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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

#41

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

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…

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.

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

#42

Post by jerf »

tomswartz07 wrote: post #37
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…

On a lighter note, I can imagine that the size of the ego which accompanies the type of person that lives to 9,000 years old would more than likely encourage someone to poison or strangle them.

You gotta play the game theory out. An 8,500-year-old strangling a 9,000-year-old needs to be asking hard questions about the sort of incentive structure they're producing for the 8,000-year-olds.

The world where life span runs on like that is deeply, profoundly weird, and thinking about it is hard because it's so unlike where we live. You can't just imagine one 9,000-year-old and try to imagine what the world is like, because they will not be alone.

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

#44

Post by pc86 »

totony wrote: post #35
adrianN wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not want to stop people from dying?

You wouldn't want population growth to outgrow your capacity. Also, usually, the longer someone lives, the more their ideology defines them. Could be a problem too

Your argument is "we don't want more old people because I disagree with them ideologically." Shoddy at best.

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

#45

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

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…

raises an interesting philosophical question: If one would commit murder and the victim has already lived 500 years is it then as much a crime as if the victim were 25 yro?

e.g. Assuming not everyone could afford the technology and you have a 30 yro killer who lacks the funds to rejuvinate committing murder on somebody much older. Would that even be a crime or could it be argued that a 2nd class citizen has only tried to revenge or to set right to what they perceive an unjust society.

Playing god is scary. I think we can only do it if we are really thick enough and full of our selves to believe that certain individuals are better than the rest. (... of course all under the usual disguise of democracy and with a system that ensures the majority of those living under it, that what they do is right and for the greater good).

People suck :-/

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

#47

Post by fsloth »

As I see it Kurzweil's predictions were mostly based on his understanding of computational complexity and extrapolating the development trend in semiconductor technlogy - and figuring out which things are practical. But still, extrapolation based on more or less theoretically well understood concrete principles.

I'm not sure if there is yet anything well understood in the human body. Just mapping the genome will give us very little hints of the consequences in the physical body. Even figuring out how a protein folds is still considered a computational achievement (I think?).

Chess is a concrete computational system. Even most tasks that we have can be considered to be constrainable to a well defined system (hence the AI will replace a lot of manual workforce).

But until such a well defined "theory of human body" exists, computers are quite helpless to create it for us. Just adding computers will not magically make us understand everything better.

Thus, just quoting "exponential development" will certainly provide nice food for thought but will not offer any practical footholds for concrete progress.

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

#48

Post by pc86 »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #45
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…

raises an interesting philosophical question: If one would commit murder and the victim has already lived 500 years is it then as much a crime as if the victim were 25 yro? e.g. Assuming not everyone could afford the technology and you have a 30 yro killer who lacks the funds to rejuvinate committing murder on somebody much older. Would that even be a crime or could it be argued that a 2nd class citizen has only trie…

> If one would commit murder and the victim has already lived 500 years is it then as much a crime as if the victim were 25 yro?

Yes.

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

#49

Post by ComteDeLaFere »

I feel like these types of articles always miss a key point, which can easily be corrected by adding the phrase "If You're Filthy Rich" to the end of any headline.

"Cure for Cancer Around the Corner, If You're Filthy Rich"

And...

If You're Alive in 30 Years You Might be in 1000 Years Too, If You're Filthy Rich"

See? Clarity is king.

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

#50

Post by neuromancer2701 »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #41
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…

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.

Why wouldn't we be more risky if we knew we would live for 3000 years. Instead of 5-10 years of drinking and partying we would have 100-200 years of extended "college" years.

There no pressure to get your stuff together if you know you can mess around for a couple of centuries and still have time to get your life in order.

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