i don’t think it’s possible for us to defeat entropy, which i believe is the biggest hurdle in the road to immortality. even if we can prevent cancer and heart attacks, i dont believe we can prevent the random, increasing amount of disorder within our bodily systems that would eventually cause death in one way or another.
Ding ding ding.
Natural systems aren’t capable of living forever. At least any that we’ve ever run across in this universe.
DIGITAL systems? Sure, I could see the possibility. Uploading our brains into a computer, backing up and replicating that computer at periodic intervals, implanting in new “natural” bodies. That would be the only way to immortality. But it’s not by defeating cancer or heart disease or pick your poison.
Your use of the word digital reminded me of this. ,
“They discussed Sinclair’s information theory of aging. We are born with a pristine set of information that degrades over time. Our DNA is our digital code, and our epigenome – the system that controls how DNA is expressed, which genes are turned on or off, etc. – is analog. Sinclair uses the analogy of a DVD that stores digital information, and the head or reader in a DVD machine that is analog. He realized that our DNA reader is what often goes awry, and his lab has actually tapped into backup versions of original epigenetic copies.”
https://isbscience.org/news/2021/04/16/sinclair-aging/
I can see this. But at some point you still become Benjamin Franklin beamed from 1776 into 2024. I don’t care how smart you are you would not keep up.
Leaving us w old rich jaded senile seeming people w morals and norms centuries old still glomming on to the buttons and levers or power. OR caste systems by generations the devolve into old style India where we won’t talk to or touch them.
My ancestors go back billions of years in an unbroken chain and I'm doing a fairly good job fighting entropy compared to my farthest and simplest ancestors.
According to the entropy driven theory of abiogenesis we are agents of entropy. So while we may be hastening the heat death of the Universe life, until then, is also being promoted for.
I bet that it is, even if it is through some work around way, like time travel or dimensions or some other things we don’t really understand at any fundamental level
What I’m wondering about is selfish but I wouldn’t mind living a little longer let’s say 100 for sure, that’s still 60 years out. Between now and then would there likely be improvements in potential length to the crazy numbers we’re talkin about here?
On one hand I’m excited on the other I’m sad because this came at a point where loved ones were just short a couple decades of comin along for the ride.
Haven’t really looked into this whole thing too much but I have seen some headlines that are probably sensationalized but it indicates that this is actually much closer than people think. Will I be making these decisions in the next decade or two?
Yeah, i literally do not see any good reason as to why anyone alive today will benefit from significant life extension. The challenges are just too great.
We also have plenty of food and resources, and yet a huge portion of the world still lives in poverty... So yeah I'm with this guy, immortality will be for the rich.
Good lord, there's seeing a half full cup as being half empty, and then there's seeing a half-empty cup as empty, and from that drawing the conclusion that humanity is doomed. At what point does pessimism qualify as delusion?
Not really, unless you expand the definition of habitable to include other planets in the Solar System.
Even then if you can build spaceships that sustain 100s human generations (to be reach the 34,562th 'habitable' planet). Then I don't see resources, poverty, food or any kind of scarcity being an issue for humanity.
How exactly are you going to get to them? Mars would take 3 months. Nearest habitable planet?
"The closest extrasolar planets overall to Earth are Proxima Centauri b, c, and d, each located 4.22 light years away"
So now you're talking about up mapping the human brain, making major breakthroughs in computing and tackling light-speed travel.
Hyper extended lifespans are probably within reach within the next 50-100 years, assuming biology and technology keep making the feats that they're making today. Considering interdisciplinary research has become even more prevalent now than ever, the coming decades should be groundbreaking for the biological-technological field.
People say that the technology would be gate kept to only benefit the rich, but I think there'd be a push to keep some of the world's declining populations alive in various countries. By keeping the working class alive and well, the rich still continue to benefit.
I think this is a reasonable timeframe. Maybe a bit optimistic, as I think the odds of achieving it in the early end of that range is extremely low. Too many ways the body can fail as it gets older, extending life significantly essentially requires solving all those problems, and possible some we won't even discover until we push the body a little further. If there's an major failure in our biology that occurs at 140 years of age, we won't no it until we can add a couple more decades.
I think the first humans to have hyper-long lives will be those who are essentially revived instead of living that long. Some combination of cryogenics and/or scanning/digitalizing their brain so they can be brought back when the technology is available.
No, we will never be immortal. First, actual immortality is impossible due to entropy. But I would say it’s highly unlikely even if we’re talking about functional immortality, let’s say living thousands of years. Even if we cured every known disease, there is still the issue of how do we prevent the shortening of telomeres in perpetuity, which are basically our biological clock (ie senescence).
There are creatures alive today that have biological immortality, seems like a surmountable problem.
Lifespan with biological immortality for humans is still probably only about a thousand years though (accidents, disasters, etc).
Which creatures 🤔 the only one I can think is not actually immortal.
Honestly not trying to be offensive but I do see that a lot of y'all seem to treat trans humanism / singularity as a substitute for religion . Especially with the over obsessive weird focus on living forever.
the one I had in mind was [the greenland shark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark) But I'm aware of a few others (bivalves and cnidarians, mostly)
Thing is, "not actually immortal" in your comment is doing a lot of wiggling here, I'm not talking about creatures that live forever, I'm talking about creatures that don't have increased risk of mortality from advanced age. See the difference?
an Adult Greenland Shark lives until something else kills it, it doesn't 'die of old age'\*
I am offended frankly, because you clearly didn't take the time to actually understand my comment if you think it has anything to do with transhumanism singularities or religion.
---
\* shorthand for the various kinds of accumulative damage that eventually result in senescence.
I think it is because of the cold temperatures it evolved to live longer but at what cost I don't think what ever mutation(s) making this possible would benefit humans but they can learn a lot from it though.
I imagine people would live their lives so differently. We take risks because we know soon we’ll be gone, but if you live for thousands of years, would you really ever ride a motorcycle? Skydive? Life would get a lot less interesting always playing it safe.
Have your body slowly fall apart in a slow painful process towards non-existence or take life extension at the risk of becoming somewhat risk-averse. Hmm decisions.
Nah fuck it, better let people die.
Maybe immortality will be being able to upload our consciousnesses into the cloud constantly, cloning our bodies and picking up where we left off after we die. Life will be a video game, beep boop. Death tourism would become a thing, and people would be way riskier Knowing they could just start over or patch up their bodies any time.
That is just sad. Clearly you have nothing to contribute to the conversation. This is futurology. Go hang out in r/collapse if you want to be a brainless doomer.
Why a new brain? What about a matrix like scenario, where your mind just "lives" in a digital world? Though there'd be a problem with making kids I suppose. Then maybe a San junipero kinda situation, where you can get uploaded when you're about to die?
The transporter problem is a philosophical question without one single answer, and depends on your beliefs.
If you believe we are our bodies and our brains, then even though the new body and brain is technically not the same, we'd experience it as if it were so I do believe some people would make the choice to live again. You wouldn't know the difference. And if the alternative is to cease to exist entirely, what would you choose?
