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Can we live 1000 years?

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Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#81

Post by seiji »

mixmax wrote: post #9

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…

Make a society immortal and it becomes afraid of going outside: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunnen-G

Or, you could end up in the bottom of a cave for a few thousand years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorien_(Babylon_5)

Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#82

Post by lallysingh »

Imagine that everyone had time to get education, have several generations of kids (& debug the process), maybe figure a few things out.

OTOH, we'll have to explore space, as we'll quickly run out of room.

Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#83

Post by Raphael »

russell wrote: post #53
patio11 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Regardless of lifespan we are going to move into a post scarcity economy, where wealth won't mean what it does today. We must do it because we can already see the decline of extracted resources like oil and minerals. We will do it because we can. The internet has enabled telecommuting. Telecommuting enables the move to smaller communities where housing is cheaper. As robots get more capable they will take over the ma…

This sounds really cool. The only problem is that people like to congregate, but maybe virtual reality could help.

Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#84

Post by stcredzero »

newt0311 wrote: post #65
cabalamat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would probably be laws against that. If people were immortal, perhaps the law would say every two humans can have one child between them; that way population could only double once.

Doubt it. Population control laws are too unpopular and anybody over ~300 is probably very rich thanks if nothing else, due to the magic of compound interest. Since rich = powerful, it is unlikely that any population control measure would hold up well.

Right. And even if the docs make you get snipped in exchange for the immortality treatments, by then we'll be able to induce meiosis, combine and crossover genes with another and produce offspring anyhow, for the right price.

Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#85

Post by whatusername »

ars wrote: post #59

For the religious point of view: 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.

From another religious angle - As I understand - prior Noah/Flood - the Bible records humans living long lives. (Say 1000 years)

Post flood / Noah - Humans were limited to 120? Or something like that?

Found the quote: Genesis 6: 3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with [a] man forever, for he is mortal [b] ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

So the religious interpretation could be: a) See this proves Chapters 1-8 of Genesis b) God will curse you / etc / etc

Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#86

Post by newt0311 »

stcredzero wrote: post #84
newt0311 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubt it. Population control laws are too unpopular and anybody over ~300 is probably very rich thanks if nothing else, due to the magic of compound interest. Since rich = powerful, it is unlikely that any population control measure would hold up well.

Right. And even if the docs make you get snipped in exchange for the immortality treatments, by then we'll be able to induce meiosis, combine and crossover genes with another and produce offspring anyhow, for the right price.

Hard to tell if you are arguing against my point through sarcasm or supporting my point by covering a contingency. Weird.

Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#88

Post by mhartl »

I can state confidently that there are no fundamental physical laws preventing 1000-year lifespans. There aren't even fundamental biological limitations---lots of organisms live that long. At this point it's "merely" a (very difficult) engineering problem.

Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#89

Post by kragen »

patio11 wrote: post #13
mixmax wrote: post #9

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…

And that's why Sumerian investment banks rule the world today.

To get your $300 million number, you're assuming a 5% risk-free return on investment over 400 years. I very much doubt that you would have received a 5% return on investment by investing in a diversified international portfolio of joint stock corporations from 1608, leaving aside the great likelihood that you would have lost everything by personally being a victim of one war or another, as the Cherokees did on the Trail of Tears, as the Jews and Gypsies did in the Holocaust, as many of the Guaraníes did in the War of the Triple Alliance, etc.

Re: Can we live 1000 years?

#90

Post by DabAsteroid »

cabalamat wrote: post #51
joubert wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think how many offspring you could spawn in a thousand years.

There would probably be laws against that. If people were immortal, perhaps the law would say every two humans can have one child between them; that way population could only double once.

Why would one want population to stop growing? http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource
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