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The practical problem is resource scarcity. We're already destroying our only planet with 7 billion people living only 72 years on average. If we manage to get through the problems we've already created, it'll be a miracle, and it is safe to say that without a lot of other problems besides longevity being solved, there is zero chance that a significantly larger population would make it.

And those problems have to be solved first, we couldn't just say "well, let's multiply the population, then figure out what to do about it later".

I'm also very skeptical that, given an indefinitely extended lifespan, people would suddenly do all of those nice-sounding things you list. More likely they'd just do the exact same things they do now, for longer.

It sort of reminds me of the philosophy around the early internet: imagine if people could get access to all information and communicate with anyone, anywhere. Imagine how smart we'll become, how civilized! That's what we thought would happen, but look at what we actually did: yell at each other and watch porn. My guess is that if we lived forever, we wouldn't suddenly become interesting, enlightened people if we weren't already.

> We're already destroying our only planet with 7 billion people living only 72 years on average.

Because we only live a short while, we don't take a long view and there's a soft cap on society's accumulated wisdom. (In a smaller scale it's like companies losing "institutional knowledge" when employees leave.) People would act differently if they knew they'd be around for 700y instead of 70.

> That's what we thought would happen [with the Internet], but look at what we actually did

You're not seriously suggesting humanity is better without the Internet…

> You're not seriously suggesting humanity is better without the Internet…

I cannot speak for karaterobot, but that seems to be an unwarranted inference from the post you are replying to, which merely points out that the internet did not lead to the more cooperative and altruistic world that some idealists predicted.

You posit that humanity would step up to the challenges of a ten-fold increase in longevity, but I haven't seen what I would regard as persuasive evidence for that view. The fact that the internet has been a net benefit (a view I accept) is not that evidence, IMHO.

The argument by analogy, as I understood it, was the following.

  Internet idealism : Internet negatives¹ :: longevity idealism : longevity negatives²
  ¹flaming & porn ²scarcity & overpopulation

In the context of a discussion about whether or not to undertake a societal change (widespread longevity), bringing up an example of a prior societal change (The Internet) where the result didn't live up to the ideal is more likely than not an argument against making the change in favor of maintaining the status quo (killing statistical 72 year-olds).

Statistical 72 year-olds? What are they? And the status quo is that they are killed? You appear to be inventing some bizarre argument that has not even been mentioned up to now.

The practical problem is resource scarcity. We're already destroying our only planet with 7 billion people living only 72 years on average. If we manage to get through the problems we've already created, it'll be a miracle, and it is safe to say that without a lot of other problems besides longevity being solved, there is zero chance that a significantly larger population would make it.

The problem is not resource scarcity, it's pollution. For example, Americans pollute far more than Indian, despite having a smaller population.

It’s not about a single person - aka mastering tennis.

How are we as a species suppose to take to the stars if our lifespan is relatively short?

I would wager that this is another step in becoming an interstellar race. Aka the challenge is not just about bending space-time.

What if Einstein lived to 500 or was still alive?

Anyway, I think people need to step way back on the true necessity of solving aging. At a minimum it’s about ensuring we have a high quality of life while living out our final days and long term it’s about the human species viability as an interstellar civilization.

> What if Einstein lived to 500 or was still alive?

The flipside would be, what if Aristotle or Ptolemy lived to 2500 and were still alive? Would we still be arguing if everything revolves around Earth, or if fire, earth, water and air constitute everything?

8<----------------

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."

Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

8<----------------

if you want to improve the net intellectual progress of humanity solving inequality will do a lot more than solving aging.

Why not both?

well, if current trends are any indication, anti-aging research will tend to disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and if anything increase the percentage of resources that flow upwards. the potential einsteins labouring in a mine or field are even less likely to be helped if they are not made a systemic priority.

I've always been a fan of this story and on the side of "it's logical to spend all human effort curing death" but lately I've just developed hesitations around the argument for that.

Mainly stemming from all of the societal issues we have that ultimately are based on human nature and our tribal instincts. Living longer isn't going to make things like universal basic income happen or accelerate us into some post-scarcity economy.

Humans already behave poorly enough when provided a knowingly limited lifespan, I can't see people improving provided an unlimited natural lifespan. We're not wired for it.

These questions were explored somewhat in the Scythe trilogy[0]. Natural death was conquered so some people are tasked with going around and enforcing unnatural death. I enjoyed reading it and thinking over some of the implications.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28954189-scythe

> One of my favorite book quotes:

> > “Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics is not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do.” - Aldous Huxley

This is what AGI will go. It will know everything, and at an above best-human level at that.

