Life eternal.

[Android]

(English is not my first language so my choose of words and sentance structure are not very good.)

I ran across this guy Aubrey de Grey today, heres his bio of sorts.

http://confusion.stilyagi.org/content/science-goh-aubrey-de-grey

 

I have thought a lot about this stuff since I took biology in "high school" (It's called differently where I live, but no matter.)

 

I realize there must be a great multitude of factors that need to be taken into consideration, but are there any known factors that cannot possibly be changed?

 

What interests me more is how this would effect our society?

 

If most normal people could expect to live for centuries, it would make education and other such investments in the individual so much more "profitable".(Not the best word, but I hope it conveys my meaning.)

 

I'm very curious what other people think about this subject.

[Lilith]

that dude's got one hell of a beard

[Lord Safey]

Age has to do with errors that show in the genes due to being copied over and over again. You take out a (or change it in health favorable way) factor the decreases the likely hood of errors to be introduced and then you can age more gracefully.

 

The issues with everyone living several centuries is one of logistics and population management. We are running out of resources (not just talking about oil).The world's infrastructure is severely taxed as it is and the worlds population is running away as it is. Unless we become a lot better at handling these problems, significantly increasing the age we can reach will compound these problems severely.

[Student of Trinity]

Well, he's aiming to live forever. Perhaps he's found evidence that extreme beardage will help.

 

But Droid seems to be asking whether greatly extended lifespans are possible, and how they would change human society.

 

My guess is that greatly extended lifespans are possible, but not as easy as one might think. When genes play the game of life, rapid proliferation probably beats immortality as a strategy every time. So I doubt there's much genetic infrastructure for really long life. Nature probably doesn't give you much to work with; you'd be relying on artificial interventions. In other words, I doubt that extending human life into centuries is going to be too much easier than making human bodies out of raw elements.

 

And I figure that, by the time we get there, social adaptation to longer lifespans will be one of the lesser adaptations that human societies will have had to make.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

My guess is that greatly extended lifespans are possible, but not as easy as one might think. When genes play the game of life, rapid proliferation probably beats immortality as a strategy every time.

not if you're a tree

[Android]

@ Lord Safey

The whole resource issue is not nearly as much of an issue as it's made out to be.

Most resources are very predictable, and their(?) absence can be adapted to with years in advance.

[Enraged Slith]

I think marriage would become a whole lot less attractive.

[Dantius]

Reducing population would be easy; we now know that murder on massive scales is quite feasible thanks to all the lessons we've learned in the 20th century. The trick is to only kill off enough people- you couldn't try to use MAD to reduce population, for instance, that would just eliminate the entire race. You'd need to keep the casualties capped at, oh, 95% max. I don't see how it would be easily doable.

[Micawber]

Originally Posted By: Droid

The whole resource issue is not nearly as much of an issue as it's made out to be.

Most resources are very predictable, and their(?) absence can be adapted to with years in advance.

 

That's debatable. On the contrary, with the strides in development of many parts of the world, but particularly the giants India and China, the worldwide competition for resources is going to be a BIG theme this century. World population is growing, and due to increased industrialisation, on average people are consuming more.

 

And predictability? First, in parts of Africa and the Middle East, water is a scarce resource, and it's not clear how you can 'adapt' to the absence of that. Second, food prices are this year at record levels due to: fires in Russia, storms in Canada and floods in Australia. The last time we had shortages like this (two years ago) there were food riots in over 30 countries. See Global Food Crisis.

[Student of Trinity]

Hmmm, that's true. What's up with trees? They're heavily outnumbered by grass, but there are still a few of them around. They didn't all get predominated to extinction.

 

Though to be fair, there are very few really long-lived trees.

 

I guess the hope would be that humans have some bristlecone pine inside, somewhere, that we could lean on a bit to make it through a few extra centuries. But I doubt it.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

And I figure that, by the time we get there, social adaptation to longer lifespans will be one of the lesser adaptations that human societies will have had to make.

