Objections (And Answers)
SECTION THREE
OBJECTIONS (And Answers)
TOO MANY PEOPLE
Arguably the most serious, and almost always the first objection usually made about the end of aging concerns overpopulation. It's often phrased as a question such as: What would we do with all the people. The answers follow.
1) These will not be people in the typical sense. Totally healthy humans living as long as they may want to are people who have reached the next stage in historical evolution. They will have evolved not into transhumans as some would identify themselves, but (one might argue) truehumans. People have collectively been trying to improve and control nature since we first walked on this planet. We have also been trying, on a somewhat less conscious level, to improve ourselves, to treat each other more fairly, more humanely.
As examples of the latter, we've effectually eliminated slavery, at least as a legally sanctioned entity, worldwide. In industrialized countries we've given women more equality; we've abolished child labor; we've established a democratic form of government. Obviously we've all still got quite a way to go to reach our full potential.
We still have murders, involvement in wars, sex trafficking, poverty, even in too many developed countries, plus, in a number of others, bonded servitude, hunger to the point of starvation, dictators, terrorists, and so on.
But if we compare now to where we, the species as a whole, were a thousand years ago, or say even a hundred years ago, it can be seen that a slow yet steady progress is being made.
With the control of aging, or even the first real achievements toward it (including the real potential to reach same), these people will have taken the primary step toward becoming the ultimate humanity is capable of, and could be designated truehumans. Clearly the social aspects need to be worked on with intensity since humanistic progress unfortunately moves much slower than technological progress. The achievement of serious humanistic evolution may be difficult to accomplish, but is, most would agree, doable, and, almost all would agree, crucial.
2) Once each person, some actually, others at first potentially, has the literal and obvious ability to enjoy an indeterminate lifespan in a totally healthy body, we will see individuals in a different way. As opposed to every other animal (and to our past), we no longer will have to keep the species going by living short lifespans and reproducing before we die. The species will keep going by every individual member of it deciding to live as long as they want.
Each individual will then become concretely sacred, concretely godlike. We will have, and will feel less need to, automatically create new beings. It may be necessary in the short term to control reproduction (this right should only be temporarily curtailed and only if absolutely necessary). New attitudes about the ultimate importance of each individual should help make such control more feasible.
3) There are too many people on the planet now. We have to start curbing the innate drive to have children, babies, no matter the state of anti-aging advances. But it is the furtherance of such endeavors, and related research that will lead to overpopulation solutions (as will be seen shortly).
4) Eventually we are going to have to colonize other planets. Not too long ago, setting foot on the moon was seen as science fiction. Work is now proceeding toward not only landing, but living on, other planets.
Reader's note: In places where original text might be difficult to distinguish from a media article, lines, before and after original text will be employed. "Include-Everyone:" is also added after the excerpt to indicate our comments. A blue link, as always, means an excerpt is starting, and there is a space between its paragraphs.
Consider:
If you have ambitions of being one of the first people on Mars, listen up: A Dutch company says it is moving along with its plan to send four lucky Earthlings to colonize the Red Planet. The catch: They won't ever come back.
The first mission will demonstrate technology that would be involved in a permanent human settlement on Mars. If all goes well -- and that's still very much an "if" -- the first pioneers could land on Mars in 2025...... More than 200,000 people have signed up to be prospective astronauts, Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp said in Washington on Tuesday. Apparently, they're OK with living out the rest of their lives on Mars.
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Include-Everyone:
It's highly improbable anyone will be going to Mars as soon as 2025. Even if they are able to get there, establishing a survivable situation on Mars is extremely complex, and developing the needed technology, while likely achievable, will take hundreds upon hundreds of years " unless we consciously as with every other aspect of Hale -- put the necessary effort and funds into accelerating the needed science. Mars One, its developers and participants, at the least, have the necessary enthusiasm and forward looking perspectives for eventual success.
NASA, other countries, and some private companies are also planning to land people on Mars. See the following link:
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How we could colonize Mars if we wanted to [Headline]
The idea isn't as far-fetched as you think well, okay, just slightly less far-fetched [Headline]
..Protected colonies may lead the way "think giant space bubbles" but the endgame will likely be terraforming. That is, changing the planet's environment to become extremely Earth-like, to the point of being livable.
It's an ambitious goal, to say the least. But planetary scientist Christopher McKay and aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin have studied and written extensively about the potential for turning Mars's environment into a habitable one, and they're optimistic.
They point out that Mars used to have a warm, wet climate and a thick atmosphere, and they believe this could be recreated using 21st century technology.
