40 replies to this topic

[Absent]

I don't think this question crosses many peoples minds, because most people don't imagine it to be realistic that they could be the ones to discover such a thing..... Though I have entertained this idea, and I can most assuredly say that if I found the key to living forever, I would not share it. I see implications, and I will elaborate.

Physical Immortality would essentially allow for an endless expansion of knowledge. The biggest obstacle in scientific development is death itself. People having to relearn all the ideas of the past minds and trying to build on them. While these people can relearn the knowledge of past discoveries, they cannot copy the already developed thinking abilities of those masters. The growth of our problem solving abilities are limited with age. If our body and minds could stay physically young forever, there is potential for unlimited growth of such problem solving abilities. This can only lead to inevitably and extremely high levels of intelligence. The truth is most people don't dedicate their entire lives to becoming smarter and more knowledgeable, because they know their lives are limited.

The amount of power such an immortal person could amass is scary. The only person I would trust with such potential growth of knowledge, power, and intellect, is someone of the highest caliber of responsibility, a Buddha perhaps, or hypothetically speaking, a Jesus.

Yes it is a nice idea for everyone to live forever and no one to die, but the implications are very big.

Surely I am not the only person who fears the potential for moral corruption of a person who has unlimited time to develop their intelligence, to develop as a person, etc.

Though this is just my view. I do not trust any man to have a perfect morality with an immortal life. If I had the secret to immortality, I would not risk sharing it if I knew one of those people who got their hands on it might later end up destroying me, or even worse, the world. I think such a secret should be kept to those who discover it on their own, and should never be shared. I think 99.999% of people aren't ready for such a responsibility.

Edited by Siro, 03 February 2013 - 02:04 AM.

[Lister]

I would share it but I would likely be ignored until I went on a talk show at age 100 looking like I was 20 and proved publically that I had the cure for aging. It’s not just that people would have trouble believing me; they actually wouldn’t want to believe me.

The one question I’ve asked strangers the most is “If a cure for aging was available, cheap and easy, would you take it?” I’ve been absolutely shocked to find out that most people I’ve asked have said “No.”

The general public cannot cope with the idea of living forever. It’s not within their sphere of understanding. Even the question itself offends people as it’s too far beyond their comfort zone. They spend their days thinking about work, about family, and about retirement. Their thought patterns and their views are sealed within a comfortable bubble which they’d rather you not pop.

Remember too that the world is developing at an insane rate. By the time you with your cure for aging had experienced enough life to hold any real power the world would be something completely different to what it is today. Also by then a cure would have likely already been available for a long time regardless of whether you had shared it or not.

It’s not about whether you’d release it; it’s whether you can be the first to patent it. Holding the cure for aging is the same as holding billions of dollars.

There won’t just be one cure either; there will likely be dozens of ways to avoid aging, most of which will come about in the next 100 to 200 years.

Like sharing your smartphone with someone from the 90’s; worrying about the power they would wield would be made pointless 20 years later.

Edit: But if you found the cure shortly before society collapsed, would you share it with the survivors knowing that it may be a very long time before it's discovered again? Or if you found out that aging cannot be cured and by some freak accident you found a way which you knew would never be discovered again; would you share it?

I wonder...

Edited by Lister, 03 February 2013 - 02:42 AM.

[Absent]

That is an interesting scenario I hadn't thought of. Kind of reminds of the movie In Time, where the wealthiest people could buy time to stay alive. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/

It still leads to the possibility of various people, with the right work ethic, amassing extreme power and either using it for great evil, or simply great good. I honestly feel if such technology was available to that public, that inevitably we would end up destroying ourselves if we did not have our morality game in check.

It only makes sense that technology can advanced so much. If the morality of the race does not advance with it then they too many people will have too much power and it could easily lead to the inevitable destruction of our planet by ourselves. There seems to be this idea held that as a planet, in theory, we are not finished developing and our self-destruction is still a possibility.

Here's an interesting video discussing the various 'Classes' of civilizations and planetary development in regards to its intelligent life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhkwT466ykc

Edited by Siro, 03 February 2013 - 03:01 AM.

