
What if we could live for a million years? - egfx
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-if-we-could-live-for-a-million-years/
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hliyan
In the Arthur C. Clarke novel _City and the Stars_ , human civilization has
survived a billion years and human lifespans could too, theoretically. There,
most humans live as long as they can until boredom overtakes them. Then then
they sort of clean up their memories -- keeping only the most valuable
memories and deleting the rest -- and then go into hibernation for thousands
of years. Society has reached a steady state so very little changes over time,
but just enough for a person to rise from hibernation and start a new life.

I suspect that limits of human psychology will probably result in a society
like this, if we were to ever stretch our lifespans into millions of years.

~~~
leafboi
>until boredom overtakes them.

What's wrong with being bored? I only live 100 years and I spend the majority
of my life being bored. I want to be immortal so I can spend eternity being
bored.

The people who claim they don't want to be immortal because they don't want to
be bored don't get human psychology... Humans generally prefer being bored
over being dead, period.

~~~
Gunax
I don't think anyone really knows what or how people's thoughts would change
if they were to live to a thousand years (or a million, whatever).

Given that, I think there are probably different feelings which we all call
bored. There is bored in the immediate term, bored in general, and ennui.

~~~
leafboi
That notion goes both ways. How do you know we'll be so bored that we'd give
up immortality? Extrapolating from information we already have I'd say we get
plenty bored with about 80 years of life... I think we'd do well with another
million.

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run2arun
This is not a serious article. There are many topics they could have discussed
in depth but the biggest miss for me is that they did not talk about human
psychology. Human brains are not evolved to handle a million years of noise
and notifications. There would be an incalculable amount of damage to a
person's personality from all the ups and downs and vagaries of life.

So many of our physiological systems and the way our consciousness works will
have to change unrecognizably that the being that exists after these
transformations can no longer be called human. If a thing thinks, it will be
finite and want to be.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
>Human brains are not evolved to handle a million years of noise and
notifications.

Are you sure? I mean it could be argued we're not evolved to handle 50 years
of noise and notifications given that we do not keep all that data but forget
quite a bit of it. But then the response is that we handle it by forgetting it
- what's the proof that the mechanisms that allow us to handle 50 years by
forgetting will cease to work with significantly more data?

~~~
kisna72
Right, I think human brain forgets most of the things anyways, so I don't see
why it'd not continue forgetting old memories over time!

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Well I can make a hypothesis that the human brain will not be able to easily
forget centuries worth of memories given the thing that after a certain age
people often report having clearer memories of longer ago events than newer
ones and that these memories will come back to them periodically, will over
time the long term memories be filled up?

my personal feeling would be no, you will keep getting that memory of the
person you liked in high school when you're 600 but your probably won't
remember anything particularly clearly past 20 years before and the stuff from
your 70s-80s will be totally gone.

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jandrese
Imagine trying to get ahead in the company when you're behind a 500 year old
middle manager that isn't going to retire for another 999,500 years?

I'd think society would have a lot of trouble moving forward on issues when
you don't have the great equalizer of the coffin to kill off old ideas.

~~~
leafboi
Just quit. Who cares. You're stuck in this mindset of eternity under
management. You're immortal. Do the vanlife for a month, Live on an island,
start a business. Chill.

~~~
rabidrat
You're not immortal, you still need to eat and stay warm and get medical care.
In fact if anything now the stakes are even higher to achieve a certain
sustainable dollar amount so that you can 'retire' (i.e. live sustainably off
passive income for a million years).

~~~
leafboi
Stakes are lower. More time to achieve a certain net worth. Once I reach that
threshold compounding growth takes over. Two centuries is more than enough to
achieve this.

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peter303
You'd have a 50-50 chance of dying from an accident in 960 years in current US
society. My guess is government would get more serious about safety if we live
less than percent of our lifespan.

~~~
jacquesm
We'd be so cautious we'd never leave our homes in the first place. When there
is that much at stake any risk is going to be too much. People will call each
other daring for walking across the street or leaving a window open.

Also, the whole world would be owned by the few people that were there since
the beginning, with them seeking rent on everybody else. You'd be hip deep in
debt to the ruling class from day one. Forget about democracy in a setup like
that.

~~~
epicureanideal
I see it as more hopeful than that. With a long time to think about things, I
think people would cooperate to organize society better. If their lack of
organization for 100s of years leads to no improvement in quality of life,
eventually they'd do something about it.

Also, with that much time, differences in education would smooth out, and even
people who started with a small amount of resources would eventually be able
to build up to financial independence, which gives labor more negotiating
power.

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ardy42
> What would change if we could live for even just a million years? ... First,
> tenure in academia would have to be capped. Universities would have to limit
> faculty appointments to a century at most in order to refresh their talent
> pool and mitigate old-fashioned education and research dogmas....

> An extended life experience could make us wiser and more risk-averse since
> there is much more at stake....

> Increasing our fertility period in proportion to our life span will bring
> the risk of overpopulating Earth. With the current birth rate per person,
> the number of million-year-old people could increase to the untenable level
> of a hundred trillion. Moderating that would require a public policy that
> limits the birth rate to the desired level.

So basically, social ossification and stasis. You'll also have voters who made
up their minds on all the political and social issues half-million years ago,
and see no reason to change their minds (just like you have people who did the
same a half-century ago).

I think any kind of extreme longevity scenario will result either ossification
or a re-invention of death under another name (e.g. a memory reset). A finite
thing can only go on forever by settling into some kind of repetitive cycle,
otherwise it will quickly exhaust its memory.

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stared
> Increasing our fertility period in proportion to our life span will bring
> the risk of overpopulating Earth. With the current birth rate per person,
> the number of million-year-old people could increase to the untenable level
> of a hundred trillion. Moderating that would require a public policy that
> limits the birth rate to the desired level. Alternatively, travel ports
> could launch people into space to balance the birth rate and maintain a
> terrestrial population suitable for the available supply of food and energy.

Wait, does it imply that the current population trajectory is sustainable?

