I think this is more the authors projection. Elon rated a declining birthrate as a threat to civilization but long lived elders as a risk of society ossifying.
When you consider the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, he does have a point. Longevity technology would be available first to the rich and the powerful. Do we really want another 50 years of the likes of the current political “leadership”?
What does “Invalid DateTime by Victor Tangermann: mean?
All this demonstrates is that even geniuses are not immune to infection by false memes. After all, Musk is also, famously, an adherent of the Anthropogenic Climate Change hypothesis.
In light of Musk’s entirely correct appreciation of the actual nature of humanity’s population problem – that there are too few of us rather than too many – his notion that life extension will ossify society seems the product of superficial and insufficient analysis.
In every generation, innovators and original thinkers are a minority. If such people from preceding generations remain alive and are joined by more born in subsequent generations, then – especially in an age where total human population is trending toward stasis or even contraction – the proportion of innovators will, perforce, increase. That, in turn, should increase the amount of innovation in each successive generation and also the chances of one or more of the innovators solving the underpopulation problem.
If someone invents something that allows people to live longer, who do you think will be the first to get it? Hint: it won’t be the innovators. It’ll be the ruling class and the oligarchs. Do you think we’ll be better off with decades more of the likes of Nancy Pelosi in power?
It was only a couple of years ago that we were hearing about tech titans getting blood transfusions from young people as a life-extension trick.
At a pizza parlor in downtown DC, right?
“It was only a couple of years ago that we were hearing about tech titans getting blood transfusions from young people as a life-extension trick.”
I believe that if true is likely related to Dr. Harold Katcher’s work:
“Dr. Harold Katcher is the Chief Scientific Officer at Yuvan Research Inc., a biotech company exploring the development of novel, young plasma fraction rejuvenation treatments in mammals.”
Does E5 Reverse Aging? | Dr. Harold Katcher interview (August 2021)
Harold earned his PhD in Biology, is Chief Science Officer of Yuvan Research and is one of the discoverers of the breast cancer gene (BRCA1). Harold describes in his book, The Illusion of Knowledge, his personal story and journey developing E5 which may be extremely promising for the field of rejuvenation/biological age reversal.
Just a guess, but was Christopher George involved in this?
Oh, piffle. The first people to get it will be the rich. A fair amount of them are on our side.
And an awful lot of them aren’t.
That still represents an improvement over most of human history in which none of the rich and powerful were “on our side.”
Early adopters, as with pretty much every other technological innovation of the last couple of centuries, will be the rich and/or powerful – followed fairly quickly by everyone else. New tech is always expensive at first, but doesn’t stay that way for long. Given that a fair number of innovators are also among the rich and/or powerful, that demographic will be over-represented, not under-represented, among early adopters.
I can solve the underpopulation problem in one weekend a month, free beer.
Unserious solution to a serious problem? Maybe but why do people choose not to have kids? In part, I suspect it has to do with fear of uncertainty and control. Is there a greater fear of uncertainty than parenthood and what your child will be like? Is there a greater fear of loss of control? As Jocko says, discipline equals freedom.
However, changing how people think using education and persuasion is no easy task and certainly isn’t something that happens quickly.
Free beer solves all of that in a couple of hours.
I’m one of the people who think that the fact we die is what gives life its value. Life is a wonderous gift, but it has a finite duration. You have to make the most of it while you can.
“I’m one of the people who think that the fact we die is what gives life its value.”
Well firstly…you wouldn’t be “immortal” that is biologically well-nigh impossible. Death by accident, crime, mishaps, natural disasters, wars etc would still be around. You would just be eliminating death by old age; just like curing Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s would only delay not prevent death. Not to worry; if you think “death” in terror & pain by say pancreatic cancer gives “meaning” to your existence take heart, you will still die of something eventually. If say Ulysses S. Grant hadn’t been dying of “throat cancer” he might never have felt the impetus to finish his memoirs that I am sure not one person in a thousand alive today has read.
Well the exception to this can be found in SF, starting in the early 80’s story by Vinge “True Names”. Whereupon a person’s conscious being could be uploaded to the net (now called the cloud). Gibson’s Neuromancer took it a step further and placed a consciousness in a flash drive (an advanced memory device). The consciousness of a world class hacker McCoy Pauley aka Dixie Flatline. He actually gets rebooted once or twice. In these cases the risk is death by erasure.
How long do you live before a person feels their own mortality and what have they done up to then? Fear of death is a great motivator but many, if not a majority, of humanity’s great works came from those who had not yet learned death was coming for them.
Chandrasekhar had to wait 25 years for Eddington to die before his ideas were allowed a fair hearing.
Thank you for this specific story. I’m trying to pull together cases of scientific disagreement that took place in scientific, but not public circles.
I’m assuming, by your definition, that Lysenkoism falls too much in public circles to count?
Look into Harlan Bretz.
“Chandrasekhar had to wait 25 years for Eddington to die before his ideas were allowed a fair hearing.”
“Chandrasekhar’s narrative of this incident, in which his work is harshly rejected, portrays Eddington as rather cruel and dogmatic.”
Well…he (Chandra) had the pleasure of living to see not only having his idea (eventually) accepted but in outliving his “cruel and dogmatic” detractor Eddington by fifty plus years. Even with death by old age removed people would still remain all to mortal; if one has bad health habits like smoking, drinking, drugs, obesity etc. your life might not be extended that much no matter how good the tech gets. Chandra might still be alive with many more years to “gloat” Eddington maybe still not around; but your point is made.
