I was watching this video (warning, long ass video) which discusses some of the implications of radical life extension. Assuming you don’t want to watch the long ass video, basically, it means a biotech breakthrough that allows humans to essentially halt and reverse or radically slow down aging. Obviously, this is going to have some fundamental implications for society. If you have a tech that reverses aging, say, then you would have a ton of folks who are out of the workforce today back in the workforce. I’m going to also say let’s assume this new tech is available to just about anyone who can afford any prescription drugs today or has access to a semi-competent chemist. If people could live without aging until, say, 500 or 1000 then assuming they aren’t killed in an accident, through disease or other mishaps, you could have someone who has decades or even centuries of experience competing with people who are just getting into the workforce…that would have HUGE implications. Retirement would be another…all retirement plans basically use actuary data to project how they will meet their fiscal outlays…and all that data would be out the window. How could you have a retirement if you could live 500 years, or a thousand (or more)? You certainly couldn’t, unless you were one of the ultra-rich, retire after a mere 60-80 years for the rest of your life. Not even sure who’d want to do that. Then you have over population, though I agree with linked video that this problem is way overblown at least in the short term. Other issues would be impacting us more in the short term, IMHO.
At any rate, what are your thoughts? What implications do you see in such a technology? We aren’t discussion HOW we’d get this tech, or even if it’s feasible or not…I think it is, but that’s not the point of the IMHO discussion. I’d like to stick to implications, and perhaps discuss whether we SHOULD do such a think. Recently on an episode of Through the Worm Hole on the Sci Channel this topic was also discussed, and one of the segments was by a European guy who said it’s a very bad idea…that we need people to die for a variety of reasons (of course, it’s a bit of a strawman argument, since even with radical life extension people would still die, just like they do today, from things other than old age).
I think the tech would be restricted to the extremely wealthy and powerful. How will it play out when the greedheads have centuries in which to consolidate their grip on things?
I don’t know…Having struggled with self esteem issues due to my race and gender African appearance (think I’m unattractive and masculine looking) along with my desire to be a lighter androgynous guy, I don’t think I want to be living the next 5 years let alone thinking about half a millennium.
I suppose if you’re life is nice then…certainly. More power to you! But I don’t know, As much I’m that guy who doesn’t like logical fallacies (the one where people complain about us throwing money into space with NASA instead of spending it on the needy)I’d say that we’d be more better on tapping into our bodies in other ways (emulating effects of heroin and cocaine in the brain, perfecting plastic surgery) as well as offering social benefits (voluntary sterilization)
Wasn’t it Lincoln who said something like ‘It’s not the years in your life but the life in those years’? :dubious:
I doubt this unless the process uses some sort of highly expensive ingredients or some very complex and difficult process to manufacture. For the sake of this discussion, assume it’s neither and that it’s available to just about everyone. In the video, the author has a scenario where a breakthrough is made by a Nobel chemist who decides that it’s too important to allow big companies to restrict it and also who doesn’t feel right waiting for government approval of the drug, so releases the formula and process to the internet, use at your own risk. It’s a process with ingredients that any good chemist can manufacture. Obviously, the government would still be looking into it, and perhaps some company would still be able to get a patent, but once it’s out in the wild like that it’s going to be very difficult to keep under wraps and only sell to rich people.
That would obviously be your choice. No one is going to force you to take the drug. By the same token, I don’t see how it’s right or ethical to stop people who don’t feel the same way from taking it. I assume that some percentage of the population would feel like you do. I’m sure many religious types especially would, but also folks who don’t want to burden the earth, think it’s unnatural, or just don’t feel their lives are worth extending that long. I also assume that, even folks who take it might eventually get tired of life and opt out at some point. Then, of course, you just have ordinary things that kill people today taking their toll.
Our whole system of resource/wealth management is dependent upon our relatively predictable lifespan.
Assuming this innovation is accessible to a meaningful portion of the population, we’d have a complete breakdown of our economy within, say, 30 years of its implementation.
It basically accelerates the current issues with automation and the employment-based, capitalist model under which we currently work (namely, as time goes on fewer and fewer people are needed to work jobs that maintain/improve quality of life, yet employment is practically the only way to ensure basic needs like shelter, food, warmth, and basic medical care).
I think Scumpup raises a good point. Our political and economic systems have always been built around the idea of change through mortality. No matter how powerful somebody is now, time will inevitably remove them from power. It would be a profound change if that wasn’t true. A strong-willed dictator could take over a country and then rule it for centuries.
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Our whole system of resource/wealth management is dependent upon our relatively predictable lifespan.
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It didn’t have a similar effect when we went from a life expectancy of, say, 30 to today’s 80+ in some nations. That’s a nearly 300% increase. Going from 80, today, to 500 or a 1000 is a larger jump, but it’s not THAT larger of a jump.