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Include-Everyone:
Already individuals are able to live on space stations for prolonged periods. Valeri Polyakov, a Russian cosmonaut, spent 437 consecutive days in space during one mission. Scott Kelley, an American astronaut, returned to Earth in March, 2016, after spending almost a year on the International Space Station.
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In 2005, then NASA Administrator Michael Griffin identified space colonization as the ultimate goal of current spaceflight programs, saying:
..the goal isn't just scientific exploration ... it's also about extending the range of human habitat out from Earth into the solar system as we go forward in time ... In the long run a single-planet species will not survive ...
If we humans want to survive for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, we must ultimately populate other planets......
I'm talking about that one day, I don't know when that day is, but there will be more human beings who live off the Earth than on it. ......I know that humans will colonize the solar system and one day go beyond..
In the 2,900 km³ of Eros [a near-Earth asteroid], there is more aluminum, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust.
It is a bit bigger and somewhat colder, but a planet circling a star 500 light-years away is otherwise the closest match of our home world discovered so far, astronomers announced on Thursday.
The planet, known as Kepler 186f, named after NASA's Kepler planet-finding mission, which detected it, has a diameter of 8,700 miles, 10 percent wider than Earth, and its orbit lies within the Goldilocks zone of its star, Kepler 186 " not too hot, not too cold, where temperatures could allow for liquid water to flow at the surface, making it potentially hospitable for life..
Nonetheless, since dwarfs are the most plentiful type of star in the galaxy [the type of sun Kepler 186f revolves around], astronomers are hopeful that Earth twins are plentiful, and that some will be found close by, allowing other telescopes to make temperature and mass measurements or to identify molecules in the atmosphere.
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Include-Everyone:
So, while there are many possible habitable planets, Kepler 186f has thus far been identified as the one most similar to Earth. Chances of there being many other such planets, as well as some much closer in distance to Earth, are excellent. But since even the closest of these earth-like relatives is so incredibly far away, getting there is the problem. We will need to develop new methods of travel to make living on them feasible.
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Humans must colonize planets in other solar systems traveling there using "Star Trek"-style propulsion or face extinction, renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking said Thursday.
Referring to complex theories and the speed of light, Hawking, the wheelchair-using Cambridge University physicist, told BBC radio that theoretical advances could revolutionize the velocity of space travel and make such colonies possible.....
The sun, like all other stars, emits an immense amount of photons, as well as a steady stream of charged particles. This solar wind actually exerts a not insignificant amount of pressure on everything which orbits the sun. It's enough to blow out the glorious tails of comets, like the ones that should be visible in the skies later this year, and to be gradually eroding Venus's atmosphere. Also, just like the wind here on Earth, space weather can be used to power sails.
Despite being a mainstay in some science fiction works, solar sails are a very real and attainable technology. The latest development being the Sunjammer, a joint project between NASA and California-based aerospace company Garde.
At over 1,200 square meters (13,000 sq. ft.) in area, Sunjammer will be the largest solar sail ever constructed.....and will travel approximately 3 million kilometers (1.9 million miles).....The best thing about solar sails is that they're effectively free spaceflight. After all, the sun already provides a huge amount of energy to everything within an 18 billion kilometer (11 billion mile) radius. Why not spacecraft too?.....
Reaching a velocity of around 100 meters per second (224 miles per hour), IKAROS reached its destination at Venus roughly 6 months after its sail deployed.
Compared to using rockets, space elevators would make carrying huge loads of cargo and passengers a breeze. It's a much more feasible plan for leaving the star system and makes space colonization a serious possibility..
The biggest problem is finding a material strong enough to serve as the elevator's cable..In the meantime, LiftPort is working on building a moon-based space elevator. "It's an essential stepping stone," Laine says, "and we have all the parts."
As for an earth-based space elevator, it all hinges on carbon nanotube development [a good choice of material if it can be improved enough for space use], and current research prioritizes their use in cell phones over their ability to haul space cargo. But it's not an impossible goal, and there's always the chance of a dark horse overtaking carbon nanotubes as our dream material.
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Include-Everyone:
So, colonizing other planets is the essential solution to eventual population increase. There is also one more answer to the objection of too many people. It has two parts and is the most important, most cogent of all. Furthermore, it is an excellent answer for any possible objection to any part of Hale. It follows:
Almost every sane person is in favor of curing diseases, of medical progress, even those who may question the desirability of a perfect-health open-ended lifespan. The very research which leads to Hale, leads to curing all diseases, all infirmities. And the corollary is true as well: all medical research leads directly toward a perfect-health-life free from aging.
Consider the following hypothetical conversation with a resistor:
Are you against curing heart disease, or diabetes, or macular degeneration, or lupus, or kidney failure, or any other medical infirmity?
