Immortality in 25 years?

[Solver]

Even more awful. Selling or randomly giving life is wrong. It has to be available easily, but if it involved modifying the genome, it won't be. It will create too many problems...

[Az]

@ people who actually think that this stuff will be non-purchaseable.

[Shi Huangdi]

Living 1000 years!

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by Solver
Seriously speaking, though, life extenstion will create problems. It's bound to be very expensive, and that will suck - basically, rich people can buy life and poor people can not.

Not nessecarily. If this also extends your ability to work for hundred of years more, then it ought to be able to obtain loans to pay for the operation, since over the next few centuries you'd have more then enough time to pay it back.

[Drogue]

As long as I can still commit suicide, I'm up for living forever

[Solver]

Not nessecarily. If this also extends your ability to work for hundred of years more, then it ought to be able to obtain loans to pay for the operation, since over the next few centuries you'd have more then enough time to pay it back.

Yes, but at least until such technology becomes widespread, you'd hardly get any loans with a 100 or 200 year payback term from banks.

[Elok]

Don't worry, the choice will never present itself. Even if you want to prevent death by aging, there will probably be all sorts of lovely side effects to this process that can cause fatality, similar to the way cloned animals almost always have severe health problems.

Plus this will do nothing to prevent murder and war, which end human life independent of age, but will rather accelerate both by exciting envy and widening the gap between haves and have-nots. And, as many have mentioned, this is potentially an overpopulation disaster of vast proportions. People are not going to want to give up having children.

This technology, even if it works, will merely allow us several milennia of existential crises, wondering wtf the point is of it all, if life is nothing more than a perpetuating chemical reaction. The current trend in arguments about bioethics is to focus on quality of life rather than quantity. I'm not sure that I agree, but the changes this makes to human life will not necessarily be good. A thousand years is long enough to get sick of anything, perhaps even life.

[Az]

why don't you think such technology will become widespread? I think that political pressures will make it highly subsidized.

[Solver]

why don't you think such technology will become widespread? I think that political pressures will make it highly subsidized.

Any new technology with a high production cost takes a while to become widespread and is first available to few people. Computers, automobiles, telephone... it will be the same. The first people to get life extension will be some of the richest people. Besides, will the subsidies be enough to grant this to everyone who's willing to have it?

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Az
why don't you think such technology will become widespread? I think that political pressures will make it highly subsidized.

Subsidised? Does that mean we will get immortal French farmers?

[Az]

Any new technology with a high production cost takes a while to become widespread and is first available to few people. Computers, automobiles, telephone... it will be the same. The first people to get life extension will be some of the richest people. Besides, will the subsidies be enough to grant this to everyone who's willing to have

but you have other examples, such as cellphones, that had offered something so strong, and the preparation relatively simple that the product made it to the market in a couple of years.

From what I read, it's not as if we'll have to build radically new tools and methods. Just discover what exactly has to be done, and then prepare the treatments.

[Sandman]

Pill to extend life by 30 years

Sounds like a step in the right direction.

An ageless society would be very, very different from our own. Probably better.

Of course, it depends on the cost of the treatment, and so on. It had better to be available to everyone, preferably everybody in the world.

I also don't want to see the patent-holder's rights honoured, if it's developed by someone who wants to use them. Why? Well, firstly, I am not going to let a measly social structure stand in the way of me not dying. Secondly, think of aging as a disease which everybody suffers from. Under existing legislation in most countries, patent-holder's rights go out the window when there's an epidemic. And aging IS an epidemic. So is AIDS, incidently, so the poor countries may well expect to get shafted... again.

By all means reward the patent-holders with a big pile of money. But no-one should be able to have 'the rights' to eternal youth. No-one.

The sociological and economic changes would be enormous. Here's some I can think of:

A massively shortened working week. Few children and old people means more economic efficiency. Less work = more leisure = good.

Universities become purely focused on research. There's hardly anyone to teach, after all. What teaching there was would be unrecognisable to us; I forsee multiple teachers per pupil per subject. An ageless society can afford to spend almost unlimited amounts on the few children who do get born to make up for suicides, accidents and voluntary age-death.

Less social mobility. At least, on the face of it. A concept like retirement gets completely turned on its head; people could still 'retire' for a few decades having earned enough money... but they could also stay at the top for centuries, untouched by age. How would long would it take to get promoted at an ageless company?

Social conservatism. There'll only be one generation, or maybe current generations 'frozen' forever. No teenagers or students to rebel and challenge people's attitudes.

Social wierdness. The opposite to the above. With no age identity, people will either expand on other identities, or invent new, wierd ones. One possibility is that of 'students' or 'teenagers' emerging as groups undefined by age, but by lifestyle.

[Az]

But no-one should be able to have 'the rights' to eternal youth. No-one.

You can relax. AFAIK, they expire rather rapidly.

[Dis]

I'd probably have to give up pizza to be immortal. That's just not worth it.

Eathing unhealthy.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Az

But no-one should be able to have 'the rights' to eternal youth. No-one.

You can relax. AFAIK, they expire rather rapidly.

That's true enough.

Oh, and to those who say, 'Well, you'll get hit by a bus eventually', I say 'Who cares?' That's why I use the term 'ageless' rather than immortal. Immortality is better, but agelessness is a good substitute.