Trends In Attitudes Toward Life, Death, and Progress - Part 3

* Introduction * Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 *

"Immortality", Feasibility, and Optimism's Limit Case

In any discussion of longevity and attitudes toward it, making the distinction between radical longevity and immortality is important -- both for the sake of clear communication and for the sake of widening the sphere of individuals willing to take part in serious discussion of longevity research and potential treatments. Within the healthy life extension community, the utility of the word "immortality" is certainly contested. Some suggest that making references to "immortality" specifically is unwise due to the associations with mythology and a sort of comic-book grandiosity that it tends to imply. Others, however, feel that longevity advocates have little chance of succeeding unless immortality becomes socially acceptable as a goal, and therefore, the word itself ought to be used unashamedly.

For the purposes of the Existence is Wonderful Death Poll, the word "immortality" was purposely excluded from the phrasing of the poll items. Regardless of its tentatively-acceptable status within the aforementioned "healthy life extension community", the connotational baggage of the word immortality is frequently so profound as to make use of it highly impractical, if not downright damaging. The Death Poll was not geared only toward people who would even consider themselves in favor of life extension -- a link to the poll was provided to a number of people not known to be regular readers of longevity literature, and therefore, it seemed appropriate to present the question of longevity feasibility in terms of a scale most people would consider reasonable.

Items 9 and 10 in the poll asked the respondent to select based on their sense of whether it seemed plausible that a person alive today might live to be 200 years of age or older in reasonable health. The number "200" was chosen because it represents an age far in excess of the average modern lifespan, but not an age that suggests or approaches "immortality". The intent in this case was to avoid "turning off" potential respondents who see the notion of immortality as too ridiculous for consideration, thereby acquiring a sense of how a more ideologically diverse population perceives the prospects of longevity medicine over the next few decades.

An impressive majority of respondents (79) in the representative group of 116 selected Item 9. A minority (8) selected Item 10, and a larger minority (28) selected neither Item 9 nor Item 10. Clearly, there is a general perception among poll respondents (regardless of their value judgements associated with death and life extension) that medical progress is being made, and that the prospect of effective longevity medicine being developed in the next few decades is more than mere fantasy. A larger-scale poll of a more varied and general population might reveal a different pattern, however, the fact that value judgements did not seem to notably affect a person's level of optimism regarding medical progress could indicate, at the very least, that this level of optimism is not necessarily based in "wishful thinking".

Nevertheless, the popularity of Item 9 cannot be taken to indicate anything about the actual state of scientific progress regarding the development of effective longevity medicine. Just as non-advocates can sometimes fall into the trap of believing aging to be absolutely immutable based on folk wisdom as opposed to scientific data, members of the healthy life extension community must take care not to overestimate near-term future progress based on a poor understanding of the relevant biological principles. It can be quite easy to believe that something is possible when you don't have much in the way of a detailed understanding of how it might be accomplished, after all.

But regardless of the actual state of longevity science at present, it cannot be disputed that if medicine were able to develop techniques and treatments capable of allowing a person born in 2007 or earlier to live to age 200 in reasonable health, this development would represent an impressive accomplishment. Not just because it would mean that aging had been proven at least somewhat mutable, but because that healthy 200-year-old would presumably be alive in an era of even greater medical skill and anatomical knowledge than the present boasts. Achievement of the condition described in Item 9 might then be said to represent a condition that is necessary for, but not sufficient to achieve, functional "immortality" -- at least for people who already exist. But it is not necessary to "believe in immortality" (by any definition) in order to believe that life and health extension are inherently good and worth working toward.

Perhaps rather than campaigning for the re-introduction of the word "immortality" into the set of things considered to be realistic, scientifically achievable goals, longevity advocates should focus more on pointing out that the entire goal of medicine is to sustain life and that "life extension" medicine is fundamentally no different from medicine in general in terms of its function in the world. The notion of a limit case for optimism does not even need to come into play in this scenario; we are not, after all, thinking in terms of solving age-related death in one fell swoop, but rather, through an incremental series of breakthroughs and achievements that each build upon the set of previous accomplishments.