~~~
CraneWorm
It absolutely is.

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me_me_me
Look at the amount of comments from the cult of death in this thread.

Making so many arguments why they so desperately want to die. Oh how
meaningless and boring it would be.

But given they could live 1000's of years not one would choose to end it at
80.

Where does it come from? Deeply rooted pessimism?

I for one couldn't be more happy to live long enough to see us take to the
stars. So much happened in last 1000 years who is to say next 1000 will be
boring.

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kanobo
This thought experiment crosses my mind everytime I read the crazy ages of the
characters in the book of genesis, the obvious consequence is that space
travel and technology would be the dominant science since the earth and this
solar system is way too small and boring for creatures who live that long.

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umvi
You'd have Mistborn-esque tyranny with God Kings that last virtually forever
(unless assassinated).

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tosser0001
I've wondered what the relationship between long term interest rates and the
human lifespan is.

Even if you lived only, say, a thousand years, just putting a little money
into some reasonably safe investment would result in enormous wealth over
time. Surely if everyone did this, the amount of wealth would tend to drive
down rates.

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acvny
"Universities would have to limit faculty appointments to a century at most in
order to refresh their talent pool and mitigate old-fashioned education and
research dogmas." \- has the author realized that a century to a million years
is the same as 3 days to 100 years?

~~~
Gunax
Anything 'lifetime' would have to be re-thought. Warranties. Sentences.
Appointments.

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smusamashah
I recommend watching "The man from earth". It's a film literally discussing
this same idea.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/)

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not2b
Imagine what the world would look like if our natural life span were a million
years, but people could still be killed by accidents or homicide at the same
rate as today. Our attitude towards risk would almost certainly change.

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_nalply
Death is the only sure thing.

Even if we could live for billions of years, the Heat Death of the universe
will eventually reap us.

So we must understand and embrace Death before we massively extend our
lifespan. This is only one of the many things we must do.

~~~
epicureanideal
We've only known about quantum mechanics for 100 years. Let's give us another
couple hundred years of investigation before we decide there's no way out of
the heat death mess.

~~~
_nalply
But should we?

~~~
epicureanideal
Should we what?

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xwdv
If we could live a million years it would allow us to produce a better society
by making ultra long investments.

Looking at a century’s candlestick chart for a stock would be something like
looking at a weekly chart today.

~~~
coldcode
I think suicides would go way up. People would get bored with life after a
couple hundred years. If everyone lived that long life would stagnate into a
boring grayness.

~~~
chrisco255
How do you know they would? Greenland sharks live for 300-500 years and they
seem to enjoy eating fish well into old age:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark)

~~~
jacquesm
They're not sentient at our level. That makes it doable, if you are aware of
being bored it is a totally different thing than if you are not.

~~~
chrisco255
Thankfully, I'll never get bored of making cheeky comments. ;-)

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256lie
Maybe something like this
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776)

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gherkinnn
Bad ideas die one generation at a time.

I’m all for a limited lifespan.

~~~
jacquesm
Not only, that death serves as a moment in time when there is some redivision
of resources, and as a way of making room for the next generation(s).

A million years * the per-capita-per-annum-consumption and your best
contribution to society and the environment would be to jump off a bridge.
Nobody would have children for fear of further dividing that meager pie.

Earth's population would skyrocket.

~~~
epicureanideal
Let's worry about pushing the average lifespan to 150 before we start talking
about the end of civilization. Let's increase our lifespan a little bit and
see what happens, rather than theorize about it.

~~~
jacquesm
150 isn't 'a little bit'. That's disruptive if there ever was something
disruptive. A little bit would be to raise the average lifespan by 5 years.
Prediction: all of our pension systems would collapse immediately.

~~~
epicureanideal
But that's solvable by people working longer if their health lasts longer.

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d1zzy
I recommend people watch Ad Vitam (it's on Netflix). It shows a society where
ageless/disease-free immortality has been achieved.

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a3n
Euthanasia would become compulsory, like a draft, so that people who build
personal power would have leverage and patronage.

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z3t4
sense of time would be very different if you was even a thousand year old. One
day would feel like five minutes.

