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Ask Slashdot: What Happens If We Perfect Age Reversing?
ourlovecanlastforeve writes: With biologists getting closer and closer to reversing the aging process in human cells, the reality of greatly extended life draws closer. This brings up a very important conundrum: You can't tell people not to reproduce and you can't kill people to preserve resources and space. Even at our current growth rate there's not enough for everyone. Not enough food, not enough space, not enough medical care. If — no, when — age reversal becomes a reality, who gets to live? And if everyone gets to live, how will we provide for them?
Exodus from Earth. We need space ships to spread out in the galaxy!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You can't tell people not to reproduce and you can't kill people to preserve resources and space.
Sure we can. It might be morally reprehensible to do but it hasn't stopped people in power in the past as well as the present.
If it becomes necessary to tell people not to reproduce, the laws can be changed.
(More likely, though, it would be presented as a choice between being allowed to live indefinitely and being allowed to reproduce.)
The question is not what the people will do with all the extra people, but rather what the robots will do with all the people.
It seems like before we worry about the implications of reversing aging we should see how age reversal even effects mortality. Cancers, dementia, and many other age related diseases might not even significantly change from their current rates.
Citation, Please.
We grow plenty of food. The problem isn't the quantity of food. It's distribution. We have plenty of space, as well. We just need to change our (American) notion of what "space" is.
But I would whole-heartedly support a "stop making fucking babies" measure.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
If everybody gets to live a very long time, then we run out of resources
If we figure out how to curb over-population and only the really old live, then we run out of viable sperm and eggs in a few generations
We will need to have people living 'normal' lifespans, unless we figure out how to dodge the who reproduction via sperm and eggs thing
The economics of the situation would probably lead to a self-selected wealthy group occupying the long-life slots and the rest of us toiling away as normal with our lifespans slightly adjusted from what we expect today in order to fill the breeders slot
It would probably make things easier all around if the breeders did not suspect that they could enjoy a long and healthy life
One thing that could potentially change this entire equation would be extending the range in which humans can live, whether it be orbital habitats, terraformed planets or cozy lintel asteroids. A that point ti would be really handy to have extremely long-lived humans taking the not quite as fast as light trips to our nearest stellar neighbors
But then, I tend to be an optimist
Wherever You Go, There You Are
I sincerely believe that is one bridge that is best to cross when you actually get to it... worrying about something like this is liable to only keep you from enjoying the life that you have, here and now.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It is the Star Trek universe. What you're missing is that this is not Earth. It is Ferenginar.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
All those who sign-up to live and work in orbiting colonies get age-reversal therapy for free. The primary economy will to be build more and better colony ships to handle the influx of long lived people. Within a generation or two the entire Earth will be most emptied and the federation of human colonies will declare Earth a "National Park" available to visit on vacation - just pick your continent.
Let's say an age cure is released tomorrow. It will be priced specifically for a certain percentage to afford. It probably won't even be publicly available, and instead be invite-only like certain cars already are. I honestly can't imagine the wealthy and elite opting to release that kind of cure to the general public, although it's a safe bet to assume politicians will grant themselves (and family) access.
I could easily see such a scenario causing mass riots and civil wars, however. And on the off chance that it did become something that just gets dumped in the public water system for the benefit of mankind, we'd just have more wars. Longer life spans would mean "reevaluating" things like term limits for politicians, prison sentence lengths, retirement, and pensions. I don't think food would even be on the radar for possible issues. I'd be way more worried about every day things that our societies are based on suddenly being rendered obsolete.
Even social changes would be pure chaos. Imagine your 90 year old grandmother suddenly regressing in age a bit, with a restored mental and physical agility. She may not be ready for SEAL training, but you can bet she wouldn't be happy sitting in the nursing home all day. How does she train for a job? Can she afford to stay "retired" for another 30 years when her savings were built with 10 in mind? And how would the rest of the family react to grandma Joanne becoming an equal again, rather than an elder?
