4 ms·

> I am so incredibly envious of the future humans that will live in a world without death. A world without death is also necessarily a world without birth once

by lisper 2y ago

> I am so incredibly envious of the future humans that will live in a world without death. A world without death is also necessarily a world without birth once the whole biosphere has been converted to immortals. I'm not sure living amongst a bunch of old people is something to be envied. I also don't think that people who think that immortality is enviable have really come to grips with how long forever actually is.

shiroiushi 2y ago
>A world without death is also necessarily a world without birth once the whole biosphere has been converted to immortals. You think no one is ever going to die from accidents or murder or natural disasters?
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  You think those numbers are enough to keep the population from ballooning to entirely unmanageable numbers? Consider the global population is increasing now and we're talking about removing a big chunk of all-cause mortality from the field. So unless there's a plan to replace natural causes with artificial causes (which moots functional immortality entirely) some form of population control is an absolute requirement.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >You think those numbers are enough to keep the population from ballooning to entirely unmanageable numbers? If we keep reproducing at today's rates, of course not. However, birthrates are in free-fall worldwide due to many factors, with the biggest ones probably being education, women's rights, and access to reliable contraception. As the high birthrate countries improve in these areas, their birthrates fall; we've seen this universally in countries across the world. Of course, there's other factors too, like high costs of living, gender divides in some cultures, etc. The latter ones might be solved eventually, but I truly hope we don't regress on the former ones. With life-extension research, I think it's highly unlikely someone is going to find the Holy Grail anytime soon that suddenly makes humans biologically immortal. Instead, it'll probably be a slow process of incremental improvements. So while those improvements chip away at the death rate, cultural changes will continue to decrease the birthrate: people will continue to choose to have fewer children, people will wait longer to have children, etc.
- lisper 2y ago
  Not many, no. Not enough to matter. Natural disasters just don't kill that many people [1]. But now that you mention it I do think that anyone living in a world without death will be constantly looking over their shoulder and sleeping with one eye open. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_d...
  - ben_w 2y ago
    If you remove aging and diseases, everything else will kill people with 50% chance in any given 1000-ish years.
    - qsdf38100 2y ago
      Still mean living in a world of mostly very old people, and almost no children. Sounds depressing to me.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        Old people who will likely still look like they are in their mid-20s — few people are going to want to develop something that only extends old age, even though people (not sure if "some" or "many") will still prefer that over death.
        qsdf38100 2y ago
        Being old is not limited to how you look. It’s also how your world views change, how your personality evolves, etc. Also you didn’t address my almost-no-children point. That one I think is the stronger point. Looking at my children grow older day after day is the thing that bring me the most joy and sens of meaning in my life.
        lisper 2y ago
        > Being old is not limited to how you look. This is really important. Being young is cool not just because your body works better but because you still have a lot to discover. Discovery is fun. Experiencing something for the first time is fun. But the problem is that you can only experience something for the first time once. The second time it might still be fun, or the third time, but by the time you do something 100 times or 1000 times or 10,000 times it becomes less fun. This is one of the major differences between doing something as a hobby and doing it as a job. When it's a hobby, when it stops being fun, you can just quit. And sooner or later, everything stops being fun if you do it often enough. The problem is not that we don't live long enough, the problem is that most people don't have the freedom to do the things they want to do in the time they have. That is a much more tractable problem, and it is the one we should be working on, not extending life spans. If you have the wherewithall, ~100 years is more than enough time to get sick and tired of everything.

by lisper 2y ago

shiroiushi 2y ago

>A world without death is also necessarily a world without birth once the whole biosphere has been converted to immortals. You think no one is ever going to die from accidents or murder or natural disasters?

forgetfreeman 2y ago
You think those numbers are enough to keep the population from ballooning to entirely unmanageable numbers? Consider the global population is increasing now and we're talking about removing a big chunk of all-cause mortality from the field. So unless there's a plan to replace natural causes with artificial causes (which moots functional immortality entirely) some form of population control is an absolute requirement.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >You think those numbers are enough to keep the population from ballooning to entirely unmanageable numbers? If we keep reproducing at today's rates, of course not. However, birthrates are in free-fall worldwide due to many factors, with the biggest ones probably being education, women's rights, and access to reliable contraception. As the high birthrate countries improve in these areas, their birthrates fall; we've seen this universally in countries across the world. Of course, there's other factors too, like high costs of living, gender divides in some cultures, etc. The latter ones might be solved eventually, but I truly hope we don't regress on the former ones. With life-extension research, I think it's highly unlikely someone is going to find the Holy Grail anytime soon that suddenly makes humans biologically immortal. Instead, it'll probably be a slow process of incremental improvements. So while those improvements chip away at the death rate, cultural changes will continue to decrease the birthrate: people will continue to choose to have fewer children, people will wait longer to have children, etc.
lisper 2y ago
Not many, no. Not enough to matter. Natural disasters just don't kill that many people [1]. But now that you mention it I do think that anyone living in a world without death will be constantly looking over their shoulder and sleeping with one eye open. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_d...
- ben_w 2y ago
  If you remove aging and diseases, everything else will kill people with 50% chance in any given 1000-ish years.
  - qsdf38100 2y ago
    Still mean living in a world of mostly very old people, and almost no children. Sounds depressing to me.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Old people who will likely still look like they are in their mid-20s — few people are going to want to develop something that only extends old age, even though people (not sure if "some" or "many") will still prefer that over death.
      - qsdf38100 2y ago
        Being old is not limited to how you look. It’s also how your world views change, how your personality evolves, etc. Also you didn’t address my almost-no-children point. That one I think is the stronger point. Looking at my children grow older day after day is the thing that bring me the most joy and sens of meaning in my life.
        lisper 2y ago
        > Being old is not limited to how you look. This is really important. Being young is cool not just because your body works better but because you still have a lot to discover. Discovery is fun. Experiencing something for the first time is fun. But the problem is that you can only experience something for the first time once. The second time it might still be fun, or the third time, but by the time you do something 100 times or 1000 times or 10,000 times it becomes less fun. This is one of the major differences between doing something as a hobby and doing it as a job. When it's a hobby, when it stops being fun, you can just quit. And sooner or later, everything stops being fun if you do it often enough. The problem is not that we don't live long enough, the problem is that most people don't have the freedom to do the things they want to do in the time they have. That is a much more tractable problem, and it is the one we should be working on, not extending life spans. If you have the wherewithall, ~100 years is more than enough time to get sick and tired of everything.