[Lister]

Interesting video…

Making it through to a Type 1 civilization doesn’t necessarily eliminate the risks of journey. We could harness all the power of our planet and have full control of it yet still blow ourselves up…

Towards the thought of aging though I want to give you my idea of life in a few hundred years…

There are a couple assumptions to make here first:

• Our society will continue to progress at its current or a faster rate
• The vast majority of the climate damage we predict to happen will be manageable though perhaps not comfortable
• We don’t run into any impassible obstacles (things that could be 1000x more firm than the speed of light for example, although that assumes the speed of light is flexible)
• Society remains more or less in a similar state. There are disasters but nothing catastrophic.

So there’s quite a few big assumptions there though I feel like they’re very possible and every day they seem more and more likely to me.

In this situation I have no doubt that life extension will become the norm. If you think about it, life extension already is the norm. Every year we see the average life expectancy increase ever so slightly and that trend is likely to continue (as cures for cancer and the like arise).

In this world it’s not so much a single cure for aging; it’s many, many solutions to the problems of aging such as diabetes and congestive heart failure. Over time we may find big chunks of aging effects falling away. Skin for example will be easier to rejuvenate which will make us look younger. Organs will be printable and thus a full system replacement will be a relatively straight forward procedure. Bones, muscles and tissue will enjoy augmentation as well as rejuvenation in the same way skin will.

So really in my future the cure for aging isn’t a cure; it’s just treatments for the effects of aging. Thus it wouldn’t be individuals that are cured of aging and gain enormous power; it’s that our entire society will just not die and will age more and more.

We already have people with enormous power and wealth (Warren Buffet, Rupert Murdoch, etc.) In my future these people will have just as much power and as we venture out into the universe they will likely gain a lot more power. That will happen and we’ll have to find a solution at some point.

Also with regards to population growth, even without a cure for aging our populations will continue to grow out of control. That being said there are physical limits on population such as food, water, and energy and those limits won’t change specifically because of a cure for aging.

So really what I’m trying to say is a cure for aging isn’t that big of a deal speaking in the long term; it’s just a big deal for us because we’re not all healthy centurions or millenniums… yet!

[Absent]

You make some good points. Though I think it's only reasonable and expected that we will begin to advance at a much faster rate than we currently are.

If you think about it, many scientist making ground breaking discoveries don't tend to be very elderly. There's a cognitive decline that comes with aging. If the aging was prevented, as well as the decline, various experts in their fields could easily advance at exponential rates after a certain point, as their knowledge would be continually built upon over and over.

With our current educational systems, all past learned knowledge can be relearned by new students, but the students don't have that multiple year experience and thinking ability that those experts have. If cognitive decline was totally eliminated as well as aging, it's only rational to assume our scientific development would skyrocket exponentially after some 30 or 40 years, as experts would not be dying off or retiring, and would only to continue to get smarter and more knowledgeable about their fields.

[Droplet]

If you think about it, many scientist making ground breaking discoveries don't tend to be very elderly. There's a cognitive decline that comes with aging. If the aging was prevented, as well as the decline, various experts in their fields could easily advance at exponential rates after a certain point, as their knowledge would be continually built upon over and over.

With our current educational systems, all past learned knowledge can be relearned by new students, but the students don't have that multiple year experience and thinking ability that those experts have. If cognitive decline was totally eliminated as well as aging, it's only rational to assume our scientific development would skyrocket exponentially after some 30 or 40 years, as experts would not be dying off or retiring, and would only to continue to get smarter and more knowledgeable about their fields.

You are so spot on.

[Lister]

After we defeat cognitive decline how long will it be before we have functional technological connections with our brains? As I’ve mentioned before I’m speaking specifically of the types of technology that will allow us to download and upload experiences directly to the brain.

When that type of technology comes into being it will bring with it the possibility of instant expertise. In other words a 16 year old student could pop in, have a download and be at the same level as a 200 year old scientist. Does that sound reasonable or completely loopy?

Would that then mean the death of schools? Would that suddenly skyrocket our development as a society? Is this all completely off topic? I’m thinking yes.

