of infinite non voluntary deaths, considering non-human conscious beings across the universe. Doing a quick search I didn’t find anything close enough to ending with infinite deaths in the future. Thus, this problem is far from neglected.

An important consideration

Some ideas might seem crazy, like caring about alien life or writing about conscious beings rather than humans. But in this post I’m taking into account the infinite term of this problem, and it is not unlikely that in the far future we include other kinds of beings in our moral circle.

I hope this post is read and commented by at least someone. That would make me very grateful :-)