A defense of Senexism (Deathism)

I think that this post conflates two issues, and is an example of a flaw of reasoning that goes like this:

Alice: It would be good if we could change [thing X].
Bob: Ah, but if we changed X, then problems A, B, and C would ensue! Therefore, it would not be good if we could change X.

Bob is confusing the desirability of the change with the prudence of the change. Alice isn't necessarily saying that we should make the change she's proposing. She's saying it would be good if we could do so. But Bob immediately jumps to examining what problems would ensue if we changed X, decides that changing X would be imprudent, and concludes from this that it would also be undesirable.

But that last step is entirely groundless. Something could be a bad idea in practice due to implementation difficulties, but very desirable. These are orthogonal considerations. (Another way to think about it is: the consequences of making a change, vs. the consequences of the means used to implement said change.)

I think that Bob's mistake is rooted in the fact that he is treating Alice's proposal as, essentially, a wish made to a genie. "Oh great genie," says Alice, "please make it so that death is no more!" Bob, horrified, stops Alice before she can finish speaking, and shouts "No! Think of all the ways the words of your wish can be twisted! Think of the unintended consequences! You haven't considered the implications! No, Alice, you must not make such grand wishes of a genie, for they will inevitably go awry."

The view here on Lesswrong, on the other hand, treats Alice's proposal as an engineering challenge. The conversation in that style goes like this:

Alice: It would be good if we could change [thing X].
Chris: Hm, I concur that this would be good if we could do it. However, consider problem A, which would arise as a result.
Alice: I think that solution J would handle that acceptably.
Chris: That seems reasonable. But, there is also problem B to deal with.
Alice: It may seem like that at first, but actually that won't be a problem because [reason K].
Chris: Ah, I see. It occurs to me that C will also be problematic.
Alice: Hmm, you're right. That will be a challenge; I will have to give that some serious thought.
Chris: Please do! It would be very nice if you could solve it, because then we could make change X, which we both agree would be great.

Once you properly distinguish the concepts of desirability and prudence, you can treat problems with your proposal as obstacles to overcome, not reasons not to do it. So a real "defense of deathism" would have to argue that death is desirable; that immortality is not something we would or should want, even if we solved all the auxiliary problems. Otherwise, it fails to engage with the core of the anti-death position.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Other paraphrases:

Truth never triumphs -- its opponents just die out.

Science advances one funeral at a time.

Might edit in my thoughts on the post later on. Probably not in depth, the Cliff notes would go something like

• Naturally humans developed coping mechanisms to deal with the inevitability of dying. It would be surprising to find such mitigation methods not only diminishing the negative impact of someone close to you dying, but to actually change the sign ("get out of it stronger"). Like a car bumper which not only lessens crash damage, but actually improves the car upon impact.

• Indeed, death is an integral part of the natural selection cycle, and may have various societal benefits. Let's assume that was the whole of it, hypothetically, no negative societal downsides. So now what? Now this: I don't care. I want neither me nor my loved ones to die, and societal consequences be damned. That doesn't mean that ceteris paribus I don't want to benefit society (I do), but not given the price of family dying, in which case ceteris ain't paribus, as the saying goes.

• The real Achilles' heel of anti-deathism I'd see in the fuzzy definitions of identity / continuity of one's personal identity / continuity of consciousness in the first place. It's not reasoning via Sorites Paradox ("if you can't exactly delineate heaps of sand versus grains of sands, then no heaps can exist"), it's pointing out that commonly accepted concepts integral to anti-deathism are so fuzzy and contradictory that once you start pulling out the fuzzy strands, the whole tapestry is unraveled. The teleporter problem does to common concepts of identity what Parfit's does to layman decision theories -- it fucks them.

You have given reasons why death can provide utility. You have not established how these reasons comparatively outweigh the vast disutility of death, or that similar utility could not be gained without death.

I'll give the classical rebuttal.

If you were immortal, and I mean "unaging and healing", in a society of immortals, and reasonably adapted to immortality - would your post convince you to give death a try? I think you know the answer.

Moved to Discussion (reason: downvoted)

Before I start my defense I propose a different more neutral term for deathism: Senexism - from the latin adjective senex - old.

I propose this because death is only the end of an aging process and by focussing on the ultimate and emotionally disturbing result one loads the topic with negative connotations.

Lemme quote some more from Orwell's Politics and the English Language.

...Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

...

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.

