That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees (out of a --Those dying generations -- at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.  From, Sailing to Byzantium, William Butler Yeats (1927) 

Is the modern world still "no country for old men"? Is it still almost universally believed that if one desires to find life, one must look to the cycles of birth, animation, and decay that characterize the unaltered natural world?

Like Yeats, many would probably still suggest that permanence (or at least a semblance of it) is only achieved in the creation and appreciation of objects and structures not subject to the sort of aging that biological bodies are.

And while Yeats makes no apparent apology for bodily senescence in Sailing to Byzantium (in fact, one might even argue that the poem ends on a rather transcendent note), he does not question its inevitability, either. And no wonder: the prospect of real, non-metaphorical, empirically-demonstrable means of intervening in the aging process is so new that at times it seems trapped somewhere in the shadows between science and mythology. Over the past few years, however, the increased visibility of key players in longevity science as well as successful and highly public fundraising efforts have helped draw the international longevity discussion further and further toward the "science" side of things.

While some today probably still believe unquestioningly that humans will continue to live to a maximum of no more than 120 years or so into the indefinite future, more and more are beginning to see the shadow of aging's destructive, clockwork inevitability fade. Effective longevity medicine may not yet exist, however, there have been some promising results in the area of calorie restriction), as well as mainstream attention to the potential for humans to live to unprecedented ages.

Clearly, the attitudes of individuals (and, by extension, cultures) toward death and mortality are facing the prospect of requiring extensive adjustment. Modern psychology, for instance, has plenty to say on the matter of existential dread and the various paths one can take toward managing it -- as well as on the various pathologies that can supposedly emerge as part of the ego's defense against ideas of personal nonexistence. From the "circle of life" cliches one finds in popular articles on explaining death to children, to academic treatises on Terror Management Theory, humans demonstrate a clear and obvious fixation on mortality awareness and its implications. And as a result of unmistakable longevity gains over the past few generations in the developed world, the questions at hand are many.

What sorts of attitudes are developing as emerging technologies make it possible for more and more people to live longer, healthier lives? Are people holding unyieldingly to old, possibly outmoded attitudes, or adopting new ones? What sorts of news items and/or scientific breakthroughs help to shape people's attitudes regarding how long they might live, and what they imagine the shape of their future will be?

A Small Survey of Attitudes

The intent of the informal Existence is Wonderful Death Poll was to examine some of the precursor attitudes to these emerging questions. The poll surveyed various attitudes toward death and longevity research -- both in terms of desirability (of either eventual death or of longevity medicine) and in terms of feasibility (e.g., are we likely to achieve marked levels of life and health extension, and if so, will this occur within "our" lifetime?).

While this was not a scientific poll, its results still proved very interesting, and will be taken into account in considering future philosophical writings and advocacy efforts. In any advocacy movement, it is important for the movement to self-examine continuously in order to avoid ideological "tunnel vision" and alienation of newcomers or persons unfamiliar with the idea of healthy life extension. Hence, as well as considering a primary respondent demographic of pro-longevity individuals, the poll also included several items deliberately intended to prompt responses from those not necessarily in favor of life extension. It was thought that in this way, a maximally representative sample pool could be obtained -- one consisting of people likely to read about longevity research and advocacy, or who are at least willing to follow links to sites that discuss these topics.

The poll asked:

Which of the following statements (you can choose more than one) most closely match your thoughts on the subject of death?

Responents were provided with the following options (from which they could choose as many as applied to their position):

1. Death is natural. Death is as much a part of life as being born is. Therefore, it is something to be respected and not necessarily fought.

2. Death is an outrage -- it destroys people, no matter what the cause, and is therefore obviously something to be challenged and resisted. I fully support all serious scientific research efforts devoted to helping usher in longer, healthier lives for all.

3. I don't really think about death much -- I just try to live my life and figure that if I do die at some point, it doesn't matter because I'll never know it anyway.

4. I believe in a supernatural afterlife, and that when I die I will enter this afterlife and exist there for all eternity.

5. I have never liked the idea of death, but I am very reluctant to even let myself think that it might be possible to do something about it.