Why in 30 years? We are only talking about a relatively small increase in overall population world wide in that time frame. In the US each year around 2.5 million people die from all causes. Even if ALL of those people stopped dying that’s only 75 million. And that wouldn’t be the case at all. Around 4 million babies are born in the US each year. That’s only an additional 120 million in 30 years. Why would these numbers, which are way over the reality, cause an economic collapse??
It’s a problem we have on the horizon with or without radical life extension. My own thought on this is that, as in the past, we will find a way to utilize that extra labor somehow. At the turn of the 19th century in the US over 90% of the population was in agriculture…today it’s less than 3%. That didn’t mean that 87% of the population was unemployed. What will people do as automation becomes more and more prevalent? No idea, though personally, I think it will be something we wouldn’t even recognize as ‘work’ today…just as those people in 1900 couldn’t or wouldn’t recognize what most people on this board do today as ‘work’. But it’s a good point you make…regardless of radical life extension it’s an issue we will have to resolve in the future, and radical life extension might exacerbate it. If you live for a thousand years but don’t have work it would be not only a bad life for you but also a burden on society to maintain you for all that time.
How many powerful dictators today or in the past have died of old age? I can think of a few, but in several of those cases it’s pretty clear that had they stayed in power due to life extension their systems would have collapsed even faster. Stalin, for one…had he remained in power I doubt he’d have ruled for centuries. Mao is another…same thing. The various Kimmy’s (say versions 1 and 2)…eventually, the jig will be up and they would, IMHO, face the music.
COULD it be a problem? Sure. But ISTM that most dictators don’t even survive today’s life expectancy, let alone in it for potential centuries. I wonder, though, if it would change our own political system. Would it still make sense to have a president only in office for 4 years and only 2 terms? Or, on the other side, offices that have no effective term limit today except death. You certainly wouldn’t want a USCJ in office for ‘life’, when that could mean 1000 years. At least I wouldn’t think so, though a lot could be said for someone with 500 or 1000 years of experience in something.
So a change in human social structure. Which we have seen many times in our histiry, From hunter gatherers to farmers to being urban dwellers.
A long lifespan would be a similar change. We have seen some examples of it. It used to be childhood, adulthood, old age. Now its childhood, teenage years, adulthood, middle age, old age. And the twenties are fast becoming another age level. People are also living decades in old age, so much so that these days the sixties is no longer seen as “old age”. Something similar would happen if people could live several centuries.
If you ask people if they would like to live forever, a significant number will answer “no”. I could NEVER understand this. Actually, I guess I do. About 3/4 of the people don’t believe they will really be dead when they die. This is the ultimate cruel joke.
I have always wanted to live forever, and that death is the ultimate tragedy; the end of existence. I also think that life is just extremely complex biochemistry and that the foundation is being laid to control and reverse aging. Unfortunately, this will take some time, and it will probably not happen soon enough for us, but I could see it happening for a person born today or that person’s children.
As for the implications for society, the questions of employment and retirement are the least of it. If we can pull this off, dark factories will produce all the stuff we need. Organizing all this can be child’s play.
Also, that 3/4 who want to experience the afterlife will have that option, and will be “retired” out there with the angels.
The short answer is overpopulation would run rampant, our food supply would not be even close to sustaining it and wars would, eventually, erupt over food supply and space.
We would eventually go to a lottery system for reproducing and would see a looooot less kids in the world.
Conversely, what could (and IMHO probably would) happen is that people would simply have less kids, or have them later in life. Today, especially in the industrialized world (where this is likely to have the biggest impact), a lot of people who have kids do this already…and many feel compelled to do it when they think their biological clock is ticking down. If you could live to, say, 1000, there wouldn’t be any real urgency in having kids today…or even in 50 years. You might choose to, but just like today, a lot of folks would choose not to or chose to put it off until they were at a place where it made sense financially and also wrt their lives and goals. Look at Europe or Japan, for instance.
I think this aspect is way overblown…I don’t see it in the numbers or in the way people actually behave once they get even the life extension we enjoy already. In most countries where you GET higher levels of life extension, you have lower populations and people having kids later in life. I think that trend will hold true for this as well.
We’re really talking about two different things here. The low life expectancy of the past was skewed by the high rate of infant and childhood mortality and infectious disease. Maximum lifetimes determined by ageing at the cellular level have not changed. We are just now barely scratching the surface here.
Not really. You are correct that life expectancy has to do a lot with when you die, and that because you have a life expectancy that’s, say, 30, that doesn’t mean you will die at 30…it probably means that if you GET to 30 you’ll live quite long, but that many don’t even get out of their childhood. But, today, it’s kind of the same thing. US life expectancy is lower than many other countries, and part of that is we still have a relatively high infant mortality rate, but also that we have a lot of deaths in the teens to 20’s as well…and then another big bump of middle-aged deaths due to a variety of reasons.
Thing is, if you stop aging alone, none of that really changes. You COULD live to 1000, but probability wise most won’t, because even if the probability of your death goes to something like .1 or even .01% per year it’s going to mount as you get older. I’m not proposing some magical cure all for every disease, simply that we figure out a way to stop people from aging and, perhaps, are able to reverse aging in the already elderly. All other factors, however, are in play.
