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If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

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Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#131

Post by reasonattlm »

dahart wrote: post #106

Unfortunately, no, this is pure wishful thinking. Using life expectancy is a misleading argument, and I believe intentionally so. Life expectancy is a function of early mortality. Longevity is the average age at death of people who die only of old age, and it doesn't vary much and hasn't for thousands of years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey De Grey are playing on the hopes and fear…

http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-7954-8-18

The ongoing increase in life expectancy in developed countries is associated with changes in the shape of the survival curve. These changes can be characterized by two main, distinct components: (i) the decline in premature mortality, i.e., the concentration of deaths around some high value of the mean age at death, also termed rectangularization of the survival curve; and (ii) the increase of this mean age at death, i.e., longevity, which directly reflects the reduction of mortality at advanced ages. Several recent observations suggest that both mechanisms are simultaneously taking place. ... We illustrate the method with the evolution of the Swiss mortality data between 1876 and 2006. Using our approach, we are able to say that the increase in longevity and rectangularization explain each about 50% of the secular increase of life expectancy.

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This history has happened without anyone trying deliberately to target and treat the causes of aging - all gains in longevity have been incidental. The difference between the past and the future at this point is that now the research community is just starting to develop therapies that do in fact target and repair the causes of aging. Future results will reflect that change of focus.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#132

Post by jliptzin »

dghf wrote: post #36

> So if you've made it to 150, you're "over the hump" (a long time ago), and then there's simply no limit to how long you can live. Even if we accept that life-extending and rejuvenating technologies will progress as described, and that all diseases will eventually be either curable or eradicated, there's still the risk of death from accident (or murder). In England and Wales in 2010, about 0.025% of the population d…

Perhaps we have already solved death and the world we currently live in is a virtual reality in which death is simply a reboot cycle where memory is wiped and new attributes are assigned.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#134

Post by madaxe_again »

Big damned if. Personally, I expect us to all starve or burn within the next 30 years. We have repeatedly shown that we are not responsible guardians of our own technology, and our disasters just get bigger.

Additionally, immortality is not a good thing. It would lead to domination of the world from now until eternity by the powers that be at the point at which the tech becomes available, stagnation of development (if you have 1000 years to do something, you'll take your time), and ultimately the depletion of what it is to be human.

The only way immortality could work would be with a complete moratorium on new births, and perhaps a Logan's Run style annual carrousel that randomly eliminates a percentage of the population.

None of that sounds better than what we have now.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#135

Post by Benjammer »

btbuildem wrote: post #85
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the reduced risk of death from injury, you also have to account for a change in behavior. I posit that we would all act very differently if we knew our life expectancy to be a few thousand years. I'd venture a guess that we would be a lot more risk-averse. Society would look drastically different.

Not really. Only the wealthy would have access to this technology, the poor would still have normal life expectancy. Society would look the way it does now (stratified), just more so.

Check out the book Altered Carbon if you want a sci fi series about pretty much this exact scenario.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#136

Post by kayoone »

adventured wrote: post #93
Udo wrote: post #38

I consider myself a transhumanist, though even I can't help but notice that these advances always seem just close enough so the author might manage to benefit from them shortly before he expects to die. Kurzweil did the same thing. I used to do yearly blog posts on the current state of whole brain emulation, and we are very very far away from any breakthrough there. So far away in fact that some prominent neuro scien…

The part where you think we're very far away, may be because a breakthrough is most likely going to be revolutionary when it occurs. Rather than a small increment, it'll be a substantial leap (even if it's not recognized at that moment). On the order of the transistor. I'd be very skeptical that it will be noticed that it's possible, around the time that leap forward is about to occur. History indicates the exact opp…

You totally had me until you mentioned VR which is totally trivial compared to emulating a human brain. I think there was never the question if VR would be possible because we had forms of it 2 decades ago. It was more a question about the market actually existing and technology become faster and smaller to make it financially viable for mainstream consumers.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#137

Post by krisdol »

dghf wrote: post #36

> So if you've made it to 150, you're "over the hump" (a long time ago), and then there's simply no limit to how long you can live. Even if we accept that life-extending and rejuvenating technologies will progress as described, and that all diseases will eventually be either curable or eradicated, there's still the risk of death from accident (or murder). In England and Wales in 2010, about 0.025% of the population d…

Then we have the rich not only figuratively starving out the poor by hoarding wealth, land, and production; but, also literally starving them out by simply refusing to die while excessively consuming resources into eternity.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#138

Post by mc808 »

harperlee wrote: post #72
peteretep wrote: post #2

There's a whole profession of people whose job it is to predict this called actuaries. They disagree with your conclusion.

But it's in their best interest to assume it wont happen. If I correctly predict, as an actuary, the demise of the industry, I don't win anything. If I can calculate a superprecise premium for my insurance product based on this being true, I have an expensive product that underperforms the competition, and management is not happy. Whereas if I ignore superlong trends, I get to earn my salary, probably until I retire…

If actuaries can collectively predict the future, then term life insurance premiums should show a strong trend down as we approach the point where longevity increases significantly (adjusting for income, inflation, etc). From a few seconds of googling, they seem to be flat or increasing. It might be good to look back in 100 years and see if they got it right.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#139

Post by technofiend »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #127
dghf wrote: post #36

> So if you've made it to 150, you're "over the hump" (a long time ago), and then there's simply no limit to how long you can live. Even if we accept that life-extending and rejuvenating technologies will progress as described, and that all diseases will eventually be either curable or eradicated, there's still the risk of death from accident (or murder). In England and Wales in 2010, about 0.025% of the population d…

For this reason I'd predict a society of immortal conservatives. No risk is worth taking. Speed limits drop precipitously. Traffic infractions become federal offenses. Interest rates drop to nil. Everyone would just have too much at risk, to allow anything dicey.

There are a great number of books that explore this subject. Robert A. Heinlein's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah%27s_Children is an early treatment. As you say at least one society (I'm sorry I don't remember the book) became increasingly risk-averse and added to an ever-growing list of death penalty crimes to feed the organ banks. Rather than utopia my fear is that would be closer to the truth.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#140

Post by crusso »

btbuildem wrote: post #85
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the reduced risk of death from injury, you also have to account for a change in behavior. I posit that we would all act very differently if we knew our life expectancy to be a few thousand years. I'd venture a guess that we would be a lot more risk-averse. Society would look drastically different.

Not really. Only the wealthy would have access to this technology, the poor would still have normal life expectancy. Society would look the way it does now (stratified), just more so.

I remember when I was a kid how people said the same thing about the ability to own computers.
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