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Ask Slashdot: What Happens If We Perfect Age Reversing?

Posted by samzenpus on from the mad-max-time dept.

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?

14 of 692 comments (clear)

  1. Exodus by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Exodus by bunratty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Even at the speed of light we can expand our territory at most proportional to the cube of the amount of time we have to spread. If the birth rate exceeds the death rate, the population growth will be exponential. No matter what technology we have, we won't be able to accommodate a geometrically growing population within a volume that grows no faster than a cubic formula. Here come the death panels. Thanks, Obama!

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    2. Re:Exodus by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Informative

      As we leave the solar system radiation should decrease the further out we go.

      Just no.

      You are confusing Solar radiation with cosmic radiation... and they are largely very different things.

      The "solar wind" is largely photons and other, relatively low-energy charged particles from the sun. (Note the word "relatively".) Which is GOOD for us here on Earth. Because cosmic radiation has a much larger component of HIGH energy particles. The solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic fields in such a way as to shield it from the cosmic high-energy particles.

      But it's the cosmic high-energy particles that penetrate far enough into the atmosphere to ionize particles of matter, which form nuclei around which clouds form. So... high sunspot activity generally means fewer clouds, which in turn means it gets hotter. When "solar storm" activity is low, more cosmic rays leak in, forming more clouds, cooling the weather.

      Unfortunately, it is these high-energy particles which require the most shielding. And in general, cells are more prone to damage than radiation-hardened silicon chips.

    3. Re:Exodus by khayman80 · · Score: 5, Informative

      ... high sunspot activity generally means fewer clouds, which in turn means it gets hotter. When "solar storm" activity is low, more cosmic rays leak in, forming more clouds, cooling the weather.

      When more cosmic rays leaked in, the climate didn't change. Richard Alley mentioned (at 42:00 in his 2009 AGU talk) that beryllium proxy data reveal a spike in cosmic ray intensity during the "Laschamp anomaly" ~40,000 years ago, but the corresponding oxygen isotope proxy for temperature didn't change unusually during that time period.

  2. Sure we can by alzoron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Sure we can by flaming+error · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What society considers morally reprehensible would probably change to fit the new reality.

    2. Re:Sure we can by Mr.+Shotgun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      kill people to preserve resources and space.

      In the ancient times they called that war.

      --
      Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
  3. Yes, you can by harryjohnston · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)

  4. let the robots choose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  5. Money class, breeder class by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  6. The rich and powerful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  7. Re:Not enough room? Not enough food? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. Or we could stop being afraid of death. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Who dies from old age? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They are "age related diseases" because age seems to be one of the main factors. If the body (and mind) stays young and healthy, a lot of those things are going to have a drastic decline. For cancer, treatment and survival rates are improving all the time.

    From a health care perspective, most of the cost comes from the elderly. If there aren't any more elderly, and they are instead working and contributing to society, universal health care actually becomes cheaper, medical technology improves faster (making those diseases even less of an issue), and so on.

    And people don't usually die of "old age" but of things related to it. When the body gets older, the immune system gets weaker, your bones and muscles decay, your brain gets messed up, and a lot of deaths are in reality just a mix of a bunch of factors that just result in the body kind of shutting down. None of that will happen anymore.