I’m still kicking myself for missing a lecture by Chandrasekhar in the 80s when I was a young Physics student.
OTOH, quantum mechanics and relativity took over in less than a generation.
Most big discoveries are made by outsiders, and it’s hard to be an outsider when you’re old.
And it has been my experience that progress is often slowed by the old guard in power, with needed change only happening when they finally retire of die.
This brings up quality vs quantity. Does living longer mean you are older longer, younger longer, or something else?
I think that people living longer would lead to more people trying out new fields. This would lead to more creativity and breakthroughs. One reason people don’t today is limited time.
–With demographics skewing older in may parts of the world, humanity could really be in for a decline, and it could kick off before the year 2100, according to experts.
But whether that’s really a bad thing remains to be seen. The economic impacts of a shrinking labor force may be self-evident, but given our species’ immensely harmful footprint on our planet, it may not be such a bad thing after all.–
Not Musk
About Musk:
“SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has some strong feelings when it comes to our fate as a civilization.”
Probably does, but article gave no clue.
So, I guess leaves talking about VICTOR TANGERMANN ‘s
silly view of things.
He mentions China, probably most relevant Chinese have fled this country.
“India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35.”
And Africa is younger. India and Africa are and will become rather important in the future.
“…given our species’ immensely harmful footprint on our planet,”
Idiocy.
The problem with Earth is it lack resources- especially energy resources. Since it lacks energy resource, this water planet lacks water. Or if we had a lot more energy, it would not have shortage of water.
1/3 of Earth land surface are deserts. We had so much deserts, because we living in an Ice Age.
One reason to go to Mars is to go somewhere warmer.
70 % of our surface is ocean, which is somewhat useful for oceanic transportation, but it might as well be desert, as we don’t know how to live on the Ocean [or the sky]
A long time ago, when we had less deserts {the Sahara Desert was all grasslands, rivers and lakes} though we were still in an Ice Age, but it was warmest time of the Holocene interglacial period which lasted for thousands of years.
So, we been living in an Icehouse Global Climate, for 34 million years, last 2 millions years has been the coldest time period, and we have lots of not educated people, imagining Earth could get too warm. And Earth Global Climate has been cooling for more than 5000 years. And plant food is called pollution.
I have somewhat interested is why people are so misinformed.
Now, almost everyone knows we are in an Ice Age and are aware that at some point we going to slide back into a glaciation. People know we have lots of desert areas, and know cooling causes deserts- or at least hear the story about forests turning into grasslands, causing the human creature to walk, instead crawling around in trees. 2 million years ago when humans evolved {and polar bears evolved from brown bears} and presently humans wear clothes and live in warm houses- burning stuff to keep warm enough. And they know 15 C {59 C} is cold. They have thermostats with numbers on them- and 15 C is cold.
It’s somewhat similar mystery as why we don’t lunar bases. Which was question I interested in, before knew much about Space.
Strangely, I think the reason why people are terrified that our cold planet could get slightly warmer, is related to space exploration.
To cut to the chase, idiots didn’t understand why Venus surface air temperature was so hot.
Venus gets twice as sunlight and has large atmosphere- which work better well to make cities in the sky, if Venus didn’t similar problem as Earth does, in terms of leaving the planet. Difficult to leave is about only similarity between Earth and Venus.
Venus lacks an ocean {zero evidence it had one- which doesn’t deter fantasies that it had an ocean}.
Best I can tell, global warming is a cult, I call it, a cargo cult because similar in some ways. This cargo cult started before everyone has accepted the plate tectonic theory AND before we discovered that giant space rocks can fall out of the sky.
So started in a dark age of dumbness, which kind of related to problem of people living too long- we entire congress filled with uneducated people in the best of times, and *most* these hapless creatures were poorly educated during that dark age. But since we got the all-powerful Teacher Unions, it not as though young people getting educated. Or these old farts running congress might better informed then most children, who are taught there is different between male and female {I am a bit surprised that women aren’t really angry about idea, that they are thought to be the same as men}.
Anyhow, my latest idea, is my prediction that if Venus was at Earth distance, it would be even colder than Earth.
My colder idea {decades ago} was if add atmosphere to Mars, you make Mars colder for humans. Or don’t wreck a great thing about Mars with its nearly nonexistent atmosphere. Instead, add lakes, not because it warms {and it would by insignificant amount] but for other reasons.
I have a seven-word phrase I’d like to throw out for your consideration.
“the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist”
Remember “For I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison?
Death sometimes is a blessing.
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
Yes, it does suck, and mightily, except when you’re the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist.
Tim, the world (and the Universe, by extension) is a BIG place, and sometimes great evils take place out of sight and not easily discovered or remedied, the Epstein affair being a case in point.
Those girls were in Hell, often helpless, and help took its own damn sweet time to arrive.
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
“Yes, it does suck, and mightily, except when you’re the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist.”
Computers (the “sadist” in the story) are no more “immortal” than his prisoner is. Easier to “crash” an errant computer one way or another than watch 100K people a day die in the hope of waiting for prisoner and crazy computer to finally die of “old age”.
“Tim, the world (and the Universe, by extension) is a BIG place, and sometimes great evils take place out of sight and not easily discovered or remedied, the Epstein affair being a case in point.”