You can't tell people not to reproduce and you can't kill people to preserve resources and space.
Well, with that kind of negative-nancy thinking, of course nothing's going to get done.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
But I would whole-heartedly support a "stop making fucking babies" measure.
I actually wonder if society will ever get around to regulating reproduction.
We regulate whether you're allowed to drive a car, but we don't regulate whether you're allowed to have a kid. I submit that you can do a LOT more damage with the latter than the former.
I think we really need a better social contract. We need to take better care of those who are alive, and do more to ensure that those who are born are more likely to be able to take care of themselves. If it takes a lot of work to be allowed to have a kid, you'll probably see parents invest a lot more in their kids. When somebody is born with autism or whatever, society can step in and lend a LOT more support. However, you won't just have masses of kids forced to take care of themselves because their parents were irresponsible.
There is no reason that cradle-to-grave can't be financially viable, as long as you exercise control over the cradle part.
Cry however you want over reproductive rights. I don't see how preventing somebody from trivially deciding to have kids is a greater injustice than much of what goes on as a result of humoring that urge.
As far as who gets to reproduce goes, I don't think it has to be that difficult. At the very least, mandate education and some general weed-out steps so that those who aren't reasonably committed don't bother. Then you can screen for stuff like serious genetic disorders (by all means allow surrogacy and adoption instead). At that point you have to earn some kind of right to reproduce (that might be trivial or difficult depending on demand for reproduction vs slots available). The wealthy might be able to pay into a trust fund to simply buy the right (it costs society money to clean up after your messes, so you can prepay if you want). Otherwise, it might be a bit like applying for a scholarship - what have you done to give back to society, etc. Then for the sake of diversity you could have a lottery for x% of the slots where everybody has an equal chance of being able to reproduce regardless of merit.
What makes you think this magical treatment (which doesn't exist, and may never exist) will be available to everyone? Life extension/immortality would easily become the most valuable thing on earth. It would sell for a fortune, be used for political and financial gain, and generally be restricted to the super rich.
There won't be a population problem because the majority would be allowed to die.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The assumption that people will reproduce if given the opportunity to live indefinitely is flawed.
For many people, the urge to reproduce is strongly motivated by the idea that we want something of ourselves to leave behind when we are gone: we want someone to care for us in our old age; someone to carry on our memory. For people in developing countries, having children is a way of having extra labor. If, however, we do not regard death as inevitable, then the motivation for reproduction is also reduced. The need for extra labor is also reduced, in that there will be more healthy adults of working age in the population.
That is not to say that nobody would choose to have children. There may be a period of adjustment where people would still have lots of kids out of habit and out of a desire to hedge one's bets, so to speak, but once people start hitting ages around 150 without signs of slowing down, most will quite likely start to realize they would be better off not reproducing.
But there's always the idea that the only way you can live forever is if you agree to not have children...I'd say there is no shortage of people who would take up that offer.
The whole premise is bull.
There is more than enough food to feed everyone. The problem is mostly just politics such as feeding a SUV enough corn to feed a family of 10 for a day to simply drive to the mall and back or letting relief supplies get resold on the black market.
space? Are you kidding me? Huge sections of the earth are completely barren, with existing technology the USA could easily accommodate a thousand or even a million times its population and not run out. Maybe some tiny countries have issues but not the world in general. We aren't even building floating cities yet.
medicine mostly has the same issue as food and the complex relationship between patents and rights and patients who need the medicine. Some is genuinely expensive and difficult to produce. But even today street bums get better medical care than kings just 300 years ago. It will only improve.
All the earth needs to support far far more humans is cheap clean energy and automation. Nuclear fusion, cheap solar and similar technologies will likely be a reality before humans living forever. Same with completely autonomous and self contained manufacturing. Combine the two and you could create hydroponic fields thousands of layers deep tended by robots and powered by light from a fusion reactor. You could build complex mega cities capable of housing a billion people.