[Absent]

I think it's far more likely that we will first develop the technology to make every persons brain function at a superhuman level before we will be able to download information straight to the brain. A brain functioning at super human level with perfect performance, could absorb any information including through the utilization of mirror neurons, as well as having perfect recall for knowledge. You could in theory just display information once to a person and boom they know it, the same with displaying various methods of understanding knowledge.

I think pulling off something like this is far more likely than downloading information into the brain(like they do in the Matrix). At least, this will be impossible until we get a heavy grasp on the functioning of human consciousness.

[Marios Kyriazis]

It is quite likely that 'immortality' (I think you mean an 'indefinite lifespan') would not depend on one treatment or therapy/intervention. It would also depend on a critical number of people who achieve that state. If a sufficient number of humans reach a state that is the precursor of an indefinite lifespan, then it will happen. So, a large section of humanity will necessarily know the 'secret'.

[Absent]

I don't think it's wise to place limitations on how an indefinite lifespan could be achievable. I believe there could be millions of different methods, with the biggest limitation being our knowledge and current technological limitations.

What if the first discovered method is something that nobody can buy? Something that perhaps only the most determined can achieve with years of persistent training. Who is to say something like this doesn't already exist, only known by a few, and we don't hear from those people because they are so excluded from society, or decide not to divulge it. After all, it's rather foolish to assume that every single human/superhuman achievement has reached mainstream science understanding or become known. If this were so, new amazing things wouldn't be getting discovered every single year. Ponder that.

If something of that sort was discovered or known by a certain few individuals, and could not be sold, only taught and practiced through extensive effort, why on earth would they be motivated to tell anyone?

Just throwing ideas out...

[Lister]

I think the only time we'll be really looking at an indefinite life span is when we can properly define what we are as being non-physical (electrical) and then find a way to upload that to the cloud. Once we can solidify our consciousness/memories/etc in something less prone to accident, injury, illness and the like we can properly begin to ignore the idea of aging.

So really that would mean inventing computers that are at or beyond the current abilities of a human brain. There are rough ideas though we don’t really know how powerful our brains are. Considering the rate of computer advancements it will probably be the 2100’s before we see computers capable of easily containing a human consciousness. We may be able to do it before that but commercially available, tested and proven technology will take awhile. The interface too will be a challenge to setup. So really we only have to survive until then; that's the challenge!

This could also give us a reasonable idea of why teleporter technology could work out. Destroying and recreating your body won’t be so bad if your body isn’t what contains your entire consciousness. In fact you could just have a body at either location and travel at the speed of light electronically.

Really does get my imagination going I tell ya!

[SkatKat]

I just wanted to add that even though you may be able to stay physically young forever; the brain can only hold so much information. Of course this is not proven because nobody has lived past the estimated age where this happens (like 200 or something like that?) but it is something to think about. I suppose if you live that long though science will have found a way to increase your memory capacity.

[Danail Bulgaria]

SkatKat, the information that will be stored in the brain is not be a new problem, since the brain selectively forgets, lets say "deletes" old information.

It can be viewed as a hard drive, that when new information is needed to be stored, the old one is being removed.

If You live 200 years, You will definately not remember anything from Your first 100 years.

Simmilarly You may ask Yourself, what do You remember from the time when You were 1 year old, or when was 2 years old.

The brain will remember only the information, that You need currently. This infact is one of the reasons, because of which we use external sources to store information - notebooks, books, videos, photos, audio records, etc.

[Absent]

seivtcho makes a good point, but leaves out something else very important.

The brain does selectively forget, mostly the memories you do not recall often. BUT, it NEVER fully forgets. You can think of the memories in the brain like a zip/rar file on a computer. The less often that memory is accessed, the less space it will take up. It is never completely lost, and with enough effort, it can be fully restored without being relived. It just isn't easily accessible when in this 'compressed'/decayed state. The information is never completely lost.

Just think of it as, if your hard drive on your computer is full, and then you zip all of the files up. After that 70% of the space might have been freed up, but none of that data is lost. The brain works in a similar manner. Similar parts of the data are used to reconstruct other parts of it so that redundant parts can be deleted as to not take up space.