Plenty of arguments can be made here:

1. A lifetime is enough to experience everything that you listed.

2. Honestly, not everyone is interested to experience everything that you think everyone should experience.

3. What is the point of experiencing them?

4. Experiences and relationships are valuable only because they are time-limited, either by change or death.

4. Experiences and relationships are valuable only because they are time-limited, either by change or death.

Not true by any stretch of imagination.

Why not?

1. Maybe, but I’m sure there’s more that I want to do in life than what I listed out in about 10 minutes

2. My point isn’t that they should experience those things, it’s that there’s so much to experience.

3. What’s the point of anything?

4. When I think of the relationships in my life that went too long or too short, the ones that went on for too long I don’t feel too bad about. The ones that went too short are a completely different class - I feel far more regret and sadness.

4.Experiences and relationships are valuable only because they are time-limited, either by change or death.

Nope. They would be more valuable if they where not time-limited.

Curing death would have obvious downsides. Most people would not be able to procreate - the world would overcrowd. The really bad people of history could find themselves in permanent long-lasting power (think Putin for a modern example). I think you can come up with 100 reasons why curing death would be bad. As Steve Jobs said, death is life's greatest invention.

The really bad people of history could find themselves in permanent long-lasting power (think Putin for a modern example). I think you can come up with 100 reasons why curing death would be bad. As Steve Jobs said, death is life's greatest invention.

On the contrary, Putin showed how dictatorships are vulnerable to defeat, if not collapse.

It seems more like we're justifying death rather than solving challenges.

Hilarious to hear that we are justifying something that naturally occurs, but let's indulge the train of thought--

The elimination of death would necessitate that each individual would consume indefinitely, whereas the planet has finite resources. So, at some point, children must stop being born, and governments must either enforce infertility or make having sex illegal.

Animals viciously murdering each other for food is also natural, that doesn’t mean it’s preferable.

I would imagine if death were cured, a very small percentage of people would actually want to live forever. I imagine most people would want to live between 1x and say, 5x an average lifespan.

It's a silly question to ask.

Do you think about where you will go to the restroom 20 years into the future? No. Same thing with lifespan questions. You'll presumably die in some sort of accident.

Why is it not preferable for animals to viciously murder each other for food? There's nothing wrong with it. It's quite a beautiful thing once you understand the natural world.

Yeah, there are downsides to everything, the question is whether pros > cons.

Imagine tomorrow, some mystical cosmic event made it impossible for people to die of natural causes. Would you institute a law that once someone made it to 100 years old, they should be executed? This would prevent most of the downsides curing death would spring.

I think the answer to this is obviously no, that would be completely foolish, if not immoral. But when we start with the status quo of death existing, puzzlingly, most people think death is a good thing.

Enforcing it completely would be rather hard, but I think in principle it might be a good idea.

>Most people would not be able to procreate - the world would overcrowd.

This isn't quite true. Suppose no one dies. Starting from a population of 10 billion, suppose every person can have one child.

The population after one iteration is 15 billion. If those 5 billion then each have one child, the next iteration's population is 17.5 billion. This converges to 2x the original population. In fact, so long as not everyone has 2 kids, it will converge to a finite value.

(Edit: also, this problem takes places on the timescale of HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of years. The year 2500 is not going to look like today.)

>The really bad people of history could find themselves in permanent long-lasting power (think Putin for a modern example).

In many cases, dictatorships do not end with the dictator's old age. This is true both in the sense that they sometimes die early, and in the sense that they're prone to dynasties. The system of a dictatorship already has agelessness, just not indestructibility.

>I think you can come up with 100 reasons why curing death would be bad.

You can indeed do that, but it's worth keeping the screaming torture of the default in perspective. It's really hard to do worse than aging. I wouldn't want to see my parents wither, suffer, and die. I don't want to die knowing my children would wither, suffer, and die. I don't want you to wither, suffer, and die. I don't want people to have to grieve the loss of their loved ones.

We can just... get rid of the ultrabadness, and have more of the good things. There are new problems that would have to be addressed, but they are addressable! Sometimes, things just aren't that complicated.

People would still eventually die of accidents. Undying doesn't imply unkillable.

Honestly I think if we got to a point where death were eliminated, we would also be able to eliminate personological "badness", or at least it wouldn't be too far behind.

If it weren't, it would certainly become a focus, and probably within reach.

Why do you think that? I see no basis for that belief, rather the opposite.