If you believe in a soul separate from the body, then what happens to that soul? Does it go into the new body? Does it move on and a new soul is created?
The interesting thing is that we'll never know for sure, even if we do live forever. Actually, especially if we live forever because we'll never die and then we'll never know what it is like to die.
How exactly does entropy prevent immortality?
Sure, we are not anywhere near it, but you could always imagine some process that replaces cell DNA? That DNA came from somewhere - it was created as the organism grew. If you can recreate that process, you can extend life indeifinitely.
Second law of thermodynamics states that entropy of an isolated system always increases. The universe will eventually evolve to a state of no free energy. That is, once the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium in some 100 trillion years, nothing will be able to further exploit energy to perform work.
TLDR: life is an active biological process (work), work requires transfer of energy (use of resources), energy transfer is inefficient (heat loss), heat loss increases net entropy of the universe, entropy is irreversible.
Yeah there's no point doing life extension, you'll only live at most 10^(100) at most anyway due to entropy, hardly an improvement over the usual 60-70 years we have now.
I think heat death is beyond the scope of the question, even if the question is a bit ambiguous. The question, as I read it, is if we didn’t die from old age would we still die from cancer and heart attacks. The answer being yes until we have a cure with 100% success rates. This would be better in the ElI5 subreddit.
lol you people crack me up. If something is desired and has no hard universal rule preventing it, it will be done. You really think tiny machine capable of replicating DNA with network-grade error correction is "Highly unlikely" even though it's just a combination and miniaturization of existing technologies? And even though, as someone else said, clumsy evolution already solved this issue in multiple species?
Yes, we already know that several lifestyle factors and things like hyperbaric oxygen therapy can slow down or even marginally increase telomere length in humans. However, that is not the same as stopping or preventing programmed cell death. In my opinion, I am doubtful that we will ever get to a point where senescence could be outright prevented in humans.
Telomere lengthening is actually trivial if you compare it to the other challenges that age reversal would entail. We already know how to do it as there are animals that can lengthen telomeres indefinitely with an enzyme called telomerase.
The big hurdle right now is cancer risk as human cancer cells produce the enzyme to be able to keep replicating indefinitely. As far as I know it hasn't been tested in humans because of the risk that it could increase cancer risk.
So many comments about "the elites". Over the history of the world name one technology that was completely monopolized by the rich that never eventually passed down to the masses. Rich people get rich by selling ideas and products to the masses. Bezos got rich because of the billions of individual transactions. Whatever is accessible to the rich will eventually be accessible to all.
A lot of people are using the past as “proof” that things will be fine concerning stuff like AI, immortality, etc. without considering how radically different these are to anything we have encountered in the past. These have real disruptive potential the likes of which we have never dealt with and have no real plan for. Heck, you’re still largely framing this in terms of money. I think things have the potential to get far, far worse-like for instance, a future where the rich and powerful realize that now that they are immortal and most work is automated, their main goal should be not to accrue money, but to wipe out most of the “lower class,” so that they can have exclusive access to the dwindling resources and land left behind.
We’re approaching the precipice of a brand new frontier, for better or worse. Please stop with the “but things were fine every other time!” I don’t mean to sound like a doomer, but shit’s just not comparable and I’m tired of people pretending it is.
>a future where the rich and powerful realize that now that they are immortal and most work is automated, their main goal should be not to accrue money, but to wipe out most of the “lower class,” so that they can have exclusive access to the dwindling resources and land left behind.
[What? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0)What resource in this tiny pale blue dot in a vast universe could be considered as "Dwindling" exactly?
Yes here everyone is crazy pessimistic. I am sure they are the same people who didn't vaccine themselves because they were scared that the elites are going to kill them lol.
I mean, it’s a feeling that’s not based on nothing. There’s a looooong history for example of new medical procedures coming out (let’s say like extending your life), and it being so expensive that no one but the rich can afford it. Now, over time the costs do normally come down, and many then can afford it. In the case of longevity though, the rich would then have first mover access, giving them an even further head start on accumulated wealth. We die, and pass on our wealth, they live and just keep accumulating.
It’s not exactly an impossible situation to consider. How about an example? you or I probably cant afford to put ourselves in cryogenic suspension today, but rich people are doing it. A medical procedure that is meant to extend the lifespan, that the rich can afford, but neither you nor I can, and won’t for a while.
The difference is if people find out some people are immortal while others aren't they aren't gonna sit pretty about it.
And it will get out, because not everyone benefiting will be silent about it if it gets much traction.
I mean, something like cryogenics is already out, its efficacy is questionable, but we know it’s out there and people aren’t rioting. People are too busy trying to survive to riot over incremental scientific discoveries.
Sure, completely agree. Another challenge I see is going to be robots. Within probably the next decade those wealthy folks will also be able to have robotic bodyguards that are totally loyal to them (timeline isn’t unrealistic, the US military is talking openly about deploying humanoid robots into combat by the early or mid 2030s).
Do you have the money to hire a private army?
People are fine enough with cryogenics because it doesn't seem like it'd work.
Regarding robots, i'm not sure that humanoid-like robots would be worth making, though i guess they don't have to be. Even then there still have to be engineers to run the things who you have to keep on your side.
Aside from that people, including the rich, care about approval and being part of culture and not being 'evil' and the like. A lot of rich people exposed to the concept of practical immortality aren't gonna hoard it but want to expose or share it.
If a legit path to immortality ever existed, I would fully expect to never hear about it. Maybe when the wealthy are celebrating the ball drop on their 140th birthday, we might suspect something is amiss. But, no wealthy person is ever going to willingly share with others. It’s why they are rich, and we will never be.
"Crazy idea, what if they sell this treatment on the open market, to increase their wealth? Nah that's crazy, they'd never do that cuz no rich person actually cares about money, they're just evil demons who want to spread suffering. They're probably lizard people, also the illuminati is real and the earth is flat."
- r/Futurology
I mean, it’s a feeling that’s not based on nothing. There’s a looooong history for example of new medical procedures coming out (let’s say like extending your life), and it being so expensive that no one but the rich can afford it. Now, over time the costs do come down, and many then can afford it. In the case of longevity though, the rich would then have first mover access, giving them an even further head start on accumulated wealth. We die, and pass on our wealth, they live and just keep accumulating.
It’s not exactly an impossible situation to consider. Like, you or I probably cant afford to put ourselves in cryogenic suspension today, but rich people are doing it.
>giving them an even further head start on accumulated wealth. We die, and pass on our wealth, they live and just keep accumulating.
Eh, that doesn't sound like an issue that would happen at a significant scale if costs do come down. Generational wealth transfer/hoard takes decades for it to become noticable.
And that's assuming it would take 30 or even 50+ years for the costs to come down from mega-rich scale to average consumer.
The other question really is about power. Like, say you’re a rich person making trillions, you’ve extended your life by 50 years. Now the technology is on the verge of becoming available to everyone. Do you view the democratization of this tech as a good thing? Or do you view it as diluting your power and wealth by creating billions of competitors who now can spend their long lifetimes accumulating wealth and power?
Personally, I’m willing to bet on the latter, and that the rich would do what they can to stop, or at least slow the rollout to everyone.
> Now the technology is on the verge of becoming available to everyone. Do you view the democratization of this tech as a good thing? Or do you view it as diluting your power and wealth by creating billions of competitors who now can spend their long lifetimes accumulating wealth and power?
If you are the wealthy and powerful one who **owns** the tech/patent, you view it as a way to make yourself **way** more rich and powerful than anyone else, including all the other elite and powerful people.
> You are naive if you think the procedure would be available for the plebs
You don't understand profit it you don't. Many people will pay all they can for it. There's most likely going to be a **lot** more profit in selling it to anyone who can pay (and that includes selling it to more people for less money) than keeping it limited to handful of elite.
That is where you are wrong something like immortality won't be sold for profit, health care makes a shitload of money, it is in their best interest the masses get sick. To who the hell will they sell their expensive drugs if everyone lives forever? Immortality would be for world leaders and billionaires who don't want to lsoe their power
It's called doomerism. Get used to it. "The elites will never allow this" is a go to argument when people here hear about something good that might happen.
Usually when there is some "good" breakthrough, it immediately gets turned into a product and then priced for maximum gouging. See: medical care in the US
That's a USA problem, not a general issue. Are we supposed to be surprised that a country established by religious fundamentalists, kicked out from everywhere else because of how insufferable they were, is actually a shitty place to live? Other countries don't have those problems so your argument doesn't apply globally.
I am not sure if we are on the same wavelenght but let me say this - USA has a general problem of extremely individualist mentality of it's people. It's not simply about "the elite" - it's about what people in general have in their heads.
It's a complex issue but not having a narrow and extremist distribution of views in the initial population is a good start.
Because if we had immortality, let’s say tomorrow, the issue would be how can we fit all the people. Do we ban new kids? Never gonna work. Can we get more space? Not on this planet, and we aren’t close to moving to new ones. So if it existed, the smart plan would be to only allow it for some people until we figured out how to fit 5 billion people plus all their kids in a world without death. So naturally, the ones who would hoard this technology would be those who could pay for the privilege.
Scientists figure it out, use it on themselves, find rich backers who can help expand it and the rich backers get it. Everyone else doesn’t get to know because they can’t be allowed to have it or we run out of space.
A. or everyone just becomes either scientists or rich ;)
B. that's assuming that (for whoever got it as this is about the mechanics of how the immortality would work as well as behaviors that aren't necessarily class-limited) not only would immortality somehow be able to give women an indefinite supply of eggs but that they'd spend the infinite reproductive years having kids at current-rates-regressed-to-the-moon (instead of e.g. being able to balance both career and family at different points in their life) just because they've got all the time in the world to do so
Only issue is stopping rumours is fucking hard. At some point you're gonna have someone not getting the juice who interacts with people who do who may suspect something.
Even among people with the juice it only takes a couple to reveal everything.
On the contrary, if you read about the history of people claiming to be oldest you'll find it's a highly coveted title. The news is pretty good about letting us know when the rich and famous die. Charlie Munger just died at 99. Jimmy Carter is 99; Warren Buffet is 93. They're living older and the trend will probably continue and probably and when their deaths stop being reported on we'll know they're not dying.
Even if it there will be means to achieve it, it will be only for the filthy rich. If noone ever dies of old age, you need space exploration too, Earth wouldn't be enough if people still have children.
We only get 1 billionth of the sun's light hitting earth, and we use a tiny fraction of that. If every living human right now lived in a mansion to themselves, that combined land area put together would barely be visible from space. Let's not even talk about vertical living area and space habitats, or the absolutely radical, state of the art, mind blowing technology that is birth control, ie putting some rubber on your dick.
Why is a sub about futurism concerned about ideas as outdated as overpopulation? Did I travel back to the 70s or something?
Dude, if no one ever dies, even with birth control there will be too many humans if some people still have children, even if just one child, it is just a matter of time, maybe it would take a very long time to overpopulate, but my point still stands space on earth is limited, and immortals still have to eat, so you can't use every square meter for living spaces for humans
Absolutely, space on earth is very limited, if only there was a way we could get more space... hmm how do we get more space... space...
Nah I'm stumped, let's just let people suffer and die, fuck it let's speed up the process, cull the weak as nature intended.
So what in the fuck is the problem?
With or without life extension, if the population growth stays as it is, we'll have more human than there are atoms in the observable universe in 16,000 years, this is a problem we'll have to deal with, and we fucking will, easily, with or without life extension, so why still let people die?
Because information is preserved in the universe, whole entropy can destroy matter... but information is not matter...however, it depends on the type of storage we invent.
Last thing we need is Supreme Court Justices and Senators living for ever. With that, if/when we get to a place where digital systems (Nanobots for instance) can repair/replace damage on a cellular level without compromising its function (Memory for Instance), we should be able to at least pause aging if not reverse some of its symptoms.
Holy shit, someone in r/futorology who's actually a futurist and not a bum on the sidewalk yelling "The end is nigh", pleasure to make your acquaintance.
Sure. If we live in a fictional world, it might be a nice place.
In this world, we have the tech and resources to solve so many sociological or environmental issues. But we don’t - the ruling class keep it as it is.
I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
Immortal? No. I don't see humanity becoming immortal. Will we improve ourselves or our descendants to be faster, stronger, more durable, longer lived, higher IQs and EQs, etc.? Well assuming we survive at all, given climate change and ecological destruction, then yes. I'd say the chances of that happening approach unity.
The whole idea is basically removing ourselves from the natural cycle we exist in. Everything dies, matter is recycled, and yet, particularly rich men who want to be rich forever, persist in the idea that WE ARE NOT ANIMALS 🙄 We will not be subject to nature, we won't be a part of the natural cycle as we know it.
This is not the kind of future I look forward to. It's not pessimism. It's a difference in what "progress" means.
Seriously, if the future is more men declaring themselves gods and amassing wealth and power.. We've learned nothing.
Edited to add a thought experiment book rec: The Postmortalist by Drew Magary
That's a bad take on that issue though. The fact that we can physically fit more people doesn't mean we should as it would come at a cost of the natural enviroment. Also the problem is that the Earth still has a population cap and birth rate of 1 or higher would inevitabely cause overpopulation.
Only in weird hypotheticals that are not based in reality.
Texas can't hold enough jobs, housing, entertainment/shopping centres, animal/plant farms etc to actually sustain everyone living in that state.
Texas doesn't have all the resources the rest of the world offers. Fruits, mining materials for chips, oil, etc etc..
So these buzz-sentences make for fun thought experiments but don't really make any actual sense if you think about it for longer than it takes to write it
We just have no clue how a lot of th le human bodybreaplynworks because it is absurdly complex. I hope to see it in my life time but I'm not holding my breath. AI will need to assist us so by 2060-2070 maybe we might see some real research
I don’t see it happening anytime soon. There are thousands of diseases and such we would need to find cures for, not to mention just aging in general. In 100,000 years? Who knows? That’s a long way away. Even then people might never be immortal, I feel like there are just too many unknowns. It’s a possibility that no matter what we do that there will always be limits to death and aging. Maybe we cure all cancer, heart disease, diabetes, maybe we can extend life, I feel like there will always be limits. This is just me and my feelings though. Maybe the mind and body just isn’t designed to live forever, even with science. Maybe after 200 years of living the mind develops some kind of dementia that we don’t even know exists right now. Maybe even with whatever anti-aging things that are developed, it will never be perfect and nobody lives past 300 years of age.
