Fukuyama's Perfectly Horrifying Example

The most obvious hypothetical externality from life extension (at least the more sci-fi versions) is the population pressure. A cheap “cure” for natural death could quickly spiral into a global Malthusian nightmare.

Another hypothetical externality is a massive increase in the pressure towards stasis. Your upstart is prevented from opening up another firm by government. And with a life-extended eternity at risk, the upstart may be willing to wait a few thousand years working in the muck for a possible chance a few thousand years later than risk his long-extended life.

As for crying at funerals, we mourn those we love or like, but many consider the death of a non-friend CEO an opportunity for either advancement or change.

After all, in all likelihood Bryan would not hold his present post if the professor previous never retired. And how could he retire if he could live a very long time indeed?

I don’t think it makes a compelling case against life extension, but I think Fukuyama’s correct in thinking there will be negative externalities of one kind or another. For instance, it’s hard not to be pleased that segregationists like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond are no longer in the senate. Give radical life extensions to the “Greatest Generation” or their forebears, and the culture wars of the sixties (civil rights, feminism, etc) are probably still ongoing.

There’s an interesting question lurking in there. Fukuyama seems to think that the attitudes and ideas of older generations impede social progress, so the longer you keep old people around, the less progress you get. I don’t know how true that really is, but I’d point out that not every change that’s initially thought of as progress really deserves to be viewed as such. The rise of socialism, for example. I’m no conservative, but I would be inclined to think that there is some value to the sensibility of people who stand athwart history yelling “stop!”

Bryan, one frequently finds these kind of arguments against life extension, and it is astonishing how poorly thought out they are. Another example: famous scientist, Leonard Hayflick (discoverer of ‘Hayflick limit’ on cell divisions) dismissed longevity research out of hand because “aging is inevitable – it is obvious from the Second law of thermodynamics – the entropy always goes up!”. Well, any bright high-school graduate knows that entropy always goes up in a *closed* system. Living organisms, by definition, are not closed systems. Bacteria have been alive for billions of years, etc., you get the point.

What I think is going on, is that a lot of people are afraid of this momentous change, and grab at the first thing that comes at their minds as a justification.

By the way, the world mortality rate is currently below 1%, while the population growth rate is 1.1%, so there is no threat of ‘immediate Malthusian war’. Longer term, we would need to stabilize the population, and if you want a quick and dirty solution, here it is: only one child per person allowed. The world population would never double again!

Keep up the good work!

First, group selection, a misconception since “Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior”, an influential book by the ornithologist V. C. Wynne-Edwards (1962), at least, has been rebutted systematically by evolutionary biologists, and almost every biologist has been convinced, but it continues popular in social sciences. Once more, group selection does not exist.

Fukuyama’s entire argument is based on a fantastic group logic. It is an absurd.

Also, our life spans have tripled over a relatively short period of time, while our species has advanced incredibly, both technologically and culturally. Why would tripling it again suddenly start to retard that growth?

“If aging CEOs refuse to give young upstarts a chance, what happens now? The upstarts don’t wait around for “generational succession”; they open a competing firm.”

In libertarian fantasy land, yes. In the world we live in, not so much. I wish we lived in libertarian fantasy land, but alas . . .

“There is the saying among economists that the science of economics proceeds one funeral at a time”

Then the simplest way Fukuyama can advance the science should be obvious…

One thing which I think has exacerbated the problem of incumbency is communication technology.

In the 19th century, the navy captains were not only seamen but diplomats. Men in their late 20s might attain command of a small ship and find themselves negotiating on behalf of the President. A junior agent of the Dutch East India Co. might be sent to some distant corner of the empire with some money and a few dozen fusiliers, and told to come back in a few years when he had established a new port or trade route.

Today, that same navy captain sits in the Gulf of Aden while 4-stars and JAGs in Washington watch the live feeds from drones deciding whether he should be allowed to fire on a few pirates.

Meanwhile, businesses have continued perfecting the art of micro-management, building towards a future that looks more like Chile’s Project Cybersyn than anything else.

And while the entrepreneurial exit remains available, the frontiers are fast closing. The American West grew for decades–in some places close to a century–with a complete lack of government for many purposes. The IT industry retains some of this still, and so it’s full of software companies run by non-conformists with low agreeability scores like me. But how much longer before the regulations start to multiply and it too becomes as dull as every other business?

I tend to agree that life extension will mean more power accruing to the elderly (the relatively modest gains in lifespan since the last century have already led to a majorshift in power, just look at how Medicare is bankrupting the country.

For a fictional description of what the world would look like if life extension therapy were available that would extend lifespans by 50% while preserving quality of life and productivity, but at extreme financial expense, have a look at “Holy Fire” by Bruce Sterling.

“But how much longer before the regulations start to multiply and it too becomes as dull as every other business”

Not long, the business themselves are already asking for it. Google for example asking for enforced net neutrality. Oracle asking for MS to be broken up, etc etc.

Hacs,

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Wikipedia may not be such a reliable source, but it’s relevant, handy and you can take part in the process of making it more reliable and thereby improve validity. Before Internet when working in the field it could take months to get good source material.

The language problem is similar between disciplines. And, when one like economics has hundreds of peer-reviewed journals, overspecialization to an extreme is an understatement. Also, even when you understand the language, core concepts like “selfishness” are inherently unreasonable, even irrational.

Positively, though, relative to group selection and interdisciplinary work believe behavioral economics “bounded selfishness” is on the right track: though the comprehensive Ego’n’Empathy Hypothesis puts both selfishness (egotism) and selflessness (altruism) within bounds for economic science to proceed, L believes. While not understanding the mathematics of the formal Hypothesis, the reasoning, empirical evidence, the falsifiability criteria makes sense. Indeed, all together it appears as a true paradigm shift.

A relevant quote: “Affirming the Hypothesis also indicates an overall paradigm shift when making a place for empathy as an equal opposite and complement to ego [self-interest]…but does not stray far from the dominant neoclassical economic theory of the day in that we use similar analytical devices…. Intriguingly, neoclassical economics and the microeconomic tool of homo economicus as we know it becomes a special case of the metaeconomic model. If empirical testing results in failure to reject the null hypothesis of ‘no empathic, other-interest at work’ and ‘no lack of substitution possibilities’, we are back to the standard neoclassical economic model. All testing to date, however, suggests we cannot go back.” (Hayes & Lynne, 2004, Towards a Centerpiece for Ecological Economics, Journal of Ecological Economics, P. 299.)

Thanks for the articles. The Wilson & Wilson article Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology is excellent. A quote from it illustrates how multiple models in evolutionary biology are coming to the same conclusions and refutes Thornhill & Palmer’s “misconception” regarding group selection.

“All of these models obey the following simple rule…Selfishness beats altruism within single groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. The main exception to this rule involves models that result in multiple local equilibria, which are internally stable by definition. In this case, group selection can favor the local equilibria that function best at the group level, a phenomenon sometimes called “equilibrium selection” (Boyd and Richerson 1992; Samuelson 1997; Gintis 2000; the model by Peck 2004 described earlier provides an example).”

I support life extension, but I think the guy’s argument is fairly obvious. Natural selection, the death of individuals who are less well adapted, has been a critical factor in why life has survived 4 billion years, and why our species is what it is. I can think of no other advancement that would need to be considered so carefully. The real question is, why would you consider it a “horror” to point this out?