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What happens when [insert your least favorite political figure here] gets to live to 500? 500 years of Putin - that would be fun.
by tomohawk 3y ago
What happens when [insert your least favorite political figure here] gets to live to 500?
500 years of Putin - that would be fun.
- sethbannon 3y agoSo this is a common argument against longevity -- that dictators would remain in power for even longer. A simple counterpoint: imagine a world were we all did live until 500 years old. And there were some bad dictators in that world. If you lived in that world, would you suggest cutting everyone's lifespan to 80 years old to diminish the power of those dictators?
- jrockway 3y agoMy take is that if the cancer doesn't get you, the angry subjects will. Right now, medical science is what imposes term limits on dictators. But it's likely that humanity will impose their own, like they have in less dictatorial regimes. (Everyone's worried about dictators, but I'm just sitting here thinking about the Supreme Court.)
- LeifCarrotson 3y agoOr pretend you lived in a world where dictators often live to 80 years of age or more (easy to do, because that is the world you live in). Would you support cutting everyone's lifespan to 20 to diminish the power of those dictators?
- aredox 3y agoWould you support paying the cost of providing everyone with your life-expanding drug? Because that's never discussed
- jjk166 3y agoDo you support paying the cost of providing healthcare for age-related conditions to everyone who does not get the life-expanding drug? People living healthier and longer is extremely economically beneficial for all.
- aredox 3y ago"Everyone's" lifespan? Is your longevity drug going to be offered for free? Are you going to use taxes to pay for everyone's right to live? Your scenario is a pure strawman - we all know that in the current social and economic system, anti-aging drugs are just going to worsen inequality...
- orangecat 3y agoIs your longevity drug going to be offered for free? They'll almost certainly be cheaper than the costs of treating the effects of aging. Are you going to use taxes to pay for everyone's right to live? We do this already. we all know that in the current social and economic system, anti-aging drugs are just going to worsen inequality This is extreme zero-sum thinking. Has chemotherapy worsened inequality?
- macintux 3y ago> They'll almost certainly be cheaper than the costs of treating the effects of aging. Will they really reduce the medical costs of aging when you take into account the longer lifespan? To borrow an argument from a different branch of the thread: if everyone lived to be only 20, would you expect that medical expenses would be more than they are today, or less?
- Teever 3y agoAnybody who withholds large scale distribution of these drugs while taking the drugs themselves is just painting a huge target on their back. No rational person is going to respect intellectual property rights for these sorts of substances and if they're relatively easy to produce then people will make them themselves. Anyone who tries to stop the production and distribution of them will basically be killing people with more steps and people don't take too kindly to that. These people may be living twice as long with these drugs while others die, but that doesn't make them immortal.
- paxys 3y agoI can't imagine a world where everyone will live for 500 years because there is zero chance that's how such a magic drug will be distributed. Life is the most valuable commodity we have, and it will absolutely be hoarded by the top 1%.
- jjk166 3y agoBy that logic things critical to life like water and food would be extremely expensive while useless things like diamonds or gold bars would be cheap. What benefit would the rich derive by hoarding life extension drugs? Other people taking the same drug as you doesn't make your dose any less effective, nor vice versa.
- paxys 3y agoYou don't need to do some crazy speculation to reach this conclusion. People in the richest countries in the world are dying because they can't afford a shot of insulin or an ambulance or the most basic preventative care. Why will life extending drugs be any different? The only concern will be to maximize profit and not much else.
- shiroiuma 3y agoEven if they could profit by hoarding such drugs, what's going to prevent people from manufacturing the same thing elsewhere? It's just like software "piracy": once the information gets out, there's no way to stop it. Drugs aren't that difficult to manufacture, which is why lots of pharmaceuticals are manufactured, ignoring patent protections, in places like India.
- dullcrisp 3y agoI guess the fear is that only dictators would live for 500 years. But that’s still an argument for longevity research I think. If living to 500 years is a war crime, only war criminals will live to 500 years, and all that.
- polishdude20 3y agoI think the issue is as you get older, you amass more wealth and power but you amass less open mindedness. You become more conservative, set in your ways.this would permeate every process and institution in our lives.