Epstein didn’t die of old age…he “suicided” (murdered) in his cell; longevity treatments wouldn’t have saved him even if they existed. Is it really worth killing 100K + mostly innocent people a day to make sure that the low part(s) per thousand maybe truly evil ones die? Especially when new evil ones happily jump up to fill their boots. We didn’t have to kill everyone alive at the time in Germany to make sure Hitler dies or everyone in Russia to make sure Stalin dies or everyone in China to make sure Mao dies.
“the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist”
Remember “For I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison?
Death sometimes is a blessing.
Yes. But as I have stated you wouldn’t be immortal; you would remain very mortal just not dying of old age as such. You would still be vulnerable to accident, suicide, murder, natural disaster, new lethal pandemics, wars and the like. Ways of dying that are relatively low probabilities (like car accidents/plane crashes) in a 70-80 yr life span start being more of a threat if you lived to say 400+ years. So cheer up; you would still continue to “enjoy” the “blessing” of death; you might even refuse the longevity/age reversal treatments if you wish to enjoy the blessing sooner rather than later.
Tim, you write:
Yes. But as I have stated you wouldn’t be immortal; you would remain very mortal just not dying of old age as such.
And that’s the problem. You know the joke about how, given enough monkeys pecking away at random for long enough on enough typewriters, one of them will eventually produce the King James Bible?
As I noted above, the Universe is a BIG place. Who is to say that, in some far future age, in a galaxy far, far away, that a human equivalent of Ellison’s “AM” (the insanely sadistic computer) will not exist, and run a comparable sort of dungeon?
That certainty — not possibility, but certainty, given the facts of human nature — is why immortality is such a BAD idea.
And yes, I am Catholic. So sue me. 🙂
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
If we all wind up in Vortex 4, will we become Renegades or Apathetics?
All too few of us are really free to enjoy the world that we live in. Too busy making a living, thus life seems short. So many stories explore what we could become if we had the leisure to pursue. Cheap energy does seem to be the solution.Well, that and an ethical foundation that would protect against the evil tendencies of man to do harm to man.
Quite so. Not to mention the fact that once you have things figured out, for yourself, you are maybe in late middle age.
That’s why the saying “Youth is wasted on the young”.
Living to 400 knowing what I know now (as opposed to what I knew when I was 20 – which was very little) would be great.
“Living to 400 knowing what I know now (as opposed to what I knew when I was 20 – which was very little) would be great.”
Yes. And also the value of wealth accumulation over time. Imagine how much your IRA/401K/REIT or similar type investment(s) might be worth in say ~150yrs +? Even allowing for the inevitable “crashes”, “depressions” and such. Of course longevity age reversal treatments would be just the tip of the iceberg. At some point you would be looking at physical/mental whole body upgrades as well; enhanced senses, strength, stamina, brain function as well. Allot can happen in 200+ years.
Much of this anti-longevity as it prevents innovation neglects that compared to all of history, we are all old. A college graduate today is at the age of a village elder back when. Dead of old age at 30 does not reek of rapid progress of ideas.
And on the other end, I would expect Elon to be more innovative at 80 than most people are in their prime.
“A college graduate today is at the age of a village elder back when.”
Don’t think that is quite right; you are being misled by the average life expectancy figures for back in the day. People weren’t popping off dead at age 25 in large numbers that wasn’t it. The reason why it (life expectancy) was so low in say ancient Rome, ~25yrs give or take was because of the high infant/child mortality rate. If you made it to 20 you had a decent shot at getting to say 50-60 yrs of age thereabouts before you kicked it. The trick was surviving infancy/childhood.
“Case in point: In his paper “Demography and Roman Society,” classics and history professor Tim. G. Parkin used ancient tombstone epigraphs to estimate the life expectancy of the average Roman citizen. The figure he came up with: 25 years.”
“Imagine there’s a pair of twins. One dies in the first year of life, the other dies at age eighty. Technically, the life expectancy of that two-person population would be 40 years. But when trying to understand the history of human longevity, how useful is looking at an average like that? Wouldn’t you get a clearer picture of longevity by only looking at people who’ve already survived into adulthood?
“In the case of Ancient Rome, Parkin found that for people who made it to the age of 25, their life expectancy skyrocketed to 53 years.”
Guess that’s at least one reason why people through out history until very recently had so many kids..
Several years ago, my wife and I were touring a cathedral in Scotland. We walked through the cemetery and saw many examples of the high childhood mortality rates back in the 1800s. In one family plot, there were about 8 headstones for children, all of whom died before their 18th birthday and several before their 10th. Yes, there were people who lived into their 50s and beyond, but they were the ones fortunate enough to survive their childhood. The number of women’s graves with their ages in the child-bearing range was also considerable. Giving birth was also dangerous back then.
Who was it said “science advances one funeral at a time”? Neils Bohr?
Googled it:
–The German physicist Max Planck said that science advances one funeral at a time. Or more precisely: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”–
So, it’s a joke.
“Science advancing” similar to Science fashion that moves like other fashions. And largely such advancing science is worthless or pseudo science.
It’s more like the truth is stubborn {for some mysterious reason} and lies dies like flies {though it could seem the opposite, as if lies are immortal} it seem lies are like fashion which is endlessly recycled. Or like immortality of reincarnation- insanity or stupidity does the same thing over and over again.
I say science advances from exploration. But science is observation exploring is observation. But the science is connected in people’s head to ‘publishing”- how many papers are peer reviewed is regarded a measuring stick. Or do others see your paper – again, observation {a poor form of observation- as compared to direct involvement- or observation}. But science, is about the experiment which can be repeated, if can’t be repeated, it can’t be observed {and false}.
