25 replies to this topic

[Danail Bulgaria]

Lets imagine, that we become immortal during our life time. How will the society accept us? Will it want to accept us at all? If it accepts us, then how will it accept us?

 

What do you think?

[Sanhar]

Whether it will or not depends on much people have come to accept it.  There is much we can do to help make that happen and this is becoming one of my specialties.  We must never underestimate the value of the social approach to LE because, right along with the scientific and production aspects, the social aspect is crucial to getting it available to us and keep it available to us.

 

Thus if society has been made mostly amenable to LE it will not only accept us but will *be* us.  If society has not been made very amenable then we will have some conflicts and availability will be lower than it ought to be (government and legal blockages, FDA being too tight, etc.).  If some disaster happens because people were not careful then it might be blocked altogether.

 

My point is: if you want LE, make sure society accepts it or you may not get it regardless of the state of science and/or production.  It is just like that, seriously.

 

 

 

 

[Danail Bulgaria]

Alright. 

 

But if it doesn't accept us - the immortals, what would the reasons be? 

 

 

[niner]

But if it doesn't accept us - the immortals, what would the reasons be? 

 

Because if you call yourself immortal, normal people will think you are dangerously crazy.  If you can be killed, you are not immortal by the conventional definition.  Even if we are able to eliminate all forms of aging damage, you can still be killed, by bullet, bomb, or asteroid collision.   If you instead portray yourself as someone who remains fit and healthy into advanced age, I don't think society would have much of a problem with that as long as you continue to be productive.  If you stop working and expect younger workers / taxpayers to support you, that would give society a reason to think that you are a problem.

[Danail Bulgaria]

Alright. We will be Productive Non - aging Human Species (PNAHS) lol

 

What else the society may not want to accept us? Envy maybe? Something else?

[niner]

The standard list of concerns, in no particular order:

 

Only the rich will get access to LE treatments.

We will overpopulate the world and deplete resources.

Dictators and other evil people will live forever.

We will be old and decrepit and miserable, but will not die.  (The Tithonus error)

Without the knowledge that our time is limited, we won't appreciate life.

It's un-natural and against God's plan.

The old will continue to accrue power and resources in perpetuity, and the young will be screwed. 

Outmoded ideas and worldviews will stick around a lot longer.

People would get bored with very long lifespans.

 

What have I forgotten?

 

Obviously, most of these are just wrong.  A few are valid points that we could devise ways to deal with.   I think it's a huge error to try to sell the world on infinite lifespan all at once.  I think it would be a much better idea to sell people on the concept of a cure for most cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers, and other "diseases of aging", and really soft-pedal the extension of lifespan aspect.  Extreme life extension just scares the shit out of most people.  Once the technologies actually exist, and people see that they can be 90 and still feel great, then they'll come around.

[Sanhar]

Alright. We will be Productive Non - aging Human Species (PNAHS) lol

 

What else the society may not want to accept us? Envy maybe? Something else?

 

Well, there are a few factions, all of which are resolvable given enough time.  To my knowledge they are:

 

1.  "Overpopulation-ists".  They're just flat out wrong, we don't have an overpopulation problem outside of the developing world.  Better education regarding how this is a non-issue will help with that, as will the developing world getting more developed (then their population growth rate will drop).

 

2.  "Humanity is a cancer/virus-ists".  Usually associated with some kind of dark green movement, they're just hostile.  They're connected to the overpopulationists but aren't necessarily interested in how much of a problem actual overpopulation is.  They think the human race should go back to the near-stone age and be limited to a few hundred million people at most.  The best way to deal with them is just turning public opinion further against them - they're not doing too well in the opinion polls in the first place but some extra push would be good.

 

3.  "Interfering with God's plan-ists".  Not much surprising here.  While certainly not all religious types have a problem with LE and the like, some see it as hijacking whatever they see the divine plan as being.  You can usually keep them out of your way if you engage them in some kind of dialogue that makes them look bad to the general public (it's not hard nowadays) and otherwise try to address their concerns so that more of them turn into religious moderates.  Don't ignore them, that just makes them stronger.

 

4. "You're taking the job/resources/place of my kid-ists".  Few people would admit to feeling this way but there are a lot of people out there who really don't think all men are created equal and certainly don't value the welfare of a stranger over their own progeny's success chances.  They'd be willing to die themselves so their kids can inherit their goodness and they really want you and I to die too in the process.  You deal with them by actively engaging against the concept since, as I said, few people will openly admit to believing in this.  As production costs go down and we move towards a post-scarcity economy their arguments pretty much go out the window too as it is predicated on their kids needing what you have.  If they don't, there's no conflict.

