Biological immortality

You know what: no, thanks. I don't enjoy working that much that I'd like to do it for another thousand years. On top of that, god forbid you should become crippled or otherwise unable to work; your benefits will not last until forever. Just imagine the insurance rates...

No. Another 40 years of work followed by 20 years in retirement to then hopefully go quietly in my sleep. That's about the best I can hope for...

edited 1st Feb '12 2:53:09 PM by GreatLich

I'd love to live for centuries, at least. Though I guess I couldn't justify raising a pension through the last (say) 500 years of my life if I had only worked for 40 years or so.

I'd like to have a retirement of about 20-30 years every century. I wonder if that would work...

Or: when you've lived for a long time and worked your ass off for decades, you should (in a proper society) have a fair amount of savings. So why not put it in a low-risk, long-term investment fund? It's not as if you're in a hurry to spend it! Then, decades later, you'll have enough to live comfortably until you're ready to return to work again. Then you put more money into investment banks (or invest it directly; there's a higher risk but you'll always be able to make the money back!)

edited 1st Feb '12 2:57:32 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

How would investment work when everyone is trying that trick?

I love the idea of immortality, especially if it includes the option of eliminating some of our more annoying needs (anyone else annoyed at that whole "sleep a third of the day" thing?). Most of society's problems will be fixed relatively quickly—within a century or so, whenever everyone gets used to the fact that they'll be around for the long-term consequences of their actions. Though I'm worried how people would react. Would people revolt and split society in two? And that's assuming its a relatively simple solution that everyone has access to. If its something only the rich can afford, things would go downhill very quickly.

One of my greatest desires is biological immortality. Once this is done, I can work on ways to become immune to unnatural death.

Heck, if the civilization reverts to a more medieval setting due to certain things, I might, ahem, have a little fun with my status.

By the way, biological immortality was a central theme in The Man From Earth.

Media recommendations in OTC? It's not unheard of (I hope.) At least this one is as on-topic as can be.

edited 1st Feb '12 3:26:15 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

I remember a while (man it seemed so recent) there was this National Geographic for Kids magazine that was telling how life and science would be like in 2050-60 and it brought up nanomachines and that shit going into the body and making a person who looked 60 or 70 look like they were still in their 30s.

Also known as Achillesforever6 of Lordkat.com fame

...is biological immortality desirable.

Short answer: No, not really.

Long answer: Yes, on an individual—i.e. I wouldn't personally mind—basis, but on a societal scale? It would probably fuck everything up. A lot. Like, civilization as we know it—not to mention religion—would need to be redefined in multiple ways.

Plus the aforementioned "now people only die if they're killed" issue, plus overpopulation...

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Shirou Emiya: See, I was right! Now, People Die if They Are Killed!

Sorry, had to do that.

Hmm, and I suppose mass immortality would not be very good for society. But, maybe that would be an incentive to colonize space...

I believe you mean (in the event of such biological immortality being achieved) "People die iff they are killed".

Valid point. If we don't have to worry about little things like aging, interstellar travel would probably become at least that little bit more plausible.

Well, my point is that it means that all deaths will now have to be horribly violent. There will be no more "peacefully going off in old age."

That, and if you get badly mangled and survive, you're basically fucked, because you'll be like that for quite awhile yet (unless you put a bullet in your brain or have a ton of money and can afford whatever fancy shit we have in the future as far as medical tech goes, because anybody planning on relying on government healthcare is in for a rude awakening with the rise of the Right).

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Well, if you want to end it, it doesn't have to be messy. You could poison yourself or hang yourself, both of which ought to be cleaner than turning your brain into modern art.

Also, given my understanding of the premise, there won't be any "old age" to go off peacefully in anyways.

edited 1st Feb '12 7:56:34 PM by Balmung

The bullet to the brain idea is proverbial for suicide, just as "firing squad" is my generalized proverbial term for execution.

And, yes, that's the point.

It's not really the primary issue, though. The primary issue is overpopulation. And anybody who thinks space travel is the answer probably is kidding themselves. Everything is too far away to really get people off world fast enough.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

@Flyboy: That was the problem I raised. "So commit suicide" is a good answer to the problem of permanency, but there would have to be fairly draconian worldwide reproductive statutes if immortality was available worldwide.

