4 ms·

Some questions about living forever: If we can live forever, can we also be productive citizens forever? If not, is it ethical to want this? Assuming "living

Some questions about living forever: If we can live forever, can we also be productive citizens forever? If not, is it ethical to want this? Assuming "living forever" becomes everyone's right, we would be forever increasing the burden on the young/productive citizens. For how long can it go on? If we can be productive forever, would we be taking opportunities away from younger members of society? Would we continue reproducing, or would civilization become static? If we have all eternity, would we have the drive to keep improving ourselves and our society?

lumost 6y ago
The focus of anti-aging research is to maintain good health for a prolonged period of time. I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be productive for far longer in such a world. While doing the same grind could get old after a while, there would be far less restriction on taking prolonged "time out periods" Imagine being able to take a year off for the Appalachian trail or get a PhD in your 50s without concern for ROI or the short-term career impact of losing 4-5 years. Not be viewed as having hit peak potential in your late 20s/30s.
- yesbabyyes 6y ago
  > Imagine being able to take a year off for the Appalachian trail or get a PhD in your 50s without concern for ROI or the short-term career impact of losing 4-5 years. How do I not interpret this as wanting everybody, at a time when our society is facing huge challenges, to spend time and resources on prolonging your life, so you can walk around the poorest parts of the US, without it costing you? I mean, it's natural in way, I suppose, to want everything for oneself without investing anything, but it also seems laughably childish, selfish and short-sighted. Will the people of Appalachia also have access to immortality, in your vision? If so, how?
  - joshspankit 6y ago
    You’re assuming that we continue the current version of capitalism. Your interpretation doesn’t fit if you assume something like automation-funded UBI. I feel like if we live forever, we’ll have to drastically re-think money anyway or if parents put in money with compound interest at the birth of their child it might provide that child financial security forever.
jefft255 6y ago
I imagine retirement would disappear in its current form, and be replaced by super long vacation where you spend your savings, only to start working again (maybe in a new career) afterwards. Economic pressure wouldn’t allow for lifelong retirement.
rantwasp 6y ago
if we’re going to live forever, do we have to do it in the same biological form? also, ethics if all fun and games until you are confronted with your own mortality.
badsectoracula 6y ago
AFAIK China already has a limit of a single child, so i guess we'll end up placing restrictions - perhaps needing a license for childbirth that wont be given in overpopulated areas. Also perhaps in the future we'll manage to colonize other planets, so living longer will help there too. And let's not forget that living forever here really means not dying due to age. We'll still die from other reasons.
pinipedman 6y ago
> If we have all eternity, would we have the drive to keep improving ourselves and our society? Are we improving ourselves or society now? I doubt many decisions humans make are concerned with improving society. Even if they are it is with respect to their perspective of what it means to improve society. A given society places constraints on people and incentivizes them to act in certain ways and over time this elicits changes in that society, but I don't see that constituting an improvement, unless your notion of improvement is simply change in the manner induced by societal pressures. But then improvement is guaranteed, tautologically, hence it is a a rather poor definition. If humans were to become immortal then it seems likely that the constraints and incentives of a given society would elicit different responses from its members, thereby inducing a different type of change. And again whether this is an improvement depends on what your definition of improvement is taken to be. Surely, should such a time come, these new immortals' notion of improvement should take precedence over our own. But I doubt they would take conscious control over the manner in which their society changes any more than we do presently. I have similar issues with the notion that we are, presently or at any time in the past, improving ourselves.
Brian_K_White 6y ago
As knowledge and technology, and thus capacity, advances, the definition and moral implication of "productive" changes. Is it ethical to deny essentially free resources from people simply because they didn't perform some act you consider "productive" according to the medieval definition of working real hard? Is it ethical for 11 rich people to simply own all the robots and all the land that actually produces all material needs, and since no one else except a few technicians and engineers can possibly have any sort of productive job by the old rules, they get none of the resources and shall just die, or, be relegated to agency-less slaves for the pointless amusememt of the few with actual jobs? Is it ethical to pick any arbitrary time limit and say on day X you die, because that's the rules we made up? Even if that time limit is 1000 years, it's still arbitrary and constitutes a murder. What younger members? There is no reason to assume that the birth rate will not eventually decrease to match the death rate, or eventually our expansion into space. I see no problems with longer life that are worse than the current problem of dying. These sorts of arguments are like being handed a bag of gold bricks and complaining that they are so heavy. You know, you're right. Them gold bricks is just sooo annoyingly heavy. Because I am just that nice, I will suffer their burden for you. You can die at your religion's appointed 80 years or whatever number you imagine, but there is no ethical argument why everyone else shouldn't seek to live both as long and as well as they can possibly manage, by any means short of vampirism. Merely a lot of standard rules about how resources are distributed and how decisions and policy are made today would need to change to fit that different context of tomorrow. The ethical solution to that problem is to simply work on it.

