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Put it this way, I'd like to see human mortality conquered, but I don't want to be alive when it happens. If you think class warfare is a problem now, wait unt

Put it this way, I'd like to see human mortality conquered, but I don't want to be alive when it happens. If you think class warfare is a problem now, wait until only the so-called "rich" get to live forever. The others will tear the world apart.

pjscott 15y ago
Why would only rich people get to live longer? Advanced technology has tended to get cheaper over time, often dramatically. I'm not saying that things wouldn't be scary and tumultuous for a while, but the alternative is to slowly sicken and decay into oblivion before you've had even a single century of life. This should not be a tough decision!
- CamperBob 15y ago
  Yeah, it gets cheaper over time, but there will probably be at least a few years during which the technology will be more like private space travel. Imagine if the few people who've been able to book passage to the ISS were instead the only ones who could afford immortality. Those are not going to be fun years.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Advanced technology has tended to get cheaper over time, often dramatically That's because as far as technology in the software industry goes, the bottleneck has been our own knowledge. That's why space travel to inhabitable planets is nothing more than an utopia right now, because for achieving the speed of light we need efficient fuel that can power a space-ship for several years. As far as this problem goes, our knowledge of the universe is not the only bottleneck -- building such a ship will also be freaking expensive in terms of material resources consumed. You really shouldn't confuse technological advancements in silicon chips manufacturing with anything else. Moore's law is severely limited to a niche ;-) the alternative is to slowly sicken and decay into oblivion before you've had even a single century of life. This should not be a tough decision! Advocates of immortality are completely oblivious to the social challenges this will bring. First of all -- nobody will be able to have children anymore, since that will over-populate the planet. It's already happening since humans don't have natural enemies and we live in times of peace. Yet as a species we feel the need to have children. Personally I would give my life just so my 1 year-old boy could live a happy life. And while it saddens me that one day he too will be dead, I don't want to rob him of one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling purposes in life -- that of raising children of his own. Of course, this is a problem of humanity in general -- we tend to be selfish mother-fuckers.
  - nova 15y ago
    Let me humbly suggest this video: http://vimeo.com/17513355 http://vimeo.com/17513355
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    Advocates of immortality are completely oblivious to the social challenges this will bring. Not oblivious to them, but social challenges are so much more fixable than being dead that it should be a no-brainer.
    - bad_user 15y ago
      Personally I think fixing death problems is only a matter of technological progress. And in general technological problems are much easier than social ones as social problems sometimes do not admit technological fixes ;) With the problem I outlined above, modifying humans to not feel the need for children would make us much less human than replacing our body parts with pieces made from silicon. It is easy imagining living a 1000 happy years, but would you experience happiness at all if you were less human? And I am aware that happiness could be faked, but then what incentive would you have for living a good life and accomplishing stuff instead of living like a vegetable, as many drug addicts are doing? And if you can't be happy, since that's the ultimate goal of everybody, than what's the point to all this? In my humble opinion, cheating death is the easy part.
      - jodrellblank 15y ago
        modifying humans to not feel the need for children would make us much less human than replacing our body parts with pieces made from silicon. It is easy imagining living a 1000 happy years, but would you experience happiness at all if you were less human? When you rephrase that to: "150,000 people die every day, and you want that to continue because changing the definition of 'human' feels a bit weird" it starts to look like less of a compelling argument. There are lots of reasons why developing life extension technologies will cause social and economic upheavals and potentially huge ripples, but fear of possible problems is not enough to make me say "well, I'm glad people died to avoid those problems". And I am aware that happiness could be faked, but then what incentive would you have for living a good life and accomplishing stuff instead of living like a vegetable, as many drug addicts are doing? Am I a drug addict today? Why would I be more likely to be a drug addict in 100 years? And if you can't be happy, since that's the ultimate goal of everybody, than what's the point to all this? Because we can (maybe) and because if we can, it's worse if we don't.

pjscott 15y ago

Why would only rich people get to live longer? Advanced technology has tended to get cheaper over time, often dramatically. I'm not saying that things wouldn't be scary and tumultuous for a while, but the alternative is to slowly sicken and decay into oblivion before you've had even a single century of life. This should not be a tough decision!

CamperBob 15y ago
Yeah, it gets cheaper over time, but there will probably be at least a few years during which the technology will be more like private space travel. Imagine if the few people who've been able to book passage to the ISS were instead the only ones who could afford immortality. Those are not going to be fun years.
bad_user 15y ago
Advanced technology has tended to get cheaper over time, often dramatically That's because as far as technology in the software industry goes, the bottleneck has been our own knowledge. That's why space travel to inhabitable planets is nothing more than an utopia right now, because for achieving the speed of light we need efficient fuel that can power a space-ship for several years. As far as this problem goes, our knowledge of the universe is not the only bottleneck -- building such a ship will also be freaking expensive in terms of material resources consumed. You really shouldn't confuse technological advancements in silicon chips manufacturing with anything else. Moore's law is severely limited to a niche ;-) the alternative is to slowly sicken and decay into oblivion before you've had even a single century of life. This should not be a tough decision! Advocates of immortality are completely oblivious to the social challenges this will bring. First of all -- nobody will be able to have children anymore, since that will over-populate the planet. It's already happening since humans don't have natural enemies and we live in times of peace. Yet as a species we feel the need to have children. Personally I would give my life just so my 1 year-old boy could live a happy life. And while it saddens me that one day he too will be dead, I don't want to rob him of one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling purposes in life -- that of raising children of his own. Of course, this is a problem of humanity in general -- we tend to be selfish mother-fuckers.
- nova 15y ago
  Let me humbly suggest this video: http://vimeo.com/17513355 http://vimeo.com/17513355
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  Advocates of immortality are completely oblivious to the social challenges this will bring. Not oblivious to them, but social challenges are so much more fixable than being dead that it should be a no-brainer.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    Personally I think fixing death problems is only a matter of technological progress. And in general technological problems are much easier than social ones as social problems sometimes do not admit technological fixes ;) With the problem I outlined above, modifying humans to not feel the need for children would make us much less human than replacing our body parts with pieces made from silicon. It is easy imagining living a 1000 happy years, but would you experience happiness at all if you were less human? And I am aware that happiness could be faked, but then what incentive would you have for living a good life and accomplishing stuff instead of living like a vegetable, as many drug addicts are doing? And if you can't be happy, since that's the ultimate goal of everybody, than what's the point to all this? In my humble opinion, cheating death is the easy part.
    - jodrellblank 15y ago
      modifying humans to not feel the need for children would make us much less human than replacing our body parts with pieces made from silicon. It is easy imagining living a 1000 happy years, but would you experience happiness at all if you were less human? When you rephrase that to: "150,000 people die every day, and you want that to continue because changing the definition of 'human' feels a bit weird" it starts to look like less of a compelling argument. There are lots of reasons why developing life extension technologies will cause social and economic upheavals and potentially huge ripples, but fear of possible problems is not enough to make me say "well, I'm glad people died to avoid those problems". And I am aware that happiness could be faked, but then what incentive would you have for living a good life and accomplishing stuff instead of living like a vegetable, as many drug addicts are doing? Am I a drug addict today? Why would I be more likely to be a drug addict in 100 years? And if you can't be happy, since that's the ultimate goal of everybody, than what's the point to all this? Because we can (maybe) and because if we can, it's worse if we don't.