Life Extended. Is this something you want?

originally posted by: TheArrow
I want to live as long as possible, because I don't believe there's anything after this existence.

I just can't imagine eating all those chickens for a thousand years.

Thousand and thousands of chickens.

This topic tickles at the edge of a theory I've held for a long time.....

What if we knew exactly the day, date and time that we would die. Let's throw out an age of 87 (why not). In this scenario there would be no sickness, disease, our bodies would age so that we are still active both mentally and physically up to the end.

Mind you there would still be the risk of dying early from accidents and stupidity (like jumping off a mountain with a faulty parachute), or at the hand of another, just to keep some uncertainty in the mix. You would be expected to work until the age of 60, less if you planned well and saved up, thus leaving you at least 27 healthy years of retirement.

By knowing exactly how long you were going to live, I would say shame on you if you hadn't achieved everything you wanted to during your lifetime. You would be able to plan for the future of your family. The leaving of this world would be a major party, a celebration with no regrets.

This isn't solely my own thinking as there was a TV show back in the seventies called "Logan's Run". The premise in this story was that everyone lived to the same age and then they were recycled, for lack of a better term. The countdown was monitored by a crystal in the palm of your had that would change colour as your time was growing near. Of course there were people who wanted to live longer and became fugitives, running from the law. Now the huge problem in this saga was that you only got to live until 30 .... that I think would suck....hence my limit of 87.

I went for a search for it and found a link to a possible remake ... is there anything that Hollywood won't try to bring back? JEESH, come up with something new for a change.

remake of Logan's Run

Anyway, look forward to your thoughts on that train of thought from the other side of the coin.

Namaste,
YogaGinns

who wants to live forever?

i know i don't.

originally posted by: jude11
I have already outlived my expectancy according to friends and family.

Do I want to go on to a ripe old age of 250, 200, 300? Hell no!

With where we're at right now I really don't want to see another 20 yrs.

Peace

Respectfully disagree.

Sign me up for a 1000 years. I am a questing and curious creature. I want to see what happens.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Namely, where are we going to put all these people? How are we going to employ and feed them? At the rate that humans have babies, each generation would be exponentially increasing the population ever greater, all the time. The prospect of humans living any longer than we do currently is terrifying.

Exactly correct, but this is just another variation of that whole Singularity nonsense we keep hearing about all the time. Basically rich people want to live forever, but need to sell the "idea" of pursuing such to the masses, even though the masses will not get the chance to live forever too. Its a ruse to build public support for policies and public funding that will make such possible, for only the "chosen few".

Life-extension tech will have the exact same effect on regular people that newborns and immigrants do. Basically wages being driven down further by employers, due to oversupply of labor and older workers, with highly specialized skills, possibly never leaving their paid labor positions. The "owners of capital" are doing their very best to reduce employment opportunities for all of us, whether that means squeezing overhead and laying people off or making more rules to drive the self employed and small businesses out of the market. In addition to AI and life extension tech, do we really need anymore children being born or immigrating to the United States? NO. Every child born or entering the county as an immigrant means less jobs for those already here. Life extension tech will only magnify this problem. People can't get on-the-job training now, imagine a future where high skill jobs require 50+ years of experience and 2 PhD's, due to an oversupply of "qualified laborer" and more applicants than can be reasonably screened for interviews .

Since Americans have ACTIVELY chosen to abandon Unionization and other forms of Collective Bargaining, regular people have lost nearly all means to negotiate stable income streams from the "owners of capital". The only thing left to try, at this point, is reducing population numbers. Note, I don't mean making people into Soylent Green, I mean, culturally imposing an effort to produce less or no KIDS, whom are willing to work for less and also preventing people from using life-extension tech to live longer than nature has allowed. Their very existence undermines the efforts of the middle and lower classes trying to negotiate wages and social benefits with the 1%.

The reality is that people should be highly dissuaded from having kids, today. The only thing they do is make everyone whom is already here poorer. Kids serve no purpose to those whom are not in the 1%. Anyone whom is not in the 1% should never have kids. They are an anchor in the modern economy that has been created, on purpose, by the "owners of capital". Please be aware, this was not always the case and is a VERY NEW phenomena. If people took the time to see the writing on the wall, they would realize that rich kids of the 1% exist to continue and drive legacies, kids of the 99% exist only to help the 1% exert more control, through decreased wages and divisiveness among the cross sections of various generations.

End the cycle, punish those whom are immigrating, punish those whom have created unneeded children at everyone else's expense and VIGOROUSLY oppose support for AI and life-extension tech. To let these things develop and grow will surely mean DOOM for everyone whom is not in the 1%.

originally posted by: redhorse
Sign me up for a 1000 years. I am a questing and curious creature. I want to see what happens.

