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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?"
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.
NMG
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.
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
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?
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
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.
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.
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!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
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.