 

That's all I can think of right now.  Anyone else have thoughts?

[niner]

Nice list Sanhar, and nice post as always.  Regarding number 2, the "Humanity is a cancer"-ists, there's a portion of their argument (but only a portion) that makes some sense.  Depending on our technology and the kind of ecological footprint per person that it entails, there is in fact a reasonable human carrying capacity for the biosphere.  At the moment we are beyond it.  Certainly technological changes can alter that capacity radically, but there will still be some number of people that is too many.  That's something for us to consider in long term plans.

[Danail Bulgaria]

 

 

The standard list of concerns, in no particular order:

 

Only the rich will get access to LE treatments.

We will overpopulate the world and deplete resources.

Dictators and other evil people will live forever.

We will be old and decrepit and miserable, but will not die.  (The Tithonus error)

Without the knowledge that our time is limited, we won't appreciate life.

It's un-natural and against God's plan.

The old will continue to accrue power and resources in perpetuity, and the young will be screwed. 

Outmoded ideas and worldviews will stick around a lot longer.

People would get bored with very long lifespans.

 

What have I forgotten?

 

Obviously, most of these are just wrong.  A few are valid points that we could devise ways to deal with.   I think it's a huge error to try to sell the world on infinite lifespan all at once.  I think it would be a much better idea to sell people on the concept of a cure for most cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers, and other "diseases of aging", and really soft-pedal the extension of lifespan aspect.  Extreme life extension just scares the shit out of most people.  Once the technologies actually exist, and people see that they can be 90 and still feel great, then they'll come around.

 

 

Alright. We will be Productive Non - aging Human Species (PNAHS) lol

 

What else the society may not want to accept us? Envy maybe? Something else?

 

Well, there are a few factions, all of which are resolvable given enough time.  To my knowledge they are:

 

1.  "Overpopulation-ists".  They're just flat out wrong, we don't have an overpopulation problem outside of the developing world.  Better education regarding how this is a non-issue will help with that, as will the developing world getting more developed (then their population growth rate will drop).

 

2.  "Humanity is a cancer/virus-ists".  Usually associated with some kind of dark green movement, they're just hostile.  They're connected to the overpopulationists but aren't necessarily interested in how much of a problem actual overpopulation is.  They think the human race should go back to the near-stone age and be limited to a few hundred million people at most.  The best way to deal with them is just turning public opinion further against them - they're not doing too well in the opinion polls in the first place but some extra push would be good.

 

3.  "Interfering with God's plan-ists".  Not much surprising here.  While certainly not all religious types have a problem with LE and the like, some see it as hijacking whatever they see the divine plan as being.  You can usually keep them out of your way if you engage them in some kind of dialogue that makes them look bad to the general public (it's not hard nowadays) and otherwise try to address their concerns so that more of them turn into religious moderates.  Don't ignore them, that just makes them stronger.

 

4. "You're taking the job/resources/place of my kid-ists".  Few people would admit to feeling this way but there are a lot of people out there who really don't think all men are created equal and certainly don't value the welfare of a stranger over their own progeny's success chances.  They'd be willing to die themselves so their kids can inherit their goodness and they really want you and I to die too in the process.  You deal with them by actively engaging against the concept since, as I said, few people will openly admit to believing in this.  As production costs go down and we move towards a post-scarcity economy their arguments pretty much go out the window too as it is predicated on their kids needing what you have.  If they don't, there's no conflict.

 

That's all I can think of right now.  Anyone else have thoughts?

 

 

Alright - the things, that you are listing are not scientific, actually, and they are easy to be proven wrong. Here are some arguments from first reading: 

 

*Only the rich will get access to LE treatments

 

Wrong as concept and wrong as a projection in time

 

Always when some one has said, that something will be only for the rich has been wrong. For example I watched a vintage cryopreservation movie, that mentioned the possibility of cryopreserving sperm and egg cells. And they said very similar incorrect things - if this technology becomes true, whose sperm will be saved? Whose eggs? Will it be only the rich, who will be able to freeze their sperm? As we know now, there are many fertilization clinics, and everyone can freeze sperm or egg cells. The costs are not that high. And these are not only the rich, who can do it. 

