9 ms·

Can we live 1000 years?

61 points by nreece 18y ago

jsmcgd 18y ago
I'm indifferent on whether we should want/attempt to live longer than natural life spans. Either way sounds good and bad.
sireat 18y ago
I'd be happy with any radical advance in anti-aging (even extra 50 years would be significant). Alas, I fear the breakthrough may not come within our lifetimes. The article does nothing to dispel my pessimistic notions.
tphyahoo 18y ago
I don't know, but I hope we get space colonization first, or it's going to get awfully crowded and competitive around here.
- Harkins 18y ago
  It would be some pretty big spaceships that could outpace the birth rate.
  - tphyahoo 18y ago
    I think if it's a nanotech-based solution to aging, we'll have the resources to build some whopping big monster colony ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Orbitals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Orbitals
  - randallsquared 18y ago
    ...or very numerous. If wealth keeps trending upwards, then anyone who wants will be able to afford their own ship out, as the wealthy can all afford yachts today.
andr 18y ago
It would slow down technical innovation. People grow accustomed to their surroundings and find newer technology suspicious and unneeded. That's why leaps in innovation are most easily embraced by the generations born with them (ie., current teenagers using computers for communication where their parents use phones). If people can live 1000 years, that would cause overcrowding of the Earth. So if we don't expand to other planets, there would need to be some kind of very serious birth control. This would increase the average age of Earth's population and, as discussed before, make them less interested in innovative products.
- tom_rath 18y ago
  If we can get to the point where we're reversing aging, I think we can safely assume reversible sterilization. Use an economic solution (really simplified here): When you receive anti-aging treatment, you're temporarily sterilized. Each person then gets 1 credit for a child. 3 credits are required to bear a child. One can purchase or sell their credit for children as one would like. For the first time in human history, if one wants children, they'll have to put conscious effort into it. Only those who _really_ want children will have them. ...unless you don't want anti-aging treatment, then you can have as many kids as you'd like and become 'immortal' the old fashioned way.
  - gcheong 18y ago
    I'm not sure it would be necessary. Kids in developed nations are already considered optional (vs. undeveloped countries where you put your kids to work so you can eat) so as people get accustomed to having more time to raise kids then they may seem them as much less of a priority and birthrates would continue to decline to offset the increased lifespans. I do wonder what people would consider to be the age of maturity at which you are expected to be on your own. Would people expect to be cared for by their parents until they are 300?
  - tocomment 18y ago
    You could have a law, if you take anti-aging meds you must leave the planet.
mixmax 18y ago
Living a thousand years has some pretty interesting implications. - Things that seem safe will become dangerous. Small daily risks, such as crossing a red light, will have a much bigger chance of killing you. If you live 15 times as long the risk is 15 times as big. Expect to see people being insulated from the daily dangers of the world. - Our personal drive will diminish. If you want to do a startup (or whatever else that is nontrivial) you have to act now or it might be too late. If you live a thousand years you can do it next month or next millenium, and you won't feel the same pressure to get started. - The relation between people that have just reached adulthood and "old" people will be tremendous in terms of experience. Can you imagine the experience of someone that lived through the middle ages, the Roman Empire, the colonization of America, the French revolution and both world wars? And these are just off the top of my head...
- patio11 18y ago
  Imagine the implications for wealth, too. If the means of life extension is not hideously expensive, then anyone past a certain age with even the smallest bit of sense will be rich beyond the dreams of mortal men. Compound interest works. This would have interesting social ramifications. As it is, most states are organized such that the old are relatively rich, the young are relatively poor, and the young's income subsidizes the old's healthcare costs. In a state with some people who are 420 and some people are 20, the Methuselah will be worth $300 million. For every dollar invested back when he was twenty.
  - Retric 18y ago
