Keep in mind that, with immortality, geniuses would live forever.
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The concept of physical immortality being considered by science today is that of stopping physiological degeneration and eliminating the major killers in America, namely, heart and lung problems and cancer along with other fatal diseases.
That concept is not the same as forever or eternal.
People may still choose to kill themselves with lives of excesses, overconsumption, carelessness, and neglect. People will still get struck by lightning or killed by other unpredictable acts of nature. Deaths by unpredictable acts of nature produce a very small percentage of the 2 million people we lose annually in our country.
With advances in psychological effectiveness, people will learn that the thrill of dangerous activities can be replaced by the thrill of public speaking, which has been identified as the greatest fear of all, but does not risk one’s life.
The rush one can get in delivering public address is comparable to the rush of death-defying danger. It will simply no longer be fashionable to do dangerous things. Doing dangerous things for thrill or recognition will carry the same connotation as placing animal bones in one’s nose like they do in the jungle. Unenlightened, uneducated.
I was being flip. I realize that you’re discussing lives that are longer by orders of magnitude, rather than true immortality. Still, my point holds: geniuses in their fields will have careers that are orders of magnitude longer. The universities will be pretty crowded, but I expect there would be a boom in research, technological development, and invention. In fact, you’ve probably hit on one of the key precursors to humanity expanding into the stars. What’s a four-year trip to Alpha Centauri measured against a life-span of centuries?
I picture science taking a more subtle form, metaphorically like long-term investments. Experiments with a longer time-frame could be carried out. Data would be gathered across decades or centuries, rather than years.
I don’t see, though, how society would necessarily evolve towards a more enlightened existence regarding health and safety. I suspect the opposite would occur. With better medical science, dangerous activities would become less so because the odds of being repaired are greater. Likewise, the “ennui of the immortals” would set in, causing some people to become thrillseekers, which would result in a greater number of deaths. To many, this would seem like an adequate control on over-population.
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*Originally posted by hansel *
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I don’t see, though, how society would necessarily evolve towards a more enlightened existence regarding health and safety. I suspect the opposite would occur.
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Does this mean you think we will become clouded and darkened in the health/safety domain? Will we go backwards or remain stagnant, silencing all research and experimentation?
We keep learning more and more. Just 10 years ago, seeing one drive with headlights on during the day was thought to be carelessness. Daytime headlights reduce collisions.
Now, some governments require daytime headlights. More social control. That kind of social control increases my statistical life expectancy at least a few minutes.
It is counterproductive to predict anything less than a better society and lifestyle with longer lifespans. Who wants to live longer so life can get worse or less safe or healthy?
Verbalizing concerns about worse lifestyles is productive in that the concerns are openly discussed and addressed, thus hopefully corrected.
All other concerns about extra century of life need to be openly presented. As long as there is resistance to the idea of stopping aging, there will be resistance to the idea of supporting research funding and communicating with elected government officials to get a move on.
Psychic prediction of the future is perhaps one of those science fiction ideas that may or may not be developed in our expanded lifetime.
This resembles Risk Homeostasis, the tendency of people to perpetuate a certain level of risk when safety measures dimish danger levels. Individuals subconsciously act out in more dangerous behavior than before to meet the original risk level.
Only be becoming aware of such tendencies can they be corrected.
Another example of resistance to the idea of getting an extra century to play around with. There are 182 examples of resistance to the idea of impending age stopping. Most easily thought out and re-positioned.
Good point. There will be other developmental crises not yet identified. Of course, crisis management will be one of the self preservation skills taught by psychologists during childhood.
Identity crises will undoubtledly be experienced by most people. Purpose in life. Direction. Importance. Belongingness. Loyalty and companionship. Spirituality. Usefulness. Ambivalence. Confusion. Romance. Patriotism.
Ooo…she’s pretty hot. Of course the trick is living 1000 years but still look like you are in your 20s-30s.
I’m guessing not that many. I think mid-life crisis are a result of feeling as if your best years are behind you and you are running out of time to achieve the goals you set when you were younger.
I would be more worried about chronic, epidemic apathay. After all, why not screw around for a couple of decades, I have plenty of time to start a career?
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*Originally posted by The Shill *
**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.
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We don’t have to live 600 years for that experience. That is a developmental experience for many people now. The thrill is gone. It rarely results in suicide,though, and if it lasts longer than a few months, it is known as depression. The stats get larger and larger identifying people with depression. You may be right. We are living longer now, therefore more depression?
