If the human lifespan was doubled or tripled, but you could still die just as easily we do today, do you think most people would drastically alter their lifestyle?
I mean, if you could live for 250 years or so, why would you risk driving in a car, or riding a motorcycle, or downhill skiing? With so much potential life on the line, do you think people would become extremely cautious?
I’ve always been meaning to write a short story about this potential conundrum. My idea was to have a biological test pilot-type character be the first to receive life-extension gene therapy that would effectively make him immortal on a cell-division(?) basis. He would gradually become so obsessive about safety from disease and accidental death that he ended up living in a bubble, etc… Not that this is an answer to a GQ.
It’s possible that in the long run, if the lifespan is extremely expanded and people become accustomed to this, accidental deaths could indeed eventually be viewed as particularily unacceptable. Like for instance, the death of a child is perceived currently as unaccceptable because it’s unexpected.
However, I think that making guesses about anything 250 years down the road is essentially pointless since things will have changed so drastically meanwhile that our current views are plainly meaningless.
Does a 20-year old think about the ~60 years he may be throwing away when he goes 120mph down the freeway on a motorcycle? Would he think about ~150 years?
I think that the answer depends on exactly how human life would be extended.
If it were increased by extending the duration of every stage of life, so that cellular aging would be slowed down and humans would be “young” for a longer period of time, then maybe behavior would change. If you’re a physical 25 or 30 for a total of 40 years you would probably work out some of those silly impulses early and settle into more responsible behavior. Of course, this would also lead to some significant changes in laws and such - e.g. if development is slowed, children remain children for much longer, not just the 18 years we consider now.
However, if that life extension were just added on to the end, so to speak, so that people spent longer and longer in a geriatric state, what would the point be? People would still have the same number of years in a physically young body, know it, and be as reckless and silly as ever, depending on their inclination.
If nothing else, I imagine that you will no longer be able to retire for good around age 70.
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DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
Larry Niven postulated just the opposite, actually. In the Beowulf Shaefer stories human life is several hundred years through increased care and other methods.
In one story Shaefer runs into a group of men and woman who look to be in their 30s or so but (later) we find out they’re 200+ and have begun just living life for the hell of it. They start taking greater and greater risks because life presents no more challenges. In effect, they’re bent on taking greater and greater risks for experiences outside the norm until one ends up killing them.
Only a few centuries ago the average length of life was less than half what it is today. Our ancestors didn’t obsess on a daily basis about the fact that they could die any more or less than we do (unless in a crisis), even though a wave of smallpox or plague could wipe out half the town at any moment.
The novel One Million Tomorrows by Bob Shaw deals with this issue in reasonable detail - the main character goes ‘cool’ (so called because the immortality drug also causes sterility and complete loss of libido in the male) and the comparison is made between immortals and glass figurines - they don’t multiply or age, but a certain number get broken every year. Death is bad when it takes away a couple of decades of potential life, but when it takes a way a potential couple of centuries - it is terrible!