Immortality.

[techs]

OK, lets say the genetic researchers have a heck of a year and find the gene that causes aging. They develope a quick and inexpensive fix that not only allows people to live 500 years but also ends heart disease.
What should we do? Give it to everyone who wants it? Would we really want to do that? Wouldn't we have to stop having kids(well, almost all of us) since in a short time our population would be unsustainable?
Would we only make it available for a very high price so only the rich could afford it? Should we only make it available to people who are valuable to society?
Think about it.
Would you even want to live for 500 years? The effects of this type of long life are enormous.

 

[Tab]

Aren't they working stuff like that right now?...

 

[DAPUNISHER]

There are only eleventybillion sci-fi books that speculate along similar lines

 

[judasmachine]

Haven't they pretty much found that it's the "hairs" that line the genes that degenerate and cause us to age? I was thinking that it's just finding a way to keep them in place that was slowing the whole anti-aging breakthroughs. I'm not a Biology student, but this is similiar to what the Bios tell me these days.

Morals, Ethics? The only dilemma I see is over population, and the eventual regulation of number of children a family may have. Meh we'll do amazing things with science and eventually most of it will become commonplace, and life will go on. (unless we blow ourselves up, thanks science)

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: judasmachine
Haven't they pretty much found that it's the "hairs" that line the genes that degenerate and cause us to age? I was thinking that it's just finding a way to keep them in place that was slowing the whole anti-aging breakthroughs. I'm not a Biology student, but this is similiar to what the Bios tell me these days.

Morals, Ethics? The only dilemma I see is over population, and the eventual regulation of number of children a family may have. Meh we'll do amazing things with science and eventually most of it will become commonplace, and life will go on. (unless we blow ourselves up, thanks science)

Will science really advance or stagnate? How many scientific breakthroughs are made by people say, 50, and over? I thought that after about 35 peoples thinking became fixed and unable to really make leaps.
As to regulate the number of children wouldn't that have to be very, very, very few? Since 30 generations may grow to child bearing years while you are still alive. Perhaps a hundred thousand a year could be born to just make up for accidental deaths to keep the population steady.

 

[Moonbeam]

For those of you who have all the answers to this think about what it means that the exponent of exponential growth in technology is growing exponentially.

 

[judasmachine]

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: judasmachine
Haven't they pretty much found that it's the "hairs" that line the genes that degenerate and cause us to age? I was thinking that it's just finding a way to keep them in place that was slowing the whole anti-aging breakthroughs. I'm not a Biology student, but this is similiar to what the Bios tell me these days.

Morals, Ethics? The only dilemma I see is over population, and the eventual regulation of number of children a family may have. Meh we'll do amazing things with science and eventually most of it will become commonplace, and life will go on. (unless we blow ourselves up, thanks science)

Will science really advance or stagnate? How many scientific breakthroughs are made by people say, 50, and over? I thought that after about 35 peoples thinking became fixed and unable to really make leaps.
As to regulate the number of children wouldn't that have to be very, very, very few? Since 30 generations may grow to child bearing years while you are still alive. Perhaps a hundred thousand a year could be born to just make up for accidental deaths to keep the population steady.

All I really meant is that this (not true immortality, but doubling of lifespan with a quality increase) will most likely come to pass someday, and it will be integrated into our culture, and we'll go on. But yes the limiting of births would be a must and it would most likely be very severe.

As for aged people not making 'leaps,' i think we'd adapt eventually, we've adapted to the doubling of our lifespan before.

edit: now that i think about it, we didn't really double our lifespan per say, we just stretched it to it's natural limit, so far.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: judasmachine

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: judasmachine
Haven't they pretty much found that it's the "hairs" that line the genes that degenerate and cause us to age? I was thinking that it's just finding a way to keep them in place that was slowing the whole anti-aging breakthroughs. I'm not a Biology student, but this is similiar to what the Bios tell me these days.

Morals, Ethics? The only dilemma I see is over population, and the eventual regulation of number of children a family may have. Meh we'll do amazing things with science and eventually most of it will become commonplace, and life will go on. (unless we blow ourselves up, thanks science)

Will science really advance or stagnate? How many scientific breakthroughs are made by people say, 50, and over? I thought that after about 35 peoples thinking became fixed and unable to really make leaps.
As to regulate the number of children wouldn't that have to be very, very, very few? Since 30 generations may grow to child bearing years while you are still alive. Perhaps a hundred thousand a year could be born to just make up for accidental deaths to keep the population steady.

All I really meant is that this (not true immortality, but doubling of lifespan with a quality increase) will most likely come to pass someday, and it will be integrated into our culture, and we'll go on. But yes the limiting of births would be a must and it would most likely be very severe.

