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?"

Comments

population

[mjmalone]

"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?"

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?

I think the more interesting point, and one the article failed to mention, is where are all these people going to live, what are they going to eat, and who is going to pay for 240 years of retirement? With the population of earth already increasing rapidly extending lifespans to three times their current level would have a huge impact.

Oh yea! And what's going to happen when we run out of IPs for them all!?

Re:population

[s20451]

Maybe not three hundred. But what if the number were a millon? An immortal being (i.e., one for whom there was no such thing as a natural cause of death) would probably be very risk-averse. Some have claimed that this is the answer to the Fermi paradox, which wonders why evidence of extra-terrestrial life is not everywhere. If alien civilizations discovered immortality first, then why would they risk life and limb in something as reckless as space travel?

Re:population

[Ominous Coward]

Well, I think people would retire later, but also, I think that the actual life expectancy wouldn't grow as much, because health advances will only go so far as to offset the more dangerous things we do to ourselves.

Though fiction, I think Futurama and Transmetropolitan both show pretty well how people will act in the future. Still violent, still stupid, but soon people can be even more careless with their health. Why stop smoking when you can just have the anti-cancer trait?

Transplants might extend our lives a bunch, but brain damage will be the limiting factor. Replacing the brain-cell will do no good, because it won't have the memories of what it replaced. Now if we can do computer back-ups of brains, then we're going somewhere.

Re:population

[realdpk]

Rather than continuing to promote specialization over those 200 years, I'd like to see people branch out in to new fields.

Specialization is one of the top problems with jobs here - we have people who are on unemployment who complain about not being able to find a job in their field, who don't even look outside their field. Unions are also a problem here - they seem to work under the idea that people will have the same jobs their entire lives. 30-40 years is already a long time - 200 years is approaching insanity.

Re:population

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah .... great think about the average burn-out is something like 5 years for any given job ... 40 carrier moves in a life time.

One thing the article completely misses, however, is that brain deterioration tends *not* to be solely due to aging. Alzheier's disease is closely linked with the accumulation of plaques and tangles that foul up the neuro chemistry and wack the neurons. Keeping cells from dying of "natural old age" won't avoid that problem. So sure you can live to 600, but the last 500 will be in a cognition free stupor.

Re:population

[Theatetus]

There's an interesting question... as a card-carrying generalist (yes, we can get jobs), will the kind of stuff I do become more important in an immortal world, or will people simply give up on trying to bridge vastly differing specialties?

Re:population

[Azureflare]

Man, I don't know what you're talking about, if people are old and crufty for 200 years, I for one want no part in any society like that!

Even if you can solve the problem of physical decay, how long do the neurons in the brain last? New neurons cannot be created, only new connections can be made...People would probably die of brain death, while their bodies were in perfect health. I think it's kind of silly to think that we should strive for immortality. What are you going to do with all those years? Can you seriously imagine what it would be like to work for 200 years, as opposed to 65? That's more than 3 times the current retirement age!

We will all have to face death one day, and promises of immortality are just a waste of time and energy.

Re:population

[QuantumFTL]

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?

Actually I think it's a valid psychological point. A lot of individuals rationalize their dangerous behaviors in that they are going to "die sometime" anyways. The more you have to lose, the less likely you are to take a risk.

I think the more interesting point, and one the article failed to mention, is where are all these people going to live, what are they going to eat, and who is going to pay for 240 years of retirement? With the population of earth already increasing rapidly extending lifespans to three times their current level would have a huge impact.

Those are indeed interesting questions. First of all, the assumption that people would continue to retire in their sixties if their lifespan extended is rather silly. People used to have a life expectancy of 40 years, but we certainly don't stop working at 40 now. Provided the quality of life is high ehough for them to be useful, I know plenty of elderly individuals who'd love to be productive again. Medical technology should allow them to be much more fit, robust, etc by then anyways.

As for where everyone is going to live, have you ever been to Wyoming? There's literally *TONS* of space, we haven't even come close to saturating earth spatially, not to mention skyscrapers will continue to be larger/taller.

As for what they are going to eat... underground farming is a possibility, and it's quite possible with the help of organic synthasizing implants the food intake required by a human could be drastically reduced. Between that and organic recycling technology, there's no reason a household could not eventually be a closed loop system that only required energy input (recycling water/organics). It's what astronauts do already!

As for the growth rate... A lot of developed countries have populations that are barely growing, or are shrinking even. As technology becomes more and more inexpensive and pervasive, developing countries will be able to catch up. Between this and advanced technology (much of which is coming from the space program, of which I am a part) I think a lot of these problems are solvable.

The biggest issue (which you didn't mention) is where are we going to get the energy for all of these people? I mean, there's theoretical power sources that could handle it, but will they be around in time? Controlled fusion perhaps, or maybe giant solar collectors in space... I predict that between biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics and computer science, in a hundred years the only real commodities left will be energy and information (from which anything else can be derived).

Yes there's plenty of interesting problems we will face as we head into the later part of the 21st century, however I am confident there will be equally interesting solutions. 10+ billion people have a way of overcoming difficulties. That is, if we don't kill ourselves first.

Oh yea! And what's going to happen when we run out of IPs for them all!? I'll sell mine on eBay for a ton of money, and stop wasting my time on slashdot ;)

Re:population

[Transcendent]

Rather than continuing to promote specialization over those 200 years, I'd like to see people branch out in to new fields.

That's the way to go for the working class, but what about the scientists or that make the discoveries that form the back-bone of tomorrows technology in which the engineers design and take to it's limit?

Take specialists from multiple fields with 150+ years of research behind them, have them work together and share ideas freely... just imagine the type of genious that would be it's output.

I myself wouldn't want to be stuck in the same job for over 200+ years. My passion is knowledge and would naturally span over as many different type of work and study as I could find.

Another possibility that would arise from that kind of lifespan would be to colonize other planets in our solar system or beyond. I'd gladly spend 50 years on a ship (not those little capsules... I gotta live there, ya know) to help out in setteling around a neighboring star.

Re:population

[peretzpup]

You know, this sort of life extension might actually significantly retard scientific progress. The dying off of the 'old guard' is often a precondition for the widespread propagation of genuinely new ideas.

Re:population

[in7ane]

Once again you've been fooled by causation. Take crime and war for example, life expectancy is reduced because of it, not that people engage in these activities because they have a low live expectancy. And either way, I doubt that potential life expectancy figures as the main driving force behind your decisions if you are living in one of the countries you mentioned (ok, maybe preserving your life does, but then again outside factors largely determine your success in that).

To address the change in risk attitudes if your life expectancy is longer - yes, if you are rational, you should be more risk averse since you have more to loose. But who says that people are rational?

Re:population

[David Hume]

Once again you've been fooled by causation. Take crime and war for example, life expectancy is reduced because of it, not that people engage in these activities because they have a low live expectancy.

The causation can work both ways. Indeed, it may create a self-reinforcing loop.

Crime and war probably reduce life expectancy. (I say "probably" because there may be times where the refusal to engage in crime or to wage war reduce one's life expectancy. There are times when those who do not steal food starve to death. There may have been people who died in the Holocaust who would have survived had they fought, or fought sooner.)

However, the perception or belief that one is going to "die young" or "die soon" anyway can cause someone to engage behavior. I've listened to interviews with young gang-bangers who were convinced that they were going to die before they were 30, so they might as well go out having "fun" -- even if that "fun" involved stealing a car, ripping off a liquor store, etc.

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. The firm belief that one is destined to die before age thirty causes a person to engage in behavior that both reinforces that belief and greatly increases the probability that one will in fact die before age thirty.

Enaging in risky behavior when one believes one has relatively little time left can be perceived to be rational. Today, if somebody is 50 years old, and decides to go sky-diving for the first time, he is probably risking only 20 years of life and future enjoyment. However, if in the future the average life expectancy is 250 years, a 50 year old who decides to go sky diving for the first time is risking much, much more. The cost-benefit analysis is completely altered.

I wish I could remember the episode, but I seem to recall a Twilight Zone episode where the main character either was immune to death from natural causes, or was just days away from achieving immortality. As a result, he wouldn't leave his room. He was terrified by the thought that he would die in a stupid accident.

Re:population

[promethean_spark]

Actually we've already begun to slow down and will settle at something like 11 billion sometime around 2050. As people get more civilized, they have fewer children. Europe's population is actually shrinking right now, and the US isn't going up or down. As the lesser developed countries mature, their fertility will drop as well. Moore's law for medicine suggests that in 2020 we'll be adding a year to the average lifespan every year. Moore's law for technology suggests we'll probably have unlimited virtual space to live in.

Re:population

[Tyreth]

Chances are I'll be modded flamebait, but for curiosity factor I once calculated what the population of the earth would be today if we assumed two humans (Adam & Eve) 6,000 years ago, and a 1% growth rate (very modest).

Today's population would be: 1.69540200147367e+26

Of course, there are obvious problems to this from the start - population growth fluctuates. Adam & Eve would have had more than just a fraction of a child (39 people after 300 years), etc.

Anyway, for evolutionists or creationists there's an important point here - you can't take straight population growth and assume it will continue constantly - which I think was your original point.

War, famine, food shortages, space shortages, culture and more all have an effect on population rates, and at different times in history too. I think that if people were to live hundreds or thousands of years, in many ways we would regulate ourselves (though not necessarily). For example, when space is small, living costs for property should increase, discouraging people from having more children than they can handle. People will have differing opinions. We thought education would remove prejudices, but it doesn't. Imagine hundreds of years of stubborness, wars could reach spectacular levels with feuds raging hundreds of years, with the same people behind pulling the strings. Population has been reduced in the past, it will happen again.

Sci Fi covered it first?

[umrgregg]

There are some great SciFi books/series that deal with extended life-spans and the societal issues that arise from such an issue. The first that come to mind are Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series (humans use genetic massaging to prolong their lifespan; initially for the rich) and Larry Niven's Ringworld series (an alien race in the series has extremely long life spans and therefore everything is built for caution). Aside from being excellent books, they offer some insight to the topics in the article, and some ways we should avoid (Robinson) handling or handle (Niven) if the situation arises.

Re:Sci Fi covered it first?

[Telastyn]

Fantasy too. Tolkien's elves [and their derivatives] are one of the better examples of immortality influencing culture.

Re:Sci Fi covered it first?

[fermion]

All the greats have dealt with this issue, many in an idealistic way, assuming that space travel is easy enough to spread the population amongst the cosmos. One example that comes to mind is Frederick Pohl "Outnumbering the Dead." Of course, as many have mentioned, many authors use extended life as an assumption or plot device. K.S. Robinson has both actual and metaphorical longevity. Heinlein also uses this extensively in his later adult oriented novels.

The thing that most of these miss is how efficiently we kill each other, especially when resources are scarce. A recent movie with this theme is "28 Days Later"(I am talking about the military people trying to kill the men to get the women). We already have older people consuming an extraordinary amount of resources to live a few more years. There is backlash against this, and it will increase. The most likely consequence of immortality, unless it is achieved very cheaply or results in people wanting much less stuff, will likely be the routine killing of the weak and otherwise useless portion of society to make room for those deemed more worthy. This is already kind of done in an informal way.

Re:Sci Fi covered it first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory classic Star Trek reference: "The Mark Of Gideon"

"Odona, can you...remember why your people dream of being alone?"

"Because they never can be. - Why ?"

"What makes it so impossible to be alone?"

"Because there are so many of us. So many.
There is no place,
no street,
no house,
no garden,
no beach,
no mountain that is not filled with people.
Each one of us would kill...
in order to find a place alone to himself.
Yet would willingly die for it,
if they could."

yeah... not?

[digitalsushi]

if you could pop a pill that would make you never die from something biological, the *average* age you would live to be is about 600, after you calculate in train wrecks, falling down stairs, car crashes, and well, anywhere you can kill yourself mechanically or chemically. Given that's the average, that means some lucky 10 percent would be seeing more like 6000 years, and some unlucky folks getting their 60, or worse, 6! I really wish I had a source for that number, but if it is indeed roughly corect, then someone can just do whatever math is required to decide for themselves. Sorry I dont have a link...

Possible solutions?

