1

If, at least in certain circumstances, a person considers death to be something bad and undesirable, then most likely, if this person were truly faithful to their moral principles, they would support the continuation of life. Thus, the badness of death and the goodness of life extension can be derived from many of the most popular moral systems on the planet.

Note: death may still often be considered good, regardless of any arguments, because the bearer of a given moral system is convinced that an afterlife exists, where a person will be “rewarded” or “punished” for everything they did on Earth. Or death can be considered a good thing because it is a rule that the “Creator” established in the world, and we must not break that rule.^[1] In that case, my further arguments have much less force than they would in the case of someone less certain in their beliefs, an agnostic, or an atheist.

In the fictional dialogue, I will hereafter be referred as “M,” and my opponent as “B.”

M: If death is good, then allow everyone who wants to kill anyone they want.

B: It is bad when a person dies young, before they have truly lived. Death is good when a person has already lived out their life.

M: Then allow everyone who wants to kill all old people. Can you set a specific age after which killing becomes acceptable? After which life no longer has value, and its loss becomes something good?

B: Let us agree that death should come only from natural causes, not at someone’s hand.

M: Then let us never treat anyone who falls ill, never help the injured up, and so on.

B: Let us agree that death should come only from natural causes only in those cases where we do not yet have the technology to provide the necessary help.

M: Then let us create technologies that will prevent people from aging and that will increase their chances of survival. Because there is no objective reason to selectively support the fight against specific diseases, but to oppose the very idea of combating aging as a set of destructive processes.

That’s all. We have arrived at life extension and immortalism movement. Congratulations.

1.5

If someone says, “But there are states in which a person is already suffering so badly that dying would be better,” then yes, such states do exist. In our time, unfortunately, there are forms of suffering so terrible that we cannot help. Then let us make those states curable, reversible, and reduce the chance of their occurrence to near zero.

2

While thinking about the moral side of death, I also remembered my old argument against the “ethical” slaughter of animals for meat consumption.

At best, the current approach to meat production is to destroy animals instantly, without their awareness of the situation, and with the minimization of their suffering.

Then why can I not take any human being, quietly switch off their consciousness, for example with an injection of a powerful sedative, and kill them by administering a strong poison? I would control the entire process so that the person would definitely feel nothing and understand nothing.

And yet even such a killing would be horrific and unacceptable. Why? For example, because the person may have a family, loved ones, who would grieve for them — chickens, for example, do not grieve for the dead (as far as I know).

Then let us find some person who has no loved ones at all who would mourn them, and kill them in a completely painless way. Is that acceptable? No. It is still horrific.

It is horrific, for example, because that person might still have had a huge amount of time left to live their life, to learn a million things, to try everything they wanted. And we took that time and those possibilities away from them.

A chicken’s life may seem to us uninteresting and devoid of anything valuable. But that is not a reason to kill it, even “humanely.” If we looked at the lives of our distant ancestors, they too might seem completely meaningless to us. If highly advanced aliens looked at us, they might also think that we do nothing valuable with our lives. But that would be their point of view, and we would not want to die because of it.

In the same way, people who are now dying of old age might have had an entire life of thousands of years ahead of them, if people did not hold prejudices that do not even align with their own moral values.

1. ^{^}

   But Turritopsis dohrnii can sometimes indulge themselves and avoid dying. It's allowed.