4 ms·

My name means Immortal in Sanskrit. :) If no one ever died, the world would overpopulate even faster. Death makes life possible. Death clears the old to make w

by rblion 16y ago

My name means Immortal in Sanskrit. :) If no one ever died, the world would overpopulate even faster. Death makes life possible. Death clears the old to make way for the new. In Hinduism and Buddhism, accepting death is a part of the path to enlightenment. Personally, I believe the body can die, but consciousness cannot...so we are already immortal, we just have to re-member it.

michaelchisari 16y ago
If no one ever died, the world would overpopulate even faster. If nobody ever died, the whole concept of procreation would change profoundly. With first world countries already in zero or negative population growth, creating an infinite lifespan would most likely further that trend. And in any case, we're talking about longevity, not immortality. You can still get hit by a bus.
- droz 16y ago
  Doubtful. I envision a "brave new world" styled world. Bunch of people in prime condition, "endless" amount of time to pair with everyone else. I somehow imagine that people will continue to go at it like rabbits.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    Well, luckily, your imagination and actual worldwide trends don't line up. As long as we push for women's rights, access to birth control and abortion rights, and move away from economies which encourage large families as sources of labor, we'll be fine, as has already been the case in much of the developed world (and is showing to be the case in the developing world as well).
  - lukeschlather 16y ago
    In Brave New World, contraceptive implants are mandatory, and there's a huge stigma around /not/ having an abortion. The stigma around childbirth is a little scary to think about. But all things considered, I think that a society would adapt to limit births by some means if we achieved clinical immortality. And there are plenty of means to limit birth without stopping sex. Just asking people to sterilize themselves would probably be sufficient, especially since recombinant cloning actually is at least a reasonable thing to talk about with current technology. (Sterilization doesn't mean you can't ever have kids, just that it's going to cost you a fair amount, and you will have a lot of paperwork to do.) The concept of clinical immortality, in contrast, hasn't really advanced beyond the legend of the "fountain of youth."
    - pjscott 16y ago
      It's also usually possible to reverse some forms of sterilization. Vasectomy reversal, for example, has a high success rate and is minimally invasive.
ncarlson 16y ago
> overpopulate Overpopulation is an idea based on scarcity. The technologies which enable immortality will also work to overcome scarcity.
rblion 16y ago
All I meant...more people living longer will consume more for longer time and add stress to an already stressed planet. Immortality is always theoretical, forever is a really long time.
nextparadigms 16y ago
If we were immortal, the need to "extend" ourselves through kids would also decrease dramatically. People (especially women) feel the need to have a kid after a certain age because they are afraid they will be too old if they do it too late. If you lived 1000 years, would you still be in a hurry to have a kid at 30? It's a natural instinct for humans to want to pass their genes to someone else before they approach death (and leave enough time to care for them, too). Also, about a century ago people thought we would face terrible overpopulation by now, due to limited ground space for buildings homes. That's before we learned we could make apartment buildings. Don't think of the future 100 years from now, with the eyes from 2011. You don't know what conditions might be created by then to allow for increased population. Humans tend to find solutions for everything, especially when approaching a huge crisis.
- delinquentme 16y ago
  the possibility of super long lives happens to have really interesting social repercussions ... I see no reason why after but a single generation this idea of popping kids out pre 30 wouldnt just go away
  - evgen 16y ago
    The idea would not go away, but there is a lot of strong evidence that it would diminish significantly. Two hundred years ago an average woman in the US would have had 7-8 live births by the time she was 30, a hundred years ago it was 3.5, and today it is around 2. Better birth control and better options for how women want to live their lives can explain a large part of the second drop, but the drop from 1800-1900 was almost completely because of increasing lifespans and increasing standards of living. The change would not happen in a single generation, but just observing what happens as countries transition out of third-world poverty over the last fifty years has provided a lot of justification for claiming that it would not take too many generations for birth rates to adjust quite radically.
    - delinquentme 16y ago
      as soon as you can tell a girl: " you've got the option to have healthy kids at age 200 and you're probably going to live to be 1000", and the gravity of that sinks in... Enormous cascading effects, and comparing these possibility to past events ... im sorry the scale simply pales in comparison.

