5 ms·

It's appalling that something like this, which would fundamentally alter what it means to be human in a profound and everlasting way, can be so casually describ

It's appalling that something like this, which would fundamentally alter what it means to be human in a profound and everlasting way, can be so casually described and is being pursued with relatively little debate. I guess we'll have plenty of time to debate our folly after the immortal/vampire class has put the leashes on us for a few half-centuries.

pilom 10y ago
Oh but how much fun is it to contemplate? How does love, war, work, retirement, achievement, purpose, etc. change once you can live forever? Or once some subset of humanity can live forever? If you were nearly immortal how long would you mourn the death of a non-immortal spouse? Would you work an additional 5 years before retirement on the off chance that they figure out how to make you immortal between now and then? How would you treat a person who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you couldn't afford? How would that treatment affect inflation? How would immortals affect inflation? There is so much awesome material here for science fiction writers!
- astazangasta 10y ago
  I fully intend to write this science fiction, but the fact that this COULD be reality (and I think the biology is tractable) should be sparking some sort of policy debate. There is actual capital flowing into these ventures... Speculative fiction is ten years behind where the money is.
  - __jal 10y ago
    As frequently happens, Bruce Sterling was there. Pick up a copy of _Holy Fire_.
  - surlyadopter 10y ago
    Drew Magary beat you to it. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal (It's a good read)
  - mordocai 10y ago
    Pandora's Star is the first book of a series that explores many of these themes as well.
- ryanhuff 10y ago
  If you were immortal, you could pay off a loan over hundreds of years. Imagine a mortgage of $500K being paid off over 3 years. Suddenly, paying $1M-$2M isn't such a barrier.
  - derekp7 10y ago
    It doesn't work that way -- the upper limit is still the monthly interest on the loan. So at 3%, 1M is still 25K per month. Unless I'm missing something? (I believe that there is a classification of interest-only loans currently).
    - greedo 10y ago
      Yes, your math is off. At 3% the annual interest on a $1M loan would be $30-$40K (depending on how the interest is calculated), per year. Monthly, that would only be around $2500-$3500. Principal repayment be +/- $833/month.
- yolesaber 10y ago
  > How would you treat a person who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you couldn't afford? I'm thinking of a great Prachett-esque scene where the newly ageless billionaire walks out of the clinic and then slips on a banana (or a soylent puddle) and dies from head trauma.
  - qbrass 10y ago
    You could come up with a better ironic hell than that. They walk outside, get assaulted by an angry mob of people opposed to the rich paying to live forever, and end up with locked-in syndrome for the next thousand years from the head trauma.
    - yolesaber 10y ago
      I'm a terse man. Take pithy on me.
nhaliday 10y ago
On the contrary the position of most people seems to be knee-jerk opposition to any possibility of extending life indefinitely. It's always a good idea to apply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test. Given you lived in a world where death was a choice, would you prefer to take that away?
- astazangasta 10y ago
  I was barely able to understand what the Internet would do to the world, and still don't. You're asking me to successfully imagine the consequences of ending death, and then apply a 'reversal test' in that society? This methodology is too difficult.
- ylhert 10y ago
  Using the reversal test: I imagine living in an overcrowded world whose population was out of control with nothing to cull its growth. With resources running out, and we had the opportunity to slowly and 'naturally' phase out individuals to reduce the population (read: dying of natural causes as people do now), then yes, I would prefer that.
  - nhaliday 10y ago
    At the moment the majority of the developed world is suffering from underpopulation and an aging population. Immortality would change that but I expect by the time we figure actual immortality out we'll have either gotten off the planet or figured out brain uploads (this is what I imagine applying the reversal test to). In both those cases overpopulation is not a significant problem. In the mid-term we're much more likely to see life extension and staving off dementia, and that would be helpful to countries struggling to sustain a workforce.
    - astazangasta 10y ago
      1) We're not getting off this planet for centuries, if ever. Don't hold your breath. Doing this is MUCH harder than solving immortality, which probably is about as difficult as patching some stem cells. 2) Brain uploads are dumb. Let me ask you this: I create a 'brain upload' program, run it on you, and tell you, "OK, now your brain is uploaded!" Will you walk willingly into a blender? You are your body. It does not matter what sort of digital derivative has been made of you, your subjective experience is tied to your corpse.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
No, it's appalling that something like this is not already done. That it requires bunch of rich people to become seriously discussed at all, instead of being a continued major focus of medical research for decades now. People are funny this way. They'll bury their dead and mourn their loss, consider their own mortality and preach about life everlasting, or write stories about elixirs of youth. But to actually move a finger and support the war against death? No, that's insane.
- ashark 10y ago
  > write stories about elixirs of youth One of our earliest extant pieces of literature (fragments from ~2100 BCE, earliest complete version before 1000 BCE) is about that, in fact. It's a cautionary tale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
  - FeepingCreature 10y ago
    It's easy to be cautionary if there's no chance of actually achieving it. http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2625 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2625
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Truth be told, we have cautionary tales in our literature about pretty much any single thing a human being can desire. Power? Check. Riches? Check. Love? Check.
- suddenseizure 10y ago
  I don't think it's as easy as you portray it. To "cure death", you have to cure every thing that can go wrong with you. Look at just once thing that can go wrong with you: cancer. There are huge amounts of money poured into cancer research around the world. But I don't even know if my wife, only 30 years old but recently diagnosed with cancer, will live long enough for us to have kids and see them grow up.
pjonesdotca 10y ago
"which would fundamentally alter what it means to be human in a profound and everlasting way" This has periodically happened over the long course of our species existence. A hundred years ago the average lifespan was half what it was today. Simply because medicine improved. Treating death as a disease instead of a natural thing seems perfectly rational to me.