If you wanted to argue for aging separately from death, it would be fine to pick a word that dodged our emotional reactions to death. But you are arguing for death, and (by your own admission even) substituting something else because our emotional reaction to death bad.

We're arguing over a matter of ethics. Of course emotions are going to be involved. Ultimately everything here reduces to "this policy will help us achieve ends which were chosen by things like our emotions." This substitution seems transparently like an attempt to hack me, and I might be more charitable about this, but you have already admitted to another attempt to hack me.

From "Feeling Rational",

So is rationality orthogonal to feeling? No; our emotions arise from our models of reality. If I believe that my dead brother has been discovered alive, I will be happy; if I wake up and realize it was a dream, I will be sad. P. C. Hodgell said: "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." My dreaming self's happiness was opposed by truth. My sadness on waking is rational; there is no truth which destroys it.

If I am okay with death because I envision aging instead, that feeling is irrational. It can be destroyed by the truth if I envision what I am actually thinking about.

For an efficiently working brain (that is set on the track of avoiding death at all cost) it is not hard to spot patterns that support the view that death is only bad.

I doubt many anti-deathist LessWrongers think death has absolutely no good consequences. It's just that being made tougher by people we love dying is not worth people we love dying. Being driven to do things faster and be less mediocre (if that indeed happens, which I kind of doubt, and find your folk psychology arguments for unconvincing) because we know we're running out of time until we die is not worth running out of time and dying. Making science go faster is not worth killing literally everyone. If someone is risk-averse because they have more to lose, taking away the thing they are trying to protect is not helping them. We could much more easily and effectively protect against diseases by limiting travel over long distances, than by killing off people whose genes are too common. Even if this group selection hypothesis is true, there are evolutionary adaptive things we don't want to have in a modern civilization. And there are things that were adaptive in the ancestral environment that aren't adaptive anymore.

I have to admit that I didn't follow the argument as an argument - it seemed like a number of disconnected points. Some of them seemed more like sour grapes, some like salvaging some good out of a mostly-bad event. I appreciate the references.

The first third of the post should be deleted, or put in discussion - it's a defense of talking about the subject, and a rebuttal of other posts, not anything that stands on it's own. But since it includes a threat that I'll feel bad if I downvote before reading, I had to read it.

For your first actual point, you seem to say that adaptation has made death less bad than it might be, but completely fail to say it's good or necessary. Still, this may expand into a good post, if presented as "psychological benefits of (other peoples') death".

For your second, that the group is stronger if individuals die, I think it's a reasonable position to take, and could also make a good post. That post should focus on why death at the level of human individual is the right kind of death. Subpersonality death, by updates of beliefs and of terminal values by agents seems preferable to me, both because it's faster and because it's less noticeable by the participants. I think that's what you're trying to say in your last section, but that's so contradictory to your previous use of "death" that I can't tell.

If you're really going to promote death, you should begin work toward a theory of when an individual should choose to die, in order to create a better environment for the people who are ... still alive.

Thanks for this post. I basically agree with you, and it's very nice to see this here, given how one-sided LW's discussion on death usually is.

I agree with you that the death of individual humans is important for the societal suporganism because it keeps us from stagnating. But even if that weren't true, I would still strongly believe in the value of accepting death, for pretty much exactly the reasons you mentioned. Like you, I also suspect that modern society's sheltering, both of children and adults, is leading to our obsession with preventing death and our excessive risk aversion, and I think that in order to lead emotionally healthy lives, we need to accept risk of failure, pain, and even death. Based on experience and things I've read, I suspect we all have much deeper reserves of strength than we realize, but this strength is only called on in truly dire circumstances, because it's so costly to use. If we never put ourselves into these dire circumstances, we will never accomplish the extraordinary. And if we're afraid to put ourselves in such circumstances, then our personal growth will be stunted by fear.

I say this as someone who was raised by very risk-averse parents who always focused on the worst-case scenario. (For instance, when I was about seven, I was scratching a mosquito bite, and my dad said to me "you shouldn't scratch mosquito bites, because one time your grandfather was cleaning the drain, and he scratched a mosquito bite with drain gunk on his hand, and his arm swelled up black and he had to go to the hospital".) As a kid I was terrified of doing much of anything. It wasn't until my late teens and early twenties that I started to learn how to accept risk, uncertainty, and even death. Learning to accept these things gave me huge emotional benefits - I felt light and free, like a weight had been lifted. Once I had accepted risk, I spent a summer traveling, and went on adventures that everyone told me were terrible ideas, but I returned from them intact and now look back on that summer as the best time in my entire life. I really like the saying that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one". It fits very well with my own experience.

