Medical Treknology and human aging.

[Longinus]

You would still need to earn the money in the first place, seriously you would have to go to work, every day, forever.

1) Get a job you don't hate.
2) Get a job with sufficiently good pay per hour that you won't have to work every day of the week.

People always find reasons for saying that they don't want to live forever. As if they were trying to convince themselves, as immortality is something that is rather unlikely to happen.

 

[Myasishchev]

At any rate, what's the big deal about working 40 hours a week? It's less than a third of your life, no matter how long your life turns out to be. Even if you hate it, more than half of your waking life is still capable of being dedicated to things you enjoy.

You're definitely expected to work that much in your prime, where life is at its potentially most fun. The logic behind the "I don't want to live forever because I would have to work forever" argument could easily be used to justify an argument that simply removes the "forevers": "I don't want to live because I would have to work."

 

[USS KG5]

The problem of forever-work is solved by robotics and is ultimately independent of life-extending technologies.

Err.. no it isn't - you can't just say "robots" as a solution to big problems, you would still need to solve the societal problem of billions of people with nothing to do and no means of support.

In the West our economies are consumer driven, that would be meaningless in a world without work.

Even if it didn't, I intend to make and invest enough money to be able to live off of interest and dividends and such when I'm 50 or 60+, so I don't see why that isn't doable for a longer term than 30 or 40 years.

Well PROPORTIONALLY you are probably right, if you work for ten thousand years you can probably save enough to live for a further four thousand years without working - but still immortality seems financially impractical.

Unless of course you are the world's only immortal man, then the celebrity you could live off for a very long time. Just make sure it is Dorian Gray style immortality and you stay young and pretty.

Overpopulation is a real problem, but there are ways around that, as well.

There are lots, none good sadly.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Nah, it's not so bad. Say we got immortality tomorrow--the solution is to stop having kids. Now, this brings up some really thorny human rights issues, but not on the same scale as the other options you're contemplating, I think, namely genocide or mass starvation or both. The planet can support six and change billion people. Not with current Western-average energy expenditures and eating habits, to be sure, but that too can be changed, and is indeed a historical aberration anyway ('course you could say the same thing about democracy, so that sort of reasoning could be dangerous ).

The problem would be its lack of universal applicability. Immortality would probably soon become within reach of the American/European/democratic East Asian middle classes, and perhaps the Chinese middle class as well, and of course the upper classes of all societies. However, the majority of the planet's population would not see much of a benefit, and I suspect it would be easy to wage some class warfare based on religious as well as social justifications... so that would be a downside, although it might (however messily) solve the overpopulation concern. : /

And to tackle your last point first, clearly there would have to be a huge shift toward a more socialist economic system, for the reasons you state, as well as to prevent a war against the rich that would make Krasny Oktyabr look like a hearing at an OSHA appeals board.

I do believe that it's unlikely that any society advanced enough to contemplate radical life extension technologies will not be so commensurately advanced economically as to provide a system at least as reasonably labor-free as our current one, and probably much less labor-intensive than even our own.

And hey, if I can't stay young and pretty, immortality doesn't really have much of a point.

 

[USS KG5]

^Nah, it's not so bad. Say we got immortality tomorrow--the solution is to stop having kids. Now, this brings up some really thorny human rights issues, but not on the same scale as the other options you're contemplating, I think, namely genocide or mass starvation or both. The planet can support six and change billion people. Not with current Western-average energy expenditures and eating habits, to be sure, but that too can be changed, and is indeed a historical aberration anyway ('course you could say the same thing about democracy, so that sort of reasoning could be dangerous ).

So basically you are saying removing the right for people to breed freely is a GOOD option? I suppose relative to genocide it is, but still not "good" by any definition I'd use.

Maybe convince people through clever social engineering?

The problem would be its lack of universal applicability. Immortality would probably soon become within reach of the American/European/democratic East Asian middle classes, and perhaps the Chinese middle class as well, and of course the upper classes of all societies. However, the majority of the planet's population would not see much of a benefit, and I suspect it would be easy to wage some class warfare based on religious as well as social justifications... so that would be a downside, although it might (however messily) solve the overpopulation concern. : /

Well massive global war would thin out the numbers, again probably bad!

And to tackle your last point first, clearly there would have to be a huge shift toward a more socialist economic system, for the reasons you state, as well as to prevent a war against the rich that would make Krasny Oktyabr look like a hearing at an OSHA appeals board.