Please our women wear far too much clothing.
For thousands of years humanity has had a pretty comfortable relationship with death (even two hundred years ago there were 'wakes' held in the family home for several days in many developed nations). Historically, attempting immortality has tended to go hand in hand with delusion, disconnection from reality, and/or mental illness. It is only recently (in historic terms) that death has become stigmatised rather than accepted as inevitable, and even welcomed as a natural and positive progression.
Even presuming that age reversal techniques will one day do more than allow us to be decrepit old people for longer, I will choose to die in my natural course and leave the earth to my descendants. Death doesn't have to be scary, it can be a positive choice to improve the world by my eventual absence. I will live on through the ripples of all my actions in nurturing the new generations. Attempts at immortality are still for the delusional, disconnected, and mentally ill.
Item number one on on my bucket list
When I'm 59 I'll hunt you down and kill you. Fair enough?
In other words, lots of people don't have enough food.
No, in other words, lots of people have more government corruption than they need.
Lots of food aid gets delivered to famine nations in Africa, and it either rots on the docks (what the corrupt government doesn't use itself or give to its soldiers), or the surplus that would otherwise go to people who are not corrupt government or soldiers gets sold off to other nations in order to raise money to buy weapons for the soldiers.
In other words, exactly as the GP said: a distribution problem, but one unrelated to the mechanics of distribution, rather the politics of distribution.
..or, here's an alternate theory: The research will look very promising, then either some fatal flaw that kills people will be discovered, (ostensibly) halting all further research, or it'll just disappear from the news completely and never be heard about again, and anyone inquiring into it will run into a brick wall, beyond which they can discover nothing. It will be assumed that nothing more was done about it. Meanwhile the research goes on in secret, where only the rich and powerful have access to it. The 1% will live indefinitely, while the 99% live a measly 70-90 years on average. Anyone stumbling on the secret and attempting to develop it themselves 'for the benefit of all mankind' will be quietly hushed up, bought out, or suffer a tragic accident.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
SO yes this is true. The biggest waste of resources is animal production for food. A single cow uses approx 2000 gallons of water for every pound of meat produced. The same pound of beans takes approx 100 gallons.
Who cares?
Build more nuclear plants, and use the power to operate the desalination plants you also build.
BONUS! By removing sea water from the oceans for the purpose of desalination, you mitigate the ocean level rise due to global warming!
DOUBLE BONUS! By building nuclear plants, you mitigate the production of greenhouse gasses, reducing global warming!
TRIPLE BONUS! By having an excess of water, you can grow more cattle and crops and increase the planets carrying capacity!
QUADRUPLE BONUS! Excess fresh water allows you to address ongoing desertification!
Ching ching ching ching ching ... -- human net prosperity slot machine paying out
Or possibly, this already happened a long time ago, and that 1% is currently living in this manner, subject to some physical limitations, with the details of the longevity treatment coaxed into mythology to preserve the secret of its existence.
Two different longevity treatments were discovered independently and used by two different groups. The two groups are unaware of each other, and when presented with evidence, go so far as to vehemently deny the possibility of the other group's existence.
They were affected in physiologically similar ways; one notable exception was that one group cannot stand the sunlight, and members of the other sparkle when exposed to it.
Too much of any good thing soon stops being a good thing.
I really enjoyed the fantasy novels of Anne Rice (e.g. "Interview with the Vampire") as she explored the topic of immortality in her characters to a philosophical degree. Vampires going out of their minds with the "burden" of immortality and looking for a way to die.
I believe what makes life special and precious is that it's finite.
You don't know how much you have in the bank and the happiest people you'll encounter are those who savour every moment they have like it was their last.
Turn that on it's head and life becomes valueless if you following my reasoning.
