Yesterday Tyler Cowen asked a question at
The Volokh Conspiracy as to whether since every time you drive a car you run some small risk of killing a pedestrian, it would be immoral for an immortal to drive--reasoning that of the course of a very long life the cumulative risk of killing someone amounts to near certainty.
Later, prompted by some of the discussion (particularly Lawrence Solum's), Tyler asks Would potential immortals be risk-averse?. For instance, would they avoid driving because it poses some risk to themselves and the potential loss of infinite life must outweigh the small utility of driving.
I have two observations about this:
As to the first, the question of the morality of repeatedly engaging in actions with tiny risks is another one of those cases that seems to assume the truth of some form of consequentialism. Neither deontological nor virtue ethical theories would find this at all puzzling. If driving was something that you had a right to do and no overriding duty not to, or if driving was compatible with or an outgrowth of the cultivation of virtuous character traits, then there's no question about how best to "define the relevant class of risky events."
As to the second, I think that psychologically it is implausible that people would behave much differently unless immortality also changed their neurobiology substantially. After all, if people really did think along those lines we would expect that since they have the most remaining lifespan to lose, young people would be the most risk averse when it comes to reckless actions. Obviously people just aren't built that way.
Posted by joshua at January 15, 2004 01:08 PM