 

With the time the costs of everything drops. Even if LE treatment will be expensive in the beginning, it will be so until the costs drop. The costs of everything drops with time. The most with the electronics, for example. 

 

 

*We will overpopulate the world and deplete resources

*"Overpopulation-ists"

 

This is a birth rates problem, not living longer problem. We have been discussing it many times. 

 

 

*It's un-natural and against God's plan

*"Interfering with God's plan-ists"

 

If we consider that the Gods plan and the Gods will has to be on the Earth, then it will be a part from the Gods plan the paradise on the Earth to be made. This includes we to be immortal, to build the paradise gardens, and others. 

Here a small web site about that: 

http://whyparadise.tk/

 

 

 

*The old will continue to accrue power and resources in perpetuity, and the young will be screwed

*"You're taking the job/resources/place of my kid-ists"

 

 

The old are the ones, who take care for the youngs. Your father for example is taking care for you, if you don't have enough resources. So, even if it becomes true for the young people's jobs, it will not become true for the young people's families. Plus with the accumulation of goods building up, the youngs will have more goods inevitably. 50 years ago a black and white TV costed the money for a car, working models of such TVs were massively thrown away on the garbage 20-30 years ago. 

 

 

 

*People would get bored with very long lifespans

 

Another not so correct point of view, not backed up with scientific arguments. The possibility of removing memories will be enough to live over and over pleasant experiences from many types. 

 

 

"Humanity is a cancer/virus-ists"

 

These are psychos. Don't pay attention to them. No one will listen to them. 

In order to prove their ideas, they will have to bring up real scientific proves. 

 

 

 

[Neuronautix]

I believe economics would dictate the price of le therapies that lead to immorality. The more demand, the more people competing for a finite supply, only the rich will be able to afford it until production can be increased to make it available for more (dropping price). Like computers were originally only for the rich. Or... the cost won't drop. How many non-wealthy people can afford a limo?

As far as jobs... dead people are HORRIBLE consumers. More people living should equal more demand driving a demand for labor.

The problem is natural resources, imho. Water is already scarce.

[Sanhar]

I believe economics would dictate the price of le therapies that lead to immorality. The more demand, the more people competing for a finite supply, only the rich will be able to afford it until production can be increased to make it available for more (dropping price). Like computers were originally only for the rich. Or... the cost won't drop. How many non-wealthy people can afford a limo?

As far as jobs... dead people are HORRIBLE consumers. More people living should equal more demand driving a demand for labor.

The problem is natural resources, imho. Water is already scarce.

 

 

I think a lot of the issues above will be removed or progressively defused as we move towards a post-scarcity world.  This is happening gradually and is accelerating over time.  At the moment 3d printing is moving beyond just being for prototypes (new CLIP method, extrusion methods for construction, start of food printing, etc.) and we are coming up with new ways to generate basic resources cheaply.  Water in particular is getting easier because hydrogen extraction methods are getting cheaper and easier to use.  People talk about hydrogen production from seawater etc. as being for fuel cells and such and that's true but it also provides a ready supply for creating drinkable water too.

 

If you think like me you want to watch at least three associated technological trees in addition to LE proper: the development of solar power and (photovoltaic and artificial photosynthesis), developments in 3d printing and advances in computer technology (optical/quantum).  All of these things will pave the way for a world in which LE is going to work as we need it to.

Edited by Sanhar, 19 April 2015 - 10:02 PM.

[Danail Bulgaria]

... Like computers were originally only for the rich. Or... the cost won't drop. How many non-wealthy people can afford a limo?
....
The problem is natural resources, imho. Water is already scarce.

 

Non-wealthy people can't afford expensive cars, correct, but they can afford cars as general. After several years they will be able to have a better car, than the one they may have now. This is correct when applied into the time projection. Today, the non-wealthy folks have better cars, than those, which had the super wealthy folks in the 40's.

 

The natural resources problem is a part from the overopoulation problem, and it is a problem of uncontrolled birth rate, not a problem of living longer. If today, on this second we become immortal, there will be resources for everyone, if not even one child is born from now on. The opposite - we are mortal today (2015), and the countries with the smallest average life span are contributing on the max for the overpopulation of the planet, and respectively for the future resources depletion.

