In all seriousness I find that to be an unconvincing argument; isn't it better to have that choice rather than let it be made for us? Where would we be if Newton and Einstein were still alive? The only argument for aging I've ever liked is that culture just can't really advance without it- old people (on the whole! many older people are fantastic and very progressive) eventually seem to stop catching up to the rest of society. But still, it seems like insufficient reason to let brilliant people die.
"Where would we be if Newton and Einstein were still alive?"
Einstein and Newton contributed a lot but they were part of a historical trend, not genetic hail marys who ushered mankind from one epoch to the next.
"...it seems like insufficient reason to let brilliant people die."
This is - look, you can't argue that someone has the right to live based on their life achievements. This is like the ultimate perversion of the 'american drem' delusion - just achieve great thing and you can live forever.
Unfortunately Johnny never did crack the Navier-Stokes equation so instead of given the Immortality Treatment he became fertilizer in the end
Newton and Einstein were absolutely brilliant beyond their time, and would definitely have continued to make great contributions. Overall people have gotten smarter over the generations, but the geniuses of the past would still be geniuses today. In mathematics alone there are dozens of examples of people who were proving things that we still haven't replicated. Just by looking through their notes we have found solutions to problems we hadn't been able to solve yet.
>This is - look, you can't argue that someone has the right to live based on their life achievements. This is like the ultimate perversion of the 'american drem' delusion - just achieve great thing and you can live forever.
I'm very anti-libertarian and totally against the idea that the ends justify the means wrt achievement. However geniuses do exist, and their productivity is very often cut short by death or age. As a race we would have been able to gain immensely if a few hundred people had lived a decade or two longer.
I most certainly don't deny that geniouses are critical for moving forward. What I was after, is that there never is just one - the one we remember is the one who publishes first - and it's sometimes hard to tell who they are from an institutional perspective.
As an example, wasn't Einstein a strong opponent to some of the weirder conclusions that would later be drawn by Quantum Physics? Even the brilliant people get stuck at some point (as you alluded to), and fresh perspectives are needed to make progress.
In addition, you don't get to pick who lives on and who doesn't. Think of all the people you would find to be very culturally backwards that would still be alive and hold a lot of power.
Getting to choose to live longer = good. I'm not trying to argue against that. I'm just trying to point out the benefits that natural death provides to society, because these benefits are something I personally plan to think carefully about as the choice to live longer and longer becomes an option.
Hopefully if the previous generation paid it forward.
And as long we are talking about scientists, Feynman said this in his speech:
"The ideas I wish to describe are old ideas. There is practically nothing that I am going to say tonight that could not easily have been said by philosophers of the seventeenth century. Why repeat all this? Because there are new generations born every day. Because there are great ideas developed in the history of man, and these ideas do not last unless they are passed purposely and clearly from generation to generation."
Where would we be if Vlad the Impaler or Nero or Genghis Khan were still alive?
It's not like we'll run out of brilliant people. There are always new ones being born. I think it's much better to have the opportunity for new brilliant people to rise with a different point of view from having been raised in a different environment in a different time.
> old people ... eventually seem to stop catching up to the rest of society
If (happy to be proven wrong here) we can assume that this trend has to do with an age-related decrease in brain functionality, maybe this could be mitigated anyway.
this is a deeply pernicious argument, in my opinion. who gets to be the judge of when a person is "brilliant" enough to grant immortality to? what if a "brilliant" person decides they don't want to perform their brilliance for you anymore? Would you permit immortal Newton to take up painting or golfing at the expense of time he could be spending on his brilliant mathematics?
Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.
[....]
If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. There is an infinity of difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.
[....]
For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.
- Kundera, from the first chapter of The Unbearable Lightness of Being; mistakes mine, typed hastily from my dead-tree copy for want of a quickly DuckDuckGoable digital one.
(yes, it goes on to wrestle with many of the objections/concerns you should already have about the small snippet above)
In all seriousness I find that to be an unconvincing argument; isn't it better to have that choice rather than let it be made for us? Where would we be if Newton and Einstein were still alive? The only argument for aging I've ever liked is that culture just can't really advance without it- old people (on the whole! many older people are fantastic and very progressive) eventually seem to stop catching up to the rest of society. But still, it seems like insufficient reason to let brilliant people die.