Should immortality be only available to the Wealthy.

I personally think that immortality should be offered to all and if the elite were really smart they would also agree.

Since, it would be a good form of population control. If one looks at the increase of life expectancy of various populations, you tend to find another trend happening along side of it, the longer people live the less children they have on average and the longer many of them wait to have children. If one had say a thousand years of youthful life, they may wait five hundred to have children at all.

Of course if you also required a condition of temporary enforced sterility in exchange for the immortality it would further increase the population control effect. For instance, imagine a world where you have a nanotechnological immune system; little robots that float around your body, ripping apart viruses and bacteria at the molecular level , repairing cellular, tissue and organ damage from the inside, maintaining your DNA and the telemarase, effectively making you immortal, but at the same time the same nanites could keep one from getting pregnant, but temporarily. As long as you have the nanites you can not have children. Then if at a later date an individual wants children the nanites could be removed, causing them to begin to age and die normally, but they would be able to have offspring.

There would also be another benefit from immortality for the masses, at least from the elite perspective. If you have a worker that is immortal, they can effectively do their job for many many years, with minimal need for investment in training. Also the longer one lives and performs specific tasks, the more experience and muscle memory they gain, making them faster and more efficient at their job. If you needed a major surgery, Which doctor would you trust more, one fresh out of medical school or one with many years of experience and a proven track record?

Just my opinion though.

beezzer

VoidHawk
Life is one long learning experience so I wonder just how smart a human can get by living several life times?

Would they become so clever they could manipulate an entire planet, and turn all those on the planet into slaves?

Wait.......what!!!

Thought your post could use this.

LOL I shoulld have included it

Age reversal technologies are very real and in the pipe right now:

Age Reversal in Mice
Self Healing like Wolverine (comic hero character) - new gene found

As to availability once these technologies mature and reach the consumer market, they will indeed be available to any ordinary common person.

All this rubbish about the "Elite" only having access to what is a 'drug' treatment is exactly that; Rubbish.

Sure, there may very well be laws put into place in attempting to regulate age reversal and access to 'immortality', but, the results of such have the potential for just going 'underground' like any and every other recreational drug on the market, and then, all that money just goes into the hands of drug dealers.

Whatever the case, once these technologies mature, with techniques in process and efficiency as well as result, the costs of setting up shop in a garage, for one's own personal use, or illegal distribution will plummet such that anyone that wants access to age reversal treatments will get it.

There are several problems with age reversal, and 'immortality' that we should, however, be aware of.
One problem comes in asking "How Far can one be age regressed"?
Could people be effectively regressed back to not only the youthful vigor of a 10 year old's energy and metabolism, but, also be coaxed to reverse all that adult bone growth to achieve a full reversal back to a child body as well?
If so, and such could be achievable, then, on the perverse and criminal element, we'll have a whole new category of strange happening with highly trained Government Super Spies in child bodies, Pedophiles regressing so that they can mingle and blend with their targets, Sex rings and prostitutes catering to a very select clientele in offering an adult mind in a child's body. The list could go on, but, a resulting social ramification would come about where the very terminology of what a "Child" is would come under quite a bit of legal debate and scrutiny.

Thus, regardless of one's position on JUST age reversal and access to 'immortality', the technologies could very well result in other even more controversial issues.

As for me, personally, I'm more interested in post-biological technological singularity.
If age regression is required such while I'm waiting to be able to have a fully synthetic, self maintaining replacement body that affords me the ability to run around naked and barefoot on the moon so I can be the first person to 'moon' the Earth from the moon, then, I'll do age regression until such time as I can get my synthetic replacement.

From there, I'm sticking my own personal flag in a sufficiently large rock in the asteroid belt, hollowing the thing out, giving it spin for artificial gravity on the resulting interior, and then coaching a sustainable mini-Earth into existence.
By then, propulsion technologies will have advanced sufficiently enough, and my personal project obtained sufficient popularity and support such that engines could be welded on, and places got gone to.


The rest of you can keep Earth, fight over it, destroy it, or turn it into a paradise.
It matters not to me.
I'll make one my own and take it with me.

Absolutely not.
I hope we never find the technological means either.
Just think of some of the most sociopathic living forever.shudder

Also, ironically, it would not be a wealthy person that would come across the find ethier but they would be sure to capitalize on it.

Nobody should be able to live forever. The cycle of life is critically important to evolution.

SouthernForkway26
Nobody should be able to live forever. The cycle of life is critically important to evolution.

No one, absolutely no one, should be able to, or have the authority to decree, invoke, control, mandate, or force another person to do with their OWN BODY and life what they want to.

Regarding anyone's personal choices, whether for, or against age regression, extension, or 'immortality', that's fine as it applies to them, personally, but as it applies to anyone else, um, NO.

Besides, we're talking 'immortality', in quotations.
Even Suns and Galaxies die.
No matter how hardened against mortality anyone eventually becomes, entropy will catch us all.

reply to post by SouthernForkway26


Evolution is over rated.

After all evolution is death. Just ask the dead and fossilized dinosaurs that became extinct to make way for the future evolving species. The truth is evolution will more then likely eventually make us extinct as well, after all it's an impersonal force and doesn't really care about individual species.

The only way the human race could escape it's inevitable extinction, is to flip evolution "the bird" and develop technology to extend our life and control our own evolution.

Of course since evolution has already given us reason and the ability to develop science and build technology, it has already given our species the gifts and tools to do just that. Why should we look a gift horse in the mouth? Why not use our science and technology, to survive and evolve?

And from a philosophical perspective that may just be the point.

After all the earth might just be what it seems to be, a giant eternal random life generator; it's purpose to endlessly create new and different forms of life, not sustain them.

Every once in a great eternity a species evolves with the ability to create technology and get the hell off the planet; to escape the great alchemical crucible. Those species are successes, they by that very act, have proven their worthiness to continue their species indefinitely. The other species that never develop the ability to escape, they are the failures and eventually they will be plowed under to make way for new life. And that does seem to be one thing the earth is really good at constantly making new forms of life.



Just my opinion though

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

No matter how hardened against mortality anyone eventually becomes, entropy will catch us all.

Is not a dream of the elite for science to catch up and overtake God, as to become Gods.

A metaphysical state, that's what the OP is talking about. Nothing like that could ever remain a secret for very long if it were for sale to no matter who would have the shekels, nor can I see a case for stages of immortality, that makes no sense since you die at some point anyway. But, if you are a good guy, you will then exist forever in some form or another so the good book says. Then there's the other thing like eternal youth, that has to go hand in hand with accrued immortality rating depending on age for some initiated into the big secret. I see no signs of that.

Sorry, OP, but the problem with this scenario is that you've set it up way too detailed with an oligarchy making all the decisions. Quite naturally, the reaction posts have been along the lines of "It's not fair!" and "No one has the right!" and similar self-serving reasons that are, of course, against any 1%ers, rich people, etc. having yet another advantage over us poor peons.

Unfortunately, that clouds the issue considerably. You are evoking anti-establishment hysteria and outrage rather than dealing with the issue you want to deal with: immortality. So how do you get around this? Let it happen by accident with no one in charge, no one pulling the strings, no one paying for or controlling the process, like this:

reply to post by AthlonSavage


The question can be answered any which way you want, it wont matter to those who decides.

8 billion people who are immortal makes sense to you?

reply to post by AthlonSavage


The wealthy? No.

It probably should not be available to anyone who has amassed a great fortune, because there is next to no way to become super rich, without being a mercenary, amoral sod, and dodging an awful lot of tax. Personally speaking, I do not think that it would be a good idea for any human being to attain physical immortality, but if someone is going to get it, let it be someone who is not obsessed with gaining more money than they could spend in the remaining lifetime of the freakin universe!

reply to post by AthlonSavage


The real question is not about who should and should not have it, its about the implications it would have on everyone's life.

Currently a life max sentence is around 25 years......would they have to change that to accommodate those who possibly live longer?

State pensions....how would that come into play? most people can collect state pension after 65 years of age, pensions have a major impact on a countries economy....how would that be changed...?

Lots of things have to be considered. Having this tech for everyone does not fair well!! The poor are doomed to be poor even longer.

The retarded people are doomed to suffer for longer?


Do we have a choice about this? Because if its choice and you choose to extend your life but your child does not want to do that...you must outlive your child..that is a challenge too.

Lots of things are impacted

projectbane
reply to post by AthlonSavage

 

State pensions....how would that come into play? most people can collect state pension after 65 years of age, pensions have a major impact on a countries economy....how would that be changed...?

Pensions I'd imagine would be abolished/not available to those under the curse of immortality. Simply put this is exactly why this tech will be available to the lower classes IMO: It's more cost effective for the "Elite" to make people immortal and enslaved in debt then it is to have expiration dates on their cash cows and have to regrow,train/brainwash,Milk the profits till retirement, then pay out pensions till We die and repeat. I can surmise that having a 10000 year old employe that knows the ins and outs of him/her's job and has the life experience of living for 10k plus years would be more cost effective then the current norm of birth>school>>post schooling>work>retire>die x ∞.

projectbane
reply to post by AthlonSavage

 

Currently a life max sentence is around 25 years......would they have to change that to accommodate those who possibly live longer?

indeed it would be changed in regards to the time frame of incarnation,in my eyes facing 1000's of years of jail time or worse would be far, far more punishing then the current system... at least with the current life sentence the criminal knows eventually it will end.either by death of old age or expiry of the term Would really drive home the point of multiple life sentences to a perpetrator too I'd think which is rather redundant given a person can't live long enough to suffer the full sentence

AthlonSavage
If one person had this technology secretly hidden away for themselves, would they reveal or share it with anyone else. Possibility not. Mabey its the fundamental nature of human survival to want to preserve its own lifeforce that determines how this technology is managed. If the elite can control it they will, and will only want to use it on themselves and anyone else they think can help them maintain control over it. What can be more immortal than the flow of human blood, only the flow of money, both are intrinsically locked together in the destiny of those who are servants and those who are the masters.

Here is a problem when it comes to technology. If someone wants to live longer the question is why? If it is for self serving purposes then they will have fear of dieing and it will grow. This will lead to a corrupted mind as they now see themselves as more important than the rest and and will protect their interests out of irrational fear.

Now the real value would be to achieve this without the use of technology, then that person would have earned the "licence" to live longer as they are pro life, all life. No more keepers of technology, no more master and no more slaves. But since we have technology, masters and slaves currently occuping earth, collectivly we have serious work ahead to re-establish harmony of the planet.

People are going to get 'hurt' trying to fix this and you can guess who that is going to be, the people with "assigned value" and not those with "true value"

I believe in Resurrection. Everybody and every creature that has ever lived will be translated. There will be no more death for anyone or anything. Your whole lives are being recorded. Your every thought and movement.

Some are eternally punished. I prophecy all this. The matrix is looking like to be one form of entertainment for the rich and intelligent. There will be mind control as I am controlled.

If there is a either a God or No God these things will come to pass. Better with a God if you ask me.

It could be that we bring Jesus back to life with tech before he can under his own power. At his resurrection he'd be like "see told ya".

I prophecy resurrection and immortality. The matrix is the tech that could bring about immortality. Everyone will have a mansion in virtual space. The matrix tech is around right now in existence.

AthlonSavage

Is not a dream of the elite for science to catch up and overtake God, as to become Gods.

Who the Eff even cares about 'Elite', TPTB, or whatever money-jealous paranoid ridiculous people-centric nonsense drama Spooks people like to try to blame and hang all their frustrations on?

In space, for those of us that manage to successfully get off this rock and out of the gravity well prison, there is no 'Elite', or TPTB.

Further, there's more than enough room for population demographics to go well beyond Hundreds of Thousands of Trillions census count and still have plenty resources, and room left over for more in just our solar ecliptic.

Once we've pedestrian access to minimally inclined gravity well, issues like scarcity and resource competition will eventually become antiquated anachronisms.
There's more frozen water-ice floating around the solar ecliptic than there is on Earth.
There's plenty rocks floating around that are practically dripping with gold, platinum, diamonds, and even Uranium.
All of it just floating there like low hanging fruit on a shallow gravity plane in the asteroid belt, any number of moons, and even out to the Oort cloud.

Lastly, and importantly, if we never solve the FTL issue, 'immortality' becomes fairly necessary as means for travelling interstellar distances. Even with FTL, the vastness of the Universe should still require effective immortality for the distances and time scales involved.

I would see human immortality as a curse .. not a gift ... and not something worth spending money on.
Who wants to be stuck in this organic mundane body when we can eventually be free to evolve to
a better life form outside of it? Ya' know??

Sovaka
Not at all... What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Open to all or disallowed for everyone.

What we need is the top 1% staying around longer to take even more power, more money (like they need it) and totally controlling the world we inhabit.

For something like this... No one single group of people should be allowed to dictate the use.

OTOH, why would we want someone staying alive for a thousand years if they are just going to be on the dole for a thousand years?

FlyersFan
I would see human immortality as a curse .. not a gift ... and not something worth spending money on.
Who wants to be stuck in this organic mundane body when we can eventually be free to evolve to
a better life form outside of it? Ya' know??

If it was healthy immortality, I'd find it a gift. You could spend a thousand, million lifetimes exploring the galaxy, much less the universe. Add space travel to immortality and we'd have a deal.