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> As we extend human lifespan, there is an urgent need to move toward sustainable agriculture and to adopt energy-efficient technologies. I wonder if we'll rea

> As we extend human lifespan, there is an urgent need to move toward sustainable agriculture and to adopt energy-efficient technologies. I wonder if we'll reach a point where someone's life can be saved but doctors will choose not to if that person is of a certain age - because of the impact on the planet. It seems like a grisly future, but if it were possible to live to 200 or 300, the population could get out of control pretty fast. edit: This is getting a lot of downvotes - if you downvote can you please explain why? I'm not advocating for this, I simply thought it was an interesting possibility.

bpodgursky 5y ago
By the time anyone is 200, much less 300, assuming we have truly managed to cure ageing, I don't think we're going to be worrying about the impact on this particular planet. There's a whole universe out there to spend the next centuries of your life seeing.
- patorjk 5y ago
  This assumes we can live in space indefinitely without any problems or that settling other planets won't be a problem. Both of those could be great filters.
- dragosmocrii 5y ago
  Imagine this hypothetical discussion is discovered and read by someone in 10,000 years from now, when living over 300 years is already a reality and the normal. What a feeling to realize that the things you now take for granted, were at one point simply out of reach. I wonder if we have specific examples of such recorded discussions of things that today are a reality.
  - xvector 5y ago
    Future societies will definitely look back at the "age of death" with complete horror. How could humans accept aging while at the same time desperately clawing for life when death came near? How could they move the world and spend trillions fighting COVID while not even spending a billion fighting aging? People will shake their heads in fascination and perhaps a feeling of disgust at our obvious shortsightedness. In the future, even a single death will be a very significant event, similar to how we might see a high-mortality catastrophe like 9/11 today.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      90% of covid deaths are people over 70, most with multiple co-morbidities and thus a very limited remaining life expectancy any way. We went to such extreme lengths to prevent the deaths of these people from covid, yet so many are willing to see those same people die just a few years later from other aging-related illnesses, when it is within our power to cure aging.
      - cartoonworld 5y ago
        Deaths. There is so much beyond "merely" dying within the actual events that unfolded and continue. Only less than 60,000[0] people die per year from influenza, a family of viruses that is well understood, vaccines somewhat effective and available, and almost everybody has some immunological response against due to previous exposure. Tens of millions are affected by influenza yearly, it stops their work for weeks, causes their family to stop their work and care for them, causes errors and economic cost, social cost, etc. People hate influenza and it does result in critical hospitalizations and death among people all over the place. Mostly old people die from that too, but it ruins everybody's productivity. A novel virus that is at best like influenza, with an additional asymptomatic cadre, affecting the entire country or world, with a completely naive immune response? You should read Guns, Germs, and Steel[1] We are clearly capable of acting against and preventing Sars-CoV-2 infection, we are as yet unable to cure aging. How preposterous. [0] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
        xvector 5y ago
        People are not fighting COVID because of the productivity impact but because of the deaths, otherwise we'd treat it like the flu. > we are as yet unable to cure aging. How preposterous. We put zero effort into anti-aging research but we moved the world for COVID. If we put the same amount of effort into anti-aging research, a cure to aging could be well within most people's lifetimes, effectively saving billions of lives.
- adrianN 5y ago
  If even if we manage to colonize other worlds, exponential population growth can't be sustained. The habitable space scales at most as the volume of a sphere growing and light-speed centered around Earth, so subexponential. You'd also need to constantly ship people from inner space to ever more distant new colonies. Fortunately humans seem to have the tendency of having fewer children as they become more wealthy and educated. Many countries already are below replacement rate. It is plausible that birth rates would drop even further if death became optional.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    If you truly cured death you'd have to worry about the exponent eventually, but realistically people would start pushing back childbearing even further (dramatically further potentially). And it's possible that the TFR for any individual would not increase meaningfully (not clear to me that a 300 year old would feel the need to continue having children). Could just have 2.1 children and then call it quits and enjoy your great-great-great grandchildren, in which case population growth is only linear, not even exponential.
tfigment 5y ago
It sort of already happens but not in that way where a doctor makes a choice. Those without means do no even intersect with the system in a way that that choice is possible. Those with means will be opted in automatically.
cartoonworld 5y ago
>if it were possible to live to 200 or 300, the population could get out of control pretty fast. Seems unlikely. Females generally decline in their ability to create children, males less so, but it is for sure a thing. People might crank them out like crazy, as we currently do, and the people who don't die in war, accident, disease, or whatever else will just be out there. Hopefully they will also be out there bestowing their considerable wisdom upon their clan and humankind as a whole. One can dream. >doctors [might not] if that person is of a certain age - because of the impact on the planet. I don't think so. In this grisly, sort of insane scenario (we have plenty of those, thank you) it usually operates from the other chronological direction. I was considering if people might wait longer if they had more time to live, but people really like to bang I've noticed. Seems quite unlikely for young adults to pass up. Nonetheless, I don't think it will cause an insane explosion beyond the geometric growth that this thing could do anyhow. However, consider the decline in birth rates of western countries, japan, and now china[0], the numbers simply don't substantiate this hypothesis. I don't know how the math works out wrt population growth, or why this is happening to advanced nations, but it seems like there is the possibility of numbers to plateau for some murky reason. Plus, the best doctors are most likely gonna be old as hell or under the guidance of one who is. They might be able to see the utility. FWIW, I think it is a reasonable, if malinformed, question. [0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN?locations=CN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN?location...

