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OpEd Piece on Extended Life Expectancy
daksis writes "CNN has posted an OpEd piece from the New York Times that raises some interesting issues. With the current advances in biology, we as a society are facing the real possibility that "immortality" could some day be the norm. What sort of social impact can we expect when/if life expectancies are measured in centuries?"
As people would no longer feel the need to have immortality in the form of children, and also as they realize the resources required. Second, either government suppport for the elderly would need to drop dramatically, or people would need to work longer parts of their lives. Third, there'd be a lot more shows like Golden Girls on TV.
Does that include stopping aging too? I don't think anyone will sleep with me when I'm 210.
Life expectancy relates to two things: natural factors (body wear, desease...) and other (car hitting you at 90 MPH, you jumping from 20th story window).
While "breakthrough" research can get rid(or minimize) the impact of natural factors (through medicine), the other factors are still unchanged (mostly).
Please correct me if I am viewing it incorrectly.
Who took my tinfoil hat?
I'd love to work 100 years or more before retirement. Not.
I think this is a stupid comment, why would anybody be less likely to risk their life just because of their potential logevity? Are people in third world countries more likely to endager their lives because their life expectancy is only half that of the first world?
...
Uh, yeah they are. Check out Liberia, Ethiopea, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Afghanistan,
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
and who is going to pay for 240 years of retirement?
No one... that's why they're not going to retire for 240 years, but work for at least 200.
Imagine the type of skilled labor you could obtain over 200 years... More and more people will become highly (and i mean highly) trained specialists in whatever they do. This would allow for ever-increasing advanced in science, medecine, and technology which would appear to "boom" in the first century of this kind of "immortality".
I, for one, would love to see this kind of thing happen.
...then perhaps the rich and powerful would start actually caring about the environment, seeing as they're more likely to live to see the long term effects of their actions.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
You'd think g'parent would have actually seen that line coming. Of course you live riskier (say, war) when you figure dysentery is going to get you any day anyway.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Pretty spooky!
But even if extended life expectency became standard for all people, unless the way the world works changes one hell of a lot, would you want to live forever? Working 9 to 5 for two hundred years doesn't sound too appealing to me.
Plus there'd need to be major clampdowns on population growth, or we'd be in Kurt Vonnegut terrority particularly sharpish. Money would be better spent on improving the lives of those for whose lives are so filled with suffering, death is a release.
Perpetual Copyrights. Life of the Artist/Author plus 969 years, once the Methuselah Copyright Extension Act is passed.
Imagine the type of skilled labor you could obtain over 200 years... More and more people will become highly (and i mean highly) trained specialists in whatever they do.
There's the optimist! And here I am worried that my specializations won't be relevant five years from now... =)
Looking at the posts that come before my own, it seems that there is a basic assumption that there would be a 'forever young' situation: no aging and always in your 20s or 30s. Is this necessarily the case?
Look at those -now- that have lived to be over 100. Their quality of life is piss poor. As a matter of fact, most people's quality of life past 70 is pretty bad compared to their half century younger versions of themselves or quarter century younger versions, for that matter. That's just their physical health. Then shall we, the /. community, start discussing how many seniors begin losing their minds to alzheimers, senility, etc.?
If it means living forever, but being an invalid the whole time, um, forgive me, but count me out. The winter of my life will hopefully be blessedly short and my mind intact through it all as it stands. If they come up with UberYoung Disney Magic Drug(tm), then, maybe, if they have the comparable medical regeneration, we'll talk about immortality.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
What I think you might have missed is the bit about overpopulation. It doesn't matter how skilled a populace is, if there are ten times as many humans as the planet can sustain, we're all screwed regardless.
"What if we know all that was worth knowing?" Ultimately 1) Birthrate would decline 2) Boredom would ensue 3) Suicide rate would increase
In 300 years we can probably expect the chances of dieing in train wrecks, etc to go way, way down.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
"Would one dare do anything so risky as carouse, drive a car, hit the ski slopes, if three hundred years of life would be thereby imperiled?
Or better yet, would anyone wage war? Would anyone commit terrorist acts?
If you think about it, the people who take the most big risks are usually teenagers. The people with the most life ahead of them. This isn't a big deal, I don't think.
no thanks
I wouldn't hold my breath for this. Modern science and medicine have done some amazing things, including organ transplants and effectively wiping out certain diseases. But so much, oh so much, is still at the alchemy stage. You ever know someone with cancer? The treatment is essentially to pump radioactive materials into the body and hope for the best. If it doesn't work, do it again--and again--until it either works or the patient dies of the cancer or the treatment (and the latter happens more often than anyone wants to admit). The progress in this area has been tremendously slow. Ditto for many other fatal diseases which are still, even after billions of dollars and 50+ years of research, uncureable. Now we're supposed to believe that "immortality" is just around the corner? Only in certain weird senses of the word.
Try this:
4. Learn Japanese.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
As I have matured, I have found that I have developed greater wisdom than I had before. I know I'll be in my 50's before I have developed the finesse that is necessary for some situations.
Imagine if you had people with many decades of practical experience who were also energetic and very healthy. Society would continue to benefit from their experience for a much longer time. People sometimes think of the elderly as being a burden or drain on society, because their health fades, limiting their "usefulness". Imagine if the elderly had the health of 30 year olds, could continue to contribute massively to society, and even had the time in their lives to have more than one 40-year career.
And wouldn't you like to be 60 years old and retired and still have "your whole life ahead of you"? You could go back to college and do something entirely new. And although you won't be QUITE as mentally agile as you were when you were thirty, the medical technology necessary to keep you alive for 300 years would likely make you mentally fit for most of that lifespan.
On the other hand:
It is often the case that certain social, cultural, or scientific advancements are made only when the those who held to the old ideas had died off. That is to say, it took a generation for the transition to be made.
Relativity, Quantum Electrodynamics, Evolutionary Theory, voting for women and minorities, acceptance of homosexuals, many things that we now consider to be basic civil rights, etc. All of these things required that one (or more) generation pass on so that the next generation, unencumbered by preconceived notions, could continue to advance.
Since we are young, we are ingrained with certain ideas that we find difficult to let go of later in life. I'm only 29, and yet I am finding it difficult to unlearn many habits I learned from my family which I now disagree with. Certain things are hard to change, even when we want them to.
Furthermore, the wisdom one learns earlier in one's life may apply to things about the world which have since changed. For instance, a person who did well in business in the 1950's may fail miserably trying to apply the same ideas to business in the 21st century. Sometimes, it's hard to change your entire way of thinking.
Worst case, we could have people who are 200+ years old holding back scientific and cultural improvements, because they don't like the new ideas of the younger people. If 50% of your population is over 150, then you'll have a lot of political pressure to maintain ideas and norms which are 150 years out of date.
All this being said, I personally would like to live as long as possible. Why? Because I hate the idea of not knowing what happens after I'm gone. I wouldn't care as much how long I live if I could learn what society and technology will be like 1 million years from now. I'm incredibly curious.
Would deaths by suicide skyrocket?
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
I agree! Why here in the 7th century, we serfs rarely live past 20 years. I hear talk of try to "extend" the lifespan to more than 70 years!
What would you do with all those years? That's more than 3 times the current retirement age!
I think it's unnatural to live past 20 - anyone older than that should do us a favor and kill yourself - you've outlived your usefulness!
I'm already kind of bored/sick of my field (no budgets and bad management doesn't help). I'm having a hard time imagining working the same field for 40 years, let alone 200 years.
I suppose one advantage would be that it would be totally viable to start over from scratch -- go to college, get a degree and enter a completely new profession at age 70 without feeling like you wouldn't have enough time to "make it" in your field.
That assumes, of course, that "20 years" is still considered relatively seasoned in a profession, and that number doesn't get bumped to 40 or 60 years, in which case the whole mess becomes like inflation -- just multiple the usual timelines in a profession by 2 or 3.
One of the hidden assumptions (beyond "your health will be like being 35 for 150 years") is that human psychology will stand up to the beating it will take and people will have the *yearning* to keep living. Is it possible that people of normal financial means will just run out of interesting stuff to do?
I thought of this issue somewhat similarly after reading an article about a new anti-narcolepsy drug that apparently allows for days of waking with none of the psychosis common with staying awake on amphetamines. If you could take this drug and stay awake for an extra 4 nights a week, you could nearly double your available free time. But would you *want* to?
Before considering the future, let's have a look at the past.
TIME 100: 1900 vs. Now
In the USA, life expectancy increased 60% from 1900 to 2000. In Italy, 80%. In Japan, 80%. In Mexico, 120%.
We are already living in an age of radical life extension compared to previous generations. A much higher percentage of the population lives to 60, 80, or 100 than used to. And I don't see a lot of people clamoring to roll back life extancy from 75+ years to 45.
75 is a lot better than 45. 120 will be better than 75. And 200 will be better than 120.
It appears to me that cryogenics is in its infacy; not much research, not much intereest. But over the next 50 years the ability to suspend a body's degeneration is sure to increase. Assuming that we can develop some way to perfectly preserve a body before you die, the chance for immortality is realized.
Worried that your great-great-great-grand kids won't want to wake you up? Deposit $10,000 in a mutual fund and gurantee the value of the mutual fund to whoever wakes you up. Great-great-grandkid gets a load of money and the chance to meet face to face one of their forebearers. You wake up from death with a perfectly repaired body and the promise of eternal life. I'm not sure whether this is desirable, but if you're so inclined I see little reason that you won't be able to obtain immortality (assuming you've got the dough!)
Most people that make any significant contributions to their field do so before they're 30.
Ever heard of Galileo, Hawking, or Einstein?
Either you are a historian devoted exclusively to the lives of Mongol warlords, a fan of boy bands, or a Microsoft astroturfer. Which of the above I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Actually, with people leading longer lives, more people will have the opportunity to train in multiple disciplines. This would help scientific progress as people find ways to combine ideas from very different fields of study.
I would point out that you and I were originally just one wee cell each. Now, unless you are a particularly plucky blastocyte, your cells have divided a helluva lot more than seven times apiece.
I think this is a stupid comment, why would anybody be less likely to risk their life just because of their potential logevity? Are people in third world countries more likely to endager their lives because their life expectancy is only half that of the first world?
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Uh, yeah they are. Check out Liberia, Ethiopea, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Afghanistan,
This is Insightful? Where exactly is the insight? Of course people in third world countries are more likely to do things that endanger their lives --first because most of those things they HAVE to do to survive (you don't see any Afghani's out bungee jumping), and second because the QUALITY of life is piss poor. If you took two people, gave them both a great life, but told one he would most likely only live to 40 and the other that he would live to 80, I don't think they'd act differently...
There's just way too many other factors at play to judge people's actions in third world countries based solely on life expectancy.
- First of all, the birthrate would have to be chopped. Deathrate would have to be equal to the birthrate. The population growth formula cannot stand to have the death factor nulled out. A population that has large growth with little death is a cancer, a danger to the ecosystem.
- As a practical matter, turnover in people is essential to clean out the social arteries. I've grown accustomed to the idea that I should die so that someone younger and less conservative can take over and shake things up.
- A large population of old, conservative property owners will smother the young, who can never catch up with the accumulated wisdom and wealth of people decades or even centuries older than they.
- Space colonization would be essential. Not the piddly planets, but O'Neill structures that can really give the race some room to flex while the whole property/wealth problems rage on Earth.
- Wealth inequities will inevitably create a class of wealthy near-immortals in the short term. Wealth will buy better anti-aging treatments; poverty, nearly none. If you think the not-wealthy can be cranky now, wait until they see the wealthy stay alive indefinitely, while they die. As Heinlein said so long ago in Metheuselah's Children, Death is the Great Democrat, treating all alike. If class or wealth grant exemptions from the Equalizer, there will be hell to pay.
- How's memory going to work, when accumulated experience overwhelms the brains ability to cross-reference it all?
- How will an immortal make a living? They can't be retired. It's financially impossible.
- Will an immortal ever get any respect from the young? I mean, a 35 year old scientist or techie is washed up, according to conventional wisdom. Will the very young be the only people looked to for cultural stimulation, or technical breakthroughs? What will the oldsters do, watch TV for 200 years?
- You'd eventually wind up with a world full of very old people, with a small number of young being born to balance out a very low deathrate. "Conservative" isn't the word for the social atmosphere of such a world. Change would be very, very slow in coming.
- OTOH, If the oldsters can stay biologically young, how will the "really" young (in years) compete with the infinitely smarter pseudoyoung competition?
Just some ideas to throw around.
Overpopulation and overcrowding are different things :)
Without nitrogen fertilizers we've already exceeded the farming output of the Earth, only technology has allowed the population to continue to grow. Logistics is the main problem for feeding the world today.
If for the sake of argument, we accept your biblical literalism, it should be possible to create preflood conditions again.
If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go read Aesop's Fables and take everything literally so I miss the point of the stories entirely.
Given that your life expectancy increases to infinity, you chances of dying unnaturally go to one.
You _will_ die an unnatural death, murder, car crash, or other type of accident.
How's that?
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Yes, if there's anything the Roman Empire found disgusting, it was wars, selfishness, and the power hungry!
Perhaps. But I don't think that such decisions come down to "how many years of life am I risking" as much as "I am risking not being alive tomorrow." When you make a decision regarding a dangerous activity I don't think "Well, I wouldn't have done this 30 years ago, but now that I only have probably 20 years left to gamble, what the heck."
In fact, people generally do more life-threatening, foolish things when they are younger. That's partly due to the immortality one feels being young and also due to a lack of judgement--but everything I've seen in life suggests that people become more risk-averse as they grow older and have less time left rather than the opposite being true.
"Overpopulation" doesn't refer to merely land area. Tho Asimov did some simple calculations once, and showed that every square foot of the Earth would be covered in humans in less than 3000 years. The entire universe, and every atom in it, would be converted at the same present growth rate in humans in about 6000 years, if it were possible to absorb everything, everywhere.
"Overpopulation" is what happens when problems start overwhelming solutions. Problems: disease, starvation, malutrition, species elimination, overgrazing, desertification, water shortages, political panic against the have-nots, atmospheric damage, atmospheric warming, garbage accumulation (HUGE problem), education underfunding, oceanic destruction... All of these problems inevitably trigger wars as people struggle to find a way out that doesn't involve changing their habits, such as using too much oil, too much water, or worst of all, having too many babies. Men on Horseback inevitably convince people that they merely have to attack [insert enemy here] and all will be well.
Nothing expands forever. Cancers try, and they fail. There is always a limit. At the very least, there are always consequences. Best case scenario in the short term is turning the entire planet into a Trantor, just to service the people already living.
The problem is simple arithmetic. Humans hate arithmetic applied to their babies, but it is so anyway. The human race is doubling in size every 35 years or so. This simply cannot happen indefinitely. Let's break it down:
2003 : 6.5 billion.
2038 : 13 billion.
2073 : 26 billion.
2108 : 52 billion.
2143 : 104 billion.
2178 : 208 billion.
2213 : 416 billion.
2248 : 832 billion.
2283 : 1,664 TRILLION.
Keep running the expansion. It soon goes into the quadrillions, then quintillions. In less than 3000 years, give or take a millenium, the sum of all the mass of the human race exceeds the mas of the entire planet. In a few dozen more generation, the mass of the universe is exceeded.
No matter how much you throw tech at the problem, at some point the system will go unstable. The human race cannot keep increasing at the present rate, or even a fraction thereof, without utter breakdown.
I would think that the fundementalist belief that the world will end soon is the crux of people's indifference to the problems we face. A majority of the world believes that God will end the world soon. So why bother?
I'm not kidding. Major long term planning by political leaders, especially in the U.S. is being conducted by men and women who are banking on God ending the world.
I think that depends on the field. I've read that has been true in math and science (particularly in physics). I don't think it is true in every field.
My impression is that some disciplines (such as math and physics) are more purely theoretical and thus more quickly mastered (assuming one is smart enough) whereas others (perhaps biology, the social scienes, and liberal arts) are more "messy" and require more time. I may be wrong, but I predict that if there is a "cure" for cancer, the breakthrough will be made by a scientist who was over 30.
I don't think the "under 30" rule (or presumption) applies to my area, law. People under 30 may write brilliant articles. They may write their first book or treatise. They simply have not had time to master the area. They haven't written their multi-volumne treatise on the subject. I suspect the same is true in history, philosophy, etc.
I'm sure it is going to continue to be true in physics. Damn, I can't recall the article or the area, but I recently read that one of the most promising attempts at some sort of unified field theory was being develped by older scientists (well, older as in their 30s, 40s and young 50s). Supposedly, the new theory required mastery of several different discliplines in physics that required years of study. Sorry I can't remember the article. Hopefully, somebody else will.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
sounds sick, doesn't it?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I was thinking that the economic impact of long life would be very substantial.
The power of compounding interest enables savers to retire comfortably after a few decades of saving. If people continued to work (and save), within a couple of hundred years, these folks would be billionaires.
A couple things might happen:
(1) Inflationary pressures. You have a few extra centuries to pay off that house, why not add on that million dollar addition? Also, population growth would drive up the prices of resources.
(2) Social upheaval. The haves (savers of considerable age) would have tremendous wealth and power, while the have-nots (young folks, or those who haven't saved) would be about where they are now. At worst, it could lead to class warfare. More probable would be a tax system to transfer some of the income on that wealth back to the have-nots.
With today's lifespans, people tend to be most wealthy later in life. But when they die, their heirs (and the IRS) tend to consume most of that wealth. This cycle would obviously slow down considerably with longer life spans.
It's unlikely that the human age will rise dramatically over 150 years without much replacement of parts -and the brain is hard to replace without those pesky 'side effects.'
The age of 120 is well within common reach. However, the thing I feel is more important is that the *active* phase of life will dramatically rise. Currently the active age can be said to be up to the age of 60 at which point the wear and tear will start showing -it's fully conceivable that we may get the active age stretch almost all the way to death and in any case (assuming the terminal age of 120) up to maybe 100-115. Think if you could extend the vigor you have at 30-40 nowadays for another 40 or more years!
E
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Life of author + x years could end up being a very long time indeed...
Who knows with the way IP law is heading, the right portfolio just might be worth the investment in longevity...
Blogging because I can...
I looked through a few threads and didn't notice any comments on Marriage. It's hard enough these days to stay with the same partner for an extended period of time(10 years), how hard would it be to stay with them for 200 years!! I think marriage in gerneral would have less meaning than it does today. What would be the point to getting married? Heck, you could probably be married and devorced 50 times over your lifetime. It becomes more and more meaningless. What about reproduction. I have read threads about controling the population, like in China. That would take one heck of a global Governmental plan to control every human being on earth from reproducing. Heck, if your alive for 200-300 years, you wouldn't even need a doctor to deliver the baby, cause you could probably learn to do it yourself. It's part of human nature to want to reproduce to continue the flow of life. It would take some advanced evolution on our part to wipe this out of our system before the planet is consumed by people. Maybe we should consult some Elves on what to do!!
For two downloadable examples, check out this moving short story about a week in the life of an immortal. Note how we can still empathize with the losses immortals must have. (And note that unlike this story, immortality is usually just background in Egan's stories (just like contemporary writing doesn't focus on how our average age is 70).) Or for a great read, download or buy Cory Doctorow's novel 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.' Day to day struggles of people who just happen to be in the starting centuries of immortality.
