If you’ve ever tried to advocate for rejuvenation, you know it is hard. Usually, people deem the idea as crazy/impossible/dangerous well before you get to finish your first sentence. Living too long would be boring , it would cause overpopulation ‘immortal’ dictators , and what you have . However, you’ve probably never heard anyone use the same arguments to say that we should not cure individual age-related diseases. This is largely because people have little to no idea about what ageing really is, and how it cannot be untangled from the so-called age-related pathologies. These are nothing more, nothing less, than the result of the life-long accumulation of several types of damage caused by the body’s normal operations. Unlike infectious diseases, the diseases of old age are not the result of a pathogen attack, but essentially of your own body falling apart. As I was saying, people are largely unaware of this fact, and therefore expect that the diseases of ageing could be cured one by one without having to interfere with the ageing process itself, as if the two weren’t related at all. The result of this false expectation would be that you could cure Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc., but somehow old people would still drop dead around the age of 80 just because they’re old. That’s like saying they died of being healthy.

Back to reality, this can’t be done. To cure the diseases of old age, you need to cure ageing itself. If, for whatever reason, you think that curing ageing as a whole would be a bad idea and it should not be done, the only option is to not cure at least some of the root causes of ageing. Consequently, some age-related pathologies would remain as untreatable as they are today.

Now, the typical objections raised against rejuvenation tend to sound reasonable at first. To some, the statement ‘We should not cure ageing because it would lead to overpopulation’ sounds self-evident. However, if we consider the implications of this statement, things start getting crazy. As said, not curing ageing implies not curing some of its root causes, which in turn implies not curing some age-related diseases. Therefore, the sentence ‘We should not cure ageing’ implies ‘We should not cure [insert age-related disease here]‘. What happens when we reformulate typical objections to rejuvenation in this fashion?

Generic:

We should not cure ageing, because otherwise fewer people would die and this might lead to overpopulation.

We should not cure ageing, because otherwise fewer people would die and this might lead to overpopulation. Specific:

We should not cure Alzheimer’s disease, because otherwise fewer people would die and this might lead to overpopulation.

Generic:

We should not cure ageing, because if people were able to work for much longer, younger people wouldn’t find jobs.

We should not cure ageing, because if people were able to work for much longer, younger people wouldn’t find jobs. Specific:

We should not cure Parkinson’s disease, because if people were able to work for much longer, younger people wouldn’t find jobs.

Generic:

We should not cure ageing, because it would be unnatural.

We should not cure ageing, because it would be unnatural. Specific:

We should not cure atherosclerosis, because it would be unnatural. (The f*ck did I just read?!)

Generic:

We should not cure ageing, because it would be only for the rich and cause inequality.

We should not cure ageing, because it would be only for the rich and cause inequality. Specific:

We should not cure cancer, because it would be only for the rich and cause inequality. (THE F#CK DID I JUST READ?!?!)

Generic:

We should not cure ageing, because there are more urgent issues.

We should not cure ageing, because there are more urgent issues. Specific:

We should not cure type 2 diabetes, because there are more urgent issues. (Right. Now let me watch this new Hollywood mediocre blockbuster whose making was an absolute priority.)

Generic:

We should not cure ageing, because longer lifespans would be boring.

We should not cure ageing, because longer lifespans would be boring. Specific:

We should not cure cerebrovascular diseases, because longer lifespans would be boring. (Well, I can see how an ischemic attack would spice your life up.)

Generic:

We should not cure ageing, because the future looks too grim to live.

We should not cure ageing, because the future looks too grim to live. Specific:

We should not cure arteriosclerosis, because the future looks too grim to live. (We should not cure all age-related diseases—effectively making the future worse than whatever it looks like right now—because some people think the future will be so horrible that THEY won’t want to live any more and for some weird reason specifically prefer to be killed by an age-related disease, even though all of this incidentally implies that most of the rest of the world too will die of age-related diseases, including those who disagree with this crazy argument. Sounds reasonable.)

I don’t think I need to point out why the statements listed under ‘specific’ are utterly ridiculous. (Which, in case you were wondering, is the reason for the title of this post. It’s latin for ‘reduction to absurdity’ and it is a type of mathematical proof, also known as proof by contradiction. What I did here is not a proof by contradiction, but the ‘reduction to absurdity’ bit is definitely there.) I’m all for discussing potential problems brought about by the defeat of ageing, so that we can prevent them from ever happening; however, I’m not going to buy a pig in a poke and accept blatant nonsense as valid objections to rejuvenation. Also, choosing which age-related diseases should be left untreated for the sake of not curing ageing as a whole is not an interest I’m planning to pick up any time soon.