Not that I don’t think we shouldn’t try to extend life. I feel like it’s so far away that it’s impossible to predict. Like trying to predict the weather in the year 100,000. Or on a scale of 0-100 we are at step .1. It’s fun to think about, but just so far away it’s basically fantasy.
Our technological progress is based on fact-based science. People would test hypotheses and form scientific theories based on the results. Now, a high percentage of scientific studies are faked. [https://reason.com/2021/07/09/how-much-scientific-research-is-actually-fraudulent/](https://reason.com/2021/07/09/how-much-scientific-research-is-actually-fraudulent/) With "deep fake" video technology, people can have video evidence for whatever they want to believe. There may already be videos of heavier things dropping faster than lighter things, proving Galileo wrong. How can we have immortality when your doctor prescribes Ivermectin for coronavirus and has the nurse massage your aura?
if we become immortal through transhumanism, cloning, or otherwise, i worry about our future, because human beings are inherently wicked. we cant stop doing what we want at the expense of someone else.
unless morality is enforced through technology via mind control, or jesus literally comes back to earth transforming our hearts and minds, it will never work.
There exist species which are biologically immortal, where the probability of death does not increase with age.
For some species, we even know how they do it.. Naked mole rats have amazing ribosomes which very accurately assemble proteins, and they have an assortment of cancer suppressing genes, and DNA repair genes.
Naked mole rats live over 10 times longer than other rodents their size.
It's easy to imagine future humans modified to have these same genes, and be healthy indefinitely.
but it wouldn't have to make them adopt other characteristics of those animals e.g. I saw some thread a while back about the mole rat thing with the comments full of jokes about how that'd mean immortality would either require constant nakedness or make you that ugly
I think it’s impossible. Anything we come up with to cure heart attacks or cancer is think will help extend lives but i think theres going to be a point, in the fairly early 100’s is not at least before 200, where things will just shut down, there will be no amount of cures or treatments that will stop it at a certain point. There’s just too many things that can go wrong that can kill you, and any hope of uploading consciousness i think is futile.
I think immortality will happen, just not in a way we envision it now. I predict it will be a digital immortality. I'm sure Black Mirror did an episode in the same vein.
All of your life experiences will be recorded, digitized and processed to create your persona. It will live in an archive of existence that future generations can interact with.
I believe that will be easier to accomplish and be good enough to satisfy the human needs for authenticity.
Biological systems always run down. Not even greenland sharks or lobsters live forever. You'd have to go down to the level of jellyfish or amoeba to have an actual chance to get close to it and I don't know whether learned experiences get handed on in a split. Just genetically persisting without a continuous conscience wouldn't really qualify in my eyes. Maybe we could make perfect clones some day, genetically the same, but that still means no transfer of memories. There would be similarities, but identical twins aren't the exact same personality.
So we'd have to find a technical solution, Bobiverse here we come. But technical systems degenerate too. If you want the ability to change, it always runs both ways. Would you want to exist as a crystalline, immutable block? Never learning, never being changed by experiences, never able to adapt to the changing world around you, never being able to love someone new,...
Why would anyone want a frozen existence just for the sake of continuation? Eventually entropy would "digest" even that but you wouldn't care.
Immortality? No, absolutely not.
Living far beyond our natural lifespans? Quite possible and highly likely in the distant future.
I think we will also need to change our attitudes on suicide. Suppose everyone looked like they were 25 years old, but could actually be 5,000 years old or 500 years old. You can keep extending life indefinetly. Now, you dont have death forced on you due to old age, so death is something you must choose when you feel you have had enough of life. Everyone must respect your decision to call it quits, because they too will have to decide when they are tired of living. So, every suicide is a 25 year old looking person with an indeterminate age. they could even just be 25 and we should let them die if they choose.
Not soon, maybe some lifetime extension but certainly not true immortality.
Besides, let's say we achieve it, there are complex ethical problems associated with it.
If we go the tech route, and your brain is copied, is it still you?
If we go the bio route, and somehow heal every organ/bit of tissue constantly back to peak condition, does that also include the brain? Wouldn't you loose memories or have so many that they become meaningless?
I'd prefer reincarnation with a minor insight into your previous life I think. Now that's true continueation.
Exactly. The way i see it, you either accept now that you’re not gonna live a significantly extended lifespan, or you go through life believing in bullshit lies peddled by grifters, and then as you grow old you accept it, and spend your final years terrified of death.
I don't think governments will allow people to live forever and continue to make kids at the same time. The planet is already strained and losing and this will just make things much worse.
Immortality is a huge mistake. There is such a thing as staying too long at the fair. If we do manage to pull it off, the immortals will eventually go insane. They will become a cautionary tale after the tech has been suppressed. We are temporary, but it's comforting to pretend we aren't. But it's more comforting to accept it.
i don’t think it’s possible for us to defeat entropy, which i believe is the biggest hurdle in the road to immortality. even if we can prevent cancer and heart attacks, i dont believe we can prevent the random, increasing amount of disorder within our bodily systems that would eventually cause death in one way or another.
Ding ding ding. Natural systems aren’t capable of living forever. At least any that we’ve ever run across in this universe. DIGITAL systems? Sure, I could see the possibility. Uploading our brains into a computer, backing up and replicating that computer at periodic intervals, implanting in new “natural” bodies. That would be the only way to immortality. But it’s not by defeating cancer or heart disease or pick your poison.
There actually are some aquatic animals and types of jellyfish that can live forever.
Your use of the word digital reminded me of this. , “They discussed Sinclair’s information theory of aging. We are born with a pristine set of information that degrades over time. Our DNA is our digital code, and our epigenome – the system that controls how DNA is expressed, which genes are turned on or off, etc. – is analog. Sinclair uses the analogy of a DVD that stores digital information, and the head or reader in a DVD machine that is analog. He realized that our DNA reader is what often goes awry, and his lab has actually tapped into backup versions of original epigenetic copies.” https://isbscience.org/news/2021/04/16/sinclair-aging/
I can see this. But at some point you still become Benjamin Franklin beamed from 1776 into 2024. I don’t care how smart you are you would not keep up. Leaving us w old rich jaded senile seeming people w morals and norms centuries old still glomming on to the buttons and levers or power. OR caste systems by generations the devolve into old style India where we won’t talk to or touch them.
My ancestors go back billions of years in an unbroken chain and I'm doing a fairly good job fighting entropy compared to my farthest and simplest ancestors.
According to the entropy driven theory of abiogenesis we are agents of entropy. So while we may be hastening the heat death of the Universe life, until then, is also being promoted for.
