Thanks for this post! It was great to read and learn about a topic about which I know nothing.
My primary reservation, which I’d be curious to get your thoughts on is something like this:
It seems to me that in the abstract there is a finite amount of space available for humans on the planet. Whether that space is taken up by me or some other human being is not too important to me. Similarly to life-extension research it seems to me that brain preservation is spending resources so that people who currently occupy the planet will do so for longer, at the expense of the child that wasn’t born due to resource limitations. So the net-value created by extending or preserving life is close to neutral.
What are the counter-arguments to this? Are there weird philosophical bullets I need to bite to hold that position (ie. needing to think malaria is also net-neutral since it creates space for more humans, to remain consistent)?
The main counter-argument to the idea that there is limited space is that in the future, if humanity ever progresses to the point that revival is possible, then we will almost certainly not have the same space constraints we do now. For example, this may be because of whole brain emulation and/or because we have become a multi-planetary species. Many people, myself included, think that there is a high likelihood this will happen in the next century or sooner: https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/
There is also an argument that we actually do not have limited space or resources on the planet now. For example, this was explained by Julian Simon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource. But that is a little bit more controversial and not necessary to posit for the sake of counter-argument, in my opinion.
A related question is: what is the point of (a) extending an existing’s person’s life when you could just (b) create a new person instead? I think (a) is much better than (b), because I what I described as “the psychological and relational harms caused by involuntary death” in the post. But others might disagree; it depends on whether they think that humans are replaceable or not.
Thanks for this post! It was great to read and learn about a topic about which I know nothing.
My primary reservation, which I’d be curious to get your thoughts on is something like this:
It seems to me that in the abstract there is a finite amount of space available for humans on the planet. Whether that space is taken up by me or some other human being is not too important to me. Similarly to life-extension research it seems to me that brain preservation is spending resources so that people who currently occupy the planet will do so for longer, at the expense of the child that wasn’t born due to resource limitations. So the net-value created by extending or preserving life is close to neutral.
What are the counter-arguments to this? Are there weird philosophical bullets I need to bite to hold that position (ie. needing to think malaria is also net-neutral since it creates space for more humans, to remain consistent)?
Thanks for the kind feedback!
The main counter-argument to the idea that there is limited space is that in the future, if humanity ever progresses to the point that revival is possible, then we will almost certainly not have the same space constraints we do now. For example, this may be because of whole brain emulation and/or because we have become a multi-planetary species. Many people, myself included, think that there is a high likelihood this will happen in the next century or sooner: https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/
There is also an argument that we actually do not have limited space or resources on the planet now. For example, this was explained by Julian Simon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource. But that is a little bit more controversial and not necessary to posit for the sake of counter-argument, in my opinion.
A related question is: what is the point of (a) extending an existing’s person’s life when you could just (b) create a new person instead? I think (a) is much better than (b), because I what I described as “the psychological and relational harms caused by involuntary death” in the post. But others might disagree; it depends on whether they think that humans are replaceable or not.
There is also a discussion about this on r/slatestarcodex that you might be interested in: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/tk2krv/brain_preservation_to_prevent_involuntary_death_a/i1o2s1d/