Complex systems, such as human bodies, often have a "bathtub curve" of failure probabilities. Numerous potential flaws are most likely at the start of the system's existence, which is why infant mortality and miscarriage remain noticeable even with the most advanced medical support. And as bodies age, more and more smaller flaws accumulate to cause more and more profound system problems. These range from vascular problems, likely to cause strokes and aneurysms, to the wear and tear on joints causing motion problems, to accumulated heavy metal poisoning and debris in the lungs, to the ongoing risk of cancers.
Until complete prevention or cures exist for all of those issues, it seems nonsensical to discuss the population issues of eternal life. Population _growth_ from people living even a decade longer is a much more real and noticeable issue in our economy and resources. So is the cost of medical care for those older people. We're already seeing problems with Medicare funding and elderly care being real economic and political problems in the USA. This is partly because, as we reach the far end of that "bathtub" curve for human beings, addressing one factor that might have killed people far earlier, such as very successful heart surgery and antibiotics for infections that used to kill older people easily, end when more complex and difficult problems finally occur.
I am, myself, old enough to feel these effects. They do accumulate.
"2000 gallons of water for 1 pound" is an exaggeration of a worst-case scenario; even feedlots don't use this much water, and most cattle spend most of their lives on pasture.
I raise some dairy animals on grass, so I can help with a rough calculation based on real life.
I get a calf.
Calf walks around eating grass.
Every day I put out 10 gallons of fresh water, of which the steer drinks 5-7
20 months later, I get about a quarter ton of meat, a square yard or two of leather, and a lot of good fertilizer and dog treats.
So about 6000 gallons of water for 500 pounds of meat, roughly 12 gallons a pound.
Then there's the matter of the unused 3-5 gallons of water that I dump out when I clean the bucket each day, and the cow's urine...none of that water is 'gone,' it's feeding the pasture plants that feed the steer. And even the crappiest McDonald's beef probably spent most of its life on pasture; the feedlots are only for jacking up weight (with water mostly) at the end.
1. You're talking billions of gallons of sea water, far more than we could put a dent in, even with thousands of desalination plants. Furthermore the water would just find its way back to the ocean anyway, because the Earth is a closed ecosystem. ...or was this post meant to be funny?
2. It may reduce *future* global warming, but there is still the problem of all the carbon currently in the atmosphere, as well as seawater acidification.
3. The cost to desalinate 2000 gallons of water is far more than the average person would be willing to pay for a bound of beef.
4. There will be no excess fresh water. Because of the costs, every gallon produced will already be owned by someone. Even if all that desalinated water was used to combat desertification, it's still not even in the ballpark of what would be required.
Doctor to patient, after having given the injection: "I have good news and bad news for you:"
Patient: "The good news first please!"
Doctor: "After this injection, you're going to live for another 800 years."
Patient: 'Great! And the bad one!"
Doctor: "You'll have to stay at your shitty job for another 780 years"
Trying to force more people to live in the absence of resources? You're basically still killing people, you're simply distancing yourselves from the act and washing your hands of the responsibility. Maybe the person who dies will not be the one who can afford longevity treatments; more likely it will be some poor bastard with a different skin color and hat in some distant foreign land. This doesn't seem to worry the people who believe that bearded men live in the sky.
On the whole, it would probably be more humane to just have everyone in the world play Russian Roulette once a year and thin the herd by 1/6th annually. Oh, wait, that would offend the people who believe that bearded men live in the sky.
Better yet, don't kill anyone, and incentivize population control. Oh, wait, that would offend the people who believe that bearded men live in the sky.
Maybe the best strategy is not to play the game (i.e. let people die naturally)? Even now we can prolong life medically for people that are effectively invalids and/or in chronic pain, but to what advantage? Many of them would be happy to be allowed to pass away. When medical care rises to the level that these people actually want to continue living, then maybe we can talk about longevity.
Death is not a bad option, really.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Yea, just keep breeding here on Earth and shoot the occasional capsule full of people off into space.
Do you have any clue what it would take to keep up with a population increasing by billions of people? Do you want me to Godwin this thread?
Judging by Dick Cheney's attitudes and continued existence, they already do.