6. Death is something that we all have to come to terms with -- people who can't or won't accept their inevitable mortality are just living in a fantasy world.

7. I don't think people should have to die, and I am in favor of research to arrest the aging process, but I am firmly convinced that my generation was born too soon.

8. I think that there are many social problems we ought to think about trying to fix before considering radical longevity to be a worthwhile pursuit.

9. I do not consider it farfetched to imagine that someone alive today might live to be 200 years or older in reasonable health.

10. I DO consider it farfetched to imagine that someone alive today might live to be 200 years or older in reasonable health.

Results are summarized in Figure 1. Respondents were allowed to choose as many of the statements as they felt applied to them and their views. Note that the total number of votes for all options (which was 393 at the close of the poll) does not refer to the number of individuals who answered the survey, but rather, to the total number of votes received for all poll items combined. The per-item vote count is shown in red for each item in Figure 1; comparison of these individual vote counts allows for an overall picture of which items in the poll were most and least frequently selected.

 

A more detailed analysis of respondent demographics was obtained through evaluation of the response sets of 116 individual poll respondents (1). A response set is defined for the purposes of this analysis as a single respondent's answers to the poll. Some respondents chose only one item, however, the vast majority chose multiple items. The three-part series of writings to follow will examine the patterns revealed by these representative response sets as well as the implications of these patterns.

It's A Circle Of Life (Death)?

Of the poll items chosen for the sake of revealing respondents' primary philosophical attitude toward death (items 1, 2, and 3), Item 1 was the second most frequently chosen. Figure 2 shows the distribution of how other poll items were selected among those respondents of the representative 116 who chose Item 1 ("Death is natural. Death is as much a part of life as being born is. Therefore, it is something to be respected and not necessarily fought.").

 

A somewhat intriguing finding was that the majority of persons who indicated that they saw death as a "natural" and possibly even desirable event were nonetheless cognizant of the prospect of effective longevity medicine being developed within the next few decades. 15 out of 25 respondents who chose Item 1 also chose Item 9 ("I do not consider it farfetched to imagine that someone alive today might live to be 200 years or older in reasonable health.").

At least in the context of respondents to this poll, it seems that a belief that death is "natural" (and not necessarily an outrage or even a particularly bad thing) does not necessarily preclude at least some degree of optimism regarding the progress of longevity medicine in coming decades. On the other hand, however, it could very well be that acknowledging the likelihood of expanding lifespans does not necessarily represent optimism at all, but simply a judgement regarding the apparent rate of medical progress into the near future.

Either way, it is well worth examining some of the potential reasons behind the popularity of Item 1. Must anything in the world be respected simply because it is "natural"? It seems that the only rational answer to this question must be a resounding "no" -- after all, very few humans would even think of declining to treat fatal cancer or AIDS on the basis of either of these conditions being "natural".

Nevertheless, it seems that plenty of people still see death (perhaps, in particular, age-related death) as a special part of some great cosmic cycle of emergence and renewal. The story of birth, growth, decline, and death is a powerful one, and one that (at least for all of human history up until now) has united every being ever to experience consciousness. Death as a "natural" event is not, then, romanticized merely because it is natural, but because it is perceived to be of some objective value -- for many, it serves as a poetic symbol of each person's place in the grand scheme of all life.

Among longevity advocates, some would suggest that the romanticization of death is simply a kind of rationalization, an existential palliative of sorts. That perhaps some of the power in the "story of death" is rooted primarily in a deep sense that nothing can be done about it -- after all, so far, nothing tangible has been done about it. To quote Dr. Aubrey de Grey,

At root, we all know aging is really horrible, whether for us or for our loved ones, but we have also grown up in the rather firm knowledge that it is immutable. And when one is faced with a fate that is both horrible and immutable, it makes abundant sense to find some way -- any way, however illogical -- to put it out of one's mind and make the best of what time one has left, rather than spend that time preoccupied with something one cannot affect.

The school of thought that seeks to define the "death is natural, we need to accept it" attitude as evidence of a "pro-aging trance" asserts that if only people could be "awakened" from this trance they would realize how horrible death was and would start making more active attempts to promote research into allowing people to escape it for as long as possible. The logic of this school of thought is quite straightforward: why should we be comfortable with death due to aging when we are loudly and emphatically uncomfortable with death due to war or famine or epidemic?

