In a public lecture delivered on Wednesday, Oct. 23, science fiction author Ted Chiang explored philosophical and ethical arguments for and against pursuing immortality, discussed biological explanations for current human longevity, and addressed scientific concerns facing society.
The event, titled “Do You Really Want to Live Forever?” marked the third talk this academic year in the Spencer Trask Lecture Series and drew over 200 attendees to McCosh 50. In an era when Princeton and many other institutions are grappling with the impacts of artificial intelligence, Chiang’s lecture spoke to the risks of scientific advancement.
Chiang was introduced by Ed Park, a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts and the author of the 2023 Pulitzer finalist “Same Bed, Different Dreams.”
“I still remember my first encounter with [Chiang’s] work back in 2010. I was a science fiction columnist for the LA Times, [and] a small press run by a friend of mine was reissuing ‘Stories of Your Life and Others,’” Park said, reflecting on Chiang’s 2002 debut collection. Park described it as “the most exquisitely imagined and assured fiction” he had encountered in a long time. “The book probed alien intelligence and human IQ, and examines language and God and beauty in fascinating ways,” Park continued.
“His pieces analyze those two promising, ominous letters we hear so much about: AI. As tech companies go wild for AI, as teachers like myself worry about its applications, as creative types fret over the impending end to their careers, Ted is one of the few voices of sanity figuring out what we talk about when we talk about artificial intelligence.”
Chiang, who graduated from Brown University with a computer science degree in 1989, made his literary debut in “Omni” one year later with the novelette Tower of Babylon, which would go on to win a Nebula award. He has won a total of four Hugo Awards, four Nebula awards, and six Locus awards, and is the author of one other short story collection, “Exhalation: Stories.” His stories explore philosophical questions on scientific development, linguistics, human enhancement, memory, religion, and more. Chiang is also a contributor to The New Yorker, where he writes about artificial intelligence.
He began his remarks by questioning whether medical immortality — an extended prolonging of one’s life — is desirable or not. Rather than focusing on moral judgments on the pursuit of eternal life, Chiang stressed the importance of understanding the underlying motivations behind it. “The universe, as we understand it, does not enforce justice in any way,” he said. “If it turns out that medical immortality is impossible, that, by itself, will not mean that immortality is a bad thing to want.”
Chiang focused on two reasons why immortality would be undesirable: first, immortality would “not actually be fun,” and second, desiring it is inherently problematic.
“You can live a long time, but if all you do is have fun and never accomplish anything of value, then your longevity will have been wasted,” Chiang continued. Immortality, Chiang added, may be undesirable as it could exacerbate wealth inequality, lead to overpopulation, and ultimately prove unsustainable for the planet.
For Chiang, however, these arguments carry deeper ethical and philosophical complexities. While he recognizes that overpopulation could become an issue if people pursued immortality, Chiang argued that this does not inherently make the desire for immortality unethical.
“Here, the relationship between what is sustainable and what is ethical is not simple,” Chiang said. “The desire to live forever is fundamentally in conflict with the desire to have children. Allowing people to pursue one of these goals will inevitably entail restrictions on people to pursue the other,” he continued, describing a hypothetical utopian society with medical immortality for everyone.
Chiang then turned to biology, suggesting that humans, due to their social nature, tend to live longer than other animals of similar size. Advancements in medicine and technology, according to Chiang, are products of this social instinct, enabling people to extend their lives beyond what would be possible without the collective scholarship of society.
However, Chiang argued that the desire for immortality fundamentally disrupts this social dynamic. He spoke about billionaires seeking to extend their lifespans, a phenomenon Chiang sees as reflecting a “cultural emphasis on individualism and egotism.” He added, “Having breached the benefits of being part of society, they are now trying to detach themselves from society.”
One audience member asked about how Chiang viewed the role of a science-fiction author at a time when “it feels like we are now living through some of the dystopian nightmares that your predecessors have predicted” and when “major influential capitalist actors” are “inspired by science fiction.”
“I should say I’m flabbergasted to be here. I never guessed that anyone would ask me to opine on anything,” Chiang said to laughs from the audience. “We do live in this weird historical moment where a certain subset of technologists now have accumulated great wealth and great power, and they refer to science fiction as their inspiration. They are, I think, being very selective in both the science fiction that they are referring to and in what they are taking from that. There’s been plenty of science fiction that was intended in a cautionary mode, and the billionaires have ignored all of that.”
Chiang ended by answering a question from the audience about optimism and hopes for the future. He quoted Ursula K. Le Guin, who once said “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”
The end of kings happened even though no one predicted it. I am prone to pessimism as much as you know anyone, but what I try and remember is that in general, we have never been good at predicting the future … and in the same way that there were people who fought against the idea of kings there are people who fight against the idea of capitalism, and we should keep, keep fighting we should remain optimistic about that possibility, even though there is no clear scenario, any more than there was real clear scenario to the end of kings.
Christopher Bao is an assistant News editor and the accessibility director for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Princeton, N.J. and typically covers town politics and life.
Sena Chang is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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