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Comment by nugget | Hacker News Reader

Forget achieving immortality - if we manage to extend average lifespan to even 120 years of age then almost all of our socioeconomic systems break down and we have to more or less rebuild society from the ground up.

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We're probably going to have to do that anyway with the huge growth in automation and ML/AI. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

The next time this topic comes up, notice how quickly people run into the weeds to discuss all of the social impacts. Happens every time.

There are a handful of people working on the tough problems in the world, the rest are just bullshitting about why if it ever happens, society will collapse.

Hate to break it to you but I worked around some of the most prolific hard scientists in the world and many of them genuinely enjoyed bullshitting about the potential future social impact of their work.

Good for them. Kept them motivated. The rest of us aren't adding any value. Straight to the bullshit.

Society will inevitably change as technology changes. I see no reason to avoid thinking about the problems that technology might cause.

Our socioeconomic systems are already on the verge of collapse. We don't need life extension technology to achieve it. Just the fact that more and more jobs are being lost to automation and fewer people are dying due to everyday problems such as infant mortality and smoking. The coming revolution of self driving cars is going to exasperate both "problems": fewer jobs, fewer car fatalities.

Wouldn't we just be forced to move to a more simple life?

Well, some people may be forced to move to a simple live, others may be forced to not live, others may continue as we go... Deciding who is going to take which path will probably be the topic of the next world war.

This is true, but my guess is an extension of life like you are talking about will probably come with increased health and hopefully a big decrease in health costs. I think that the terrible heath of most of our elderly people and the cost that incurs is a big part of where our entitlement systems take the most damage. We have a lot of room to improve there without even extending human life.

Hey on the bright side it's not like any of our existing socioeconomic systems are great. Last I checked we did not live in a utopia.

Not utopia compared to what?

My great grandmother had to have 8 kids so that she could have 4 or 5 adult children. That was less than 100 years ago.

My grand parents were the children of subsistence farmers without running water or electricity. They went to high school, worked in factories, and could get broadcast TV in their living room. Electricity and running water became a base default.

My parents work in an office pushing papers around. Even the society of their youth seems alien in its antiquatedness of both social mores and amenities.

I get paid to think things and can reasonably expect to live essentially disease free until my 70's. Achieving 90 in relatively good health and vitality doesn't seem out of the question.

Seems pretty utopic to me. What not-utopia are you talking about?

EDIT: Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo Over the past 200 years, the difference between 1st world and 3rd world has all but vanished. We still have a ways to go, but no utopia is perfect. Even in the movies.

Compared to Star Trek. That we are doing better than previous generations only inspires confidence that we could do even better in the future.

>I get paid to think things and can reasonably expect to live essentially disease free until my 70's. Achieving 90 in relatively good health and vitality doesn't seem out of the question.

No, you'll probably start suffering from diseases of affluence well below that. Sooner or later, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancer, and pals crop up among basically everyone who doesn't carefully optimize their lifestyle to maximize health.

In fact, the same principle applies to most of the rest of your lifestyle: it all seems very nice because you're discounting the incredibly careful and difficult-to-duplicate optimization of everything from personal habits to major life choices.

Your entire life (our entire lives, really: it's me too) is essentially golden handcuffs. This is a major step up from handcuffs made of rusty saw-blades that cut and give you tetanus whenever you move, but you're still actually handcuffed.

We are better than we were the generation before. Big deal. That's precisely the point: we aren't at the end game, there is still far ahead to push forward to.

Sex trafficking, international terrorism, homelessness, racism, crushing poverty, wage theft, mass shootings, income inequality, food deserts...are you for real?

Try walking alone unarmed across any city late at night from any era over 100 years ago and you took your life in your hands. Just because mass media is bringing you stories of the miseries of the world does not mean they are more prevalent. The majority of the world has been lifted out of poverty in the past 200 years to something unrecognizable and the pockets of turmoil that still remain will be fixed as time goes on.

Delightfully faith-based assertions regarding the future. You'll note we were discussing the near total lack of semblance between modern society and any number of utopian ideals. Apologetics aren't making the comparison any more flattering.

and the people that grow your coffee beans? How long do they live for? There is a tension between believing that a rising tide will lift all boats (eventually, someday) and that part of the prosperity of much of the West is directly built upon the back of a system that disenfranchises most of the developing world -- depending upon it for cheap and disposable labor, waste dumping sites, etc.

