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Live to be 1000

What the hell? Can't the software note that and watermark it with a big Z, like Zorro used to do?
 
There's another forum I'm a member of which flaches up a pop-up if you try to do this - something like "there have been no posts to this thread for over [six months, or something], are you sure you want to post this?"

We could do with that feature here.

Rolfe.
 
Earthborn said:
Here's the guy's TED talk. Interesting ideas, but not entirely convincing, IMHO. He assumes that when the breakthrough in life extension will happen, improvement in the technology will grow exponentially. He compares it with improvement in speed of airplane, which I think is doesn't entirely support his argument. There is at the moment not too much improvement in plane speeds; and the only supersonic passenger plane we had is taken out of service because there simply no profitable market for it. The same might happen with life extension; it could be that there is a market for life extension to for example 150 years, but not for much more than that. If there is only one person who would be willing to pay to be 1000 years, it would likely not be technology that is going to be developed.
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What? You think there isn't a market for this service?

Living to be 1000? Rich folks have put down ridiculous deposits to fly into space. Do you think that the space market will never scale and drop in price?

Consider the accumulated interest and wealth from living to 1000 instead of 100. You would probably make your money back 10 fold over your life span if they charged a million dollars.
 
Earthborn said:
Here's the guy's TED talk. Interesting ideas, but not entirely convincing, IMHO. He assumes that when the breakthrough in life extension will happen, improvement in the technology will grow exponentially. He compares it with improvement in speed of airplane, which I think is doesn't entirely support his argument. There is at the moment not too much improvement in plane speeds; and the only supersonic passenger plane we had is taken out of service because there simply no profitable market for it. The same might happen with life extension; it could be that there is a market for life extension to for example 150 years, but not for much more than that. If there is only one person who would be willing to pay to be 1000 years, it would likely not be technology that is going to be developed.

He also assumes that people who might benefit from the first generation of moderate life extension will be able to live long enough to benefit from the next generation of even better life extension. But perhaps the pill you started taking at 50 to get 30-40 years of extra life will have adverse side effects that will become apparent at age 120, which may not be reversed by the new pill that let's 120 year olds live another 30 years. As an early adopter it will seem like a good deal to get an extra 30-40 years to your life expectancy 80 in exchange for problems later, but it might exclude you from the group of people who get even more life extension.

And then there is the matter that testing whether life extension drugs/procedures actually work might take a looooong time.
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It wont be/isnt simple, and its no guarantee, thats for sure, thats is certainly right.

Thats fine though, nothing has ever been a guaranetee. Language catching on and working wasnt, farming not leading to the end of human kind wasnt, industry wasnt, technology wasnt, the civil rights movement wasnt, getting to the moon wasnt, the human genome project wasnt. We prepare, we set out and we blaze new trails. Thats what humans do.

We might encounter all kinds of problems on all different scales, and we are sure to encounter some. That though, can not stop us from going there to see. We tackle problems as we are able to anticipate them and as we encounter them. This reminds me of the premise of a paper I wrote "We dont have to know we can get there to go there but we do have to go there to get there." That premise doesnt hold for all things but it does for things you need, like your life.
 
kevinquinnyo said:
What? You think there isn't a market for this service?
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I didn't say that. I think it hasn't been proven that there is a market for it. I personally would love to live to be a 1000, but whether that will happen depends on whether I or society will be able to bear the cost.

Rich folks have put down ridiculous deposits to fly into space.
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Another largely unproven market. Yes, a few exceptionally fit rich blokes who could get through cosmonaut training have hitched a ride on a rocket that was going to space with or without them. And since space travel is still something with a fairly high risk of death, we can conclude that they certainly won't be the type of person putting down ridiculous deposits to live longer. People who want to live to be a 1000 don't tend to take such risks.

It is also unproven whether societies will accept a situation where only the rich get to be 1000 and the rest has to die at the tender age of 110. I think a lot of people will consider that to be unfair and demand that the technology be made available to everyone; but whether a society can bear the costs of making it available to everyone remains to be seen.

Do you think that the space market will never scale and drop in price?
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No, I don't think the space market is going to scale very well. The energetic costs will remain enormous. Ya cannea change the laws o'physics.

Consider the accumulated interest and wealth from living to 1000 instead of 100. You would probably make your money back 10 fold over your life span if they charged a million dollars.
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Or you can lose it all in one of about 20 Great Depressions. :)
 
Earthborn said:
I didn't say that. I think it hasn't been proven that there is a market for it. I personally would love to live to be a 1000, but whether that will happen depends on whether I or society will be able to bear the cost.
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Cost is a big factor, and although it will depend on it to certain extents, it doesnt depend directly on cost. It depends directly on support. When the world supports this, in the same way they do with things like say, religion, schools, resteraunt chains, music distributors, and others, who have stations in most every town around the world, then this will become normal every day business, with kids naturally wanting to go to college for this, with politicians naturally putting this on their platforms, voters naturally not voting them in unless they address indefinite life extension well, places like the NIA naturally programming this into their budgets in a more signficant and directed way, etc...