    If 20% of the population becomes mufti billionaires a billion will not buy what it used to. Compound interest works in large part because capital has value. As the world becomes rich the value of wealth will go down relative to the value of peoples effort. Basically over the extremely long term expected ROI should go down if people start living into extreme old age. Granted some people will always balance this out with the 700 year old with credit card debt keeping the people who get that interest well paid but if 60 million people are willing to lend billions the interest rate is going to be vary low. PS: What I wonder about is how the death penalty vs life in prison is going to work out. As people live longer I expect more people to commit "major" crimes and even larger groups of people to know someone that "flipped out". Will we want to punish people for mistakes they made 200 years ago or will people become so jaded that minor crimes are are just dealt with by killing the offender?
utnick 18y ago
I think an interesting side effect of extremely long lives would be people would be a lot more careful. Driving fast, not wearing a seatbelt, skydiving, going to war, heck even leaving the house would be considered crazy. who would want to risk ending their lives in an accident if they could live for another healthy 900 years?
- gcheong 18y ago
  I'm not so sure. Did people become twice as cautious when life expectancy doubled in our fairly recent history? The retirement age of 65 was originally set because it was deemed so unlikely that anyone would reach it, now it is almost considered a given that people will live past it and I don't think people have become more cautious as a result. The other thing is that if people feel that medical technology has advanced enough that they can be pulled through ever increasing traumatic circumstances they are more likely to attempt higher risk behavior.
  - ars 18y ago
    "Did people become twice as cautious when life expectancy doubled in our fairly recent history?" Yes! Very much so they did. So many sports have been gutted due to "safety", chemistry sets have most of the good stuff gone for the same reason. Kids can no longer just go and do what they want because it's "not safe". People took far far more risks in the past.
    - FlorinAndrei 18y ago
      But they didn't have a choice.
    - gcheong 18y ago
      This is probably more due to companies trying to protect themselves from lawsuits and a greater understanding of how to safely to things than any conservative attitude developed due to an increased life span. People routinely jump off cliffs with every expectation that they will live, given the appropriate safety measures these days, and the Darwin awards do not seem to be lacking any candidates.
biohacker42 18y ago
What's the ultimate end game of living for ever? Who's read Asimov's "The Last Question" http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html Imagine you can live to 1000 or more, at what point does your brain run out of space for memories? When you're finally out of room in your memory buffer do you just turn it into a FIFO queue? So you could collect a whole bunch of information you like (like favorite books, music, movies, etc) start consuming at one end, forget that by the time you get to the end and start again. Repeat forever. Alternatively you could expand your mind, you turn into a cyborg or something. See Asimov's The Last Question again. Or you could stimulate your (possibly digital) brain's please center - forever. And this leads me to a theory of what happened to all the other advanced civilizations in the universe. Assume human like intelligence evolves somewhere out there, then: Scenario #1: Self destruction. Scenario #2: External destruction, asteroid or something. Scenario #3 Super-intellect is achieved: #3.1 Rational super intellect realized existence for the sake of existence is pointless and quits. #3.2 Irrational super intellect wants to exist rational enlightenment be damned. Irrational intellect expands and expands. In other words, if some alien species out there advanced enough to reach trans-humanism (or trans-alienism hardi har har har) then it probably also transcended any irrational genetic fear of death and then promptly took a bow and exited stage left. I guess what I'm saying is you're doomed either way. Either you are primitive and doomed to die a natural death. Or you're super advanced and too smart to fear death, then you have something to do for a while but eventually...
- electromagnetic 18y ago
  So your assumption is life is pointless so kill yourself? Are you going to be the first person to test this laughably pessimistic hypothesis? I'm a thousand times smarter than my pet rabbit, I've yet to even try suicide because its patently moronic. If human beings were a thousand times smarter than they are today then there's a high probability that less people will commit suicide as they'll finally be smart enough to realize it's not a solution to a problem. Human culture is so diverse that even in 1000 years you'd barely manage 5 years in each country on the planet. I mean just look at how different human culture is today than it was 1000 years ago. We're talking the difference between Monarchy and Democracy in the entire western world. There's no law of conservation of information, there's no finite limit to the amount of data in the universe. It's not like once a thousand books have been written you're stuck with them, there's going to be more and more unique information as the universe ages. A being with an infinite lifespan is going to have a lot of time experiencing all there is for humanity to offer before it even has to create something itself, even then it could likely explore the universe to find another culture to experience. I'm sure if you're going to live forever and spent 10,000 years experiencing humanity, it might not seem too long to take a quick 100 year jaunt to another star system to spend 10,000 years experiencing alienity.
