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I always like to remind people that the road towards immortality is going to involve a significant period in which us normals have to deal with immortal rich pe

I always like to remind people that the road towards immortality is going to involve a significant period in which us normals have to deal with immortal rich people. Sounds awful, like, just about the worst societal dynamic I can think of. Don't be surprised if they realize there isn't enough room for the rest of us. These new 1% immortals may also require a special country in which they are not at risk of being tragically harmed by one of us billion mortals. Watch you don't get bit by their 2 tonne Boston Dynamics guard dog...

Geee 13y ago
No harm done, I bet immortality will eventually come in the form of 'brain backups' in Google Drive and your physical body is merely a vessel which you can use to interact with the physical world.
exratione 13y ago
[Rewind to 1940s] "I always like to remind people that effectively treating heart disease is going to involve a significant period in which us normals have to deal with long-lived rich people. Sounds awful, like, just about the worst societal dynamic I can think of." [Back to the present] Our age is characterized by the fact that access to types of medical technology is basically flat. Rich people get to hire better doctors, but there are no super-secret, ultra-restricted forms of medicine that are inaccessible to everyone else. Your chances of getting into clinical trials of the new new things are about as good as theirs, provided you are prepared to pick up a phone and put in the time.
- flycaliguy 13y ago
  What about the effects of over population? Predictions of food, water and clean air shortages don't seem to lend themselves to an even distribution of nano bio-technology.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  I don't think that's true. To take one example, Steve Jobs famously gamed the organ donor system by buying houses in many states in order to get on multiple statewide registries. Now, most medical treatments aren't zero-sum in the way of organ transplants, but let's not pretend rich people can't buy better health than the rest of us.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Sure they can, but I think of it as rich people subsidizing the medical research for the rest of us. It trickles down, and as the progress continues, there's always another new expensive thing for rich people to pay for. As for the organ transplants; somebody needs to pour more money into stem cell research and related fields so that we can start growing organs, thus eliminating the whole organ market (including the black one) and zero-sum dynamics of transplats.
dag11 13y ago
Sounds just like Elysium.
- trumbitta2 13y ago
  Or Alita and Alita - Last Order, that is where Elysium ripped off its core concepts from.
- smsm42 13y ago
  Elysium is fascinatingly weird film - so they had all those ships packed with wonderful medical technologies and robots standing by on minute's notice and still refused to spare any of it because of pure spite, despite not even needing them at all, as they all have the same things in their homes, so only reason why they also had all those ships with medical robots would be to heal Earth people - but they never did, so why they built those medical ships in the first place? Just to taunt poor earthlings? They have the technology to reassemble human body on molecular level and they still need millions of humans to work in degrading conditions to build those robots - because those molecular-precision technologies somehow not applicable to building robots? And yet despite their dire need of those workers - they not only dispose of them without second's hesitation but also allow their robots to mutilate them for no reason, thus degrading their productivity significantly. This movie really doesn't led itself to any thinking - it just falls apart like wet toilet paper if you start to think about it.
d0 13y ago
The immortals are only immortal from natural causes of death... History tells us that people will quickly use that to their advantage.
smsm42 13y ago
Why is it awful? All new technologies initially cost tons of money. It is the rich early adopters who keep them afloat long enough so that there's time to make them cheaper and within reach of them masses, when scale advantages kick in. But if nobody buys it when it's too expensive, there might just not be a chance to develop it to the point when it's affordable. Why is it not only bad, but worst you can think of? I, for one, can think of much worse things than immortal Bill Gates, however annoying it may be for some. Just turn on the news and watch long enough, I'm sure you'll see some of it. Then head to the library and open any 20th century history books. I guarantee you you'll find things much worse than an annoyingly long-living billionaire - such as genocide a of millions, for example. And not once but multiple times. >>> Don't be surprised if they realize there isn't enough room for the rest of us. Why there wouldn't be enough room for the rest of us?
- flycaliguy 13y ago
  It's awful because for the first time in human history there will actually be a race of people who are superior to the rest. Hasn't exactly played out great even when it's just in their imagination. Put yourself in the mind set of a super rich and powerful immortal human being. The stakes are hard to imagine, you are trying to preserve your existence for an infinite future. People who stand in the way are not even going to have a chance, an immortal can't afford such a risk.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    In what meaning it would be a "race"? Why would they be any more "superior" than now? There are a lot of things that rich people can have and poor people can't - if that is your definition of superiority, it has been happening for millennia. >>> The stakes are hard to imagine, you are trying to preserve your existence for an infinite future Human brain can not comprehend infinite, so it won't be much different from any regular person who's trying to stay alive - most people don't know when they'd die and don't think about it as a definite endpoint anyway, so it as well could be in infinite future. >>> People who stand in the way are not even going to have a chance, an immortal can't afford such a risk. Chance of what? And if the risk is so high, why would you want to alienate people that outnumber you million to one and on which your whole existence - since you can't personally produce any of the technologies needed to support your immortality, right - is based on? You'd rather try to prove them keeping you alive is a good thing and not start to murdering them in droves like you seem to imply. After all, even if medicine somehow reaches the level where all diseases could be cured (which is very improbable but let's allow it for a moment), one can still be murdered, and for a rich and potentially immortal person the risk here would be much higher than for a would-be murderer that has much less to lose. So the strategy you describe would be very foolish.

