Can we live 1000 years? | Hacker News Reader

Can we live 1000 years?

dailygalaxy.com

61 pointsnreece107 comments

Living a thousand years has some pretty interesting implications.

- Things that seem safe will become dangerous. Small daily risks, such as crossing a red light, will have a much bigger chance of killing you. If you live 15 times as long the risk is 15 times as big. Expect to see people being insulated from the daily dangers of the world.

- Our personal drive will diminish. If you want to do a startup (or whatever else that is nontrivial) you have to act now or it might be too late. If you live a thousand years you can do it next month or next millenium, and you won't feel the same pressure to get started.

- The relation between people that have just reached adulthood and "old" people will be tremendous in terms of experience. Can you imagine the experience of someone that lived through the middle ages, the Roman Empire, the colonization of America, the French revolution and both world wars?

And these are just off the top of my head...

Imagine the implications for wealth, too.

If the means of life extension is not hideously expensive, then anyone past a certain age with even the smallest bit of sense will be rich beyond the dreams of mortal men. Compound interest works.

This would have interesting social ramifications. As it is, most states are organized such that the old are relatively rich, the young are relatively poor, and the young's income subsidizes the old's healthcare costs. In a state with some people who are 420 and some people are 20, the Methuselah will be worth $300 million. For every dollar invested back when he was twenty.

If 20% of the population becomes mufti billionaires a billion will not buy what it used to.

Compound interest works in large part because capital has value. As the world becomes rich the value of wealth will go down relative to the value of peoples effort. Basically over the extremely long term expected ROI should go down if people start living into extreme old age. Granted some people will always balance this out with the 700 year old with credit card debt keeping the people who get that interest well paid but if 60 million people are willing to lend billions the interest rate is going to be vary low.

PS: What I wonder about is how the death penalty vs life in prison is going to work out. As people live longer I expect more people to commit "major" crimes and even larger groups of people to know someone that "flipped out". Will we want to punish people for mistakes they made 200 years ago or will people become so jaded that minor crimes are are just dealt with by killing the offender?

I don't know that wealth necessarily implies a lower return to capital. More people are wealthier worldwide right now than at any point in history -- the poorest American makes old European royalty like paupers. (Lives two to three times as long, too.) But what does the return on capital look like in 2008 versus 1408? It is much, much higher.

People, in aggregate, have trillions to invest right now. The market finds a way to deploy it. In a society marked by superabundance for a few, the market would presumably deploy capital towards projects with enormous ROIs and entrance requirements which stagger the imagination. (Think on a sci-fi scale, except with reasons to do it other than to sell sci-fi books. Less "colonize a new planet... because we can!", more "harness a star for energy".)

>But what does the return on capital look like in 2008 versus 1408? It is much, much higher.

No it isn't. See table 2 here: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:K7gncYlDrYQJ:www.econ.uc...

Think of it this way: there is only so much wealth being produced in the world. Increasing lifespan by itself does not increase wealth (unless it increases the proportion of people who are of working age, but at most that would less than double it). So, if a large proportion of people are going to be equivalent to today's millionaires or billionaires, where's all this wealth going to come from?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you don't sound like you know too many of the very poorest Americans. They are in debt, or completely insolvent, living a life of vagrancy, homeless, family-less, mentally disturbed, and diseased, often terminally. Kings lived lives of prestige and luxury.

The very poorest in our society are, as you note, mentally ill, addicted and diseased.

Beyond those people, however, most of the poor do live quite well even in comparison to nobility of the past.

I was marvelling a few days ago that I can get bananas and kiwis in the dead of winter.

It's good to keep life in perspective sometimes.

Someone who makes 12K US a year in the American South can easily live better in almost every material way than most nobility could even a few hundred years ago. More food choices (and at least as abundant food), more chances to travel (by driving), and such a vast array of entertainment choices that it would be inconceivable to people whose might see a bunch of concerts and plays every year.

Even the homeless have access to more, through libraries and shelters, than many societies' wealthy ever did.

Have you lived for 12K US a year in the American south? Or even tried to support kids on that? Just trying to make it on 16k in the Bay Area is a struggle, and it's only myself to feed.

