>do you also consider it ethically acceptable to kill an individual once he has stopped procreating, since he's no longer relevant to the evolutionary game?
The evolutionary game is much more complicated than you imagine it to be. Humans have evolved to be social animals. Someone who is too old to procreate can still watch after young, pass knowledge on to them, etc., which increases their fitness. This is such a fundamental misunderstanding, you have no reason to be so confident in such matters.
[Edit for more substance: you imply evolution is driving humanity towards some 'good' destination, such that more evolution is better. This isn't how evolution works.]
No. All I'm implying is that humanity, in its current form, cannot survive all possible natural threats to its existence. We're still competing with other species, and we're still vulnerable to things like the effects of climate change, so if we completely stop evolving, it's likely that in only a few thousand years, we'll be completely dependent on our technology for survival.
Once a species has the intelligence and technology to eliminate death, they'll be able to evolve and adapt themselves far more effectively than evolution via natural selection.
What's funny is memories are also re-created and retouched when we recall them. The whole thing is very complex and when people say they 'know for sure' something about life/death it irritates the hell out of me.
Individual death isn't bad or good. Death just is. It's more fluid and complex than bad or good. Not to mention "dead/alive" itself are fluid concepts. People choose to interpret death as good or bad because people are idiots.
If death was ultimately bad people wouldn't commit suicide all the time. If death was ultimately good people wouldn't apply so much effort to keep alive. People choose to think suicidals are by definition mentally ill also because people are idiots. If you're in a burning building, you most likely will jump out of the building committing suicide because the alternative (being burned alive) is much worse. Similar thing with a lot of suicides.
My point is: people are naive idiots and we still have no idea what exactly happens after death, and what exactly is 'after' or before. The idiocy of people when it comes to the subject of death figuratively speaking makes me want to kill myself.
The comforting thing is, within a context of individual consciousness you're pretty much fucking immortal. Whatever happens outside of the context of functioning consciousness should really be none of your concern. It is impossible to "feel dead". "When I'm alive death isn't here, when I'm dead I won't be there to witness it".
That doesn't explain self-sacrifice. And, honestly, I wouldn't want to live an "eternal" life when everybody I love and know around me would be dead at some point or another. Maybe this is also why I've come to see Christianity's "promise" of eternal life as ridiculous and almost scary at times.
As Seneca used to say, it doesn't matter how long you live, it's what you do with your life that matters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_%28Seneca%29)
""" The philosopher brings up many Stoic principles on the nature of time, namely that men waste much of it in meaningless pursuits. According to the essay, nature gives man enough time to do what is really important and the individual must allot it properly. """
And to finish in an even more pathetic tone, I don't think we should strive for living an eternal life, but rather do what Julius Caesar did when he realized that Alexander had already conquered the world by 30: weep, and then try to conquer the world by ourselves.
The reason to want to live longer? One word: space.
Living hundreds of years in good health will allow us all to become a space faring race. It will allow us to take the long view on interstellar travel, our species and relationships. I'm hoping to see that day and having Steve leave so early only solidifies the importance of longevity in my mind. Intelligence is not meant to die, it's meant to live. We accept death only because we have to and have been powerless to stop it. Technology is starting to change all that.
