|
With the improvements in modern medicine and health care, people are living ever-lengthening life spans. I would not be surprised if the young generation living today would eventually attain lifespans of greater than 200 years. It is important that they remain healthy and productive as long as possible, or else if they become infirm after 100 years, that is another half of their life that they become a burden for the rest of productive society to support.
Telomere shortening and limited cell division potential seems to be accepted as a popular theory for aging. To me, it does seem to make a lot of sense; other biological mechanisms for organism deterioration are so far not well documented. It would explain the apparent immortality of those cell types that do have telomerase to extend their allowed division cycles.
I think it will not be in the far future when immortals walk among us. By immortal, of course, I do not mean invincible. People can still die from physical damage. However, they may be free from the effects of aging and enjoy eternal youth, or at least eternal peak physical maturation state. When combining both fields of biotechnology and human cybernetic enhancements, such a possibility would be a difficult case to doubt.
I have often thought about the scenario when such a feat was achieved. Could you imagine living continuously for one thousand years? Is the human mind capable of handling this huge volume of memories? What mental adaptations might we require to remain sane in this environment?
To me, the most striking difference is that death becomes a much more devastating event. Currently, all people die – it is inevitable. A child dying shortly after birth was barely given the chance to live. To me, it seems as if they never really existed as a person, because their experiences and contributions to the world were non-existent. Healthy people die of old age, when their biological systems no longer function sufficiently to sustain life. The relatives of patients who become gravely ill already harbour the concession at the back of their mind that their loved one will depart soon – even if not immediately, their sickness will eventually claim them. That is why the sudden shock of someone dying unexpectedly in an accident is, I would imagine, a cause for much greater traumatic grief and emotional impact.
But what if we, as immortals, did not die, so long as we lived cautiously and avoided being run over by trains. Imagine growing up beside your best friend, someone you have known and treasured for 400 years, with no estimable date when the friendship may end. When something happens to that person, the feeling of loss must be magnified countless times. You know that you could have enjoyed much more time together, to share many more experiences. The meaning of loss suddenly becomes much more clear. Consider this happening several times with close friends during your hundreds of years of existence. Needless to say, think of the infinite sorrow of losing your truly committed romantic partner. How much grief can a person withstand?
When death is no longer inescapable, we would become that much more regretful of actions that cause mortal harm to others. When people do live on a limited life span, any such occurrences merely create timing differences of the departure that is sure to happen. When a loved one dies, we know that we will eventually share the same fate as them and join them in their final destination.
And then comes the question of mental capacity. Can the human mind truly handle all the information it has accumulated for hundreds or thousands of years? I would postulate that after a long enough stay, insanity is bound to affect the person’s mind. Factoring in the layers of grief that they may experience, it may become a normal situation where the subject has decided they have lived enough of their life, and resort to voluntary suicide. They may also struggle to find meaning in a life that would otherwise never end.
One final note I’d like to make is that the population controls must be implemented. If the death rate diminished to near zero, while the birth rate is unchanged, the planet would quickly become starved for resources. Births must be tightly regulated, such that new births are only allowed when a death occurs. Because it appears that biological clocks would be unaffected for reproductive purposes, ie. the number of eggs females are born with are limited, should a generation live so long that all the females are no longer fertile, the race is doomed. One solution is to preserve or freeze eggs for implantation when birth is desired. A very interesting alternative is to keep some humans mortal, who maintain the normal life cycles to cultivate newborns, whilst they live among immortals.
|
|
|
I'd rather not live forever. Being old sucks apparently.
Also, keeping some people mortal and others immortal would lead to a class difference in which the immortals would dominate the mortals and eventually lead to a revolution which the immortals would lose since they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
|
In a Yale lecture on the philosophy of death, the professor made an argument about what constitutes death and if immortality is a good thing. If you youtube it you will find it in no time.
His argument is that the essence of a human is his/her personality. And since ones' personality changes over time, after, say, 500 years, one may completely change his/her personality and become a "new" person, and the "old" person will "die".
On July 26 2009 12:32 ghostWriter wrote:
I'd rather not live forever. Being old sucks apparently.