I think you touch on an important point: the poor have access to a better life, or at least more choices, than many in the past could dream of. I don't believe that means that they actually do live a life of luxury: they are far less in control of their lives, are almost compelled to do meaningless work to sustain themselves, and the consumer choices they have often trap rather than fulfill them.

I have lived on less than 12K US a year in the American south, yes. My 2007 income was under 12K, even including borrowing to pay the mortgage, etc, and my wife and I weren't uncomfortable (absent stress about where the next month's mortgage payment was coming from). High-speed internet: check; SUV: check; enough food that we were both still fat: check; a home with over 1500 sq ft and a third of an acre: check.

The only thing kings had more of was power and land, and kings had nothing like the entertainment possibilities we had, and most kings had nothing like the variety of consumables we had.

Today's (first world) poor are wealthy beyond the dreams of those from most earlier eras.

I agree, by the way, that today's American poor are trapped by how much they do have. I would say that they're unwilling, for the most part, to give up the luxury they have for a good chance of more stability later. For most of them, though, this might well be the right choice: as far as I can see, people who make what I make now (around 75K) live lives of about the same happiness as the poor, but with more stuff that they mostly don't care about unless they might lose it suddenly. For someone who finds themselves making this after a few years of 10-25K a year, however, it's really awesome. I still haven't gotten over how great my life is, after half a year of the new income level.

The poor life a "life of leisure", to use historical language.

Out of 36.5 million poor people, only 7.4 million even qualify as "working poor". "Working poor" == "spent >27 weeks/year working or looking for work".

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2006.pdf

As for 16k/year in the bay area, I never lived out west so I won't comment. But as a grad student living 15 minutes out of manhattan on 18k/year, I lacked few material goods available to historical royalty. Fewer concubines, better food.

Consider investments in, e.g., a german bank in 1900. Today worth what? Over the past 1000 years, we've seen major epidemics that wiped out big chunks of the world (e.g., 95% of the population of the americas, 30% of eurasia), deranged dictators who confiscated wealth, revolutions and all sorts of total collapses of society.

Over 1000 years, the risk of losing everything becomes significant.

Hopefully one would diversify among many countries and also with some gold.

Regardless of lifespan we are going to move into a post scarcity economy, where wealth won't mean what it does today. We must do it because we can already see the decline of extracted resources like oil and minerals. We will do it because we can. The internet has enabled telecommuting. Telecommuting enables the move to smaller communities where housing is cheaper. As robots get more capable they will take over the manufacturing base.

I think we are closer to a post scarcity economy than we realize. The biggest big ticket item is housing. The biggest item in the cost of housing in sub/urban areas is land. If we disperse to small towns, the cost of land goes down. If housing were really low cost and we telecommuted, maybe 10 or 20 hours of work per week would meet our needs. Suppose we adopted a Peace Corps/Habitat for Humanity model. After school/college a person spent 3 years building housing, including their own? Maybe all he has to mortgage is the land and materials. Maybe not even that.

Add other ideas like a robot taxi service, 3D copying machines, reasonable health care; and the need for much of the need for the credit economy would disappear. I don't view this as a socialist utopia, more a natural evolution of our current market economy. It still has lots of room for entrepreneurs (less for VCs), volunteers, and open source whatever.

i truly hope so. wealth in a post scarcity world will revolve around experiences that people value, i.e. fun.

This sounds really cool. The only problem is that people like to congregate, but maybe virtual reality could help.

The only problem with your 10-hour workweek is that, as living expenses go down and people try to stop working, wages drop also (because workers won't complain as much if the cuts won't put them out on the street), so you'll still have to work two full-time jobs to keep your cheap house surrounded by endless farmland.

And that's why Sumerian investment banks rule the world today.

To get your $300 million number, you're assuming a 5% risk-free return on investment over 400 years. I very much doubt that you would have received a 5% return on investment by investing in a diversified international portfolio of joint stock corporations from 1608, leaving aside the great likelihood that you would have lost everything by personally being a victim of one war or another, as the Cherokees did on the Trail of Tears, as the Jews and Gypsies did in the Holocaust, as many of the Guaraníes did in the War of the Triple Alliance, etc.