Science is magic, Science predicts. Science can see the future.
If science can’t predict the future, it’s useless.
But our Earth remains unexplored, and great ocean of space is unexplored. Though Apollo was stunt, it still involved people going somewhere new, and it resulted in exploration of Earth.
I think we if explore the Moon and Mars, it would be a useful way to explore Earth. The more unknowns we crash into, the better.
There a lot stuff, unknown.
And I think making greenhouse on Mars, would be helpful.
But making solar pond on Mars, would also be useful.
“Vita brevis, ars longa.” I sure hope that’s true, given how I spent my life.
The ideas Elon expressed (which were championed by Asimov for many years) are arguably not true, because many of the ossifications of old age are due to aging itself. No one would want to live on indefinitely growing older and older (there’s a Greek myth about this). Life extension of your best years would delay the onset of senescence. Better life extension would involve rejuvenation. Immortality would necessarily require “forever young” or else conversion to primordial lead.
And if you were the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist? Well you’d have all the time necessary to escape, capture your sadist, imprison him, and wait for proton decay to finish him off. What’s a few trillion years when you’ve got an infinity of them?
My take on this is that if you think immortality is bad, try ignorance. A million year old man might be slow to change his ways, but so is a society that can never think more than a few decades ahead.
Nice.
and wait for proton decay to finish him off.
I think this is the crux of why the concept of physical immortality fails. Because even the Universe is not static. Death will find you eventually, even if it has to be heat death. One would have to find a transition into a “newer” Universe to survive. Such trans-dimensional travel has been speculated (aka wormholes). But to be truly immortal means you’ll have to deal with a singularity one way or another.
Got a new title for your next book Rand: “Hanging around is not an option”.
The Epicurean Atomists almost got it right. Nothing exists but atoms and the void, and all constructs of atoms eventually dissolve. Even the gods will one day die. Probably why Augustine (who knew his way around classical philosophy) hated them so. It’s been argued that the survival and emergence of a single copy of De Rerum Natura created the modern world, science all. Particular disturbing was the nearly successful explanation of non-determinism. They couldn’t explain why there should be the clinamen (quantum uncertainty to us), but clinamen did explain why atoms and the void existed. I had a stab at it in writing “White Light,” but only marginally successful in my claim that God is an emergent property of an infinite probabilistic multivese, which exists because it does (turtles all the way down). I did enjoy coining the phrase, “Nothing is unstable.” Meaning if the false vacuum ever did collapse, it would instantly decay back into an infinite probabilistic multiverse.
Two themes I see. One, fear of human nature. Two, denigration of the elderly.
TBH, I am disgusted by both and especially disgusted so many smart people lack respect for the elderly. The negative portrayal of old people is horrific when combined with other features of human nature.
There is an element of adolescent rebellion that arises naturally but there is also the melevolant inception hating the elderly taking place.
Human nature isn’t going anywhere. It doesn’t matter how young/old a person is or whether or not they live on Earth or not on Earth. Even solving poverty will not mean humans lose their nature.
The malevolence is troubling because one day I will be as old as the other people commenting here and I don’t want to see society turn against me when I am at my second most vulnerable state. Why is the wisdom of the elderly feared?
They know too much truth about the past? They are an uncomfortable reminder of what lies ahead?
What will be done to old people who are in the way? Would a person of any age be treated differently by people who would do these things?
How many people are thinking that it is good elderly die after a long full life and how many are thinking it wouldn’t be a bad thing if something happened to them sooner so that they aren’t in the way anymore? And once this is all on the table, who else is in the way?
“Why is the wisdom of the elderly feared?”
The old are for the most part perceived as in charge lording it over the young; who don’t like that much. From teachers in school, parents at home, bosses on the job etc., for the most part young people see old people as calling the shots. They (the young) want them (the old) out of the way so they can inherit and/or start running things. The fact that they themselves at some point will be old is not on the radar at least on an emotional level as far as most of them are concerned.
The young should have more freedom related to their education.
That’s one view, kind of the conventional wisdom. My observation is, the young know what they know, but don’t believe the old know anything other than what they knew when they were young. I can’t count the number of times I have some young person patiently and condescendingly try to explain computer use to me, or say, “Someone your age will typically never have used a computer, other than maybe some old mainframe.” Pointing out computers have been around since I was young seems to baffle them, as does my smart phone. “You really know how to use that?!” It’s like the attitudes about old people that were around a lifetime ago are fossilized memes.
Mr. Barton, I have had a couple chances to reply to the younger person who seems to think I’m technologically inept, “Hey, I worked on the team that invented this, back before you were even born, User”. I use User for Loser so that kind of helps dig it in. I have no patience for the young chauvinist class.
I was usually the project lead for these goofballs, who refused to believe that I was doing the heavy lifting, and thought their little code monkey assignments were the actual project. Every once in a while I would get somebody useful (upper management kept me out of hiring decisions) and even taught a few how to read usefully. I’ve also been hired as an industrial spy (because I can write readable reports as well as read code). My employers had no idea they were upgrading my job skills by exposing me to better software designers than I was!
I think this is more the authors projection. Elon rated a declining birthrate as a threat to civilization but long lived elders as a risk of society ossifying.