And, of course, if immortality is restricted to the 1%, all hell will break loose.

Well, once again, speed is less of an issue with immortality.

As for the overpopulation, I don't have much to say, but with any luck, it comes with a substantial reduction in the human reproductive rate.

And in that case, odds are, the 1% will be killed by way of violent revolution. After all, people would still die when they are killed.

edited 1st Feb '12 8:06:07 PM by Balmung

Such is the usually-overlooked problem with transhumanism: capitalism.

Same with robotics, really. Capitalism isn't a stable system when exposed to advanced technology. Or at least, it isn't a stable system if you don't already possess fucktons of money and the means to perpetuate this state of affairs.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Well, if one really wants to "peacefully go off in old age", one might presumably stop the treatment / reverse it.

But it does not strike me as an especially pleasant way to die: senescence, in itself, does not seem that desirable to me.

As for overpopulation, it seems that humankind is fairly self-regulating: whenever the health conditions improve, the natality tends to decrease. I suppose that that, birth control and economic forces will take care of that. Births would become very rare, although not non-existent, of course, and education would tend to take much longer.

One problem, however, is that the society would risk becoming some sort of gerontocracy, I think. A hypothetical 1000 years old would probably have access to a lot of resources, and also to a lot of skills — with that much time available, and with no degradation, you can learn quite a bit — and compared to her/him, a hypothetical 100 years old person would be severely disadvantaged...

edited 1st Feb '12 8:14:09 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Well, that's one advantage of the escape to space; it at least creates a new 1%. First adopters and pioneers may end up outcompeting the old capitalists, assuming that the existing elite fail to adapt to the new paradigm (which has happened before. See: Europe's old nobility).

Unlikely. Not for people, again, who have no money.

And, yes, a new upper class would usurp the old upper class, or at least partially. It wouldn't functionally change anything for the rest of us proletarians and middle-class folk, however. Bread and circuses for the have-nots, limitless time to perfect the art of ruling with an iron fist for the aristocracy. Now that sounds like utopia.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Not sure. The capitalist revolution did change things for the better for the masses, as did some variants of the communist revolution. That said, the difference depends on more technology than just immortality, so we're getting off topic.

Nothing you know now will be relevant in 100 years, so I don't think that will be a problem. Unless of course, advances slow down to a crawl to accommodate these "millennials", make them feel relevant. That, and I think you might be overestimating the brain's capacity to keep learning. Even I being only 30 can tell it's not as easy now as it was only 10 years ago. Imagine being 300 and having to relearn everything every other decade because Science Marches On...

edited 1st Feb '12 8:47:17 PM by GreatLich

I'd advise exchanging your brain for something with a bit more memory capacity, then.

Okay, I forgot to reply in this thread earlier, so I'll just write my opinion nobody cares about here quickly even though you are already discussing it:

I find immortality of all shorts completely abhorrent, even if you rebute the fact that death is part of life with that some organism already can theoretically live forever, it would mean that we can't take comfort in fact that all dictators and other horrible people will cease to do their horrible deeds at some point at least.

And all awesome people will cease being awesome too. It sort of evens out, I think.

I dunno. I think that catching up with recent progresses would be simpler than learning everything from scratch. I mean, take mathematics. Obviously there have been lots of advances in the last 300 years, but a good mathematician from the 1700s would not have to start from the beginning — he'd have to learn lots of stuff, obviously, but he would not be in the same position of an elementary student at his first lesson of arithmetics.

edited 1st Feb '12 10:40:11 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

^So "Awesome" people living forever evens out evil dictator torture people for eternity?

Besides, there are still people like corrupt businessmen who will never cease to own their material good they managed to get in corrupt ways

edited 2nd Feb '12 2:21:22 AM by SpookyMask

So? I mean in return - immortality. Friggen immortality. I can literally think of no greater thing science could ever achieve! It's literally the end to all be!

But there's another benefit hidden in this - in the end, death catches everybody. The death penalty is the worst sentence we have (and sometimes we even don't have it), but what it is it worth if everybody can die at any time anyway? (Okay, that would still be so with biological immortality but I hope you know what I mean). I mean look at Gaddaffi: He had 40 years of dictatorship and most likely would have died soon anyway, so what kinda punishment is his death? But if there is biological immortality, it would be true punishment!

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic