Live to be 1000

quarky said:
Exactly.
So do the math:

Assuming an upper cap on population; i.e., controls, that holds us to a sustainable level with minimum starvation and such, and people not dying...

Well, you can't get a permit for a pregnancy until someone checks out of the hotel. This should be obvious.

So, a minimal of births.
Hence, a thorn in our evolution, and no kids around.
You'd have to hate kids to want to live to 1000
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We already live twice as long as in the early 20th century. Should we kill people who want to live past 35?

Should we assume that we can't produce more food and find more room for people? We haven't tried populating underground tunnels, the oceans, or the moon and Mars. I know the last few are very far-fetched, but overpopulation is going to happen whether or not we live to be 1000.
 
Assume for a moment that this would even be possible. Assume further still that it will be possible within this generations lifetime. Why would you be opposed to someone living this long? I can understand being bored with life and wanting to die yourself, but why would you want others to die after some arbitrary limit?

And what is too old for you? There are some 120-year-olds out there, what about 150? Is that too much to be allowed?

I agree it would be a problem with population, and that there are ethical problems when not everyone can get the 'treatment' or whatever, but in general, I find it hard to see what is so offensive about a long life.

Maybe I'm to young to have enough 'wisdom' to see that life sucks after 50 or 60 years? Even if i wasn't in great physical shape for most of my time here, I enjoy learning new things too much to want to stop.

The problem will solve it's self though I guess. The people who want to die, will die, and the people who want to live will be left to research how to continue living.

Also, hooray for my first zombie thread :D
 
Zeuzzz said:
Who on eath would want to live for 1000 years in this boring reality?
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I don't understand how people can say that. I would love to live to a 1000, there's so much to see! I'd also rather die because I'm painfully bored than because I have to.
 
Third Eye Open said:
And what is too old for you? There are some 120-year-olds out there, what about 150? Is that too much to be allowed?
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Actually, the oldest living person is 114.

http://www.grg.org/Adams/E.HTM

But your point is a good one; at what point does society say "you've lived long enough, stop sucking up our healthcare resources?" 120? 150? 200?

And, as I've said in other places here, I believe that we're closer to having to face that choice than others might say. Not 1,000; I doubt we'll ever be able to do that, but I do believe that the first person to live to 150 has already been born.
 
jhunter1163 said:
Actually, the oldest living person is 114.

http://www.grg.org/Adams/E.HTM

But your point is a good one; at what point does society say "you've lived long enough, stop sucking up our healthcare resources?" 120? 150? 200?

And, as I've said in other places here, I believe that we're closer to having to face that choice than others might say. Not 1,000; I doubt we'll ever be able to do that, but I do believe that the first person to live to 150 has already been born.
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Go for it.

Whatever.

I can't drive my point home any harder.
This is cynical to me. Sinister, even.

If my point is too obscure, I would come back with the math.
 
I worked in a long-term care facility and hospice (my last day was yesterday, because I"m getting ready to move out of state, yay!), and I saw that there's a real potential for quality of life to continue even under severe limitations (advanced dementia, basically.) Unfortunately, LTC's are usually not run anywhere near well enough for this potential to be fulfilled, but this could be done so much more easily than I think anyone really realizes. And these are extreme cases; these dementias are disease processes and are inevitable or normal, and we're getting closer and closer to some real breakthroughs in this area. The degree to which the problems almost everyone assumes are "normal aging" are no such thing is unbelievable.

There's so much more that can be done even now, but the remarkable part is that a lot of limitations are placed on people simply because of prejudice, discrimination, and assumptions that not much can be expected from older adults. Ageism cannot be acceptable anymore-- there needs to be a real paradigm shift in this culture that causes us to understand that it's just as bad as racism or sexism.
 
Malkuth said:
I've seen quite a few articles regarding this topic in recent months. Not being a geneticist, I'm unqualified to state categorically how close to reality this might be, but I'd suspect it's quite closer to being technically feasible than most of the public might suspect.

I see bioethics as having positive and negative connotations.

On the one hand, it seems to be concerned about upsetting the natural balance of the cycle of life and death and all the problems that might be caused by an ever increasing population that never grew old and died off as it has for countless millions of years before.

On the other hand, it seems to be concerned with making sure that said cycle does indeed continue, whether the rest of us like it or not, when it does become technically feasible to implement on a wide scale.