The fact that so many people are comfortable with age-related death as opposed to death through other means seems to indicate that there is something about age-related death that allows cognitive compartmentalization. This "something", as de Grey notes above, is probably the fact that age-related death has indeed been "horrible and immutable" all throughout human history so far. It makes psychological sense to come to terms with something and perhaps even weave it into one's default worldview as a net positive if there is truly nothing a person can do about it, but as biotechnology advances, humanity is going to be faced with more and more questions regarding whether a given phenomenon ought to be intervened in as our capacities increase.

Certainly, we ought not to assume that any particular thing ought to be changed simply because it can be changed. However, when it comes to matters of literal life and death, one would think that the ethically consistent position would be the one that seeks to promote and preserve the wanted, valued, individual lives of our fellow persons. It is one thing to assert that certain evolved properties of human existence ought not to be meddled with, however, it is quite another to assert that the "natural" -- the unconsciously evolved -- ought to be granted special privelege over the invented and chosen. In developing a coherent set of future ethics, it seems that an ever-improving ability to make reasonable judgements regarding the appropriateness of particular interventions into default states is critical.

Given the current (nascent) state of true longevity research, it remains to be seen whether tangible advances in life extension medicine will result in the depopularization of the "death is natural" argument. Either people will decide that their sense of identity requires the "aging into death" story lest they risk profound existential confusion, or they will concede that, now that we can actually "do something" about aging, they're not actually all that keen on undergoing senescence.

From the standpoint of longevity advocacy, the second outcome is certainly the preferred one -- for the same reason that most of us would consider it better for a friend contemplating suicide to determine that life is worth living after all and not go through with the act of killing himself. When a person has spent enough time in the healthy life extension community, it is quite likely that even poetic-sounding arguments like "death is natural, it's part of the circle of life" will start to sound indistinguishable from statements like, "I have a death wish for myself and everyone else in the world".

Against the Dying of the Light

Item 2 ("Death is an outrage -- it destroys people, no matter what the cause, and is therefore obviously something to be challenged and resisted. I fully support all serious scientific research efforts devoted to helping usher in longer, healthier lives for all.") was, predictably, the most frequently chosen of the primary attitude items (1, 2, and 3). Of the representative 116 response sets, 72 included an affirmative response to Item 2. Figure 3 shows the response data for those respondents who chose Item 2 (though it does not include the three respondents who also selected Item 1; that data is shown in Figure 2.) Only three Item 2 responders also selected Item 1, indicating that in general, there was not much in the way of overlap between those responders who held the "death is natural" view and those who are more supportive of life extension efforts.

 

Respondents who chose Item 2 tended to have very straightforward views on the subject of death and longevity research -- these individuals only rarely chose items in addition to Item 2 and Item 9 ("I do not consider it farfetched to imagine that someone alive today might live to be 200 years or older in reasonable health."). 15 respondents selected only Item 2. 53 respondents -- a significant majority -- selected Item 9 along with Item 2, indicating a strong correspondence between enthusiasm for life extension and some degree of optimism with regard to its near-term development. None of this was particularly surprising -- the primary readership of most Internet sites dedicated at least partially to discussion of healthy life extension consists largely of individuals who found these sites through association with the healthy life extension community (e.g., individuals coming from a background of transhumanism, biogerontology, cryonics interest, calorie restriction, etc.) due to personal and/or altruistic interest in the subject.

Advocacy, Faith and the Altruistic Imperative

Two interesting observations of note with respect to the response set including selection of Item 2 are:

(a) Longevity advocacy is attractive to at least some persons with theistic leanings -- five respondents choosing Item 2 also chose Item 4 ("I believe in a supernatural afterlife, and that when I die I will enter this afterlife and exist there for all eternity."),

and,

(b) Longevity advocacy and some degree of optimism regarding its likely development in coming years (indicated by positive responses to Items 2 and 9) can coexist with a perception that one will not necessarily personally benefit from life-extension treatments (indicated by selection of Item 7 -- "I don't think people should have to die, and I am in favor of research to arrest the aging process, but I am firmly convinced that my generation was born too soon."). 10 respondents who selected Item 2 also selected Item 7 -- not a majority by any means, but enough to be worth discussion.