Our personal drive will diminish, but so will our aversion to non-fatal risks. My current reasoning: doing a startup has the opportunity cost of me taking a finance job (not so much these days) or trying to become a tenured professor. Realistically speaking, due to the aging process, I have about 13-18 years of my life to spend on such things (after 40-45, change gets harder). After age 40, I'll probably just keep doing what I'm already doing.

Give me 1000 years to live, I might just spend the next 20 years trying to build an AI. I agree with Yudkowsky that it might be the most important problem of our time, but I'm unwilling to spend my life on such a long shot. Give me 1000 years to spend, 900 youthful, and I'll give it a shot. Worst case, I learn a lot, and I can use those skills in my startup phase (my next 20 years, out of 1000).

Of course, it's different for potentially fatal risks; if I lived 1000 years, I'd probably be less likely to take up Eskrima (my latest project) and I probably wouldn't have fenced in college.

[edit: added this paragraph.] Incidentally, anti-aging would be a major boon for women. Realistically speaking, most women can pick only one of {career/accomplishments/etc, children}. Even those who can pick two must still face the choice of mid level management + children vs startup founder (or something along those lines). Anti-aging gives the opportunity to do both.

Another interesting aspect is the concept of retirement. The way I see it, retirement is done in one of two main ways now: people who save their entire lives to live comfortably for the last 20-30 years, and people who live paycheck to paycheck until they fall into a meager retirement. I think this difference will be magnified many times if people live to 1000.

Imagine working for 100 years to save up enough money to live comfortably for the next 900 years, and how different that is than the people who will live paycheck to paycheck until only the last 20 years or so of their lives. It will create two very separate classes of people.

What makes you think that a person planning on living for 1000 years would go retire for 90% of their life? What makes you think that a person who lives from paycheck to paycheck would be able to afford anti-aging treatments which are likely to be (at least initially) very expensive. Lastly, I doubt that a centenarian (or multi-centenarian) would be stupid enough not to save a $100 in an index fund to come back a century or two later to find a sizable amount in-place waiting to be used?

It is very likely that anybody over ~300 years will be filthy rich because they have had hundreds of years to build up interest on their investments and they have several hundred years of experience in what does and doesn't work in life, not to mention 300 years of contacts.

except that that will affect prices. specifically, things that tailor themselves to multi-centenarians will be much more expensive than other things.

can you imagine what 1000 year lifespans would do to the loan market?

The Man from Earth http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/

I loved that movie, wish more movies like it were made.

Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love.

       -lazarus long

Think how many offspring you could spawn in a thousand years.

There would probably be laws against that. If people were immortal, perhaps the law would say every two humans can have one child between them; that way population could only double once.

Doubt it. Population control laws are too unpopular and anybody over ~300 is probably very rich thanks if nothing else, due to the magic of compound interest. Since rich = powerful, it is unlikely that any population control measure would hold up well.

Right. And even if the docs make you get snipped in exchange for the immortality treatments, by then we'll be able to induce meiosis, combine and crossover genes with another and produce offspring anyhow, for the right price.

Hard to tell if you are arguing against my point through sarcasm or supporting my point by covering a contingency. Weird.

I call it hyper-cynicism, both of those points exist in a kind of quantum superposition.

I was supporting your point. What made it sarcastic, the use of "Right?"

If lots of people get "rich and powerful" all of a sudden, then the criteria for being considered "rich and powerful" will go up.

I'd let them do the snippity-snip in exchange for living to 150. Seriously, I want to see what happens, and I'm not interested in kids. Would rather adopt one if that bug ever bites, but I doubt it will.

Why would one want population to stop growing? http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource

Because, unlike Julian Simon, some people know that the planet is made of matter, and they know about the Law of Matter/Energy Conservation, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and other physical properties of the Universe, any of which by itself would make it impossible for natural resources to be infinite.

Some people have also heard the story of Rapa Nui, whose inhabitants discovered that natural resources are NOT infinite, shortly before their deaths.

Would it matter if humans were also creative of resources, rather than simply consumptive of resources? http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR0...

