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The most exciting thing about dramatic age increase, at least for me, would be how potentially transformative the wisdom and intellect of society could be. 140
by kristopolous 7y ago
The most exciting thing about dramatic age increase, at least for me, would be how potentially transformative the wisdom and intellect of society could be. 140 year old Albert Einstein might have been writing an email, right this second to say, 161 year old Max Planck.
As topics become more sophisticated, the time to competency and insight increases.
Someone for instance, truly committed to studying the entire corpus of thoughts on political economy, from the Frankfurt school, Chicago school, Stockholm school, Austrian school, Keynsianism, Marxian, Monetarism, New Classical, Public Choice, Georgism, Bachuninism... Each of those are hard and complicated. A sincere dedicated study of all of them would likely take decades.
If you had 300 years then not only could you do that, but you could also make meaningful contributions to the field.
Imagine public policy by people who were able to dedicate 100 years to its study.
50 or 100 year studies which currently have to be chaperoned across multiple generations of researchers could be done by a single team.
The accumulated wisdom that manifests itself in the written word would be far more potent with centuries of accumulations. In a way, genius is a measure of speed and time, the quickness of ones assimilation of the topic. With enough time, the plane of genius might be accessible to nearly all.
Other, much longer efforts would be engaged with more frequently. For instance, The art of computer programming, started 51 years ago, would be one amongst a much larger number of works of similar breadth, if taking a century to complete something was feasible for all.
The differences this would manifest would be likely as stark as if someone from the 18th century descended upon a modern urban metropolis.
- fl0under 7y agoI wonder though, after decades of study in numerous fields, how much would you actually be able to remember? No doubt some events in your life might stick around in your mind for a long time, but by your 100th, 300th, whatever year would 50% of it just be a hazy memory? Or maybe this technology could give you super memory, I mean even currently some people are born with the ability to remember tons of information, but often at the expense of other brain facilities.
- kristopolous 7y agoMemory is more structure than stuff, providing foundations of future thoughts. Meaningful insights shape your interaction with the world and change how you interface with reality. the details fade but the evolution of mind's empowering constraints continues on.
- raducu 7y agoWhich would be even worse for unlearning things/talk therapy. "I have this daddy issue, probably, but I don't really remember my dad..."
- taneq 7y agoOn the flip side, what improvements would we see just from tripling or quadrupling our training time? It'd be the human equivalent of "left it running over the holidays and now it's state of the art".
- chillacy 7y agoSocial progress would change slower though. Actually even quoting Max Plank: > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it Aka science advances one funeral at a time
- waterhouse 7y agoI suspect that, if a scientist in his fifties knew that his cognitive function would remain at the same level up to at least age 150, he would be a lot more willing to spend years rethinking things and familiarizing himself with new and better conceptual approaches. Something similar could probably be said about programmers that seem attached to old and allegedly inferior tools.
- _sid 7y agoNot sure that's how biases work.
- kristopolous 7y agoBiases are about the interplay of pressures to perform and reform where the comfort of the known is more persuasive than the enticement of the new. There needs to be the luxury of time and the space to fail, two things we don't have. The technology of longevity won't fix this problem of culture, sure. But it would make such a fix a lot more meaningful
- misterman0 7y ago>> There needs to be the luxury of time and the space to fail, two things we don't have. But once we have those, won't they be considered not luxurious, instead, standard? And won't the argument still be that we lack the luxury we need? I think we should improve the handover instead of pretending there will be no handover.
- visarga 7y ago
- paganel 7y ago> 140 year old Albert Einstein might have been writing an email, 140 year old Albert Einstein might have written an actual letter to 161 year old Max Planck because that's what they both knew and had known for more than a century, so why change things? Many of the technological and societal changes have come up because of old people dying, including the smart ones.
- taneq 7y agoMaybe because email is far better than physical mail on any axis not primarily driven by nostalgia? Take a look at the actual old people around you, they all use tech too.
- krageon 7y agoAll the old people that I know at even half that age do not use any tech they are not familiar with (so yes to a landline telephone, no to email). Perhaps you live in an area with very progressive old people.
- Wh1zz 7y agoMy grandfather is 91 and uses WhatsApp and YouTube daily. He grew up in rural Romania, and his formal education stopped after middle school.
- C14L 7y agoBeing "old" isn't necessarily a question of age. There are 30-year-old "old" people who don't want to learn anything they don't already know. And there are 80-year-old "young" people who gladly learn an interesting new tech.
- VLM 7y agoUnfortunately there are plenty of 15 year olds who decide they're done learning, time to drop out, etc. People who give up are doomed, regardless of age or other living conditions.
- 7y ago
- samvher 7y agoI imagine if you have a longer future to look forward to that also changes the incentives for investing in yourself. So not only would the people who invest in their futures be able to use their knowledge for longer, more people might invest in their future as well. The fixed costs of building a life are pretty high (let's say 25 years) and they're expected to pay off over the following 40 years of so - if this 40 becomes 70 or 100 that changes a lot.
- jacobush 7y agoYou are saying I could delay investing ?
- samvher 7y agoI'm not sure how you read that in my comment. Maybe you could, but I think in general regardless of the length of a life it makes most sense to have most of the investment phase in the first part of your life (although when science/tech evolve you need to stay up to date of course).
- jacobush 7y agoI got you, I just cheekily tried to note that people are also excellent at procrastinating what they can.
- raducu 7y agoMaybe the costs are not fixed at 25, but 1/3 or 1/4 of life. If you could live to 300, competition would eventually make it that you have to spend 150 years "building a life" (but hey, you still get 150 years of a good life).
- samvher 7y agoI think that's exactly the point that I'm trying to make. Most of the population ends up spending a much larger time of their life investing in skills and knowledge. So the total amount of knowledge in society would end up being far larger.
- ohduran 7y agoSMBC did a fantastic comic on this one: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/immortality-2 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/immortality-2
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bouvin 7y agoRather than the potential accumulation of wisdom, I would be far more concerned with the continued concentration of wealth and power by the already wealthy and powerful. Would the world be a better place, if Vanderbilt, Pullman, or Stalin were still alive? What would be the benefit to the world of, say, a Putin still in control a hundred years hence? Death is an equaliser and a recycler.
- simonh 7y agoIn the Steve Jobs interview, also currently on the first page, he quotes a Hindu saying: “For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.” I'm not sure that making that last phase ten times longer is a good investment.
- garmaine 7y agoSo the next step is encouraging neural plasticity. Don't be a deathist.
- OJFord 7y agoIs there anything special about the (absolute) number 30? Surely it's just saying roughly 'for the first [resp. last] half of your life'? Tangentially, is that actually 'a Hindu saying' - all I can find are other people quoting Jobs and claiming the same - or is it just something a guru said that Jobs happened to like and remember?
- vrc 7y agoAnecdotally my grandfather from India used to tell my father something similar as a child (and then him me), and he was born in the 1910’s in a village and very unaware of Jobs throughout his life. So I am confident that it’s from some Indian/Hindu school of thought. Only difference was he said “work hard first 30//enjoy next 30”.
- sunstone 7y agoAh, so he had it backwards :)