Indifference and Variety: Outlier Responses

Of the representative sample set (consisting of 116 responses) 22 respondents selected neither Item 1 nor Item 2. Of these 22 (whose responses are shown in Figure 4), only 7 chose Item 3 ("I don't really think about death much -- I just try to live my life and figure that if I do die at some point, it doesn't matter because I'll never know it anyway."). This was somewhat surprising; it was anticipated, based on informal discussion of life extension with members of the general populace over the past few years, that Item 3 would be far more popular among poll respondents than it actually turned out to be.



The relative lack of popularity of Item 3 seems to indicate that the vast majority of poll respondents have settled on a value judgement with respect to death. Items 1 ("Death is natural. Death is as much a part of life as being born is. Therefore, it is something to be respected and not necessarily fought.") and 2 ("Death is an outrage -- it destroys people, no matter what the cause, and is therefore obviously something to be challenged and resisted. I fully support all serious scientific research efforts devoted to helping usher in longer, healthier lives for all.") both clearly represent value judgements; Item 3 represents an attitude to be sure, but not one that judges the perceived goodness or badness of death. Instead, Item 3 describes a state of mind in which a person believes death to be largely irrelevant to their existence.

Out of the 116 representative respondents, a total of 14 selected Item 3. Figure 2 shows that three of the Item 1 responders also selected Item 3. Figure 3 shows that four of the Item 2 responders also selected Item 3. In both cases, responses to Item 3 represented a minority, possibly indicating that when a person makes a definitive value judgement on the subject of death, that person is then less prone to indifference regarding the influence of the idea of death on their existence. Or, more likely, it could simply be that the overall paucity of responses to Item 3 indicate that most poll respondents, regardless of whether or how they make value judgements about death, do live their lives with some consideration or "background awareness" of their potential mortality.

An item that might be construed as expressing a particular manifestation of this "background awareness" is Item 5 ("I have never liked the idea of death, but I am very reluctant to even let myself think that it might be possible to do something about it."). Item 5 was the least popular of all items -- even when including all the data from Figures 2, 3, and 4, only two respondents in the sample set of 116 respondents chose Item 5. It was thought that this option might appeal to those who liked the idea of life extension but who were too afraid to embrace efforts toward it for fear of personal disillusionment or social ostracism, etc. -- and perhaps it might -- but apparently, not very many such people responded to the poll. This is certainly not a negative indicator.

Figure 4 includes, in addition to responses which selected Item 3 (but not Items 1 or 2), responses that did not select any of the first three items. Six of these responses consisted only of Item 9, indicating that these respondents had an opinion on near-term feasibility of longevity medicine, but not much in the way of value judgements or thoughts on the social or philosophical implications of mortality or longevity. Two respondents selected only Item 7 ("I don't think people should have to die, and I am in favor of research to arrest the aging process, but I am firmly convinced that my generation was born too soon."). One respondent selected only Item 8 ("I think that there are many social problems we ought to think about trying to fix before considering radical longevity to be a worthwhile pursuit."). One selected only Item 4 ("I believe in a supernatural afterlife, and that when I die I will enter this afterlife and exist there for all eternity.").

Not much can be extrapolated from most of the responses depicted in Figure 4; since these responses are relative outliers with respect to the strong pools of respondents choosing either Item 1 or Item 2, all that can be taken from this data is a sense of the magnitude of the variety of different people's attitudes toward death and mortality. Some individuals not included in the major "trends" revealed by the poll (that is, people who selected either Item 1 or Item 2) expressed simple, single-issue sentiments (e.g., belief in an afterlife or a commitment to fixing the world's "other problems" unrelated to longevity). Others expressed more complex views (such as respondent 99, whose response set indicated indifference toward death coupled with vague discomfort, along with a desire to solve other problems before longevity, as well as pessimism toward the prospect of healthy 200-year-olds living in the near future).

This variety alone reminds us, whether we support longevity advocacy or not, that as sentient entities presently existing under the spectre of an expiration date, we are capable of coming to various different positions on the subject of mortality. Understanding this diversity of thought is important not just in terms of advocating from the pro-longevity point of view, but in terms of periodically re-assessing our goals and arguments, and certainly in terms of continuing to refresh and update our knowledge and understanding of both science and the ethics of scientific methodology and practice.