Hacker News Reader

Comment by otikik | Hacker News Reader

Immortality for the extremely wealthy perhaps. The rest of us, at best, will have just enough to keep being productive, until we are no longer needed.

View on HN

What if becomes super cheap?

I think immortality would be bad for humanity, but ~40 more productive years would be beneficial. Currently we take 25 years of preparation in order to work 35.

but there's a premium on our youth -- The people who complain that it's harder to find a job in their 50s and 60s can't _all_ be wrong or mistaken. I feel like we like to imagine that these treatments would extend our 20s and 30s, but what if they extend our 60s instead?

Most people I know in their 60s would way rather be in their 60s than dead

They can't all be wrong or mistaken, but there can be a very strong sample bias.

I can go into a longer diatribe here, but the short story is:

1) Most people have a hard time finding jobs at any age. Recent college grads can't all be wrong. :)

2) There is always a strong reversion to mean

3) Most of the people in their 50s or 60s whom I hear complaining were an outlier for employability for their age group in their 20s and 30s (e.g. straight out of Stanford).

Most older people I know are /very/ employable, and don't complain. Another pathway:

- Finish a state college. Have a very hard time finding a first job.

- Work up the career ladder, and build up a resume, reputation, and track record.

- Much easier time finding jobs in their 50s and 60s than straight out of college or early career.

Some of this also has to do with bust/boom cycles. People who entered the workforce during recessions had a hard time finding a job in their 20s, and then found things comparatively easy. People who entered during a boom cycle are the opposite.

That is kind of what I am saying. I think it would be better if we had 25 years of preparation, followed by 75 productive years followed by 25 years of retirement. The current 25,35,15 split isn’t very efficient.

Ageism might still exist but significantly pushed back.

The you’ll see wealth inequality skyrocket as rich people enjoy wealth compounding for an additional X years.

If most people can live forever, they’ll rebel against the conditions they live in. I suspect the rich would actually perish.

A lot of life now is ordained on the idea that we don’t live forever and we can’t see change in our lifetimes… but if the lifetime is forever - well, I’m gonna fight to make it better immediately cause then I have forever to enjoy it.

Seems rather backwards to me. Insurrection doesn’t take very long and the stakes are much higher when you have immortality.

Unless we get rid of capitalism as well. Or, at least, force these people to pay taxes that prevent the accumulation of wealth and its undue influence in politics.

Hard. While capitalism may be an established societal practice, accumulation of wealth and power is also the natural state of things. You need an incredibly cohesive society to prevent that, the likes of which humanity has never seen imo.

Humanity has never seen a lot of things that are now ubiquitous. Have hope.

What happened before capitalism?

Oneguyism. It is still pretty popular.

Communism is way better: everyone is poor except one guy.

Looks like I’m getting downvoted by CCP bots.

“bUt tRuE CoMMunISM^TM hAS nEVEr bEEN TriED!!”

True actually, oneguyism is often disguised as communism.

I think the ultimate solution is to get to the point where everything is very cheap. With AI and robotics, maybe this will be possible. Then wealth doesn't matter that much - everyone could be relatively much wealthier than they are today. Truly scarce things will only be for the rich. Who cares, let them have their gold and premium real estate.

So what if this becomes super cheap? Would dental treatments or insulin or whatever other basic medication become affordable too? Because otherwise that's a hell of immortality being offered to the masses...

Even on a forum where really smart people congregate, the "everywhere is America" syndrom is easily seen - even though Americans only constitute about 4 per cent of the world population.

Where I live, no one struggles to buy insulin. And if there is any kind of anti-aging treatment available, I don't doubt it will be offered to the general population without much ado. Compared to the rising cost of the pension systems in aging populations, treatments like that would be probably "dirt cheap".

I also live in a “cheap insulin” location. However, I’m pretty sure the Americans ultimately subsidize a lot of drug discovery. Even better would be to have stronger humans that require no healthcare.

With more productive years it seems like a reasonable conclusion would be that wealth would generally increase. Of course I have no idea what actual age extension would look like, but it seems pointless to extend the 80s or 90s. More years like 30s would be ideal.

Think of rich people as beta testers.

It's in the interest of the rich for the poor to be the beta testers.

When anti-aging becomes real rather than fantasy, there are going to be so many mutually incompatible conspiracy theories.

>It's in the interest of the rich for the poor to be the beta testers.

You're assuming the rich are rational. The billionaires on the OceanGate Titan didn't think this way; they were perfectly happy to beta-test a shoddily-designed sub.

I was half tempted to reference that myself, but if I had, someone else would have replied with all the testing SpaceX does.

(The recent explosion was such a test).

(And that sub had apparently been to depth before? I didn't follow the details…)

The fact that one billionaire's company does a decent job testing doesn't mean that billionaire customers are paying attention, or that other billionaires aren't happy to be beta-testers for a different company that doesn't believe in testing or safety or regulation.

I think the OceanGate disaster just shows that billionaires aren't any smarter or more rational than the rest of us.

Can you reason through the gloom? Unless immortality comes with built in invincibility, I don't see how it would not have to be democratized pretty much immediately to avoid civil unrest of the outmost proportions.

Also I don't see what would be to gain to not do it for those in power.

Just look at what we let them get away with now.

I’m sure a lot of people would defend the arrangement. “Of course Elon Musk can have inmortality and you don’t. He’s a genius”.

Is there anything in terms of healthcare that is only available to billionaires today (not available to middle class)?

Not going bankrupt

Again, not everywhere is America. In fact, most of the world isn't America.

Don't judge the prospects of the entire humanity by the pathology that is called the US healthcare system.

Ironically, Musk is a longevity skeptic himself.

Bezos would be the guy, spending billions on Altos Labs.

I am sure most would not.

If it's technological and not limited by some natural scarcity of components, there's no reason for this to be the case, just like everyone these days can afford a smartphone that looks like sci-fi to someone from the year 2000.

Only if they don’t live. Doing anything in life has risk: flying, driving etc

People in their twenties have an annual chance of dying of about one in a thousand, so effective anti-aging would give an expected lifespan of about a thousand years.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

Based on the rates of various types of accidental deaths, you could extend that quite a bit by avoiding dangerous drugs and and living in an area where you're unlikely to get shot. If we figure out really safe self-driving cars, that'll make a big difference too. In much of Europe you can already get the same effect by taking public transport everywhere. Air travel is quite unlikely to kill you.

https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-mortalit...

Put all that together and a 10,000-year expected lifespan looks pretty achievable.

And some cells do not reproduce (neurons, etc), so you have to keep them in good shape, except this is impossible. For example 1/3 people are infected with Herpes virus which stays in their neurons.

In addition some cells reproduce only a few times, often only during youth.

And there is sometimes involution like in thymus.

those cells reproduce at some point, I imagine that if aging can be reversed new cell growth could also be stimulated.

> "those cells reproduce at some point,"

No some cells never reproduce, for example motor neurons.

> "I imagine that if aging can be reversed new cell growth could also be stimulated."

I have a hard time to imagine how to replace a up to one meter/yard long cell with sometimes hundred of synapses which is surrounded by cells such as astroglia and microglia that are equally important.

Now you get to rent your youthful body for a low fee of 5000€ per month. [0]

[0] Cancelling the subscription may result in accelerated aging and immediate organ and heart failure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com