7 replies to this topic

[AgentNyder]

Most members of this forum, and of others outside this forum seeking immortality, are of differing ages. This is obvious but I just want to point out that each of us have been alive for different periods of time and thus we all differ in the number of years, months, days, seconds and micro-seconds that we have lived.

IF WE REACH EXTREME LIFE EXTENSION WE WILL APPROACH REACHING THE SAME AGE.

How though do you define someone who is the 'same age' as you? Someone born the exact micro-second as you are? To use common sense - you would say that someone is the same age as you if they at least are sort of centred around your birthdate with a standard deviation of about 12 months (so you and another person will both be X years old within a certain time period every year). Then again you could say someone is in the same age group as you are - thus being less discriminatory. Popular age groupings include the 18-24, 25-29, 30-44, 45-64 and 65+. However, intuitively you would definitely not say that someone aged 64 is the same age as you if you are aged 19 (for example). A 'common age' is ultimately subjective even in the context of having an average death rate of around 80 years - thereby having a clearly defined timeline in which to anaylse where you are in the bell curve of ageing.

AgentNyder - what is the bloody point?

Think of it this way:

We measure where we are on the scale of ageing by the average lifespan of an average human being. If we were to achieve immortality - then we will drastically alter our perceptions of ageing. Looking at it proportionately, for example, I am 22.19 years old - according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics my life expectancy is 77.27 years (although it wasn't at birth or will be in the future but just for illustrative purposes), therefore according to this data I have already lived about 29% of my life (as opposed to someone who is 38 and has lived roughly half of his life).

But let's say that life is radically extended to 1000 years. This means that I will only have lived approximately 2.2% of my life whilst the 38 year old would have lived 3.8% of their life. Therefore, from this perspective, our relative ages are much closer.

Taken to extremes, as long as the lifespan keeps extending, our relative ages will get closer and closer until you can finally say that all of us here alive today are in fact the same age as we live further and further into the future.

Possibly not significant I just found it interesting... [sfty]

[Lazarus Long]

I play this mathematical game with my kids to describe relativity in a concrete abstraction. When my daughter was four she was double her brothers age and felt a great gulf between their ages, but when she turned 6 and he 4 then she was only a two thirds older and by the time they were 12 and 10 respectively the difference had diminished to a sixth.

What it shows is that as you move along your specific mathematical sequence your relative position with respect to a different time-line is constantly changing by getting smaller, the rate of closure is dependent upon the initial deviation.

Besides how the numbers worked the children also realized that the wide gulf they felt in the beginning (Toddler vs Infant) was growing smaller and smaller with respect to maturity (preteen phases).

I use this analogy so that they can see the same thing you are discussing and yes I agree with your observation and suggest that it is already true. There is little difference between ages as you get older.

I have younger and older associates and the differences that I was felt so strongly when in my youth have disappeared. Now I look at minds and character not specific ages. A mature mind in a youthful body has as much appeal as a youthful mind in a mature body.

[chubtoad]

Good point, the %difference in peoples ages would shrink towards 0 over time.
You can think of it intuitively or with math.
If someone starts at some age x and another living person is c years younger, having an age of x-c.
%diff=absvalue(difference)/average * 100%
%diff=(x-(x-c))/((x+x-c)/2) * 100% = c/(x-(c/2)) * 100%
taking lim for the persons age x getting really big
lim(x>>infin) c/(x + (c/2)) * 100% = 0
Of course no one would ever be able to say they were infinite years old so ages would still differ by some small % that age would not be relevant anymore. However, if you start talking about your age difference from the average age as you get really old you may get a different answer if a lot of people are being born at an increasing rate. Most people think that birth rate will continue to stay low and probably decrease so this is probably not a factor.

[Jace Tropic]

Very impressive, chubtoad. Something else that's interesting; there are probably only a few people who will become immortals between now and, say, a couple million years from now compared to the total population of a couple billion years from now and beyond. My guesstimate is less than one percent of the people surviving beyond a few billion years from now will have been born between 2003 and 2002003 AC. If the elders stay in power, we'll be leasing and selling entire galaxies as real estate.

Jace

Edited by Jace Tropic, 21 October 2003 - 01:08 AM.

[AgentNyder]

Very impressive, chubtoad. Something else that's interesting; there are probably only a few people who will become immortals between now and, say, a couple million years from now compared to the total population of a couple billion years from now and beyond. My guesstimate is less than one percent of the people surviving beyond a few billion years from now will have been born between 2003 and 2002003 AC. If the elders stay in power, we'll be leasing and selling entire galaxies as real estate.

Jace

That could still bode well for us if that less than one percent happens to be a good proportion of the people who are currently living on this planet. The other 99% would be born between now and a couple billion years later.

Good point - Lazarus and chubtoad - about where we are in relation to each other with relative age difference. I guess I was thinking about where we sit individually in our expected life span.

If you use that system - then someone who is 10000 years old will be 10000% the age of a 1 year old. However, when the child turns 2, the 10001 year old (assuming they were both born at roughly the same date) would only be 5000.5% of the age of the 2 year old. Even though the time distance is exactly the same.

Of course - if immortality (or extreme life extension) is to be achieved, then our perceptions of time will most likely be drastically altered.

[JonesGuy]

I was thinking about this a couple weeks ago, but my idea sounds silly. My question is, what will we measure our ages with? Currently we use solar rotations because it's convenient, but you'll notice that new mothers age their newborns in weeks!

My proposition is to use galactic rotations. It's easy. It's local (we don't even have to leave the galaxy).

Sadly, we'll need to find some way of renewing the galaxy, because I don't think it's good for many rotations. I've found a source that indicates that one solar year lasts 225 million proper years.

[Omnido]

I would presume that we could measure our ages with the same chronology, but perhaps that might change as we began to exceed the maximums. Telling someone: "I just turned 125 today." sounds like a large number. But what if one said: "Im 1 and a quarter." or "Im 1.25" then relative ages would be smaller by comparrison to someone who was say, 6.75, or even 1.2k years old. The comparrisons would become less and less, as more and more people in larger groups had their ages distinguished by mere years, with proportion to their longevity, when such lifespans counted into the millenia and beyond.

[Mind]

Maybe we will stop saying what our age is and stop celebrating birthdays. These will probably have much less significance in an immortal world. Instead, maybe we will just state the date we were born.