I'm hesitant to say that death is objectively "good" or "bad". (I might even classify the question as meaningless.) It seems like, as technology improves, we will inevitably use it to forestall or even prevent death. Should this happen, I think it will be very important to accept the lack of death, just as now it's important to accept death. And I'm not really opposed to all forms of anti-deathism; I occasionally hear people say things like "Life is so much fun, why wouldn't I want to keep doing it forever?". That doesn't seem especially problematic to me, because it's not driven by fear. What I object to is this idea that death is the worst thing ever, and obviously anyone who is rational would put a lot of money and effort into preventing it, so anyone who doesn't is just failing to follow their beliefs and desires to the logical conclusion. So it's really nice to see this post here, amidst the usual anti-deathism. Thanks again for writing it.

Ok, first of all, I do have to ask: are you a non-native English speaker? The mechanics here could use a little work iff you're native, but if you're non-native, they're quite good and the flaws are easily forgivable.

Now, main point: personally, I see no point going on Grand Religious Crusades about death -- for or against. If someone really, truly does want to die (and there are plenty of days I think, "how could I ever put up with this shit we call life forever!?" myself), we should let them. If someone really, truly does not want to die, and isn't doing any damage to anything we consider ethically valuable by not-dying (ie: other people, ecological sustainability, the things I'm forgetting right now but will think of later), then we should be developing ways to enable that preference.

There's really no need to enforce a single choice for everyone. There's no need for huge flamewars about it, or at least, not massive flamewars here, where it is automatically presumed that dying is a value decision people should have the opportunity to make for themselves.

They used to say "if people are not dying, we're not trying hard enough".

So the harder we are to kill, the harder we can try. This example argues in the opposite direction from what you present it as.

if nobody [] dies for space exploration we are cheating humanity.

If you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin.

I think the intent there was that we should be pushing for space exploration quickly, and we can accept a relatively high risk of death in order to get the benefits sooner. I doubt the person who said that would want astronauts to kill themselves if nobody's died for space exploration in the past decade, or to engage in increasingly risky behaviors without commensurate rewards.

To those who think that death should be a choice. What about the benefits of knowing that we are mortal, which death by choice doesn't allow for. e.g. as a counter force to arrogance and as a force to act now, and so as we age to start reevaluating our priorities, in other words, the benefits while we live to knowing that we are mortal may outweigh the benefit of immortality. I suspect these concerns have been dealt with on this site, so if they have feel free to link me to an appropriate post instead of writing a new response,

I find the formatting of this article distracting. What is it with this one-paragraph-per-sentence approach?

More importantly, I find this article rather repulsive in the way it argues; "if we're not dying, we're not trying hard enough"? "being wary of death leads to mediocre living"? "growing old is useful"? This all sounds to me like weak, half-hearted rationalizations.

Neither of them seem to be solid arguments against the very simple statement: "every human should be able to live for as long as they want". If they want to risk their lives for another purpose, that is their prerogative, but death as an acceptable evil that needs to be embraced is an absurd notion. Death is bad. Sometimes it's less bad than other stuff, but it's pretty damned bad, as bad things go. How is this not obvious?

Most of your post is not arguments against curing death.

People being risk-averse has nothing to do with anti-aging research and everything to do with individuals not wanting to die...which has always been true (and becomes more true as life expectancy rises and the "average life" becomes more valuable). The same is true for "we should risk more lives for science".

I agree that people adapt OK to death, but I think you're poking a strawman; the reason death is bad is because it kills you, not because it makes your friends sad.

I think "death increases diversity" is a good argument. On the other hand, most people who present that argument are thrilled that life expectancy has increased to ~70 from ~30 in ancient history. Why stop at 70?

I propose this because death is only the end of an aging process and by focussing on the ultimate and emotionally disturbing result one loads the topic with negative connotations.

Senescence on the other hand - though unwanted - has also positive connotations of experience and humility.

This is loading connotation, just differently. Better is to taboo death or temporarily define it to cover that and only that which is in dispute. This redefinition implicitly marks some of the factors salient to 'anti-deathists'* as irrelevant. E.g. from an information-theoretic/knowability of local revival perspective, there is a nontrivial probability that there is a huge difference between medical death and senescence; if aging is theoretically reversible (perhaps even for some neurodegenerative conditions) up to x minutes after medical death for and only for x<100, then the difference between x=-10^6 and x=10^6 is huge and qualitative for practical decision-making purposes.

