2 ms·

It doesn't make sense to worry about what happens if humanity become immortal and nothing else changes. Technology is going to change everything about the world

It doesn't make sense to worry about what happens if humanity become immortal and nothing else changes. Technology is going to change everything about the world, and immortality may be the least of it. There's every reason to think humanity will develop super intelligent life, or augment itself into super intelligent life, within 100 years. Which means that there will never be billions of ape-like humans living to be hundreds or thousands of years old. When super intelligent life emerges, it will probably be immortal, but none of the concerns we have about immortal humans will apply. There's only one part of our future we can be sure of, and that's giving birth to Superhumanity. It almost doesn't matter what we do before this, and we will have no control over what happens afterwards.

grondilu 9y ago
Agreed. People already live quite long, so immortality would take a very long time to make a difference with how things already are. If the first person to live 150 years is twenty years old today, he will reach that age in 130 years, that is in 2148. I believe that in 2148, the world will be vastly different than it currently is, and to a degree we can't even imagine. So to me the desire to be still alive then sounds naive, even futile. I understand that from a subjective point of view, and especially to people who fear death, immortality is of prime importance, but in the grand scheme of things, it's just a detail : paradoxically it does not matter in the long term because its effects take too long a time to manifest.