[earthforce_1]

Larry Niven's ringworld series addresses the effect of near immortality on society. Having a baby requires a government permit, which is only issued to exceptional individuals, or the very, very lucky.

Of course, we had better figure out a way of getting off this stupid rock en masse, once we develop immortality.

Re:life expectancy

[maxume]

What if two of the breakthroughs are cloning and a method to back up your conciousness or whatever it is that makes you you? At that point, a new body, with a restored backup of you is going to pretty much be you, minus a little bit of experience. I realize that these are pretty far off at this point(ie cloning isn't easy yet, and rapid growth of clone isn't even thought of yet, and we don't know jack about the soul/brain/conciousness), but they are pretty much the end all of your question, because if we get those things, then what? Altered Carbon, a somewhat recent slashdot book review has an interesting take on the whole thing, and I have read other stuff that deals with it, though the titles escape me.

I don't believe it.

[_PimpDaddy7_]

I know I will be long dead before this immortality stuff may appear, but....

I don't believe it. We are carbon based beings. Carbon eventually deteriorates(sp?).

I read once where silicon has a similar molecular structure like carbon and we were silicon based then we could live MUCH longer.

How do they go about maintaining the carbon in our bodies?

Not quite forever...

[useosx]

I read somewhere that statistically the maxiumum you can live is around 500 years. Eventually, no matter how hard you try, you will get hit by a train. On a side note, a friend of mine once stayed at a clinic somewhere for some tests, and the only rooms they had left were suicide-proof. He said there were no edges anywhere and other weird stuff. So maybe if you lived in one of those, buried in the ground somewhere, you could make it to 600 years.

suicide parlours

[macho]

the kurt vonnegut story "welcome to the monkey house" dealt with this. five generations were living in the same house waiting for each other to die so they could have their own room. the government offered free "voluntary suicide services" on every street corner where you could get a lethal injection from a pretty lady. worth checking out.

Re:hmm..

[Saige]

Though this comes across as a joke, it's a very important issue to consider.

After all, if we don't bother to stop aging, then someone living for hundreds of years isn't going to enjoy that much of it. What good is living when your body is fragile and weak?

Adding on to one's life expectancy isn't worthwhile unless it comes with a significant decrease in the rate of aging, or at least the ability to temporarily reverse it. (ie taking a 70 year old body, and making it as good as at 25 again, for it to age back to 70, and repeat)

In general, when people talk about long life spans, usually slowing/stopping/reversing aging is implied.

Longevity and Responsibility

[under_score]

Living to a very old age has serious economic consequences. Just as an example... People could live long enough to amass extraordinarily large fortunes even with extremely conservative investment strategies. The rich who will be able to afford this sort of longevity will become much richer.

There are also serious social or moral consequences. How many generations distant does an offspring need to be before it is "okay" to procreate? Normally, grand parents are too old (decrepit) for this to even be an issue. When great-grandparents are still physically vigorous, is a descendant who only shares 1/8 genetic material "removed" enough for this to be okay?

If lots of people start living to a very much extended age, then population growth will become a very serious problem!

Of course, there are substantial potential benefits: the ability to pursue projects of extremely long duration becomes easier (for example space exploration, long-term experiments, businesses with very long-term returns, mastering vast bodies of knowledge, etc). Less obvious is the possibility of improved social integration of humanity since people will travel much more in a given lifetime, and since life will become more "valuable".

Personally, I think it would be cool to live much longer than my currently expected life-span of 70 or 80 years. However, once everyone is living to 600 years, it won't be "cool" anymore. What will we wish for then?

Re:Longevity and Responsibility

[Mryll]

Wouldn't interest rates drop? The urgency of getting debts repaid in 5, 10, 20, or 70 years need not really be there. I would think that typical annual interest rates are loosely correlated to human lifespan.