Another largely unproven market. Yes, a few exceptionally fit rich blokes who could get through cosmonaut training have hitched a ride on a rocket that was going to space with or without them. And since space travel is still something with a fairly high risk of death, we can conclude that they certainly won't be the type of person putting down ridiculous deposits to live longer. People who want to live to be a 1000 don't tend to take such risks.

It is also unproven whether societies will accept a situation where only the rich get to be 1000 and the rest has to die at the tender age of 110. I think a lot of people will consider that to be unfair and demand that the technology be made available to everyone; but whether a society can bear the costs of making it available to everyone remains to be seen.
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Most things start off expensive, computers, cell phones, new medical treatments, flight, etc... Really, it seems, the rich are doing us a favor by being the first and only ones to have it because they help test it out, are the gineau pigs for it, and help it to innovate and start driving its cost down. It may not ever come down, but I mean, we are still going to work to create indefinite life extension. I mean, there may have been alien outlaws on the moon with blaster rays too but we went there and got it done.


No, I don't think the space market is going to scale very well. The energetic costs will remain enormous. Ya cannea change the laws o'physics.

Or you can lose it all in one of about 20 Great Depressions. :)
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You dont? I do.
 
Earthborn said:
It is also unproven whether societies will accept a situation where only the rich get to be 1000 and the rest has to die at the tender age of 110. I think a lot of people will consider that to be unfair and demand that the technology be made available to everyone; but whether a society can bear the costs of making it available to everyone remains to be seen.
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That assumes there is an "immortality treatment" you either get or not -- which is basically magic. I think it is much more likely that immortality will sneak up on us -- today an average 60-year old plays tennis and bad knees get replaced; by 2030 an average 70-year old plays tennis and bad hearts get replaced; in 2050 an average 80-year old plays tennis and bad livers get replaced. By 2100 no 50-year old even thinks about heart attacks, or breast cancer, or enlarged prostate... and there is a billion fairly healthy centenarians. By that time major changes must have happened even though no one is technically immortal yet.
 
Hope it isn't me.

1000 years, no thanks.

I don't know why people would even want to live for so long, aside from an actual fear of death. Which is just silly in itself.
 
Eric Portal said:
Most things start off expensive, computers, cell phones, new medical treatments, flight, etc... Really, it seems, the rich are doing us a favor by being the first and only ones to have it because they help test it out, are the gineau pigs for it, and help it to innovate and start driving its cost down.
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New medical treatments don't follow that rule though. It is not the rich who tend to get the expensive new medical procedures, but rather the sick. And while sometimes the rich pay for the expenses, usually we all pay for it in some way. We're quite empathetic so it is fairly easy to accept that the most severely ill get the most expensive treatments; as such I don't think it will be difficult to develop a life extension treatment if it is sold to us as a treatment for Progeria which may or may not also extend the lives of ordinary people. We generally don't mind the use of EPO by severly ill people, but that doesn't mean many people support its use as performance enhancement by people who are already lucky enough to be exceptionally fit. Will there be more support for people with a good chance long healthy lives to have even longer healthy lives?

I mean, there may have been alien outlaws on the moon with blaster rays too but we went there and got it done.
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And never went back. Life extension is not the sort of technological achievement you can do once just to tell everyone "Hey look at what we did!" as was the case of the Space Race (or as I like to call it The Great Ideological Distance Pissing Contest). Life extension is something one has to continually support for... ever.
 
LandR said:
Hope it isn't me.

1000 years, no thanks.

I don't know why people would even want to live for so long, aside from an actual fear of death. Which is just silly in itself.
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I never got this attitude? What's so bad about life that you wouldn't want to extend it indefinitely? Why go away into the ether when you can still be around participating and shaping the world?
 
Vast silliness.

No one alive now will live to be 1000.

I don't want to live to be 100, let alone 1000.
 
I've already lived over 220 years, if you use the Mercurian calendar...

53.25y x (365.26d ÷ 87.97d) ≈ 221.10 years
 
Skimmed; sorry.

When people start living that long, which may be possible, its the sacred duty of young people to kill them. Even if you risk the death penalty yourself.

Civilization is already infused with oldness. Not wisdom. Oldness.
 
Man, Aubrey's really not kidding when he says everyone turns into luddites when this issue comes up.
 
NewtonTrino said:
Man, Aubrey's really not kidding when he says everyone turns into luddites when this issue comes up.
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Foolish words.

I'm not a Luddite.

I am in favor of research to improve the quality of life, but I have little interest in prolonging the length of life. I'm sure both kinds of research will continue (and often overlap).

Significant life extension would very likely be available only to a few and at great cost. The serious risk of social upheaval and injustice make it undesirable at this time.

I think there is a lot of power and drive that comes from the arc of a life - mortality motivates in ways that little else does.

I would far rather leave some things undone than live past my desire to live and past my ability to live well.

If I can avoid doing more damage to my body, I've got perhaps ten or fifteen more years. I intend to enjoy them as best I can. When my expected future quality of life decreases too far, I'll call it quits without regret.
 
I am still looking for a source but I read somewhere that research was done on the effects of UV light on biological forms(mainly humans) and found that if one were to go through life without any serious exposure to UV rays, longer life would be feasible due to lessened breakdown of materials.
 
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