How could one see everything there is to see? Does experiencing pleasure negate its pleasure in the future? Does pleasure come only from novelty?
Thinking of longer lives as being a negative experience is a symptom of depression. Why live any longer than necessary anyway? Lets just sleep as much as we can till degeneration takes over and extinguishes us. Let’s drink alcohol and numb ourselves from the boredom.
Is boredom a choice? Is it the result of lifestyle or neurochemistry? Is negative prediction about life extension a choice or the result of a negative outlook on life in general? Frequently the person who is negative does not realize he is negative. Just the world. That would make longer life undesirable and easy to poo poo.
Good point. With the idea that certain death looms ahead in a few decades, one gets in a hurry to accomplish things.
But wait? Why hurry anyway? What’s the hurry to start the career? Your parents on your back? Who are you trying to impress with a career? Are we trying to get ahead of classmate or follow example of superhero?
Why not relax for about 50 years before trying to accomplish and get recognized? What difference that neighbor has bigger swimming pool in back yard? Move to the beach. Take wireless Blackberry and study hydro power and sealife nutrition while trading through interactive brokers at a buck per hundred shares.
What’s wrong with screwing around? Unless someone else is paying the bills. What is the definition of screwing around? Who gets to define adult responsibilities anyway?
**With better medical science, dangerous activities would become less so because the odds of being repaired are greater. Likewise, the “ennui of the immortals” would set in, causing some people to become thrillseekers, which would result in a greater number of deaths. To many, this would seem like an adequate control on over-population. **
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Humorous concept. Population control through thrilldeath.
Not too far removed from the cigarette manufacturers’ successful promotional campaign convincing small countries that the cancer caused by cigarettes reduced governmental welfare and social security payments to old age people.
Or bin Ladens’ promise of romantic thrills in heaven for suicide terrorists.
Increased longevity would most definitly cause a serious resurgence in expansionism. Space and ocean colonization, exploitation of extraterrestrial resources like the asteroid belt (Give terrorist organizations the capacity to hurl reeeally big rocks at the US) and such. The environmentalists would either have a field day in ‘Preserving the Homeworld’ or they would lose interest because there could be a ‘Homeworld’ anywhere. Terraforming would be big business. But I think immortality leis in Nanotechnology.
Let’s look at all the *good points of a long-lived population:
[ul]
[li]Here’s a big one - we’d make better decisions, because we could take a longer viewpoint. It’s very hard today to get voters to vote for things that won’t make measurable differences in the course of one generation. But that would change. If you have to start planning 500 years into the future, you’ll make better decisions.[/li][li]We’d all be much wealthier. Today, humans spend about 40 years of their lives being non-productive (20 years of retirement, 20 years of education), maybe 10 years being marginally productive when they first enter the workplace, and then only about 20-30 years of real productivity. So only maybe 1/3 of our lives are now spent actually contributing to the wealth of the world. If we could live to be even 150, suddenly we’d be spending more like 4/5 of our lives being productive…[/li][li]We’d have a lot more multidisciplinary people, which again would help us make rational choices. A person could get a degree in engineering, work in the field for 30 years and gain all kinds of experience, then go back to school and become a lawyer specializing in engineering issues. Thirty years later, he could go back and become an MBA and start a well-run business in engineering law. That sort of thing.[/li][li]We will begin to develop the belief that we all have second chances. Kids who are born in poverty and can’t afford school will be able to work for 20 years to save enough for a good education. This should reduce a lot of stress on society, because today people often feel locked into the economic structure they are born into. If you can’t afford to go to school at 18, you probably will never be able to go.[/li][li]This one should be obvious - we won’t die as soon. That’s a big deal to me, because I like being alive, and would rather not be dead. So I support anti-aging medicine just as much as anything else that promises to lengthen my life, such as cancer research.[/li][/ul]
The main point of this thread. Support for research.
Good idea. Yet how?
It was not intended for readers of this forum to start telomerase labs in the basement sink or to buy $50 microscopes to create molecular size machines to heal degenerating cells.
How does one support research? Do we know what legislators will vote for funding? Do we even know who would research anti-aging medicine or treatment?
Is that like supporting the president but not voting?
Send money now. Support antiaging research.