pilom 10y ago

Oh but how much fun is it to contemplate? How does love, war, work, retirement, achievement, purpose, etc. change once you can live forever? Or once some subset of humanity can live forever? If you were nearly immortal how long would you mourn the death of a non-immortal spouse? Would you work an additional 5 years before retirement on the off chance that they figure out how to make you immortal between now and then? How would you treat a person who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you couldn't afford? How would that treatment affect inflation? How would immortals affect inflation? There is so much awesome material here for science fiction writers!

astazangasta 10y ago
I fully intend to write this science fiction, but the fact that this COULD be reality (and I think the biology is tractable) should be sparking some sort of policy debate. There is actual capital flowing into these ventures... Speculative fiction is ten years behind where the money is.
- __jal 10y ago
  As frequently happens, Bruce Sterling was there. Pick up a copy of _Holy Fire_.
- surlyadopter 10y ago
  Drew Magary beat you to it. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal (It's a good read)
- mordocai 10y ago
  Pandora's Star is the first book of a series that explores many of these themes as well.
ryanhuff 10y ago
If you were immortal, you could pay off a loan over hundreds of years. Imagine a mortgage of $500K being paid off over 3 years. Suddenly, paying $1M-$2M isn't such a barrier.
- derekp7 10y ago
  It doesn't work that way -- the upper limit is still the monthly interest on the loan. So at 3%, 1M is still 25K per month. Unless I'm missing something? (I believe that there is a classification of interest-only loans currently).
  - greedo 10y ago
    Yes, your math is off. At 3% the annual interest on a $1M loan would be $30-$40K (depending on how the interest is calculated), per year. Monthly, that would only be around $2500-$3500. Principal repayment be +/- $833/month.
yolesaber 10y ago
> How would you treat a person who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you couldn't afford? I'm thinking of a great Prachett-esque scene where the newly ageless billionaire walks out of the clinic and then slips on a banana (or a soylent puddle) and dies from head trauma.
- qbrass 10y ago
  You could come up with a better ironic hell than that. They walk outside, get assaulted by an angry mob of people opposed to the rich paying to live forever, and end up with locked-in syndrome for the next thousand years from the head trauma.
  - yolesaber 10y ago
    I'm a terse man. Take pithy on me.

nhaliday 10y ago

On the contrary the position of most people seems to be knee-jerk opposition to any possibility of extending life indefinitely. It's always a good idea to apply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test. Given you lived in a world where death was a choice, would you prefer to take that away?

astazangasta 10y ago
I was barely able to understand what the Internet would do to the world, and still don't. You're asking me to successfully imagine the consequences of ending death, and then apply a 'reversal test' in that society? This methodology is too difficult.
ylhert 10y ago
Using the reversal test: I imagine living in an overcrowded world whose population was out of control with nothing to cull its growth. With resources running out, and we had the opportunity to slowly and 'naturally' phase out individuals to reduce the population (read: dying of natural causes as people do now), then yes, I would prefer that.
- nhaliday 10y ago
  At the moment the majority of the developed world is suffering from underpopulation and an aging population. Immortality would change that but I expect by the time we figure actual immortality out we'll have either gotten off the planet or figured out brain uploads (this is what I imagine applying the reversal test to). In both those cases overpopulation is not a significant problem. In the mid-term we're much more likely to see life extension and staving off dementia, and that would be helpful to countries struggling to sustain a workforce.
  - astazangasta 10y ago
    1) We're not getting off this planet for centuries, if ever. Don't hold your breath. Doing this is MUCH harder than solving immortality, which probably is about as difficult as patching some stem cells. 2) Brain uploads are dumb. Let me ask you this: I create a 'brain upload' program, run it on you, and tell you, "OK, now your brain is uploaded!" Will you walk willingly into a blender? You are your body. It does not matter what sort of digital derivative has been made of you, your subjective experience is tied to your corpse.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

No, it's appalling that something like this is not already done. That it requires bunch of rich people to become seriously discussed at all, instead of being a continued major focus of medical research for decades now. People are funny this way. They'll bury their dead and mourn their loss, consider their own mortality and preach about life everlasting, or write stories about elixirs of youth. But to actually move a finger and support the war against death? No, that's insane.

ashark 10y ago
> write stories about elixirs of youth One of our earliest extant pieces of literature (fragments from ~2100 BCE, earliest complete version before 1000 BCE) is about that, in fact. It's a cautionary tale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
- FeepingCreature 10y ago
  It's easy to be cautionary if there's no chance of actually achieving it. http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2625 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2625
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Truth be told, we have cautionary tales in our literature about pretty much any single thing a human being can desire. Power? Check. Riches? Check. Love? Check.
suddenseizure 10y ago
I don't think it's as easy as you portray it. To "cure death", you have to cure every thing that can go wrong with you. Look at just once thing that can go wrong with you: cancer. There are huge amounts of money poured into cancer research around the world. But I don't even know if my wife, only 30 years old but recently diagnosed with cancer, will live long enough for us to have kids and see them grow up.

pjonesdotca 10y ago

"which would fundamentally alter what it means to be human in a profound and everlasting way" This has periodically happened over the long course of our species existence. A hundred years ago the average lifespan was half what it was today. Simply because medicine improved. Treating death as a disease instead of a natural thing seems perfectly rational to me.