lumost 6y ago

The focus of anti-aging research is to maintain good health for a prolonged period of time. I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be productive for far longer in such a world. While doing the same grind could get old after a while, there would be far less restriction on taking prolonged "time out periods" Imagine being able to take a year off for the Appalachian trail or get a PhD in your 50s without concern for ROI or the short-term career impact of losing 4-5 years. Not be viewed as having hit peak potential in your late 20s/30s.

yesbabyyes 6y ago
> Imagine being able to take a year off for the Appalachian trail or get a PhD in your 50s without concern for ROI or the short-term career impact of losing 4-5 years. How do I not interpret this as wanting everybody, at a time when our society is facing huge challenges, to spend time and resources on prolonging your life, so you can walk around the poorest parts of the US, without it costing you? I mean, it's natural in way, I suppose, to want everything for oneself without investing anything, but it also seems laughably childish, selfish and short-sighted. Will the people of Appalachia also have access to immortality, in your vision? If so, how?
- joshspankit 6y ago
  You’re assuming that we continue the current version of capitalism. Your interpretation doesn’t fit if you assume something like automation-funded UBI. I feel like if we live forever, we’ll have to drastically re-think money anyway or if parents put in money with compound interest at the birth of their child it might provide that child financial security forever.

jefft255 6y ago

I imagine retirement would disappear in its current form, and be replaced by super long vacation where you spend your savings, only to start working again (maybe in a new career) afterwards. Economic pressure wouldn’t allow for lifelong retirement.

rantwasp 6y ago

if we’re going to live forever, do we have to do it in the same biological form? also, ethics if all fun and games until you are confronted with your own mortality.

badsectoracula 6y ago

AFAIK China already has a limit of a single child, so i guess we'll end up placing restrictions - perhaps needing a license for childbirth that wont be given in overpopulated areas. Also perhaps in the future we'll manage to colonize other planets, so living longer will help there too. And let's not forget that living forever here really means not dying due to age. We'll still die from other reasons.

pinipedman 6y ago

> If we have all eternity, would we have the drive to keep improving ourselves and our society? Are we improving ourselves or society now? I doubt many decisions humans make are concerned with improving society. Even if they are it is with respect to their perspective of what it means to improve society. A given society places constraints on people and incentivizes them to act in certain ways and over time this elicits changes in that society, but I don't see that constituting an improvement, unless your notion of improvement is simply change in the manner induced by societal pressures. But then improvement is guaranteed, tautologically, hence it is a a rather poor definition. If humans were to become immortal then it seems likely that the constraints and incentives of a given society would elicit different responses from its members, thereby inducing a different type of change. And again whether this is an improvement depends on what your definition of improvement is taken to be. Surely, should such a time come, these new immortals' notion of improvement should take precedence over our own. But I doubt they would take conscious control over the manner in which their society changes any more than we do presently. I have similar issues with the notion that we are, presently or at any time in the past, improving ourselves.

Brian_K_White 6y ago

As knowledge and technology, and thus capacity, advances, the definition and moral implication of "productive" changes. Is it ethical to deny essentially free resources from people simply because they didn't perform some act you consider "productive" according to the medieval definition of working real hard? Is it ethical for 11 rich people to simply own all the robots and all the land that actually produces all material needs, and since no one else except a few technicians and engineers can possibly have any sort of productive job by the old rules, they get none of the resources and shall just die, or, be relegated to agency-less slaves for the pointless amusememt of the few with actual jobs? Is it ethical to pick any arbitrary time limit and say on day X you die, because that's the rules we made up? Even if that time limit is 1000 years, it's still arbitrary and constitutes a murder. What younger members? There is no reason to assume that the birth rate will not eventually decrease to match the death rate, or eventually our expansion into space. I see no problems with longer life that are worse than the current problem of dying. These sorts of arguments are like being handed a bag of gold bricks and complaining that they are so heavy. You know, you're right. Them gold bricks is just sooo annoyingly heavy. Because I am just that nice, I will suffer their burden for you. You can die at your religion's appointed 80 years or whatever number you imagine, but there is no ethical argument why everyone else shouldn't seek to live both as long and as well as they can possibly manage, by any means short of vampirism. Merely a lot of standard rules about how resources are distributed and how decisions and policy are made today would need to change to fit that different context of tomorrow. The ethical solution to that problem is to simply work on it.