Your "wish" is a death sentence for everyone else. Your passive support only digs the hole for the grave faster.

The only way regular people can save themselves, TODAY, is to abandon this kind of tech and stop buying/supporting companies making this tech.
Just like Artificial Intelligence, highest-bidder life extension tech will do ALL of the following:
First, it will make us jobless
Second, it will steal our liberty and freedoms because laws and economic policies will be geared to favor the long-lived
Third, it will make normal human life valueless to the true "Owners of Capital" whom will be granted extended life by such tech.

originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: nullafides

How would the problem of population growth be dealt with I wonder. I am like you... and I can't understand the people who want to make it to 100, the older people get the more miserable they are so why does everyone want to live a long time.

I think you are right there, the world could not support the population growth. Maybe if you only reproduced in your last few years so that the numbers were maintained, but you still had a chance to rear your offspring and instill something of your values.

Don't think I would ever want to live to be a 1000, I think a century give or take is plenty of time.

Namaste,
YogaGinns

originally posted by: FlyersFan

Life Extended. Is this something you want?

No thanks. I'm looking forward to moving along and being free of being stuck in an organic body. And I can't see how the planet could sustain people living longer than they already do. This place is overpopulated and our resources are running thin as it is.

I agree with you and feel the same way. Wanna play around and have fun on other places. From my point of view Earth is quite boring after a while. I would probably have a different view if humanity had reach star trek like society but we are still primitives compared to that.

This world isnt ready for longer life of this magnitude......

Imagine the multitudes of homeless on the street who,now not only live for hundreds of years, are stuck forever in squalor.....thats heart breaking....perpetual poverty on a scale worse than anything we have now

Imagine the world where old evils never seem to finally die away.......

Where will we put everyone?

How will the continuing need for resources, food, water be impacted by a society that consumes ever more and continues to grow with every birth, but sees no balance with death?

I wouldnt want it, I want to finish this chapter one day, and continue on to the next adventure......

And see how bad the world is these days, i dont know if I would want to witness whats to come a few hundred years down the road......

a reply to: boohoo
You're in effect right or close to being right, but just as there're poor people today, as there were in 1300 or 1800, the life of a poor man today is almost like the life of a king in past times, minus the beheadings, the deaths from mundane illnesses, the huge social power and some other factors. Even if society perpetually forever is 85% owned by 20% or less it's a non factor because along with the advances in technology and knowledge comes higher quality of life even for the poorest. So until we can completely eliminate the gap between the rich and the poor, wouldn't you rather live in a society with better technology, more knowledge, more humanity and greater years?

Are our lives really better than they were when the average lifespan for an adult was only ~40 or so? It's debatable, especially since high death rates among infants causes a misleading lifespan approximation, but evenso, lifespan was shorter than it's today for adults and bad situations could be really bad. Woman usually had few rights, children AND adults were used as slaves, homosexuals and others with similar "afflictions" were customarily burned alive, people of certain faiths hanged or otherwise executed, and so on. It COULD be better, but would you really want to carry the risk?

I don't think we're BETTER than we were than, I just think most people have a negative reaction to things like this, just as people from 500 years ago would have commonly viewed our society negatively. Woman have rights? No slaves? Children can't be forced to work long hours? Can't disembowel homosexuals? Have to respect the rights of a paganist? Etc.

My prediction is people will someday live for hundreds of years and it'll be no stranger to them than living to ~77 is for us. Just like us, they'll be judgemental of societies different from their own.

I think my own reasons for possibly not wanting ~1000 years vary. I don't think I'd not want it for your reasons, but who knows. I guess I'd have to really examine myself and ask what's important to me. I think once the society starts strictly controlling thoughts and emotions it's unfriendly, and much worse if you've already lost so many things which connect you to your past. What if I lost forever almost all the people and places and things which made life rich up to that time? I think I could see myself just simply clocking out on the 357th or 901st year because of those sorts of reasons, but I don't know. I do have a strong will to live, but it's not limitless.

I've another idea. What if the future outlaws greed?

a reply to: nullafides

No thank you i am bored rigid of life as it is 1000 years sounds like hell to me , roll on death

to infinity and beyond

Just a thought let those who want to be immortal be immortal and those who dont die of old age.

Sounds fair to me.

For sure, I would want this. as well for my family and loved ones. Life is great , but it has also been very hard, and I don't believe i'll have enough time to do what I want, mend the things I've broken or come close to living the dream.

Bit late now though, and a shame I'm not sure wether I believe in re-incarnation. Religious I am not, a dreamer... maybe.

Just think if people were given the option as part of thier free healthcare. Who in thier right minds would choose to die?

