According to the information posted at this link,
http://pro.moneymappress.com/NVXHCRXIB90CTL/PNVXR409/
humanity is just 2 to 3 years away from being able to live forever, at least from an aging point of view. In other words, this site proclaims that human aging is about to be eradicated.

Be warned that this site is a come-on to get you to sign up for something. Nevertheless there are some astounding claims being made, and there are lots of names included: doctors, genetecists, etc. Lots of stuff to make it *appear* legit.

Let's assume for a moment that it's all true: just 2 years from now, you will be able to get 4 injections a year and live forever as a 30-year-old (physiologically). Diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, all heart disease, diabetes, etc. will simply disappear.

The author of this site, one Michael Robinson, claims that he is out to make this injection program affordable for all, whereas without his help it would be limited to the extremely wealthy. Let's also assume that Robinson succeeds in this endeavor.

This thread has been started for anyone interested to comment on the philosophical implications of this actually happening.

If all the world's old people suddenly got the fountain of youth and stopped dying, that would bankrupt the developed world if these people somehow remained on their current pensions. And if they were so rejuvenated as to be able to work once again, well then we'd have huge masses of unemployed which would strain national resources to the breaking point.

But the worst effects would be related to the fact that people are still going to die from accidents, hazards, violence and the like. Think of the implications: would you really want to get in a car and drive if your suddenly immortal life could be ended in an accident? What about certain jobs that entail risk of death: who is going to do such jobs? Ultimately perhaps robots, but in the meantime, many of them still have to be done by people. The question becomes WHICH people, and the answer could involve brute force and the creation of a 'slave' class of people that will be relegated to do all the risky things that need done. Given the stakes -- immortality -- such a slave class will be more prone to revolt than any slave class in history.



These ramifications -- creation of a slave class along with the social cost of keeping many, many more people gainfully employed -- would seem to lead to incredible social chaos and perhaps the total collapse of civilization. In the end, I could guess that things simply must head towards major outbreaks of violence, revolution and war resulting in an actual and precipituous decline in human population worldwide over the course of maybe a single year. Only then, with the global population culled back to maybe under 1 billion from the current 7 billion plus, could there be some sense of stability. And then could begin the age of mass robotics to take all dangerous activity out of the realm of daily human life.

you have a fundamental lack of understanding of human history clearly. I considered at one point making a post about the worlds population will be reduced to less then a few million seriously!.

throughout human history most of man kind has been slaves and the libertys that we have today are only so because it is in the interests of those in power. As technology can consistently do jobs better and more cost efficiently then most people for most professions the need for humans is now none at all to those in power.

and they are a burden on the planet and its resources.

ergo it will be in there interests to wipe out most of humanity which they will do.

if you seriously think that they would let out something that could let us live forever you are clearly naive.

We would all die in a Malthusian solution to the over-population.

Rich or powerful does not always equate to smart. It would take a concerted effort by a team of scientists to work out immortality. Keeping that many mouths closed would be very difficult. It would also mean that other people could independently discover the solution somehow. Once the populace at large is informed it would be almost impossible to prevent rioting if you were going to try and horde the solution.

Either by technology or by virtue of extending life eventually our economic systems will have to compensate somehow so that economies and countries don't crash and burn. Something of that scale won't shift very suddenly so there will be time to adjust by small increments.

It may be counter intuitive but the way it works now is it's young people with the longest lives ahead of them and the greatest sense of personal immortality who are most willing to engage in risky activity. Old people who are staring impending death in the face are least inclined to take such risks. If this phenomenon persists under the fountain of youth we may see everybody making a living playing Russian Roulette - the ones who stay lucky anyway.


PairTheBoard

Deleted the RGT material from the OP so it can stand and continue. Don't mix material that can equally belong in two different forms.

If you wish to discuss the religious aspects regarding the OP then post in the RGT forum.

There is no "they." Malthus was an idiot. Mosquitos exist quite fine despite their lack of productivity and all efforts of wealthy folk to eradicate them and you can't even have sex with them and they are significantly more bitey than people.

Any other concerns?

We can outthink nature, and need not be Malthusian. Reproduction is old-fashioned.

Immortality must remain a dream as long as you can't back-up your mind. Otherwise some accident in the pipes of the brain can always "fix" you, and will, if enough time passes.

Two dying forums does it really matter?