No, of course not.
Let's say you had a diseased and failing heart. Would you object to a heart transplant if it were necessary?
No.
Medical research made such procedures possible by the way. Now, what about a transplant of a heart created from your own stem cells?
Good too, I suppose.
No chance of rejection. What if instead of a transplant, stem cells could be injected into your diseased heart and it could be rejuvenated?
That would be OK. Sure.
And what if instead of stem cells being injected into your heart your diseased heart cells could, maybe by incorporating nanotechnology-type or other methods, be made to regenerate, to turn themselves back into stem cells, healthy new cells, by somehow switching on certain genes in each diseased cell within the organ?
OK, fine as well, if it works, and with no side effects.
It wouldn’t be approved unless that was the case. Well then once we’ve reached that stage, where we can get cells within the body to rejuvenate one way or another, and if that doesn’t do the complete job somehow, when necessary to replace any worn out body part -- which failing cells would you like to keep failing? Which failing body part would you like to keep as a failing body part?
I’m not sure. I have to think about all this.
OK think about it. You'll still have the choice to age, slowly deteriorate, and die if that's what you want. But if you're in favor of health, even if you want to age in a well body, then die, then you're in favor of health and life extension research -- stem cells, nanotechnology, tissue engineering, understanding the genome, etc. -- because it will accomplish everything you want, everything you may need to maintain your health. You're in favor of curing diseases. Genome research helps with the development of new medicines, nanotechnology helps develop implants, and so on. That research and more traditional medical research like finding new drugs, are inextricably linked; each helps the other; all lead to the same ends.
Part two of the universal answer is related to part one. It follows:
We had all better begin working now to come up with solutions to any problem aging control may present. As shown in part one rejuvenation research leads to the curing of diseases, and the curing of diseases by any means leads to health and life extension. All nations are in favor of ending disease, and likely almost all are also in favor, to some extent or other, of elongating human lifespan.
There is now recognition of anti-aging research's efficacy toward these endeavors by leaders and scientists in very many different nations. Such research stem cells, nanotechnology, telomeres, supercomputers, etc. -- is now seriously progressing in very many different nations. This all makes health-life extension pretty much unstoppable.
Even if anti-aging research were somehow curbed in the country now in the forefront of such endeavors, (obviously a terrible idea and anyway extremely unlikely) -- The United States -- China, or India, or Russia, or Brazil, or Germany, or South Korea, or Turkey, or Nigeria (a lot more technological research is happening in these last two than you might think), or some other country would lead the way toward the total control of aging. In fact, consider the following:
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Nursultan Nazarbayev [president of Kazakhstan] calls on new research institute to concentrate on study to unlock secret of immortality [Headline]
…..Not satisfied with 19 years in charge of the gas-rich central Asian state, Nazarbayev urged scientists today to unlock the secret to immortality. The 70-year-old leader stressed in a speech that a new scientific research institute in the capital Astana should study "rejuvenation of the organism," as well as "the human genome, production of human tissue and creation of gene-based medicines.
In an aside to students, Nazarbayev added: "As for the medicine of the future, people of my age are really hoping all of this will happen as soon as possible..
Today was the third time in just over a year that Nazarbayev has urged scientists to find a way to stave off death. "Anti-ageing medicine, natural rejuvenation, immortality," he mused to a government science committee in September last year. "That's what people are studying these days." He added: "Those who do are the most successful states in the world – those who don't will get left on the sidelines."
For the latest developments in the health and life extension work going on in Kazakhstan see:
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Include-Everyone:
Kazakhstan is a nation in actuality far more industrialized and intellectual than hilariously portrayed in Borat -- though still at the moment obviously a minor power in every sense, relative to the major nations. Yet, its president realizes the importance of anti-aging research, and the importance of its acceleration. Notice that he urges his scientists, his country's institute, to find solutions.
Most people would hope that their country leads the way and they are the first to benefit from the needed research. Considering that scientists world-wide typically share their findings, it may not make that much difference where discoveries are initially made. But, no matter how things develop, as mentioned, Include-Everyone wants every human being, from the richest to the poorest, from every country in the world, to benefit as quickly as possible from all the advances.
To summarize:
Hale research leads to the curing of all diseases and degenerations. The curing of diseases and degenerations by other means (vaccines, antibiotics, surgery), leads to Hale. Everyone wants all diseases and degenerations to be cured.
Scientists (biologists, nanotechnologists, computer engineers, etc.) in a great many different and independent, sovereign nations are doing Hale research.
