Just a small preview of the glory that’s coming humanity’s way. I can’t wait for my 300 year lifespan pill.
DaLovin’ Dj
Who wants to live forever?
Seriously, lets say you grow up, get married, have a few kids, they grow up and get married, etc.
Suddenly you’re faced with the prospect of another 200 years, after you’ve (biologically) fulfilled your requirements. What do you do?
Are you going to stay married to the same person for another 250 years?
How many kids will you have? Would you have siblings that are 200 years apart?
How long before family reunions become virtually impossible due to scale alone?
When do you retire?
What about the population explosion? People are being born, but now no one is dying…where do we put 'em?
I do.
Play music, skydive, dance, write a novel, make a movie, check out Mars and the Moon, learn to paint, learn a few languages, beat all the cool video game, and plenty more. Entertainment is one thing human’s aren’t short on.
Hell I’m not even gonna get married. I’ve lived with a couple girlfriends and it’s taught me one thing: Keep my own place. I’ll date, but not marry.
I guess that depends on what my financial security will be like and what the population situation will be like in 200 years.
Family reunions suck anyway.
As soon as I can.
The Ocean. Mars. The Moon. Asteroids. Venus. Space Stations. Europa. This Solar System is HUGE, never mind this Universe.
DaLovin’ Dj
I would want to live forever also,I don’t think alot of people wouldn’t want to so the world won’t get too over populated
I guess we’re dealing purely in fiction at this point? In that case, I’m all for it! 
On another note: You’re going to sit around taking up space (and resources) for 250 years for the purposes of your own amusement? Not going to get married (but maybe reproduce) and retire as early as possible so you can (presumably) sit around taking up space (and resources) for 250 years for the purposes of your own amusement.
You could at least lie to me and tell me you’ll do something to benefit the rest of the world.
C’mon, man…just climb in the coffin.
Seriously, though, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to idea of living for a few hundred years, on an emotional level. All the things I could see! The things I could do! But on an intellectual level, I don’t see a dramatic increase in human life-span as terribly valuable. Death is a good thing, and as it is we stand a good chance of living nearly 100 years. How long is long enough?
50 Billion years? Nah, make it as long as reality exists.
Dalovin’ Dj
Actually, there is a very good intellectual reason to extend life spans, provided the people stay health, active and capable of work for a great portion of that time.
Greater working life spans increase the ratio between the time spent learning/mastering a life’s trade and actually doing that trade. This could be especially useful in jobs that require large amounts of time to master, i.e. physics, medical/biology, fine craftsmanship of many kinds.
Keeping the birthrate under control would obviously be crucial if lifespans so dramatically increased.
Here is where things will get really ugly. Should there be some criteria to qualify for an extra couple hundred years of life, or should we give it to everyone, even losers getting by on welfare with no intention of improving their situation? Would it be part of a prison sentence to have your supply of drugs cut off?
Would it hurt the relationship between nations? At least some of reason we get along with Japan as well as we do today is that the people in power during WWII are all retired or dead (both here and there). It seems that new generations coming up every few years help nations to forget the hatred and mistrust.
If you do it, you have to offer it to everybody or there will be much war.
DaLovin’ Dj
Or a very coercive government.
Siblings 100’s of years apart would essentially be ‘only’ children. The world’s whole financial structure would be different, but maybe people wouldn’t have to work as hard all the time. There’s only so much work that needs to be done, but while we can’t get it all done now, if we had, say, 250 years to work, we could get maybe 100 years worth of work done, and still have plenty of time to take it easy.
Birth control would have to be manditory for all ‘immortals’, or even a coercive government won’t save us from ourselves. That brings up the issue of who’s going to enforce the birth-control rules, and “mother hunts”, sweeps for people violating the birth control rules. Organized religion will have a hard time dealing with extended longevity.
DJ says
Thats how I would love to spend two hundred years! Beating Metal Gear 5000…
I think your Idea dude is quite OUTY 5000 oops I meant Audi.