When you consider the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, he does have a point. Longevity technology would be available first to the rich and the powerful. Do we really want another 50 years of the likes of the current political “leadership”?
What does “Invalid DateTime by Victor Tangermann: mean?
All this demonstrates is that even geniuses are not immune to infection by false memes. After all, Musk is also, famously, an adherent of the Anthropogenic Climate Change hypothesis.
In light of Musk’s entirely correct appreciation of the actual nature of humanity’s population problem – that there are too few of us rather than too many – his notion that life extension will ossify society seems the product of superficial and insufficient analysis.
In every generation, innovators and original thinkers are a minority. If such people from preceding generations remain alive and are joined by more born in subsequent generations, then – especially in an age where total human population is trending toward stasis or even contraction – the proportion of innovators will, perforce, increase. That, in turn, should increase the amount of innovation in each successive generation and also the chances of one or more of the innovators solving the underpopulation problem.
If someone invents something that allows people to live longer, who do you think will be the first to get it? Hint: it won’t be the innovators. It’ll be the ruling class and the oligarchs. Do you think we’ll be better off with decades more of the likes of Nancy Pelosi in power?
It was only a couple of years ago that we were hearing about tech titans getting blood transfusions from young people as a life-extension trick.
At a pizza parlor in downtown DC, right?
“It was only a couple of years ago that we were hearing about tech titans getting blood transfusions from young people as a life-extension trick.”
I believe that if true is likely related to Dr. Harold Katcher’s work:
“Dr. Harold Katcher is the Chief Scientific Officer at Yuvan Research Inc., a biotech company exploring the development of novel, young plasma fraction rejuvenation treatments in mammals.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahnHkxlS9ZQ
More on Katcher’s work:
Does E5 Reverse Aging? | Dr. Harold Katcher interview (August 2021)
Harold earned his PhD in Biology, is Chief Science Officer of Yuvan Research and is one of the discoverers of the breast cancer gene (BRCA1). Harold describes in his book, The Illusion of Knowledge, his personal story and journey developing E5 which may be extremely promising for the field of rejuvenation/biological age reversal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazPXlO8rPY&t=3s
Just a guess, but was Christopher George involved in this?
Oh, piffle. The first people to get it will be the rich. A fair amount of them are on our side.
And an awful lot of them aren’t.
That still represents an improvement over most of human history in which none of the rich and powerful were “on our side.”
Early adopters, as with pretty much every other technological innovation of the last couple of centuries, will be the rich and/or powerful – followed fairly quickly by everyone else. New tech is always expensive at first, but doesn’t stay that way for long. Given that a fair number of innovators are also among the rich and/or powerful, that demographic will be over-represented, not under-represented, among early adopters.
I can solve the underpopulation problem in one weekend a month, free beer.
Unserious solution to a serious problem? Maybe but why do people choose not to have kids? In part, I suspect it has to do with fear of uncertainty and control. Is there a greater fear of uncertainty than parenthood and what your child will be like? Is there a greater fear of loss of control? As Jocko says, discipline equals freedom.
However, changing how people think using education and persuasion is no easy task and certainly isn’t something that happens quickly.
Free beer solves all of that in a couple of hours.
I’m one of the people who think that the fact we die is what gives life its value. Life is a wonderous gift, but it has a finite duration. You have to make the most of it while you can.
“I’m one of the people who think that the fact we die is what gives life its value.”
Well firstly…you wouldn’t be “immortal” that is biologically well-nigh impossible. Death by accident, crime, mishaps, natural disasters, wars etc would still be around. You would just be eliminating death by old age; just like curing Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s would only delay not prevent death. Not to worry; if you think “death” in terror & pain by say pancreatic cancer gives “meaning” to your existence take heart, you will still die of something eventually. If say Ulysses S. Grant hadn’t been dying of “throat cancer” he might never have felt the impetus to finish his memoirs that I am sure not one person in a thousand alive today has read.
Well the exception to this can be found in SF, starting in the early 80’s story by Vinge “True Names”. Whereupon a person’s conscious being could be uploaded to the net (now called the cloud). Gibson’s Neuromancer took it a step further and placed a consciousness in a flash drive (an advanced memory device). The consciousness of a world class hacker McCoy Pauley aka Dixie Flatline. He actually gets rebooted once or twice. In these cases the risk is death by erasure.
How long do you live before a person feels their own mortality and what have they done up to then? Fear of death is a great motivator but many, if not a majority, of humanity’s great works came from those who had not yet learned death was coming for them.
Chandrasekhar had to wait 25 years for Eddington to die before his ideas were allowed a fair hearing.
Thank you for this specific story. I’m trying to pull together cases of scientific disagreement that took place in scientific, but not public circles.
I’m assuming, by your definition, that Lysenkoism falls too much in public circles to count?
Look into Harlan Bretz.
“Chandrasekhar had to wait 25 years for Eddington to die before his ideas were allowed a fair hearing.”
“Chandrasekhar’s narrative of this incident, in which his work is harshly rejected, portrays Eddington as rather cruel and dogmatic.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington#Dispute_with_Chandrasekhar_on_existence_of_black_holes
Well…he (Chandra) had the pleasure of living to see not only having his idea (eventually) accepted but in outliving his “cruel and dogmatic” detractor Eddington by fifty plus years. Even with death by old age removed people would still remain all to mortal; if one has bad health habits like smoking, drinking, drugs, obesity etc. your life might not be extended that much no matter how good the tech gets. Chandra might still be alive with many more years to “gloat” Eddington maybe still not around; but your point is made.
I’m still kicking myself for missing a lecture by Chandrasekhar in the 80s when I was a young Physics student.
OTOH, quantum mechanics and relativity took over in less than a generation.
Most big discoveries are made by outsiders, and it’s hard to be an outsider when you’re old.
And it has been my experience that progress is often slowed by the old guard in power, with needed change only happening when they finally retire of die.
This brings up quality vs quantity. Does living longer mean you are older longer, younger longer, or something else?
I think that people living longer would lead to more people trying out new fields. This would lead to more creativity and breakthroughs. One reason people don’t today is limited time.
–With demographics skewing older in may parts of the world, humanity could really be in for a decline, and it could kick off before the year 2100, according to experts.
But whether that’s really a bad thing remains to be seen. The economic impacts of a shrinking labor force may be self-evident, but given our species’ immensely harmful footprint on our planet, it may not be such a bad thing after all.–
Not Musk
About Musk:
“SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has some strong feelings when it comes to our fate as a civilization.”
Probably does, but article gave no clue.
So, I guess leaves talking about VICTOR TANGERMANN ‘s
silly view of things.
He mentions China, probably most relevant Chinese have fled this country.
“India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35.”
And Africa is younger. India and Africa are and will become rather important in the future.
“…given our species’ immensely harmful footprint on our planet,”
Idiocy.
The problem with Earth is it lack resources- especially energy resources. Since it lacks energy resource, this water planet lacks water. Or if we had a lot more energy, it would not have shortage of water.
1/3 of Earth land surface are deserts. We had so much deserts, because we living in an Ice Age.
One reason to go to Mars is to go somewhere warmer.
70 % of our surface is ocean, which is somewhat useful for oceanic transportation, but it might as well be desert, as we don’t know how to live on the Ocean [or the sky]
A long time ago, when we had less deserts {the Sahara Desert was all grasslands, rivers and lakes} though we were still in an Ice Age, but it was warmest time of the Holocene interglacial period which lasted for thousands of years.
So, we been living in an Icehouse Global Climate, for 34 million years, last 2 millions years has been the coldest time period, and we have lots of not educated people, imagining Earth could get too warm. And Earth Global Climate has been cooling for more than 5000 years. And plant food is called pollution.
I have somewhat interested is why people are so misinformed.
Now, almost everyone knows we are in an Ice Age and are aware that at some point we going to slide back into a glaciation. People know we have lots of desert areas, and know cooling causes deserts- or at least hear the story about forests turning into grasslands, causing the human creature to walk, instead crawling around in trees. 2 million years ago when humans evolved {and polar bears evolved from brown bears} and presently humans wear clothes and live in warm houses- burning stuff to keep warm enough. And they know 15 C {59 C} is cold. They have thermostats with numbers on them- and 15 C is cold.
It’s somewhat similar mystery as why we don’t lunar bases. Which was question I interested in, before knew much about Space.
Strangely, I think the reason why people are terrified that our cold planet could get slightly warmer, is related to space exploration.
To cut to the chase, idiots didn’t understand why Venus surface air temperature was so hot.
Venus gets twice as sunlight and has large atmosphere- which work better well to make cities in the sky, if Venus didn’t similar problem as Earth does, in terms of leaving the planet. Difficult to leave is about only similarity between Earth and Venus.
Venus lacks an ocean {zero evidence it had one- which doesn’t deter fantasies that it had an ocean}.
Best I can tell, global warming is a cult, I call it, a cargo cult because similar in some ways. This cargo cult started before everyone has accepted the plate tectonic theory AND before we discovered that giant space rocks can fall out of the sky.
So started in a dark age of dumbness, which kind of related to problem of people living too long- we entire congress filled with uneducated people in the best of times, and *most* these hapless creatures were poorly educated during that dark age. But since we got the all-powerful Teacher Unions, it not as though young people getting educated. Or these old farts running congress might better informed then most children, who are taught there is different between male and female {I am a bit surprised that women aren’t really angry about idea, that they are thought to be the same as men}.
Anyhow, my latest idea, is my prediction that if Venus was at Earth distance, it would be even colder than Earth.
My colder idea {decades ago} was if add atmosphere to Mars, you make Mars colder for humans. Or don’t wreck a great thing about Mars with its nearly nonexistent atmosphere. Instead, add lakes, not because it warms {and it would by insignificant amount] but for other reasons.
I have a seven-word phrase I’d like to throw out for your consideration.
“the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist”
Remember “For I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison?
Death sometimes is a blessing.
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
“Death sometimes is a blessing.”
DEATH SUCKS
http://www.speculist.com/archives/000587.html
Yes, it does suck, and mightily, except when you’re the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist.
Tim, the world (and the Universe, by extension) is a BIG place, and sometimes great evils take place out of sight and not easily discovered or remedied, the Epstein affair being a case in point.
Those girls were in Hell, often helpless, and help took its own damn sweet time to arrive.
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
“Yes, it does suck, and mightily, except when you’re the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist.”
Computers (the “sadist” in the story) are no more “immortal” than his prisoner is. Easier to “crash” an errant computer one way or another than watch 100K people a day die in the hope of waiting for prisoner and crazy computer to finally die of “old age”.
“Tim, the world (and the Universe, by extension) is a BIG place, and sometimes great evils take place out of sight and not easily discovered or remedied, the Epstein affair being a case in point.”
