Immortalism

[Mise]

@Mise: Death by 'natural causes' is not a disease.

100 years ago, if a 60 year old suddenly popped their clogs and died, we'd say they died of "natural causes". Now, we say they died of heart disease, or cancer, or brain tumour, or diabetes, or Alzheimer's. "Natural causes" is, in fact, a disease.

In any case, this is tangential to the objection I was arguing against.

The main objection thus far has been that immortality (or prolonging life more generally) causes or exacerbates societal problems, and that the benefits of attempts to prolong life do not outweigh the cost. Fine, I say: let's accept that the benefits do not outweigh the costs, and that we must not attempt to prolong life. We must therefore answer "no" to one of the questions I posed. But it is very difficult to answer "no" to any of those questions. Which do you say "no" to? Which diseases do you try to cure, and which do you let people die from? Which people do you decide to treat, and which do you decide to let die? I doubt that anyone can satisfactorily answer those questions. I doubt anyone can sincerely bite that particular bullet.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, "natural causes" tends to be deterioration of the body itself, due to reaching an age when it is usual for people to die. The human body itself is obviously not built to last for 150 years, since no one seems to live quite that long. It doesn't mean that any new deterioration apparent after (say) 120 years, can not be categorized, but it does mean that by then you are faced not with something unnatural or rare-ish, but with an effect of the human body. Ie not a genetic defect or mild defect, but something human genetics always produces.

 

[Mise]

Again though, I can easily imagine that in another 100 years' time, what we now consider "something human genetics always produces" will become a preventable disease that can be treated and cured. In 500 years' time, there may be nothing that medicine can't prevent, treat or cure; that "death from natural causes" will be a thing of the past. Labelling deaths from old age as "natural causes" may one day be seen as just as barbaric a medical practice as leeches or trepanning. We used to believe that God punished the wicked by giving them deadly diseases; we now rightly view this as the absurd, mystical thinking of a more primitive time. One day, we may look back on our belief that death is a natural and righteous consequence of human genetics with the same rational scepticism.

 

[Mise]

To be clear, I don't disagree that there is a difference between curing heart disease or lung cancer, and curing what we now know as "ageing". However, I argue that, at some point in the future, the line between those things will not be so clear: medical science will advance to a point where we can cure "ageing", in which case, we would have to answer "no" to one of the questions above. Would we ever deny this lifesaving medical treatment to anyone?

 

[Kyriakos]

To be clear, I don't disagree that there is a difference between curing heart disease or lung cancer, and curing what we now know as "ageing". However, I argue that, at some point in the future, the line between those things will not be so clear: medical science will advance to a point where we can cure "ageing", in which case, we would have to answer "no" to one of the questions above. Would we ever deny this lifesaving medical treatment to anyone?

I don't share this opinion. It seems unlikely to me that the human genetic make-up will allow (even with medicinal input) extending life to anything like 150+ years. It is my intuition this is not to happen, cause it is one thing to tend for (metaphorically) extremities and another to tend for the actual full object. Keep a flower in bad conditions, and it will die sooner. Keep it in ideal conditions and it will go on for as long as it could. But keep it with ideal conditions (trying to account for anything past its lifetime) for a lot longer than its own DNA was meant to have it sustained, and then you will be having to deal not with illnesses but the inevitable break-up of the object itself.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, again, there are only so many things that can go wrong. And any specific 'repair' will have a length of time for which its beneficial. A house can last a long, long time. Ostensibly, they can last much longer than they do, if you actually value the house instead of the property underneath it.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, again, there are only so many things that can go wrong. And any specific 'repair' will have a length of time for which its beneficial. A house can last a long, long time. Ostensibly, they can last much longer than they do, if you actually value the house instead of the property underneath it.

Ultimately my suspicion is that past some point you would have to actually alter DNA, and in a way which is not very probable to be efficient and correct, cause DNA very probably (like any other object) is working in dependence to its totality, including any sub-particles we can't account for, and maybe the sub-divisions never end. Imo it won't be enough to account for a part of the sub-divisions, cause the overall effect will come from the unknown totality.
That said, my view in this is my intuition, but i am not seeing anything to "prove" we don't need to know DNA to such an (impossible) degree in order to alter it so much that life to 150 years or similar will be possible.
It is why i indeed suppose that the difficulty goes up to infinite, instead of something always workable on each stage.

 

[Angst]

I'm a radical environmentalist and I still believe everyone has the right to be immortal.

 

[warpus]

I'm a radical environmentalist and I still believe everyone has the right to be immortal.