Observation (a), while it only concerns a small set of respondents, at least indicates that a belief in an afterlife does not always go along with a rejection of "worldly" goodness or bodily life on Earth. Some transhumanists see no necessary conflict between capacity-enhancing uses of science (that could involve life extension) and religious belief -- for example James Hughes writes in On The Compatibility of Religion and Transhumanism:

Transhumanism appears to be especially compatible with religious traditions that emphasize human agency and evolution to a transcendent state, such as Buddhism, or that have incorporated Enlightenment values, such as liberal Christianity. But elements of the transhumanist worldview and enhancement technologies are compatible with one element or another of most world faiths, even the most fundamentalist.

There are even transhumanist groups (such as the Mormon Transhumanism Association) that explicitly espouse such notions as, We Must Use Modern Science to Advance the Lord's Work. Clearly, atheism is not a pre-requistite for longevity advocacy, and perhaps longevity advocates should avoid getting drawn too heavily into religious arguments, for simple reasons of logistics and energy distribution. After all, if (by analogy) a child was trapped in a building ready to burn alive and someone came along with the capacity to rescue that child, it would not make much sense to insist that the rescuer favor (or reject) a particular spiritual paradigm in order to be permitted to assist!

Observation (b) reveals the fact that longevity advocates are perfectly capable of acknowledging the fact that they themselves might not be around to partake of the benefits of future longevity research. That is, involvement in longevity advocacy need not be (and probably is not usually) a primarily self-serving gesture -- wanting to save lives and help people maintain their health is recognized as being inherently good even in the absence of assured personal superlongevity. These results seem to, at least in the context of the segment of the healthy life extension community responding to the poll, confirm that the notion of the "selfish life-extensionist" is a myth and a damaging stereotype. Just as a doctor working to cure a particular strain of cancer does not place her willingness to work on this cure as contingent upon her own guaranteed benefit from it, the longevity advocate does not place an absolute premium on individual survival. Certainly, one can hope for individual survival, but its guarantee is by no means a requirement.

Bias, Realism, and Existential Freedom

Despite the positive implications of the fact that most poll respondents were emphatically in favor of longevity research, the healthy life extension community must remain cognizant of the potential to become too self-confirmatory and self-referential. It is important for longevity advocates to stay as informed as possible regarding the relevant science -- both so that we can take advantage of opportunities to help as they present themselves, and so that we can develop the ability to access and point to real data (or at least strong scientific precedence) in support of the feasibility of longevity medicine.

It seems reasonable to suggest here that longevity advocates should endeavor to expunge common cognitive biases from our minds -- in particular, we need to be very careful of falling prey to confirmation bias and overconfidence on the one hand, and to groupthink-induced (and possibly unjustified) pessimism on the other.

There's a scene in the film Fight Club in which the lead character is, none too gently, advised: "First you have to give up, first you have to know... not fear... know... that someday you're gonna die."

The rest of the film (as well as the Chuck Palahniuk novel on which it was based) certainly seems to be at least in part a study in the implications of acknowledging one's mortality, albeit one with a decidedly nihilistic slant. Later in the story, a group of men struggling to delineate their identities in the face of the ultimate absurdity that comprises their existence are famously told:

"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

In the world of Fight Club, pain and violence act as existential catalysts in what is arguably a debiasing process; the story ends only when the lead character has managed to shed his last remaining defense. Reality, with all its harsh and glaring angles, is thrown into sharp relief and can finally be looked upon without rationalization.

The admonitions in Fight Club given to the characters about their mortality, their non-uniqueness in the grand scheme of things -- these sentiments did not emerge from a vaccuum in order to drive a particular narrative along. Rather, they are products of a particular cultural definition of adulthood -- a state of being which demands an acknowledgement of mortality, of the ultimate, eventual, and inevitable destruction of the individual. In short, only by stripping away every internal defense, every shred of wishful thinking and every carefully-laid ego-preserving illusion can a person achieve the ability to pursue tangible, real-world goals.

