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Hguoh

Hguoh

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You're assuming, of course, that changes in longevity would be the only metric (or at least important enough to outweigh a number of other factors). As I clarified in my edit, the metric only tells how much a species has improved on this aspect and not which species had the better lives before or after (i.e. Just because humans improved their lifespans more than your theoretical civilization does not mean that they've surpassed them).

In the case of your virus example, I would indeed say that humanity is objectively worse off due to the presence of the virus decreasing lifespan. That being said if the virus would have little to no positive or negative impact on anything else, I'd say that loss of 5 years on average lifespan (a pretty small fraction of the current average lifespan) would only constitute us being marginally less advanced than we were prior to the appearance of the virus.

22-Mar-2017 13:27:52 - Last edited on 22-Mar-2017 13:28:21 by Hguoh

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :
As I clarified in my edit, the metric only tells how much a species has improved on this aspect and not which species had the better lives before or after (i.e. Just because humans improved their lifespans more than your theoretical civilization does not mean that they've surpassed them).

Exactly, which is why using such a metric is unsatisfying.

Hguoh said :

In the case of your virus example, I would indeed say that humanity is objectively worse off due to the presence of the virus decreasing lifespan. That being said if the virus would have little to no positive or negative impact on anything else, I'd say that loss of 5 years on average lifespan (a pretty small fraction of the current average lifespan) would only constitute us being marginally less advanced than we were prior to the appearance of the virus.
Be careful with equating biological well being with sociological advancement. Consider the following hypothetical scenario:

Next week a clever old woman named Sara decides that biological well being is functionally the same as sociological advancement. So she sets out to increase the biological well being as much as she can no matter the cost. Her first target is P.E.I. due to its small population and isolation. First she builds thousands of individual containment units that viruses and diseases are unable to penetrate. They are also zero gravity, and are filled with nanites. Through the use of these pods people can live up to 200 years. However, when in the pod you are essentially in a comma. Sara kidnaps all the islanders and sticks them in these pods and only allows them to leave every 40 years to maintain social ties or something. Would you really want to say that such a society is more advanced or has progressed more than our current societies?

22-Mar-2017 13:46:28 - Last edited on 22-Mar-2017 13:46:53 by Cthris

Hguoh

Hguoh

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Cthris said :
Be careful with equating biological well being with sociological advancement. Consider the following hypothetical scenario:

Next week a clever old woman named Sara decides that biological well being is functionally the same as sociological advancement. So she sets out to increase the biological well being as much as she can no matter the cost. Her first target is P.E.I. due to its small population and isolation. First she builds thousands of individual containment units that viruses and diseases are unable to penetrate. They are also zero gravity, and are filled with nanites. Through the use of these pods people can live up to 200 years. However, when in the pod you are essentially in a comma. Sara kidnaps all the islanders and sticks them in these pods and only allows them to leave every 40 years to maintain social ties or something. Would you really want to say that such a society is more advanced or has progressed more than our current societies?

I don't equate biological well being with sociological advancement. Specifically in your virus example, the only effect it had was to decrease the average human lifespan, which objectively leaves humanity worse off than beforehand.

In your current example, however, you garner increased biological well being at the cost of almost eliminating the individuals' freedoms and ability to potentially further develop technology so that you could eventually achieve the desired increased lifespan without so many limitations.

22-Mar-2017 14:40:15

Rifleavenger
May Member 2022

Rifleavenger

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Cthris, you can make a hypothetical where an increased lifespan is a negative, but if we're talking about the impact of empirical increase in longevity in the real world hypotheticals are irrelevant. We know the events that transpired to increase human longevity and should judge the pros and cons based on that, especially since the stated goal is to compare a known past to a known present. I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that contributing factors like antibiotics and vaccines have left humanity worse off.

Decreased child mortality (thus less grief for their families and theoretically greater contribution to society), fewer people crippled by polio and like illnesses, the utter eradication of a disease like smallpox which from a human perspective existed only to bring misery and death (and serve as a biological weapon against western hemisphere native populations). Some of the most impoverished places in the world are those that lack easy access to modern medicine (or reject its use on religious grounds). That is obviously a contributing factor rather than the sole causation of their situation, but it cannot be ignored.

In the case of your hypothetical virus, as Hguoh said, we would be worse off in the wake of a pandemic where the only outcome is that enough people died to drag down life expectancy by 5 years. Especially if you want to start talking about the productivity and potential lost from all the sick and dead. If you want a real world example, H1-N1 did drag down life expectancy in the wake of WW1 and hindered the post-war recovery efforts in several nations.

EDIT: I can also say that I would not have survived in any time period before the latter half of the 20th century. I was born nearly a month premature and only survived because of life support. I'd be another baby dead at age 0 at any other point in history. I'm not especially important in the big picture of mankind, but that my life could be preserved is a definite advancement imo.

22-Mar-2017 15:08:14 - Last edited on 22-Mar-2017 15:20:26 by Rifleavenger

Cthris
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Cthris

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Hguoh said :

I don't equate biological well being with sociological advancement. Specifically in your virus example, the only effect it had was to decrease the average human lifespan, which objectively leaves humanity worse off than beforehand.
I'm not sure that follows, however the issue could be that our definitions of humanity are not unequivocal. Would you mind defining your version?