Epstein didn’t die of old age…he “suicided” (murdered) in his cell; longevity treatments wouldn’t have saved him even if they existed. Is it really worth killing 100K + mostly innocent people a day to make sure that the low part(s) per thousand maybe truly evil ones die? Especially when new evil ones happily jump up to fill their boots. We didn’t have to kill everyone alive at the time in Germany to make sure Hitler dies or everyone in Russia to make sure Stalin dies or everyone in China to make sure Mao dies.
“the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist”
Remember “For I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison?
Death sometimes is a blessing.
Yes. But as I have stated you wouldn’t be immortal; you would remain very mortal just not dying of old age as such. You would still be vulnerable to accident, suicide, murder, natural disaster, new lethal pandemics, wars and the like. Ways of dying that are relatively low probabilities (like car accidents/plane crashes) in a 70-80 yr life span start being more of a threat if you lived to say 400+ years. So cheer up; you would still continue to “enjoy” the “blessing” of death; you might even refuse the longevity/age reversal treatments if you wish to enjoy the blessing sooner rather than later.
Tim, you write:
Yes. But as I have stated you wouldn’t be immortal; you would remain very mortal just not dying of old age as such.
And that’s the problem. You know the joke about how, given enough monkeys pecking away at random for long enough on enough typewriters, one of them will eventually produce the King James Bible?
As I noted above, the Universe is a BIG place. Who is to say that, in some far future age, in a galaxy far, far away, that a human equivalent of Ellison’s “AM” (the insanely sadistic computer) will not exist, and run a comparable sort of dungeon?
That certainty — not possibility, but certainty, given the facts of human nature — is why immortality is such a BAD idea.
And yes, I am Catholic. So sue me. 🙂
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
If we all wind up in Vortex 4, will we become Renegades or Apathetics?
All too few of us are really free to enjoy the world that we live in. Too busy making a living, thus life seems short. So many stories explore what we could become if we had the leisure to pursue. Cheap energy does seem to be the solution.Well, that and an ethical foundation that would protect against the evil tendencies of man to do harm to man.
Quite so. Not to mention the fact that once you have things figured out, for yourself, you are maybe in late middle age.
That’s why the saying “Youth is wasted on the young”.
Living to 400 knowing what I know now (as opposed to what I knew when I was 20 – which was very little) would be great.
“Living to 400 knowing what I know now (as opposed to what I knew when I was 20 – which was very little) would be great.”
Yes. And also the value of wealth accumulation over time. Imagine how much your IRA/401K/REIT or similar type investment(s) might be worth in say ~150yrs +? Even allowing for the inevitable “crashes”, “depressions” and such. Of course longevity age reversal treatments would be just the tip of the iceberg. At some point you would be looking at physical/mental whole body upgrades as well; enhanced senses, strength, stamina, brain function as well. Allot can happen in 200+ years.
Much of this anti-longevity as it prevents innovation neglects that compared to all of history, we are all old. A college graduate today is at the age of a village elder back when. Dead of old age at 30 does not reek of rapid progress of ideas.
And on the other end, I would expect Elon to be more innovative at 80 than most people are in their prime.
“A college graduate today is at the age of a village elder back when.”
Don’t think that is quite right; you are being misled by the average life expectancy figures for back in the day. People weren’t popping off dead at age 25 in large numbers that wasn’t it. The reason why it (life expectancy) was so low in say ancient Rome, ~25yrs give or take was because of the high infant/child mortality rate. If you made it to 20 you had a decent shot at getting to say 50-60 yrs of age thereabouts before you kicked it. The trick was surviving infancy/childhood.
“Case in point: In his paper “Demography and Roman Society,” classics and history professor Tim. G. Parkin used ancient tombstone epigraphs to estimate the life expectancy of the average Roman citizen. The figure he came up with: 25 years.”
“Imagine there’s a pair of twins. One dies in the first year of life, the other dies at age eighty. Technically, the life expectancy of that two-person population would be 40 years. But when trying to understand the history of human longevity, how useful is looking at an average like that? Wouldn’t you get a clearer picture of longevity by only looking at people who’ve already survived into adulthood?
“In the case of Ancient Rome, Parkin found that for people who made it to the age of 25, their life expectancy skyrocketed to 53 years.”
https://learn.age-up.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-human-longevity/
Guess that’s at least one reason why people through out history until very recently had so many kids..
Several years ago, my wife and I were touring a cathedral in Scotland. We walked through the cemetery and saw many examples of the high childhood mortality rates back in the 1800s. In one family plot, there were about 8 headstones for children, all of whom died before their 18th birthday and several before their 10th. Yes, there were people who lived into their 50s and beyond, but they were the ones fortunate enough to survive their childhood. The number of women’s graves with their ages in the child-bearing range was also considerable. Giving birth was also dangerous back then.
Who was it said “science advances one funeral at a time”? Neils Bohr?
Googled it:
–The German physicist Max Planck said that science advances one funeral at a time. Or more precisely: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”–
So, it’s a joke.
“Science advancing” similar to Science fashion that moves like other fashions. And largely such advancing science is worthless or pseudo science.
It’s more like the truth is stubborn {for some mysterious reason} and lies dies like flies {though it could seem the opposite, as if lies are immortal} it seem lies are like fashion which is endlessly recycled. Or like immortality of reincarnation- insanity or stupidity does the same thing over and over again.