Sounds like you need to do a little more research before you bring something like 'Immortal Pills around the corner’to this forum. Sound slike this is more of a IMHO. Not a great debate. Seems like you are wishful thinking. I’d try to stick to true science, not SF.
Sure, I’d like more time to do all this, too. But how much longer would we have to work to achieve all this leisure time?
Proponents of drastically longer life spans seem to think that the extended years will somehow be spent savoring the finer things in life. Think how long the average person must work just to have a fairly comfortabe retirement today. Then triple or quadruple that lifespan. How old would you be before you could devote time to all those activities?
Significantly longer lifespans would also necessitate a nearly zero birth rate, or massive changes in the way food is developed and distributed. Basically, world-wide near-immortality would require a utopian civiliazation.
Download all the porn on the internet! Woo hoo! 
Well it might have a better chance to get there. I have always felt that greed and impatience were two of the greatest evils out there. People today want to be millionaires by 40 so they can retire young enough to enjoy themselves in ways that health might not permit at 60.
If we knew that we would live for 250 years we would have 200 years to be productive and still be able to have fun. People would be more inclined to pursue advanced degrees because they could still use them for a nearly 2 centuries even if they got the degree at 40. What great works will come from artists, scientists, medicine when people have centuries of experience in their fields instead of decades.
I agree, population control becomes a problem but then again the same pill that triggers the regeneration gene could suppress reproductive systems. So if you’re on the drugs you don’t get to reproduce. We already know how to create drugs to suppress that.
Sure if everybody lived forever the world would have to change. But hey the world will change anyway no matter what. I certainly have no desire to die so that people that I don’t know can live. I remember a politician is Arizona received a lot of flack for saying more or less the old should hurry up and die because they were a drain on society.
The idea that if we live forever we will be able to retire and live a long happy retirement is a fantasy. If every body can live forever eventually most every body will have retired. We can already see problems with Social Security with lost of people living just a little longer.
My life right now is not just drudgery that I put up with only for the golden years of retirement. The fact that I might have to do something useful my whole long life is hardly motivation to decide to die.
I would read. Seriously, I would pretty much live in the library for the extra 100 - 150 years. There are so many books that I haven’t had time to read yet, and the damn list gets longer every day.
Could I maybe get a couple more of those pills? 
Another benefit would be that politicians, corporation head, etc. would have to be more concerned about the consequences of their actions. I think that short-term thinking is the cause of many, if not most, of our environmental problems today. I mean, why worry about the world petroleum stocks running dry in 50 to 100 years if you’re going to be long dead by then?
My general thought on the ‘working’ issue is that instead of 40 hour work-weeks, maybe 15 or 20 hour work-weeks. If that’s not efficient, maybe periodical sabbaticals, maybe even years-long sabbaticals? Mix the leisure and working years together, so that you don’t have to bust yer butt now to pay for 150 years of retirement, but work awhile, play awhile, repeat.
To each their own, and I never said it was all I’d do. I said I would do other things as well. I’ve done quite a bit in 25 years, I can’t imagine what a couple hundred more years would REALLY bring, but I’m willing to give it a try.
You think “my idea” is leaving? Doesn’t make too much sense. If you replace the word “idea” with “thread” maybe it makes sense, but it’s still untrue because. . .
There have been several threads in GD concerning immortality. The reason it’s appropriate for this forum is because a simple statement like the OP leads to all the questions Beelzebubba asked in the first post after I started the thread. Research? Research what, the forum descriptions? Please. If it’s in the wrong place (which I doubt) a mod will handle it.
I linked to Science Daily which discusses specific, successful, research that got published this week concerning making mice live longer. I can provide several more current links concerning other successful longevity treatments in mice and fruit flys. Perhaps you can show me a cite that proves it is impossible (or even unlikely) that lifespans can be affected positively by genetic tampering.
DaLovin’ Dj
[soup nazi impression]
NO PILL FOR YOU!!!
[/soup nazi impression]
Tranquilis wrote:
I hasten to remind y’all that living forever does not necessarily mean retaining the ability to have children forever.
Even today, with no immortality pills available, the average woman lives for around 80 years, but stops being able to get pregnant after age 50-55.