Since there are so many facets to consider, I’ll just point out one of them.
The environment would be much better taken care of.
If people knew that if they screwed things up today, they would bear the direct consequences of it later, it would impact far more than some vague idea of what will happen long after they are comfortably dead.
On other matters, I note that unless we are also invulnerable, then nobody would live beyond about 500 years old. Fatal accidents are common enough to ensure this.
I think we would redefine how we deal with money.
Those of us who had lived a couple of hundred years or so would have an unbelievable amount of money compared to someone who had just been born.
Have you ever seen those charts that detail te difference between putting away $2000/year starting at age 20 vs. starting at age 30?
Could you imagine them going on for thousands of years?
I think space exploration would increase. People like risk, so you would always be willing to find someone to fly off into space. We would have a whole different set of priorities since we didn’t have to worry about paying for our retirement, insurance or disability.
We would have to get licenses to have children, and depending on how overcrowded we get, I could see the death sentence becoming used a lot more often.
I once got into a very heated discussion about this, and originally took the position that immortality would destroy our current value system.
After a discussion on a totally different topic, I realized that I was failing to account for one simple premise: huamsn can never be satisfied. Because of this, granting immorality (protection from aged death and age’s associated chronic illnesses) would change things a bit, but wouldn’t be detrimental overall.
I think, in that ridiculously metaphorical sense of the word, that we have already discovered immortality. All it takes is lots of money, lots of drama, and endless self-promotion. Not very deep, but very true.
Think of OJ Simpson… Bill Gates… The guy who owns Petronas in Malaysia… Suharto… The Sultan of Brunei. The list goes on, but clearly, these folks will live on long after their death (Though not nessecarily in the United States).
Infinite Life divided by Finite amount of things to do equals terminal boredom. Once you’ve done it all, said it all and seen it all what is left? At a certain point after millions or billions of years we’d die from ennui
Overpopulation - If mankind didn’t take care of this himself, then the world would since people could still starve to death.
Disease/accidents - as time goes by, people will get diseases and accidents that couldn’t be 100% corrected. Over a long period of time, people would become more and more incapacitated. This would also cause people to be less willing to take risks.
Power struggles - What would the ‘young’ do? From the very beginning, the people who have good positions in work/society would not age and die off leaving room for the young to grow into. Do you think someone who was 22 or 18 when immortality was implemented would be content to be on a lower rung of work/society because there isn’t attrition wearing away at the people ‘above’ them? There would probably be strife from this group rebelling against this static social structure.
On a similar note, people with lots of money would never go away, they would just accumulate more and more. I see a very static society developing.
Loneliness/boredom - you wouldn’t have many children and, at least to me, it appears harder and harder to make close friends as I get older, the world would get less interpersonal. I also imagine that the same life would get boring after just a few hundred years. You would still have to work (or civilization collapses and you die). The enthusiasm for life would fade and people would probably essentially wile away eternity without accomplishing much.
No Incentives - Assuming you can’t sock away money till you’re rich and could retire forever(if people could, who would do the work, serve you the drinks?) that means that a system would be in place to keep people from getting rich … and working. Why strive?
Procrastination - I’ve got forever, I’ll start tomorrow, or next year or next century… The young strive and take risks, the older get settled. Imagine a society where everyone acts middle-age to old.
Static, boring, lazy society…
NOW, I think it would be beneficial to have a lifespan of 100-200 years with a person not aging till they drop. I think that would open things up for people to think more long term and have a higher quality of life.
Since people are mentioning authors, Isaac Asimov, in some of his ‘robot’ novels had people live thousands of years and it came off as above except everyone could retire and robots did all the work. The society stagnated and collapsed.
Well you have to bear in mind that a science fiction story isn’t really a decent cite…
A society of immortals served by robot slaves in which most scarcity has been dealt with… would be an interesting proposition. I think that it could resemble utopia. Of course our economic system (i.e. money) would be inadequate to cope with it.
Terry Pratchett in Strata postulated a future in which days themselves were the currency - i.e. you were paid with the ability to extend your life. (of course a science fiction story isn’t really a decent cite…)
This is a question that is getting more and more important. As we break down the Genome and Proteome and feed them into our monster computers we are going to gain alot of medical powers. A state resembling immortality may indeed arise (maybe sooner than you think). Problems? Yes. Worth it? Hell yes.
The issues (as others have mentioned) involved include:
Population: We will definately need more real estate. Hopefully this technology will come with advances in Space Launch and Propulsion Technology.
Distribution: To only give it to the rich would ensure war.
What to do: How about build cities across the universe, sing, dance, paint, solar sail reaces, find out the true nature of the Universe, classify and name every sun and planet, create new species and societies everywhere, and find out once and for all wether there is a God.
Resources (food, energy, etc.): There will need to be tremendous advances in these technologies. Hopefully, having our best minds and inventors not die would speed this process along.
