> Why would you ever choose "dying" over "not dying"?
First, visit a nursing home. How much is "not dying" worth? Then, visit an elementary school. Given the earth's finite carrying capacity, do you want to have a world with no children?
>First, visit a nursing home. How much is "not dying" worth?
Not dying is hard to divorce from not aging, at least in any significant sense. This isn't an argument about a few extra years in exchange for extended morbidity. Compressed morbidity is a valuable counterpoint to modern medicine's unrelenting treatment, and luckily it's gaining momentum in the medical community. But the therapies in question have very marginal returns. Significant life extension is almost certainly only achievable by keeping us young for a very long time.
It is also critical that we remember the principal of autonomy. For all of the elderly folks who would like to move on, there are many who prefer not to, frailty and all. The fact that some would like to die is no justification for denying treatment to those who do not. Denying life extension to people who desire it, by the same argument, it is equally ridiculous.
>Then, visit an elementary school. Given the earth's finite carrying capacity, do you want to have a world with no children?
No, I suppose not, but nobody has the right to ask another to die so that they may bring a new child into the world. There are lots of benefits I might realize from taking advantage of another's suffering, but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to. There is no "right to be conceived". There is a right to life.
First, visit a nursing home. How much is "not dying" worth? Then, visit an elementary school. Given the earth's finite carrying capacity, do you want to have a world with no children?