Also, keeping some people mortal and others immortal would lead to a class difference in which the immortals would dominate the mortals and eventually lead to a revolution which the immortals would lose since they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
You read too much science-fiction, evidentally.
|
On July 26 2009 12:32 ghostWriter wrote:
I'd rather not live forever. Being old sucks apparently.
Also, keeping some people mortal and others immortal would lead to a class difference in which the immortals would dominate the mortals and eventually lead to a revolution which the immortals would lose since they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
the key thing is that you wouldn't be old physiologically. you'd be 50 years old but would have the body of a 20 year old, etc.
I agree there would be a class difference, though. But then again, why would the classes be there in the first place? It'd be just a continuation of the previous class of rich vs poor. And it's very easy to change classes very easily, so I'm not sure if this class revolution will occur-this is rather marxist thought.
|
One of the consequences of oxidative phosphorylation (the pathway that produces ATP, which serves as a major "energy carrier" for humans) is the occasional formation of oxygen ions called 'free radicals' which can damage DNA. Some people theorize this is a reason for aging. If they could figure out a way to eliminate the formation of free radicals...it is possible...i guess..to live 'forever.' I don't really think anyone would want to live forever though...life is special because it must come to an end.
|
On July 26 2009 12:37 illu wrote:In a Yale lecture on the philosophy of death, the professor made an argument about what constitutes death and if immortality is a good thing. If you youtube it you will find it in no time. His argument is that the essence of a human is his/her personality. And since ones' personality changes over time, after, say, 500 years, one may completely change his/her personality and become a "new" person, and the "old" person will "die". Show nested quote +On July 26 2009 12:32 ghostWriter wrote:
I'd rather not live forever. Being old sucks apparently.
Also, keeping some people mortal and others immortal would lead to a class difference in which the immortals would dominate the mortals and eventually lead to a revolution which the immortals would lose since they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. You read too much science-fiction, evidentally.
Did you mean evidently?
Was it from the time machine by H. G. Wells? I can't remember where I read that from, but the point is valid and that's what will happen probably.
|
You'd have to find a way to stop people from reproducing so much
|
I just finished The Selfish Gene by Dawkins today.
That book claims that evolution isn't played on species level.. it's on the genes level.
Every gene has one main purpose: replicating itself. The creatures are puppets of the genes that help them replicating and spreading.
There are lethal genes which cause the host to die.
These can be ones which cause cancer, or increasing the risk of a heart attack.. etc. etc.
Dawkins in his theory suggests that the reason of death may be the effect of lethal genes which effect the host to die after it already reproducted.
Think about it: if these genes are lethal, but only after they got planted into the next generation, they get spread in the population.
If they caused the host to die before breeding age, these genes would get erased from the population, but this way, they "live".
Dawkins suggested a possible solution to make our lifespan longer (in case of his death theory is right):
people should start having kids at later and later age. This way more and more lethal genes would get erased from the population, since they aren't passed on to the next generation. Many people would die before having kids, and those genes would go extinct.
For example if there is a gene, which causes really high risk of heart attack at age of 40+. If people started having kids at age 50, the spreading of this particular gene would get lower and lower.
The breeding age should continously get higher and higher, this is the solution by Dawkins.
|
too bad having kids at later ages makes them prone to mental retardation
: |
|
On July 26 2009 12:46 MamiyaOtaru wrote:
You'd have to find a way to stop people from reproducing so much
Poor people reproduce too much and the rich don't reproduce enough.
|
I find it really dumb to say that no one wants to live forever, as a living being survival is at the top of your to do list. How the hell do you even know that in 200 years you will lose the will to live.
|
@illu Kagan's lectures, btw, are teh shizzle. I wanna take his class next year but will probably fail it on account of the excessive time I spend playing sc.
gg gpa.
|
I actually read an article that downloading or uploading (w/e you wanna call it.) your concious in to a computer isn't that far into the future. Matrix anyone?
