# 14 Concerns About Immortality

(Crossposted from my [Substack](https://taylorgordonlunt.substack.com/p/14-concerns-about-immortality); written as part of the Halfhaven virtual blogging camp)  
  
There’s a lot of concern in the media about school shootings. But retirement home and hospice shootings are more common. Only, the shooters are microscopic, so we can’t put their faces on the news. Cancer, diabetes, infectious disease, heart disease — these bad guys focus on the elderly, but can kill people of any age. Because of this, real life is like a horror movie. You’re guaranteed to die at the end. The only reason you’re not panicking is that being panicked just makes the movie scarier. All you can do is try to enjoy the good parts of the movie, and ignore the fact that the killer is right around the corner.

Historically, there was nothing we could do about this. We had no choice but to ignore the inevitable fact that we’re all going to die, and instead focus on our legacy: the children we leave behind, and the societal, technological, and scientific progress we make. We try to push the boundary of what’s possible in hopes of leaving a better world for our children. Our great-grandparents went to the Moon. As a result, we sleep on memory foam mattresses and use cordless power tools.

But what if there was something even more important we could accomplish than going to the moon? This is humanity’s next milestone: we cure aging and all disease. Some say going to Mars should be our next goal, but stopping the hurricane of tears and blood that sweeps across our planet at all times is more important than finding out whether an alien sneezed on Mars a billion years ago. And we have millions of years to spread to other planets. The goal of curing death is more urgent. Some say we can stop all involuntary death within our lifetimes. Others say it will take longer. Maybe this will be a gift we give to our own great-grandchildren. If so, there is no greater gift we could give, and what could give our lives more meaning than giving it? If we must die, let us die knowing we will be among the last to go. But it could also happen within our lifetimes. All it would take is life-extension technology to add years faster than the clock takes them away.

Human biological immortality is a physically possible, achievable goal, not some pie-in-the-sky idea. Those who say otherwise have a can’t-do attitude. Not the kind of attitude that put man on the Moon. Nevertheless, it’s natural to feel some skepticism. The purpose of this article is to address common concerns people have when it comes to the project of curing death.

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### 1\. “There are more urgent problems we need to solve, like global poverty, or warfare.”

Many things can be important at the same time. When war breaks out, we still need to feed the hungry. But of all the issues facing humanity, ending death is especially important. In World War II, millions of Allied soldiers fought to defend the lives of millions of innocent civilians. But the winners of World War II and the innocents they protected are nearly all dead today. The soldiers triumphed over evil, but eventually perished to a greater evil. Most of them died weeping or screaming, and left behind grieving families. This will be the fate of every human being until death — the ultimate enemy — is finally defeated.

### 2\. “If people live forever, there will be shortages of food, water, and living space.”

Maybe in the short term. But long term, there’s no need to worry. The universe is big and has lots of material. The Earth can hold many more people than we currently have. If we’re clever, we can expand even beyond the galaxy without running out of room. For the short-term shortages, we can adapt to infrastructure limitations by rolling out life-extension technology slowly, or freezing people who die so we can bring them back later once infrastructure has adapted.

### 3\. “Death is natural.”

Genital warts are natural.

### 4\. “Making people live forever is playing God.”

And what a fun game to play! We’ve been playing it since the dawn of our species. Mother nature wanted us to starve, hunting desperately for every bite. Instead we invented farming, and tamed wild animals. Today, there are more domesticated farm animals by mass than all wild mammals combined. Mother nature wanted us to live on the African savanna, but we learned to live in deserts and frozen wastes, and built boats to take us to new continents. We’ve made engines to work so our muscles don’t have to, and made machines think for us. We’ve broken free from the fetters of nature at every opportunity. Curing death is simply the next step.

### 5\. “Living forever would be really boring.”

You might not want to live for a billion years. But you may wish to live for ten thousand, and you should have that right. One day, far in the future, you may decide you’ve done everything you wanted to do, and seen everything you wanted to see. You may grow tired with life itself. You may be ready to die, and choose to do so. This is the best way a human being can die, and it should be the only way. Death should be a choice. Much better than the current system of randomly-assigned, unpredictable, horrifying death sentences that would be war crimes or serious human rights violations if imposed by another person.

