Bailey on Anti-Aging

Ron Bailey combines two new papers, one from John Davis and the other from IEET fellow Russell Blackford, into a serious argument in favor of anti-aging tech. My favorite paragraph is the summary of how Blackford dismantles Singer:

But imposing population control measures should be morally suspect to someone who advocates maximizing total utility over time. Why? As Blackford points out, Singer’s utility logic leads to the irresistible “conclusion that a sufficiently large population with people whose lives are barely worth living would be a better outcome than a much smaller population of people who are very happy.” This is what philosopher Derek Parfit called the “repugnant conclusion.” Parfit never believed that he had resolved the paradox at the heart of a total utilitarian calculus that leads to the repugnant conclusion. One consequence of this line of argument is that people should have as many children as possible in order to maximize the total amount of happiness just so long as they could eke out some minimal amount of pleasure. In fact, it would be immoral for people to restrict the number of children they bear because they would be reducing the overall amount of possible happiness in the world.

If you’re utilitarian, there is math aplenty to pour over. If you’re not, the other moral arguments are well articulated.

(h/t R.U.’s blog.)