1.1 Billion people to die...

[EPW]

I don't have a problem with death. I'm willing to settle for a couple of thousand years even 500 would be pretty nice.

Why don't you get to work on it then?

[EPW]

And death is better for society. Do you really want all the crazy religious nuts that are around today to still be alive 1000 years from now?

[Heraclitus]

Why don't you get to work on it then?

Well I did develop a cure based on mercury but Qin Shi Huang died after taking it due to common complications to it and I haven't been able to market it properly since.

[Space05us]

And death is better for society. Do you really want all the crazy religious nuts that are around today to still be alive 1000 years from now?

Society changes with the times.

[Heraclitus]

And death is better for society. Do you really want all the crazy religious nuts that are around today to still be alive 1000 years from now?

Well hopefully they are the guys who will think this treatment is immoral.




Also since when do humans give a **** if its better for society if they die?

[Heraclitus]

Society changes with the times.

People change with society. Do you think that the large % of people who tought homosexuality was a disease in the 70's are all dead?

[Space05us]

People change with society. Do you think that the large % of people who tought homosexuality was a disease in the 70's are all dead?

Thank you for helping to prove my point.

[Heraclitus]

[Space05us]

More people would take Anorexic Rasputin seriously if he trimmed his ****ing beard and wore a ****ing suit to a convention like that.

[Elok]

If the solution to Malthus is to let people die then why the hell are we sending aid to the third world. Also why don't we waste medical resources on people over 60?

Declining to pursue practical immortality =/= "letting people die." If you can't grasp the distinction, that's your problem.

They aren't relying on fossile fules, heck if we implimented nuclear tech on a wide scale we could easily power our civ. The green revolution is unsustainable.

I'm not talking about the green revolution, I was only using gas as an example of fallacious "it hasn't happened yet, ergo it never will" thinking. It's commonest sense that no resource is infinite, no matter how we tinker. We're not going to invent any perpetual motion machine, let alone one that churns out corn. But since you brought it up, there's this fun article in the latest National Geographic describing how, thanks to climate change, crop yields have been rather bad in recent years, and much of the world has been living off stored surplus from the explosive growth in productivity from 1960-1990 (which, by the way, was largely dependent on fertilizers derived from fossil fuels). At the current rate of population growth, we'll need to double productivity again in the next fifteen years to feed everyone.

Also you make the silly assumption that we would share the tech with the third world. If only western devils live for 1500 years with brithrates as low as 1.3 we still have a manageable population growth.

There are soooo many possible objections to this:

1. Third-world countries don't remain third-world forever, certainly not for 1500 years. Just 200 years ago, Japan, Korea and China were all rather pathetic. And 1000 years ago, The West was pretty sad, whatever BK claims to the contrary, while the currently bass-ackward Muslim world was state-of-the-art.

2. Super-valuable technologies don't stay exclusive for that long anymore either. We've guarded nuclear technology like a mofo, but less than a hundred years after Hiroshima we're worried about everybody getting their hands on it. Civilian-use technology would be a lot harder to restrict.

3. The assumption that nobody's going to have a problem with letting foreigners die, and that if they do that will have no effect on relations with them, is quite absurd. We can't stand those commercials showing pot-bellied African kids covered in flies; what makes you think a shot of a withered old person would be any different to a population accustomed to eternal youth?

Finally, there's a powerful force working against the successful implementation of any immortality technology, namely the media. Here's roughly how it'll go down: As progress is made, news outlets will hype even the slightest advance to the skies, building up absurd expectations. Pressure will mount for immediate human testing, complete with powerful lobbying groups placing ads with frowny-face toddlers and the caption "I deserve to live to 300." Or some tawdry crap like that. Trials will be held early, with the usual media attention. Inevitably, one will go horribly wrong due to being conducted before the principles involved were clearly understood. CNN will hold a series of weepy interviews with family members of the departed, everyone and their brother will file lawsuits, funding will disappear, and every insurance company in the world will preemptively declare anti-senescence therapy exempt from coverage. There will be investigation after investigation, long boring inquiries, several companies will go bankrupt, and people will lose all enthusiasm for the idea, at least for a generation. The End.

[Space05us]

We can't stand those commercials showing pot-bellied African kids covered in flies; what makes you think a shot of a withered old person would be any different to a population accustomed to eternal youth?

They don't live long enough to be old.

The life expectancy in Sudan is 51 years, Republic of the Congo 54, DRC 54, Somolia 49...

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

[Heraclitus]

Declining to pursue practical immortality =/= "letting people die." If you can't grasp the distinction, that's your problem.

No dude, ethically there is no difference. Its only a matter of degree. You need to make a seriously tight argument if you are going to overturn common sense on this.

[Elok]

The difference between a common housecat and a Bengal tiger is largely a matter of degree, but the two are still very different animals. Quantitative differences are still differences, even if they're not as tidy as qualitative ones. And this is an enormous quantitative difference.

[EPW]

People change with society. Do you think that the large % of people who tought homosexuality was a disease in the 70's are all dead?

No, but a lot them are.

[Heraclitus]

No, but a lot them are.

Yes but lets say the vast majority of people born in 1950 thought in the 1970's that homosexuality was a disease. A majority of them are not dead today. And I'm pretty sure a majority of those still living don't consider homosexuality a disease anymore.