The governments representing these nations, and all the private entities within them, rightfully value, support, and are involved with such research. If it were stopped in one country, many others would continue it. There is no way, nor should there be, to control or impede the progress of health-life extension research. The control of aging is going to happen, one way or another, at some time or another.
So, the universal answer for any objection to the achievement of ending aging, is simply: It is inevitable (to the extent anything can be termed "inevitable"). It's a waste of time to talk about whether or not it should be done; it undoubtedly will eventually be done. The only real question is whether or not those of us now alive can somehow be included. Solutions to problems like overpopulation can be reasonably explored with a view toward their solutions.
If you have reservations about the end of aging, you owe it to the species to be there when it happens to help see everything goes the right way. Don't you want to, at the least, be able to take part in it, instead of being one of the last people to have to age and die?
IT WILL GET BORING
This is the second most common objection to having a health-perfect lifespan choice. Answers are as follows:
1) There are an infinite number of permutations and combinations for living. One hundred years as a math teacher married to a professional athlete, the next hundred as a business entrepreneur married to a writer, the next hundred and twenty -- single and pursuing various hobbies, the next
2) If we can solve death, we can solve boredom.
3) One possibility among many: Virtual reality games can be created in which we live a life as we do now, with no memory of the later longevity changes. Upon death we just realize the game is over, and go on to the next endeavor. (Has this already happened?)
4) Endless new types of experiences, consciousness, possibilities, types of being one can be and experience will surely be accomplished.
5) Living each day, or some or enough days, fully, can be done endlessly (not a bad way to live in any event). Or just living each day, or some, or enough days as a new experience. Or just living each day. Not only is the outside world different each day from the day before, but we are different each day as well. Moods, physical states, and outlooks change all the time. No two days are, or could be, the same.
6) There will always be problems to be solved. In the future following age control, questions will need to be explored, debated and answered. Such as: Can someone get a life sentence for a crime? Who owns the real estate on colonized planets? How powerful and human should robots be allowed to become? Should individual animals live forever?
7) One can always put oneself into suspended animation for a hundred or a thousand years and then get revived to enter a changed world.
8) Stopping aging, disease, and death is not the final frontier. Finding out if there is an afterlife can come next. To start, using animal experiments we can have the animal die for a while and then revive it. In fact this has already been done for other research goals.
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Just as dogs preceded humans in making the first risky voyages into space, a new generation of canines has now made an equally path-breaking trip - from life to death and back again.
In a series of experiments, doctors at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research at the University of Pittsburgh managed to plunge several dogs into a state of total, clinical death before bringing them back to the land of the living. The feat, the researchers say, points the way toward a time when human beings will make a similar trip, not as a matter of ghoulish curiosity but as a means of preserving life in the face of otherwise fatal injuries.
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Include-Everyone (Answers to the boredom question continue):
Eventually, when the procedures are safe, human pioneers will be able to take trips into death for a few days or more to see if there is indeed any type of afterlife. If there is one, we may be able to stay part-time in the spiritual world, and part-time in the secular world, or full-time in one or the other, as each individual may wish. If there isn’t an afterlife, some occasional boredom may be way better than nothing.
9) Health-Life Extension is about choice. If after say a million years of living you decide that is enough, nobody will stop you from ending things. You will always have the choice to live or die. Right now your choices are quite limited. You can either live a short life, or make it even shorter by purposefully exiting it. Now no matter your feelings about life you must age and die. Isn't real choice a better option?
10) If you think you will be bored you're not alive enough now.
11) We will be as Gods. God is immortal. Does God get bored?
12) And, again, as with any objection: It's going to happen. It can't, and shouldn't, be stopped. Do you want to be there when it happens to help make sure everything goes the right way, or to at least be part of it?
There are other universal answers to any objection, though they are less powerful than the ones previously delineated.
1) The issue is being looked at through a contemporary mind. With a post-death mind, things may look totally different.
2) This is our destiny. We have been trying to use nature to benefit ourselves since we first discovered how to control fire and use animal skins for clothing. It's true we haven't many times had enough respect for nature. In fact every Include-Everyone follower should be an environmentalist because we need to be able to breathe the cleanest air possible, eat the safest, healthiest food, and so on, so we can stay alive as long as possible in order to have the best chance of making the cut.
But, no matter the mishaps along the way, obviously humankind has made unbelievable strides in the control of nature so that it has become more life-affirming for humans. The control of aging and death is just the next milestone, though so far the biggest. It is our destiny as creative, inventive, intelligent beings.
3) For religious types: God wants us to accomplish an indeterminate lifespan with perfect-health. Otherwise why would s/he have given us the type of brain s/he did.
To go to the next section, Humanistic Aspects, click on the following link: Humanistic Aspects