Would you sterilize people who are immortal? How would you control population growth?

 

[El_Machinae]

How are we going to control population growth as it is?

 

[warpus]

How are we going to control population growth as it is?

By improving quality of life standards. In most parts of the west this is leading to a negative population growth, if you don't take immigration into consideration.

If everyone was immortal though, this would quickly start spiraling out of control, it seems.

 

[El_Machinae]

Not super-quickly. It's not like we snap our fingers and people just stop dying. What shows up, statistically, is that the life-expectancy climbs. So, the number of old people will go up. But it won't rocket upwards.

 

[warpus]

Not super-quickly. It's not like we snap our fingers and people just stop dying. What shows up, statistically, is that the life-expectancy climbs. So, the number of old people will go up. But it won't rocket upwards.

I was assuming that by "immortality" we are talking about a time when nobody dies.

 

[Angst]

Would you sterilize people who are immortal? How would you control population growth?

I don't see it as completely politically realistic, but if it were, my solution for population growth would be to make highly restrictive laws on when you're allowed to procreate. I'm a "big gov" type of person. Now, this is kind of weird, but on the other hand, it's also politically unrealistic to suddenly distribute immortal genes or drugs freely.

Perhaps a solution could be for people to be allowed to enter the immortal pool, but in return, they wouldn't be allowed to procreate by default. It's not like immortality is widely available as is. Just make it available in return for those restrictions.

Really unsure how to punish illegal procreation however. This is where it can get really dark. I wouldn't vouch for any of it per se, but solutions could be forced abortion, huge fines, jail time, or forced adoptions.

Sterilization is another solution, but should only be done after say a person has had 1.5 kids.

The key to either of these punishments/preventions is to make immortality an opt-in, although free, luxury.

Not sure about the way to do it, really. All of these are loose thoughts.

But I imagine it as being a deal you can make with the government. Personally I would love to sacrifice my ability to get 4 kids with my wife in return for eternal life. It even allows me time to eventually get ready to procreate - problem is I have some issues with my life right now, the time my girlfriend is "ripe" to make kids, so to say. So it's really bad timing. And yes, the problems are really that severe and will probably remain so for at least 10 years, until I'm 35 or so. But I'll default to not sharing the problems with you guys right now if that's OK.

If I could remain 25 as a body forever, however, I could eventually solve my issues and be stable enough a person to allow myself children. I really want children, too. To me, it's a no-brainer.

 

[timtofly]

Again though, I can easily imagine that in another 100 years' time, what we now consider "something human genetics always produces" will become a preventable disease that can be treated and cured. In 500 years' time, there may be nothing that medicine can't prevent, treat or cure; that "death from natural causes" will be a thing of the past. Labelling deaths from old age as "natural causes" may one day be seen as just as barbaric a medical practice as leeches or trepanning. We used to believe that God punished the wicked by giving them deadly diseases; we now rightly view this as the absurd, mystical thinking of a more primitive time. One day, we may look back on our belief that death is a natural and righteous consequence of human genetics with the same rational scepticism.

This is probably off topic, but God punishing people is not absurd. It does not matter what the form is. Also, God does not always punish. The whole point is normally there is a warning, and then a chance to "change our ways". What seems absurd, is to deny that God does do it at certain points, and the human condition changes to the point where longevity is no longer useful, nor accepted.

There is a substantial percentage of the population today, that due to disease or not, even the psychological outlook on life is to a point where life is no longer something to be enjoyed.

That is not always because of sickness or disease, but culture itself has become depressive. That is why we contemplate utopia while only gaining dysfunction. God never offered this life to be perfect, not sure why people expect it.

Neither is evolution any better in what it has to offer. Even if humans could engineer to the next level, some control is going to have to be eliminated. Humans subjugating other humans, does not seem to be going any where, and especially if humans have to force rights upon people.

 

[Mise]

I was assuming that by "immortality" we are talking about a time when nobody dies.

Yeah, we are, but we also need to talk about how we will get there. We won't get there in one fell swoop, or with a click of the fingers. We'll get there gradually, first by increasing life expectancy from 60 to 80 (i.e. now), then by increasing it from 80 to 100, then 100 to 120, etc. At each stage, people will start giving birth later in life, and having fewer and fewer children. This reduces both the birth rate and population growth rate. You can see that, incrementally, people will simply choose to have fewer children. We may get to a point where life expectancy is infinite, and so people can choose to have children at any point in their lives. They would not universally choose to have children at age 20-35; they would probably choose to have children much, much later in life. Perhaps they would not have children at all, or would raise children only with a firm plan on how and when they themselves will end their lives. Many people have already said that they wouldn't even want to live forever, and would voluntarily end their lives after a certain amount of time, perhaps when they simply get bored. It's not like there will be no social consequences beyond the sheer numbers.