I don't really want to start a debate about Eugenics, but Bioethics, when studied in a certain light, can conceivably be seen as an old idea with a new name.
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What I don't get is why can't you just go and cut reproduction? If you could increase lifespan 10x, surely you should also be able to cut reproduction 10x as well, no? So then it'd seem the "price" to "immortality" is not being able to have children... this may be too big a price. Then again, spending years in pain due to the way "aging" works is not cool either. Geez, this one is NOT easy to answer...
 
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Maia said:
I worked in a long-term care facility and hospice (my last day was yesterday, because I"m getting ready to move out of state, yay!), and I saw that there's a real potential for quality of life to continue even under severe limitations (advanced dementia, basically.) Unfortunately, LTC's are usually not run anywhere near well enough for this potential to be fulfilled, but this could be done so much more easily than I think anyone really realizes. And these are extreme cases; these dementias are disease processes and are inevitable or normal, and we're getting closer and closer to some real breakthroughs in this area. The degree to which the problems almost everyone assumes are "normal aging" are no such thing is unbelievable.

There's so much more that can be done even now, but the remarkable part is that a lot of limitations are placed on people simply because of prejudice, discrimination, and assumptions that not much can be expected from older adults. Ageism cannot be acceptable anymore-- there needs to be a real paradigm shift in this culture that causes us to understand that it's just as bad as racism or sexism.
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This raises some interesting stuff. Medicine, from the get-go, has more or less been about extending life anyways, along with reducing suffering from disease. If "life extension" is fundamentally bad, then we should throw out medicine, no? And furthermore, "life extension" is a sort of "side effect" of curing diseases. If we wanted to "ban" it, we would therefore have to declare certain diseases, maybe like dementias, "off-limits" to trying to cure, but to me that seems like a bad thing to do. Diseases also cause suffering and pain, not just death. Thus to refuse to cure them would be to say, go and put up with the misery -- but what good does that serve? If you want to go that route, might as well advocate "suicide" programs so they don't have to go through that.

This obviously doesn't have a simple yes or no answer.
 
quarky said:
(btw, when that day comes, I won't be doing much "jumping off bridges". I barely jump now, and I'm not even depressed. Also, when you're an old fart, I could barely expect you to intervene in my jumpings, regardless of your prior 9 ph d's. They say the knees go first.)
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One of my knees is already artificial, and to some extent better than the other. I expect the other one will be within 20 years.

Eventually... cyborg.
 
Richard Masters said:
If we have solved the problem of mortality, the technology and wisdom to solve overpopulation can't be far behind.
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Right, some people might actually speculate that if/when we get indefinite life extension done, that we might be so lost as to how to solve problems and innovate that population might get us as though there are no conceivable solutions.

Another thing is, we have to remember that not only do we need to push for this if the science hadn't already advanced along, but the science is already advancing along. There are 7 forms of damage that accumulate in our cells that age us to death. Clean out that damage and we can live on indefinitely (not immortally) with robust health. On top of that, diseases that are like those forms of damage have already been worked on with success. We can already go in there and introduce enzymes that do specific things with out causing damage in other areas, we already have vast databases of the structures of proteins, we already have gene engineering, then theres dendrimers and emerging nanotechnology etc...

It has always been a matter of our will to make it happen, the collective speed at which we go to get it based on the amount of support we give it. So if you want indefinite life extension, start supporting it now because the day these therapies can get here is the day after somebody(s++) dies and that somebody could be you. You dont want to miss the bus on existence. There are just a few things out there to do, like these, to know:

- the nature of existence, ie infinity, conciousness, particle phyisics, etc..
- if there is a god, gods, no god, or something else
- how we got here
- how the universe got here
- what all else is out there like hover ability, light speed, aliens, populated galaxies, dimensions etc..
- all forms and extents of all pleasures current and undiscovered.
- the fulfillment of all goals that time brings you to want, restaurant owner, pro football, climbing mountains etc..
- universal elimination of fallacy
 
Mark6 said:
One of my knees is already artificial, and to some extent better than the other. I expect the other one will be within 20 years.

Eventually... cyborg.
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Ehhhh.... Think again. My grandpa had one of those in his hip. I don't think its there anymore and he didn't have surgery.
 
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