[klagermkii]

From an individual perspective I don't think there should be any doubt that solving death is a fantastic goal. It's the threat that is poses to the system, threats to which we have no better tool than death.

Old age and death is still the number one tool for solving: - empires and tyrants

- outdated societal opinions and prejudices (racism/sexism/etc)

- locked in privilege and wealth

- ossification of social roles

- stagnation within fields and industry ("Science progresses one funeral at a time")

We have no truly effective tools for these problems, except wait for people to die. I'd be much more supportive of ending aging if we had anything that worked.

[JoshTriplett]

> We have no truly effective tools for these problems

We have many effective tools for these problems. Death, in addition to everything else wrong with it, is already not particularly effective in that regard. (And "we should let 150,000 people die every day because some subset of those people are hurting others" is not a good argument.)

Societal problems should not wait for a generational time-scale. People will not wait that long, nor should they have to.

[ryandrake]

I agree: social progress, political progress, economic justice all also happen one funeral at a time. Look at Congress, CEOs and corporate boards, academic and other major institutional leaders. They're all elderly, and we have no (in practice) ability to change them out except by waiting for them to die! If they all of a sudden couldn't die, they'd be there for eternity. Imagine 600 years of Strom Thurmond and Ted Kennedy!

EDIT: I guess "geezers" is no longer PC. Apologies