Can Humanity Handle Immortality?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Average life expectancy is different than maximum life expectancy.

That's only partly true. Even if you factor out infant mortality, most people weren't making it past 60.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Flubber
Accurate but as someone that sometimes that laments the new PC culture, my problem has always been with the silliness of language that sometimes results. The jokes about short people being "vertically-challenged" are not that much of an exaggeration.

I think he meant Personal Computer. I might be wrong.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara I think he meant Personal Computer. I might be wrong.

Either way works, really. I had political correctness in mind, but plenty of older folks also complain about the ubiquity of technology. If they new that they were going to live to be 200, maybe some of these 50 - 60 somethings would see an incentive to take the time to learn more about technology

[Sandman]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
I would rather we leave the world a better place for the billions of our children that will follow us instead of destroying our society and possibly planet just because we are afraid of death.

Wait, so society would be destroyed, rather than just 'stagnate'? How can you be so sure? I honestly can't imagine 300 year-olds crankily muttering about the young whipper snappers.

[Eli]

Ozzy:

Initially of course the cost of whatever procedure or treatment would be far too expensive for 97% of the world's population. So it would pretty much be the rich who would be sticking around forever. More time to collect dividends, more time to build wealth, more time to get richer.

And 10 years later it will be far too expensive for only 80%, and another five years for only for 40%. Yes, people in some African hellholes won't be able to get the treatment and will stay behind. But first, why should others be denied a treatment just because some can't get it? And second, how is that different from the situation today in respect to almost every type of modern medicine?

[chequita guevara]

What if this is the height of human civilization? Antibiotics seem to have to have temporarily given us a respite against the worst diseases. Current Western civilization has extremely high energy demands, which we aren't able to fully meet. What if this is Camelot, humanity's golden age?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
What if this is the height of human civilization? Antibiotics seem to have to have temporarily given us a respite against the worst diseases. Current Western civilization has extremely high energy demands, which we aren't able to fully meet. What if this is Camelot, humanity's golden age?

We could always have multiple golden ages later. This isn't civ.

[Eli]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
What if this is the height of human civilization? Antibiotics seem to have to have temporarily given us a respite against the worst diseases. Current Western civilization has extremely high energy demands, which we aren't able to fully meet. What if this is Camelot, humanity's golden age?

Since it all boils down to us being merely machines and since we are far from a complete understanding of the human body, and since the human body can be understood, I'd say we have quite a while to go before reaching "future tech 1".

[chequita guevara]

God this thread has depressed the hell out of me. I'm having a very sever bout of nihilism.

[Lancer]

If I can still get social security at 62 and go with my wife to drink rum drinks on a beach in the Philippines for the next 200 years... I think I can handle it.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
God this thread has depressed the hell out of me. I'm having a very sever bout of nihilism.

For me it helps to think of reality as a static 4d object so that even though it is finite it's existance can be 'permanent' from the pov of some imagined 5d perspective.

That, and thinking of really shiny mundane things when I realise I've stared too long into the void.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Wycoff


Either way works, really. I had political correctness in mind, but plenty of older folks also complain about the ubiquity of technology. If they new that they were going to live to be 200, maybe some of these 50 - 60 somethings would see an incentive to take the time to learn more about technology

PCs are too mainstream for anyone to be too fussed about them. heck my mother is a total internet surfaholic and for people in their 30s and 40s, they are so much part of your work life that I don't really see anyone complaining about them

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Geronimo
For me it helps to think of reality as a static 4d object so that even though it is finite it's existance can be 'permanent' from the pov of some imagined 5d perspective.

A life line! Now just don't look too closely.

[DaShi]

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a short story where everyone lives were extended indefinitely and they were all miserable. But then again, nearly every character in Vonnegut's stories is miserable.

[pchang]

short lifespan may be part of the problem

Take a look at how people are taking care of their environment. A lot of the damage being done is due to the fact that we are not taking a long enough view. But then, why bother, we won't be around that long. If people could reasonably excpect to live 1000 years, I'm sure much more would be done about global warming today.