We're already adapting to longer lifespans as it is. At one time, a 50-year-old human was considered elderly, or even ancient; now there are places where the average lifespan is around 80. Our biology already has a lot of catching up to do because of increased lifespans.

[Lord Safey]

Lets take copper for example. It is a widely used metal and is useful for an number of things. Recycling methods have a less then 100% return rate,. It used it power grids, other electrical systems, plating ship hulls, transportation of drinking water and more. Copper has unique properties that make it ideal for these tasks.

 

To replace copper you would either need to find another material capable of doing all these task. However more likely you would have to make do with a large number of substitutes which at best would be mediocre substitutes. Power grids take a significant blow to efficiency and produce more heat which causes electronics to be more difficult to cool and wear faster and need to be replaced more often. Sea going vessels will need to spend more time effort,and energy maintaining their hulls. Copper is a material that is resistant to the growth of microbes is ideal for plumbing.

 

Also its becoming a lot more scarce.

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

We're already adapting to longer lifespans as it is. At one time, a 50-year-old human was considered elderly, or even ancient; now there are places where the average lifespan is around 80. Our biology already has a lot of catching up to do because of increased lifespans.

While average lifespan was shorter, even 2000 years ago, there were humans who lived to their 80s and 90s.

[Android]

Okay, I was not being realistic on the resource thing.

I strongly support all actions to preserve resources, and maybe I am coloring the world with my own opinions, thinking that people in general think in this way.

Many nations in general certainly do not behave as such.

 

In short, I think that if we preserve resources and work towards finding new ways to do without them, we should be fine.

 

Another take on the resource thing, for a large part of our lives, from birth until around 18-26 or somesuch, and usually the last years of our lives(retirement is at 67 I think, where I live, but this is much lower generally I think, which only raises the cost.) We do not contribute to society much at all, so in effect making lives longer(assuming health gets better alongside it) we make each individual much more affordable.

 

And also, other than million year old tree colonies, there are some microorganisms that seem not to age at all.

Turritopsis Nutricula is believed to be this way.

The Hydra too.

If one kind can get rid of this aging thing, why not others?

[Sudanna]

Quote:

Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

We're already adapting to longer lifespans as it is. At one time, a 50-year-old human was considered elderly, or even ancient; now there are places where the average lifespan is around 80. Our biology already has a lot of catching up to do because of increased lifespans.

While average lifespan was shorter, even 2000 years ago, there were humans who lived to their 80s and 90s.

True, but living that long wasn't exactly as common as it is today. My point is that an average lifespan of 80-90 is becoming more the norm than the exception.

[Goldengirl]

Malthusian positive checks on population - war, famine, and plague - will keep the population from getting too out of check. At that point, humanity will essentially be forced into having a smaller population, which will then be able to cope with being having less resources, because there will still be more per capita.

 

Although, really, who wants to live that long? Speaking from a hedonist perspective, it has the potential to be mind numbing boredom - for centuries.

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

We're already adapting to longer lifespans as it is. At one time, a 50-year-old human was considered elderly, or even ancient; now there are places where the average lifespan is around 80. Our biology already has a lot of catching up to do because of increased lifespans.

While average lifespan was shorter, even 2000 years ago, there were humans who lived to their 80s and 90s.

True, but living that long wasn't exactly as common as it is today. My point is that an average lifespan of 80-90 is becoming more the norm than the exception.

If that is your point, I fail to see how it is relevant. Decay from old age, even in pre-industrial times happened at the same rate as it does now. It was just very rare to actually get to that point with lower health standards.

[Student of Trinity]

Why do some microorganisms not seem to age? Actually I don't know if this is true. Presumably DNA damage from cosmic rays still accumulates over time, so they have more and more mutations to deal with as they get older. This must have some effect at some point.

 

In principle there could be error correction mechanisms, to eject and replace DNA strands that have gone bad, or cells whose nuclei are corrupt, or whatever. And obviously such mechanisms do exist, at least in higher organisms.

 

But I've heard a theory that it's evolutionarily favorable for such mechanisms to be fallible. If error correction is too good, a species won't mutate enough to evolve. And then, when conditions change, the species will simply die without issue, rather than giving rise to successor species that still carry most of the same DNA.