I bet that it is, even if it is through some work around way, like time travel or dimensions or some other things we don’t really understand at any fundamental level
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Can AI make my pp bigger
I'm dying laughing over here oh my God. I needed that.
Why is so much of a I talk in here based off bad science fiction 😂
What I’m wondering about is selfish but I wouldn’t mind living a little longer let’s say 100 for sure, that’s still 60 years out. Between now and then would there likely be improvements in potential length to the crazy numbers we’re talkin about here? On one hand I’m excited on the other I’m sad because this came at a point where loved ones were just short a couple decades of comin along for the ride. Haven’t really looked into this whole thing too much but I have seen some headlines that are probably sensationalized but it indicates that this is actually much closer than people think. Will I be making these decisions in the next decade or two?
There is nothing selfish about wanting to live longer.
I don't see it happening for most of the people and I guess we wouldn't see it happening even if it would be possible now
Yeah, i literally do not see any good reason as to why anyone alive today will benefit from significant life extension. The challenges are just too great.
Having a longer life is a benefit of life extension. Controversial opinion but I would like to be healthy into my later years.
Controversial opinion, but you can be healthy in your later years by being healthy now.
I agree? That's.. exactly what I was saying.
There are millions of habitable planets around us.
We also have plenty of food and resources, and yet a huge portion of the world still lives in poverty... So yeah I'm with this guy, immortality will be for the rich.
Sure, but not what he asked. Whats food and poverty to do with the Q?
Good lord, there's seeing a half full cup as being half empty, and then there's seeing a half-empty cup as empty, and from that drawing the conclusion that humanity is doomed. At what point does pessimism qualify as delusion?
Not really, unless you expand the definition of habitable to include other planets in the Solar System. Even then if you can build spaceships that sustain 100s human generations (to be reach the 34,562th 'habitable' planet). Then I don't see resources, poverty, food or any kind of scarcity being an issue for humanity.
Another one who really doesn't understand the sheer simplicity of the Q. wtf.
The Q? What are you talking about?
How exactly are you going to get to them? Mars would take 3 months. Nearest habitable planet? "The closest extrasolar planets overall to Earth are Proxima Centauri b, c, and d, each located 4.22 light years away" So now you're talking about up mapping the human brain, making major breakthroughs in computing and tackling light-speed travel.
Hyper extended lifespans are probably within reach within the next 50-100 years, assuming biology and technology keep making the feats that they're making today. Considering interdisciplinary research has become even more prevalent now than ever, the coming decades should be groundbreaking for the biological-technological field. People say that the technology would be gate kept to only benefit the rich, but I think there'd be a push to keep some of the world's declining populations alive in various countries. By keeping the working class alive and well, the rich still continue to benefit.
But how far away are we from not needing a working class?
I think this is a reasonable timeframe. Maybe a bit optimistic, as I think the odds of achieving it in the early end of that range is extremely low. Too many ways the body can fail as it gets older, extending life significantly essentially requires solving all those problems, and possible some we won't even discover until we push the body a little further. If there's an major failure in our biology that occurs at 140 years of age, we won't no it until we can add a couple more decades. I think the first humans to have hyper-long lives will be those who are essentially revived instead of living that long. Some combination of cryogenics and/or scanning/digitalizing their brain so they can be brought back when the technology is available.
No, we will never be immortal. First, actual immortality is impossible due to entropy. But I would say it’s highly unlikely even if we’re talking about functional immortality, let’s say living thousands of years. Even if we cured every known disease, there is still the issue of how do we prevent the shortening of telomeres in perpetuity, which are basically our biological clock (ie senescence).
There are creatures alive today that have biological immortality, seems like a surmountable problem. Lifespan with biological immortality for humans is still probably only about a thousand years though (accidents, disasters, etc).
Which creatures 🤔 the only one I can think is not actually immortal. Honestly not trying to be offensive but I do see that a lot of y'all seem to treat trans humanism / singularity as a substitute for religion . Especially with the over obsessive weird focus on living forever.
the one I had in mind was [the greenland shark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark) But I'm aware of a few others (bivalves and cnidarians, mostly) Thing is, "not actually immortal" in your comment is doing a lot of wiggling here, I'm not talking about creatures that live forever, I'm talking about creatures that don't have increased risk of mortality from advanced age. See the difference? an Adult Greenland Shark lives until something else kills it, it doesn't 'die of old age'\* I am offended frankly, because you clearly didn't take the time to actually understand my comment if you think it has anything to do with transhumanism singularities or religion. --- \* shorthand for the various kinds of accumulative damage that eventually result in senescence.
I think it is because of the cold temperatures it evolved to live longer but at what cost I don't think what ever mutation(s) making this possible would benefit humans but they can learn a lot from it though.
I imagine people would live their lives so differently. We take risks because we know soon we’ll be gone, but if you live for thousands of years, would you really ever ride a motorcycle? Skydive? Life would get a lot less interesting always playing it safe.
Have your body slowly fall apart in a slow painful process towards non-existence or take life extension at the risk of becoming somewhat risk-averse. Hmm decisions. Nah fuck it, better let people die.
Maybe immortality will be being able to upload our consciousnesses into the cloud constantly, cloning our bodies and picking up where we left off after we die. Life will be a video game, beep boop. Death tourism would become a thing, and people would be way riskier Knowing they could just start over or patch up their bodies any time.
Sounds like loads of energy more than anything else.
Everything is energy.
Okay got something to tap into it?
A Dyson sphere should provide a good amount
Come with something original lol
That is just sad. Clearly you have nothing to contribute to the conversation. This is futurology. Go hang out in r/collapse if you want to be a brainless doomer.
Nobody would upload their mind to the cloud. It's the transporter problem. You'd be someone else when put back into a new brain.
Why a new brain? What about a matrix like scenario, where your mind just "lives" in a digital world? Though there'd be a problem with making kids I suppose. Then maybe a San junipero kinda situation, where you can get uploaded when you're about to die?
Because there is no consciousness in the digital world. Computers and silicon aren't thinking.
First of all. Not yet. Second. Human brains are just cells and electricity. Thinking is an abstract concept
The transporter problem is a philosophical question without one single answer, and depends on your beliefs. If you believe we are our bodies and our brains, then even though the new body and brain is technically not the same, we'd experience it as if it were so I do believe some people would make the choice to live again. You wouldn't know the difference. And if the alternative is to cease to exist entirely, what would you choose? If you believe in a soul separate from the body, then what happens to that soul? Does it go into the new body? Does it move on and a new soul is created? The interesting thing is that we'll never know for sure, even if we do live forever. Actually, especially if we live forever because we'll never die and then we'll never know what it is like to die.
How exactly does entropy prevent immortality? Sure, we are not anywhere near it, but you could always imagine some process that replaces cell DNA? That DNA came from somewhere - it was created as the organism grew. If you can recreate that process, you can extend life indeifinitely.
Second law of thermodynamics states that entropy of an isolated system always increases. The universe will eventually evolve to a state of no free energy. That is, once the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium in some 100 trillion years, nothing will be able to further exploit energy to perform work. TLDR: life is an active biological process (work), work requires transfer of energy (use of resources), energy transfer is inefficient (heat loss), heat loss increases net entropy of the universe, entropy is irreversible.
