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I am baffled as to why people are saying that we are about to allow people to become immortal when we have zero evidence that we cam extend the natural lifespan at all. Today, there is not a single medicine that people can take because it extends lifespans. I am obviously not counting regular medicine like vaccines and antibiotics etc, they increase our likelihood of reaching the natural lifespan limit but do not ext…
SciFi author Ian Banks 's culture series explores a future civilization where people is potentially immortal but in that society it happens that lots of people lives 150 / 200 or 300 years an then they choose self termination.
Rather than achieving true immortality through some one-off miracle pill a la Golden Age pulps, "immortality" is a sequence of stopgaps - one life-extension therapy gives an individual enough time for science to advance to the point where it comes up with another extension. Rinse and repeat for eternity (or until your nanotech goes crazy and melts you from the inside out, whoops).
The sociological consequences of a system like this, where maintaining your immortality through the pursuit of enough wealth, prestige and tech to get your hands on the hottest new therapies becomes practically a raison d'etre in and of itself, are an interesting contrast to Banks' utopianism. I'd love for us to go Culture, but I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised to see some variation of the therapy-chain thing during my natural lifespan.
There’s evidence this is not true. Many animals mourn the dead, and many animals will routinely remove older animals from power/leadership.
You don't want to live forever. Because if you live forever, the probability of you eventually getting trapped somewhere forever is 1.
Immortal as in reproductively, intellectually and physically functional, or sitting in a nursing home at huge social expense for 50 years immortal? I think people are more interested in having working joints, no wrinkles, youthful energy and libido, and a full head of hair for an additional 20 years than immortality.
“To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death. – Jorge Luis Borges” There’s evidence this is not true. Many animals mourn the dead, and many animals will routinely remove older animals from power/leadership.
For me immortality seems like a recipe for stagnation and inequality rather than dynamism and renewal. Unless individuals suddenly learn to change, to adapt and to give up their old ways (in which case what's really the point of thinking of yourself as immortal or a continuous entity), I think there's a very obvious upside to birth and death.