 

Consequently (so runs the theory) mortality, from accumulating DNA glitches, is an evolutionary (or maybe meta-evolutionary) advantage.

 

As to resource scarcity:

Earth's resources are in fact finite, so at some point we may in principle start to run short. But doomsayers have always been wrong in the past — and there's quite a long track record of failed doomsayings by now to look back on. On the one hand, rigorous estimates of supplies are hard to find. New technologies can open up previously unreachable sources, and suddenly the old bets are off. And on the other hand, there are very few resources that are really irreplaceable. New technologies allow us to achieve the same purposes with other materials.

 

In the 18th and 19th centuries, whaling was an enormous global industry. The main goal of whaling was collecting whale oil, which was mostly used for lighting. As demand rose and supplies diminished, the world did indeed start to face a shortage of whale oil.

 

Whale oil was great stuff, and not easy to replace with any substitute. But excellent substitutes were eventually found. Civilization did not crumble for want of whale oil. And the LED bulbs which will soon cover the world won't be burning any oil at all. They won't even be hot.

 

That's just one example, but it's a pattern that has been followed in everything. I'm optimistic.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: Seiðmaðr Eld

Quote:

Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Ethics of Greed"

FYT

I have too much else to say than I can put into writing, sorry...

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Hmmm, that's true. What's up with trees? They're heavily outnumbered by grass, but there are still a few of them around. They didn't all get predominated to extinction.

Though to be fair, there are very few really long-lived trees.

I guess the hope would be that humans have some bristlecone pine inside, somewhere, that we could lean on a bit to make it through a few extra centuries. But I doubt it.

Botany was never my best subject, but I suspect there are two answers to why some trees live so long: an evolutionary answer and an organism-level answer. The evolutionary answer is to do with the ways trees compete with each other. Being tall makes it easier to get sunlight at the expense of other trees, and since they're immobile the practical limit on how tall they can get is very tall indeed. But growing that tall takes a long time and trees are most vulnerable when they're still small, so it's to their advantage to live long enough to get a decent return on their investment, so to speak. In support of this argument, the really long-lived trees tend to either be very tall, or to grow in very hostile environments where it's hard to grow at all.

The organism-level answer is that trees are hard to kill off completely, because they're more modular than we are. You can cut a twig off a tree and stick it in the ground and it'll basically have everything it needs to survive except for roots, which it can grow. On the other hand, if you cut an arm off me, not only will the arm die, but I'm going to be in pretty poor shape myself. Humans have a whole lot of single points of failure: trees have only a few, and the ones they have are pretty sturdy.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

Age has to do with errors that show in the genes due to being copied over and over again. You take out a (or change it in health favorable way) factor the decreases the likely hood of errors to be introduced and then you can age more gracefully.

That's a popular hypothesis, but and the buildup of genetic damage may be part of aging, but it's not as though cancer is the leading cause of age-related decline. Loss of telomeres is also part of senescence, but just activating telomerases tends to cause cancer and not necessarily repair senescence. Whatever the program that causes aging, it's not simple to switch it on and off.

Why don't some organisms seem to age like others? Good question. If you have an answer, you can probably get a Nobel prize from it. The discoverers of telomerase received the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine.

Really? I've never heard anyone complain of being bored because they've reached the age of 50, or 80, or 100. Why would life start becoming boring?

—Alorael, who really does think that maximum age merits consideration. People used to live to 100 more rarely than they do now, but the maximum age achieved by the extreme end of the curve hasn't gone up very much, and increases in lifespan have also come with increases in amount of time spent ailing and infirm towards the end of life. Living longer isn't so worthwhile if you can't live well.

[KrataLightblade]

I think it'd require a social shift, really. People retire in their 60s in America. If people now live to 200, it's just not feasible to allow basic retirement to stay in the 60s. The society simply cannoy support the ever-growing disproportion of productive and nonproductive members. It sounds callous, yes, but it's just simple math. Assuming the the population grows at some sort of stable rate (hint: population tends to explode more than stably grow, when surpluses are readily available and the society doesn't limit it somehow), let's just assume for the sake of numbers that 100 new people enter the workforce every year, and 100 retire.