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felideon 18y ago
Imagine having been born in the year 1100 and still be alive with about 90 years to go. PS: For what it's worth, humans actually did live for about 900 years on average until the Great Flood---if you believe in the Bible.
kingkongrevenge 18y ago
No. We have shockingly little control over basic diseases and health issues. This de Gray character is just an attention whore.
- FlorinAndrei 18y ago
  I'm surprised there are so few mentions about that. I smashed an ankle a few years ago racing a motorcycle. The ankle is mostly fine, I can walk, hike, climb a mountain, lift weights, or just stand for as long as I want. It doesn't hurt. Jumping though is not OK, and neither is dancing (not that I dance anyway, but still) or running. It looks like it can't be fixed 100%. So, if such a comparatively trivial thing can't be fixed, how can they talk about immortality? I don't see immortality becoming less than a dream until we are able to fix the vast majority of diseases and health issues. The simple fact that we can't do that is a sign that we're pretty far from understanding our biology.
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    Ridiculous beard, ridiculous claims. This guy is a clown. I don't understand how he dupes so many people.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    I think most of the issues with your ankle are simply problems of mechanical engineering. Total ankle replacements exist now, they just aren't very good.However, I find it highly unlikely that in the next 10 years, incremental improvements to artificial ankles will not lead to ankles capable of jumping, dancing and jogging.
Hexstream 18y ago
If extending lifespan from 30 years to 70 years was beneficial, and I believe it did, I don't see why extending it from 70 to 160 wouldn't be similarly beneficial.
lst 18y ago
? First of all we would have not to kill the not yet born ones. This would be the very first step necessary. The next step necessary would be not to help to kill the old ones. Currently we have no real respect neither for the not born ones, nor for old ones. In other words: currently we still (kind of) hate life.
jobeyonekenobi 18y ago
The third world country's / developing country's. How would they get a piece of this? I'm quite sure they wouldn't - or if so, it would be an order of magnitude below what the western world would have. Already more than enough to go to war for, by the havenots. And resources? Would we just ultimately end up allowing 1 child per 1k couples to try and stem the rampant population explosion and resultant resource drain? Would we tackle extreme age with a longevity based tax on a log scale? It's the little things that add up and kick us in the arse, because even though we could live 12 times longer, the human condition would not advance anywhere as much.
ram1024 18y ago
so the question is. what happens at 1000 that kills us, and why aren't we solving that problem? WTF didn't anyone see this coming? might as well just die now if it's all going to be the same...
- rsheridan6 18y ago
  ISTR that, on average, people would live to be 1000 on average if they died only from accidents/violence rather than disease and old age. The age distribution would be different. With the simplifying assumption that everybody's chance of dying in a given year is the same, the mortality rate would be proportional to number of people alive, which means that 1000 years would be a half-life. So you'd see 1/8 of the people living to be 3000 or more years, 1/16 living to be 4000, etc.
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geebee 18y ago
methuselah lived 900 years, methuselah lived 900 years, but who calls that livin when no gal will give in to no man who's 900 years
- shard 18y ago
  Maybe the downvoters just don't recognize "Porgy and Bess"? Regardless, it was relevant commentary and not deserving of a downvote.
rokhayakebe 18y ago
Saying 1000 years is too much is a just a matter of perspective. A few thousands years back, I am sure most people died at around 40. To them living 100 years would be way too much. 1000 is nothing. We will adapt to it and still find ways to be miserable and need more time to do the things we want to do.
jonknee 18y ago
I wouldn't want to. I can barely tolerate family reunions now, no need to make them fill a stadium.
transburgh 18y ago
Imagine the number of people competing for jobs.
swombat 18y ago
Were it to do so, it would undermine what it means to be human. They oppose the idea of life extension and anti-ageing research on ethical, moral and ecological grounds. the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual Seriously, if you think that dying will give meaning to your life, go ahead and do it. No one's stopping you.