[YOLF]

I don't see any problem in making it available to everyone. I'll quote what Aubrey said about the life expectancy of a crazy dictators. They don't live very long. Anyways, if you can save every life on earth and you don't for your own reasons that's almost like killing everyone or 99.999% as you say or at least killing everyone who had wanted to live forever. I doubt anyone would destroy the world if we were all immortal and had forever to look forward to. Even if you didn't like the culture of today, you'd just wait until culture changes or splits off or until enough like minded people exist to start a sovereign culture of their own. Governments and cultures rise and fall. To an immortal it would be like the weather in Florida: "Don't like it? Wait 5 minutes, it'll change."

I think there is a social responsibility required by immortality that must begin ASAP. In current cultures, people are treated like they are going to die someday, and so the liability of harming them or allowing harm to them is acceptable and used as a tool. Ostracism is an example. If you were to ostracize someone for a lifetime, you'd an immortal enemy. Assuming that there is a person or group of individuals among us that couldn't be happy if they were treated differently and fairly assumes that YOU are perfect and that the system as it stands could continue indefinitely without change and that people have to die for it. As immortalists or those seeking the freedom of indefinite lifespans, we must improve our society in such a way that prevents all loss of life, we must look at the liability of our culture and realize we are liable to an indefinite future and that, as the possibility exists, people are essentially immortal and we cannot choose death for them without being their murders and we certainly wouldn't get away with manipulating people into making the decision or believing that they had made the decision without actually putting the knife to their chest or willfully and knowingly swallowing the Swiss suicide cocktail as anything short might cause harm or liability to the one judging the decision in the future. What happens to the Judge or jury who wrongly sentence someone to death? What of those people when we come to our senses and stop the death penalty. How will they be held liable for killing another person? What of the people who watched it on TV and the guy who pulled the lever? Will the witness victims in the viewing room be given therapy or counseling or the future's equivalent? When people have to rely on someone dieing to tie up loose ends or feel safe, they're criminals. Most people who support a death penalty say thing that sound to me an awe-full lot like "I wanted to make sure they died now before we couldn't kill them legally anymore, or while we still had the chance to kill them." It's a very violent attitude and isn't much different in my eyes than a crime of passion or whatever they call a murder that occurs under some form of pressure, like a murder that occurs to prevent a crime from being reported.

If I discovered immortality tomorrow, I'd make it available to everyone that very day.

[YOLF]

I think the only time we'll be really looking at an indefinite life span is when we can properly define what we are as being non-physical (electrical) and then find a way to upload that to the cloud. Once we can solidify our consciousness/memories/etc in something less prone to accident, injury, illness and the like we can properly begin to ignore the idea of aging.

So really that would mean inventing computers that are at or beyond the current abilities of a human brain. There are rough ideas though we don’t really know how powerful our brains are. Considering the rate of computer advancements it will probably be the 2100’s before we see computers capable of easily containing a human consciousness. We may be able to do it before that but commercially available, tested and proven technology will take awhile. The interface too will be a challenge to setup. So really we only have to survive until then; that's the challenge!

This could also give us a reasonable idea of why teleporter technology could work out. Destroying and recreating your body won’t be so bad if your body isn’t what contains your entire consciousness. In fact you could just have a body at either location and travel at the speed of light electronically.

Really does get my imagination going I tell ya!

I saw figures last year that predicted such a computer being in the $500 range in the very near future, it might even be during this year or it might just be a more expensive computer this year. These prediction were fairly recent too.

[YOLF]

Interesting video…

Making it through to a Type 1 civilization doesn’t necessarily eliminate the risks of journey. We could harness all the power of our planet and have full control of it yet still blow ourselves up…

Towards the thought of aging though I want to give you my idea of life in a few hundred years…

There are a couple assumptions to make here first:

• Our society will continue to progress at its current or a faster rate
• The vast majority of the climate damage we predict to happen will be manageable though perhaps not comfortable
• We don’t run into any impassible obstacles (things that could be 1000x more firm than the speed of light for example, although that assumes the speed of light is flexible)
• Society remains more or less in a similar state. There are disasters but nothing catastrophic.

