Max mentions ageless society. Genetic deterioration of cells and body parts has been eliminated.
Surveying people to brainstorm their ideas of such an environment will produce many interesting concepts. Mostly positive and motivating.
The task in visioning such life is to try to throw away negativity and dogmatic notions that insist we are doomed to a lifespan of less than a century and that all must die.
Half of all the adults that have ever lived are still alive.
Most of us will survive long enough to be here when degeneration can be arrested.
Advances in social sciences will automate healthy lifestyles and disintegrate habits of excess and carelessness. It will be the law to stay healthy and alive.
Death will be remembered as a thing of the past like covered wagons and sword fights to gain land possession.
Instead of 2 million people dying in the US annually, a few dozen might possibly pass in freak events.
Safety concepts like seat belts and cooperative driving won’t be debated. Forget about the ‘have-nots’ resenting the ‘haves’ and about hostile power struggles among individuals or nations.
Forget about dirty dishes. Technology will have become geometrically more advanced in the next 30 years than in the last century. There were no computers or cross country airlines 100 years ago.
Some of the science fiction of today will be realistic.
Sorry, I lost my codebreaker sheet for this thread, so it sounds like you’re saying that there are a bunch of 35,000-year-old people still walking around.
Assuming that you’re only referring to Cro-Magnon or “modern” man, homo sapiens, and not including homo habilis or homo neanderthalis.
[sub]who is max?[/sub]
An infinite number of monkeys flinging an infinite amount of feces against an infinitely long wall will eventually produce a readable version of this OP
Actually, the humans currently living represent an important part of all the humans who ever lived. I don’t think it’s 50%, though…
Just found an estimate (don’t know what it’s worth). 80 billions people would have lived on earth. So, the currently living humans would represent 8% or so of the total.
When we are able to prevent natural physical deterioration, I don’t think the government will legislate healthy behavior, I believe that they will do even less along those lines than we do today. If we do away with natural death then soon we will have to limit the number of new people being created, and there will always be people wanting to have kids. These people will want the government to give people the right to endanger their own lives. We could see the return of dueling, and perhaps even larger-scale forms of ritualized warfare (though war as we know it would be a thing of the past as it would be much harder to convince people to risk their lives who wanted to live).
The thrill of dangerous pasttimes would probably increase, as death would be a strange thing to people and participating in ‘extreme sports’ would be an even bigger risk. Those who do so might be glorified even more than they are now.
OK, so we can stop people dying. That means that we’d all be effectively immortal.
Wouldn’t you get bored? There’d come a point when you’d seen everything there is to see, been everywhere on Earth you can get to, and experienced every pleasure of both mind and flesh imaginable. Then, eternal boredom, or alternatively suicide. I’d go for the latter option.
Besides, we’d end up strangling our creativity and inventiveness by not bringing new people and new minds into the world. We’d just succomb to stagnant decadence…
Not sure about the OP in general, but here is something I can understand and thus disagree with.
This standpoint assumes that nothing will ever change on the Earth (or beyond). Imagine a caveman, 50,000 years ago, who accidentally makes himself immortal. After wandering around for a few thousand years, he too would conclude that he’d seen everything, so might as well top himself. Uh oh! If he’d hung around a bit, he’d have found out that there would have been loads of interesting stuff just around the corner, chronologically speaking.
Move onto today, and the pace of change is incredible. Who knows what cool new sights will be built in the next couple of years, never mind the next few thousand. Who knows what new discoveries will be made? Who knows what new places may be found? And who knows whether Anna will finally stop feeling sorry for herself in “Hollyoaks”?
Imagine how many times Jordan could come out of retirement if he was immortal (instead of an advanced robot created by a joint veture between the NBA and General Dynamics).
I thought for a moment there you were talking about Jordan the British model famous for her regularly expanding “assets”. If she was made immortal - and we follow the average trend of the last five years or so - then we can predict that sometime in the next 1000 years her breast implants will become so massive that their gravitational pull will suck us all in, suffocating us.
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*Originally posted by msmith537 *
**Imagine how many times Jordan could come out of retirement if he was immortal
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That concept brings the challenge of how does one set new goals when one is already acknowledged as athlete of the century. How could one ever embellish on an accomplishment of that magnitude? Coach/owner of the next century.