- sadfsa 18y ago
  These statements (especially the one about "meaning") show how religion affects a person's view of science. For it to <i>mean</i> something to be human, there has to be someone who intends for it to mean something. Once you accept that God is imaginary, the problem of "meaningless humanity" disappears.
ars 18y ago
For the religious point of view: I hold that if god did not want people to live to 1000 he would make it impossible to do so. If it's possible, then god must be OK with it. He was pretty specific about all the "possible but don't do them anyway" things after all, so no need to add some new ones.
- whatusername 18y ago
  From another religious angle - As I understand - prior Noah/Flood - the Bible records humans living long lives. (Say 1000 years) Post flood / Noah - Humans were limited to 120? Or something like that? Found the quote: Genesis 6: 3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with [a] man forever, for he is mortal [b] ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." So the religious interpretation could be: a) See this proves Chapters 1-8 of Genesis b) God will curse you / etc / etc
  - Raphael 18y ago
    Isn't that interesting that the biblical limit is so close to the current outlier lifespans?
    - Retric 18y ago
      I assume 2000 years ago some people would live about that long. It's going to be a smaller percentage of a smaller population but the are reasonably healthy 105 year old people in the world today so I assume there were a few back then.
Eliezer 18y ago
Give me a break. You think you're still going to be running around with fleshy arms and legs and a meat brain after one thousand further years of technological progress? Do you realize that the whole scientific revolution only started five hundred years ago? No, you will not die "crossing a red light" after living a thousand years. Sheesh, talk about your failures of imagination.
- randomwalker 18y ago
  It's called a metaphor. I suppose he could have said, "you might die accidentally hitting the wrong button on a hyperdimensional panfibrillator," but people don't generally talk like that, preferring more familiar and concrete imagery. Come to think of it, "1000 years" just means "really big number that's way longer than our current lifespan." When someone uses an exemplar to describe a class of things, you're supposed to imagine the other objects in that space.
  - DavidSJ 18y ago
    Even if I did hit the wrong button on a hyperdimensional panfibrillator, I'd just be restored from my S3 backup.
time_management 18y ago
I think it's optimistic to state that the first 1000-year-old is alive today. We don't know anything about the challenges that a 200+ year lifespan will pose. What scares me is that imperfect, expensive forms of "immortality" will exist before the desirable, cheap ones. I wouldn't want to "make the cut" but be demented for 900 years. I think I'll die at a relatively normal age, between 70 and 100, and that the first 200-year-old will be alive when I die. I make no projections about 1000, much less over 9000.
mccon104 18y ago
No.
ruby_roo 18y ago
Hate to sound cynical, but I have to ask: why would technology like this be made accessible to the average person? What would be the economic payoff? Seems to me that this will be a technology for elitists, first and foremost. Or you would have to 'earn' it in some way. Would the 'unproductive' among us be allowed to have access to technology that increases their lifespans? I'm pretty sure Larry Ellison is reading this story from his volcano lair about now, just barely holding back his maniacal laughter. :)
lallysingh 18y ago
Imagine that everyone had time to get education, have several generations of kids (& debug the process), maybe figure a few things out. OTOH, we'll have to explore space, as we'll quickly run out of room.
ryan-allen 18y ago
Someone please quote The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert! In fact that book is a take on living for, well, ages. :) I enjoyed it.
mhartl 18y ago
I can state confidently that there are no fundamental physical laws preventing 1000-year lifespans. There aren't even fundamental biological limitations---lots of organisms live that long. At this point it's "merely" a (very difficult) engineering problem.
JulianMorrison 18y ago
If you live 50 years from today you'll probably live 1000, but if you live 1000 years you'll probably live until the fundamental laws of physics leave no possible means for your survival. Why would you stop at the limits of biology?
pavelludiq 18y ago
A 1000 years of memories could drive any one insane, i mean, what is our mental capacity? I'm sure we could keep the body alive and healthy for a long period of time, but a 1000 years is probably too much. The brain would have to adapt somehow, we would probably forget most of our experience and only keep the most important memories, our brains were designed for 30-40 year life-spans, nature really didn't intend us to live as long as we live today. We've managed so far by forgetting stuff thats not that important, but how would our memory management work in a longer period?

