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Do You Want to Live Forever?
Jamie McCarthy writes "In 1918, Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Daly inspired his weary men to attack by yelling, 'come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?' But how would the world change if we could? This month's Technology Review introduces us to the computer scientist, and self-taught biologist, Aubrey de Grey, who thinks immortality could be within our grasp by 2030. Thinking like an engineer, he's broken aging down into seven specific problems, like cell atrophy and mitochondrial mutation, which he believes can all, in principle, be solved. And he has good reason to think those seven are the only 'bugs' standing in the way of a thousand-year lifespan. De Grey is clearly both a genius and a little nuts, but I'm not sure in what proportion..."
As he reviewed the possible reasons why so little progress had been made in spite of the remarkable molecular and cellular discoveries of recent decades, he came to the conclusion that the problem might be far less difficult to solve than some thought; it seemed to him related to a factor too often brushed under the table when the motivations of scientists are discussed, namely the small likelihood of achieving promising results within the period required for academic advancement--careerism, in a word. As he puts it, "High-risk fields are not the most conducive to getting promoted quickly."
The world needs more thinkers like him, even if he's a little nuts. Anyone willing to start his own international symposium after teaching himself micro biology is. Too many professional scholars are pinned into doing research that has immediate market viability and too many researchers are more interested in their own career advancement than the science they're supposed to be advancing. So they play it safe.
Daly dreams of being on the cover of Time magazine I'm sure, ego is almost certainly a factor for him as well, and no doubt a huge payday would follow and major advancement on any of his 7 problems. But it's the all-or-nothing mentality, the fact that he's willing to go for it even if it never pans out, that separates him.
I Want To Believe
3D High Def THX Surround Sound home entertainment (some brain surgery required)
The 100th season of the Simpsons
200 more years of Dick Clark in Times Square
Windows Cthulhu (C'mon, you know it was coming some day...)
Baseball players finally agree to seriously address the steroid issue after a homerun ball is driven through the skull of a guy two miles away from the stadium.
No matter how well you cared for your teeth, you'll eventually lose them.
Watching every public retirement system go into the stock market and then watch it really tank! (Alpo! Yum!)
Liver Spot removal pill spam
Survivor Krakatoa
Final Fantasy LXXVI: The ploy that isn't beaten to death, yet.
After about 20 presidents claiming to reduce spending you realize they're full of shit as the world runs out of money to finance the US debt. And those guys who said, "The debt doesn't matter", they died, so it didn't matter to them.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Oh great, in addition to the bigger penis spams, we'll start getting "Live Forever" messages.
AND...we'll be getting them much longer. Jeez!
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
Look, kid, the world doesn't owe you a living. Nobody said eternal life was fair.
Breakfast served all day!
By the time you are in your 70's so much stuff pisses you off that you can barely deal with it. Things change so much from what it was even when you were growning up.
er em ... better post this AC
Who wants to live forever, when love must die?
Arch Obler addressed some of the realities of such a life span in one of the episodes of the old radio show "Lights Out".
There was a revolution. The younger generation was tired of being held down by the generation that was in power when immortality became possible. Bereft of political power for hundreds of years, there was a violent and bloody revolt, resulting in the massacre of the older generation.
Can you imagine the state of civil rights if the people running the country in the 1950s were still alive and well?
To an extent, society just doesn't change unless the older generation dies off.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Is it because 2038 going to be just like 1970 all over again?
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Okay, why shouldn't we?
The same overtone of moral disapproval you express has greeted every major medical advance. And it may take a while for people to hash out, but the overwhelming response in the end is always, "Hell yes, we should!"
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
You phrased that slightly wrong.
When you ask that question, to make it honest, you should ask "Should YOU live forever?" After all, people who are against such things aren't against it for themselves, they're against it for OTHER PEOPLE.
After all, a person can choose not to get the treatment to live indefinitely, or even commit suicide if they've had enough. They don't need restrictions to keep themselves from the long lifespans. They want them to keep other people from getting them.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
The problem isn't that life expectancy could be raised to 1000 years or more.
The problem is that it would only be available to relatively few people. People who could afford multimillion dollar fees (which might exist solely to keep out the riffraff) or people with key political connections.
Working slaves can forget about it. Banks can always repossess a multimillion dollar house, but what do you do here when somebody declares bankruptcy after treatment?
The bottom line is that assets and power will quickly become (even more) concentrated in the top 1% or so of the population. Imagine what the average working person could do with a second lifetime where they own their own home from the beginning -- but they would start with much more real world experience and street smarts. Now imagine the same thing with people will millions of dollars in assets and dozens of lifetimes of experience.
The result would not be unlike the Go'uld in Stargate. The "immortals" might even put on the cloak of divinity. A few hundred years ago monarchs claimed they ruled by divine right, but they died just like us. How hard would it be for people with a centuries-long lifetime to manipulate society so the emphemerals believe that the immortals are graced by god. How long would it take for the emphemerals to forget that these medical treatments even forget or that everyone naturally dies within a century or so.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
"If you were "immortal" you could just keep working and wouldn't need SS."
Oh.
Yay.
I believe the proper question at this point isn't "can we" it's "Should we"
What's with this "we" shit? Speak for yourself.