The article on CNN has caused quite a stir on SlashDot.com with 616 responses to the post..
There's actually quite a number of somewhat positive entries.. the interesting ones anyways..
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Posted by michael on Tuesday August 12, @02:29PM
from the read-holy-fire-by-sterling dept.
"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?"
and who is going to pay for 240 years of retirement?
No one... that's why they're not going to retire for 240 years, but work for at least 200.
Imagine the type of skilled labor you could obtain over 200 years... More and more people will become highly (and i mean highly) trained specialists in whatever they do. This would allow for ever-increasing advanced in science, medecine, and technology which would appear to "boom" in the first century of this kind of "immortality".
I, for one, would love to see this kind of thing happen
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.
Even if you can solve the problem of physical decay, how long do the neurons in the brain last? New neurons cannot be created, only new connections can be made...
That's actually been shown to be false, although it used to be believed. Neurons are born throughout life, particularly in certain parts of the brain- there are stem cells in the human brain.
Indeed, indications are that depression is caused by insufficient neurons being produced; antidepressants seems to increase survival of the new nerve cells, as well as raising serotonin levels.
What are you going to do with all those years? Can you seriously imagine what it would be like to work for 200 years, as opposed to 65? That's more tha 3 times the current retirement age!
Well, if you can save up enough money you can live off the interest indefinitely. About a million bucks is in the ballpark.
and this one is particularly funny..
Ah yes...as if it's not already hard enough for me to find a new job...
Programmer Wanted. Must have 100+ years experience in object-oriented programming, 50+ years as Senior Developer.
I wonder if they'll start coming up with new levels of experience? Senior Programmer...Guru Programmer...UBER Programmer...God-like Programmer. As if programmers egos weren't big enough...
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!
Here's the link
http://slashdot.org/...3/08/12/1734227
Edited by kevin, 13 August 2003 - 07:17 AM.
