# If mankind became immortal **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 14, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914 "2016-07-14T19:25:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/21 "2016-07-14T23:24:40Z")
There are at least 2 workarounds to this problem. 1. Space travel. There is a lot of raw materials and living space in this universe. When humans achieve immortality we will also likely achieve space travel and nuclear fusion. Using nuclear fusion we will probably be able to create any element we want out of hydrogen. 2. Uploading consciousness to digital substrates. We will eventually have to ability to transfer a mind to a computer, which means you can live in VR. In VR you do not need many natural resources other than the computer and the electricity to run it. If you assume it takes 10^18 cps to run a mental simulation, that’ll be a drop in the bucket to what computers will be able to achieve in the 22nd century. I’m not worried. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/22 "2016-07-14T23:29:16Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > I remember seeing something in the 80’s or 90’s about how, if we became biologically immortal, meaning zero deaths from disease and other physical body issues, at the then-current accident rates, the average person would live somewhere around 600 years before something got them. At most you might live 900-1000 years and only the few rare lucky outliers would live for several millennia. > > Of course, the very first thing we’d do would then be to make our world as safe as we could, to bring that accident rate down. > > And also, a great many people wouldn’t want to live for centuries, and would choose to end their lives earlier. > **[Actuarial Life Table](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html)** > > Actuarial Life Table Using the social security actuarial table, a woman going from age 20 to age 21 has a 0.04% chance of dying during that year. If you divide that number and assume those odds, that means something like 2421 years of life. I’m using a woman because young women have lower suicide, homicide and accident death rates than men. Anyone who wants to live forever will have even lower homicide, suicide and accident rates. Also medicine in the future will be better, so even if you get in an accident it will not be as likely to be fatal. In just the last few decades deaths in the US from war and gunshots have gone down because medicine is better at treating traumatic injuries. Living for centuries in these bodies and brains wouldn’t be desirable. However when we reprogram (or replace) the brain with something else life will become much more enjoyable. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2016, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/23 "2016-07-14T23:51:40Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > Boredom is for teenagers. The older I get, the more interesting the world gets. > > Suppose you set out to visit every tourist destination on the planet, starting at the north pole and working your way to the south pole. By the time you finished with Johannesburg, Stockholm would have some new stuff in it. You will never be able to move fast enough to see it all. There would always be one more place to visit, one more person to meet, one more book to read. I can attest to this. Plus, sometimes new types of pastime are periodically invented (video games are a good recent example). Also, some experiences never really get old; nature never stops being beautiful. And yes, space travel will be very different for someone who can take a very long view of things. Even without FTL travel, taking decades to travel between solar systems could become acceptable. Millennia to terraform planets could even be doable. I would hope that innovation would accelerate. Imagine if Leonardo DaVinci were still alive today, with well over five centuries of experience under his belt. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/24 "2016-07-15T00:01:55Z")
The older I"ve gotten, the more time seems to slow down and my perspective has changed. When I was a kid, a year was practically forever. These days five or ten years goes by almost like nothing. I imagine if I lived to be 1000 years old, centuries would seem trivial. If I lived to be 10,000 years old millenia would be nothing. If I were a near-immortal being traveling through space it’s possible a 50,000 year voyage between stars would be like getting a four-year degree or something. IOW, not that big a deal. I imagine advanced, ancient star-faring beings would necessarily be patient to the extreme. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/25 "2016-07-15T01:10:50Z")
I’d also hope that longevity would increase people’s sense of environmental stewardship. Not as many people with “Après nous, le déluge” attitudes. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/26 "2016-07-15T02:02:54Z")
> [@Max\_the\_Immortal](#): > > I’d also hope that longevity would increase people’s sense of environmental stewardship. Not as many people with “Après nous, le déluge” attitudes. I can see this going both ways. Yes, they’d want to preserve the quality of the environment…but for safety’s sake, they’d also want to “tame” nature. Large carnivores would be in zoos or strictly enclosed preserves, and there would be a movement to exterminate dangerous creatures such as mosquitos. The world-wide plan to eradicate smallpox would be followed by other such programs. Nature is nice…except for the dangerous bits. (Of course, this is the actual course of human history, in real life. I would just predict it would become more acute if people were much longer-lived.) ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/27 "2016-07-15T03:05:58Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > …However when we reprogram (or replace) the brain with something else life will become much more enjoyable. Speaking of the brain; we’d have to radically reprogram it. Even if medical technology solves problems like dementia and every retains peak mental agility there has to be spoke kind of limit to how much memory the brain can store. Sure you could live for millennia, but the vast majority would be lost to the fog of ages. That might help with existential boredom, but how would that effect you as a person? Knowing that sooner or later every experience, every trauma, every love, every child will be forgotten? And what schedule? It seems doubtful that say you’d only be remember 300 years, and everything before that get’s deleted. It’d be like being able to remember the Etruscan rhymes your mother what was this post about again? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/28 "2016-07-15T03:11:15Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Speaking of the brain; we’d have to radically reprogram it. Even if medical technology solves problems like dementia and every retains peak mental agility there has to be spoke kind of limit to how much memory the brain can store. Sure you could live for millennia, but the vast majority would be lost to the fog of ages. That might help with existential boredom, but how would that effect you as a person? Knowing that sooner or later every experience, every trauma, every love, every child will be forgotten? And what schedule? It seems doubtful that say you’d only be remember 300 years, and everything before that get’s deleted. It’d be like being able to remember the Etruscan rhymes your mother what was this post about again? 😕 I’m not worried about it. Either we will vastly augment and expand our brains, or we will totally replace them. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/29 "2016-07-15T06:14:16Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I think the major reason old people tend to be conservative and cranky is that they’re old - by which I mean physically old, with old bodies and little to look forward to except more pain and death. If they all had permanent 25-.year-old bodies and a future ahead of them they’d be a lot more cheerful and open minded. Also, if the brain stays young, then the mind that lives in it can continue to change and develop. In practice, this means that when you’re 900 years old, you might be a completely different person compared to your 200 year old self. ---