61 points by nreece 18y ago

I'm indifferent on whether we should want/attempt to live longer than natural life spans. Either way sounds good and bad.

sireat 18y ago

I'd be happy with any radical advance in anti-aging (even extra 50 years would be significant). Alas, I fear the breakthrough may not come within our lifetimes. The article does nothing to dispel my pessimistic notions.

tphyahoo 18y ago

I don't know, but I hope we get space colonization first, or it's going to get awfully crowded and competitive around here.

Harkins 18y ago
It would be some pretty big spaceships that could outpace the birth rate.
- tphyahoo 18y ago
  I think if it's a nanotech-based solution to aging, we'll have the resources to build some whopping big monster colony ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Orbitals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Orbitals
- randallsquared 18y ago
  ...or very numerous. If wealth keeps trending upwards, then anyone who wants will be able to afford their own ship out, as the wealthy can all afford yachts today.

andr 18y ago

It would slow down technical innovation. People grow accustomed to their surroundings and find newer technology suspicious and unneeded. That's why leaps in innovation are most easily embraced by the generations born with them (ie., current teenagers using computers for communication where their parents use phones). If people can live 1000 years, that would cause overcrowding of the Earth. So if we don't expand to other planets, there would need to be some kind of very serious birth control. This would increase the average age of Earth's population and, as discussed before, make them less interested in innovative products.

tom_rath 18y ago
If we can get to the point where we're reversing aging, I think we can safely assume reversible sterilization. Use an economic solution (really simplified here): When you receive anti-aging treatment, you're temporarily sterilized. Each person then gets 1 credit for a child. 3 credits are required to bear a child. One can purchase or sell their credit for children as one would like. For the first time in human history, if one wants children, they'll have to put conscious effort into it. Only those who _really_ want children will have them. ...unless you don't want anti-aging treatment, then you can have as many kids as you'd like and become 'immortal' the old fashioned way.
- gcheong 18y ago
  I'm not sure it would be necessary. Kids in developed nations are already considered optional (vs. undeveloped countries where you put your kids to work so you can eat) so as people get accustomed to having more time to raise kids then they may seem them as much less of a priority and birthrates would continue to decline to offset the increased lifespans. I do wonder what people would consider to be the age of maturity at which you are expected to be on your own. Would people expect to be cared for by their parents until they are 300?
- tocomment 18y ago
  You could have a law, if you take anti-aging meds you must leave the planet.

mixmax 18y ago

Living a thousand years has some pretty interesting implications. - Things that seem safe will become dangerous. Small daily risks, such as crossing a red light, will have a much bigger chance of killing you. If you live 15 times as long the risk is 15 times as big. Expect to see people being insulated from the daily dangers of the world. - Our personal drive will diminish. If you want to do a startup (or whatever else that is nontrivial) you have to act now or it might be too late. If you live a thousand years you can do it next month or next millenium, and you won't feel the same pressure to get started. - The relation between people that have just reached adulthood and "old" people will be tremendous in terms of experience. Can you imagine the experience of someone that lived through the middle ages, the Roman Empire, the colonization of America, the French revolution and both world wars? And these are just off the top of my head...

patio11 18y ago
Imagine the implications for wealth, too. If the means of life extension is not hideously expensive, then anyone past a certain age with even the smallest bit of sense will be rich beyond the dreams of mortal men. Compound interest works. This would have interesting social ramifications. As it is, most states are organized such that the old are relatively rich, the young are relatively poor, and the young's income subsidizes the old's healthcare costs. In a state with some people who are 420 and some people are 20, the Methuselah will be worth $300 million. For every dollar invested back when he was twenty.
- Retric 18y ago
  If 20% of the population becomes mufti billionaires a billion will not buy what it used to. Compound interest works in large part because capital has value. As the world becomes rich the value of wealth will go down relative to the value of peoples effort. Basically over the extremely long term expected ROI should go down if people start living into extreme old age. Granted some people will always balance this out with the 700 year old with credit card debt keeping the people who get that interest well paid but if 60 million people are willing to lend billions the interest rate is going to be vary low. PS: What I wonder about is how the death penalty vs life in prison is going to work out. As people live longer I expect more people to commit "major" crimes and even larger groups of people to know someone that "flipped out". Will we want to punish people for mistakes they made 200 years ago or will people become so jaded that minor crimes are are just dealt with by killing the offender?