Reality Check: Most of us die in our 60s

[MrJerryNormandinSir]

Reality check everyone! Most of us don't even make it to our late 60s. Sure medicine has advanced in the past 25 years. But the reality most of us are loosing our mind to Parkinsons or Alzhiemers. If we escape that we may die from Cancer. We've been poisoning our environment for hundreds of years now and we expect to live longer. Nope. I expect the average lifespan to drop. Even farm raised samon from the United States is full of PCBs. The truth isn't out about cell phone radiation because a multibillion dollar industry will go bust. I tell you what I do not use my company supplied cellphone often, and I treat it like fire. I've got to do something to make up for the contaminated well water I drank as a teenager for over 1 year. My parents well was contaminated with Tricholethylene, Benzene, Tetrachloryethelyne..and we drank it without knowing. Until we did a water test.

Also my granmother is 85 years old. She still has her mind. She's never sick, but now her body is attacking her.. rhumatoid arthritis is awful.
And there isn't a cure, just a treatment. And sometimes the treatment just does not work.
Also... eyes. man.. she took a baby aspirin as
recomended to reduce the possibility of a heart attack, well the aspirin a day put her at risk for macular Degeneration. She's can't see well.
My brother bought some natural herbal medicine that may reverse some of the illness, she's been on the treatment for 4 months and can now look at me in the eye. She couldn't see my eyes before.

Would I want this body to last over 100 years? Nope.

prison system modifications

[Mr. Asdf]

How expensive would life in prison become? (Or the ridiculous 300+ years that we sometimes have now?) In fact, imagine that we were immortal; that should lead you to realize that there may be something logically flawed with the punishment of life in prison to begin with. (Of course, I cannot propose a better alternative...)

It'll never happen!!!

[scorp1us]

Your DNA will become increasingly damaged. Cancer will run rampant. We'll have drugs by then to keep the cancer down, but eventually your DNA will look like swiss cheese. You can't fix that, unless you can some how store a copy of your DNA somewhere with 0 radiation and copy from that on a regular basis. Failing that, you'll live to turn into a giant sack of tumors. We already know that everything (even celery) gives you cancer.

I'd rather live short and dignified, than to die a blob of genetic mutations.

We won't be around in 2100...or will we?

[jstultz]

"Our life expectancy will be in the region of 5,000 years" in rich countries in the year 2100, predicts Aubrey de Grey, a scholar at Cambridge University. (This is, of course, a great prediction to make because none of us will be around in 2100 to mock him if he's wrong.)

Not necessarily...if one assumes that life expectancy will continually increase, for those of us living *now*, our *actual* life span will be longer than our current projected life span. Say you were born in 1970, and the current life expectancy is 80 years old...theoretically you'll live until 2050. But then in 2040, say the life expectancy has changed to, say, 120 years...it might not mean that you would then necessarily live until 2090, but since it changed, you would at least live longer.

So maybe, just maybe, we WILL be around in 2100 to see if he's right. And then, all of this begs the question, what happens when life expenctancy starts to increase at a faster rate than time passes? That is, life expectancy increases consistently each year by more than 1 year. Wouldn't it be then, in fact, that immortality is achieved? When the rate of change of life expectancy is >1, not when the actual life expectancy is infinite?

Then there's the problem of overpopulation....where do we put all of these people that refuse to die? Hopefully we will have established colonies off-earth by then.

Hopefully at least some of this has been partially understandable.

biogerontology as a career

[biotechnician]

I got interested in genetics at 13 when I read the cartoon guide to genetics, I was about 16 when I started hearing about telomeres and p53. Now I'm 21, doing my own research(viva la grant money) relating mutation rate to growth hormone, and am thoroughly fascinated by biogerontology. I've hung out at a special big wig aging research seminar last summer, it was really the best 5 days of my life. Molecular Biology is accelerating at such a rate, that a supposed "cure" for aging may very well be developed in the next 20 to 30 years. In fact I bet my life on it(literally). A non-biologist just doesn't get how fast our field is improving, the curing of aging is inevitable. Aging itself is a very effective mechanism against aging, while you associate cancer with olld age old age itself helps prevent cancer. Mice that have overactive p53 will have dramatically reduced cancer, but they exhibit many aspects of aging at a very early age! Aging and cancer is like ying and yang, to cure aging we must also cure cancer. Right now it takes X number of genes to be mutated before your cell becomes tumorous, and then another X number of genes before it becomes cancerous. We must increase the number of redundant cancer genes so that cancer is EXTREMELY rare, the only reason we still have cancer is because of evolution. There simply isn't enough evolutionary pressure to decrease our cancer rates, however with genetics we can most definetly overcome this problem. Yes this post is over-enthusiastic, and paints a picture far too positive for any respectible scientist. Damnit I got 60 years ahead of me, if you thing what we did in the last 50 you'd understand why theres no doubt in my mind we'll be curing aging in the next 20-30 years.