Geee 13y ago

No harm done, I bet immortality will eventually come in the form of 'brain backups' in Google Drive and your physical body is merely a vessel which you can use to interact with the physical world.

exratione 13y ago

[Rewind to 1940s] "I always like to remind people that effectively treating heart disease is going to involve a significant period in which us normals have to deal with long-lived rich people. Sounds awful, like, just about the worst societal dynamic I can think of." [Back to the present] Our age is characterized by the fact that access to types of medical technology is basically flat. Rich people get to hire better doctors, but there are no super-secret, ultra-restricted forms of medicine that are inaccessible to everyone else. Your chances of getting into clinical trials of the new new things are about as good as theirs, provided you are prepared to pick up a phone and put in the time.

flycaliguy 13y ago
What about the effects of over population? Predictions of food, water and clean air shortages don't seem to lend themselves to an even distribution of nano bio-technology.
ForHackernews 13y ago
I don't think that's true. To take one example, Steve Jobs famously gamed the organ donor system by buying houses in many states in order to get on multiple statewide registries. Now, most medical treatments aren't zero-sum in the way of organ transplants, but let's not pretend rich people can't buy better health than the rest of us.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Sure they can, but I think of it as rich people subsidizing the medical research for the rest of us. It trickles down, and as the progress continues, there's always another new expensive thing for rich people to pay for. As for the organ transplants; somebody needs to pour more money into stem cell research and related fields so that we can start growing organs, thus eliminating the whole organ market (including the black one) and zero-sum dynamics of transplats.

dag11 13y ago

Sounds just like Elysium.

trumbitta2 13y ago
Or Alita and Alita - Last Order, that is where Elysium ripped off its core concepts from.
smsm42 13y ago
Elysium is fascinatingly weird film - so they had all those ships packed with wonderful medical technologies and robots standing by on minute's notice and still refused to spare any of it because of pure spite, despite not even needing them at all, as they all have the same things in their homes, so only reason why they also had all those ships with medical robots would be to heal Earth people - but they never did, so why they built those medical ships in the first place? Just to taunt poor earthlings? They have the technology to reassemble human body on molecular level and they still need millions of humans to work in degrading conditions to build those robots - because those molecular-precision technologies somehow not applicable to building robots? And yet despite their dire need of those workers - they not only dispose of them without second's hesitation but also allow their robots to mutilate them for no reason, thus degrading their productivity significantly. This movie really doesn't led itself to any thinking - it just falls apart like wet toilet paper if you start to think about it.

d0 13y ago

The immortals are only immortal from natural causes of death... History tells us that people will quickly use that to their advantage.

smsm42 13y ago

Why is it awful? All new technologies initially cost tons of money. It is the rich early adopters who keep them afloat long enough so that there's time to make them cheaper and within reach of them masses, when scale advantages kick in. But if nobody buys it when it's too expensive, there might just not be a chance to develop it to the point when it's affordable. Why is it not only bad, but worst you can think of? I, for one, can think of much worse things than immortal Bill Gates, however annoying it may be for some. Just turn on the news and watch long enough, I'm sure you'll see some of it. Then head to the library and open any 20th century history books. I guarantee you you'll find things much worse than an annoyingly long-living billionaire - such as genocide a of millions, for example. And not once but multiple times. >>> Don't be surprised if they realize there isn't enough room for the rest of us. Why there wouldn't be enough room for the rest of us?

flycaliguy 13y ago
It's awful because for the first time in human history there will actually be a race of people who are superior to the rest. Hasn't exactly played out great even when it's just in their imagination. Put yourself in the mind set of a super rich and powerful immortal human being. The stakes are hard to imagine, you are trying to preserve your existence for an infinite future. People who stand in the way are not even going to have a chance, an immortal can't afford such a risk.
- smsm42 13y ago
  In what meaning it would be a "race"? Why would they be any more "superior" than now? There are a lot of things that rich people can have and poor people can't - if that is your definition of superiority, it has been happening for millennia. >>> The stakes are hard to imagine, you are trying to preserve your existence for an infinite future Human brain can not comprehend infinite, so it won't be much different from any regular person who's trying to stay alive - most people don't know when they'd die and don't think about it as a definite endpoint anyway, so it as well could be in infinite future. >>> People who stand in the way are not even going to have a chance, an immortal can't afford such a risk. Chance of what? And if the risk is so high, why would you want to alienate people that outnumber you million to one and on which your whole existence - since you can't personally produce any of the technologies needed to support your immortality, right - is based on? You'd rather try to prove them keeping you alive is a good thing and not start to murdering them in droves like you seem to imply. After all, even if medicine somehow reaches the level where all diseases could be cured (which is very improbable but let's allow it for a moment), one can still be murdered, and for a rich and potentially immortal person the risk here would be much higher than for a would-be murderer that has much less to lose. So the strategy you describe would be very foolish.