But where to send money? Will my $1000 contribution make a difference? Who do I send it to? Will our contributions wind up in the general fund, distributed to various causes like EPA?
Maybe writing letters to influential people would support the cause. Those letters have to be written so as not to appear as nut case wanting to make all science fiction reachable.
I am complacent. Sorry to say. I have written no letters to congress or scientists. Just flapped around on the internet, ventilating ideas.
I do want to live longer, stop aging, get healthier, experience more of the good life. It is definitely a good life for me. See no reason not to strive for another few centuries of it. But strive in what way? How can we get on the wagon to help out with the process of scientific breakthroughs?
Maybe we need to stop complacency then get on with promoting funding for research.
I question whether this, in fact, is a tendency that needs “correcting”.
Risk tolerance is necessary for advancement of any technology or science. Many of the individuals that are entrepeneurs are also physical risk-takers. I’m not sure you can separate the two.
BTW - substituting “public speaking” for “physical risk” isn’t going to work. I have no problem getting up in front of a crowd and running off at the mouth. It just doesn’t give the same rush as, say, spin training in a 30 year old Cessna 150. Sorry.
A better course, in my not-at-all-humble opinion, is to teach better risk managment. You see this with professional stunt men and folks like test pilots. They run real risks, but in a controlled manner and with an “out”. Although not all live to retire, quite a few do - Chuck Yeager, Bob Hoover, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Evil Knievel…
Fact is, although you can suppress the tendency folks with the trait are very unhappy unless given an outlet for their urges. I’m curious as to how you intend to “correct” this tendency.
If we’re ever going to go to Mars or the stars we MUST retain our risk-takers - otherwise no one will go. But the risk-seeking can be channeled into socially harmless but still fulfilling activities. You want to steer them away from drug abuse and criminal activity and suicidal risks, but the trait is absolutely necessary to society that intends to grow rather than stagnate.
Fact is, although you can suppress the tendency folks with the trait are very unhappy unless given an outlet for their urges. I’m curious as to how you intend to “correct” this tendency.
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Don’t have the answer to that anymore than stopping aging. Just look forward living long enough to enjoy advanced psycho-social methods to improve society.
Good to see some other Transhumans around. Death most likely will be meeting it’s end soon. Society’s definintion of death has continually changed. A stopped heart 200 years ago would have meant death. Now it can be restarted with a defibulator (sp?). I am thining about setting up a life insurance policy to be paid to Alcor, or a similar company, to have myself frozen or vitrified should I meet an untimely end. Just in case they change the definition of dead in the next 200 years.
What disturbs me about this statement is the “improve society” line. Who decides what is an “improvement”? Is there only one, ideal, permitted temperment or is there a range of such? If your personality fails to meet the standard will there be compulsory medication/modification/treatment?
I jumped in at the mention of risk-seeking personalities. I’ve seen folks in other places comment on the “necessity” of eliminating “risky behavior” and the temperments that lead to it - but if we all play it safe then who will be the firemen and run into burning buildings to save lives?
If you’re talking about helping people find a fulfilling and socially acceptable means of using their talents and inclinations I’m all for it. If you’re talking about forcibly eliminating “bad” traits because you or someone else find them inconvinent or alien… that I can’t agree with.
What disturbs me about this statement is the “improve society” line. Who decides what is an “improvement”? Is there only one, ideal, permitted temperment or is there a range of such? If your personality fails to meet the standard will there be compulsory medication/modification/treatment?
Mr. Laden suggests that an improvement in society would be to shorten the lives of Americans. He is influential enough to make a $100 billion dent in our lifestyles.
Have the antiaging researchers been so influential to get $100 bil from American society for research to lengthen the lives of Americans?
‘Who decides?’ is a good question. If we are passive enough others will decide for us. How about complacency? If we are complacent enough, bin Laden will be glad to send more goats on airplane rides with box cutters.
If we are passive and complacent, will the scientists stop their quest for antiaging techniques? We can protest, as in “Stop Cloning” (today’s headlines) in response to Advanced Cell Technology or “Stop Longevity Research” -or- we can watch things happen -or- we can take action of some sort, such as speaking out on internet forums to promote interest.
Advanced Cell Technology is headed by Mike West, the initial biochemist who started Geron Corp. with $25,000 from Miller Quarles to cure aging. Geron has millions of dollars in Menlo Park now, not billions.
