I think that’s pretty misleading when it comes to biological organisms. Our organs are constantly regenerating, and it’s not just trivial wear and tear that is the cause for them finally failing. It really does look like part of the reason we age is an inbuilt cellular “fuse”.
Mammals with shorter lifespans like dogs will die of diseases that humans only get at age 60+. And, sadly, humans can also be afflicted with late life cancers, arthritis etc at a young age if they have ageing disorders like Progeria.
Now, I’m not saying that extending the human lifespan will be easy, I’m just saying I think parts wearing out is misleading.
Even if you conquer aging, you’ll never live forever. Eventually the odds will catch up to you: Lightning strikes, bear attacks, deranged snipers. All the things you don’t really worry about will become more and more probable. And of course in a billion years you will all boil away, or even if you do make it off world, heat death or the big rip will get you eventually.
I do think we are on the precipice of stopping death from aging. But rejuvenation is a harder problem. If you are already 60 by the time they make you immortal, do you want to look 60 forever?
Even if they do figure it out in our lifetimes, only people with means will be able to take advantage of it. There is no way the governments will be able to afford to extend such a technology to everyone universally assuming the price point is similar to other health care services.
I agree with XT that we’re equally close to or far from either of these sci-fi ideas. I think we know a lot more about how the body ages than we do about how perception works, let alone memory and thinking. The best model we have so far is described nicely in Kurzweil’s recent book, “How to Create a Mind”. Still a long way to go, with significant breakthroughs required.
Granted, it’s just an analogy. My point was that an engine breaks down due to any number of different parts wearing out, just as a human body ages due to a wide number of unrelated causes.
I doubt that there is a single fuse that governs most aging processes. There may be one or two “low hanging fruit” that go a long way, maybe adding 20 to 40 years, but to go indefinitely will require significant changes, which are very difficult to do other than by the natural way: evolution (which wouldn’t be quick).
If we really want people to live longer, all we have to do is make it so that only old people are allowed to procreate, and continuously raise the legal age limit. (wink)
ISTM that we are so used to consoling ourselves about death and ageing, that any discussion about significant life extension is usually peppered with responses about how it would suck to live forever, or how great it is that we die.
None of these responses really “work” IMO; except for of course the practical issue of overpopulation (It is true that while we don’t have cold fusion or space travel, and the birth rate remains high, humans living indefinitely could cause problems).
3 of their reasons are based on a scenario where we continue ageing normally but are nonetheless immortal. But that’s a particularly odd scenario: you could argue one drawback of this form of immortality would be my bones would eventually be dust.
And 1 is based on living forever as opposed to indefinitely. True, this is the title of the article, but again it should be said that the much more feasible scenario is living indefinitely or having a greatly extended lifespan.
Their final point (about having to keep it a secret) is a whole different tangent and depends obviously on the circumstances under which such technology becomes available.
No. Time speeds up because we have less and less reference points. A boring day at work feels exactly as long as a boring day at primary school. But at the end of the month, if you have done only what you usually do, you won’t have any significant memory of anything. It feels like you’ve done nothing at all, and the time flew by. But if you spend a month going on vacations in a place you don’t know, doing things you’ve never done and meeting new people, when you’ll come back, this month will feel like it lasted way, way longer than a boring month at work. That would be because you accumulated tons of new memories, of reference points.
The older you get, the less you do new stuff. And I suspect, the less excited you are about new stuff when you actually do it. That’s why older people feel that time is speeding up. Actually, it isn’t really a feeling of time passing more quickly, it’s a feeling a posteriori of time having passed very quickly because there’s almost nothing to remember from your last week, month, year..
That’s a bit paradoxical since when you do that exciting new thing, it does feel like time is passing extremely quickly, since you aren’t bored. But retrospectively, it will feel like it lasted much longer than an ordinary day/week/month.
I recall reading something on this 20-30 years ago. Said that if we eliminated murder, disease, death from old age, etcetera, and the only thing that killed us was accidents, and the accident rate stayed the same, our maximum lifetime would be on the order of 800-900 years. By then, something would get you.
Of course, if the only way we died was in accidents, I strongly suspect the accident rate would plummet, as we then directed our attention to maximum safety.
Which would mean you’re still looking at only a couple of thousand years at best.
Notice how fearless 5 year-olds are? As we become older, we become risk adverse. It is well known that this is not an optimal strategy, and leads to sub-optimal outcomes
Imagine how set in his ways and risk adverse an 80-yo would be if he were risking not just 10 years, but the next 300.
So which is it? Are we more risk averse because of how many years old we are, or because of how few we have left? Neither seems particularly plausible.
I think for humans currently, there are two main reasons why we become more risk-averse:
Hormonal and other “hard-wired” changes. Contrary to your opinion that this is sub-optimal, I think it makes perfect sense. You do a bunch of daredevil stunts that secure you a fit partner and high social standing. Then as you age (and you’re less able to do such stunts) you act to protect and nurture your “investment”.
(You also mentioned children, but while they fit this pattern I would see children are a special case here: they don’t understand what is and is not risky yet).
Ageing itself. Our ability to learn new mental or physical skills goes down. And the injury risk of any given activity goes up.
However, talking of societies rather than individuals, it’s true that as life expectancy goes up, populations generally take fewer risks.
This is generally seen as a good thing: it’s often cited as the reason why many kinds of violent crime have decreased significantly in much of the developed world.
Good point and well put. However, I think there’s another reason time speeds up.
First, let me point out that when we say “time speeds up,” it’s only regarding remembered time, not real-time. Real time doesn’t seem to speed up much, except perhaps we’re quite a bit more patient about a 3-hour wait as adults than kids. Well, some of us …
The other reason is that to some extent we measure remembered time against our whole lives. A year to a 5-year-old is 1/5 of his life; to a 50-year-old, it’s 1/50th, and frankly it does feel a lot like that. Perhaps this is due to the “landmarks” theory, but that would still be true for indefinitely long life. But it wouldn’t lead to time fleeting by like the article posits. That’s just silly.
I think the main reasons are that (a) we learn better, and (b) we get more conservative in general. Not politically, but regarding our behavior. We act the ways we’ve always acted, with less novelty all the time as we age. Mid-life crises tend to be reactions to this, working temporarily the opposite way. I suspect that people who fight this tendence might be the ones who tend to live longer, by keeping mentally young, doing new things all the time.
But of course you’re right that old people are rationally more risk-averse simply because the results are worse. A trip and fall at age 20 is nothing. At age 30, no problem. 40 to 50, OK, just a little longer to heal. 60, could be serious. At 70 or 80, it can be a life-changing event. A friend’s mother aged 100 just fell and broke her hip. It’s practically a death sentence, really tragic, for a woman who was otherwise in remarkably good health and active (they were going out for ice cream).
In any case, I’d leap at the chance of an indefinite lifespan, but only a fool would accept unconditional immortality.
Regarding the 5 reasons article, which assumes you alone (or among a select, secret few) would be immortal:
Evolution will turn you into a freak: Interesting point. Frankly, it won’t just be evolution, but us mucking with our own genes. That won’t be allowed for quite a while, but inevitably it will dominate. We’ll also enhance ourselves artificially. Some of that technology will be applicable to persons already living. Of course, if everyone’s immortal, then you wouldn’t be alone.
Nobody can ever find out: Right, if you’re special. It’d be a hard secret to keep, especially with ID being more and more important and carefully documented. On the other hand, if you have an account long enough even with a tiny return, you’ll be so damn rich you can probably buy your way around this obstacle.
You’re still getting older, mentally: a lot of assumptions here, some I think are pretty questionable, but yeah, mental health would be an issue.
