The morality of immortality

Answering ChatGPT's objections to human immortality

I asked ChatGPT about common objections against human immortality. The following is a list of its objections and my replies.

1. Loss of purpose and meaning: With unlimited time, one may find that life becomes monotonous and meaningless. The finite nature of life gives it a sense of urgency, and our limited time often motivates us to make the most of it. 

Answer: The awareness of death is an unnecessary burden, and it seems unlikely to motivate anyone into productive work. People are productive because they strive to improve their lives, and even the life of an immortal human can be endlessly improved. There is always more work to be done, deeper truths to be discovered, and a better world to move towards. These are the same motivators that currently spur people into productivity and make life worth living.

2. Loss of loved ones: Immortal beings may have to watch their loved ones age, suffer, and eventually die while they continue to live on. 

Answer: Immortality is the solution to those problems. Death is perhaps the worst evil that exists today; without death, there will be far less human suffering.

3. Boredom: With an endless amount of time, one could potentially run out of things to do or experience.

Answer: The world already contains more entertainment than one person could consume even in multiple lifetimes. On top of that, dynamic societies are constantly producing new, novel forms of entertainment – as well as new technologies, novel ideas, and entirely new areas of science – so there is no reason to expect to be bored. 

By the way, if you expect a society of immortals to become bored with books and films etc., so will the producers of books and films etc., motivating those producers to create more interesting entertainment, if only to remedy their own boredom.

4. The planet will be overpopulated, as there are insufficient resources to keep a society of immortal humans alive.

Answer: People are our most significant resource because it is people who create the knowledge that makes Earth inhabitable. 

We lose a tremendous amount of that knowledge every day due to death. When a scientist dies, everything she learned during her lifetime is lost – her deep understanding of her field and the open problems within it, as well as the knowledge to solve those problems, disappear forever.

Currently, young people have to relearn that knowledge just to offset what is lost due to death; this is a great hindrance to progress, including the kind of progress necessary to sustain society. Mortality is unsustainable.

5. Psychological challenges: Immortality could pose psychological challenges, including the potential for mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and existential crises. Immortal beings may also struggle with issues related to identity as their sense of self changes.

Answer: I expect this to be entirely the other way around. The older one gets, the better one becomes at managing life's ups and downs. People tend to become more knowledgeable with age, and one of the main obstacles to that personal growth is one’s physical health. With that obstacle solved, there will be no telling how knowledgeable one can become – how wise would a 1000-year-old person be? Let’s find out!