The question begged by this conclusion in this particular context, however, seems to be that of what place extreme longevity might have within -- or outside -- the overall set of tangible, real-world goals. Among those interested in studying or pursuing advanced longevity, opinions vary widely on this question. The collaborative writing project Overcoming Bias, orchestrated by Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute describes itself as "A forum for those serious about trying to overcome their own biases in beliefs and actions." Aside from the occasional meta-speculation on the question of the utility of overcoming bias in the first place, those who write for Overcoming Bias apparently work under the general presumption that it is better to know what is true than to be comforted by what is not true.

While the writing on Overcoming Bias is not always specifically applicable to the case of death, that subject has certainly been touched upon; in the short piece You Will Age And Die, Robin Hanson writes, "Rage if you will against the dying of the light, or take a chance with cryonics, but believe it: you will most likely age, become infirm, and die." This attitude was reflected in the poll by Item 6 ("Death is something that we all have to come to terms with -- people who can't or won't accept their inevitable mortality are just living in a fantasy world."). While only a very small number (4) of the respondents who market Item 2 also marked Item 6, it is apparent that at least some of those generally supportive of longevity efforts also feel strongly that it is important for people to distinguish between efforts to extend the healthy lifespan and efforts to "become immortal".

Returning for a moment to the respondent set which selected Item 1 (indicating sympathy for the notion that death is a natural, acceptable phenomenon), it is worth noting that 8 of 25 respondents who chose Item 1 also chose Item 6. Compare this to the fact that only 4 of the 69 response sets that selected Item 2 ("death is an outrage") but not Item 1 also selected Item 6. These data seem to indicate that at least among respondents to this poll, the "death is natural" attitude is more strongly correlated with an insistence on ultimate mortality acknowledgement than the "death is an outrage" attitude is. The implications of this difference in correlation cannot be precisely extrapolated given the small sample size, however, it seems clear that a different mindset underlies the longevity advocate's choosing of Item 6 versus the "death is natural" sympathizer's choosing that same option.

While non-advocates might see the inevitability of death (particularly age-related death) as being inextricably intertwined with the "natural-ness" of death, longevity advocates who also promote explicit mortality acknowledgement probably see this acknowledgement as part of what it will take to actually assure development of effective longevity medicine. To quote Robin Hanson again, "Our terror of death is one of our most reliable sources of bias." Even the most scientifically literate person can still possess intrinsic human tendencies toward magical thinking -- and when you are still young and vigorous, it can be easy to fall into the trap of believing that everything is going to turn out all right in the end regardless of what you do (or don't do), or that you can somehow induce positive outcomes simply by visualizing them. Therefore, it is logical to make every effort to strip away one's confirmation biases and comforting visualizations of an imagined idyllic future if one wants to be able to see what truly needs to be done in order to realize highly optimistic outcomes (such as effective longevity treatments).

Nevertheless, not all longevity advocates see this level of intensive "debiasing" as necessary. Since future progress is impossible to predict to absolute certainty, those who do not make a point of expressing their absolute acknowledgement that they (and their loved ones) "will age and die" might feel that it is best to simply make every effort to keep living and help assure that others may continue to live as well. While it might be psychologically difficult to come to a position in which both wishful/magical thinking and unwarranted pessimism are avoided (since the human mind struggles greatly with uncertainty), it is by no means impossible to come to such a position.

An ability to fully acknowledge one's vulnerability and fragility need not entail an absolute conviction that one will necessarily succumb to aging -- most, if not all, serious longevity advocates are fully cognizant of the frailty of their bodies and the strong likelihood of eventual accident or mishap. Just as the end point of a successful personal expedition into existentialism is a sense of tremendous freedom to make one's own meaning in life, so is the realization that longevity is a good thing to work toward even though there can be no guarantees of its ultimate success. If a person can answer the question, "Why live at all?" for herself, then the answer to the question, "Why try to live as long as you can and help to assure that others can do the same?" is obvious.

