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I'm unsure if we want people living forever. While disease, illness, and senility are terrible things, as soon as people can live forever we will have eternal d
by Smoosh 3y ago
I'm unsure if we want people living forever. While disease, illness, and senility are terrible things, as soon as people can live forever we will have eternal dictatorships (or people trying for it) as well as other questions of perpetual inequality.
"Death renders all equal".
- highwaylights 3y agoAlso there’s a massive philosophical quandary in there too. If people could live for much longer then they’re likely disincentivised to procreate due to worries of overpopulation and then, in one way of thinking, you’re hypothetically depriving a line of offspring of lifetimes they’d otherwise have if you’d had what we consider a normal lifespan now. Yes I realise there are probably an infinite number of takes on this, I’m just pointing out one possible way of looking at it for the sake of saying not all technological advances have universally positive outcomes.
- raducu 3y ago> you’re hypothetically depriving a line of offspring of lifetimes they’d otherwise have. I don't want to open a can of worms, but... about 40 milion people are aborted each year...
- gorbachev 3y agoI think a majority of the people who want to live "forever" are the types of megalomaniacs who want to populate the earth with their own kind of uber mench, and will actually have more children than an average person.
- wiseowise 3y agoYou read too much fiction. There are millions of people who would love to just live their life.
- ETH_start 3y agoThe vast majority of healthcare spending is incurred at the end of life, because when death really approaches, almost everyone wants to avoid it. People who are explicitly pursuing immortality are just thinking on a long-term basis instead of only reacting once they face the reality of mortality, in their impending death. But amongst the popular left, there seems to be an aversion to competency and rationality, as they are symbolically linked to high status and social dominance. And so those who work deliberatively to end the scourge of aging and illness from humanity are—due to their displaying a rational results-oriented mindset—disdained.
- deely3 3y ago> we will have eternal dictatorships I can't agree. We can have eternal dictatorship now. Nothing prevents it except other people, therefore people will prevent eternal dictatorship just as now (with various results). Anyway, Im ready to accept this risk.
- SanderNL 3y agoWe cannot have them though? The leaders die and the resulting fights over succession is what keeps us out of eternal territory. These maniacs didn’t have enough time to accrue enough mass to become power black holes, but give them a century or two to work with..
- coderenegade 3y agoNah, the fact that even emperors die is a good thing. No dynasty lasts forever, because after the first few generations, assets get diluted, someone spends the money, descendants fight, etc. An aristocracy that lives forever would be very hard to remove because those factors would be greatly mitigated.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ETH_start 3y agoImmortal emperors may produce shorter-lived dynasties, as it means no changing of the guard to provide the dynasty with fresh blood. Rulers, set in their ways, will take a government down an increasingly non-viable path.
- bratbag 3y agoNot just dictatorships. We already see the advantage age provides when building influence for US politics.
- ben_w 3y agoEternal youth != immortality; given accidental and deliberate injuries and deaths, the "half life" (feels wrong in this context) is about 1000 years. As for dictators: it's not like guillotines stop working. What will keep dictators (if eternally young, or their offspring if not) in power forever is competent and obedient AI manning the police and army.
- shrx 3y agoSource on the half life number?
- sethammons 3y agoSimilar, I recall hearing 2k years on some program. No source. The idea was that accidental deaths will happen. On mobile, but you could look up accidental death records to get the rate and then project out average lifespan. Still, that is averages. A cruel despot may never leave their palace fearing death and will always have security. They will have less opportunities for accidents.
- ben_w 3y agoPercent of all deaths that are caused by injuries: 7.85% Current global median life expectancy: 75.2 years LE/I%: ~958 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat... Same but assuming we can avoid transport accidents, ~1354 years.
- moffkalast 3y agoInteresting to see hard numbers for this, I always felt like those LOTR elves living for 10,000 years in a war torn world is laughably improbable from a statistical perspective.
- ben_w 3y agoTolkien's elves were also (somewhat?) magic, and the designated firstborn of the creator god Ilúvatar with various gifts, seemingly including awareness and dexterity exceeding anything a human could ever do.
- ajmurmann 3y ago"Science progresses one funeral at a time" comes to mind as well.
- kaba0 3y agoAlso, people’s mind simply worsen as they age, and I don’t mean senility only. We are not made for living too long, and the elderly are already the most commonly targeted group for populist propaganda by political parties. Reflexes worsen, the past will become rose-tinted, etc.
- ETH_start 3y agoWe will also have eternal opposition activists and leaders. The effects of immortality on politics will fall on everyone equally.
- skeaker 3y agoI have never liked this mentality in discussions around immortality that essentially boil down to "I would die if it meant people I don't like can die too." "A bad actor living for a long time would make our quality of life lower" is usually the given reasoning, but do you know what quality-of-life rock bottom is? It's being dead! Once you are dead there is absolutely no good to ever happen to you ever again! And the counter for this is then usually "well what if I like being dead," which is great for you, but I and many many others happen to very much dislike the idea, and your stance would drag us down with you. That's all without even mentioning other benefits like cumulative knowledge of multiple lifespans being contained in one person allowing for new scientific breakthroughs.