Would the world be better if people just stayed alive for good?

Ubbquittious · 20-03-2018 10:39AM #1

It seems quite inefficient and wasteful to keep introducing new people to the world who will make the same mistakes and do the same stupid things as the crowd before them.

Eventual some biopharmaceutical megacorp will find a way around this pesky aging and death problem and you'll see a huge wave of people against it being put to use because they're too attached to the status quo but I'd say this would be a mistake. I reckon the world would be a much better place if it were populated with sagely 900-year-olds but since this hasn't been tried before I cannot be 100% sure.

Perhaps the 900+ year olds would go mad from being alive for so long and having seen the same daily drudge for so many centuries and there would be no tablet that could sort it.

What do you think?

Dravokivich · 20-03-2018 10:44AM

Why would they be unable to kill themselves without a special tablet? Folks don't need one now.

silverharp · 20-03-2018 10:48AM

imagine the grudges , its probably better that the past gets relegated to history also people might become overly risk adverse if you had an infinite future ahead to protect

20-03-2018 10:48AM

All your answers can be found in this mini documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_izvAbhExY

Wibbs · 20-03-2018 10:49AM

Ubbquittious wrote: »

It seems quite inefficient and wasteful to keep introducing new people to the world who will make the same mistakes and do the same stupid things as the crowd before them.

They can also be the people who come up with new things that drive humanity forward. If we stopped and kept the current crop pickled forever we'd not see another Einstein, Mozart etc(and 9 times outa 10 they do all their best work before they're 30).

biko · 20-03-2018 10:51AM

Would you like to slave in the same ****ty job for hundreds of years?

A dictator for life rules a country for 500 years?

Fourier · 20-03-2018 10:54AM

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Eventual some biopharmaceutical megacorp will find a way around this pesky aging and death problem

That's a massive assumption.

Tell me how · 20-03-2018 10:54AM

The best thing for the world would probably be if humans stopped procreating entirely and maintained existing lifespans until, well, you know.

bigar · 20-03-2018 10:56AM

As I get older I can feel that physically I cannot do the same as when I was younger. Will this disintegration continue or will one be frozen in time at a certain age?

silverharp · 20-03-2018 10:57AM

the sifi solution will be to upload people's consciousness before death, so you wouldn't be taking up any space or resources, it would be a bit like being on boards I'd imagine.....

Ubbquittious · 20-03-2018 11:05AM

silverharp wrote: »

imagine the grudges , its probably better that the past gets relegated to history also people might become overly risk adverse if you had an infinite future ahead to protect

That's one thing that would also aggravate the boredom factor. Things like knives, cars, guns and upturned plugs would presumably all get banned just in case

Wibbs · 20-03-2018 11:28AM

Fourier wrote: »

That's a massive assumption.

Whether humanity will pursue it is an assumption alright, though the science behind longevity will almost certainly catch up. It is in the end an engineering problem, albeit at a massively complex and microscopic level. There's no good reason why at some stage we won't be able to "freeze" cells in their younger healthy stage. Keep someone 25 "forever". Some cells are immortal as it is. Many cancer cells for example. They keep on dividing.

That's one of the hurdles to get over of course. Cells that never die are dangerous to the organism. The main problem with ageing are the faults that come along with each division, fix those and we'd be on our way to extended healthy lifespans.

Some animal species are giving insights into ageing. Rodents tend to live fast and die young(high metabolic rate usually equals short lifespans), except for bats. While a mouse might live for a couple of years, bats can live into their forties. Mole rats are another oddball. They live for much longer than the equivalent sized rodent and they don't appear to age. A Mole rats risk of dying is the same at 5 as it is at 30. Which is odd. It would be like a human's risk of dying was the same at 20 as it is at 80. They still die of course, but it's not clear from what, they just appear to stop. They almost never get cancer either. Now if we could figure out how to engineer that into humans you could have people growing up hitting maturity and staying as healthy as a twenty year old until they were a hundred*.

I suspect living much beyond say three hundred will remain largely out of reach. However if we do end up creating actual non biological AI's, it's quite possible they will be our replacements and they can live essentially forever. So an immortal intelligent species could very well come into existence on Earth and spread beyond it. Interstellar travel would become a reality. Time and distance means little if you're immortal.

*one of the biggest factors seems to be to do with insulin. Superior insulin regulation appears to be a major factor in health and longevity. Families who's members regularly live to 100 have been found to have extremely robust insulin systems. The calorie restriction diet that has found to increase longevity in every animal species so far studied(inc primates) seems to trigger better insulin response.

Insect Overlord · 20-03-2018 11:36AM

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithonus

Lorelli! · 20-03-2018 11:37AM

No. You'd be bored to death!

sbsquarepants · 20-03-2018 11:37AM

Would get very crowded, very quickly without people popping their clogs do you not think?

Standing room only soon enough:eek:

SEPT 23 1989 · 20-03-2018 11:45AM

worked out well for Dracula

raspberrypi67 · 20-03-2018 11:46AM

Having to stick out and stay on this bloody planet with Putin rigging his 500th term in office...lol

jimgoose · 20-03-2018 11:51AM

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Fourier · 20-03-2018 11:54AM

Wibbs wrote: »

I suspect living much beyond say three hundred will remain largely out of reach.

I definitely believe in the possibility of extended lifespans, it was more actual immortality or even living thousands of years I have doubts about. Keeping something as complex as the body repaired indefinitely is probably what is known as an NP problem and having cells "keep up" with resultant issues (fixing problems will never leave tissue in the same state, etc) no matter how well you program them seems impossible to me.