I would rather spend eternity alive and trying to find a way to. We should have a 500 year get-together in 2501 for those of us who make it!!!
An immortality that works is one where you can die, but you have backup, so you can be restored to a life, say, yesterday, before you killed yourself. A bunch of cloned bodies in the closet, just waiting for brain data.
Or, Artificial Intelligence where you transfer your intelligence to an artificial being. This is probably less realistic as humans are less likely to give up a lot of things that are considered “living”, such as eating, sex, all kinds of nasty, fun body things, etc.
Immortality in this case would be wild! You could do anything and know that there is backup. Think of the EXTREME sports - diving of a cliff - no parachute, no problem!
Think if you had sex with a supermodel and forgot to back it up and lost it forever!
Ok. You back up your brain data, and when you die, have it inserted into a new clone body. All fine and good, right?
But what if you insert it into a clone while you’re still alive, and that clone then says “Thanks! I don’t need you any more.” Though rationally you may accept that your consciousness would carry on (if we assume a 100% exact copy of your brain, down to the littlest neuron firing) in the new body, how accepting would you be to die yourself?
This is a good question and illustrates the main problem I have with the “backup” strategy towards immortality. I want me to continue, not copies of me. If you can record all my old memories and ID and upload that data into a computer, it does not make the original go away.
The question that needs to be answered is “What is the minimum amount of biological material I need to still be me?”. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I want to be sure that at least that much of me stays in existence at all times. Hook my actual brain into a computer like the evil robot in Robocop 2 or was it 3? Not to say I’d be an evil immortal.
If my brains gone, so am I. Even if a backup of everything that makes me can be made, the data becomes it’s own thing with it’s own perception separate from mine. Even though we would share common memories, we would be separate. I have a similar problem with some proposed transporter technology.
How do you know that every night up to now when “you” have gone to sleep, that “you” haven’t actually died and been replaced the following morning? When you woke up this morning, you had most of the memories of your 10,000-odd predecessors, but “you” are actually a brand-new being with the life-span of a mayfly. You are going to die tonight, but you can take comfort in the thought that an exact copy of “you” will arise tomorrow and draw on the same databank of memories that you’ve borrowed and contributed to during this brief span.
Indeed. How do I know I am not a brain in a vat running a simulation? How does one tell whether the reality they see and hear is real, or if they are sitting in a padded room immersed in dillusional fantasy? There is no way to tell. Just look out for those glitches in the matrix.
Seriously though, since you alreadly lose consciousness every twenty-four hours, how would that be different from ceasing higher brain functions in your current body and regaining them in your doppelganger? Couldn’t you argue that the “you” of the future and the “you” of the past are already separate entities, with the only difference now being that they are separated by physical bodies as well as time?
First, I would not say I lose consiuosness once every 24 hours. I would say my consiuosness changes once every 24 hours. While I am asleep, I still have perception. I dream and when I awake I remember the dreams. While I am asleep the dreams seem just as real as reality does when I am awake. Who is to say which perception is more valid. It is a good illustration of how much perception effects reality. As far as the doppleganger question . . .
It gets down to the question “What is you?” and boy if it aint a toughie. Some think that there is no real individual (ID). It is an illusion that arises out of the combination of millions (billions?) of cells interacting. I don’t really buy this (that it’s an illusion), but I can’t prove it’s not true, so it must remain as a possibility. The physical nature of consiousness is not yet well enough understood to say for sure, one way or another. Very quickly words like “soul” start getting thrown around and that is a tricky subject. But if you can make a copy of me, and we can exist at the same time, damn if I don’t want this body to be destroyed, just cause there is another one sharing my memories and personality. How much of my body can you hack away without taking away my sense of self?
Is ID a simple trick of cells to help them live longer? Or is there more to it. Is there a consiousness that can live, and can die (even if it can be duplicated)? Tough one. I don’t know the answer, but I don’t want to risk destroying myself until I do.
An extremely interesting sci-fi work that deals with this issue is the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson,
Red Mars Green Mars Blue Mars
These books have won numerous big sci-fi awards, and are a fantastic read (and i’m not generally an sf reader).
While the people of earth (and of Mars - the books are about the colonisation of the planet by humans) cannot become immortal, they can undergo genetic manipulation that allows them to live an extremely long time. Robinson deals with this issue in a really smart way, politicising it in what seems to me to be a very realistic manner. Given that there is not enough time nor enough doctors nor enough equipment to treat the 12 billion or so people who populate the earth in the books, of course the treatment becomes reserved for those with money, power and influence. This causes massive political disturbances, riots, etc. on Earth and on Mars.
It’s all quite an interesting comment on the adoption of new technologies. Many people like to think that such a discovery would benefit everyone, but the reality of power meansd that such an outcome is unlikely. Another interesting aspect is that, for those inabiting the Earth at the time of such a discovery, it would become a race to become either the last people to die, or the first to live (almost) forever. Now there’s cause for urgency if you think you’re going to be left behind.