- shiroiuma 3y agoI see nothing wrong with letting dictators live forever, and stay in power forever, if that's what their people want. If the people don't like the dictator, it's entirely in their power to remove the dictator. How exactly can one person stay in power over an entire nation of millions? It's only because the people there tolerate it. If the society needs a lifespan limit to limit the damage dictators can do, the problem isn't the lifespan.
- bezier-curve 3y ago> It's only because the people there tolerate it. Or they're too poor to leave for greener pastures. Dictators are in power not because their people tolerate them, but because they don't have a choice in many cases. There's exceptions, but generally the stigmatized term "banana republic" aptly describes many of these places dictators control for a reason.
- shiroiuma 3y ago>Dictators are in power not because their people tolerate them, but because they don't have a choice in many cases. They absolutely do: they can rise up and revolt. How is a dictator going to stop them? He's one person. How exactly does one person stay in power over millions? No dictator in history has ever been a Marvel-comics-style supervillain with fantastical powers. Dictators stay in power because their people tolerate them.
- graphe 3y ago0 worries. Russsia has a rich cultural history of assassinations. The long lived single party in Japan with the oldest population isn't immune to the disease of assassination either.
- lIl-IIIl 3y agoYou have to go back 1881 to tsar Alexander II to find an assassinated Russian leader.
- graphe 3y agoIf you ignore Putin's political assassinations, the assassinations during eras such as the red terror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror where Lenin and trosky were killed, and Nikolas II's 1918 assassination as well as the whole royal Russian family, sure. Russia has a rich culture of assassination.
- lIl-IIIl 3y agoNone of those examples are of a Russian leader being assassinated. Putin didn't kill any Russian leader, he is one. Nicholas II has abdicated the throne so he wasn't in power when he was killed. Lenin was shot but survived. Trotsky was never in power. All your examples flow from top to bottom, that is the leader of the country likely ordered them. But your "zero worries" argument rests on bottom up assassination, and Aleksander II is the most recent one.
- taylodl 3y agoMaximum human lifespan is still roughly 120 years. All the advances in medical science over the past century has been about getting more people to live longer. The actual maximum lifespan hasn't budged.
- dfxm12 3y agoConsider that if people lived to a mere 250 years old, we'd probably be living among people who thought slavery was good for the enslav -- nevermind.
- graphe 3y agoYou have people in the present that think that. Culture doesn't need the cultivators alive. Prophet's messages are carried on long after they die.
- dubcanada 3y agoI do wonder, let's think about that. People can change, 500 years is a long time. One could argue living that long may tame or completely change him. Get bored of doing what you did the past 200 years and try something else. We do have to understand that humans are humans after all. Eventually you will get bored of the same nonsense day in and day out and do something else.
- whythre 3y agoThis seems incredibly naive. You seem to think a longer lifespan will somehow make a brutal tyrant more caring, but I think the cruel will likely just get more monstrous with age. A long life means power must be held that much more tightly: what good is your near-immortality if rebels or rivals dethrone and kill you?
- mrguyorama 3y agoAh yes, surely the Robber Barons would have eventually got "bored" of being in control of all money and politics. Surely that would eventually be something they don't want! Just as silly as the people who somehow think a billionaire can't be bought and so make better politicians. Surely they became a billionaire because they have a reasonable relationship with money right? Surely you or I can relate to how they think of money!
- agloe_dreams 3y agoThis is a plot point in Cyberpunk 2077. A main executive/dictator is 158 years old due to medical advancements. The inability of his son to escape from his shadow leads to murder.
- concordDance 3y ago500 years of putin but no ageing would still be a net positive. Ageing is really bad in terms of both emotional cost on others and the financial cost.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kybernetikos 3y agoWhy are we focusing on the negative examples? Would you not want George Washington to live to 500? Lots of bad political figures were stopped by good political figures who would also benefit from life extension.
- whythre 3y agoThis seems the exception that proves the rule- Washington was good in no small part because he stepped down. He did not rule America as king, even when he had the popularity to claim the throne. He served his stint as president, and then stepped aside. An immortal Washington would not want to be the permanent head of state.