When Pinker said that, about the value of life, I knew it was important straight away, but it just hit the real meaning of it. That point, is probably one of the strongest arguments we have for a need to solve aging.
In the thousands of years leading up to our current millenium and our past century, civilisations regularly engaged in torture and executions as a type of public entertainment. (If you have doubts about that, see this http://listverse.com...-of-execution/) As Pinker says in that talk, the reason we think of that as barbaric is because we have a much higher valuation of life. Life is worth something to us! Why was life so valueless to them now? It was because most people died while being born, while giving birth, from diseases which they had no concepts of, from accidents (no OH&S back then!), from warfare, and a whole list of other things which were beyond their control. AS such, if people are going to die anyway, what does it matter if you kill them a little soon? Whether anyone bothered using that logic or not is irrelevent, but the consequences of how they see the world around them is what formed their valuation of life.
This is actually still happening in Africa today. In another TED talk on Africa the talker spoke of how people are still having Sex without concern for AIDS. Why would they do that? Its because they think they are going to die anyway, so why limit their pleasure while they can? (watch the video: http://www.ted.com/i...ks/view/id/143) I'm sure the sort of logic which these people apply in their concerns for AIDS applies to many other aspects of life, such as "Should I join up with a militia and run around killing other people so that I can get what I want?"
So why is our value of life so much higher than theirs, and than our ancestors? I think it all started thanks to the enlightenment, and our gradual accrual of medical treatments. We were finally able to stop people from dying. Of course the valuation of life as a consequence of this took a long time to change, but it did gradually happen. And so we saw the gradual decline of public torture, public execution, slavery, decline in warfare etc. We have reached a point now where we value life very highly, but it is still limited. The increae in life expectancy from 30's to 75 has seen a HUGE improvement in valuation of life. But the step from 75 lifespan to indefinite lifespan will eventually see an infinite increase in valuation of life.
The point? Next time someone says "Shouldn't we worry about poverty before we worry about aging?" or "Shouldn't we do more to help people dying of "blah" instead of worrying about aging?", the only appropriate answer should be: "By solving aging, the overall zeitgeist will change so that everyone will be infinitely more motivated to actually do precisely that. At the moment we are all upset that people from poverty, warfare, and disease X in country Y, but that is just unfortunate for them. When our valuation of life is raised because life expectancy is given an indefinite time span, then we will finally start to actually treat life with true reverence. And for the first time in history we will actually do all in our power, as a global community, to stop unnecessary suffering and death."
LongeCityAdvocacy & Research for Unlimited Lifespans