I say science advances from exploration. But science is observation exploring is observation. But the science is connected in people’s head to ‘publishing”- how many papers are peer reviewed is regarded a measuring stick. Or do others see your paper – again, observation {a poor form of observation- as compared to direct involvement- or observation}. But science, is about the experiment which can be repeated, if can’t be repeated, it can’t be observed {and false}.
Science is magic, Science predicts. Science can see the future.
If science can’t predict the future, it’s useless.
But our Earth remains unexplored, and great ocean of space is unexplored. Though Apollo was stunt, it still involved people going somewhere new, and it resulted in exploration of Earth.
I think we if explore the Moon and Mars, it would be a useful way to explore Earth. The more unknowns we crash into, the better.
There a lot stuff, unknown.
And I think making greenhouse on Mars, would be helpful.
But making solar pond on Mars, would also be useful.
“Vita brevis, ars longa.” I sure hope that’s true, given how I spent my life.
The ideas Elon expressed (which were championed by Asimov for many years) are arguably not true, because many of the ossifications of old age are due to aging itself. No one would want to live on indefinitely growing older and older (there’s a Greek myth about this). Life extension of your best years would delay the onset of senescence. Better life extension would involve rejuvenation. Immortality would necessarily require “forever young” or else conversion to primordial lead.
And if you were the immortal prisoner of an ageless sadist? Well you’d have all the time necessary to escape, capture your sadist, imprison him, and wait for proton decay to finish him off. What’s a few trillion years when you’ve got an infinity of them?
My take on this is that if you think immortality is bad, try ignorance. A million year old man might be slow to change his ways, but so is a society that can never think more than a few decades ahead.
Nice.
and wait for proton decay to finish him off.
I think this is the crux of why the concept of physical immortality fails. Because even the Universe is not static. Death will find you eventually, even if it has to be heat death. One would have to find a transition into a “newer” Universe to survive. Such trans-dimensional travel has been speculated (aka wormholes). But to be truly immortal means you’ll have to deal with a singularity one way or another.
Got a new title for your next book Rand: “Hanging around is not an option”.
The Epicurean Atomists almost got it right. Nothing exists but atoms and the void, and all constructs of atoms eventually dissolve. Even the gods will one day die. Probably why Augustine (who knew his way around classical philosophy) hated them so. It’s been argued that the survival and emergence of a single copy of De Rerum Natura created the modern world, science all. Particular disturbing was the nearly successful explanation of non-determinism. They couldn’t explain why there should be the clinamen (quantum uncertainty to us), but clinamen did explain why atoms and the void existed. I had a stab at it in writing “White Light,” but only marginally successful in my claim that God is an emergent property of an infinite probabilistic multivese, which exists because it does (turtles all the way down). I did enjoy coining the phrase, “Nothing is unstable.” Meaning if the false vacuum ever did collapse, it would instantly decay back into an infinite probabilistic multiverse.
Two themes I see. One, fear of human nature. Two, denigration of the elderly.
TBH, I am disgusted by both and especially disgusted so many smart people lack respect for the elderly. The negative portrayal of old people is horrific when combined with other features of human nature.
There is an element of adolescent rebellion that arises naturally but there is also the melevolant inception hating the elderly taking place.
Human nature isn’t going anywhere. It doesn’t matter how young/old a person is or whether or not they live on Earth or not on Earth. Even solving poverty will not mean humans lose their nature.
The malevolence is troubling because one day I will be as old as the other people commenting here and I don’t want to see society turn against me when I am at my second most vulnerable state. Why is the wisdom of the elderly feared?
They know too much truth about the past? They are an uncomfortable reminder of what lies ahead?
What will be done to old people who are in the way? Would a person of any age be treated differently by people who would do these things?
How many people are thinking that it is good elderly die after a long full life and how many are thinking it wouldn’t be a bad thing if something happened to them sooner so that they aren’t in the way anymore? And once this is all on the table, who else is in the way?
“Why is the wisdom of the elderly feared?”
The old are for the most part perceived as in charge lording it over the young; who don’t like that much. From teachers in school, parents at home, bosses on the job etc., for the most part young people see old people as calling the shots. They (the young) want them (the old) out of the way so they can inherit and/or start running things. The fact that they themselves at some point will be old is not on the radar at least on an emotional level as far as most of them are concerned.
The young should have more freedom related to their education.
That’s one view, kind of the conventional wisdom. My observation is, the young know what they know, but don’t believe the old know anything other than what they knew when they were young. I can’t count the number of times I have some young person patiently and condescendingly try to explain computer use to me, or say, “Someone your age will typically never have used a computer, other than maybe some old mainframe.” Pointing out computers have been around since I was young seems to baffle them, as does my smart phone. “You really know how to use that?!” It’s like the attitudes about old people that were around a lifetime ago are fossilized memes.
Mr. Barton, I have had a couple chances to reply to the younger person who seems to think I’m technologically inept, “Hey, I worked on the team that invented this, back before you were even born, User”. I use User for Loser so that kind of helps dig it in. I have no patience for the young chauvinist class.
I was usually the project lead for these goofballs, who refused to believe that I was doing the heavy lifting, and thought their little code monkey assignments were the actual project. Every once in a while I would get somebody useful (upper management kept me out of hiring decisions) and even taught a few how to read usefully. I’ve also been hired as an industrial spy (because I can write readable reports as well as read code). My employers had no idea they were upgrading my job skills by exposing me to better software designers than I was!
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