
We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal - pseudolus
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-last-mortals-immortality/
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Barrin92
The piece is very concerned with the individual effects of immortality, or
extreme longevity, but the first thought that scared me was the cultural
effects on our species. I'm already worried about the number of very old
people that predominantly govern our countries, but a congress full of 500
year old boomers, now that's material for a horror novel.

For me immortality seems like a recipe for stagnation and inequality rather
than dynamism and renewal. Unless individuals suddenly learn to change, to
adapt and to give up their old ways (in which case what's really the point of
thinking of yourself as immortal or a continuous entity), I think there's a
very obvious upside to birth and death.

~~~
lxmorj
I think a lot of that come from slowing down and being afraid of change and
learning. Presumably if you could live to 500, your cognitive function would
be 'peak' for much, much longer. It's unlikely we would do a good job of
predicting what that would do to humans and human culture.

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fsoteras
SciFi author Ian Banks 's culture series explores a future civilization where
people is potentially immortal but in that society it happens that lots of
people lives 150 / 200 or 300 years an then they choose self termination.

~~~
livueta
Another interesting treatment of "immortality" in fiction is the Chasm
City/Glitter Band/Yellowstone society from Alastair Reynolds' novels.

Rather than achieving true immortality through some one-off miracle pill a la
Golden Age pulps, "immortality" is a sequence of stopgaps - one life-extension
therapy gives an individual enough time for science to advance to the point
where it comes up with another extension. Rinse and repeat for eternity (or
until your nanotech goes crazy and melts you from the inside out, whoops).

The sociological consequences of a system like this, where maintaining your
immortality through the pursuit of enough wealth, prestige and tech to get
your hands on the hottest new therapies becomes practically a raison d'etre in
and of itself, are an interesting contrast to Banks' utopianism. I'd love for
us to go Culture, but I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand, I wouldn't
be surprised to see some variation of the therapy-chain thing during my
natural lifespan.

~~~
Junk_Collector
There is also the Niven take on cheap immortality where people just become
incredibly BORED with life after a few hundreds years, reinventions, and "mid-
life" crises. Inevitably they turn to increasingly extreme pursuits as they
age and run out of lifestyles to try and an average life expectancy develops
organically.

It's interesting to note that he also wrote some about the style of
immortality described by Alastair Reynold's and the cheap immortality of his
"Known Universe/Ringworld" novels is after that time period in which longevity
has become cheap, commoditized, and easily affordable by all.

~~~
thechao
There was a reddit conversation years ago where some actuaries discussed all-
causes mortality for an immortal. If you factored out death by natural causes
(cancer, heart, ...) you still ended up with a mean time to death of ~3100
years. That is, all of the possible _accidents_ in life pile up & kill you.
For instance, live long enough and you _will_ be struck by lightning — the
survivability of which is very low!

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Creationer
Immortal as in reproductively, intellectually and physically functional, or
sitting in a nursing home at huge social expense for 50 years immortal?

I think people are more interested in having working joints, no wrinkles,
youthful energy and libido, and a full head of hair for an additional 20 years
than immortality.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
My mother-in-law says that she doesn't know anyone who's lived past 80 who
doesn't regret it.

~~~
rekabis
I know some people who have lived past 80 without regretting it, but they
invariably share a few basic features: their lives are filled with
constructive things to do (even if those things are not always enjoyable),
they have an internal purpose or direction, and they take time to enjoy
whatever spare moments they can grab.

In particular, I know of one octogenarian who works part-time in the IT field
as a mid-level support tech in a large company. He’s the one who sets up
systems, replaces broken mice and monitors, and gives printers a good whack
upside the chassis when they misbehave. It’s light enough work for him to keep
up with the field, but important enough that he feels valued.

And the company loves him. To everyone there he’s their “Opa”, and that’s what
makes him jump out of bed every morning.

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b_tterc_p
If only we had the technology. Then we could be sad _forever_.

~~~
merckx
This. Immortality = hell.

~~~
akeck
As I get years into Stardew Valley, I wonder about the true nature of the
place. ;-) No one ever ages, and you can't leave.

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astazangasta
This article begins with a fallacy based on "life expectancy", which is the
expected age at death across all individuals. By far the highest mortality,
historically, was under five mortality; life expectancy went up in the 20th
century primarily because infants are now less likely to die. If you consider
mortality after age 20 there has only been a ~10 year increase in life
expectancy.

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james_s_tayler
You don't want to live forever. Because if you live forever, the probability
of you eventually getting trapped somewhere forever is 1.