The problem is that with socialist systems..oh heck this is not trek tech stuff I can't go down that road!

I do believe that it's unlikely that any society advanced enough to contemplate radical life extension technologies will not be so commensurately advanced economically as to provide a system at least as reasonably labor-free as our current one, and probably much less labor-intensive than even our own.

Yes but what would you actually do? After say 10,000 years you will have soaked up every bit of culture, visited every place, got a doctorate in every possible subject - you would just continue, on and on.

This does to some extent go way off the point but I'm not sure life is meant to be like that, when it is short every second counts, when it is endless everything loses some of it's meaning.

And hey, if I can't stay young and pretty, immortality doesn't really have much of a point.

Oh yes indeed.

 

[USS KG5]

1) Get a job you don't hate.
2) Get a job with sufficiently good pay per hour that you won't have to work every day of the week.

1. I don't hate my job, I certainly would not want to do it stretching on for thousands of years though. Work actually tires you out, it makes you look forward to retirement one day, NEVER retire? Frak that!
2. Saying you could go to work ALMOST every day instead of every day hardly invalidates the point.

People always find reasons for saying that they don't want to live forever. As if they were trying to convince themselves, as immortality is something that is rather unlikely to happen.

Well that does not make any sense - there are many good reasons for both religious and secular people to not want to live forever.

 

[Longinus]

KG5, if you ever get offered immortality just hand it over to me. I am willing to endure the horrors of not dying instead of you.

 

[USS KG5]

KG5, if you ever get offered immortality just hand it over to me. I am willing to endure the horrors of not dying instead of you.

Naah, I'd take it just so I could wind you up

Seriously though - I'm assuming you are not religious and don't believe in any kind of afterlife - but still immortality would be a lot to take on.

Don't get me wrong - I want to live a long happy life and if someone told me I could live happy and healthy to 150 I'd not complain.

However immortality implies never dying - as I said in another post you could do literally everything probably in about 2000 years - so after that what would you actually do?

 

[Myasishchev]

^Nah, it's not so bad. Say we got immortality tomorrow--the solution is to stop having kids. Now, this brings up some really thorny human rights issues, but not on the same scale as the other options you're contemplating, I think, namely genocide or mass starvation or both. The planet can support six and change billion people. Not with current Western-average energy expenditures and eating habits, to be sure, but that too can be changed, and is indeed a historical aberration anyway ('course you could say the same thing about democracy, so that sort of reasoning could be dangerous ).

So basically you are saying removing the right for people to breed freely is a GOOD option? I suppose relative to genocide it is, but still not "good" by any definition I'd use.

Maybe convince people through clever social engineering?

Hey, they do it in China, and if they hadn't botched it up it would be a good thing. The (largely cultural, somewhat economic) incentive to sex-preferentially abort is going to cause them major problems down the line--this is something that should have been foreseen when they implemented the policy.

Strictures to obviate a gender imbalance might not be necessary on a system of tax credits or whatever in the U.S. and Europe.

Well massive global war would thin out the numbers, again probably bad!

Well, yeah. -_-

The problem is that with socialist systems..oh heck this is not trek tech stuff I can't go down that road!

Indeed.

Yes but what would you actually do? After say 10,000 years you will have soaked up every bit of culture, visited every place, got a doctorate in every possible subject - you would just continue, on and on.

Well, the human brain's storage capacity is poorly understood, but upper limits can be reasonably assumed. Iirc, it's something like 10^17 bits--which again iirc works out to about 1000-10000 years. So after those ten millennia, everything would be new again. Alternatively, there's no point in a human living longer than 10,000 years, but by that point I don't assume at all that humans or biological life at all will comprise most of that future society.

I also figure that new stuff will continue to come into being to study, enjoy, appreciate, get pissed at--all that fun human stuff.

This does to some extent go way off the point but I'm not sure life is meant to be like that, when it is short every second counts, when it is endless everything loses some of it's meaning.

I find life the more meaningful, should it be extended in quality as well as quantity... matter of taste I guess.

And hey, if I can't stay young and pretty, immortality doesn't really have much of a point.

Oh yes indeed.

To paraphrase Lawrence from Office Space, I think if I were immortal, I could get two chicks at the same time. If nothing else, then by sheer statistical probabilities.