Fatalism is no longer adaptive: the story of the rotted meat virus
I have good news and bad news.
First, the bad news.
Imagine that an asteroid crash landed on earth, unleashing an infectious disease that caused every infected human to turn into a pile of rotted meat by age 35. And imagine that this "rotted meat disease" (RMD) was so virulent that there was no escape--every human on earth becomes infected.
Now, to my mind, the appropriate response to RMD on the part of governments, universities, and industry would be a massive, coordinated effort to treat and cure RMD. Top billing for a rotted meat disease cure, I say.
But imagine that instead, most people responded:
"Why would anyone want to live more than 35 years?"
"You want to spend your money on not turning into rotted meat? How selfish!"
"Rotted meat gives life meaning."
"Rotted meat disease? That's such a hard, complex problem. We should spend it on something easier, like low-income housing or malaria research."
"Rotted meat disease? I'm not worried. When the rotted meat disease takes me, [INSERT RELIGION HERE] will whisk me off to [INSERT AFTERLIFE HERE]."
You'd think everyone had lost their minds, right? Where are their priorities?
Unfortunately, I'm sorry to report that "rotted meat disease" is real.
Everyone is infected, including you. Except that instead of "rotted meat disease", we call it "aging".
Every human on Earth has an internal clock that is slowly winding down. (1) When your time is up, you too will turn into a pile of rotted meat. No one gets more than 135 years. Most will be dead by 80, and some unlucky ones will succumb much earlier.
The fatalism illustrated above is also real. Most of the population is indifferent to aging, and a substantial fraction are hostile to the idea that we should do anything about aging.
Why, you might ask? Why are so many blasé that everyone they know and love will turn into a pile of rotted meat?
In the past, fatalism was an adaptive response to aging and death. Worrying about your inevitable death would've drained you of energy that you could've spent on more productive near-term actions (such as hunting, farming, and reproducing).
Now for the good news: fatalism is no longer adaptive.
Aging can be cured. Death can be conquered.
How do we know this?
We've learned that several complex species--such as tortoises, aspen trees, and sturgeon--don't appear to have a clock like ours. Individuals of those species can remain healthy for hundreds of years.
We've advanced far enough in our understanding of genetics, physiology, neuroscience, and other fields that we're starting to understand how our bodies work at a molecular level.
Given enough research, we can plausibly stop and rewind our clocks, thus delaying death indefinitely. Or maybe even transform ourselves into new machines entirely, ones with no clocks at all.
Just think of what we could to then!
Every generation, we spend two decades educating the next generation. They, in turn, get roughly 4-5 decades of productive life after that (much of which they also spend raising children) then they decay and die.
Imagine how much faster humanity would progress if we didn't have to start over, again and again, every 80 years or so, if individuals could build up repositories of knowledge and experience that span centuries instead of decades.
Moreover, imagine how much longer our time horizons would be! Many environmental problems stem from the fact that it pays to destroy the environment now, because you and yours will be long dead when the consequences come due.
Would people be so cavalier about pollution, rain forest destruction, and soil depletion if they personally expected to live through the consequences?
Likewise, dictators and tyrants arise, again and again, despite each generation writing to warn future generations of the horrors they cause.
Would those patterns repeat as often if the people who lived through the previous iteration of horror were still alive?
So, we have a little time to make this happen. But not a lot! Time goes so fast. If you want to combat pro-“rotted meat disease” fatalism, here are three high leverage actions you can take:
Donate to the Brain Preservation Foundation.
http://www.brainpreservation.org/
Donate to the SENS Research Foundation
http://www.sens.org/
Invest in 21st Century Medicine
http://www.21cm.com/
Sign up for cryonic suspension with Alcor Life Extension Foundation
http://www.alcor.org
I’ll write up more on each of those organizations in a later post.