bpodgursky 5y ago

By the time anyone is 200, much less 300, assuming we have truly managed to cure ageing, I don't think we're going to be worrying about the impact on this particular planet. There's a whole universe out there to spend the next centuries of your life seeing.

patorjk 5y ago
This assumes we can live in space indefinitely without any problems or that settling other planets won't be a problem. Both of those could be great filters.
dragosmocrii 5y ago
Imagine this hypothetical discussion is discovered and read by someone in 10,000 years from now, when living over 300 years is already a reality and the normal. What a feeling to realize that the things you now take for granted, were at one point simply out of reach. I wonder if we have specific examples of such recorded discussions of things that today are a reality.
- xvector 5y ago
  Future societies will definitely look back at the "age of death" with complete horror. How could humans accept aging while at the same time desperately clawing for life when death came near? How could they move the world and spend trillions fighting COVID while not even spending a billion fighting aging? People will shake their heads in fascination and perhaps a feeling of disgust at our obvious shortsightedness. In the future, even a single death will be a very significant event, similar to how we might see a high-mortality catastrophe like 9/11 today.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    90% of covid deaths are people over 70, most with multiple co-morbidities and thus a very limited remaining life expectancy any way. We went to such extreme lengths to prevent the deaths of these people from covid, yet so many are willing to see those same people die just a few years later from other aging-related illnesses, when it is within our power to cure aging.
    - cartoonworld 5y ago
      Deaths. There is so much beyond "merely" dying within the actual events that unfolded and continue. Only less than 60,000[0] people die per year from influenza, a family of viruses that is well understood, vaccines somewhat effective and available, and almost everybody has some immunological response against due to previous exposure. Tens of millions are affected by influenza yearly, it stops their work for weeks, causes their family to stop their work and care for them, causes errors and economic cost, social cost, etc. People hate influenza and it does result in critical hospitalizations and death among people all over the place. Mostly old people die from that too, but it ruins everybody's productivity. A novel virus that is at best like influenza, with an additional asymptomatic cadre, affecting the entire country or world, with a completely naive immune response? You should read Guns, Germs, and Steel[1] We are clearly capable of acting against and preventing Sars-CoV-2 infection, we are as yet unable to cure aging. How preposterous. [0] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
      - xvector 5y ago
        People are not fighting COVID because of the productivity impact but because of the deaths, otherwise we'd treat it like the flu. > we are as yet unable to cure aging. How preposterous. We put zero effort into anti-aging research but we moved the world for COVID. If we put the same amount of effort into anti-aging research, a cure to aging could be well within most people's lifetimes, effectively saving billions of lives.
adrianN 5y ago
If even if we manage to colonize other worlds, exponential population growth can't be sustained. The habitable space scales at most as the volume of a sphere growing and light-speed centered around Earth, so subexponential. You'd also need to constantly ship people from inner space to ever more distant new colonies. Fortunately humans seem to have the tendency of having fewer children as they become more wealthy and educated. Many countries already are below replacement rate. It is plausible that birth rates would drop even further if death became optional.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  If you truly cured death you'd have to worry about the exponent eventually, but realistically people would start pushing back childbearing even further (dramatically further potentially). And it's possible that the TFR for any individual would not increase meaningfully (not clear to me that a 300 year old would feel the need to continue having children). Could just have 2.1 children and then call it quits and enjoy your great-great-great grandchildren, in which case population growth is only linear, not even exponential.

tfigment 5y ago

It sort of already happens but not in that way where a doctor makes a choice. Those without means do no even intersect with the system in a way that that choice is possible. Those with means will be opted in automatically.

cartoonworld 5y ago

>if it were possible to live to 200 or 300, the population could get out of control pretty fast. Seems unlikely. Females generally decline in their ability to create children, males less so, but it is for sure a thing. People might crank them out like crazy, as we currently do, and the people who don't die in war, accident, disease, or whatever else will just be out there. Hopefully they will also be out there bestowing their considerable wisdom upon their clan and humankind as a whole. One can dream. >doctors [might not] if that person is of a certain age - because of the impact on the planet. I don't think so. In this grisly, sort of insane scenario (we have plenty of those, thank you) it usually operates from the other chronological direction. I was considering if people might wait longer if they had more time to live, but people really like to bang I've noticed. Seems quite unlikely for young adults to pass up. Nonetheless, I don't think it will cause an insane explosion beyond the geometric growth that this thing could do anyhow. However, consider the decline in birth rates of western countries, japan, and now china[0], the numbers simply don't substantiate this hypothesis. I don't know how the math works out wrt population growth, or why this is happening to advanced nations, but it seems like there is the possibility of numbers to plateau for some murky reason. Plus, the best doctors are most likely gonna be old as hell or under the guidance of one who is. They might be able to see the utility. FWIW, I think it is a reasonable, if malinformed, question. [0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN?locations=CN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN?location...