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Imagine Trump and Biden living forever holding outsized political power in perpetuity. Without the cycle of life there's no evolution, with no evolution there'

Imagine Trump and Biden living forever holding outsized political power in perpetuity. Without the cycle of life there's no evolution, with no evolution there's no progress. That goes for biology, but certainly also for ideas.

Nursie 4y ago
Imagine that when lifespans change and mortality drops, society adapts and changes too. Imagine. Actually we don't have to imagine, for instance we can see that in general birth rates drop when infant mortality falls. The idea that stagnation is the only possible outcome of longer lifespans seems ... reductivist.
- shafyy 4y ago
  How do you see that happening? Would you just exclude people that are older than, say, 100 years, of doing anything that affects the world? They will still try to influence the world according to their old, outdated ideas.
  - Nursie 4y ago
    No, I think that’s more of the same flawed thinking. The answer is I don’t know, and further, that trying to predict the outcome of societal change like that is probably a fool’s game. Pre-emptive, discriminatory rules seem like the absolute worst way to start out. Well, perhaps second worst compared to an outright ban on the technology, which is unfortunately where I think we’ll probably go first due to societal fear of change. Which is ironic given how much you and the OP think it would cause stagnation… You've started by assuming the same as the OP, that having older people will necessarily cause societal stasis. But you're basing that both on a preconception of what you think older people are like now (personally I dispute this, and I'm not that old), and on a supposition that whatever longevity treatment we come up with won't change that. How do we know? How do we know that a particular treatment to, say, keep people younger for longer, wouldn't result in more youthful and dynamic society? We don't know. And any supposition is based on flawed ideas.
    - shafyy 4y ago
      We do know that new and better ideas usually come from younger people, not older people who have been doing the same thing for 50 years. We also know that in general, once people have status and power, they do a lot to not give it up. I do think that we as a humans need to become more responsible with developing new technologies. There are technologies that do more bad than good, and we should develop techniques to better asses this before we just yolo a technology and then try to damage control later.
deleted 4y ago
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Nursie 4y ago

Imagine that when lifespans change and mortality drops, society adapts and changes too. Imagine. Actually we don't have to imagine, for instance we can see that in general birth rates drop when infant mortality falls. The idea that stagnation is the only possible outcome of longer lifespans seems ... reductivist.

shafyy 4y ago
How do you see that happening? Would you just exclude people that are older than, say, 100 years, of doing anything that affects the world? They will still try to influence the world according to their old, outdated ideas.
- Nursie 4y ago
  No, I think that’s more of the same flawed thinking. The answer is I don’t know, and further, that trying to predict the outcome of societal change like that is probably a fool’s game. Pre-emptive, discriminatory rules seem like the absolute worst way to start out. Well, perhaps second worst compared to an outright ban on the technology, which is unfortunately where I think we’ll probably go first due to societal fear of change. Which is ironic given how much you and the OP think it would cause stagnation… You've started by assuming the same as the OP, that having older people will necessarily cause societal stasis. But you're basing that both on a preconception of what you think older people are like now (personally I dispute this, and I'm not that old), and on a supposition that whatever longevity treatment we come up with won't change that. How do we know? How do we know that a particular treatment to, say, keep people younger for longer, wouldn't result in more youthful and dynamic society? We don't know. And any supposition is based on flawed ideas.
  - shafyy 4y ago
    We do know that new and better ideas usually come from younger people, not older people who have been doing the same thing for 50 years. We also know that in general, once people have status and power, they do a lot to not give it up. I do think that we as a humans need to become more responsible with developing new technologies. There are technologies that do more bad than good, and we should develop techniques to better asses this before we just yolo a technology and then try to damage control later.

deleted 4y ago

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