by rblion 16y ago

michaelchisari 16y ago

If no one ever died, the world would overpopulate even faster. If nobody ever died, the whole concept of procreation would change profoundly. With first world countries already in zero or negative population growth, creating an infinite lifespan would most likely further that trend. And in any case, we're talking about longevity, not immortality. You can still get hit by a bus.

droz 16y ago
Doubtful. I envision a "brave new world" styled world. Bunch of people in prime condition, "endless" amount of time to pair with everyone else. I somehow imagine that people will continue to go at it like rabbits.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  Well, luckily, your imagination and actual worldwide trends don't line up. As long as we push for women's rights, access to birth control and abortion rights, and move away from economies which encourage large families as sources of labor, we'll be fine, as has already been the case in much of the developed world (and is showing to be the case in the developing world as well).
- lukeschlather 16y ago
  In Brave New World, contraceptive implants are mandatory, and there's a huge stigma around /not/ having an abortion. The stigma around childbirth is a little scary to think about. But all things considered, I think that a society would adapt to limit births by some means if we achieved clinical immortality. And there are plenty of means to limit birth without stopping sex. Just asking people to sterilize themselves would probably be sufficient, especially since recombinant cloning actually is at least a reasonable thing to talk about with current technology. (Sterilization doesn't mean you can't ever have kids, just that it's going to cost you a fair amount, and you will have a lot of paperwork to do.) The concept of clinical immortality, in contrast, hasn't really advanced beyond the legend of the "fountain of youth."
  - pjscott 16y ago
    It's also usually possible to reverse some forms of sterilization. Vasectomy reversal, for example, has a high success rate and is minimally invasive.

ncarlson 16y ago

> overpopulate Overpopulation is an idea based on scarcity. The technologies which enable immortality will also work to overcome scarcity.

rblion 16y ago

All I meant...more people living longer will consume more for longer time and add stress to an already stressed planet. Immortality is always theoretical, forever is a really long time.

nextparadigms 16y ago

If we were immortal, the need to "extend" ourselves through kids would also decrease dramatically. People (especially women) feel the need to have a kid after a certain age because they are afraid they will be too old if they do it too late. If you lived 1000 years, would you still be in a hurry to have a kid at 30? It's a natural instinct for humans to want to pass their genes to someone else before they approach death (and leave enough time to care for them, too). Also, about a century ago people thought we would face terrible overpopulation by now, due to limited ground space for buildings homes. That's before we learned we could make apartment buildings. Don't think of the future 100 years from now, with the eyes from 2011. You don't know what conditions might be created by then to allow for increased population. Humans tend to find solutions for everything, especially when approaching a huge crisis.

delinquentme 16y ago
the possibility of super long lives happens to have really interesting social repercussions ... I see no reason why after but a single generation this idea of popping kids out pre 30 wouldnt just go away
- evgen 16y ago
  The idea would not go away, but there is a lot of strong evidence that it would diminish significantly. Two hundred years ago an average woman in the US would have had 7-8 live births by the time she was 30, a hundred years ago it was 3.5, and today it is around 2. Better birth control and better options for how women want to live their lives can explain a large part of the second drop, but the drop from 1800-1900 was almost completely because of increasing lifespans and increasing standards of living. The change would not happen in a single generation, but just observing what happens as countries transition out of third-world poverty over the last fifty years has provided a lot of justification for claiming that it would not take too many generations for birth rates to adjust quite radically.
  - delinquentme 16y ago
    as soon as you can tell a girl: " you've got the option to have healthy kids at age 200 and you're probably going to live to be 1000", and the gravity of that sinks in... Enormous cascading effects, and comparing these possibility to past events ... im sorry the scale simply pales in comparison.