 

People remain productive members of the workforce for approximately 44 years (simplifying, from 18 to 62 or so). Now, for the same math, let's assume people are dying around 80 on average. That's a fairly high number, but this is for the sake of arguement here. That means that from birth to age 18, then again from 62 to 80, people are generally unproductive members of society requiring support of some kind. That's a total of thirty-six years of nonprodctive life, eighteen at each end.

 

That makes the ratio of productive years to nonproductive years 44-36, which works out to just about 11-9. That's not quite 1-1, but it favors productive years. This people people are, on average, theoretically more productive in their lifetime than nonproductive. Of course, this doesn't account for people like me who are unemployed, or criminals, or those too ill, injured, or mentally unstable to be productive in some way. This is a simplification, after all. What this essentially means, however, is that each person, on average, much supply both themselves and one other person for every day of their productive live for the system to work, plus allows for a surplus.

 

Now, imagine that people suddenly live to even just 100 on average. That's an extra 20 years of nonproductivity. That makes the ratio of years 44 to 56, which simplifies down into 11-14. This is an over 50% increase in the amount of productivity each person, on average, MUST be responsible for to keep everything running and not come up with shortfalls. Now instead of every person being responsible for both themselves and one other person, they're responsible for themselves, one other person, and a whole third of another person, with very little margin for error.

 

And that's just one factor to be considered. Let's assume that longer lifespans allow people to STAY productive longer. Now imagine you're trying to move up on your career. Your boss is maybe twenty years older than you, and you won't move up until he moves up, is fired, transfers, or retires. He won't move up until the guy above him does the same. In short, this means that everybody is waiting for SOMEONE to screw up, die, quit, or retire. Now make it take even ten or twenty more years for someone to retire or die. Suddenly, the waiting time to move up in your career moves up another ten or twenty years. Again, this is a simplification, but there are a lot of people who work low level crap jobs for a long time only for the hope of getting noticed and moving up the chain. It's a lot harder to do that when it takes that much longer for openings to come around.

 

Plus, this limits the amount of new blood able to break into the business. Think politics, or business, or whatever is an old boys club (or some other appropriate metaphor) now? Give them another ten, twenty, fifty, hundred years to stagnate the hell out of things even more.

 

Lilith above mentioned the opinion that marriage will be less attractive. I disagree. I just think divorce will be MORE attractive, right up to the possibility of marriages having term limits with possible renewal clauses. But just imagine the weirdness of having a younger brother or sister who's SIXTY YEARS YOUNGER than you.

 

What will it do to political term limits, too? Maybe it'd be a good thing to have a turnover rate that doesn't rely on people being too old for the job, or maybe it'd just mean that you'd spend centuries with the same groups of politicians who hate anything changing rather than decades.

 

None of these things are unsolveable problems, but they all come with a radical and dramatic REQUIRED SHIFT in societial outlooks.

 

On another note, I'd rather enjoy living an extended lifespan. Frankly, I haven't done anywhere near as much with my life as I'd've liked, and having a few extra decades of wiggle room would be great. Sure, I'm only thirty, but that's still ten years of my life that were basically wasted. I'd love to be able to get them back when I'm old enough and wise enough to do better this time.

[nikki.]

man, 70 or 80 years seems like too long sometimes. living any more would pretty much be unbearable to me right now.

[Android]

One thing I once heard and cannot find any mention off on Google is that viruses could be engineered to repair DNA.

I guess it makes perfect sense, since it's exactly what viruses do.

 

I don't see it happening any time soon though.

 

I´m shocked by your view on the working market.

I've never seen it as such, that people would continually only be doing what they do to get upwards?

When I have finished my education and found a job I like why wouldn't I just stay there?