"Immortality", Feasibility, and Optimism's Limit Case

In any discussion of longevity and attitudes toward it, making the distinction between radical longevity and immortality is important -- both for the sake of clear communication and for the sake of widening the sphere of individuals willing to take part in serious discussion of longevity research and potential treatments. Within the healthy life extension community, the utility of the word "immortality" is certainly contested. Some suggest that making references to "immortality" specifically is unwise due to the associations with mythology and a sort of comic-book grandiosity that it tends to imply. Others, however, feel that longevity advocates have little chance of succeeding unless immortality becomes socially acceptable as a goal, and therefore, the word itself ought to be used unashamedly.

For the purposes of the Existence is Wonderful Death Poll, the word "immortality" was purposely excluded from the phrasing of the poll items. Regardless of its tentatively-acceptable status within the aforementioned "healthy life extension community", the connotational baggage of the word immortality is frequently so profound as to make use of it highly impractical, if not downright damaging. The Death Poll was not geared only toward people who would even consider themselves in favor of life extension -- a link to the poll was provided to a number of people not known to be regular readers of longevity literature, and therefore, it seemed appropriate to present the question of longevity feasibility in terms of a scale most people would consider reasonable.

Items 9 and 10 in the poll asked the respondent to select based on their sense of whether it seemed plausible that a person alive today might live to be 200 years of age or older in reasonable health. The number "200" was chosen because it represents an age far in excess of the average modern lifespan, but not an age that suggests or approaches "immortality". The intent in this case was to avoid "turning off" potential respondents who see the notion of immortality as too ridiculous for consideration, thereby acquiring a sense of how a more ideologically diverse population perceives the prospects of longevity medicine over the next few decades.

An impressive majority of respondents (79) in the representative group of 116 selected Item 9. A minority (8) selected Item 10, and a larger minority (28) selected neither Item 9 nor Item 10. Clearly, there is a general perception among poll respondents (regardless of their value judgements associated with death and life extension) that medical progress is being made, and that the prospect of effective longevity medicine being developed in the next few decades is more than mere fantasy. A larger-scale poll of a more varied and general population might reveal a different pattern, however, the fact that value judgements did not seem to notably affect a person's level of optimism regarding medical progress could indicate, at the very least, that this level of optimism is not necessarily based in "wishful thinking".

Nevertheless, the popularity of Item 9 cannot be taken to indicate anything about the actual state of scientific progress regarding the development of effective longevity medicine. Just as non-advocates can sometimes fall into the trap of believing aging to be absolutely immutable based on folk wisdom as opposed to scientific data, members of the healthy life extension community must take care not to overestimate near-term future progress based on a poor understanding of the relevant biological principles. It can be quite easy to believe that something is possible when you don't have much in the way of a detailed understanding of how it might be accomplished, after all.

But regardless of the actual state of longevity science at present, it cannot be disputed that if medicine were able to develop techniques and treatments capable of allowing a person born in 2007 or earlier to live to age 200 in reasonable health, this development would represent an impressive accomplishment. Not just because it would mean that aging had been proven at least somewhat mutable, but because that healthy 200-year-old would presumably be alive in an era of even greater medical skill and anatomical knowledge than the present boasts. Achievement of the condition described in Item 9 might then be said to represent a condition that is necessary for, but not sufficient to achieve, functional "immortality" -- at least for people who already exist. But it is not necessary to "believe in immortality" (by any definition) in order to believe that life and health extension are inherently good and worth working toward.

Perhaps rather than campaigning for the re-introduction of the word "immortality" into the set of things considered to be realistic, scientifically achievable goals, longevity advocates should focus more on pointing out that the entire goal of medicine is to sustain life and that "life extension" medicine is fundamentally no different from medicine in general in terms of its function in the world. The notion of a limit case for optimism does not even need to come into play in this scenario; we are not, after all, thinking in terms of solving age-related death in one fell swoop, but rather, through an incremental series of breakthroughs and achievements that each build upon the set of previous accomplishments.

Indifference and Variety: Outlier Responses

Of the representative sample set (consisting of 116 responses) 22 respondents selected neither Item 1 nor Item 2. Of these 22 (whose responses are shown in Figure 4), only 7 chose Item 3 ("I don't really think about death much -- I just try to live my life and figure that if I do die at some point, it doesn't matter because I'll never know it anyway."). This was somewhat surprising; it was anticipated, based on informal discussion of life extension with members of the general populace over the past few years, that Item 3 would be far more popular among poll respondents than it actually turned out to be.