### 6\. “Death gives life meaning.”

Would you love your friends and family less if you knew they’d live forever, and you would too? Would your love be cheapened by the fact that it won’t be tragically cut short? Is Christmas with your family only enjoyable because you only have a few dozen left? There’s lots in life that you can find meaning in, from the easy fun of telling jokes with friends or watching movies, to the hard work of learning an instrument or writing a novel. Meaning is inherent in the lives we live. Death does not create meaning — death is the *end of everything meaningful.* Death obviates. Life after death is cured will be more meaningful, because you will have more time to grow and learn what you find meaningful. Death does not add meaning, only urgency.

### 7\. “Living forever would be torture. The human mind couldn’t handle it, and we would go mad.”

It’s possible human beings are not psychologically suited to immortality. If so, then that’s just something we have to fix. You might be opposed to tweaking your brain, but the only alternative would be death, which is a much greater adjustment of your brain!

Some objections like this are not reasons we shouldn’t solve the problem, they’re just part of the problem that needs solving.

### 8\. “If we lived forever, then power would gradually concentrate in the hands of the few”

This is another objection that’s part of the problem, rather than a reason not to solve the problem. Dividing resources fairly is hard. But it’s a solvable problem. Imagine how much easier this problem would be to solve if all the geniuses of history were alive to help us solve it! Allowing each generation of geniuses to rot in the ground does not help us solve difficult problems like this.

Biological immortality doesn’t really make the problem of dividing resources any harder anyway. Currently, while individuals are mortal, families may live forever, and either way we need to deal with a small number of rich families hoarding resources.

### 9\. “Wanting to live forever is selfish. You should make way for the next generation. How will young people find jobs if old people never retire?”

Having a job won’t be a thing for much longer. Soon enough, machines will do the work for us. Hopefully we will still find meaning in hard work, but our hard work will no longer be tied to our income. People will reap the rewards of work mostly done by machines (as long as we can coordinate to make sure we’re fairly sharing in the fruits of their labor. And that’s a problem we have to solve whether or not we cure death.)

### 10\. “Immortality may only be available to the wealthy at first, which isn’t fair.”

No matter how you roll out a new technology, there’s gonna be someone who gets it first and someone who gets it last. The fact that we’ll be using money to determine who goes first doesn’t change that. Some people will get it first — sucks for those who get it last! — but even worse would be *nobody getting it at all!*

### 11\. “I heard humans are already technically immortal, because of something called quantum immortality.”

Quantum immortality is a thought experiment in theoretical physics, and is controversial among physicists. It’s an neat idea, but not something to take seriously. Otherwise, you’d see physicists playing Russian roulette for large sums of money.

### 12\. “Actually, immortality is philosophically impossible.”

It may be impossible to truly live forever. The universe may end, for one thing. But also, to live is to think, to think is to change, and to change is to die. Eventually the you that exists today won’t be around any longer, one way or another. You will either grow into someone new, or you will suddenly, tragically die. The project of curing death is concerned with the latter, not preventing nonexistence altogether.

### 13\. “But what about AI? Why solve the problem ourselves if we can just have AI solve it for us.”

We can’t just sit around and wait for AI to solve all our problems. Nobody knows how long it will be until we have superintelligent AI. It may be 2 years, or it may be 200. If we cure death one or two years before we invent superintelligent AI that could have done it for us, at least we can be proud knowing we saved ourselves, rather than relying on a machine.

### 14\. “What should I do if my loved ones die before immortality is available?”

Freeze them! It may be a long time before we can bring them back, but eventually it will be possible. Nobody seriously denies that. The biggest risk is not that it will never be possible to safely thaw someone, but that a cryonics company will go out of business, and their frozen corpses will be thawed early and disposed of. This has already happened in some cases. So, we’ll need better laws to protect the frozen bodies of people who have chosen cryonics. In particular, such a person should not be treated as a corpse, but rather, a patient undergoing a long-term treatment, similar to a lengthy medically-induced coma. Once a person is frozen, they should have a right to stay frozen until the time comes they can be restored.

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People are naturally suspicious of ideas that sound far-fetched, and the idea of curing death is the most far-fetched sounding idea ever. But there was once a time when going to the Moon sounded just as impossible. Curing aging and all diseases is on the table. It will happen. We should treat it as a civilizational goal, and make it happen as soon as we can. We should orient our society around solving this goal. It will be a difficult fight, but at least it’s one we can be proud to fight. When people have set their minds against something, they can easily imagine all sorts of objections and what-ifs. But when humanity sets its mind to accomplishing something good, humanity pulls it off.