Heinlein talked about this long ago...

[got911here]

Anyone who thinks this type of postulation is new ought to check out the 'Lazarus Long' storyline in Robert Heinlein's adult series of novels. Heinlein discussed how practical (>200 yrs) immortality would impact the family, morality, technology, careers, etc. For example, what's the real difference between you, at age 230, and your son, who's 210?

I think that even now we're seeing some of the leading effects of longevity as people lead longer, healthier lives. The most obvious is retirement. In the states, we used to retire at 65 and sit around for seven or eight years until we died. Now, people 'retire' sightly earlier, but are really moving on to second careers - doing what they 'really want to do'.

Re:Heinlein talked about this long ago...

[Erik_Kahl]

Heinlein is the man.

One of the key points that Heinlein brought up with greater lifespans is the idea that it will lead to the true spread of humanity. We WILL run out of the resources needed to maintain the lifestyle and freedoms we enjoy. Longer life will give a brave few the hope that they might survive to see the end of a long trip away from earth.

The Earth is too fragile a basket for humanity to keep all its eggs in...

He also somwhat touches on the idea that interesting things might be done when there are so many experienced people around. What would it be like to work with an engineer who had been solving problems for a century? How would all that experience benefit the work he produced?

Marriage and treatment of children as they age are also interesting areas to consider. Marriage often doesn't last forever today. What if people still felt young and sure that they would live 100 more years even at 140? Would they still be with the person they chose at 20?

I look forward to seeing it...but doubt I will.

Limitations of the brain

[nhavar]

I saw an article I think on joeuser about a trip to the future and how medicine worked. The visitor stated how even with all the medical advances that people still didn't live past the age of 125-130. The problem was that while organs could be transplanted and through proper diet and pharmacology be kept healthy enough to survive, the brain was the key failing point. They cured alzheimers and another disease cropped up in it's place, after that another, and another. No matter the treatment or the chemical stabilizers used to keep the brain from oxydizing or losing neurons there was always something that ended up failing.

I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't too far from the truth.

Exposes the need to index the retirement age...

[GPS Pilot]

Back when FDR first instituted Social Security, average life expectancy was approximately 58. The retirement age, of course, was 65 -- or 112% of average life expectancy. Think about it... the average worker didn't live long enough to collect a dime of SS retirement benefits. No wonder the SS payroll tax was low then, and SS appeared to be a sustainable system, not a pyramid scheme.

If a retirement age 112% of life expectancy was fair then, why wouldn't it be fair today? If that were true today, we'd have no fears of the system becoming insolvent when the baby boomers retire. And I think society would be a lot better off if there was an expectation that people would continue to be productive past the average life expectancy.

Yeah, the retirement age was recently raised to 68... big whoop. That's much too little too late to address the root cause of the problem. Hope to God the government doesn't get its mitts on my IRA ad 401k, or I'll really be screwed!

Re:From a MolecularBiology Major

[biotechnician]

evidently you didn't study enough. Certain parts of the body is more succeptable to free radical damage then other parts. Female ovaries have some of the lowest mutation rates anywhere. Also your mixing up cancer with sensence, its senesence that causes mutated cells to stop dividing. Apoptosis is often triggered as another method of killing cells to prevent them from being mutated. It would be quite feasable to keep stem cell lines of every person, careful monitoring of the cell lines should allow us to have absolute minimal amounts of mutations to occure in the stock lines. I'm just glad I didn't go to purdue, obviously their all wack at that university.

Two thoughts:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd get reeeealy good at 'Go'.

Also, how would the statutory rape laws work? I realize this is a disturbing question, but look at it this way. Is it legal for a 2482 year old man to sleep with a 18 year old girl?

"He said he was 24!"
"She said she was 180!"