The relative lack of popularity of Item 3 seems to indicate that the vast majority of poll respondents have settled on a value judgement with respect to death. Items 1 ("Death is natural. Death is as much a part of life as being born is. Therefore, it is something to be respected and not necessarily fought.") and 2 ("Death is an outrage -- it destroys people, no matter what the cause, and is therefore obviously something to be challenged and resisted. I fully support all serious scientific research efforts devoted to helping usher in longer, healthier lives for all.") both clearly represent value judgements; Item 3 represents an attitude to be sure, but not one that judges the perceived goodness or badness of death. Instead, Item 3 describes a state of mind in which a person believes death to be largely irrelevant to their existence.

Out of the 116 representative respondents, a total of 14 selected Item 3. Figure 2 shows that three of the Item 1 responders also selected Item 3. Figure 3 shows that four of the Item 2 responders also selected Item 3. In both cases, responses to Item 3 represented a minority, possibly indicating that when a person makes a definitive value judgement on the subject of death, that person is then less prone to indifference regarding the influence of the idea of death on their existence. Or, more likely, it could simply be that the overall paucity of responses to Item 3 indicate that most poll respondents, regardless of whether or how they make value judgements about death, do live their lives with some consideration or "background awareness" of their potential mortality.

An item that might be construed as expressing a particular manifestation of this "background awareness" is Item 5 ("I have never liked the idea of death, but I am very reluctant to even let myself think that it might be possible to do something about it."). Item 5 was the least popular of all items -- even when including all the data from Figures 2, 3, and 4, only two respondents in the sample set of 116 respondents chose Item 5. It was thought that this option might appeal to those who liked the idea of life extension but who were too afraid to embrace efforts toward it for fear of personal disillusionment or social ostracism, etc. -- and perhaps it might -- but apparently, not very many such people responded to the poll. This is certainly not a negative indicator.

Figure 4 includes, in addition to responses which selected Item 3 (but not Items 1 or 2), responses that did not select any of the first three items. Six of these responses consisted only of Item 9, indicating that these respondents had an opinion on near-term feasibility of longevity medicine, but not much in the way of value judgements or thoughts on the social or philosophical implications of mortality or longevity. Two respondents selected only Item 7 ("I don't think people should have to die, and I am in favor of research to arrest the aging process, but I am firmly convinced that my generation was born too soon."). One respondent selected only Item 8 ("I think that there are many social problems we ought to think about trying to fix before considering radical longevity to be a worthwhile pursuit."). One selected only Item 4 ("I believe in a supernatural afterlife, and that when I die I will enter this afterlife and exist there for all eternity.").

Not much can be extrapolated from most of the responses depicted in Figure 4; since these responses are relative outliers with respect to the strong pools of respondents choosing either Item 1 or Item 2, all that can be taken from this data is a sense of the magnitude of the variety of different people's attitudes toward death and mortality. Some individuals not included in the major "trends" revealed by the poll (that is, people who selected either Item 1 or Item 2) expressed simple, single-issue sentiments (e.g., belief in an afterlife or a commitment to fixing the world's "other problems" unrelated to longevity). Others expressed more complex views (such as respondent 99, whose response set indicated indifference toward death coupled with vague discomfort, along with a desire to solve other problems before longevity, as well as pessimism toward the prospect of healthy 200-year-olds living in the near future).

This variety alone reminds us, whether we support longevity advocacy or not, that as sentient entities presently existing under the spectre of an expiration date, we are capable of coming to various different positions on the subject of mortality. Understanding this diversity of thought is important not just in terms of advocating from the pro-longevity point of view, but in terms of periodically re-assessing our goals and arguments, and certainly in terms of continuing to refresh and update our knowledge and understanding of both science and the ethics of scientific methodology and practice.

 

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(1)The total number of responses was greater than 116, however, some of the details regarding the first few responses were lost due to technical difficulties with the response notifications, which were provided via e-mail by the polling service. Additionally, one response set was discarded from the individual-response analysis set because mutually-exclusive poll items 9 and 10 were both marked.