The people who grow my coffee beans also live much better than they used to. We're enjoying a before unseen period of peace and prosperity. Globally.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Over the past 200 years, the difference between 1st world and 3rd world has all but vanished. We still have a ways to go, but no utopia is perfect. Even in the movies.

I take your point, and it is one interpretation. There is another interpretation as well. Here, I'll trade you videos. From a now-ethereum venture capitalist, so not just a hippie dippie leftist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQCy-UrLYw

it's short, ten minutes

Sure but the anarchism of blowing up existing systems in hopes of great ones hurts a ton of people in the process with marginal likelihoods of success

Whereas desperately clinging to the decaying hulk of existing systems guarantees continued suffering and exploitation with literally no chance of success. So...

No chance of success? They are by no means perfect, but millions of people in the US alone benefit from our decaying hulks of existing systems. Sure, an ideal system can help millions more or help those millions more, but blowing them up and hoping something better comes out of it leaves millions that rely on them in the cold.

Go look at a graph of income inequality over the last 30 years. Reflect on the fact that 30 years ago Detroit was a bustling industrial hub. Contemplate the fact that we have more people in jail in this country than any other country in the world. Child poverty & homelessness are at near-historic levels and rising. Critical environmental regulations are being dismantled at the state and federal levels and we have politicians openly discussing further deregulation of industry. So when you say millions of people are benefitting you'll excuse me if I ask you to define what that means. Incidentally, why do you assume real political reform (or even revolution) requires blowing a bunch of people up?

Never said blowing people up, I said blowing the systems up.

You don't have to convince me that there are serious systemic issues in this country. However, existing systems have done a lot of good, and need consistent improvements, not a lazy call for revolution without considering who gets affected by it.

We passed critical environmental regulations in the first place. Crime rates continue to decrease across the country across generations. Millions of those people in poverty or out of work benefit from the safety net, disabled people are protected, minorities are protected from segregation, public schools and colleges educate millions for free or close to it.

All these systems can and should improve. But just throwing out "revolution" doesn't solve any of these problems.

The systems you're infatuated with have done at least as much harm as good, currently work mostly in favor of individuals who least need the help, and for at least the last 30 years have steadily grown more dysfunctional. Working within a system only works when the system works, and there's nothing lazier than calls to work within a system that's directly responsible for the overwhelming majority of society's ills. But by all means feel free to keep painting would-be revolutionaries as lazy, bomb-throwing nihilists.

Let's assume you're right -- we still have decades before anybody even reaches that age. We've dealt with bigger shocks in shorter spans of time.

Feel free to explain because I don't see what would be the problem.

Looking at the US, our society is based on working from 18 till about 65-67. Your plan for "retirement" includes living from ~67-85 on a fixed income. That income is a combination of (ideally) retirement income, and social security, coupled with socialized care.

If you live from 120, that changes that "retirement" point.

Mortgages are 30-year fixed rate. Social Security kicks in at 65.

You could make the case that you continue to work past 65, but in what field. How many 85 year olds are in fields they could stay relevant in?

An alternative way of looking at it is that societies do better when they make full use of their resources. Saudi Arabia has long been criticised (by lots of people, but particularly relevant here) by economists for the way they keep women out of the labour pool. They are making themselves uncompetitive by this.

It's the same for North Korea - who are getting rid of their most interesting voices for change into hell holes.

So an economic argument would be that we are currently running the years 67+ as unproductive, and the first society to change that will do better than the others. It's also possible that this is the first time in history it would be safe to allow life extension in a lot of countries due to the falling birthrate at the same time.

Oh, and immortality doesn't mean living forever. I read somewhere that even if we could extend lifespan, actuarial tables show that on average people would live to about 700 before dying of accidents.

> You could make the case that you continue to work past 65, but in what field. How many 85 year olds are in fields they could stay relevant in?

I think this depends on whether the brain can be made young, too.

You could retrain at 65 or simply continue learning as you age. We simply don't do that because people know they will retire and die, or otherwise lose the quick wit of youth.

The last part is generally a prejudice nowadays. It is either laziness (and if you don't use it, you lose it) or senility due to medical reasons.

What actually might be happening is genetics and society prodding young people to actually be smarter.

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