Is There a Dystopia in Cloning?

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The 104 year old woman who is the last living human being. She's getting up every morning and making breakfast alone, but alone in a way that gives me goosebumps just to think about it. The loneliness of that last person trying to, you know, go through any motions of life. And I guess part my first thought would be, and this is part of the thought experiment. That if we thought we were all sterile, we might move really briskly towards some form of cloning artificial life.

Suppose all of humanity was infected by a virus that left us all infertile--no one will come along after us. How would you react to such a world? Agnes Callard of the University of Chicago says she would be filled with despair. But why does this seem worse than our own inevitable deaths? Callard speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the meaning of life, and what exactly about the end of humanity is so demoralizing. The conversation concludes with a discussion of whether humanity is making progress.