Drooling on Your Shoes or Living Long and Prospering? | Hacker News Reader

Drooling on Your Shoes or Living Long and Prospering?

slate.com

33 pointsanacleto8 comments

This only really touches upon the financial implications of increased lifespan. Immortality in particular I feel isn't feasible for everyone, given a growing population with finite resources. In which case we'd either need some radical breakthroughs (e.g. being able to travel to other inhabitable planets), or more probably some kind of constraints on who can achieve immortality. Given the current trends for increasing the gap between rich and poor I'd be concerned that a future society would only give the benefits of increased lifespan to those who could afford it.

Immortality would introduce some new challenges (possible cultural stagnation, an even more entrenched elite class (only a problem if you're not a member of the elite class I suppose), etc.), however, it would also solve (or at least mitigate) a lot of problems, some of which are hinted at in the article (medical costs, social security, etc.)

I'm not sure overpopulation would be such a huge problem - birth rates are already declining all over the world and I suspect indefinite lifespans would only accelerate that trend. Besides, there are still plenty of ways to die other than old age, we wouldn't be truly 'immortal' :)

Ah yes, now I remember Zardoz, with the Apathetics who have grown weary of immortality.

For a much better take on much the same topic, you might look at a UK scientific think-tank's "What is Aging? How Can We Delay It?":

http://www.longevitypanel.co.uk/_files/What-is-ageing-can-we...

"Our goal for this project was to produce a report about the complex processes involved in ageing. We wanted it to be accessible to a wide spectrum of readers, not just those involved in academic study. It has been an important example of teamwork - bringing together Panel members with their different disciplines, the eight scientific experts, a leading social research organisation, medical writers, actuaries and modellers, among others. This report is based on the opinions of leading scientists who have been studying the biology of ageing. We have supplemented their views with some key evidence from the results of recent research into ageing, and have developed a model to illustrate what the impact of different treatments might be on our lifespan. It is being published because the Panel is keen to share its conclusions with others and to support the continuing debate regarding the implications of ageing. In addition, the Panel is very keen to hear from others working on any related research which can aid understanding and be recognised in our future work."

Currently in the US for those under 45, unintentional injury is the leading cause of death. As medicine increases, that age will just creep up.

Cars and drug abuse are the two leading causes of unintentional injury deaths, and the per-capita mortality for those doesn't seem to taper-off much with age so long as you are still capable of driving, so if we do hit the "immortality" scenario, then driving a car will be seen as a much more risky proposition than it is now.

1.24 million deaths caused by traffic accidents in 2010 according to http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/en/ . But isn't reducing fatalities one of the main benefits of self-driving cars?

It would be interesting to calculate how many years the average human would live before the probability of dying due to accident/injury reaches 0.999 or so.

I had read that if people didn't age at all, they would have a statistical lifespan of something like 800 years (or maybe half-life?).

It's just that the everyday dangers add up, if you roll the dice enough times.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com