So there’s quite a few big assumptions there though I feel like they’re very possible and every day they seem more and more likely to me.

In this situation I have no doubt that life extension will become the norm. If you think about it, life extension already is the norm. Every year we see the average life expectancy increase ever so slightly and that trend is likely to continue (as cures for cancer and the like arise).

In this world it’s not so much a single cure for aging; it’s many, many solutions to the problems of aging such as diabetes and congestive heart failure. Over time we may find big chunks of aging effects falling away. Skin for example will be easier to rejuvenate which will make us look younger. Organs will be printable and thus a full system replacement will be a relatively straight forward procedure. Bones, muscles and tissue will enjoy augmentation as well as rejuvenation in the same way skin will.

So really in my future the cure for aging isn’t a cure; it’s just treatments for the effects of aging. Thus it wouldn’t be individuals that are cured of aging and gain enormous power; it’s that our entire society will just not die and will age more and more.

We already have people with enormous power and wealth (Warren Buffet, Rupert Murdoch, etc.) In my future these people will have just as much power and as we venture out into the universe they will likely gain a lot more power. That will happen and we’ll have to find a solution at some point.

Also with regards to population growth, even without a cure for aging our populations will continue to grow out of control. That being said there are physical limits on population such as food, water, and energy and those limits won’t change specifically because of a cure for aging.

So really what I’m trying to say is a cure for aging isn’t that big of a deal speaking in the long term; it’s just a big deal for us because we’re not all healthy centurions or millenniums… yet!

I think in the mean time we may have organ printing and individual cures for different effects for aging, but in order to make it readily available, it has to be simple. We can't have the production and use of organ printing or other such thing weighing down our capacities to feed and enrich an ever growing populace even if the growth declines substantially. Any energies we have to waste on methods that aren't self sustainable or that require too significant an amount of money begin to deny that indefinite immortality to others and we wind up "soothing" people into death the way we do today. Immortality must be made an intrinsic part of life as soon as it can be done. Otherwise delays cause death. I doubt anyone in the early 1900s sued Ford for wrongful death in a Model T the way they do today with the Ford/Firestone case. But what will happen when Huge ImmortaliCorp who has been postponing discoveries that would result in indefinite life expectancy becoming intrinsic to life to preserve profits and people died? That's a wrongful death suit time bomb just waiting to explode. I'd rather be investing that energy and economic output equivalency into safer cheaper space travel or something like that. Immortality must be efficient at being available to all.

[YOLF]

I think it's far more likely that we will first develop the technology to make every persons brain function at a superhuman level before we will be able to download information straight to the brain. A brain functioning at super human level with perfect performance, could absorb any information including through the utilization of mirror neurons, as well as having perfect recall for knowledge. You could in theory just display information once to a person and boom they know it, the same with displaying various methods of understanding knowledge.

I think pulling off something like this is far more likely than downloading information into the brain(like they do in the Matrix). At least, this will be impossible until we get a heavy grasp on the functioning of human consciousness.

This is an interesting thought. With things so easily learned, I think physical learning will become more of a past time. As is the case with martial arts, Kung-fu for example, requires years of training the body to have the right flexibility to do all of the acrobatic techniques perfectly. Each movement improves as the form of the muscle changes with continuous practice and may be inhibited by weight training. I could imagine devoting decades to properly learn such an art to such a perfection. I even think these things could become common place. We'd all become perfect dancers, acrobats, wakeboarders, and other types of perfect sportspersons through such training. The Olympics could become much more interesting and take place all over the galaxy and have to be indefinitely ongoing for all of the new countries and cultures to participate. A figure skater could spend 100 years competing to reach and attain all of the awards for figure skating from all of the different planets and Olympic locations. There'd be several 24/7 Olympics channels, and international football megabowls that occur every 5-10 etc. years because so many teams exist. Baseball would have the Galaxy Series etc. At this point, where we have post human supercomputing power, we will find ways to improve and experience things in more and more ways.

[Danail Bulgaria]

Siro, where from do You have the information, that the brain never forgets completely anything?