[Sanhar]

On the subject of overpopulation, there's a couple of things to consider.  In terms of just the developed countries (which almost all have negative population growth) longer lifespans is going to cause people to delay childbirth.  It's also going to encourage people to have fewer children and economic incentives as currently exist to have children can be removed (even the USA has some such as tax credits).  Add to this the fact that through technology we can and are increasing the planet's ability to support more people so even modest population growth is sustainable, not that I think it's going to really going to be much growth at all if any.  Add to this the fact that we will in fact colonize the moon, mars, and on-shelf undersea areas (meaning not deep ocean) and there's going to be a lot more room for us to live.

[A941]

 

"Humanity is a cancer/virus-ists".

 

Funny!

Every time I meet one of them I open the closest window and tell them to set an example and jump out, or do they think they are not a "cancer" themself?

Until now , no one jumped, so all of them were hypocrites.

[Danail Bulgaria]

What do you think about that one?

 

"

Outmoded ideas and worldviews will stick around a lot longer.

"

[niner]

 Add to this the fact that we will in fact colonize the moon, mars, and on-shelf undersea areas (meaning not deep ocean) and there's going to be a lot more room for us to live.

 

I wouldn't use this argument.  The timeframe for significant life extension is a few decades, while the timeframe for moving enough people to the moon or mars to have an impact on world population (which means transporting on the order of a billion people to the moon or mars) is centuries.  In the minds of a lot of people, if you propose moving people en masse to anywhere off the planet, you are in all probability delusional, and that is something that we really want to avoid.  It's hard enough convincing them that life extension is possible, worthwhile, and non-harmful.    I think it's much better to use your primary argument of first-world depopulation requiring that something be done to stabilize (i.e. increase) their population.

[sthira]

The timeframe for significant life extension is a few decades...

Such optimism! I've been reading and posting on this site for nearly a decade. And in that time, what advances have been made toward increasing human longevity? So far, we have CR, which may or may not work in monkeys, and may or may not give five to seven extra years of skinny life even if it works at all What else looks promising? Stem cells? 3D printing? Rapamycin? Metformin? C60? NR? Mitoq? TA-65? Blood transfusions? High dose quercetin? What isn't "five to ten years away," and what wasn't five to ten years away five to ten years ago? What's positive here? Chin up...but really...

[niner]

 

The timeframe for significant life extension is a few decades...

Such optimism! I've been reading and posting on this site for nearly a decade. And in that time, what advances have been made toward increasing human longevity? So far, we have CR, which may or may not work in monkeys, and may or may not give five to seven extra years of skinny life even if it works at all What else looks promising? Stem cells? 3D printing? Rapamycin? Metformin? C60? NR? Mitoq? TA-65? Blood transfusions? High dose quercetin? What isn't "five to ten years away," and what wasn't five to ten years away five to ten years ago? What's positive here? Chin up...but really...

 

Not five to ten.  A few decades means like 30 years, plus or minus ten.   And "significant" life extension doesn't mean a thousand years, it means measurable, non-trivial.  Like ten years, or maybe 20.  Compare where we were at ten years ago to where we are today- then we had CR and a couple things, now we have everything you mentioned and more.  Look at the way Senolytics just popped up out of the blue and took everyone by surprise.  They got great animal results after looking at 39 compounds.  What kind of results might happen if you apply high throughput screening to the problem, along with chemical optimization?  What if a glucosepane breaker does a similar fall-from-the-sky thing?  The progress that we're making in biomedical technology today is amazing, and it's only going to get faster.  The past isn't a very good pointer to what the future is going to be like; cutting-edge research can give you some ideas, but ultimately, when things are in as much flux as biomedicine, and technology is improving so rapidly, prediction becomes a loose statistical exercise.  The future will be different than the present.  A lot different, I suspect.

[Sanhar]

 

 Add to this the fact that we will in fact colonize the moon, mars, and on-shelf undersea areas (meaning not deep ocean) and there's going to be a lot more room for us to live.

 

I wouldn't use this argument.  The timeframe for significant life extension is a few decades, while the timeframe for moving enough people to the moon or mars to have an impact on world population (which means transporting on the order of a billion people to the moon or mars) is centuries.  In the minds of a lot of people, if you propose moving people en masse to anywhere off the planet, you are in all probability delusional, and that is something that we really want to avoid.  It's hard enough convincing them that life extension is possible, worthwhile, and non-harmful.    I think it's much better to use your primary argument of first-world depopulation requiring that something be done to stabilize (i.e. increase) their population.