I think I would be more interested in a brand new feeling body than I would sticking around a thousand years. To stick around here a thousand years as an old feeble man doesn't sound very appealing.

I've become interested in electronics, motors and computers in the last few years and its all such a vast subject I'll never have time enough left on earth to learn it all. I'd be happy making a living at it somehow if I could manage to break free of the groove I grew up in and learn enough to succeed at one of those somewhere.

What I'd like is a new body that feels as good as it did when I was a kid, better memory sharper eye sight, quicker wit.

Have you ever seen a dog with so much energy he can chase a 4 wheeler for miles and never slow down, and he never gets tired of fetching a stick? He keeps on and on bringing the stick back to be thrown again. That's how I'd like to feel.

There's a lot to learn here, a lot to see and there definitely won't be enough time or freedom to learn and see even a small percentage of it. To think of sticking around in this body even another 10 years makes me wonder if I'll ever make it?

Hey, I volunteer, as long as it's not life paralyzed hooked up to an oxygen mask.

I would happily try out one thousand years.

But what of heavy metals, and radioactive isotopes? And dementia? Surely that would complicate things?

a reply to: FormOfTheLord

Who in thier right minds would choose to die?

Against what measuring stick would you chose "right"?


I've dealt with anxiety and depression all of my entire life. That may very well put me in the target zone of your statement. But I think the greater picture here, is the right to live. The right to live when *you* want to. Quality of life.

And yet other's ideologies and viewpoints still are weighed in when we attempt to make decisions that will impact the one thing we are supposed to have control over.


- NF

a reply to: Voyager1

I for one don't think that "youth" is entirely dictated by the current condition of the body. The mind, not unlike a lightbulb, or hard drive for that matter, has a lifespan.

Even if they could miraculously make me younger, faster, better....would that necessarily change my brain and therein the age of the personality?


-NF

a reply to: BlubberyConspiracy

But what of heavy metals, and radioactive isotopes? And dementia? Surely that would complicate things?

I think it has become and been romantic to assume that you fix the body, you fix the mind.

Whereas the body is designed to heal, I do not begin to think that is true of the mind. I know, I know...here come the folks who'll look to poke an eye into my statement. "Well, I did X, Y, &Z...and I feel SOOO much better....Jesus Christ saves..."...blah blah...



-NF

Yes being immortal is as simple as creating a virus which causes the telomeres to become identical to cancer telomeres.

Cancer telomeres are programmed to be immortal and so it does not ever die, so just infect other cells with the same program for telomeres as within a cancer cell.

Its been done and suppressed, but that doesnt mean it cant be redone again and again till we get a good immortal telomeres virus which cant be suppressed by the powers that be.

People are forgetting that this tech can be used effectively to further indentured servitude.

How is that you may ask?

Remember when cell phones were actually fun? I do, the phone was a huge and needed to be carried in a bag, BUT my boss NEVER called me on it after typical work hours and certainly never to ask me to do more work while I was at home. Compare that to today, when a cell phone in your pocket can spontaneously generate more work to be done outside of the office, simply because someone higher up than you had a random thought.

Now how does this scenario play into life-extension tech, AI and the Singularity?

Right now most Americans are expected to and are coerced by employment requirements to buy/finance a car, buy/finance education, buy/finance healthcare, buy/finance insurance and eventually buy/finance a home of some kind.

What do you think the "Owners of Capital" will do when life-extension tech becomes a commercial product? They will simply coerce people to buy it, even if they don't want to have it done and the method to coerce the general populace is quite easy to accomplish in the United States and will not require any additional lobbying or law changes.

Imagine a world where life-extension tech is sold and financed to regular people that can't pay, in cash, up front, similar to a cars, education or home mortgages.

Want to opt-out? Sure you have the "choice" to do anything you want.

Imagine the unfolding of the following fictional scenarios:

Do you want health insurance? Sorry, but we don't insure people whom have not had the life-extension procedure. However, there is another provider that we can refer you to that will, with a high deductible and high premium, so as to reduce the risk of your shorter life span.

Want to get a job? Sorry, but we don't hire people whom have not had the life-extension procedure, they cost more to insure and are uninsured in some cases. We don't consider this discrimination however because its no different than requiring you to have a car or a driver license. Especially with the Supreme Court declaring that those refusing the life-extension procedure are not disabled, nor are a protected class.

Do you need a credit card or a business loan? Sorry, but we have to charge you a higher interest rate because our actuaries have found that people whom have not had the life-extension procedure are a higher risk and have lower profit margins, due to a shorter life expectancy.

Need any more examples?

Remember this is America, we have no labor protection, no union representation and no access to collective bargaining. In situations like this we are sheep to be slaughtered. Mark my words, Europeans will fare MUCH better when such tech becomes reality.