[blueinfinity]

Siro, where from do You have the information, that the brain never forgets completely anything?

Marilu Henner talks about this too that we have somewhere in our brain the information, but lack the connections/pathways to access it verbally.

I have heard of people under hypnosis being able to recall whole days events, signifcant/mundane with complete accuracy from when they were just a child.

Siro,

Ive thought about ti and realized, at the end of the day, it would be shared.. You would live quite a boring, insignificant, and meaningless life if you did not share with those that you love and care for, eventually that will happen, and if you were to live endlessly without love life and happiness, whats there to live for? to set a world record?.... meh, may get boring after 200years or so of being a hermit

[Danail Bulgaria]

The brain forgets after time all that is unnecessary for our living. This is a known fact and the true situation. I also do not like it, but facts are facts. Under hipnosis sometimes many events can be restored, but the most of the forgotten iformation is lost forever. Plus the remembering under hypnosis not always gives a correct information, e.g. the memories retrieved on that way are often changed.

[matthewebbert]

so to keep memory strong can we go with memory enhancer supplements?

[Danail Bulgaria]

As far as I know, in terms of the aging - no. Brain atrophy and senile dementia can not be affected by the supplements.

[Bron]

You make some good points. Though I think it's only reasonable and expected that we will begin to advance at a much faster rate than we currently are.

If you think about it, many scientist making ground breaking discoveries don't tend to be very elderly. There's a cognitive decline that comes with aging. If the aging was prevented, as well as the decline, various experts in their fields could easily advance at exponential rates after a certain point, as their knowledge would be continually built upon over and over.

With our current educational systems, all past learned knowledge can be relearned by new students, but the students don't have that multiple year experience and thinking ability that those experts have. If cognitive decline was totally eliminated as well as aging, it's only rational to assume our scientific development would skyrocket exponentially after some 30 or 40 years, as experts would not be dying off or retiring, and would only to continue to get smarter and more knowledgeable about their fields.

This is exactly why I would 100% without a doubt share it. I want to see human civilization advance, the blowback or unintended consequences would not be so severe to justify stunting human development indefinitely.

But I digress, what you just said here is pretty much a paraphrasing of what I heard Aubrey de Grey say at TED a few years back.

[Absent]

I wouldn't share it for the simple fact that man kind simply isn't ready for it.

People would try to profit off it, and the rich would live forever, and the poor would be stuck suffering and dying, like in the movie "In Time"

If everyone was able to live forever, we would have way too many people. Humanities current level of greed causes millions to die every year for simple problems we easily can fix. Countries throw out billions of dollars in food every year that could be used to solve world hunger 10x over. Our greed is our biggest obstacle towards advancement and I believe it needs to be left behind before we are ready for the technology to stay forever young.

Tesla is well known for his development of his "Death Ray", but did not share the technology because simply put, we were not ready for it. The ability to basically send an Energy Nuke anywhere on the planet without actually being there, without any costs? Humans just aren't ready for some things. It's very respectful that many of you want to see humanity move forward technologically, scientifically, and morally, but this must happen in stages. You give a child everything he demands at a young age and you will spoil him. We must meet certain societal benchmarks before we are ready to properly handle certain technologies.

Now, this isn't to say somebody won't discover it before then. I'm sure somebody already has. For all you know, somebody on this thread has. We discover lots of things that we aren't ready for, and often we do more harm with them than good.

Those of you who don't see the potential for disaster of having this technology before we are ready for it.... simply need to open your eyes. Life is filled with learning. If a single person can use every single lesson and knowledge they gained over the past hundred years, and redo their lives.... they could literally achieve anything. Imagine millions of people doing this... but with bad or greedy intentions. It is a recipe for disaster.

[Danail Bulgaria]

I would share it.

[matthewebbert]

As far as I know, in terms of the aging - no. Brain atrophy and senile dementia can not be affected by the supplements.

I went some review where people saying that supplements are helpful for them?

[Lister]

Seivtcho – I would be truly surprised if we made it to our 200th year before discovering how to augment our memory through either biological or technological methods. If we run into a wall where memory becomes an issue the economical driving forces of this problem would solve it rather quickly.