 

 

Well, I don't have to mention it, but the fact that we can make better use of the space we now utilize combined with our low (negative) population growth does seem to me that there aren't going to be issues here.

 

The timeframe for significant life extension is a few decades...

Such optimism! I've been reading and posting on this site for nearly a decade. And in that time, what advances have been made toward increasing human longevity? So far, we have CR, which may or may not work in monkeys, and may or may not give five to seven extra years of skinny life even if it works at all What else looks promising? Stem cells? 3D printing? Rapamycin? Metformin? C60? NR? Mitoq? TA-65? Blood transfusions? High dose quercetin? What isn't "five to ten years away," and what wasn't five to ten years away five to ten years ago? What's positive here? Chin up...but really...

 

 

You have to remember that most of this tech is appearing all at once in a sort of landslide.  We have really hit the watershed and now things are exploding.  While it's always good to be cautious with one's optimism, it's also true that we can't use the past as any indicator of the future in this matter.  Things are really that new and that fast.

[Danail Bulgaria]

Hey people, you are getting off-topic. 

 

Lets try to investigate the left factors for the society not accepting future PNAHS 

 

Only two left: 

 

"Dictators and other evil people will live forever."

"Outmoded ideas and worldviews will stick around a lot longer."

 

And into some extent the 

 

"people are cancer... " thing. 

 

The dictators are too political to discuss, OK,  but what about the outmoded ideas? Why not focus on them? 

I already investigated and busted the other arguments. You do some job too. 

[niner]

"Dictators and other evil people will live forever."

"Outmoded ideas and worldviews will stick around a lot longer."

 

And into some extent the 

 

"people are cancer... " thing. 

 

The dictators are too political to discuss, OK,  but what about the outmoded ideas? Why not focus on them? 

I already investigated and busted the other arguments. You do some job too. 

 

You did the easy ones.  The evil people problem doesn't have to be political; Evil is evil.  We can leave politics out of it as long as we don't name names.   I think the only way that the problem of evil leaders will go away is if we construct a society that rejects such people as leaders, and rejects their ideas in general, in the event that they are not politicians.  Evil can show up in any position of authority or power, so if people never age, we are going to have to get away from lifetime appointments everywhere, all the way from the Pope to the head of the lowliest .org.  This is going to be opposed by those in power, and they're the ones with the power.  So good luck with that.

 

Outmoded ideas sticking around longer is another problem.  I've never heard a cogent argument against it.  Maybe you could turn it into a positive by noting that things are already changing too fast, and it might be good to have some brakes on change.  The problem is that the brakes might be on all the wrong things.  I'm not sure what to say about religious extremism/belief in things that aren't true.  You can't get rid of it by people dying, because it's memetic. 

 

People are cancer.. That's a little easier.  We'll stop being a cancer on the biosphere when we develop sufficiently clean technology and get our numbers in line with what the biosphere can handle, given the state of our technology.  If we can't accomplish this, then that's going to be a problem.

[Danail Bulgaria]

Easy? lol. Only several years ago all of them were equally difficult. If I didn't write my posts, they would be still the same difficulty, lol. They are equally difficult and now, by the way. Simply you don't want, or you can't analyze them correctly. All of them are based on non-provable concepts, and are not based on real scientific facts, nor are confirmed by an experiment, so there ARE ways for them to be analyzed and the real situation to be revealed.   Simply you have to waste several months analyzing them. I already lost more than a month for each one of these, long time before you to formulate them. Including I lost some time to make the http://www.whyparadise.tk/web site, that to show the religious people, that immortality is not against the God, but the contrary. If you don't want immortality, then you don't want the realizations of the God's plans for being His kingdom on the Earth. 

 

Here you are some guidelines - check out how long the outmoded ideas are being outmoded, and what does this means for the eternity. 

[A941]

This maybe offtopic: I find it interessting how we deal with acceptance in our world.

Today it looks like we have an attitude like: Things which make you different are okay, as far as you dont "question" my lifestyle with your alternative lifestyle -->make something better than I do /did.

You can be the member of what ever subculture you want, many people dont have a problem with that, but they are frightened by people who want to do something really radical, like stemcell research, in this case they think the end of the world is near.

 

I like Isaac Asimovs work, but his praised story, the bicentennial Man is quite bad if we talk about the message it tries to transport.

