Aging. Aging causes far more suffering than bad weather.
I’m 70, with several serious health problems. How the hell do you think I voted?
I’m not voting for rejuve without getting term limits for politicians permanently implemented. Throw in a complete ban on moving from politics to lobbying.
Still not voting for it. Far too many downsides.
Hook us up with some weather control. I shouldn’t be able to ride my motorcycle in February.
Can we work out a side deal on rejuvenation though?
Neither., thanks.
Breaking the circle of life would be horrible. Kids today think its hard to get a job, but how do you compete with someone who has 400 years experience and shows no signs of slowing down?
If humans were that fragile, we would never have survived the Neolithic. People start over all the time. Spouses die, houses burn down, factories close, stock markets crash. Stuff happens, and life goes on. Rejuvenation would make it easier. As for “infinite patience for failure”, we already have that. It’s called “mediocrity”.
Thinking further on the subject of weather control, it occurs to me that it would likely end up under the control of some government entity. If said government were at all responsive to public opinion, there would be a strong temptation to warm the Arctic, cool the tropics, bring more rain to the deserts, bring less rain to the jungles.
That would wreak havoc on natural ecosystems. Personally, I am not a fanatic about “nature” or “biodiversity”, but lots of people on this board would consider that a calamity.
Old age reversal would be an amazing boon for individuals. But on a cultural level, it might create as many problems as it solves. Death redistributes wealth and opens up opportunities for younger people to move into.
The boon for humanity as a whole would be weather control. Weather causes an enormous number of deaths and amount of damage every year - everything from heat waves, droughts, stagnant air, hurricanes, blizzards, etc. The economics benefits alone are enormous.
The earth has a unified ecosystem, the human race is a pathogen, and antibodies are evolving as we speak.
Bullshit. We are part of the Earth, not an alien force. We’ll be around for a while, then either go extinct like the pterodactyls or evolve into something else like the dinosaurs. But we’re not unnatural invaders, and we have as much right to hr here as any other animal.
The greatest boon for humanity is pretty obviously a tech that negates and slows down or halts aging. Controlling the weather would certainly also be a boon for us, but not on the same scale since literally billions of lives would be saved through the anti-aging tech. Not only that, but think of the other benefits humanity would gain through keeping folks from dying of old age, or even just allowing people to live longer lives.
Of course, I’m not sure about the benefits of either for species other than humanity or for the Earth itself, but for us? Definitely old-age reversal and extended life.
It really depends on how it is used. The way you describe would certainly be disastrous from a biodiversity standpoint. It might even prove disastrous in other senses because it seems likely to disrupt (or even require the disruption of) major ocean currents and wind patterns.
In a more moderate sense, ifall your weather system did was trim the tails off the bell curve (for example, reduce the intensity of the 5% most extreme events) then you probably wouldn’t have too many negative impacts on the environment.
This is true as far as the negative, but as far as the positives aging also causes large amounts of pain and disability, and causes large amounts in medical spending and pensions.
Assume you live in a world where nobody gets an old age pension because nobody ages, and everyone in the developed world has medical expenses of about $1000 a year (which is about what someone in their 20s in a developed non-US country spends, in developing worlds it’ll be an even lower number). That frees up trillions of dollars in capital each year which can be used for socially productive purposes. Global spending on medical care is about $6+ trillion (most of that in developed nations), if you eliminate aging you eliminate a major chunk of that figure. Eliminate pension and you also eliminate trillions also that can be used for something else.
Eliminating aging could free up 5-10%+ of global GDP for other uses.
Which would be used to buy shovels for people wanted to dig themselves out of the ever-growing mass of humanity…
Pathogens can form from within, like cancer, and the body tries to reject or destroy them when the threat is recognized…
Parasites have as much right to be here as humans do, such as malarial plasmodium, so it is not a defensible argument that one species does not have a right to fight off a threatening one. Humans are a threat to nearly every other species on the planet, and sooner or later, one will successfully defend itself by extirpating humans.
Why do these “Which is Better?” always give options which, if thought about for 2 minutes, are actually “Which will Lead to the Less Awful World?”?
As noted, the problems with Gerontology are just now (mid-20th Century onward) being explored.
The idea that we have ever-more mouths to feed and even more epidemics (Zika, anyone?) to address due to prolonged live is not a happy one.
So Hey! let’s control the weather (and the bad guys will never, ever get their hands on this tech, right? I mean, just look at N. Korea - they will never be able to launch a nuke of an ICBM, right?).
But, we can now grow all the food we want, and nobody will ever again die in childhood from starvation. What’s not to like?
Ever more and more babies.
All you’re doing is magnifying the problem - even if there is just-the-right weather for food, there is a limit as to how many nutrients can be pulled from the earth. Eventually, the crops will fail - but now you have another 5 billion mouths to feed. The oceans will be sterile after even algae is prized as nutrition.
Why do we see the natural limits of an ecosystem for every specie EXCEPT Homo Sapiens?