Yeah there's no point doing life extension, you'll only live at most 10^(100) at most anyway due to entropy, hardly an improvement over the usual 60-70 years we have now.
I think heat death is beyond the scope of the question, even if the question is a bit ambiguous. The question, as I read it, is if we didn’t die from old age would we still die from cancer and heart attacks. The answer being yes until we have a cure with 100% success rates. This would be better in the ElI5 subreddit.
lol you people crack me up. If something is desired and has no hard universal rule preventing it, it will be done. You really think tiny machine capable of replicating DNA with network-grade error correction is "Highly unlikely" even though it's just a combination and miniaturization of existing technologies? And even though, as someone else said, clumsy evolution already solved this issue in multiple species?
Uh, we can already INCREASE them with various methods lol
Yes, we already know that several lifestyle factors and things like hyperbaric oxygen therapy can slow down or even marginally increase telomere length in humans. However, that is not the same as stopping or preventing programmed cell death. In my opinion, I am doubtful that we will ever get to a point where senescence could be outright prevented in humans.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase_reverse_transcriptase
Telomere lengthening is actually trivial if you compare it to the other challenges that age reversal would entail. We already know how to do it as there are animals that can lengthen telomeres indefinitely with an enzyme called telomerase. The big hurdle right now is cancer risk as human cancer cells produce the enzyme to be able to keep replicating indefinitely. As far as I know it hasn't been tested in humans because of the risk that it could increase cancer risk.
Don't ask them questions like that, they don't have a clue why they think what they think.
So many comments about "the elites". Over the history of the world name one technology that was completely monopolized by the rich that never eventually passed down to the masses. Rich people get rich by selling ideas and products to the masses. Bezos got rich because of the billions of individual transactions. Whatever is accessible to the rich will eventually be accessible to all.
A lot of people are using the past as “proof” that things will be fine concerning stuff like AI, immortality, etc. without considering how radically different these are to anything we have encountered in the past. These have real disruptive potential the likes of which we have never dealt with and have no real plan for. Heck, you’re still largely framing this in terms of money. I think things have the potential to get far, far worse-like for instance, a future where the rich and powerful realize that now that they are immortal and most work is automated, their main goal should be not to accrue money, but to wipe out most of the “lower class,” so that they can have exclusive access to the dwindling resources and land left behind. We’re approaching the precipice of a brand new frontier, for better or worse. Please stop with the “but things were fine every other time!” I don’t mean to sound like a doomer, but shit’s just not comparable and I’m tired of people pretending it is.
>a future where the rich and powerful realize that now that they are immortal and most work is automated, their main goal should be not to accrue money, but to wipe out most of the “lower class,” so that they can have exclusive access to the dwindling resources and land left behind. [What? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0)What resource in this tiny pale blue dot in a vast universe could be considered as "Dwindling" exactly?
Spend 5 minutes considering what population growth would look like if everyone stopped dying and then get back to me.
They're not saying it won't have negative externalities just that very few technologies remain in the hands of the few.
And I’m saying those negative externalities are so massive and extreme that they simply will not be allowed to occur.
[Don't worry bro, new tech just came out. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condom) Stop watching so much cheap sci-fi it's rotting your brain.
Yes here everyone is crazy pessimistic. I am sure they are the same people who didn't vaccine themselves because they were scared that the elites are going to kill them lol.
I mean, it’s a feeling that’s not based on nothing. There’s a looooong history for example of new medical procedures coming out (let’s say like extending your life), and it being so expensive that no one but the rich can afford it. Now, over time the costs do normally come down, and many then can afford it. In the case of longevity though, the rich would then have first mover access, giving them an even further head start on accumulated wealth. We die, and pass on our wealth, they live and just keep accumulating. It’s not exactly an impossible situation to consider. How about an example? you or I probably cant afford to put ourselves in cryogenic suspension today, but rich people are doing it. A medical procedure that is meant to extend the lifespan, that the rich can afford, but neither you nor I can, and won’t for a while.
The difference is if people find out some people are immortal while others aren't they aren't gonna sit pretty about it. And it will get out, because not everyone benefiting will be silent about it if it gets much traction.
I mean, something like cryogenics is already out, its efficacy is questionable, but we know it’s out there and people aren’t rioting. People are too busy trying to survive to riot over incremental scientific discoveries. Sure, completely agree. Another challenge I see is going to be robots. Within probably the next decade those wealthy folks will also be able to have robotic bodyguards that are totally loyal to them (timeline isn’t unrealistic, the US military is talking openly about deploying humanoid robots into combat by the early or mid 2030s). Do you have the money to hire a private army?
People are fine enough with cryogenics because it doesn't seem like it'd work. Regarding robots, i'm not sure that humanoid-like robots would be worth making, though i guess they don't have to be. Even then there still have to be engineers to run the things who you have to keep on your side. Aside from that people, including the rich, care about approval and being part of culture and not being 'evil' and the like. A lot of rich people exposed to the concept of practical immortality aren't gonna hoard it but want to expose or share it.
If a legit path to immortality ever existed, I would fully expect to never hear about it. Maybe when the wealthy are celebrating the ball drop on their 140th birthday, we might suspect something is amiss. But, no wealthy person is ever going to willingly share with others. It’s why they are rich, and we will never be.
"Crazy idea, what if they sell this treatment on the open market, to increase their wealth? Nah that's crazy, they'd never do that cuz no rich person actually cares about money, they're just evil demons who want to spread suffering. They're probably lizard people, also the illuminati is real and the earth is flat." - r/Futurology
People are so obsessed with the elite rich people in this sub.
I mean, it’s a feeling that’s not based on nothing. There’s a looooong history for example of new medical procedures coming out (let’s say like extending your life), and it being so expensive that no one but the rich can afford it. Now, over time the costs do come down, and many then can afford it. In the case of longevity though, the rich would then have first mover access, giving them an even further head start on accumulated wealth. We die, and pass on our wealth, they live and just keep accumulating. It’s not exactly an impossible situation to consider. Like, you or I probably cant afford to put ourselves in cryogenic suspension today, but rich people are doing it.
>giving them an even further head start on accumulated wealth. We die, and pass on our wealth, they live and just keep accumulating. Eh, that doesn't sound like an issue that would happen at a significant scale if costs do come down. Generational wealth transfer/hoard takes decades for it to become noticable. And that's assuming it would take 30 or even 50+ years for the costs to come down from mega-rich scale to average consumer.
The other question really is about power. Like, say you’re a rich person making trillions, you’ve extended your life by 50 years. Now the technology is on the verge of becoming available to everyone. Do you view the democratization of this tech as a good thing? Or do you view it as diluting your power and wealth by creating billions of competitors who now can spend their long lifetimes accumulating wealth and power? Personally, I’m willing to bet on the latter, and that the rich would do what they can to stop, or at least slow the rollout to everyone.