The Android Andrew wants acceptance as human Being, and so he does damage to himself to be accepted in a group which cant take him for what he is (potentially immortal robot).

If this would have happened in another context we would have called it a bad case of peer pressure, but the human condition seems to be somethin sacred even if it is just a large collection of problems "done" to us by nature and chance, not worth our admiration, nor protection.

[niner]

Easy? lol. Only several years ago all of them were equally difficult. If I didn't write my posts, they would be still the same difficulty, lol. They are equally difficult and now, by the way. Simply you don't want, or you can't analyze them correctly.

 

Seriously?  Don't be insulting.

[Sanhar]

Hey people, you are getting off-topic. 

 

Lets try to investigate the left factors for the society not accepting future PNAHS 

 

Only two left: 

 

"Dictators and other evil people will live forever."

"Outmoded ideas and worldviews will stick around a lot longer."

 

And into some extent the 

 

"people are cancer... " thing. 

 

The dictators are too political to discuss, OK,  but what about the outmoded ideas? Why not focus on them? 

I already investigated and busted the other arguments. You do some job too. 

 

A.  Political systems will ensure that normally elected people don't serve more than they do now.  It doesn't matter if the president of the USA lives to be 1,500, if he only gets 8 years in office, that's that.  Maybe in the future you get 8 years every 100 years if the law is changed to that, but I don't tihnk that's the point.

 

B.  As to other "evil people" holding power, they already do that quite effectively through generations.  Also, you may have noticed that new evil people take the place of old ones.  There isn't much difference between that except perhaps under the new system "evil" people will be less inclined to forever look over their shoulder for assassins if they have a greater reason to live since they're not going to die anyway.

 

C.  This is not much of an actual issue.  People will have new ideas whenever they feel like it and will split off into separate societies if they can't get along with others who don't feel the way they do.  This has always been the case and will continue to be so.  Also, to some extent, new ideas are not always thought out properly so it can be an advantage for them to come along somewhat more slowly.  Do we, for example, really need new clothing fashions every year?  I don't think so.  Technical improvements will continue to happen as they do now or faster simply because people want what they can do.
 

[Brett Black]

Hey people, you are getting off-topic. 

 

Lets try to investigate the left factors for the society not accepting future PNAHS 

 

Only two left: 

 

"Dictators and other evil people will live forever."

"Outmoded ideas and worldviews will stick around a lot longer."

 

And into some extent the 

 

"people are cancer... " thing. 

 

 

Some initial thoughts and counterarguments:

 

 

1.  "Dictators and other evil people will live forever."

 

Dicators and evil people have already managed to be constantly present throughout human history despite limited lifespan. It's not like this would be a problem somehow specially created by life extension. In fact it seems that repressive political regimes have existed uninterrupted for centuries exactly at times when lifespan was much shorter than it is today - e.g. look at the middle ages.

 

If anything it seems that the rise of more enlightened political systems is actually correlated with increased lifespans. Perhaps the less desperate people are, in terms of maintaining their own survival and wellbeing (from finding food, right up to not having to endure the slow onset of disability, disease and death from aging), the more time and energy they have to devote to other important matters like making clear-headed decisions to help cultivate and maintain healthy social and political systems. The longest lasting most consistently free and enlightened systems - the Western liberal democracies - have not been sustained by some unending cycle of age-related death and subsequent replacement of those in power.  

 

So dictators and evil people are killed off by age-related diseases like cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's etc - is anyone seriously suggesting we stop research into these areas of medicine too? Should we condemn billions of good decent people to the slow suffering and death from these and other diseases of aging just because it might be handy when these same diseases of aging kill off a handful of evil people and dictators every couple of decades or so?

 

I mean why don't we just outlaw antibiotics and medical care in general if that's the argument - I'm sure the death toll of dictators would rise too, right? And anyway, as previously mentioned, age-related death hasn't ever rid the planet of dictators anyway.

 

 

2. "Outmoded ideas and worldviews will stick around a lot longer."

 

First of all, social/cultural change is not necessarily inherently always superior and history does not necessarily move in a linear manner or a single direction. There are aspects of current "progressive" Western culture/society that existed, for example, in ancient Greece, that  disappeared for centuries as new generations made changes, only to then to once again reappear as further new generations took over.