Like I'd understand if the discussion in here was of a particularly high quality but it's mainly just posters dicking around.

I think the OP is wildly overoptimistic about the timeline to curing ageing, but that probably does not matter. The point is that we only need to live long enough to get the remedy for the next thing that would have killed us. Thanks to improvements in sequencing technologies the cure for cancer is likely only ten or twenty years away, in a similar time frame we will soon be able to grow replacement organs from a persons own tissue which would pretty much remove heart disease as a cause of death. Lots of people are working on Alzheimer's ...

If we manage to cure all fatal age related aliments it will come in the wake large scale improvements in health care, and biotechnology in general. Imminent improvements in biotechnology is set drastically increase the efficiency of food production to the extent that I am less concerned by food shortages than most.

An argument is that education and birth control tend to go together, which could conceivably increase the divide between between first and third world countries. However in practise the opposite seems to be happening, with educations levels increasing world wide. I think that with cheaper computer hardware and improvements in machine learning education will continue to become cheaper and more available.

So the same technologies that are likely to lead to curing all age related fatalities are also likely to lead to solutions to overpopulation. This is however a common theme of scientific progress; causing problems and then solving them. Still the process can sometimes be disruptive.

If life expectancy in the west increased by 30 years the implications would be massive, this is an interesting topic, potentially, long before we get anywhere near immortality.

RGT stuff would make this forum die even faster.

Well unless Zeno started adding to the OP then there's enough in that to be SMP worthy. I have 30 topics per page and the oldest is 2 1/2 weeks so I doubt it.

Ok, he may be a bit scared those three lines of RGT-stuff may poison all the tread. Maybe he has reason to belive so? I wouldn't post here if that irrelevant stuff was discussed regularly. It's more suited for politics/psychology.

Do you post much outside the Random Drunk thread?

Just to make my objection clear.

A post may have content that aligns with a number of forums, on what basis do people want to determine what forum it gets posted in. If this had been posted in RGT would it have been appropriate for Original Position to edit out the ethical aspects given that ethics is a branch of philosophy? The issue raises ethical questions and this forum seems quieter over the last while so being overly nitty with regard to the questions that end up here seems a little pointless.

I didn't see the unedited post, but I tend to trust Zeno's judgment here and OrP's judgment there. I even trust them to adjust their modding based on changing happenstance.

Of course, if I didn't, I would have written a post similar to your post.

Is the OP about human immortality or SMP immortality?

Seems clear I don't, in any case it's not like it matters.

This thread should not be about me or the moderation, if you have concerns please send a PM. But just to note I deleted the OP once, entire. It was posted again and I deleted one or two sentences and one phrase to bring the topic into a better focus for discussion in SMP. I have other concerns also to contend with but will not elaborate here has I don't think it proper as noted etc., send me a PM if you wish to discuss.

Continue with discussion/debate.

I read the original post, and remember being a bit perplexed at the deletion. The idea that religion will die if we achieve immortality seems like a philisophical question, and an interesting one that could be discussed in SMP. I do agree it deserves it's own thread though. The topic of practical immortality has such huge implications. I think the main reasons Kurzweil gets this wrong have to do with his neglecting to address how humanity will respond to the changes he predicts, both politically and religiously.

The trend in life expectancy has increased greatly during the last 100 years and not just in the West. Modern medical advances and better health and diet information coupled with pre-natal and infant care has been a boon to civilization.

The issue is very broad-based and multifaceted covering everything from the advancement and application of modern medicine to political ramifications to ethical considerations. The scientific and ethical ramifications are of great interest for us here.

You're right life expectancy is increasing and with it comes its own challenges, caring for an ageing population and increases in population among them. The increase has been gradual enough however and while it's been enough to have pension age increase life expectancy seems more likely to be subject to increase sharply now than previously.

A bit.
For clarity: I meant RGT-stuff is more suited for politics and psychology than for SMP, because it doesn't deal with physically existent things. But the "prolonging life" theme of course can suit SMP, even "close to immortality" can, if realism is held as a value.

Personally I think we humans are much of a dead end. Too much will keep us on dying. But time will show, especially those younger than me

Most of philosophy is trying to understand whether there are existent things and if so relations between them rather than the investigation of physically existent things which is the domain of science.

There are ethical considerations around access to technology that can prolong life, population ethics is a thing. I do expect conscious AI to achieve "immortality" some time before any of us do.