Our whole evolution up to this point shows that human groups spontaneously evolve patterns of behavior, as well as patterns of training people for that behavior, which tend on balance to lead people to create rather than destroy. Humans are, on net balance, builders rather than destroyers. The evidence is clear: the civilization which our ancestors have bequeathed to us contains more created works than the civilization they were bequeathed.

In short, humankind has evolved into creators and problem-solvers. Our constructive behavior has counted for more than our using-up and destructive behavior, as seen in our increasing length of life and richness of consumption.

This view of the average human as builder conflicts with the view of the average human as destroyer which underlies the thought of many doomsdayers. From the latter view derive such statements as "The U.S. has 5 percent of the population, and uses 40 percent of resources," without reference to the creation of resources by the same U.S. population. (Also involved here is a view of resources as physical quantities waiting for the plucking, rather than as the services that humankind derives from some combination of knowledge with physical conditions.) If one notices only the using-up and destructive activities of humankind, without understanding that constructive patterns of behavior must have been the dominant part of our individual-cum-social nature in order for us to have survived to this point, then it is not surprising that one would arrive at the conclusion that resources will grow scarcer in the future.

We don't really create-- we merely transform physical resources from one form to another, increasing total entropy in the process. Because entropy can only increase and never decrease, our creative activities are outweighed by the destruction that is a direct consequence of it.

In other words, the only ways we can be "creative of resources" are to create energy from nothing, create matter from nothing, or to reduce entropy without increasing it elsewhere. All three of these are known to be impossible.

We don't really create-- we merely transform physical resources from one form to another

If I were to give you an equal mass of rocks in exchange for everything that you own, would you be equally wealthy (equally secure)?

If society were instantly given equal masses of rock and mud in echange for all of the artifacts that it had created over the past 100,000 years, and if in the same instant all of any otherwise technology gains of the past 100,000 years were also lost, would the 6.7 billion people alive today be equally as secure as before that instant change? If not, why not?

If humans have been able, over the past 100,000 years, to transform matter and energy into forms that better serve their security, why might they suddenly no longer be able to do that?

If nothing has been created, the how is it that 6.7 billion people today exist in relatively high security where previously only a handful of thousands could exist and in relatively low security? http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080425101050.cni2ks3...

Regarding energy:

Did our developed energy resources exist before humans created them? Are they imminently running out? Is general entropy imminent?

The matter/energy that exists naturally tends to either be too general to best serve human security, or if specific tends to be so in suboptimal directions. Do humans not improve their own security by transforming general and chaotically-specific resources into specific and orderly ones tailored to their own security needs? Are humans running out of general resources and chaos with which to transform into security-enhancing resources? Are humans running out of the creativity that has been driving this 100,000+ -year-long improvement in human security?

I'll answer the questions in order:

1: If humans lost all technology today, the vast majority of them would die off within a month, because only modern, high-energy farming can get enough food out of the ground to feed them. However, this high-energy farming is only possible because of oil, which not only transports the food, but provides the pesticides without which insects would be eating instead of humans. (Another finite, nonrenewable natural resource with no possible substitute provides fertilizer, without which our food wouldn't even grow).

2: Because, like other species before them, humans are destined to exhaust the resources on which they depend.

3: Nothing has been created (IOW, entropy has not decreased, and matter and energy are still conserved)-- we're merely better at transforming matter and energy than we used to be.

4: Before our developed energy resources were built, they existed as undeveloped energy resources and raw materials. For example, oil drills are made of steel from the ground, not steel magicked into existence, and they are built to remove oil from the ground, not to create oil out of thoughts.

4a: Since the aforementioned resources are finite, they are most certainly running out. The only scientific theory on the timing was formulated by one M. King Hubbert in the 1950s.

4c: General entropy is irrelevant. We're still over a trillion years away from seeing the entire universe burn out. The entropy of this planet, WRT its ability to sustain an ever-increasing human population, is increasing rapidly, as evidenced by global warming, desertification, deforestation, and other very obvious symptoms.

5: Yes, humans are running out of general resources (because they are finite) to transform into security-enhancing resources. No, humans are not running out of chaos, they are creating plenty of it: Polluted drinking water, fishless oceans, coalless coal mines, a toxic atmosphere, and dry oil fields (among other things) are all perfectly useless to our security. Eventually, there isn't going to be anything left but rocks and mud, and then the situation I described in (1) above will exist.

5a: 100,000 years is not a long time compared to the length of the history of life on Earth. There have been other species that lasted longer, but are gone today.

>3: Nothing has been created (IOW, entropy has not decreased, and matter and energy are still conserved)-- we're merely better at transforming matter and energy than we used to be.

Entropy on Earth has been decreasing for billions of years. The 2nd law of thermodynamics only applies to a closed system.

I remember a study that found that the average lifespan for immortals would be 2500 years because of fatal accidents.

Better medical technology = an accident that is fatal now may not be fatal a hundred years into the future. All these studies are complete bullshit because none of them can predict the social factor and over a period as long as 2500 years, it dominates everything else.

This social factor includes murders and other petty crimes, as well as holocausts, wars, and things of that sort, all of which have a tendency to reduce lifespan, and none of which would stop just because we live 2500 years.

Maybe maybe not but who here is willing to make any bet on what technology we will have in 2500 years? I certainly am not. And thats just one example of something that could (and is likely to) change drastically.

Make a society immortal and it becomes afraid of going outside: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunnen-G

Or, you could end up in the bottom of a cave for a few thousand years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorien_(Babylon_5)

When you start a startup, are you really thinking, "holy shit I only have 44.9 years of life left! Better make the most of it!" Your old age and death are pretty abstract concepts if you're young and healthy. I think for most of us, the thought process is more, "holy shit, I could spend the next twenty years working on shitty enterprise software in Cobol! Better work my way out now!" If you're making every decision now in the context of a death that's decades away, that's a bit sad.

Give me a break. You think you're still going to be running around with fleshy arms and legs and a meat brain after one thousand further years of technological progress? Do you realize that the whole scientific revolution only started five hundred years ago?

No, you will not die "crossing a red light" after living a thousand years. Sheesh, talk about your failures of imagination.

It's called a metaphor. I suppose he could have said, "you might die accidentally hitting the wrong button on a hyperdimensional panfibrillator," but people don't generally talk like that, preferring more familiar and concrete imagery. Come to think of it, "1000 years" just means "really big number that's way longer than our current lifespan."

When someone uses an exemplar to describe a class of things, you're supposed to imagine the other objects in that space.

Even if I did hit the wrong button on a hyperdimensional panfibrillator, I'd just be restored from my S3 backup.

Saying 1000 years is too much is a just a matter of perspective. A few thousands years back, I am sure most people died at around 40. To them living 100 years would be way too much. 1000 is nothing. We will adapt to it and still find ways to be miserable and need more time to do the things we want to do.

If extending lifespan from 30 years to 70 years was beneficial, and I believe it did, I don't see why extending it from 70 to 160 wouldn't be similarly beneficial.

Were it to do so, it would undermine what it means to be human.

They oppose the idea of life extension and anti-ageing research on ethical, moral and ecological grounds.

the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual

Seriously, if you think that dying will give meaning to your life, go ahead and do it. No one's stopping you.

These statements (especially the one about "meaning") show how religion affects a person's view of science. For it to <i>mean</i> something to be human, there has to be someone who intends for it to mean something. Once you accept that God is imaginary, the problem of "meaningless humanity" disappears.

What's the ultimate end game of living for ever?

Who's read Asimov's "The Last Question" http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Imagine you can live to 1000 or more, at what point does your brain run out of space for memories?

When you're finally out of room in your memory buffer do you just turn it into a FIFO queue? So you could collect a whole bunch of information you like (like favorite books, music, movies, etc) start consuming at one end, forget that by the time you get to the end and start again. Repeat forever.

Alternatively you could expand your mind, you turn into a cyborg or something. See Asimov's The Last Question again.

Or you could stimulate your (possibly digital) brain's please center - forever.

And this leads me to a theory of what happened to all the other advanced civilizations in the universe.

