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Jan 4, 2017

Why live longer when the future looks so grim?

Posted by Nicola BagalÃ  in categories: existential risks, life extension Is the future really going to be so bad that you wouldnât want to live longer? Hardly!


The future looks grim? Thatâs quite an interesting claim, and I wonder whether there is any evidence to support it. In fact, I think thereâs plenty of evidence to believe the opposite, i.e. that the future will be bright indeed. However, I canât promise the future will certainly be bright. I am no madame clearvoyant, but neither are doomsday prophets. We can all only speculate, no matter how âsureâ pessimists may say they are about the horrible dystopian future that allegedly awaits us. Iâm soon going to present the evidence of the bright future I believe in, but before I do, I would like to point out a few problems in the reasoning of the professional catastrophists who say that life wonât be worth living and thereâs thus no point in extending it anyway.

First, we need to take into account that the quality of human life has been improving, not worsening, throughout history. Granted, there still are things that are not optimal, but there used to be many more. Sure, it sucks that your pet-peeve politician has been appointed president of your country (any reference to recent historical events is entirely coincidental), and it sucks that poverty and famine havenât yet been entirely eradicated, but none of these implies that things will get worse. Thereâs a limit to how long a president can be such, and poverty and famine are disappearing all over the world. It takes time for changes to take place, and the fact the world isnât perfect yet doesnât mean it will never be. Especially people who are still chronologically young should appreciate the fact that by the time theyâre 80 or 90, a long time will have passed, and the world will certainly have changed in the meanwhile.


