Quote: Original post by Yann L
Or just start all over again, leading an entirely different life.

This.

If you live, effectively, "forever" and still reach maturity within your first 20 years, you have the opportunity to rise to the absolute pinnacle of several disciplines, to explore every interest and career you've ever wanted, to experience incredible numbers of things without any real repercussions because you can just move, change your appearance and start over.

Quote: Original post by Lode
Colonize space, fill the whole milky way with trillions of people, and next all galaxies beyond that :)

Galaxy empire? It's too trite[smile]

Quote:
"A lot you know about evolution," Victor said rudely. "A new Darwin! What's the difference whether it's a chemical process or a conscious act? Not all your ancestors were protein either.Your great-great-great-grandmother also, though quite complicated,I admit, was not a protein molecule. It may be that our so-called conscious activity is also a variety of evolution. How do we know it was the aim of nature to create a comrade Eddie? Maybe the aim of nature was the creation of un-life at the hands of Amperian. It could be."
"Indeed, indeed. First an anti-virus, then protein, then comrade Eddie, and then the whole planet is filled with un-life."
"Exactly," said Victor.
"And all of us are dead out of sheer use..."
"And why not?" said Victor.
"I have an acquaintance," said Eddie. "He asserts that man is just an
intermediary link that nature requires for the crown of its creation: a
glass of cognac with a lemon slice."
"And why, in the final analysis, not?"

A lot of these "develop your skills and talents forever" are awesome, except for the detail that other problems continue to be just as likely, or more likely.



What is meant by "able to cure aging"?



People generally don't die because of age itself, but because of accumulated diminished physical capacity to handle everyday natural affectations.

The body doesn't say "Oh look, I just turned 72. Time to turn off." There is normally a progression of minor issues and wear-and-tear that continue until it reaches a life-ending event.



What would be done to stop problems such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, assorted cancers, and other major health concerns? What about diabetes? What about general dementia? How about the fact that brain cells die to many factors other than age, but are never replaced? What would be done about degenerative conditions like osteoporosis (bone density loss), vision impairment and loss, hearing impairment and loss?

To address the reproductive issues, would this theoretical "cure" affect fertility, or would female fertility ages continue to depend on the mother's health and stop at around 40 years of age?


I'm reminded of the Alphaville song "Forever Young" where they ask if you would really want to live forever or rather be forever young?


Would you really want to live for 1000 years if you were going to spend 800 of those years mostly blind, deaf, toothless, scarred, and dependent on medications for daily existence?



The possibility of eternal life only excites me ONLY if it is accompanied by a perfect (i.e. ideal, incorruptible, un-scared, uninjured, uninjurable, etc.) body.

Quote: Original post by frob
What is meant by "able to cure aging"?

I'm assuming they mean cures for all the things that tend to go wrong with the human body as it gets older. Ie, all the things you mentioned as 'also' needing to cure.

The problem seems to be a problem of over population. Over population is only a problem because there are finite resources and space. Because there's a finite amount of resources and space on Earth, we'd eventually hit the carrying capacity of earth. We're already going to hit the maximum carrying capacity, but if we stopped aging, then we'd just hit that limit even faster. Suppose that every human being did stop aging though and we did hit the maximum carrying capacity of Earth. The problem would turn into a shortage of food for the global population, and even if every person had babies once a year, people somewhere would starve to death -- and it would most likely be those who are less able to care for themselves. Thus, solving the problem of aging wouldn't solve the problem of death.

The bright side to all this is that in the future we could potentially colonize other parts of the universe and expand the amount of space and resources available to us. If that's possible, then the problem of Earths carrying capacity is mooted and people being ageless and still procreating would not be a problem.

It would mean that the Earth would become Coruscant more quickly than otherwise. Oh and we'd also go around chopping other people's heads off. Well. I would.

Quote: Original post by frob
What is meant by "able to cure aging"?

...

People generally don't die because of age itself, but because of accumulated diminished physical capacity to handle everyday natural affectations.

Which wouldn't occur if people didn't age.

I guess we all assume that "curing aging" would mean being able to live an infinitely long time in peak physical condition. You're right; it wouldn't be worthwhile otherwise.

I hear a lot of worries of overpopulation, but I think it's just the opposite - one of the main reasons people feel the need to have kids is because they know they're going to die some day and they want at least some part of them to continue on. Even that is sometimes not a strong enough motivation, just look at how low the population growth rate is becoming in developed countries these days. If I knew I could live forever, suddenly having kids seems a lot less important, even irrelevant.

Also, assuming this cure for aging is accomplished through technology and isn't magicked out of the clear blue sky, then all our other tech will be a lot more advanced by then too. So we'd likely be able to support orders of magnitude more people on earth, as well as ship them off to other planets.

Another possibility is that immortality is not accomplished by changing human bodies to not age, but instead through mind uploads. In that case, resource consumption per capita would drop dramatically, and it wouldn't be a problem. Of course then you get whole new problems, like is it morally wrong to allow rich individuals to buy themselves a larger timeslice on the scheduler etc.

Wouldn't this paralyse evolution?

Quote: Original post by Demosthenes
Wouldn't this paralyse evolution?

Would it matter? Evolution is to improve and preserve the life of offspring, to make them better and more able to live to produce offspring in turn. I think evolution kind of becomes a moot point if the species lives basically forever.