Lives that never end would freeze the world in place

The argument

A second argument for this position looks past the individual to the societies such lives would occur in. Proponents point out that renewal in almost every sphere happens by replacement: holders of office, property, influence and expertise eventually die, and their successors arrive with different assumptions. Much of what is regarded as progress, on this view, has come not from people changing their minds but from the generations holding the old view passing on. If those generations did not pass on, they argue, the arrangements of the present would acquire a permanence they have never had, and the people in command of institutions would stay in command of them. The argument also concerns who would bear the cost. A world of indefinite lives is one in which positions do not open, inheritance does not transfer and accumulated advantage never disperses. Proponents argue that the losers are the young and the unborn, who would inherit a landscape fully occupied by their predecessors. Where such treatments were expensive the effect would compound, since the people best placed to secure an indefinite span are already the people holding the most. They describe the likely result as a hardening of hierarchy rather than a general gain. Proponents add that the burdens would not stay abstract. Indefinite lifespans raise questions about population, about the resources a vastly older world would consume, and about what happens to people who continue long past the point at which they wanted to. None of these, they argue, has an answer that supporters of the project have supplied. On this account humans should not strive for immortality, because the gain would be private while the costs would be collective, and the collective costs would fall hardest on those with no say in the matter.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Supporters of the project reply that this treats death as a mechanism of social reform, which they regard as a poor one: waiting for opponents to die is a slow and indiscriminate way to change institutions, and societies have other tools, including term limits, taxation and the dispersal of estates. They also argue that the premise understates how much people change within a single life, and that longer lives might make individuals more invested in the far future rather than less. Others point out that the same objection could be raised against any gain in life expectancy, and that nobody proposes shortening lives to open positions for the young, which suggests the argument is not really being applied as a principle.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics object that institutional renewal has many other mechanisms, and that relying on death to achieve it is both slow and indiscriminate. [Rejecting P2] They argue that people revise their views within a single life, so continuity of persons does not entail continuity of assumptions. [Rejecting P3] They note that the same reasoning would count against any increase in life expectancy, which its proponents do not accept. [Rejecting C] They conclude that the costs described are matters for policy to address rather than reasons to abandon the aim.