utnick 18y ago

I think an interesting side effect of extremely long lives would be people would be a lot more careful. Driving fast, not wearing a seatbelt, skydiving, going to war, heck even leaving the house would be considered crazy. who would want to risk ending their lives in an accident if they could live for another healthy 900 years?

gcheong 18y ago
I'm not so sure. Did people become twice as cautious when life expectancy doubled in our fairly recent history? The retirement age of 65 was originally set because it was deemed so unlikely that anyone would reach it, now it is almost considered a given that people will live past it and I don't think people have become more cautious as a result. The other thing is that if people feel that medical technology has advanced enough that they can be pulled through ever increasing traumatic circumstances they are more likely to attempt higher risk behavior.
- ars 18y ago
  "Did people become twice as cautious when life expectancy doubled in our fairly recent history?" Yes! Very much so they did. So many sports have been gutted due to "safety", chemistry sets have most of the good stuff gone for the same reason. Kids can no longer just go and do what they want because it's "not safe". People took far far more risks in the past.
  - FlorinAndrei 18y ago
    But they didn't have a choice.
  - gcheong 18y ago
    This is probably more due to companies trying to protect themselves from lawsuits and a greater understanding of how to safely to things than any conservative attitude developed due to an increased life span. People routinely jump off cliffs with every expectation that they will live, given the appropriate safety measures these days, and the Darwin awards do not seem to be lacking any candidates.

biohacker42 18y ago

What's the ultimate end game of living for ever? Who's read Asimov's "The Last Question" http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html Imagine you can live to 1000 or more, at what point does your brain run out of space for memories? When you're finally out of room in your memory buffer do you just turn it into a FIFO queue? So you could collect a whole bunch of information you like (like favorite books, music, movies, etc) start consuming at one end, forget that by the time you get to the end and start again. Repeat forever. Alternatively you could expand your mind, you turn into a cyborg or something. See Asimov's The Last Question again. Or you could stimulate your (possibly digital) brain's please center - forever. And this leads me to a theory of what happened to all the other advanced civilizations in the universe. Assume human like intelligence evolves somewhere out there, then: Scenario #1: Self destruction. Scenario #2: External destruction, asteroid or something. Scenario #3 Super-intellect is achieved: #3.1 Rational super intellect realized existence for the sake of existence is pointless and quits. #3.2 Irrational super intellect wants to exist rational enlightenment be damned. Irrational intellect expands and expands. In other words, if some alien species out there advanced enough to reach trans-humanism (or trans-alienism hardi har har har) then it probably also transcended any irrational genetic fear of death and then promptly took a bow and exited stage left. I guess what I'm saying is you're doomed either way. Either you are primitive and doomed to die a natural death. Or you're super advanced and too smart to fear death, then you have something to do for a while but eventually...

electromagnetic 18y ago
So your assumption is life is pointless so kill yourself? Are you going to be the first person to test this laughably pessimistic hypothesis? I'm a thousand times smarter than my pet rabbit, I've yet to even try suicide because its patently moronic. If human beings were a thousand times smarter than they are today then there's a high probability that less people will commit suicide as they'll finally be smart enough to realize it's not a solution to a problem. Human culture is so diverse that even in 1000 years you'd barely manage 5 years in each country on the planet. I mean just look at how different human culture is today than it was 1000 years ago. We're talking the difference between Monarchy and Democracy in the entire western world. There's no law of conservation of information, there's no finite limit to the amount of data in the universe. It's not like once a thousand books have been written you're stuck with them, there's going to be more and more unique information as the universe ages. A being with an infinite lifespan is going to have a lot of time experiencing all there is for humanity to offer before it even has to create something itself, even then it could likely explore the universe to find another culture to experience. I'm sure if you're going to live forever and spent 10,000 years experiencing humanity, it might not seem too long to take a quick 100 year jaunt to another star system to spend 10,000 years experiencing alienity.