I wouldn't share it for the simple fact that man kind simply isn't ready for it.

People would try to profit off it, and the rich would live forever, and the poor would be stuck suffering and dying, like in the movie "In Time"

If everyone was able to live forever, we would have way too many people. Humanities current level of greed causes millions to die every year for simple problems we easily can fix. Countries throw out billions of dollars in food every year that could be used to solve world hunger 10x over. Our greed is our biggest obstacle towards advancement and I believe it needs to be left behind before we are ready for the technology to stay forever young.

Tesla is well known for his development of his "Death Ray", but did not share the technology because simply put, we were not ready for it. The ability to basically send an Energy Nuke anywhere on the planet without actually being there, without any costs? Humans just aren't ready for some things. It's very respectful that many of you want to see humanity move forward technologically, scientifically, and morally, but this must happen in stages. You give a child everything he demands at a young age and you will spoil him. We must meet certain societal benchmarks before we are ready to properly handle certain technologies.

Now, this isn't to say somebody won't discover it before then. I'm sure somebody already has. For all you know, somebody on this thread has. We discover lots of things that we aren't ready for, and often we do more harm with them than good.

Those of you who don't see the potential for disaster of having this technology before we are ready for it.... simply need to open your eyes. Life is filled with learning. If a single person can use every single lesson and knowledge they gained over the past hundred years, and redo their lives.... they could literally achieve anything. Imagine millions of people doing this... but with bad or greedy intentions. It is a recipe for disaster.

I see what you did there ;-)

I really don’t think that the whole over population issue is really worthy of concern with regards to near limitless life spans. I’m thinking we may actually run into problems with not enough people. Thing is the population issues are directly linked to poverty and suffering. Families in poorer nations are forced to have many children as a retirement plan (children look after the elderly). In the west I see more and more people going childless. For every couple that doesn’t have a child or adopts you have 2 less people in the world.

With “immortals” the need to have children diminishes. When you’re not constantly sitting on a biological clock there’s no need to worry about when you have children. Also why even have children in the first place? To pass on your gene to achieve some level of immortality perhaps? With us being immortal that reason for having children vanishes too.

So why would a permanently healthy immortal even have kids in the first place? Hobby perhaps? Is that even reason enough to make up for the accidently death rates? I would say no. Thus immortality will not result in over population, but instead a population shortage. Add to that the eventual exploration of the universe (people leaving earth) and nature may even be given a chance to take land back.

On the issue of humanity deserving the cure… have you seen how many people don’t actually want it? I see “I’m 35 and I’m already sick of life” more than I see people lusting for immortality. Even if the cure was available tomorrow I betcha it’ll take 3 generations before we even start to notice the effects.

It’s less a big deal than you think it is.

[Danail Bulgaria]

Lister, I actually make a difference between "stopping the neurons death" or "stopping the brain atrophy" or "stopping the senile dementia" and "augmentation of our memory". However, I am at Your oppinion, that this may take too long to stop the death of the neurons and the brain atrophy. And, according to me this is a very important issue, maybe the most - important one.

[TheFountain]

If you think about it, many scientist making ground breaking discoveries don't tend to be very elderly. There's a cognitive decline that comes with aging. If the aging was prevented, as well as the decline, various experts in their fields could easily advance at exponential rates after a certain point, as their knowledge would be continually built upon over and over.

With our current educational systems, all past learned knowledge can be relearned by new students, but the students don't have that multiple year experience and thinking ability that those experts have. If cognitive decline was totally eliminated as well as aging, it's only rational to assume our scientific development would skyrocket exponentially after some 30 or 40 years, as experts would not be dying off or retiring, and would only to continue to get smarter and more knowledgeable about their fields.

You are so spot on.

Why is scientific thinking the only one important in this context? What about philosophical thinking? Some of the best philosophers expound their most amazing ideas during middle age. Just a thought. Because it is a philosophy upon which we base our lives. Science augments it, but philosophy and ideas propel it.

Edited by TheFountain, 10 April 2013 - 10:59 AM.