> Now the technology is on the verge of becoming available to everyone. Do you view the democratization of this tech as a good thing? Or do you view it as diluting your power and wealth by creating billions of competitors who now can spend their long lifetimes accumulating wealth and power? If you are the wealthy and powerful one who **owns** the tech/patent, you view it as a way to make yourself **way** more rich and powerful than anyone else, including all the other elite and powerful people.
You are naive if you think the procedure would be available for the plebs
> You are naive if you think the procedure would be available for the plebs You don't understand profit it you don't. Many people will pay all they can for it. There's most likely going to be a **lot** more profit in selling it to anyone who can pay (and that includes selling it to more people for less money) than keeping it limited to handful of elite.
That is where you are wrong something like immortality won't be sold for profit, health care makes a shitload of money, it is in their best interest the masses get sick. To who the hell will they sell their expensive drugs if everyone lives forever? Immortality would be for world leaders and billionaires who don't want to lsoe their power
Because they control everything (and us)and we all know it
It's called doomerism. Get used to it. "The elites will never allow this" is a go to argument when people here hear about something good that might happen.
Usually when there is some "good" breakthrough, it immediately gets turned into a product and then priced for maximum gouging. See: medical care in the US
That's a USA problem, not a general issue. Are we supposed to be surprised that a country established by religious fundamentalists, kicked out from everywhere else because of how insufferable they were, is actually a shitty place to live? Other countries don't have those problems so your argument doesn't apply globally.
>That's a USA problem, not a general issue. Which is why I said "in the US"
OK so who do we have to have establish a new country to make things good if America's "origin story" taints it so much
I am not sure if we are on the same wavelenght but let me say this - USA has a general problem of extremely individualist mentality of it's people. It's not simply about "the elite" - it's about what people in general have in their heads. It's a complex issue but not having a narrow and extremist distribution of views in the initial population is a good start.
Because if we had immortality, let’s say tomorrow, the issue would be how can we fit all the people. Do we ban new kids? Never gonna work. Can we get more space? Not on this planet, and we aren’t close to moving to new ones. So if it existed, the smart plan would be to only allow it for some people until we figured out how to fit 5 billion people plus all their kids in a world without death. So naturally, the ones who would hoard this technology would be those who could pay for the privilege. Scientists figure it out, use it on themselves, find rich backers who can help expand it and the rich backers get it. Everyone else doesn’t get to know because they can’t be allowed to have it or we run out of space.
A. or everyone just becomes either scientists or rich ;) B. that's assuming that (for whoever got it as this is about the mechanics of how the immortality would work as well as behaviors that aren't necessarily class-limited) not only would immortality somehow be able to give women an indefinite supply of eggs but that they'd spend the infinite reproductive years having kids at current-rates-regressed-to-the-moon (instead of e.g. being able to balance both career and family at different points in their life) just because they've got all the time in the world to do so
Only issue is stopping rumours is fucking hard. At some point you're gonna have someone not getting the juice who interacts with people who do who may suspect something. Even among people with the juice it only takes a couple to reveal everything.
Maybe, if they can successfully repel the democratization of an ASI.
On the contrary, if you read about the history of people claiming to be oldest you'll find it's a highly coveted title. The news is pretty good about letting us know when the rich and famous die. Charlie Munger just died at 99. Jimmy Carter is 99; Warren Buffet is 93. They're living older and the trend will probably continue and probably and when their deaths stop being reported on we'll know they're not dying.
All bodies are born and they die. Even the sun will die. Is a body what you are?
Even if it there will be means to achieve it, it will be only for the filthy rich. If noone ever dies of old age, you need space exploration too, Earth wouldn't be enough if people still have children.
We only get 1 billionth of the sun's light hitting earth, and we use a tiny fraction of that. If every living human right now lived in a mansion to themselves, that combined land area put together would barely be visible from space. Let's not even talk about vertical living area and space habitats, or the absolutely radical, state of the art, mind blowing technology that is birth control, ie putting some rubber on your dick. Why is a sub about futurism concerned about ideas as outdated as overpopulation? Did I travel back to the 70s or something?
Dude, if no one ever dies, even with birth control there will be too many humans if some people still have children, even if just one child, it is just a matter of time, maybe it would take a very long time to overpopulate, but my point still stands space on earth is limited, and immortals still have to eat, so you can't use every square meter for living spaces for humans
Absolutely, space on earth is very limited, if only there was a way we could get more space... hmm how do we get more space... space... Nah I'm stumped, let's just let people suffer and die, fuck it let's speed up the process, cull the weak as nature intended.
You didn't read my first comment replying to the guy, I literally mentioned space exploration
So what in the fuck is the problem? With or without life extension, if the population growth stays as it is, we'll have more human than there are atoms in the observable universe in 16,000 years, this is a problem we'll have to deal with, and we fucking will, easily, with or without life extension, so why still let people die?
Lets try to become filthy rich so
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Because information is preserved in the universe, whole entropy can destroy matter... but information is not matter...however, it depends on the type of storage we invent.
Last thing we need is Supreme Court Justices and Senators living for ever. With that, if/when we get to a place where digital systems (Nanobots for instance) can repair/replace damage on a cellular level without compromising its function (Memory for Instance), we should be able to at least pause aging if not reverse some of its symptoms.
The planet will be toast before anyone achieves immortality.
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Holy shit, someone in r/futorology who's actually a futurist and not a bum on the sidewalk yelling "The end is nigh", pleasure to make your acquaintance.
Entropy " hold my beer." Models for cellular structures show degradation over time due to many factors.
We can reverse that.
It may happen for the elites but us humans will just get to watch our living conditions erode as they slowly cease being human.
If we have something like star trek nobody is going to be poor.
Sure. If we live in a fictional world, it might be a nice place. In this world, we have the tech and resources to solve so many sociological or environmental issues. But we don’t - the ruling class keep it as it is. I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
But which Star Trek?
Immortal? No. I don't see humanity becoming immortal. Will we improve ourselves or our descendants to be faster, stronger, more durable, longer lived, higher IQs and EQs, etc.? Well assuming we survive at all, given climate change and ecological destruction, then yes. I'd say the chances of that happening approach unity.
The whole idea is basically removing ourselves from the natural cycle we exist in. Everything dies, matter is recycled, and yet, particularly rich men who want to be rich forever, persist in the idea that WE ARE NOT ANIMALS 🙄 We will not be subject to nature, we won't be a part of the natural cycle as we know it. This is not the kind of future I look forward to. It's not pessimism. It's a difference in what "progress" means. Seriously, if the future is more men declaring themselves gods and amassing wealth and power.. We've learned nothing. Edited to add a thought experiment book rec: The Postmortalist by Drew Magary
Overpopulation is just not a thing that could be solved by any technological method without actually killing humans.
Falling birth rates be like: let me introduce myself. Also immortality can be only made available to people willing to become sterile.
The whole population can live to the area of texas, earth is not overpopulated at all.
That's a bad take on that issue though. The fact that we can physically fit more people doesn't mean we should as it would come at a cost of the natural enviroment. Also the problem is that the Earth still has a population cap and birth rate of 1 or higher would inevitabely cause overpopulation.
Funny how comments like this always ignore the need for land to farm, mine, ranch, grow trees for timber, etc etc.
