4 ms·

The longevity of the body is one thing, it is debatable whether or not it can be extended by a lot or a little (or at perhaps until the MTBF of a freak accident

by angdis 15y ago

The longevity of the body is one thing, it is debatable whether or not it can be extended by a lot or a little (or at perhaps until the MTBF of a freak accident). What I rarely see discussion of, however, are philosophical and psychological implications of "living indefinitely". Even if the body is says relatively youthful, what about diseases of the mind? In other words, I am saying that in the same way that increasing life-span has uncovered a plethora of diseases that were previously unknown like cancer, is it possible that further increasing life span may uncover conditions (perhaps purely psychological) that we can't even imagine. Will people _want_ to live 100's of years?

Tossrock 15y ago
There is an interesting discussion of this in the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. As people age well past a hundred, they can no longer remember most of their lives, and their cognitive function becomes progressively worse.
onemoreact 15y ago
There is less separation between mind and body than you are assuming. Old age disease of the mind ARE the direct result of breakdowns in the body.
andrewflnr 15y ago
Then those will become our new research problems, and we will dream of the distant future when we overcome them and can live even longer.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
To the extent we find bugs that cause the brain to stop working properly over time, we'll need to find and fix those. That falls under "problems we'd love to have". As for the question of whether people want to live for hundreds of years: if you don't want to live longer, you can easily stop. A surprisingly large number of people seem to rationalize the lack of immortality by claiming people won't want to live forever, which strikes me as sour grapes. Given an actual solution that allows people to live forever, the question becomes "do you want to die?", and I seriously doubt many people will say "yes". (Also, if you think of immortality as "hundreds of years", I think you need to recalibrate your scale. I'd like a lifetime measured on a cosmological time scale, and I have no problem conceiving of ways to spend that time.)
- jonp 15y ago
  As someone who does have difficulty conceiving of ways to spend a cosmological-scale lifespan, how might you spend it?
  - leot 15y ago
    I wonder.
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Mostly, I'd never stop learning, and I'd apply everything I learned. Consider the sum total of human knowledge today. Consider how small a fraction of it any one person knows. Within the next month, I'll have completed a PhD in computer science. It took me years to learn the fundamentals of one field, plus years more to get practical experience by tinkering in numerous areas, plus years more to become an expert in one narrow area (scalable concurrent data structures) and advance the state of the art in that area. Take a look at http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ to get a clearer picture of scale; now consider what a few million or billion lifetimes could produce, between research, practical work, exploration, and just good old-fashioned tinkering. How many of those narrow areas exist in one field alone? How many more fields exist to explore? How many more will exist by that point? What happens when someone with expert-level knowledge in a pile of those fields starts applying them to each other? And most importantly, do you really think it ever stops? Apart from that, I'd have plenty of time between learning everything and creating new things to enjoy the enormous amount of available entertainment created over the aeons, in all its various forms. I think the future sounds awesome, and I want to see all of it. :)
  - kahawe 15y ago
    Well, there are books, movies, TV shows, there is art and music and languages... and you haven't even touched on seriously studying different sciences up to a respectable level. I think it would benefit humanity a lot if people could have a much longer lifespan during which they can actually do things. Think of all the time you could spend learning... also, think of all the time spent learning and experiences and eventually wisdom accumulated in even just one human being by the time they are 60, 70.... only to have it practically all lost forever once you die? Also, wouldn't you just love to be alive only to see what the future will actually look like? it has been quite some time now since the last real paradigm-shift and real heavy impact innovation that changes our lives forever. I would love to see what is coming.
hessenwolf 15y ago
Not exactly answering at all but a short, entertaining view: The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Trip Up Yonder, by Kurt Vonnegut http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30240/30240-h/30240-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30240/30240-h/30240-h.htm

by angdis 15y ago

Tossrock 15y ago

There is an interesting discussion of this in the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. As people age well past a hundred, they can no longer remember most of their lives, and their cognitive function becomes progressively worse.

onemoreact 15y ago

There is less separation between mind and body than you are assuming. Old age disease of the mind ARE the direct result of breakdowns in the body.

andrewflnr 15y ago

Then those will become our new research problems, and we will dream of the distant future when we overcome them and can live even longer.

JoshTriplett 15y ago

To the extent we find bugs that cause the brain to stop working properly over time, we'll need to find and fix those. That falls under "problems we'd love to have". As for the question of whether people want to live for hundreds of years: if you don't want to live longer, you can easily stop. A surprisingly large number of people seem to rationalize the lack of immortality by claiming people won't want to live forever, which strikes me as sour grapes. Given an actual solution that allows people to live forever, the question becomes "do you want to die?", and I seriously doubt many people will say "yes". (Also, if you think of immortality as "hundreds of years", I think you need to recalibrate your scale. I'd like a lifetime measured on a cosmological time scale, and I have no problem conceiving of ways to spend that time.)

jonp 15y ago
As someone who does have difficulty conceiving of ways to spend a cosmological-scale lifespan, how might you spend it?
- leot 15y ago
  I wonder.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Mostly, I'd never stop learning, and I'd apply everything I learned. Consider the sum total of human knowledge today. Consider how small a fraction of it any one person knows. Within the next month, I'll have completed a PhD in computer science. It took me years to learn the fundamentals of one field, plus years more to get practical experience by tinkering in numerous areas, plus years more to become an expert in one narrow area (scalable concurrent data structures) and advance the state of the art in that area. Take a look at http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ to get a clearer picture of scale; now consider what a few million or billion lifetimes could produce, between research, practical work, exploration, and just good old-fashioned tinkering. How many of those narrow areas exist in one field alone? How many more fields exist to explore? How many more will exist by that point? What happens when someone with expert-level knowledge in a pile of those fields starts applying them to each other? And most importantly, do you really think it ever stops? Apart from that, I'd have plenty of time between learning everything and creating new things to enjoy the enormous amount of available entertainment created over the aeons, in all its various forms. I think the future sounds awesome, and I want to see all of it. :)
- kahawe 15y ago
  Well, there are books, movies, TV shows, there is art and music and languages... and you haven't even touched on seriously studying different sciences up to a respectable level. I think it would benefit humanity a lot if people could have a much longer lifespan during which they can actually do things. Think of all the time you could spend learning... also, think of all the time spent learning and experiences and eventually wisdom accumulated in even just one human being by the time they are 60, 70.... only to have it practically all lost forever once you die? Also, wouldn't you just love to be alive only to see what the future will actually look like? it has been quite some time now since the last real paradigm-shift and real heavy impact innovation that changes our lives forever. I would love to see what is coming.

hessenwolf 15y ago

Not exactly answering at all but a short, entertaining view: The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Trip Up Yonder, by Kurt Vonnegut http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30240/30240-h/30240-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30240/30240-h/30240-h.htm