3 ms·

If we don’t die we don’t evolve. If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. I do feel the pull on my heartstrings in your comment (wouldn’t th

by dcow 4y ago

If we don’t die we don’t evolve. If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. I do feel the pull on my heartstrings in your comment (wouldn’t that be wonderful), but an engineer will expand to fit as much time as you give them. We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation.

kelnos 4y ago
> If we don’t die we don’t evolve. Sure we will, just not in the traditional natural-selection sense. In many ways humans have "beaten" evolution by finding medical means to allow "unfit" humans to live full lives, and often pass on their genes. Evolution in the future could be via technical means, either through advancements in medicine, or with cybernetic implants. If humans could ever become intellectually & ethically pure enough to be trusted with genetic engineering ourselves, that's another form of self-made evolution. > If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. That's a very personal thing, and just an opinion. With changes in lifespan, attitudes change, purpose changes, and people change their outlook. Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s. Now life expectancy is in the 70s and 80s. And yet we don't look at this doubling of our lifespans and believe that all that extra time robs our lives of meaning. So why should that be the case if we could live to be 500? > We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation. Perhaps, but that should be a floating limit that gets adjusted upward with life expectancy. If people regularly lived to be 200, maybe 190-year-olds wouldn't be fit to serve, but a 100-year-old? Why not? And if we managed to push that to 400, those 190-year-olds would start to seem pretty relevant; it would be an injustice to deny them participation in the political system. Regardless, our idea of society itself would need a huge overhaul even if our lifespans were doubled, let alone made effectively limitless. Political participation would likely be the least of our worries.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  > "Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s." Citation needed; because that's commonly believed to be average life expectancy - brought down by infant mortality. If you made it past ~5 years old, you had a good chance of living to 60-80. "The days of our years are threescore years and ten" - Psalm 90:10, the King James Bible. "A man will spend ten years as a child before he understands death and life. He spends another ten years acquiring the instruction by which he will be able to live. He spends another ten years earning and gaining possessions by which to live. He spends another ten years up to old age, when his heart becomes is counsellor. There remain sixty years of the whole life, which Thoth has assigned to be the man of god." - A passage from The Insinger Papyrus, in the Ptolemaic period"
elliotec 4y ago
> If we don’t die we don’t evolve. Not as a species though. We just have to keep reproducing more of us that are good at staying alive and also reproducing to evolve. You and I theoretically could live forever in the same state, and still, our species would evolve via our offspring and theirs and so on.
- pkrotich 4y ago
  I think the OP has a point - look at the cycle of innovation e.g in physics - happens almost every 100! I think it’s not an accident - as older generation die out the new ones can easily question the wisdom of the death vs living giants!
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    Or you could maybe go much faster as you don't have to tech new generations of physicists all iver again & you won't loose all the Nobel Price level geniuses after a few decades.
concordDance 4y ago
> If we don’t die we don’t evolve. If you're actually worried about evolution you'll want to bring back eugenics. Current selective pressures are quite relaxed, leading to an increase in deleterious mutations and rising future healthcare costs.
0xLJK 4y ago
I sort of imagine. Neuralink type of device combined with somatic cell nuclear transfer, cloning oneself but reliving being born again and growing up, accessing your Neuralink at age 18, accessing your memories.

by dcow 4y ago

kelnos 4y ago

> If we don’t die we don’t evolve. Sure we will, just not in the traditional natural-selection sense. In many ways humans have "beaten" evolution by finding medical means to allow "unfit" humans to live full lives, and often pass on their genes. Evolution in the future could be via technical means, either through advancements in medicine, or with cybernetic implants. If humans could ever become intellectually & ethically pure enough to be trusted with genetic engineering ourselves, that's another form of self-made evolution. > If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. That's a very personal thing, and just an opinion. With changes in lifespan, attitudes change, purpose changes, and people change their outlook. Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s. Now life expectancy is in the 70s and 80s. And yet we don't look at this doubling of our lifespans and believe that all that extra time robs our lives of meaning. So why should that be the case if we could live to be 500? > We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation. Perhaps, but that should be a floating limit that gets adjusted upward with life expectancy. If people regularly lived to be 200, maybe 190-year-olds wouldn't be fit to serve, but a 100-year-old? Why not? And if we managed to push that to 400, those 190-year-olds would start to seem pretty relevant; it would be an injustice to deny them participation in the political system. Regardless, our idea of society itself would need a huge overhaul even if our lifespans were doubled, let alone made effectively limitless. Political participation would likely be the least of our worries.

jodrellblank 4y ago
> "Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s." Citation needed; because that's commonly believed to be average life expectancy - brought down by infant mortality. If you made it past ~5 years old, you had a good chance of living to 60-80. "The days of our years are threescore years and ten" - Psalm 90:10, the King James Bible. "A man will spend ten years as a child before he understands death and life. He spends another ten years acquiring the instruction by which he will be able to live. He spends another ten years earning and gaining possessions by which to live. He spends another ten years up to old age, when his heart becomes is counsellor. There remain sixty years of the whole life, which Thoth has assigned to be the man of god." - A passage from The Insinger Papyrus, in the Ptolemaic period"

elliotec 4y ago

> If we don’t die we don’t evolve. Not as a species though. We just have to keep reproducing more of us that are good at staying alive and also reproducing to evolve. You and I theoretically could live forever in the same state, and still, our species would evolve via our offspring and theirs and so on.

pkrotich 4y ago
I think the OP has a point - look at the cycle of innovation e.g in physics - happens almost every 100! I think it’s not an accident - as older generation die out the new ones can easily question the wisdom of the death vs living giants!
- m4rtink 4y ago
  Or you could maybe go much faster as you don't have to tech new generations of physicists all iver again & you won't loose all the Nobel Price level geniuses after a few decades.

concordDance 4y ago

> If we don’t die we don’t evolve. If you're actually worried about evolution you'll want to bring back eugenics. Current selective pressures are quite relaxed, leading to an increase in deleterious mutations and rising future healthcare costs.

0xLJK 4y ago

I sort of imagine. Neuralink type of device combined with somatic cell nuclear transfer, cloning oneself but reliving being born again and growing up, accessing your Neuralink at age 18, accessing your memories.