Even more so, a neuronal network in the brain keeping itself coherent long term as it fills up and how the brain manages the mind are large unknowns.

Bambi985 · 20-03-2018 11:57AM

Good god no, who the hell would want to stick around this hole indefinitely? I reckon I'd be glad to kick the bucket after around 80 years of this sh1t.

archer22 · 20-03-2018 12:11PM

No bloody way...for one thing it would stop evolution which is the whole purpose of being born and reproducing with others creating offspring slightly different to yourself and then dying to make room for them.
But one other good reason now is climate change..you don't want to be around in 900 years time or even 100 years from now!!

seamus · 20-03-2018 12:13PM

It's irrelevant really. Eventually the universe will die a heat death and be nothing more than an homogenous soup of subatomic particles.

It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme what humanity does with itself, whether there are more or fewer of us. Humans will disappear eventually no matter what we do.

Allinall · 20-03-2018 12:23PM

seamus wrote: »

It's irrelevant really. Eventually the universe will die a heat death and be nothing more than an homogenous soup of subatomic particles.

.

Judging by some of the threads currently in After Hours, I’d say we’ve already reached that point.

wakka12 · 20-03-2018 12:29PM

archer22 wrote: »

No bloody way...for one thing it would stop evolution which is the whole purpose of being born and reproducing with others creating offspring slightly different to yourself and then dying to make room for them.
But one other good reason now is climate change..you don't want to be around in 900 years time or even 100 years from now!!

In the hypothetical situation where ageing is 'cured' as in the OP, medical advances would be such that humans could easily alter any physical characteristic very easily, so the evolution thing is irrelevant as evolution would be obsolete

Theres a lot of other issues though, such as food and space. And I think living forever would cause a great deal of depression within the population, and people questioning their reason for life and what the point of living is.

Personally I think life is a bit short. And most humans don't get to experience many amazing things about planet earth before they die. But I don't know if it'd be a good thing if we lived forever.

Fourier · 20-03-2018 12:58PM

seamus wrote: »

It's irrelevant really. Eventually the universe will die a heat death and be nothing more than an homogenous soup of subatomic particles.

Again, just to be technical, but that's not known for certain.

Kimbot · 20-03-2018 01:06PM

Sounds like someone wathced Altered Carbon on netflix, dont worry my next sleeve will be female :pac:

archer22 · 20-03-2018 01:09PM

wakka12 wrote: »

In the hypothetical situation where ageing is 'cured' as in the OP, medical advances would be such that humans could easily alter any physical characteristic very easily, so the evolution thing is irrelevant as evolution would be obsolete

Theres a lot of other issues though, such as food and space. And I think living forever would cause a great deal of depression within the population, and people questioning their reason for life and what the point of living is.

Personally I think life is a bit short. And most humans don't get to experience many amazing things about planet earth before they die. But I don't know if it'd be a good thing if we lived forever.

Yes but evolution is not just physical, this what Darwin said in this case about the evolution of empathy and I roughly quote.

"At the bottom of the evolutionary scale is the Savage who can only feel empathy for himself and his immediate family.
Next up the ladder is the man who can only feel empathy for himself his family and his own tribe.
Next those who can feel empathy for all of their own kind.
At the highest pinnacle of evolution those who can feel empathy for all living things."

In this case Darwin was talking about empathy...but its an example of evolution being more complicated than just physical bodies

20-03-2018 05:07PM

In theory, you could live forever if you can alter the cells to repair at the same rate and in the correct order that they do during your early years.
Look at some species of shark who live for 20-440 years as the cells the grow essentially replenish the body, cells only die and replace in much later years.

If you could control your cell production levels and rate you could keep your body going as in a state of really what ever age you wanted.

As said though, we would not evolve, unless we reproduce with healthy cells but with all the artificial reproduction methods today such as IVF that is becoming less stringent anyway.

What will happen is dome form of hybrid like transcendance where we have our minds intact with artificial bodies, once we figure out AI and can use this to load up our own thought patterns and assimilate information the need for evolution will cease.

Ubbquittious · 20-03-2018 05:10PM

Skyrimaddict wrote: »

In theory, you could live forever if you can alter the cells to repair at the same rate and in the correct order that they do during your early years.
Look at some species of shark who live for 20-440 years as the cells the grow essentially replenish the body, cells only die and replace in much later years.

If you could control your cell production levels and rate you could keep your body going as in a state of really what ever age you wanted.

As said though, we would not evolve, unless we reproduce with healthy cells but with all the artificial reproduction methods today such as IVF that is becoming less stringent anyway.

What will happen is dome form of hybrid like transcendance where we have our minds intact with artificial bodies, once we figure out AI and can use this to load up our own thought patterns and assimilate information the need for evolution will cease.

What happens if you duplicate your mind once uploaded? Which one continues on to be you?

Tell me how · 20-03-2018 05:12PM

Skyrimaddict wrote:

What will happen is dome form of hybrid like transcendance where we have our minds intact with artificial bodies, once we figure out AI and can use this to load up our own thought patterns and assimilate information the need for evolution will cease.

You would be very naive to suggest that such an existence would not give rise to further evolution.

In fact, the above scenario would probably lead to a consensus to turn off the AI powered android machines as there is no further point in existing.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 20-03-2018 05:14PM

Bambi985 wrote: »

Good god no, who the hell would want to stick around this hole indefinitely? I reckon I'd be glad to kick the bucket after around 80 years of this sh1t.

The fact that there is an end date for everybody keeps me going. :pac:

The thought of living 100s of years would be my version of hell.

Would the world be better if people just stayed alive for good?

Would the world be better if people just stayed alive for good? 8 votes

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