 

It might be argued that, based on current perspectives, an ancient Greek grandfather was more progressive in certain of his socio-cultural values than a large proportion of 25 year olds alive today. So if this Greek grandfather had continued to live for millenia, with original values up to the present day, would he be more a force for beneficial progressive change than a young conservative of today?

 

So who is holding progress back here, and what is progress exactly anyway? We can even see in different societies existing at the exact time in history, including right now, that many very different social and cultural values and goals can exist. I'm not saying that progress does not exist, just that the topic is complex and not so easily addressed as change = good and stasis = bad.

 

Second, there is evidence that, from at least around the age of thirty, the average human experiences a gradual loss of mental performance. This is consistent with the fact that most people also begin a gradual physical decline in performance in their thirties. It seems reasonable to assume then, that the reduced tendency(ability?) to adapt and change views may be underpinned by biological declines in the brain/CNS that occur as the result of aging. So perhaps if the brain, along with the body, were kept in a youthful state by life extension technology, this tendency for mental/psychological stagnancy and close mindedness may be reduced or eliminated.

 

I think it's also important to factor in that experience and wisdom that can be accrued with a longer life may have great value. Imagine if, due to anti-aging technology, we could have humans who had the experience and wisdom of say 150 years combined with the vigour, open-mindedness and sharpness of a biologically twenty five year-old brain. Now imagine if a significant proportion of society was composed of such people. We might just experience the greatest enlightenment humanity has every experienced as a result. Of course I cannot prove that would happen, but if we're going to speculate I think there are also reasons to believe that anti-aging technology could have many such highly beneficial impacts.

 

 

3. "People are cancer"

 

I certainly can find many faults with humanity and humans in general; I don't think humans are perfect. However, humans are arguably the most empathic, compassionate, intelligent, reflective and conscious manifestations of nature that we know of. The reason why some people can view humanity as a cancer in the first place is exactly because they have at least some of these traits. The irony for those making such claims is that, in so far as we know, humans are the only ones who care about this planet - no other known life form has the mental capacity to even conceive of the world in any way close to allowing them to care on a global scale as we do.

 

On a practical level, the future wellbeing of all the animals, plants and environments on Earth may actually depend on humans. "Nature" routinely and blindly anihilates entire planets and all life on it, by all manner of cataclysmic events....from rogue comets to supernova to supervolcanos. At least for the next hundred thousand years or so, no other species on this planet will be likely to have the technological means to protect this planet, or to shuttle the inhabitants to a safer place in case of such cataclysm. So maybe those who actually care about the earth and its biosphere should actually be supporting humanity - we could be the best chance the planet and all life upon it has for now.

 

Another thing to consider is that as human technology and power has grown, our ability to make massive and long lasting changes to the planet has dramatically increased. Now, a single generation may be able to alter the planet in a way that will be felt for many generations to come. Climate change is an example of this. Resource use is an example of this. Population growth is an example of this.

 

Arguably, our power to make massive long-lasting impacts has far outpaced our lifespan. We have gained the ability to make multi-generational impacts, but have yet to attain the lifespan to match this. This may have created a particular lack of responsibility; most of the generation alive today is expecting to be dead and gone before many of the impacts of their behaviours is fully felt.

 

But if instead the current generation were to have access to life-extension technology, and thus to expect they would be around for many generations - long enough to be affected (for good or bad) by their own actions - then there might be a radical change of mindset and choices.

 

Perhaps one of the single greatest limitations today for humanity making really great advancements and achievements is a lack of desire and willpower for setting really long-term goals. It is a problem much discussed in politics. But if people expected that they would be around for a political or personal decision that might take 50 years or even longer to pay off, things might be really fundtamentally different. The scope for progressive might be dramatically expanded.

 

Many (most?) humans are capable of growing and improving upon themselves. We live, we learn, we gain knowledge and wisdom and new perspectives. Some grow faster than others, but we try to do better. I know I and many other people genuinely try to improve themselves and the world in which they live. 

 

But what we have now is each generation filled entirely of the people who had to struggle to build themselves up over a preciously limited number of decades from an ignorant blank slate, only to then to slowly degrade until death. Imagine instead a world in which human personal growth and self-improvement could continue on, uninhibited by the slow degradation of mind and body; instead replaced with the vigour, drive and determination of youth, with the biological brain and body of a twenty five year old.

 

Whilst some might disagree, I personally am already very impressed by humanity now, but just imagine what we might achieve...

 

Edited by Brett Black, 26 April 2015 - 12:34 PM.