Hguoh said :

In your current example, however, you garner increased biological well being at the cost of almost eliminating the individuals' freedoms and ability to potentially further develop technology so that you could eventually achieve the desired increased lifespan without so many limitations.
So to clarify, you are saying that advancement in society is measured not just by longevity, but also by freedom, and ability to develop future technology?

22-Mar-2017 15:40:17

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

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Rifleavenger said :
hypotheticals are irrelevant
I'm not sure you understand the point of the current discussion. Right now we are only trying to find a metric in which to measure real world societies with. A metric must be able to satisfy both real world and hypothetical scenarios, that is why the number system extends into infinity despite there only being a finite amount of things in the universe to quantify.

Also to be fair, I'm forced to use hypotheticals in an effort to avoid certain 20th century examples because people tend to be uncomfortable with real world scenarios.

Anyways, I offer you the same warning I offered before. Be careful with equating biological well being with sociological advancement. To offer you a real world scenario. During the 20th century, the scientific world was embracing the idea of genetics. There was more and more evidence that our behaviors, intelligence and attributes were linked to our genetics.

Now a Canadian scientist wrote an interesting paper that argued that that our society would be better off as a whole if we eliminated some of the more problematic genes that lowered intelligence, caused criminal behavior, or was just a general cost to society. Essentially it is a call for eugenics. Now this paper was accepted by the government and they implemented a system to force the sterilization of target individuals who had these "problematic" genes. It is important to note that no one was killed in this program thus biological well being was not negatively impacted and was arguably promoted because it made people more genetically fit, however clearly human agency, freedom of choice etc. were all negatively impacted.

Would you really want to say that a society that is more genetically fit but has far less freedom, or human agency is more advanced than a comparable society with equal levels of technology but normal levels of free will and human agency?

22-Mar-2017 16:02:37 - Last edited on 22-Mar-2017 16:04:12 by Cthris

Rifleavenger
May Member 2022

Rifleavenger

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Cthris said :
Eugenics has nothing to do with the concrete examples of advancement brought by vaccines and anti-biotics I used. Present me an argument that those things have made the world worse since their introduction, not a tangent into genetic studies/eugenics.

Cthris said :
Would you really want to say that a society that is more genetically fit but has far less freedom is more advanced than a comparable society with equal levels of technology but normal levels of free will? If it actually works? Yes. The issue with eugenics is that it does not work in regards to behavior, at least not at our current level of expertise, because genes that control behavior are more complicated than "this one causes violence, turn it off." It was also often based in spurious racist assumptions that actually damaged its ability to increase genetic fitness.

Since many genes are interlinked, any method as crude as simple breeding will result in unwanted results alongside the desired ones, see all the genetic disease present in domestic animals. There is also the issue of taxonomic fitness versus individual fitness; adaptation can increase individual fitness, but be maladaptive for the clade. Examples include an entire succession of extinct mammalian carnivores, where adaptations for individual fitness decreased population density, increasing risk of extinction (Van Valkenburgh et al. , 2004).

If you had a treatment that could modify a living creatures genetics to cure disease or increase mental/physical capability, even at the cost of "free will," I'd support it. Especially if the implementation was non-violent. I am not a supporter of free-will, but there is no method I know of that can actually remove it (or if it never existed to begin with, the concept of it that causes people to deterministicly move to defend what they view as freedom). Half measures accrue suffering.

22-Mar-2017 16:25:18 - Last edited on 22-Mar-2017 16:27:35 by Rifleavenger

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

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Rifleavenger said :
Cthris said :
Eugenics has nothing to do with the concrete examples of advancement brought by vaccines and anti-biotics I used. Present me an argument that those things have made the world worse since their introduction, not a tangent into genetic studies/eugenics.

Why would I do that? I haven't at all been arguing that society or the world is getting worse...

Everyone keeps saying society is advancing, all I'm asking for is a satisfying proof for why everyone believes this to be so. To do that it is up to you to prove that a) biological welfare is a suitable metric to measure the advancement of society. The eugenic "tangent" as you say is a test of the metric you have given me.

Your vaccine example is the next step should we prove that biological well-being is indeed a suitable method of measuring society. For the record, some major cons with the introduction of vaccines is that it gives massive corporate control over our lives, potentially limiting human agency should it exist. But there's really no reason for me to address this until we prove that this is a suitable metric. So if you don't mind, I will be putting your metric through a whole host of hypothetical scenarios to see if it can hold up.

22-Mar-2017 16:37:32

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

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Rifleavenger said :

If you had a treatment that could modify a living creatures genetics to cure disease or increase mental/physical capability, even at the cost of "free will," I'd support it. Especially if the implementation was non-violent. I am not a supporter of free-will, but there is no method I know of that can actually remove it (or if it never existed to begin with, the concept of it that causes people to deterministicly move to
Great! Thanks for this response.

You specifically mention that you would especially consider it advancement if it was non violent. What if the method of sterilizing mental/physical deficiencies came at the cost of extreme pain, essentially it would be violent.

Would you still consider a society that forces its inhabitants undergo extreme pain in order to increase its overall lifespan by a year more advanced than a comparable society where it's inhabitants do not undergo extreme pain and therefore live one year less on average?

22-Mar-2017 16:42:57

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