The concept of ‘over-the-hill’ comes to mind. Hopefully he won’t feel over-the-hill for 600 more years. ‘Over-the-hill’ feelings come and go anyway, like graduating from high school after being top dog, then college and big man on campus, and completing a term as top officer of organization, or kids grow up and don’t need wiping anymore.
With 600 years, most people will come out of retirement dozens of times, to explore and capture new challenges and ventures in life.
Surely population would eventually increase to such a level that swordfights over land would become commonplace?
(Many SF stories tackling immortality seem to introduce male sterility as a consequence, thus limiting the population factor, but I don’t see that this is anything more than a convenient literary device).
Personally, I don’t think i’d get bored of living for at least a few thousand years; there are simply so many things I’d like to do but I know I will never find the time; besides, the ‘wouldn’t you get bored after you’ve done everything?’ argument is flawed as it seems to assume that everybody does any thing exactly once only, but this isn’t the case - if you find a pastime that you like (let’s say climbing trees*) there’s no reason why it shouldn’t occupy you and provide enjoyment for quite a long time.
*I chose that example on purpose; if I’d said something like Golf, then the counter-argument would be ‘ah yes, but when you’ve had a thousand years’ practice and can get a hole in one every shot…’, whereas wioth pastimes like tree climbing, there is endless variety as no two trees are alike and by the time you’ve climbed even a fraction of them, there would be some new ones to try.
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*Originally posted by Mangetout *
Personally, I don’t think i’d get bored of living for at least a few thousand years; there are simply so many things I’d like to do but I know I will never find the time;
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Limitless challenges for those with positive attitude.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Mangetout *
Personally, I don’t think i’d get bored of living for at least a few thousand years; there are simply so many things I’d like to do but I know I will never find the time;
…
Limitless challenges for those with positive attitude.
Limitless people with positive attitudes. Negative attitudes would be rare and considered a hospitable condition, treatable with effective psycho-social therapeutic techniques.
[Quote]
How many people have lived on earth since the dawn of time?
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The original quote specifically included the word ‘adults’.
Not ‘people’ or ‘humans’. Those words include infants and children.
When investigating the mortality rate of infants and children prior to year 2001, one may find the numbers significantly different in the number of people who have lived vs the number of adults who have lived.
People who die before age 21 rarely die of old age. People who make it to adulthood die predominantly because their physiology deteriorates. Death due to trauma during adulthood is a small fraction of deaths due to heart, lung and cancer complications.
Stopping aging, thus stopping deterioration, will expand life expectancy for several decades. In several decades, we will have discovered how to eliminate lifestyles of excesses, overconsumption and carelessness. Heart and lung problems will be minimized, nerve and bone degeneration will have been addressed.
Emotions like anger and fear will be utilized by acknowledging their energy in positive ways rather than retaliation and withdrawal. Resentments and hatred will be looked back on like public lynchings and stake burning, a pathetic waste of lives and energy.
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*Originally posted by hansel *
**a03 keeps raising creepy social control ideas.
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We have social control now. Fines and incarceration for dangerous driving. Governmental punishment for lying about the ingredients of food.
Our government controls the information and procedures we use to teach children in schools.
We have social control that keeps my neighbor from dumping his trash in my yard. Our government prohibits me from taking merchandise without paying for it.
It is illegal to sit around and watch someone die who has been injured in a car wreck.
The government will make it illegal for children to refuse innoculations or medical treatment that prevents old age (cellular senescence). Children today are not allowed to go untreated when they have been identified with potentially fatal medical conditions.
Government will continue to exercise social control. What is the definition of government? Not indifference or apathy. Does social control have to be creepy? Some of it does. Bin Laden’s social control using ‘divine’ guidance is creepy.
Which social control is better: Mandatory life extention or death to American society?
Here in America we have the A4M trying to figure out how to do away with aging and in the underground we have the mindless goats who follow Mr. Laden’s plan to shorten our lives.
We spend $40 bil to address Laden and $80 bil to clean up his handiwork and engage security. We do not spend that much to find a way to keep people alive for another century. We have a funding priority issue.