**Author:** ![Gillbert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/dc4da7/32.png) [@Gillbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gillbert)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/30 "2016-07-15T15:56:42Z")
With forever young or without forever young? If the latter then it wouldn’t be pretty. Who would want to work for a home targeting the 520-529 year old demographic? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/31 "2016-07-15T16:15:42Z")
What plane has the OP lived on? The powerful have _always_ been killing the less powerful. Immortality is not necessary to the equation. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/32 "2016-07-15T17:23:23Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Yeah, I think people would work for a few years, then take off maybe to have families, then go back to work again. Also, my own WAG is that when we gain this sort of technology it won’t be in a vacuum. Instead, it will be but one break through among many, that will most likely have a fundamental change on what ‘work’ even means or why we do it. You can kind of see that already happening in fact. Yeah, this. I figure if we get to the point where we can expect to live for centuries in reasonably good health, we’ll likely adopt some sort of punctuated retirement. You’d train for a career, work that for a few decades while saving some money on the side, then take a decade off for travel and the like. Add a bit extra for a few years of training for a new career, wash rinse and repeat. As time went on, you’d even likely need less money to live on, largely because mortgages on property don’t become a virtually life-long prospect. As it is now, for most of us with a 25 year mortgage, that covers most of our useful working life, with the house only being paid off near retirement age. In this new world, we’d all own our homes outright for the vast majority of our lives, and as such our housing costs would only be the property taxes. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2016, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/33 "2016-07-15T18:06:42Z")
The older I get the more I think extending life spans beyond a certain point is actually bad for society. We should of course strive to cure horrible diseases and help people live functioning lives but one of the ways society progresses is people with bad old ideas they will never let go of eventually die. People living 150, 200+ years would make change move more slowly which overall is a detriment. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2016, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/34 "2016-07-16T02:29:23Z")
Eee, the arthritis ALONE…! ---
**Author:** ![Nansbread1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Nansbread1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nansbread1)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2016, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/35 "2016-07-16T16:14:26Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > Eee, the arthritis ALONE…! Just to remind you. All,organs will work in perpetuity. You cannot die of disease.only your body can be destroyed by unnatural means like accidents, killings etc. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2016, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/36 "2016-07-16T17:25:46Z")
> [@vtxrider](#): > > But then with all this, the question comes up, would you want to live forever? Sure it sounds all great. But working with no end in sight, no hope for a real retirement. After a while, you would have done it all, seen it all, and at some point, boredom would set in. Presumably you could take a few years or even decades off if your finances supported it. It’s not practical to do that now since people only have a limited amount of time to get to a certain point in their career. But it might not be an issue if people lived forever. One issue, however, would be turnover. Or more specifically, the lack thereof. How does the working world change when people are no longer retiring like they used to. Or where you have some people just starting out while others have a hundred years experience? ---
**Author:** ![spamforbrains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@spamforbrains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spamforbrains)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2016, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/37 "2016-07-16T20:09:35Z")
> [@](#): > > If you think ‘high risk’ and ‘death defying’ activities are popular now, imagine what they’d be like if you never had to worry about dying of cancer or some other disease. wouldn’t it be the opposite? People today do some dumb things because they know death is inevitable, but if it stops being so, won’t people become much more careful? Finance-wise, wouldn’t most people eventually end up rich? Even a working grunt who manages to save a few bucks a week will end up with a lot of cash after a few hundred years. Then we’ll have no one to do the labor, but I guess we’ll have invented robots by then. I suspect the population growth problem would take care of itself. Many of people’s reasons for having children-take care of me when I’m old, carry on my name, etc. would simply vanish. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2016, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/38 "2016-07-17T15:43:36Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > One issue, however, would be turnover. Or more specifically, the lack thereof. How does the working world change when people are no longer retiring like they used to. Or where you have some people just starting out while others have a hundred years experience? I suspect this will be less of a problem than you expect. Most jobs just aren’t that interesting, and I think people would get bored and want to switch. I’m at a point where my current job is getting a bit boring, but I’m close enough to retirement that I’ll just stick it out, rather than shaking up my whole life this late in the game. But if I were looking at another 200 years of working life, rather than just 10-15 years? For sure I’d be planning a switch of some sort. For instance, I’d love to get in on some of the stuff like what Space X is doing. There’s no way I could realistically do that now, but if I knew I was going to live for centuries? Hell yes! And if I had my house paid off, then I could afford to do it, because the salary hit I would take from going from my current senior job position to a junior job position wouldn’t be so important. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2016, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/39 "2016-07-17T15:46:28Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > wouldn’t it be the opposite? People today do some dumb things because they know death is inevitable, but if it stops being so, won’t people become much more careful? I think we’d see pretty much the same thing we do now. We currently have some daredevils who do stupid dangerous things for fun, and we also have nervous Nellies who see danger around every corner and so refuse to take any avoidable risk, no matter how small. I don’t see why this would change. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2016, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914/40 "2016-07-17T17:04:25Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > As time went on, you’d even likely need less money to live on, largely because mortgages on property don’t become a virtually life-long prospect. As it is now, for most of us with a 25 year mortgage, that covers most of our useful working life, with the house only being paid off near retirement age. In this new world, we’d all own our homes outright for the vast majority of our lives, and as such our housing costs would only be the property taxes. Gentlemen, I give you the 1000 year mortgage. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-mankind-became-immortal/759914.md?page=3)