*I dislike 'anti-deathist'. Maybe I could call myself 'pro-life'—that's never been done before, right...?

Consider rot13ing HPMoR spoilers and indicating that the rot13 contains a major spoiler, or just referring to HPMoR generally without pointing to specific parts, or something.

Sometimes it is necessary to Make an Extraordinary Effort or even to Shut up and do the impossible!

This implies setting aside some of your mental barriers. Barriers that protect you from danger, exhaustion and possibly death (not necessarily immediate but possibly speeding up senescence).

What is your response to the following proposition: that Eliezer is an example of this, and that he is also your canonical anti-deathist, and you must reconcile these observations?

This post talks past at least one significant anti-deathist line, which is that there is a significant probability that one will inductively desire high lifespan. Now, the basic argument is only a first pass and there are legitimate criticisms that require it to be made more rigorous, but it does go through, and this post doesn't seem to speak much to it. I guess the evolutionary point sort of touches it, but I'm not exactly clear on where exactly it's coming up against the deathist position so without further clarification it seems sort of non-sequitur/I put really low weight on it.

I'm not clear where you would claim the optimum/optima is/are, but you should be very suspicious if your arguments prop up the status quo on lifespan, given alternative possible extremes. If your arguments would conclude that in a world where everyone died before 25 or a world where everyone lived to 10^12, humans should reject increasing or decreasing their lifespan to our typical ~100 life span, then you are being hit by status quo bias. I pretty much think that that point constitutes nadegiri unto deathism.

Has anyone considered that life may not be that great? Considering that:

• Death is by default neutral as you get none of the downsides of life.
• One has to cope every day with the fact of being alive (what they call existential problems). Unless you (1) find distractions, (2) find a compelling project to work on, -- and these are temporary solutions subject to Diminishing Returns --, you'll experience sheer boredom, ennui, anxiety, self-doubt, etc. I suspect this point applies to everyone, even someone otherwise really fortunate in a best-case scenario who has won the lottery.
• High potential for disappointment and misfortune.
• Half of life is spent working, which may be tiring or stressful.
• Doing chores.
• Old age increases problems.
• Possible depression or other mental disorders.
• Possible poverty, be starving.
• Able to experience pain.
• (Bonus) By eliminating life we also eliminate the possibility of bad AIs instituting worse-than-death scenarios.

Sometimes I think our society could benefit from a bit more harm. Wouldn't we value life more and make more out of it?

Did you know? When you can be hurt at any time, you feel pain more, not less. Similarly, when you can die at any time, you value life less, not more. (Well, I do.)

On Thoughts on Death I refused to defend deathism because

[missing from import]

that is no consolation for someone who has lost a relative to death "my position on death is controversial here" and "the only relatives I lost until now were grandparents" But

[missing from import]

doesn't apply in this independent post. shouldn't hold me back in general. I risk loosing karma but I'll try to defend my view as objectively and scholarly as a can (given one day preparation). 

[missing from import]

was countered in the comment by Mestroyer so I wrote this argument that death in general is adaptive.

short response is "yeah, sure, sorta ... but only if you're a stupid group. we can do better."

edit: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jop/a_defense_of_senexism_deathism/akk3 is the longer version of this response

About the Spirit of Deathism

I understand that defending deathism is problematic on this forum.

I assume that this is because it is seen as inconsequential, pessimistic and against the spirit of the forum.

I feel that the latter is related to EYs strong opinion on this matter.

I was moved by his account about the death of his brother.

Do I understand as well as he how bad death is?

Do I need to lose a loved one to understand that?

I lost only grandparents until now. I did loose my wife - but not to death, so this presumably doesn't count.

I will lose my father in law to cancer some time in the future.

The loss of that amazing trove of experience - much like a 1000 year old vampire - will hurt. But he is passing on his legacy to the next generation(s) and he is joking that he is already 20 years older than he expected.

So do I understand death? Am I qualified to question death and by doing so question the resolutions formed when dealing with death?

I can hear EYs experience echo from HPMOR - obgu va gur svtug rtnvafg gur qrzragbef naq gur erfbyhgvba nsgre urezvbarf qrngu. (rot13; links here and here). It moved me to tears. Why doesn't it move me to fight death? Or does it?