A number of lifetime contracts would have to be modified. Marriage, for one - I can see marriage contracts for specific terms or purposes being common, with pre-negotiated penalties for early withdrawal, things like that.
Debt would explode. Instead of 30 year mortgages, you could have a 300 year mortgage.
“Adolescence” would be prolonged. You may have a society where the under-100 year-olds are considered “immature”.
Suicide would be the most common form of death, followed by accidents and murder. Negligence that leads to a death will be more shocking, and penalties will be far more severe. (ETA: just saw the post above this, which probably changes this prediction, but I don’t want to be bothered. )
How do you give a lifetime sentence?
Religions with the message “your blessings come after death” will need to revise their marketing message.
Are there any countries operating a modern economy where most people expect to be unable to work meaningfully by age 27, and dead by 35? That would be a better comparison.
Remove infant/child mortality from the equation, and while there still have been significant changes to life expectancy, I don’t think that a 300% increase is an accurate reflection of practical life expectancy for people who have lived to age 10, for example.
Also, even granting that an X% change in life expectancy didn’t disrupt systems, it doesn’t follow that you can assume that that means that subsequent increases of X% will also not disrupt things.
Where are the extra jobs going to come from, with this added bump of +1-2 million workers every year? Unemployment will begin to rise almost immediately.
Again, just because in the past there was room for both increased efficiency and massive growth in our current economic system does not mean that it can continue to do both forever. Increased efficiency (less need for person-hours of labor to produce enough to satisfy people’s basic needs), coupled with increased dependency on the state of “being employed” to have access to the product of that labor, coupled with significant increases in the number of people who need access to that product is a recipe for disaster.
I think you’re right in a later post where you say that ultimately people may start having kids much later in life, so things might even out, but in the near term it’s too late; which is why I said 30 years. We’ve already got young people who will be entering the workforce over the next 20-30 years who are going to find no opportunity (or, elderly people being kicked out with no way to provide for the next 100s of years of their own welfare).
So i can live to see every single person i ever knew, who didn’t have the money to play the immortality game?
No thanks.
On a practical sense…
People will still make babies right?
And there are a finite number of jobs to go around.
If we have 3 or 4 generations of old timers running about playing the immortal Zeus, and they are not getting old retiring then dying, how are the younger people going to get jobs?
And eventually we got too many living people that food becomes an issue on a wide scale.
A vast amount of science fiction (and fantasy) covering this topic. So many variables on the idea. If you go back to the physical age of a teenager/early 20s, do you start to act again like a teen, ruled by hormones, or do you act more like your mental age? Are you able to retain your memories throughout your life or do you forget the older stuff so that you may be 500 years old, but have forgotten 400 years of it? Does your aging halt forever once you start taking regular treatments, or is it something that you take once to reverse the aging, age regularly for a few decades, then take again? Etc.
One recent book with one of the primary plot lines concerning the development of a (difficult, extremely expensive) anti-aging treatment and consequences of its use is Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer.
Also featuring (but not centered around) issues of anti-aging treatments are the books of Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth series of novels. In those books, the treatments are available but not cheap–casually available to the very rich, something that must be saved for over decades for the masses. And whenever someone has their age reset, there are places they go that are basically endless parties/orgies to take care of their newly rejuvenated hormones. (And people could and did expect to spend centuries working their way up corporate ladders, but never reaching the top because of the entrenched leadership that is too rich and stubborn to die and get out of the way.)
Another book I read (but long ago, and I don’t remember the title) involved virtual immortals who built their structures and machines very, very well, because who wants to bother with the hassle of having to replace their car every few decades when you can just make it work for centuries?
A world with centuries or more of lifetime in easy reach would have to have either 1.) a constantly increasing population, driving down the quality of live and driving natural resources to the breaking point 2.) vastly cheaper and easier access to space and off-world colonies to export excess population or 3.) restrictions on reproduction much more draconian than China’s One Child policy (the Chinese, after all, only had to be limited to 1 child per 50 years or so–immortals might be limited to 1 child per 500 years.)
Definitely restrictions on having children because the earth would overpopulate rapidly. Some shift in the way people save for the future. What you can save your first 60-70 years won’t last for another 400 years, but people will be able to keep working and saving longer, so they may start later and build up larger sums before retiring. All that assumes the economy can be maintained which may be difficult with a growing population and not many retirements. And then a growing number of people requiring assistance as they stay alive but become disabled in some way over the years. Lots spoiled children who don’t get inheritances because their parents aren’t dead yet and fewer may have anything left when they go.
Great business for Hallmark because everyone has tons of children, nieces, nephews, etc. through more generations. The aisle for Happy Birthday Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandma will be huge. Weddings will be attended by thousands of relatives. You have to worry a lot more that you could be dating a close relative, maybe your own grandchild.
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