5 ms·

I'd suggest "The most human human". It's unfortunate that those calling themselves "futurists" somehow seem to think that being alive forever... is kind'o shal

I'd suggest "The most human human". It's unfortunate that those calling themselves "futurists" somehow seem to think that being alive forever... is kind'o shallow. Death may be inevitable, but hopefully those who preach from the pulpit, have a little more depth to them and have hopefully examined their lives more carefully than to simply say, I'll just live forever. In that sense, I think Jobs had the right idea. If life were "infinite" or even significantly prolonged (i.e. 10 times the current life expectancy), I think we'd have a lot of thinking to do to come to terms with such a new reality.

TeMPOraL 13y ago
> If life were "infinite" or even significantly prolonged (i.e. 10 times the current life expectancy), I think we'd have a lot of thinking to do to come to terms with such a new reality. I'd be happy to spend next few centuries thinking about this problem.
- codeulike 13y ago
  One thing about 10 x life expectancy would be that your attitude towards risk would become much more conservative. You have so many more potential years to lose if you fall off your mountain bike or your parachute doesn't deploy or your fast car skids off a road or your speedboat flips over. People with a 700 year lifespan would probably spend a lot of time sitting around indoors, I reckon.
  - d0 13y ago
    There will still be idiots. They won't respawn.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Would they? I don't find myself thinking "I have only at most 80 more years to live, so I'll jaywalk here, risk be damned". Do people really do those kind of mental calculations? It might be me still being relatively young, but having 60-80 years in front of me feels more like +∞, and I have to keep constantly reminding myself that my time is limited. I'd wager that the only relevant scale for people to think is weeks/month; there wouldn't be much difference felt between 60 years, 600 years and +∞.
    - codeulike 13y ago
      People don't _think_ about it, but a sense of our time limit is part of our 'human condition'. e.g the phrase 'you only live once'. 'You only live once, but for 700 years' has quite a different feel to it.
brador 13y ago
Isn't our willingness to take risks connected with our inevitable, eventual, death? Without a guaranteed eventual death few would take risks without massive compensation. Consider the need in human societies for revolution. With a massively long lifespan, no one will revolt when the need arises, due to risk of death. Leading to a pretty shitty state with no way out.
- scotth 13y ago
  It may not be a conscious choice. We could very well be programmed that way.
- wpietri 13y ago
  There's a great short story along these lines from Larry Niven. I can't remember the name or the collection, but maybe somebody else will. A spaceport bar's noise suppression system is on the fritz, so the human bartender keeps hearing random bits from a conversation somewhere in the bar. One alien, a DNA-based one, has come to sell their life-extension technology. The other points out innovative things that humans are doing, and speculates that it's related to the short lifespan. Eventually, the DNA-based alien agrees and decides to wait a few human generations just to see what we do next. The bartender looks around desperately trying to figure out which of the many tables it was, to no avail. It's a commonplace among artists that constraints force creativity. A small example is the 6-word-stories thing [1]. An example more relevant to your comment is Kevin Kelly's life clock [2]. If you talk to people who have cheated death, you might expect them to talk about being more careful. But the ones I know all talk about being reminded to live fully while we can. [1] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html [2] http://kk.org/ct2/2007/09/my-life-countdown-1.php http://kk.org/ct2/2007/09/my-life-countdown-1.php
  - magnanimous 13y ago
    The story is called Limits and it is part of his Draco Tavern series.
- mindvirus 13y ago
  20 year olds are the ones that go to war though, aren't they? And yet they have the most life ahead of them. Of course, everything looks bad if you only look at the negative aspects of it. Certainly risks would change. Life does seem like it would get more valuable. However, on the positives, we'd see huge technological progress - experts could be experts in their field for hundreds of years, rather than working for a short window and having to publish their results and hope that the next guy can pick it up and take it a few steps further. So I feel that we'd end up in a society that is quite different than current human society - with plenty of their own problems. One thing that I do think though is that it would be very wrong to project our morality on this and accuse it of screwing up the natural order of things. Aging is just another disease.

TeMPOraL 13y ago

> If life were "infinite" or even significantly prolonged (i.e. 10 times the current life expectancy), I think we'd have a lot of thinking to do to come to terms with such a new reality. I'd be happy to spend next few centuries thinking about this problem.

codeulike 13y ago
One thing about 10 x life expectancy would be that your attitude towards risk would become much more conservative. You have so many more potential years to lose if you fall off your mountain bike or your parachute doesn't deploy or your fast car skids off a road or your speedboat flips over. People with a 700 year lifespan would probably spend a lot of time sitting around indoors, I reckon.
- d0 13y ago
  There will still be idiots. They won't respawn.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Would they? I don't find myself thinking "I have only at most 80 more years to live, so I'll jaywalk here, risk be damned". Do people really do those kind of mental calculations? It might be me still being relatively young, but having 60-80 years in front of me feels more like +∞, and I have to keep constantly reminding myself that my time is limited. I'd wager that the only relevant scale for people to think is weeks/month; there wouldn't be much difference felt between 60 years, 600 years and +∞.
  - codeulike 13y ago
    People don't _think_ about it, but a sense of our time limit is part of our 'human condition'. e.g the phrase 'you only live once'. 'You only live once, but for 700 years' has quite a different feel to it.

brador 13y ago

Isn't our willingness to take risks connected with our inevitable, eventual, death? Without a guaranteed eventual death few would take risks without massive compensation. Consider the need in human societies for revolution. With a massively long lifespan, no one will revolt when the need arises, due to risk of death. Leading to a pretty shitty state with no way out.

scotth 13y ago
It may not be a conscious choice. We could very well be programmed that way.
wpietri 13y ago
There's a great short story along these lines from Larry Niven. I can't remember the name or the collection, but maybe somebody else will. A spaceport bar's noise suppression system is on the fritz, so the human bartender keeps hearing random bits from a conversation somewhere in the bar. One alien, a DNA-based one, has come to sell their life-extension technology. The other points out innovative things that humans are doing, and speculates that it's related to the short lifespan. Eventually, the DNA-based alien agrees and decides to wait a few human generations just to see what we do next. The bartender looks around desperately trying to figure out which of the many tables it was, to no avail. It's a commonplace among artists that constraints force creativity. A small example is the 6-word-stories thing [1]. An example more relevant to your comment is Kevin Kelly's life clock [2]. If you talk to people who have cheated death, you might expect them to talk about being more careful. But the ones I know all talk about being reminded to live fully while we can. [1] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html [2] http://kk.org/ct2/2007/09/my-life-countdown-1.php http://kk.org/ct2/2007/09/my-life-countdown-1.php
- magnanimous 13y ago
  The story is called Limits and it is part of his Draco Tavern series.
mindvirus 13y ago
20 year olds are the ones that go to war though, aren't they? And yet they have the most life ahead of them. Of course, everything looks bad if you only look at the negative aspects of it. Certainly risks would change. Life does seem like it would get more valuable. However, on the positives, we'd see huge technological progress - experts could be experts in their field for hundreds of years, rather than working for a short window and having to publish their results and hope that the next guy can pick it up and take it a few steps further. So I feel that we'd end up in a society that is quite different than current human society - with plenty of their own problems. One thing that I do think though is that it would be very wrong to project our morality on this and accuse it of screwing up the natural order of things. Aging is just another disease.