The fact is, we don't know what it will look like at the end state. But we know that at each intervening state, the birth rate decreases as life expectancy increases. We know this -- it's happened in the past and there's no reason to expect it not to continue. Moreover, this will take place over hundreds of years, so we will deal with the social consequences in many stages. Comparing human breeding habits 500 years ago to 200 years ago to now, we already see that they have changed dramatically, in response to technological, economic and medical advances. Society itself has changed; the way we think about parenthood and childhood have changed. These changes weren't planned or thought through by utopian visionaries -- in fact, predictions for this sort of thing are notoriously and hilariously wrong. People thought that widespread birth control would lead to the slow death of human civilisation. lol. The fact is, we don't know what the end state will look like. But we do know that at each intervening state, human society will change itself in response. We will adapt slowly and incrementally, over hundreds of years. This is how it's always worked, and there's no reason to assume that this will suddenly change.

 

[Mise]

Broader philosophical point incoming.

We tend to see the past and the future as two distinct things. The past appears to be a natural, logical progression, in small, predictable increments. We went from caves to agriculture to monarchy to democracy to industrial revolution to computers in a simple, linear narrative that can be put onto a tech tree in a computer game and stepped through easily. The future appears to be the exact opposite: every single thing seems to be revolutionary, from robots taking jobs to birth control killing humanity. There are a handful of really genuinely species-endangering things, such as disease, war, and global warming. But, to them, we add a whole bunch of simple, natural, logical technological or economic progressions that, in the past, have come in small, predictable increments. We have always dealt with what at the time appears to be revolutionary new technology that will disrupt everything and kill jobs or babies with a series of logical, incremental steps over many years. Aside from a catastrophic event such as a global outbreak of a deadly disease, a nuclear winter, or, well, the continuation of global warming, we will almost certainly deal with things in the exact same way: slowly and incrementally, over many years.


This article makes a similar point, but about the opposite thing -- technologies that aid reproduction: http://www.economist.com/news/leade...-are-multiplying-history-suggests-they-should

 

[El_Machinae]

I was assuming that by "immortality" we are talking about a time when nobody dies.

So, the thing is, we're already long, long past the 'population growth' problem. Both liberal and conservative Westerners have decided to live a lifestyle that's not really all that sustainable, and the rest of the world is ignoring Western hand-wringing and doing their level best to increase their own quality of life. That's six billion trying to live like the billion. Broadly, we need a solution to this issue. Reasonably asap. And a slow climbing of the geriatric population isn't going to affect this need's timeline significantly.

And a solution that we don't want is to increase the number of deaths that are holding back people's footprints. Just like we don't want polio crippling the various slums around the world, we don't to increase people's age-related degeneration so that they take fewer high-footprint vacation flights. Degeneration and suffering are certainly buying us time on the 'overpopulation' problem, but it's a severe lack of insight if we're relying on it.

 

[warpus]

Yeah, we are, but we also need to talk about how we will get there. We won't get there in one fell swoop, or with a click of the fingers.

I agree, for the first couple decades it will likely only be the really rich who can afford immortality. But even so, we are going to need a solution for "What happens with all the extra people?" even if only 1% of people are immortal. That number is going to go up and up and if we don't have a plan at the beginning, we're not going to have one when everything starts falling apart.

 

[Narz]

We'll get there gradually, first by increasing life expectancy from 60 to 80 (i.e. now)

It's important to note that while we've increased the AVERAGE life expectancy (mostly by reducing infant mortality and keeping the old and sick going longer) we haven't increased the MAXIMUM life expectancy. People have been living to 80, 90, 100 since the beginning. We just have more of them now.

It's a misconception that every single Bushman or Aboriginal died at 30-60, plenty did but there's always been old people.

The idea that we're anywhere near 'conquering aging' is silly. The only known ways to affect lifespan in a serious way all involve extreme lifestyle changes (intermittent fasting) that very few people are gonna have the discipline to follow.

There's always reports of a miracle supplement or new gene discovered but mostly it's just a way to separate fools from their money (my mom used to subscribe to a mag called Life Extension Magazine) but lost faith after my father died of cancer despite taking all sorts of anti-cancer pills daily.