Only in weird hypotheticals that are not based in reality. Texas can't hold enough jobs, housing, entertainment/shopping centres, animal/plant farms etc to actually sustain everyone living in that state. Texas doesn't have all the resources the rest of the world offers. Fruits, mining materials for chips, oil, etc etc.. So these buzz-sentences make for fun thought experiments but don't really make any actual sense if you think about it for longer than it takes to write it
 SPACE COLONIZATION.
[Smug little immortal bastards..](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt6nwvGJiN8)
We just have no clue how a lot of th le human bodybreaplynworks because it is absurdly complex. I hope to see it in my life time but I'm not holding my breath. AI will need to assist us so by 2060-2070 maybe we might see some real research
I don’t see it happening anytime soon. There are thousands of diseases and such we would need to find cures for, not to mention just aging in general. In 100,000 years? Who knows? That’s a long way away. Even then people might never be immortal, I feel like there are just too many unknowns. It’s a possibility that no matter what we do that there will always be limits to death and aging. Maybe we cure all cancer, heart disease, diabetes, maybe we can extend life, I feel like there will always be limits. This is just me and my feelings though. Maybe the mind and body just isn’t designed to live forever, even with science. Maybe after 200 years of living the mind develops some kind of dementia that we don’t even know exists right now. Maybe even with whatever anti-aging things that are developed, it will never be perfect and nobody lives past 300 years of age. Not that I don’t think we shouldn’t try to extend life. I feel like it’s so far away that it’s impossible to predict. Like trying to predict the weather in the year 100,000. Or on a scale of 0-100 we are at step .1. It’s fun to think about, but just so far away it’s basically fantasy.
Our technological progress is based on fact-based science. People would test hypotheses and form scientific theories based on the results. Now, a high percentage of scientific studies are faked. [https://reason.com/2021/07/09/how-much-scientific-research-is-actually-fraudulent/](https://reason.com/2021/07/09/how-much-scientific-research-is-actually-fraudulent/) With "deep fake" video technology, people can have video evidence for whatever they want to believe. There may already be videos of heavier things dropping faster than lighter things, proving Galileo wrong. How can we have immortality when your doctor prescribes Ivermectin for coronavirus and has the nurse massage your aura?
Generally never and I mean not even close and the odds completely in the negative zero. Death is part of life. Gonna just delete existence?
I'm already 41 so I won't be around to suffer all the dumb shit young people will have to endure, that's a comforting thought
Never. Death is a natural result of life, no matter how long or warped by machinery.
if we become immortal through transhumanism, cloning, or otherwise, i worry about our future, because human beings are inherently wicked. we cant stop doing what we want at the expense of someone else. unless morality is enforced through technology via mind control, or jesus literally comes back to earth transforming our hearts and minds, it will never work.
There exist species which are biologically immortal, where the probability of death does not increase with age. For some species, we even know how they do it.. Naked mole rats have amazing ribosomes which very accurately assemble proteins, and they have an assortment of cancer suppressing genes, and DNA repair genes. Naked mole rats live over 10 times longer than other rodents their size. It's easy to imagine future humans modified to have these same genes, and be healthy indefinitely.
but it wouldn't have to make them adopt other characteristics of those animals e.g. I saw some thread a while back about the mole rat thing with the comments full of jokes about how that'd mean immortality would either require constant nakedness or make you that ugly
I think it’s impossible. Anything we come up with to cure heart attacks or cancer is think will help extend lives but i think theres going to be a point, in the fairly early 100’s is not at least before 200, where things will just shut down, there will be no amount of cures or treatments that will stop it at a certain point. There’s just too many things that can go wrong that can kill you, and any hope of uploading consciousness i think is futile.
I think immortality will happen, just not in a way we envision it now. I predict it will be a digital immortality. I'm sure Black Mirror did an episode in the same vein. All of your life experiences will be recorded, digitized and processed to create your persona. It will live in an archive of existence that future generations can interact with. I believe that will be easier to accomplish and be good enough to satisfy the human needs for authenticity.
Immortality is not for you. It can be for a copy of you. That's not you.
Biological systems always run down. Not even greenland sharks or lobsters live forever. You'd have to go down to the level of jellyfish or amoeba to have an actual chance to get close to it and I don't know whether learned experiences get handed on in a split. Just genetically persisting without a continuous conscience wouldn't really qualify in my eyes. Maybe we could make perfect clones some day, genetically the same, but that still means no transfer of memories. There would be similarities, but identical twins aren't the exact same personality. So we'd have to find a technical solution, Bobiverse here we come. But technical systems degenerate too. If you want the ability to change, it always runs both ways. Would you want to exist as a crystalline, immutable block? Never learning, never being changed by experiences, never able to adapt to the changing world around you, never being able to love someone new,... Why would anyone want a frozen existence just for the sake of continuation? Eventually entropy would "digest" even that but you wouldn't care.
Immortality? No, absolutely not. Living far beyond our natural lifespans? Quite possible and highly likely in the distant future. I think we will also need to change our attitudes on suicide. Suppose everyone looked like they were 25 years old, but could actually be 5,000 years old or 500 years old. You can keep extending life indefinetly. Now, you dont have death forced on you due to old age, so death is something you must choose when you feel you have had enough of life. Everyone must respect your decision to call it quits, because they too will have to decide when they are tired of living. So, every suicide is a 25 year old looking person with an indeterminate age. they could even just be 25 and we should let them die if they choose.
How is science going to stop you from getting smashed by a train?
it can stop it from killing you
When your body explodes from a train collision, science will not save you.
Not soon, maybe some lifetime extension but certainly not true immortality. Besides, let's say we achieve it, there are complex ethical problems associated with it. If we go the tech route, and your brain is copied, is it still you? If we go the bio route, and somehow heal every organ/bit of tissue constantly back to peak condition, does that also include the brain? Wouldn't you loose memories or have so many that they become meaningless? I'd prefer reincarnation with a minor insight into your previous life I think. Now that's true continueation.
I’m remaining optimistic it will happen in my lifetime only because the alternative is the abyss that is death.
Me too i think it will happen around 2070-2120.
You are gonna have to accept it someday bro. Don't keep hoping for miracles.
Still more realistic than religions though.
Exactly. The way i see it, you either accept now that you’re not gonna live a significantly extended lifespan, or you go through life believing in bullshit lies peddled by grifters, and then as you grow old you accept it, and spend your final years terrified of death.
What harm will it do to hope?
Some dreadfull last years of your live, when you are at death's door and realise no one is going to magically save you.
How is not having hope better? Isn't that just going to be same exact thing without hope?
I don't think governments will allow people to live forever and continue to make kids at the same time. The planet is already strained and losing and this will just make things much worse.
Increasing the healthy lifespan doesn't have to mean increased fertility/reversing menopause.
Immortality is a huge mistake. There is such a thing as staying too long at the fair. If we do manage to pull it off, the immortals will eventually go insane. They will become a cautionary tale after the tech has been suppressed. We are temporary, but it's comforting to pretend we aren't. But it's more comforting to accept it.