51–60 of 111 posts
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Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love. -lazarus long
Think how many offspring you could spawn in a thousand years.
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The problem with death is that it's irreversible. If I'm bored today, I might still find something interesting tomorrow. If I'm dead today, I'll still be dead tomorrow.
How likely are you to find something new and interesting if you are a universe sized super intellect?
Living a thousand years has some pretty interesting implications. - Things that seem safe will become dangerous. Small daily risks, such as crossing a red light, will have a much bigger chance of killing you. If you live 15 times as long the risk is 15 times as big. Expect to see people being insulated from the daily dangers of the world. - Our personal drive will diminish. If you want to do a startup (or whatever el…
Imagine the implications for wealth, too. If the means of life extension is not hideously expensive, then anyone past a certain age with even the smallest bit of sense will be rich beyond the dreams of mortal men. Compound interest works. This would have interesting social ramifications. As it is, most states are organized such that the old are relatively rich, the young are relatively poor, and the young's income su…
I think we are closer to a post scarcity economy than we realize. The biggest big ticket item is housing. The biggest item in the cost of housing in sub/urban areas is land. If we disperse to small towns, the cost of land goes down. If housing were really low cost and we telecommuted, maybe 10 or 20 hours of work per week would meet our needs. Suppose we adopted a Peace Corps/Habitat for Humanity model. After school/college a person spent 3 years building housing, including their own? Maybe all he has to mortgage is the land and materials. Maybe not even that.
Add other ideas like a robot taxi service, 3D copying machines, reasonable health care; and the need for much of the need for the credit economy would disappear. I don't view this as a socialist utopia, more a natural evolution of our current market economy. It still has lots of room for entrepreneurs (less for VCs), volunteers, and open source whatever.
Living a thousand years has some pretty interesting implications. - Things that seem safe will become dangerous. Small daily risks, such as crossing a red light, will have a much bigger chance of killing you. If you live 15 times as long the risk is 15 times as big. Expect to see people being insulated from the daily dangers of the world. - Our personal drive will diminish. If you want to do a startup (or whatever el…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with death is that it's irreversible. If I'm bored today, I might still find something interesting tomorrow. If I'm dead today, I'll still be dead tomorrow.
How likely are you to find something new and interesting if you are a universe sized super intellect?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone who makes 12K US a year in the American South can easily live better in almost every material way than most nobility could even a few hundred years ago. More food choices (and at least as abundant food), more chances to travel (by driving), and such a vast array of entertainment choices that it would be inconceivable to people whose might see a bunch of concerts and plays every year. Even the homeless have ac…
Have you lived for 12K US a year in the American south? Or even tried to support kids on that? Just trying to make it on 16k in the Bay Area is a struggle, and it's only myself to feed. I think you touch on an important point: the poor have access to a better life, or at least more choices, than many in the past could dream of. I don't believe that means that they actually do live a life of luxury: they are far less…
The only thing kings had more of was power and land, and kings had nothing like the entertainment possibilities we had, and most kings had nothing like the variety of consumables we had.
Today's (first world) poor are wealthy beyond the dreams of those from most earlier eras.
I think an interesting side effect of extremely long lives would be people would be a lot more careful. Driving fast, not wearing a seatbelt, skydiving, going to war, heck even leaving the house would be considered crazy. who would want to risk ending their lives in an accident if they could live for another healthy 900 years?
I'm not so sure. Did people become twice as cautious when life expectancy doubled in our fairly recent history? The retirement age of 65 was originally set because it was deemed so unlikely that anyone would reach it, now it is almost considered a given that people will live past it and I don't think people have become more cautious as a result. The other thing is that if people feel that medical technology has advan…
Yes! Very much so they did.
So many sports have been gutted due to "safety", chemistry sets have most of the good stuff gone for the same reason. Kids can no longer just go and do what they want because it's "not safe".
People took far far more risks in the past.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone who makes 12K US a year in the American South can easily live better in almost every material way than most nobility could even a few hundred years ago. More food choices (and at least as abundant food), more chances to travel (by driving), and such a vast array of entertainment choices that it would be inconceivable to people whose might see a bunch of concerts and plays every year. Even the homeless have ac…
Have you lived for 12K US a year in the American south? Or even tried to support kids on that? Just trying to make it on 16k in the Bay Area is a struggle, and it's only myself to feed. I think you touch on an important point: the poor have access to a better life, or at least more choices, than many in the past could dream of. I don't believe that means that they actually do live a life of luxury: they are far less…
I hold that if god did not want people to live to 1000 he would make it impossible to do so.
If it's possible, then god must be OK with it.
He was pretty specific about all the "possible but don't do them anyway" things after all, so no need to add some new ones.
No. We have shockingly little control over basic diseases and health issues. This de Gray character is just an attention whore.
I smashed an ankle a few years ago racing a motorcycle. The ankle is mostly fine, I can walk, hike, climb a mountain, lift weights, or just stand for as long as I want. It doesn't hurt. Jumping though is not OK, and neither is dancing (not that I dance anyway, but still) or running. It looks like it can't be fixed 100%. So, if such a comparatively trivial thing can't be fixed, how can they talk about immortality?
I don't see immortality becoming less than a dream until we are able to fix the vast majority of diseases and health issues. The simple fact that we can't do that is a sign that we're pretty far from understanding our biology.