How long would an "immortal" person live?

Great Debates
21

Yes, Bytegeist, the same issue of economics really disturbs me, as well, and it seems the only quick recourse is the have the cost of these pills/treatments be so large as to require the majority of the population to keep working. But with costs that large, a black market is guaranteed to arise, even granting the notion that the government controls distribution and even manufacturing and forgoes taxation in its stead.

Interestingly, even given odds against being caught dealing or purchasing this on the black market, since time is no longer an issue, you are virtually guaranteed to get caught eventually. What’s even worse is that consecutive 99 year sentences for example, are practically servable, which means any finite sentence also guarantees the party will be released eventually. And would inmates be afforded such treatment (doubtful)?

The economic ramifications seem huge. Any significant and generally available savings plan would cause total havoc.

22

That is… “…any finite sentence also guarantees the party will be released eventually unless inmates weren’t afforded the treatment.” Rethought the post but obviously not in its entirety. :stuck_out_tongue:

23

The population of every planet with people on will go through the roof if fertility is maintained thoughout a thousand year life-
having kids will have to be such a rare event, you will hardly ever see a child from one year’s end to the next.

It seems likely to me that most people will be content to live no more than a thousand years, then opt for a digitised matrix scenario as an alternative to living as a human meatbag for ever…

it may even be that most people will opt for the matrix after six months, and everyone will exist only as shadow- it remains to be seen.

SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

24

You are forgetting that the world would change around such a person. Europe 1000 years ago was very different from Europe today. Even Joe sixpack might learn a thing or two in a thousand years time.

It raises an interesting question though. What happens to the psyche of a person who lives 10,000 years? Does terminal bordom set in? Or is a person happier because they have less of a sense of wasting their life or running out of time? Would adolescence last longer? How would society change? (I’m in the 20 year program at Harvard where they take you through an entire career lifecycle)

25

I think the economy would increase by a huge amount if people were immortal.

Think about the situation today: People are born, and consume huge amounts of resources in their childhood. Then they go to school, and consume more resources. They get into the work force at maybe 25, and don’t start to become really productive until they hit their thirties. Then they have a couple of decades of productive work, and then they retire and become productive for another 20-30 years before they die.

So a typical human in a western society today is only productive for maybe 25% of their lives.

Then there are the practical limitations of a short life that prevent us from being hyper-productive. For example, most people have to narrowly specialize in order to cram enough learning to be an expert into a relatively small number of years. That limits our effectiveness.

How productive would a 200 year old man or woman be, if they had the equivalent of Ph.D’s in physics, chemistry, english, mathematics, engineering of several types, law, and an M.D.? Think of the insights people could have if there was an unlimited amount of time to learn about your interests?

And here’s another factor: When geniuses come along, they are often thousands of times more productive than ‘average’. Think of what Einstein, Hawking, Newton, and a few dozen other super-geniuses have contributed to us. And yet, when they come along we only gain the benefit of having them at the peak of their ability before senescence sets in and they start to fade. Then they die, and we lose that resource. Imagine if they stuck around for thousands of years. What would come out of a scientific conference today that was attended by Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, etc?

What could those guys achieve if they had the freedom to take a couple of decades and apply their genius to other fields?

As for the ‘living off of interest’ thing… You say that like it’s a bad thing. Au Contraire. If the money is out there working, it’s creating wealth. Or rather, someone who is using it is. In today’s world, the productive die, leave their money to their kids, and their kids spend it non-productively. Leave the productive people their money, and they’ll grow it to immense proportions.

And there’s the real stress factor on society. Not everyone is equally productive. So by the time people die, there are wide disparities in wealth. But then the money changes hands, and the less productive get it and spend it. Or they are equally productive, in which case you wind up with the Rockefeller family in a few of generations.

Now imagine the disparity in wealth if people lived 1000 years. The gap between rich and poor would be huge.

That’d make a good science fiction premise. How would a society deal with that? One way would be to have periodic taxes that take a significant portion of wealth from people. Another would be to have an even more progressive tax system. Or there could be a ‘renewal’ tax, where you lose half of what you own on your 100th birthday, your 150th birthday, your 200th birthday, etc. Not that I think this would be a good thing, but you can imagine the adaptive mechanisms that might arise to handle this problem.

How about criminals? What’s a life sentence? If someone is a habitual felon, but committing crimes that aren’t serious enough to warrant the death penalty (car theft, drunken driving, stealing large items, assault, etc). What do you do with them? You can’t lock them up for eternity, and you can’t really kill someone for stealing a bicycle. Maybe some form of penal colony, with ‘parole’ reviews every 100 years?

Lots of interesting societal side-effects from this.

26

Well, Sam, the intellectual benefits on the surface seem large, but the reason most people work is to either keep their head above water or to seek a way to float. Given enough time, a much much larger percentage of people can float.

Is the desire to consume so great that the intellectual product progress would be enough to keep people working? Novel and desireable consumer goods would have to outpace the ability of most people to set up a savings plan that could afford them retirement. Is that a significant possibility? I suppose it is, human desire for stuff and fun is pretty large.

Hmm.

27

immortals do not die. period.

so what do you call people with eternal life? eternals?

28

Somewhere in my collection of science-fiction anthologies is a whimsical short story along these lines, about an immortality treatment invented in the late 1800s. I’ll find it and report back.

The big problem with a falling birthrate in this story is that eventually childbirths become rare, then unheard of, and by the time it’s noticed that the immortals are dying off from long-term wear and tear and accidents, the youngest females (though they look 19) are actually 200 or 300 years old, and no longer fertile. As a result, no new humans can be produced at all and the species dies out.

If we had something like this, we’d have to make sure birthrates don’t fall too far and that we always have on hand a bunch of viable 20-35 year-olds who could still crank out babies. The overall number of these “breeders” can be kept relatively low, though, and I can imagine banning them from gun ownership or driver’s licenses until they reach the “mature” chronological age of 50 or so, at which point they’ll no longer breed and will be less likely to commit crimes of passion or be impulsive drivers.

29

You might also try looking for Struldbrugs.

30

Fertility would need to be regulated to allow for replacement only;
you will need children to replace people lost by accident, murder, suicide (because of boredom?), emigration to other planets, and those who opt to live as electronic copies in databanks. This could be a reasonably large number;
I expect quite a few parents would be opting to give birth using artficial wombs, so the loss of fertility in these long-lived individuals might not be such a problem after all.

SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

31

Until they messed with me.