Assume human like intelligence evolves somewhere out there, then:

Scenario #1: Self destruction.

Scenario #2: External destruction, asteroid or something.

Scenario #3 Super-intellect is achieved:

#3.1 Rational super intellect realized existence for the sake of existence is pointless and quits.

#3.2 Irrational super intellect wants to exist rational enlightenment be damned. Irrational intellect expands and expands.

In other words, if some alien species out there advanced enough to reach trans-humanism (or trans-alienism hardi har har har) then it probably also transcended any irrational genetic fear of death and then promptly took a bow and exited stage left.

I guess what I'm saying is you're doomed either way.

Either you are primitive and doomed to die a natural death.

Or you're super advanced and too smart to fear death, then you have something to do for a while but eventually...

So your assumption is life is pointless so kill yourself? Are you going to be the first person to test this laughably pessimistic hypothesis?

I'm a thousand times smarter than my pet rabbit, I've yet to even try suicide because its patently moronic. If human beings were a thousand times smarter than they are today then there's a high probability that less people will commit suicide as they'll finally be smart enough to realize it's not a solution to a problem.

Human culture is so diverse that even in 1000 years you'd barely manage 5 years in each country on the planet. I mean just look at how different human culture is today than it was 1000 years ago. We're talking the difference between Monarchy and Democracy in the entire western world.

There's no law of conservation of information, there's no finite limit to the amount of data in the universe. It's not like once a thousand books have been written you're stuck with them, there's going to be more and more unique information as the universe ages. A being with an infinite lifespan is going to have a lot of time experiencing all there is for humanity to offer before it even has to create something itself, even then it could likely explore the universe to find another culture to experience. I'm sure if you're going to live forever and spent 10,000 years experiencing humanity, it might not seem too long to take a quick 100 year jaunt to another star system to spend 10,000 years experiencing alienity.

I wouldn't just kill myself for several reasons, but the two top ones are:

First, I am afraid of death.

Second, I am mortal and my death is a certainty, there is quite literally no point in rushing it.

So there you have one emotional instinctive reason and one logical one. And I have to agree with you suicide is moronic.

And perhaps 1000 years is not nearly enough time to become bored. But how about 1000 000 years? More?

My question was about the veeeeeeeeeeeeery long run, do you think you'll find life interesting for ever?

For that one, look away from The Last Question, and toward Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut. I think, as long as we're talking about finite time, life would have to be pretty incredibly bad to make me want to end it.

The problem with death is that it's irreversible.

If I'm bored today, I might still find something interesting tomorrow.

If I'm dead today, I'll still be dead tomorrow.

How likely are you to find something new and interesting if you are a universe sized super intellect?

When you finally understand everything there is to know, if that is possible, then I think you will be so far gone from human that you will be impervious to boredom.

I'll think of something.

More likely than I am to stop being dead.

"...I've yet to even try suicide because its patently moronic..."

Alan Turing committed suicide, mostly thanks to the pressures put upon him by British society at the time... because he was gay. I sincerely doubt that Turing was a moron. There are many factors that lie well outside the realm of intelligence, that have a profound effect on whether or not people one day decide that they can no longer go on with their lives.

Boredom may very well be a motivating factor, especially for someone who can live as arbitrarily long as they wish.

I believe there is some debate about whether that was actually suicide.

I'd be happy with any radical advance in anti-aging (even extra 50 years would be significant). Alas, I fear the breakthrough may not come within our lifetimes. The article does nothing to dispel my pessimistic notions.

I can state confidently that there are no fundamental physical laws preventing 1000-year lifespans. There aren't even fundamental biological limitations---lots of organisms live that long. At this point it's "merely" a (very difficult) engineering problem.

For the religious point of view:

I hold that if god did not want people to live to 1000 he would make it impossible to do so.

If it's possible, then god must be OK with it.

He was pretty specific about all the "possible but don't do them anyway" things after all, so no need to add some new ones.

From another religious angle - As I understand - prior Noah/Flood - the Bible records humans living long lives. (Say 1000 years)

Post flood / Noah - Humans were limited to 120? Or something like that?

