Quote: Original post by Melekor
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.

Despite of many A.Clarce forecasts was too optimistic (Space Odissey 2001 etc), in his novel "The City and stars" mind uploading (exactly now it was described in post ) might happen only after a half million years,long before it Earth turned into desert and any evolution was paralised.

Hm, I wonder whether our brain's data structures scale fine over such long periods of time, and I hope it accesses packets of information at least in O(log n) complexity, once cached.

I also wonder about what is the maximum age of a package of information, if any.


edit:
Nah, to be honest, stopping aging is imho not really a "cure". Death is needed to keep evolution running. Look at some viruses: You find a cure, and thanks to the short lifetime, that bitches evolute (is that the right word?) into something that can't be harmed by the new cure, and we need to find another cure for the same virus. Evolution can run without death, but then you better take care to not cross old DNA with new DNA, or you slow down the process. Leading this further, we would develop into several sub species, and the most succesfull would laterwards just eat(!) us Old Folk, like we eat today lifeforms that where once identical with us ("Time Machine" anyone? basically, it's not perverse that the new human eat old the human, bigger fish eats smaller fish as well!).

On the other hand: Human seems to develop a power strong enough to accelerate evolution by himself, maybe essentially driving hisself obsolete anyways.

I don't think instant cure to aging for millions of people is a realistic prospect. However, given that we barely started work on genetics, and what we already know and discovered, complete control of our genome will certainly improve the lifespan of a given individual. I think we have a long way to go though, technologically and socially. Our current social structures would not be able to cope with a dramatic increase in life span. hell, we are already struggling with coming to terms with an aging population and our solution so far is 'make more babies'.

We're still primates, not much distinguishes us from our closest relatives genetically, and having complete control over our own evolution (= genes) would make natural selection, aging and reproduction a thing of the past. We would also change, physiologically and spiritually, for the better or the worse. If you buy into the selfish gene theory, that would make us more uniform and well, less individualistic. Which is ironic considering that living forever is basically the goal to preserve the individual. Just my expressed opinion of course...

Frankly, that's not my idea of paradise, but to me it seems like the next inevitable step in our evolution, whether it takes 200 or 20,000 years. Gene being the king, a remodel of our social structures and morals, and total dependence on technology for our survival.

Colonize planets.

I for one would love to live forever. Sign me up.

Quote: Original post by phresnel
Nah, to be honest, stopping aging is imho not really a "cure". Death is needed to keep evolution running.

So what if evolution stops? If evolution requires my death then guess what, screw evolution.

Quote: On the other hand: Human seems to develop a power strong enough to accelerate evolution by himself, maybe essentially driving hisself obsolete anyways.

Yep, at that point humans would be in control of engineering themselves. Oldschool "natural" evolution would be irrelevant. If you think about it, it's already pretty irrelevant today since the timescale it operates on is many orders of magnitude slower than the speed that our technology improves.

Quote: Original post by oliii
I don't think instant cure to aging for millions of people is a realistic prospect.

Not realistic today, but why shouldn't it be eventually?

Quote: Our current social structures would not be able to cope with a dramatic increase in life span. hell, we are already struggling with coming to terms with an aging population and our solution so far is 'make more babies'.

Only because we're currently stuck on this perpetual growth modal. Eg in the US they always need more new workers to keep the social security pyramid going. Humanity will be forced (by resource constraints) to switch to sustainable economics long before our tech is advanced enough to cure aging anyways, so that problem will be solved by then. And if all of our new immortals are above flipping burgers and digging ditches, no problem because we'll undoubtedly have robots by then anyways.

I guess my main point is, the existence of this aging cure presupposed by the OP implies a certain level of technology in other areas as well. When you're considering the problems that come with living forever, you have to keep in mind the other tech that is now available to solve them.