As for aged people not making 'leaps,' i think we'd adapt eventually, we've adapted to the doubling of our lifespan before.

edit: now that i think about it, we didn't really double our lifespan per say, we just stretched it to it's natural limit, so far.

In the first place those discoveries in science that require life experience, the social sciences, are not ones made by the young, for obvious reasons. Also, all the limitations you constrain yourself with are meaningless in the face of the exponential nature of technological advances.

Hint: The final stages of an exponential graph is straight up. The possibility that the speed of light is in fact a limit, will only mean that it will set the pace at which the universe becomes computational. There are, of course, those that say the universe is already software.

 

[Proletariat]

They should just make me immortal.

I'll bring balance to the force and peace and justice to the world.

 

[alchemize]

Sure I'd love to live 500 years. Can you imagine what we'll know and can do 500 years from now? Assuming the world isn't blown up or we aren't forcibly praying to allah 5 times a day.

I think "they" would need to put in population control, at least initially. You'd still have loss of life for non-health reasons. Eventually things would even out - i.e. culture would generally accept you not getting married until you were 200, any maybe your first kids at 350

 

[Dissipate]

Technology guru Ray Kurzweil wrote a book about immortality called: Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever

He believes that if you can live another 50 years you can live to see the day when they will have nanotechnology advanced enough to eliminate or even reverse the aging process i.e. allowing people to live forever.

 

[TheSlamma]

Naa this place is already boring.

 

[XZeroII]

We'd just need lots more wars to thin out the population. Sure, we could live to be 500 years old...if only we weren't killed at age 36 in a war.

 

[BlancoNino]

I always figured that by the time we could figure out how to live that long, we'd also have other planets to live on.

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: alchemize
Sure I'd love to live 500 years. Can you imagine what we'll know and can do 500 years from now? Assuming the world isn't blown up or we aren't forcibly praying to allah 5 times a day.

I think "they" would need to put in population control, at least initially. You'd still have loss of life for non-health reasons. Eventually things would even out - i.e. culture would generally accept you not getting married until you were 200, any maybe your first kids at 350

Gettimg married at 200 and living to 500?
AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

 

[her209]

Only if they raise the voting age.

 

[LumbergTech]

theres no way that it would be given for cheap.....it would be a thing for the rich..

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: alchemize
Sure I'd love to live 500 years. Can you imagine what we'll know and can do 500 years from now? Assuming the world isn't blown up or we aren't forcibly praying to allah 5 times a day.

I think "they" would need to put in population control, at least initially. You'd still have loss of life for non-health reasons. Eventually things would even out - i.e. culture would generally accept you not getting married until you were 200, any maybe your first kids at 350

Gettimg married at 200 and living to 500?
AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

Yah - 180 years of "playing the field"

Hmm maybe you are right - get married at 400

 

[Legend]

Anyone that gets immortality loses their right to have children. They may apply to be considered to be awarded the right to have a child. The award would only be to the most outstanding of people so that only the best is passed on to the next generation.

 

[HombrePequeno]

I think we'd be plum retarded after 500 years. Unless we could grow more brain cells it would be kind of pointless.

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: HombrePequeno
I think we'd be plum retarded after 500 years. Unless we could grow more brain cells it would be kind of pointless.

A good point. I believe that there is such a thing as capacity in the human brain and the brain probably isn't capable of storing 500 years worth of data without a whole lot of forgetting.

 

[cruiser1338]

I think that maybe it is capable. We only use what, 10% of our brains? Maybe we only use 10% of our memory too, or maybe we have a ton of memory, that just doesnt get measured because we use so little.

I think that we should give it to everyone if we invent it, but include something that makes everyone sterile, and only administer it to people between 20 and 40 to make sure people are in the prime condition of their lives to live forever with, with exceptions to people who are of great mind (like Stephen Hawking). Maybe we should also have to wait until we can make babies in factories almost, because people will still die of murder or whatever, so we need something to replenish our population.

If it happens, I don't know what the ramifications of this would be, but I think it would be amazing to be part of the generation that lives forever.

 

[Moonbeam]

You mean none of us could ever afford to have our own like personal ENIAC computer, say on our wrist for 10 bucks.

"Where a computer like the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1 1/2 tons."
Popular Mechanics, March 1949

 

[AragornTK]

your body may be capable of living forever, but just imagine the amount of damage our bodies sustain in a normal lifetime... not to mention, that still only fixes death due to aging... we still have preventable death, accidents, maybe even the genes mutating and causing us to age really fast

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: AragornTK
your body may be capable of living forever, but just imagine the amount of damage our bodies sustain in a normal lifetime... not to mention, that still only fixes death due to aging... we still have preventable death, accidents, maybe even the genes mutating and causing us to age really fast

You read that in Popular Mechanics 1949?