Found the quote: Genesis 6: 3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with [a] man forever, for he is mortal [b] ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

So the religious interpretation could be: a) See this proves Chapters 1-8 of Genesis b) God will curse you / etc / etc

Isn't that interesting that the biblical limit is so close to the current outlier lifespans?

I assume 2000 years ago some people would live about that long. It's going to be a smaller percentage of a smaller population but the are reasonably healthy 105 year old people in the world today so I assume there were a few back then.

The third world country's / developing country's. How would they get a piece of this? I'm quite sure they wouldn't - or if so, it would be an order of magnitude below what the western world would have. Already more than enough to go to war for, by the havenots.

And resources? Would we just ultimately end up allowing 1 child per 1k couples to try and stem the rampant population explosion and resultant resource drain?

Would we tackle extreme age with a longevity based tax on a log scale?

It's the little things that add up and kick us in the arse, because even though we could live 12 times longer, the human condition would not advance anywhere as much.

I wouldn't want to. I can barely tolerate family reunions now, no need to make them fill a stadium.

I'm indifferent on whether we should want/attempt to live longer than natural life spans. Either way sounds good and bad.

A 1000 years of memories could drive any one insane, i mean, what is our mental capacity? I'm sure we could keep the body alive and healthy for a long period of time, but a 1000 years is probably too much. The brain would have to adapt somehow, we would probably forget most of our experience and only keep the most important memories, our brains were designed for 30-40 year life-spans, nature really didn't intend us to live as long as we live today. We've managed so far by forgetting stuff thats not that important, but how would our memory management work in a longer period?

It would slow down technical innovation.

People grow accustomed to their surroundings and find newer technology suspicious and unneeded. That's why leaps in innovation are most easily embraced by the generations born with them (ie., current teenagers using computers for communication where their parents use phones).

If people can live 1000 years, that would cause overcrowding of the Earth. So if we don't expand to other planets, there would need to be some kind of very serious birth control.

This would increase the average age of Earth's population and, as discussed before, make them less interested in innovative products.

If we can get to the point where we're reversing aging, I think we can safely assume reversible sterilization.

Use an economic solution (really simplified here): When you receive anti-aging treatment, you're temporarily sterilized. Each person then gets 1 credit for a child. 3 credits are required to bear a child. One can purchase or sell their credit for children as one would like.

For the first time in human history, if one wants children, they'll have to put conscious effort into it. Only those who _really_ want children will have them.

...unless you don't want anti-aging treatment, then you can have as many kids as you'd like and become 'immortal' the old fashioned way.

I'm not sure it would be necessary. Kids in developed nations are already considered optional (vs. undeveloped countries where you put your kids to work so you can eat) so as people get accustomed to having more time to raise kids then they may seem them as much less of a priority and birthrates would continue to decline to offset the increased lifespans. I do wonder what people would consider to be the age of maturity at which you are expected to be on your own. Would people expect to be cared for by their parents until they are 300?

You could have a law, if you take anti-aging meds you must leave the planet.

Hate to sound cynical, but I have to ask: why would technology like this be made accessible to the average person? What would be the economic payoff? Seems to me that this will be a technology for elitists, first and foremost. Or you would have to 'earn' it in some way. Would the 'unproductive' among us be allowed to have access to technology that increases their lifespans?

I'm pretty sure Larry Ellison is reading this story from his volcano lair about now, just barely holding back his maniacal laughter. :)

I think an interesting side effect of extremely long lives would be people would be a lot more careful.

Driving fast, not wearing a seatbelt, skydiving, going to war, heck even leaving the house would be considered crazy. who would want to risk ending their lives in an accident if they could live for another healthy 900 years?

I'm not so sure. Did people become twice as cautious when life expectancy doubled in our fairly recent history? The retirement age of 65 was originally set because it was deemed so unlikely that anyone would reach it, now it is almost considered a given that people will live past it and I don't think people have become more cautious as a result. The other thing is that if people feel that medical technology has advanced enough that they can be pulled through ever increasing traumatic circumstances they are more likely to attempt higher risk behavior.

"Did people become twice as cautious when life expectancy doubled in our fairly recent history?"

