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When I see things like this, I'm reminded of a story an old co-worker told me who was a war veteran years ago in his home country. He and many others were made

When I see things like this, I'm reminded of a story an old co-worker told me who was a war veteran years ago in his home country. He and many others were made to go to war for their country and risk their lives. However, those who were wealthy and/or well-connected could find ways out of being compelled to go into the military and risk their lives. One of the wealthy, well connected young men he knew who got out of going into military was killed getting hit by a bus in an accident. The guy telling the story actually went into a bloody war seeing people get killed around him, yet he somehow was alive today to tell the tale. What's my point? I don't think it's pointless to research life-extending technology. It seems like some forms of death couldn't be avoided 'post-hoc', if one had a particular accident or the like, no matter how many resources were at your disposal, however. I guess lowering the overall probability of dying of 'something' in general would be nice though.

mr_overalls 10y ago
I agree. Even if you conquer conventional biological aging via nanobots in your bloodstream or whatever, you'd still be vulnerable to random space elevator accidents, particle beam malfunction, etc.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  It's still better to have an option of dying than to have a certainty of dying[0]. Also, avoiding accidents and even malicious actions becomes an engineering problem to be solved too. Maybe we'll end up having mind backups, so if you die in that elevator, you'll get restored from last night's copy into a freshly-grown body? -- [0] - sure, when lifespan approaches infinity, the probability of dying due to external factors will approach 1 anyway, but it's still better than having your lifespan capped at 120 years or something (last decades of which barely qualify as living).
  - mr_overalls 10y ago
    Right, I agree that pursuing life-extension is worthwhile. Even living a few more decades at the height of our productivity would benefit society immensely, given how long it takes to train humans to be experts at anything. I'm just trying to inject a little reality into the more starry-eyed Singularitarianist fantasies about living for millions of years among the stars as an uploaded member of a hive-mind or something. I'm not a "deathist" by any means, but I accept that one day, it is overwhelmingly likely that my consciousness will end.
    - RivieraKid 10y ago
      I think that if we could defeat aging, living one million of years wouldn't be that hard to achieve. People would just focus more on preventing fatal accidents. Plus, more accidents would be survivable because healthcare would be much more advanced too.
true_tuna 10y ago
Your story has a more sinister moral. Wealth and privilege can allow people to achieve statistically better life outcomes. Conquering aging would be nice, reserving it for a select few will simply exacerbate the existing inequality in the world. Surely we can come up with some better rules for this game.

mr_overalls 10y ago

I agree. Even if you conquer conventional biological aging via nanobots in your bloodstream or whatever, you'd still be vulnerable to random space elevator accidents, particle beam malfunction, etc.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
It's still better to have an option of dying than to have a certainty of dying[0]. Also, avoiding accidents and even malicious actions becomes an engineering problem to be solved too. Maybe we'll end up having mind backups, so if you die in that elevator, you'll get restored from last night's copy into a freshly-grown body? -- [0] - sure, when lifespan approaches infinity, the probability of dying due to external factors will approach 1 anyway, but it's still better than having your lifespan capped at 120 years or something (last decades of which barely qualify as living).
- mr_overalls 10y ago
  Right, I agree that pursuing life-extension is worthwhile. Even living a few more decades at the height of our productivity would benefit society immensely, given how long it takes to train humans to be experts at anything. I'm just trying to inject a little reality into the more starry-eyed Singularitarianist fantasies about living for millions of years among the stars as an uploaded member of a hive-mind or something. I'm not a "deathist" by any means, but I accept that one day, it is overwhelmingly likely that my consciousness will end.
  - RivieraKid 10y ago
    I think that if we could defeat aging, living one million of years wouldn't be that hard to achieve. People would just focus more on preventing fatal accidents. Plus, more accidents would be survivable because healthcare would be much more advanced too.

true_tuna 10y ago

Your story has a more sinister moral. Wealth and privilege can allow people to achieve statistically better life outcomes. Conquering aging would be nice, reserving it for a select few will simply exacerbate the existing inequality in the world. Surely we can come up with some better rules for this game.