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felideon 18y ago

Imagine having been born in the year 1100 and still be alive with about 90 years to go. PS: For what it's worth, humans actually did live for about 900 years on average until the Great Flood---if you believe in the Bible.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago

No. We have shockingly little control over basic diseases and health issues. This de Gray character is just an attention whore.

FlorinAndrei 18y ago
I'm surprised there are so few mentions about that. I smashed an ankle a few years ago racing a motorcycle. The ankle is mostly fine, I can walk, hike, climb a mountain, lift weights, or just stand for as long as I want. It doesn't hurt. Jumping though is not OK, and neither is dancing (not that I dance anyway, but still) or running. It looks like it can't be fixed 100%. So, if such a comparatively trivial thing can't be fixed, how can they talk about immortality? I don't see immortality becoming less than a dream until we are able to fix the vast majority of diseases and health issues. The simple fact that we can't do that is a sign that we're pretty far from understanding our biology.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  Ridiculous beard, ridiculous claims. This guy is a clown. I don't understand how he dupes so many people.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  I think most of the issues with your ankle are simply problems of mechanical engineering. Total ankle replacements exist now, they just aren't very good.However, I find it highly unlikely that in the next 10 years, incremental improvements to artificial ankles will not lead to ankles capable of jumping, dancing and jogging.

Hexstream 18y ago

If extending lifespan from 30 years to 70 years was beneficial, and I believe it did, I don't see why extending it from 70 to 160 wouldn't be similarly beneficial.

lst 18y ago

? First of all we would have not to kill the not yet born ones. This would be the very first step necessary. The next step necessary would be not to help to kill the old ones. Currently we have no real respect neither for the not born ones, nor for old ones. In other words: currently we still (kind of) hate life.

jobeyonekenobi 18y ago

The third world country's / developing country's. How would they get a piece of this? I'm quite sure they wouldn't - or if so, it would be an order of magnitude below what the western world would have. Already more than enough to go to war for, by the havenots. And resources? Would we just ultimately end up allowing 1 child per 1k couples to try and stem the rampant population explosion and resultant resource drain? Would we tackle extreme age with a longevity based tax on a log scale? It's the little things that add up and kick us in the arse, because even though we could live 12 times longer, the human condition would not advance anywhere as much.

ram1024 18y ago

so the question is. what happens at 1000 that kills us, and why aren't we solving that problem? WTF didn't anyone see this coming? might as well just die now if it's all going to be the same...

rsheridan6 18y ago
ISTR that, on average, people would live to be 1000 on average if they died only from accidents/violence rather than disease and old age. The age distribution would be different. With the simplifying assumption that everybody's chance of dying in a given year is the same, the mortality rate would be proportional to number of people alive, which means that 1000 years would be a half-life. So you'd see 1/8 of the people living to be 3000 or more years, 1/16 living to be 4000, etc.

deleted 18y ago

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geebee 18y ago

methuselah lived 900 years, methuselah lived 900 years, but who calls that livin when no gal will give in to no man who's 900 years

shard 18y ago
Maybe the downvoters just don't recognize "Porgy and Bess"? Regardless, it was relevant commentary and not deserving of a downvote.

rokhayakebe 18y ago

Saying 1000 years is too much is a just a matter of perspective. A few thousands years back, I am sure most people died at around 40. To them living 100 years would be way too much. 1000 is nothing. We will adapt to it and still find ways to be miserable and need more time to do the things we want to do.

jonknee 18y ago

I wouldn't want to. I can barely tolerate family reunions now, no need to make them fill a stadium.

transburgh 18y ago

Imagine the number of people competing for jobs.

swombat 18y ago

Were it to do so, it would undermine what it means to be human. They oppose the idea of life extension and anti-ageing research on ethical, moral and ecological grounds. the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual Seriously, if you think that dying will give meaning to your life, go ahead and do it. No one's stopping you.

