Biological immortality

I wasn't talking about aging but not dying, I was talking about planet and society dying while you aren't

A comprehensive treatment for aging would be a major productivity multiplier for society, and while it would result in moderate population increases if fertility rates were not negatively impacted, you also have (a lot) more labor you can dedicate to solving societal problems created by that extra population.

edited 5th Mar '18 5:52:36 PM by CaptainCapsase

You are kind of assuming that either people want to come out of retirement if they could or that if they could, people would want to work for their whole immortal life. So to me that is essentially doing things in wrong order because "surely fixing the one thing somehow fixes the other!"

It's a step up from the current arbitrary ticking time bomb situation we have now. Again I need to raise the point that the alternative is literally dying.

Many (in fact in the US I'm fairly sure it's most) people don't like their jobs, but that doesn't mean most people don't want to work in some capacity. Pensions would have to be drastically restructured (ie into a basic income system rather than a guaranteed retirement income) to accommodate the demographics of a post-aging society, but you could put some of the funding previously earmarked for such plans towards retraining, reeducation, and job matching programs for people coming out of retirement to make it easier for them to find a job that they actually enjoy and/or find fulfilling. In fact, I'd want to keep said programs around for the long haul since I imagine changing careers and lifestyles every so often would be a common practice to stave off boredom and complacency.

One another very important side benefit of an indefinite healthspan is promoting more long term thinking. The moneyed interests behind climate change denial are, for the most part, perfectly aware of their deception, but, because it lies outside of their conceivable future, they don't particularly care. Living indefinitely means living "forever" with the consequences of your actions, giving even the most selfish person a reason to care about the long term fate of the environment.

edited 17th Feb '18 8:45:33 AM by CaptainCapsase

Incidentally, I just discovered that I was incorrect about adipose tissue having one of the highest turnover rates; it's actually quite slow. Many tissues in the body in fact turn over far more regularly, with parts of the gastrointestinal track and lung alveoli cells being replaced almost weekly.

Finding a way to enforce higher rates of turnover in such tissues, and achieving some degree of turnover in post-mitotic tissues is both an interesting approach to somatic gene therapy and one of the major goals of regenerative medicine.

Just because you wont die of old age doesnt mean you dont still need to eat, pay the rent, and so forth. I dont see how immortality would necessarily impact capitalism. In other words, people will still need jobs. Though not retirement plans, so there's that.

edited 1st Mar '18 5:58:36 PM by DeMarquis

Yes, and not needing to save or fund (permanent) retirement frees up a lot of the resources going into State pension systems, which as I suggested could be converted into a basic income system (my preference) or done away with altogether along with the requisite taxes. Thr former case gives even people living paycheck to paycheck a lot of breathing room, and the latter still would benefit a decent cross section of the total population. It wouldn’t fundamentally change capitalism, but it would make it considerably easier for people to pursue a career in line with their passions or at least find a job that’s tolerable.

edited 1st Mar '18 7:55:33 PM by CaptainCapsase

Although, as currently configured, retirement accounts are used bybanks to fund inestments, usually corporate stocks andbonds. Eliminnating retirement accounts basically shifts all that money away from business investment and into consumption.

Looking through the comments on a Guardian article from a few years back*, it’s really starting to hit me how poorly informed a large portion of the public (or at least the people who opted to post on those comments) seems to be about both the ethical and scientific issues and non-issues involved with life extension.

* May I also add how much it irks me when journalists invoke terms like “immortality” and “living forever” in the context of Regenerative Medicine and Biogerontology? That’s not really on the table due to thermodynamics.