> You could simply decide to turn off your nanobot life support system or whatever and die naturally if you wanted to. I'm not entirely sure I'd want to, though. If faced with a terminal illness today, would you choose not to seek treatment?

I hadn't thought of the nanotechnology but that makes sense. As for a terminal illness, it depends on where I am in life. Now, yeah, I'd fight it. If I felt I'd lived a full life or didn't want to suffer anymore, maybe not.

What if a woman had great things to add to society and did so for many years without signs of running out of good ideas that would benefit mankind? If she got tired of living and decided to die naturally, would she be viewed as selfish? Would people step in and not allow her to die? Would this diminish the contributions she had made in the eyes of others? And if she did stay alive without contributing anything more, is there still a reason continue living?


> I agree with you to some extent. Let me put on my Marxist hat and talk about dialectical materialism (the only part of Marxism I actually like). I would say it is better to be alive circa 2003 than it would have to have been alive circa 1003. In the last thousand years, the quality of life for the average person has increased. Education has increased. Freedom and tolerance has increased. History is in large part a history of things improving for the better. Yeah, sometimes there are dark ages and things regress, but overall I think it's better.

I would have to agree with you to a point. I think life is better and easier today compared to 1003. But the increases, for the most part, have been pretty steady with occasional spikes. However, technology and population have increased rapidly over just that last 100 years and I don't think we've adjusted to this as well as if it were gradual. We use technology to adjust to technology and our dependence on it grows. I'm not anti-technology by any means but I hate having to rely on the next new thing. Population growth causes different strains and I'm not sure that keeping the current population alive longer will alleviate things such as resource depletion. But necessity is the mother of invention.

>
> One can make a pretty strong inductive argument that things will continue to get better. They may never get perfect, but it's quite probable they will continue improving. So I don't think I buy that all of our current problems will exist in the future (it seems likely that, say, environmental degradation will be much less of a problem in the next few centuries), but I agree new ones will arise.

I also think that all this growth does cause problems that are much grander in scale. 150+ years ago, a plague could remain fairly localized. Political unrest might affect a region or a continent but worldwide effects would be slower. It took months for news of incidents of the French Revolution to reach America and longer still for our press to pass the information along. Now, everything is instantaneous and global. I could be halfway around the world in a day or less. So I think it will be hard to anticipate problems and what their effect will be on us.

> By extension I assume that you believe the current world is "not good to live in." I would say the current world is flawed, but overall I enjoy it. Do you not get more pleasure out of it than pain?

I love the world we live in now. It has plenty of things that suck but I can deal with having to face starvation, war, racism and more episodes of the Bachelor. Hopefully we'll keep moving forward. However, I don't know if my great great grandfather would like living here and now or if my great great grandchildren would like it. My points of comparison will extend out about 50-90 years, most likely and I'm sure I'll complain about certain things. I'm not sure if I want to be complaining about the kids I see around me in 150 years. But maybe this is a technology, not for the generation that develops it, but for those who come later and are born into it.

> Stephen

Ultimately, I think there will always be people looking to take advantage of the system. Human nature will not change, in my opinion, because I do believe that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Things might get better in some respects but there will be new, possibly greater negatives because someone will always be looking to get theirs. Of course, time won't be an issue when it comes to fixing these problems but mental endurance could be.

I'm also not bringing in the issue of religion. For some who think there is something better beyond this world, why would they want to stay any longer than natural? But that is another thread/can of worms.

Ferrick