But what really interests me are the motivations of people who hate the idea of immortality or longevity. Now, if these people were like the Amish ("go on ahead with your tech, but we're going to hang out here for a while") that'd be one thing. But George Bush's chief bioethicist is one of them. Geoge Bush's decisions will be made^hhhInfluenced by someone who has been said to think:
Or, as he has been quoted as saying "The finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not."I think that given the opportunity for longevity treatments (antibiotics, heart transplants) he'd take them, saying that the particular treatment isn't terrible (like Bennett on gambling). But meanwhile he causes lots of damage, because as treatments are introduced, you cannot easily separate longevity treatments from quality of life treatments. If Kass thinks one of these (longevity /immortality) is ultimately evil, then he might well be willing to sacrifice the other (q of l) in order to prevent the former. To stop reproductive cloning (because delayed twinning is evil, you know?) we also have to stop theraputic cloning, for example.
Me, I want both longevity and quality of life. Of course I'd like to try for 160, just like a person who could only expect to make 40 would love to try for 80. But if not, I'd love to have a much better time in my last decades. I don't see the necessity or beauty of strokes, dementia, arthritis... I don't see this virtue of suffering that Kass sees, and I doubt that he voluntarily skips anti-suffering treatments as they become available. However, I think he will work hard to delay when they become available. That's scary.
As a thought experiment, imagine a world where all arts- books, symphonies, photos, movies, plays, scuptures- had an average lifespan of 70 years, then they start to crumble away, 99% gone by 100, all gone by 120 years. So all we knew about Murasaki Shikibu, Michelangelo, W. Shakespeare, and Beethoven were that they existed; and jazz fans were already losing Louis Armstrong's works. Imagine people in that world saying "Its great we lose these works: unless they disappear no new works will be created. It is unethical to try to extend these creations to survive to 140 or 500 years..." Humanity survived our average lifespan going from 25 to 40 and 40 to 75: I think we're perfectly capable of working out the logistics of 120 or 160 or 300.
Or think of how it would affect our government...do you think the people of the US would put up with it's government detaining people and putting them in camps without representation or a public trial if they could personally remember things like the roundup of innocent Japanese Americans during WWII?
well...I guess this *is* the US, but still, you get the point. A lot of people forget the past atrocities of their government after a single generation passes.
teeker
You numbers may have been right 40 years ago, but recent data indicates that the rate of population growth is decreasing.
Modern statistical methods estimate that the poulation will plaueau at 10 billion in 2150.
The sky is not falling. Move along.
If we can't even supply jobs to those alive now, how can we supply jobs to a world where there are BILLIONS more people?
What, are jobs dug up out of the ground and burned up? How many years of jobs do we have left before we've used them all up? (Let's ask Jeremy Rifkin. He's probably writing a book warning us about it as we speak.)
If you have billions more people, you'll have billions of additional customers, people with needs to fill and problems to solve. Of course, there are business cycles of expansion and contraction, and there are secular shifts of jobs from old industries to new industries and from one region to another.
However, this notion of "we [inevitably meaning The Government] have to supply jobs" needs a secular shift of its own toward a reduction in the friction one encounters when trying to create jobs, especially for oneself and maybe a few friends.
I'm not suggesting a totally unregulated black market free-for-all. It's hard to create a good job for yourself in such an environment, too. Just an environment in which the government (and a lot of people) think less about creating or retaining jobs and more about how to make it easy and uncomplicated for average joes to (repeatedly) create their own jobs and jobs for their friends and colleagues.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Most people that make any significant contributions to their field do so before they're 30.
In 300 years, current modes of human cognition will be outdated and irrelevant to the people actually getting work done. If we manage to catch the wave of increasing longevity and ride it that far, we will either no longer be anything like we are now, or we will be fossils and relics kept around by our successors as we do children and the elderly today. The future of progress will be in enhanced intelligence. Whether this intelligence is machine or augmented biology is irrelevant. Once it becomes possible to be smarter than human, it will be a societal inevitability.
People who grow useless past age 30 will be a thing of the past unless the next generation's model of thinking is as vastly superior to theirs as a modern computer is to it's decade old ancestor.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").