I guess what you describe is the corporate work world, which isn't all there is.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Codes, disguises, and explosions

Really? I've never heard anyone complain of being bored because they've reached the age of 50, or 80, or 100.

actually lots of people do this, the suicide rate peaks around age 65 and in general it's because people feel like they've done everything they wanted to do with their lives and there's nothing left for them

[Lord Safey]

SOT I have no doubt that that Humanity will survive the coming shortages, it is a matter of how well. Wars, plagues, and famines also litter history as well. Their also been a few instances I can think of were nations either went to war or collapsed due to lack of resources. So no the world won't come to and end but will it be a world you want to live in.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Codes, disguises, and explosions

Really? I've never heard anyone complain of being bored because they've reached the age of 50, or 80, or 100.

actually lots of people do this, the suicide rate peaks around age 65 and in general it's because people feel like they've done everything they wanted to do with their lives and there's nothing left for them

Yes, but it's still a minority of the population. A fair amount of suicide has to do with inability as well: if one can no longer do new things, or old things that were a source of pleasure, what's the point of living more?

I can understand facing down fifty years of decrepitude and being unenthusiastic, but fifty more years of skydiving, extreme ironing, and hard drinking could be fun!

—Alorael, who has had mixed results with ironing during a skydive while drunk.

[Student of Trinity]

My grandmother is 96. She weathered her 80's pretty well. She's had a number of relatively minor ailments for decades, but nothing major came up, and she's had no mental deterioration. But getting into the 90's has been very tough. She's just gotten steadily much weaker, she has poor balance, she has very little energy, and her sight is nearly gone (macular degeneration). And all her friends have died. Extreme old age really sucks.

 

But on the other hand, just one or two more medical breakthroughs, like a remedy for macular degeneration, might give her back quite a decent life. They may not come along in time for her, but maybe for my parents or for me.

[A less presumptuous name.]

As a cashier at a grocery store that serves 150% of the elderly people in the area, I can say that current old age sucks. They sit there spending my tax money on groceries, have me keep the bags light because they haven't had good muscle tone in 30 years, and they can't here a word I say.

 

I suppose that's not exactly old age, but degeneration caused by old age. There are still wonderful elderly people out there, and I certainly wouldn't go killing all of the disabled people in the world, but they do irritate you after a while.

[Mea Tulpa]

I've heard a lot of proposed rationales for population thinning, mandatory-suicide-at-a-certain-age, and so on... but "they're irritating" was never one of them.

 

As Sega used to say before they euthenized the Genesis, welcome to the next level.

[Randomizer]

If you use irritating as a criteria, then you will have to be more specific. I could use that as an basis to get rid of most of the members here under 18.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Codes, disguises, and explosions

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

Although, really, who wants to live that long? Speaking from a hedonist perspective, it has the potential to be mind numbing boredom - for centuries.

Really? I've never heard anyone complain of being bored because they've reached the age of 50, or 80, or 100. Why would life start becoming boring?

I have, in fact, met a few such people, who were bitter about their age. Specifically, though, being old would be boring at the point in which physical limitations on the body appear and increase. The matter is all an issue of perspective, but even still, I think everyone would prefer to have two fully functional legs over being confined to a wheel chair.

[Alorael at Large]

Bitter, sure. My great-grandmother was fond of the phrase "old age is bitterness" herself. But age wasn't the reason; it wasn't as though she was bored after too many decades of life. She was, instead, deaf, almost blind and not very quick while walking.

 

As far as infirmities of extreme old age go, that's actually not bad. But in terms of being able to do anything, it's crippling. Her life didn't become bad because she'd done too much, it became bad because she couldn't do enough new things.

 

—Alorael, who agrees that just adding more life to the end as more and more infirmities pile on isn't really worthwhile. But from a hedonist perspective, the potential to try new experiences for centuries is entirely worthwhile as long as one doesn't lose the capacity to actually go out and seek experiences.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Slartucker

I've heard a lot of proposed rationales for population thinning, mandatory-suicide-at-a-certain-age, and so on... but "they're irritating" was never one of them.

As long as I get to utter the phrase "Run, runner!" at some point in my life, I'm happy.

[Student of Trinity]

You could always just go to a track meet.