Fiction of interest

This is a very good story. And I think - in spite of the clear-cut attempts to elicit intuitions about the value of childhood and the rights of parents - that there may be some validity to the perspective character's society's view. Consider, for instance, the opposite case: dementia in old age. The years of dementia replace years of potentially productive and enjoyable thought with confused, near-valueless, dependent, and often suffering-laden resource-sucking; the demented aged receive no respect or autonomy. Eliminating senility as part of the human condition would be met with unequivocal celebration: no one would be holding protests begging for their deluded grandma back. For some reason, putting the stage of incompetence at the other end of the lifespan and making the sufferers adorable completely reverses this impression.

Clever story, dirty tricks. Make them unemotional, neotenous, r-strategy reproducers, bigoted and politically untrustworthy. Imply a short lifespan with no attempt at anti-aging. That variant of humanity is no fun, but what does that tell you about the propaganda topic, the value of long dependent childhood? Almost nothing. Too many confounding factors.

The scenario in which now-like humans, and future humans, find each other's morals mutually repulsive, is interesting. But we have millennia of experience resolving conflicts.

But I think that some attention should also be given to scenarios in which both the now-like humans and the future humans agree that the future humans are morally superior to the old-style humans. That seems more likely, and may be more difficult to resolve, as we have no experience with such problems.