This article begins with a fallacy based on "life expectancy", which is the expected age at death across all individuals. By far the highest mortality, historically, was under five mortality; life expectancy went up in the 20th century primarily because infants are now less likely to die. If you consider mortality after age 20 there has only been a ~10 year increase in life expectancy.
We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
21–30 of 49 posts
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#22I 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…
> Today, there is not a single medicine that people can take because it extends lifespans.
Metformin. Originally used to treat diabetes, we’ve slowly begun to realize that the users of it tend to live longer than non-users. There are some studies running now to determine if it’s effective, but there are already people taking it daily to try and live longer.
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#23In order to be truly immortal one needs to be indestructible. The chance to die in an accident essentially limits the average human life span to around 200 years.
(Ironically, indestructibility, on the other hand, can lead to situations that are worse than death.)
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#24The idea of immortality is absurd. At some point you have to toss out the old model and replace it with a new one. Way longer lifespans than we expect today we might just see. Immortality means forever though.
Immortality should be thought of as an abstraction, similar to infinity. You are immortal if you die without you (or anyone) noticing.
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#25The piece is very concerned with the individual effects of immortality, or extreme longevity, but the first thought that scared me was the cultural effects on our species. I'm already worried about the number of very old people that predominantly govern our countries, but a congress full of 500 year old boomers, now that's material for a horror novel. For me immortality seems like a recipe for stagnation and inequali…
I think a lot of that come from slowing down and being afraid of change and learning. Presumably if you could live to 500, your cognitive function would be 'peak' for much, much longer. It's unlikely we would do a good job of predicting what that would do to humans and human culture.
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#26The piece is very concerned with the individual effects of immortality, or extreme longevity, but the first thought that scared me was the cultural effects on our species. I'm already worried about the number of very old people that predominantly govern our countries, but a congress full of 500 year old boomers, now that's material for a horror novel. For me immortality seems like a recipe for stagnation and inequali…
You’re in luck, it won’t be boomers, but it could be gen-z’ers...
But, yes, there is no churn, no opportunity to have s change of the guard. If it becomes very, very slow.
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#27SciFi 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.
Another interesting treatment of "immortality" in fiction is the Chasm City/Glitter Band/Yellowstone society from Alastair Reynolds' novels. 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. Rins…
Eh I assume medical science will be an exponential curve where this chain would only be a thing for the oldest generation that goes through it. I mean 100ish years ago cocaine was a cure all and now we have a protein that can individually identify and replace genes.
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#28“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.
Prey species are very aware of their own death.
Found the rabbit.
But seriously they aren't aware of death they just act based on evolutionary impulses that in the past made their ancestors not die. A prey creature has zero cognition of its own death.
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#29You have to completely solve the population explosion issue before anyone who is likely to write about it, will be immortal. Since that issue seems likely to exist for the next 50 years, I doubt anyone alive today will be immortal, or if they are it'll be maybe limited to zuckerberg - I can't think of anyone else young enough and rich enough to benefit from it.
Thing is its not like most medical procedures stay inaccessible for that long once they're proven to work. Maybe zuck would be fortuitous if he was on his deathbed and something came out, but give anything a few years and it'll be available to the masses. And that hopefully will become more true with time.
Re: We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal
#30Immortal 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.
My mother-in-law says that she doesn't know anyone who's lived past 80 who doesn't regret it.
I know some people who have lived past 80 without regretting it, but they invariably share a few basic features: their lives are filled with constructive things to do (even if those things are not always enjoyable), they have an internal purpose or direction, and they take time to enjoy whatever spare moments they can grab.
In particular, I know of one octogenarian who works part-time in the IT field as a mid-level support tech in a large company. He’s the one who sets up systems, replaces broken mice and monitors, and gives printers a good whack upside the chassis when they misbehave. It’s light enough work for him to keep up with the field, but important enough that he feels valued.
And the company loves him. To everyone there he’s their “Opa”, and that’s what makes him jump out of bed every morning.