Richard Chappell posted an article on his blog: Is Longevity Good For You? Here, I repro­duce a comment that I had posted in response.

In my opinion, welfare is additive to the extent that it is consum­able. The first step towards rational analysis of longevity is to realize that no matter how long an individual manages to prolong life, he/she is subject to eventual death. Personal welfare does not come into the picture after death, so from a purely first-person perspec­tive, death is accept­able at any point of time. What really consti­tutes a measure of personal happi­ness is debat­able, but this measure is something that cannot be defined beyond death.

As far as the social aspect of longevity is concerned, the stake­holders are both close relatives who are emotion­ally affected, as well as the rest of society that is cultur­ally affected by the death of the individual, in terms of his/her poten­tial contri­bu­tions to society. Person­ally, I would prefer longer lives for my fellow humans, irrespec­tive of the ‘shapes’ of their lives. My argument for this is two-fold. A longer life, with the excep­tion of partic­ular cases, raises the sum total of happi­ness amongst close relations. Secondly, the individ­uals contri­bu­tion to society is propor­tional to the extent of his/her life. This is assuming that we provide the ‘elixir’ to everyone impar­tially. There may be anti-social elements whose longevity negatively impacts society, but they are in a minority. The same applies to ‘non-contributors’ to society.

In summary, life-extension research is neces­sary, because longevity is immate­rial from a personal stand­point and benefi­cial from a social one.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 3rd, 2006 at 06:16 and is filed under Daily Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.