This could mean that your mind or ''soul'' that some people might call it, could be stored, put into a virtual world. Or maybe even uploaded into another vessel, a clone perhaps. Its quite interesting. Personally, I would like to live forever, but, then again, I'm a young person. Maybe when I'm like 70+ I'll be ready to die, realizing I had a life full of experiences and memories.
|
I like Ray Kurzweil's predictions about the future, concerning the singularity he thinks will happen by 2045. Man will merge with machine and essentially become something else entirely.
When I talk to my friends IRL about the singularity they give me this look like I'm crazy. O.o
+ Show Spoiler +http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_singularity
Futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that the inevitability of a technological singularity is implied by a long-term pattern of accelerating change that generalizes Moore's Law to technologies predating the integrated circuit, and which he argues will continue to apply to other technologies not yet invented.
|
On July 26 2009 13:48 Eggplant wrote:
@illu Kagan's lectures, btw, are teh shizzle. I wanna take his class next year but will probably fail it on account of the excessive time I spend playing sc.
gg gpa.
Yea him. He sounds kind of awesome.
I am not in Yale btw. =)
|
oh. Academicearth or yale open courses? 
|
On July 26 2009 12:37 illu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2009 12:32 ghostWriter wrote:
I'd rather not live forever. Being old sucks apparently.
Also, keeping some people mortal and others immortal would lead to a class difference in which the immortals would dominate the mortals and eventually lead to a revolution which the immortals would lose since they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. You read too much science-fiction, evidentally.
and/or Marxist historians
|
I actually think about this topic a lot and I still have mixed feelings about it. As a biological individual, I would love to live forever (assuming I maintain mental capacity); I might even go as far as to say it's my evolutionary duty to live a long time and give a lot of offspring. But on the other hand, if you really think about it, modern society functions based on the concept of our mortality. Religion, capitalism, raising a family, etc are all based on doing as much as we can with the little time we have. If you take away the mortality element of it, will society continue to evolve? That's the part that bothers me because I can very well see massive stagnation when we aren't limited by the greatest fear in life.
|
Shortening of the telomeres is a fairly accepted mechanism of aging, but it is far from the only cause. Someone mentioned oxidative damage to DNA (both nuclear but in particular mitochondrial), proliferation of 'glycation' (body slaps glucose randomly onto proteins - after this reaches a certain level tissues lose flexibility and it interferes with function), accumulation of intracellular and extracellular waste and so on. There is a computer scientist turned geneticist by the name of Aubrey de Grey who advocates a specific engineering oriented approach toward reversing the known pathological causes of aging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SENS) - many criticize what he advocates but it is interesting to read about nonetheless.
I do not really know much about cognitive science, but I suspect that we (humans) are not truly the neurological sum of our experiences. I suspect instead that we are the sum of a number of continually changing pieces of our experiences. Even as we are today, we do not remember every experience; we often remember very little of the things we learn, and even if we remain aware of them on some level we often do not let our knowledge affect our actions. I further suspect all of this will remain true no matter how much we extend our lifespan: old neurological connections will give way to make for new ones, old memories and old skills will give way to new ones. I feel that just as certain times and experiences never leave us as we are today (such as our childhood), that will also remain the case with an extended lifespan. If this is true, it means that given no additional technology (such as mental augmentation), immortality will not allow us to become successively more learned and skilled (and generally awesome), but what it will do is give us infinite chances to get everything right - chances to actually achieve our peak of capability and success. It will also open the potential for the innumerable wonderful phenomenon the universe has to offer to be experienced by human eyes.
With regard to illu's comment about the Yale lecture: I feel that we already change significantly many times over the course of our existing lifespan, yet it is not really always true that we 'die', for we often retain fundamental memories and characteristics. As I alluded before, I suspect this will remain true no matter how long we can live - we are, and will remain a blend of a finite amount of our experiences.
Once again assuming the above is true, this would contradict the OPs proposition that negative experiences would weigh more heavily upon us. Humans (and many other animals no doubt) have excellent mechanisms to help reduce the effects of bad memories. Barring extended experiences of truly horrific nature, we do pretty well, and generally bounce back from loss perfectly. I don't really see why this would change given a longer time to live.
Sorry if this whole mess is incomprehensible - if you are interested in anything please ask for clarification
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