I can see this happening all the time. Age would be less important in social situations, unless you said something like, "I remember when Kennedy was shot..." The youngsters (200 and below) would 'oooh' and 'ahh' at that.

hopefully smarter not harder....

[greymond]

i'd hope we would all become more intelligent - with an average lifespan of 200yrs - I would assume it would be the "norm" to have a doctorates degree (much like having a highschool degree is)

of course it would become VERY easy to overpopulate the world so I would hope that people would stop making so many god damn babies - or at least only make babies they could afford.

another plus tho is that we would eventually have more money/wealth since your retirement age would double - instead of 65 it would become around 130+

Emotional impact?

[delcielo]

I wonder about the emotional effects of this "truth". If you remove deaths from things biological, that means every death will be the result of some tragedy. All would know that their death will be violent, or at least sudden (relatively anyhow, rather than expecting it for the ten years leading up to it.)

Also, it's hard enough to lose a loved one after 30/40/50/60 years, what will be the emotional impact of losing your wife of 200 years, or of losing your brother at age 500.

Will we even want to live that long? I'm not sure I would. I'm already dreaming of retirement, and I'm only 34. I'd imagine that I'd get tired of the daily grind at some point and just shoot myself, wrecking my wife of 300 years.

If these changes happened slowly (and I mean at an evolutionary pace) we might be able to deal with it; but I'm not sure we'd find longevity to be all it's cracked up to be if it was just handed to us.

The MOST important question ever

[zapp]

If people lived 200+ years, and were in good shape, would we all not just have sex like bunnies? Women hit menopause at ~50... that leaves 150 years of pregnancy-free, disease free (by medicine) sex.

Woo!

Re:The Death of Science

[thasmudyan]

Immortality can be counted on bringing about the stagnation of most aspects of society. I mean now, things change as those who are invested in the way things are die off, but when they can't be counted on dying off, progress must happen rather more slowly.

I think thats just plain wrong. What you are talking about is applicable to evolutionary processes, which are beyond the scope of human history anyway.

No. Imagine everyone gets really much more time to study, to learn, to invent new things. Would that be the age of stagnation?

Today, you have a down time of ~20 years before a human being can contribute to society. That's because that time has to be spent to learn even the *basics* required for most of the things we would call contribution to society.

After that follows a period of 30-40 years in which "contribution" is constantly declining due to health degradation, after that time you typically just idly wait to die.

Doesn't sound very efficient anyway, even discounting the emotional bias I have because I don't want to end my existence just yet.

We're at a point in our development were our world is so sophisticated, it is mostly not driven forth by sheer random creativity (the only domain where the young dominate, because they don't have learned proper error correction yet) instead its hard work, study, knowledge and self-improvement that drives us to achieve.

Remember that saying, about that just when you finally figured out life, it's too late to actually live? That's because the development of our mind is now seperated from the purely evolutionary processes, instead of advancing numbers or genes we now strive to advance ourselves individually. And the saying is true because 30-40 active years are not enough to fulfill our desire to live.

I think with "immortality", even casting aside the assumption of improved progress that I described, you have a concept that dominates the dreams of most people in some or the other way. Religion, if you think about it, is the ultimate denial of mortality! Most of us just want to have more time to figure it all out!

There is no progress gained by dying. Dying is essential for genetic evolution, not for human progress. If you actually would die now, nothing would be gained - but unspeakably valuable things would be lost forever.

Re:An eternal rut?

[Theovon]

Well, if technology advances enough so that we can extend lifespan, perhaps it will also advance so that we can have greater control over reproduction.

My wife is on birth control pills. We are concerned about the long-term effects it may have on her health, as well as the fact that as she ages, there is a decline in fertility, along with an increase in the risk of birth defects.

If those risks were eliminated, and we could wait until she was 60 to have children, we would be able to put off. As it stands, if we're to have children at all, we should do it while she is in her early thirties, if not sooner.

If people were able to have children later, then their children would have children later, and so forth. The population growth problem would be reduced.

Furthermore, many pregnancies are "accidents". If children were made infertile (in a reversible manner), teen pregnancy would be eliminated. While that might result in a corresponding increase in the spread of STD's (which medicine might be able to deal with), there are all sorts of benefits that can be had.