Yes! Very much so they did.

So many sports have been gutted due to "safety", chemistry sets have most of the good stuff gone for the same reason. Kids can no longer just go and do what they want because it's "not safe".

People took far far more risks in the past.

But they didn't have a choice.

This is probably more due to companies trying to protect themselves from lawsuits and a greater understanding of how to safely to things than any conservative attitude developed due to an increased life span. People routinely jump off cliffs with every expectation that they will live, given the appropriate safety measures these days, and the Darwin awards do not seem to be lacking any candidates.

If you live 50 years from today you'll probably live 1000, but if you live 1000 years you'll probably live until the fundamental laws of physics leave no possible means for your survival. Why would you stop at the limits of biology?

Imagine that everyone had time to get education, have several generations of kids (& debug the process), maybe figure a few things out.

OTOH, we'll have to explore space, as we'll quickly run out of room.

Someone please quote The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert! In fact that book is a take on living for, well, ages. :) I enjoyed it.

methuselah lived 900 years, methuselah lived 900 years, but who calls that livin when no gal will give in to no man who's 900 years

Maybe the downvoters just don't recognize "Porgy and Bess"? Regardless, it was relevant commentary and not deserving of a downvote.

No. We have shockingly little control over basic diseases and health issues. This de Gray character is just an attention whore.

I'm surprised there are so few mentions about that.

I smashed an ankle a few years ago racing a motorcycle. The ankle is mostly fine, I can walk, hike, climb a mountain, lift weights, or just stand for as long as I want. It doesn't hurt. Jumping though is not OK, and neither is dancing (not that I dance anyway, but still) or running. It looks like it can't be fixed 100%. So, if such a comparatively trivial thing can't be fixed, how can they talk about immortality?

I don't see immortality becoming less than a dream until we are able to fix the vast majority of diseases and health issues. The simple fact that we can't do that is a sign that we're pretty far from understanding our biology.

Ridiculous beard, ridiculous claims. This guy is a clown. I don't understand how he dupes so many people.

I think most of the issues with your ankle are simply problems of mechanical engineering. Total ankle replacements exist now, they just aren't very good.However, I find it highly unlikely that in the next 10 years, incremental improvements to artificial ankles will not lead to ankles capable of jumping, dancing and jogging.

I think it's optimistic to state that the first 1000-year-old is alive today. We don't know anything about the challenges that a 200+ year lifespan will pose. What scares me is that imperfect, expensive forms of "immortality" will exist before the desirable, cheap ones. I wouldn't want to "make the cut" but be demented for 900 years.

I think I'll die at a relatively normal age, between 70 and 100, and that the first 200-year-old will be alive when I die. I make no projections about 1000, much less over 9000.

I don't know, but I hope we get space colonization first, or it's going to get awfully crowded and competitive around here.

It would be some pretty big spaceships that could outpace the birth rate.

I think if it's a nanotech-based solution to aging, we'll have the resources to build some whopping big monster colony ships.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Orbitals

...or very numerous. If wealth keeps trending upwards, then anyone who wants will be able to afford their own ship out, as the wealthy can all afford yachts today.

so the question is. what happens at 1000 that kills us, and why aren't we solving that problem?

WTF didn't anyone see this coming? might as well just die now if it's all going to be the same...

ISTR that, on average, people would live to be 1000 on average if they died only from accidents/violence rather than disease and old age.

The age distribution would be different. With the simplifying assumption that everybody's chance of dying in a given year is the same, the mortality rate would be proportional to number of people alive, which means that 1000 years would be a half-life. So you'd see 1/8 of the people living to be 3000 or more years, 1/16 living to be 4000, etc.

First of all we would have not to kill the not yet born ones. This would be the very first step necessary.

The next step necessary would be not to help to kill the old ones.

Currently we have no real respect neither for the not born ones, nor for old ones.

In other words: currently we still (kind of) hate life.

No.

Imagine the number of people competing for jobs.

Imagine having been born in the year 1100 and still be alive with about 90 years to go.

PS: For what it's worth, humans actually did live for about 900 years on average until the Great Flood---if you believe in the Bible.

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