~~~
nihonde
The cycle of life is what keeps things lively and interesting. You can get
stuck at the bottom of a well in a figurative sense, too.

~~~
nitin_flanker
But then you'll die of hunger or thrust, which isn't a good situation to be in
but, it happens now as well. People get trapped in remote, abandoned places
only to die of circumstances other than natural causes.

I suppose that the biological immortality that author has talked about, the
kind that our future generations will see, will still require all the
necessary resources like we do. They'll still get sick and will need medical
care sometimes, environment will still affect them, the only thing that will
change is the deterioration that our body goes through as we age. I don't know
much about the concept but I think it is pretty easy to picture it.

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xorand
In the biological sense, a population of creatures is immortal if "the rate of
mortality from senescence is stable or decreasing with age".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality)

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randyrand
“To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal,
for they are ignorant of death. – Jorge Luis Borges”

There’s evidence this is not true. Many animals mourn the dead, and many
animals will routinely remove older animals from power/leadership.

~~~
village-idiot
Prey species are _very_ aware of their own death.

~~~
thatoneuser
Found the rabbit.

But seriously they aren't aware of death they just act based on evolutionary
impulses that in the past made their ancestors not die. A prey creature has
zero cognition of its own death.

~~~
illuminator
Without knowing the perspective of the animal how can you make that definitive
of a statement?

~~~
thatoneuser
...neuroscience? Are you implying that rabbits have the ability to understand
the metaphysical concept of death like humans? If so where is your supporting
evidence? Death is much more complex than simple things like language or long
term planning and rabbits can barely do either.

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PhilWright
I am baffled as to why people are saying that we are about to allow people to
become immortal when we have zero evidence that we cam extend the natural
lifespan at all. Today, there is not a single medicine that people can take
because it extends lifespans.

I am obviously not counting regular medicine like vaccines and antibiotics
etc, they increase our likelihood of reaching the natural lifespan limit but
do not extend the limit.

When they can show that some treatment extends the limit from around 120 to
something like 150, then come back and talk about immortality. Although even
then, there is a big difference between immortality and adding a mere 30
years! Oh, and those extra years had better not be as a bed bound senile in a
nursing home. They can better be quality years, otherwise there is no point in
bothering.

~~~
village-idiot
> Today, there is not a single medicine that people can take because it
> extends lifespans.

Metformin. Originally used to treat diabetes, we’ve slowly begun to realize
that the users of it tend to live longer than non-users. There are some
studies running now to determine if it’s effective, but there are already
people taking it daily to try and live longer.

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NikkiA
You have to completely solve the population explosion issue before anyone who
is likely to write about it, will be immortal.

Since that issue seems likely to exist for the next 50 years, I doubt anyone
alive today will be immortal, or if they are it'll be maybe limited to
zuckerberg - I can't think of anyone else young enough and rich enough to
benefit from it.

~~~
thatoneuser
Thing is its not like most medical procedures stay inaccessible for _that_
long once they're proven to work. Maybe zuck would be fortuitous if he was on
his deathbed and something came out, but give anything a few years and it'll
be available to the masses. And that hopefully will become more true with
time.

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Koshkin
In order to be truly immortal one needs to be indestructible. The chance to
die in an accident essentially limits the average human life span to around
200 years.

(Ironically, indestructibility, on the other hand, can lead to situations that
are worse than death.)

~~~
jakeogh
200? That's lower than I guessed. I get numbers for accidental death like "50
per 100000 per lifetime"... so 0.05% chance per lifetime? Compounding...

    
    
      err... just ask #math, use geom distribution...: 0.9995^n = 1/2 = 1386 lifetimes...
    

looks like we have a ~100,000 year accidental halflife

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TheOperator
The idea of immortality is absurd. At some point you have to toss out the old
model and replace it with a new one.

Way longer lifespans than we expect today we might just see. Immortality means
forever though.

~~~
Koshkin
Immortality should be thought of as an abstraction, similar to infinity. You
are immortal if you die without you (or anyone) noticing.

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jslakro
This interesting idea has been addressed in some way by Altered Carbon, hasn't
it?