sadfsa 18y ago
These statements (especially the one about "meaning") show how religion affects a person's view of science. For it to <i>mean</i> something to be human, there has to be someone who intends for it to mean something. Once you accept that God is imaginary, the problem of "meaningless humanity" disappears.

ars 18y ago

For the religious point of view: I hold that if god did not want people to live to 1000 he would make it impossible to do so. If it's possible, then god must be OK with it. He was pretty specific about all the "possible but don't do them anyway" things after all, so no need to add some new ones.

whatusername 18y ago
From another religious angle - As I understand - prior Noah/Flood - the Bible records humans living long lives. (Say 1000 years) Post flood / Noah - Humans were limited to 120? Or something like that? Found the quote: Genesis 6: 3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with [a] man forever, for he is mortal [b] ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." So the religious interpretation could be: a) See this proves Chapters 1-8 of Genesis b) God will curse you / etc / etc
- Raphael 18y ago
  Isn't that interesting that the biblical limit is so close to the current outlier lifespans?
  - Retric 18y ago
    I assume 2000 years ago some people would live about that long. It's going to be a smaller percentage of a smaller population but the are reasonably healthy 105 year old people in the world today so I assume there were a few back then.

Eliezer 18y ago

Give me a break. You think you're still going to be running around with fleshy arms and legs and a meat brain after one thousand further years of technological progress? Do you realize that the whole scientific revolution only started five hundred years ago? No, you will not die "crossing a red light" after living a thousand years. Sheesh, talk about your failures of imagination.

randomwalker 18y ago
It's called a metaphor. I suppose he could have said, "you might die accidentally hitting the wrong button on a hyperdimensional panfibrillator," but people don't generally talk like that, preferring more familiar and concrete imagery. Come to think of it, "1000 years" just means "really big number that's way longer than our current lifespan." When someone uses an exemplar to describe a class of things, you're supposed to imagine the other objects in that space.
- DavidSJ 18y ago
  Even if I did hit the wrong button on a hyperdimensional panfibrillator, I'd just be restored from my S3 backup.

time_management 18y ago

I think it's optimistic to state that the first 1000-year-old is alive today. We don't know anything about the challenges that a 200+ year lifespan will pose. What scares me is that imperfect, expensive forms of "immortality" will exist before the desirable, cheap ones. I wouldn't want to "make the cut" but be demented for 900 years. I think I'll die at a relatively normal age, between 70 and 100, and that the first 200-year-old will be alive when I die. I make no projections about 1000, much less over 9000.

mccon104 18y ago

No.

ruby_roo 18y ago

Hate to sound cynical, but I have to ask: why would technology like this be made accessible to the average person? What would be the economic payoff? Seems to me that this will be a technology for elitists, first and foremost. Or you would have to 'earn' it in some way. Would the 'unproductive' among us be allowed to have access to technology that increases their lifespans? I'm pretty sure Larry Ellison is reading this story from his volcano lair about now, just barely holding back his maniacal laughter. :)

lallysingh 18y ago

Imagine that everyone had time to get education, have several generations of kids (& debug the process), maybe figure a few things out. OTOH, we'll have to explore space, as we'll quickly run out of room.

ryan-allen 18y ago

Someone please quote The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert! In fact that book is a take on living for, well, ages. :) I enjoyed it.

mhartl 18y ago

I can state confidently that there are no fundamental physical laws preventing 1000-year lifespans. There aren't even fundamental biological limitations---lots of organisms live that long. At this point it's "merely" a (very difficult) engineering problem.

JulianMorrison 18y ago

If you live 50 years from today you'll probably live 1000, but if you live 1000 years you'll probably live until the fundamental laws of physics leave no possible means for your survival. Why would you stop at the limits of biology?

pavelludiq 18y ago

A 1000 years of memories could drive any one insane, i mean, what is our mental capacity? I'm sure we could keep the body alive and healthy for a long period of time, but a 1000 years is probably too much. The brain would have to adapt somehow, we would probably forget most of our experience and only keep the most important memories, our brains were designed for 30-40 year life-spans, nature really didn't intend us to live as long as we live today. We've managed so far by forgetting stuff thats not that important, but how would our memory management work in a longer period?