Media Criticism, Philosophy, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

How Long Do You Want To Live?

22 Comments

I think that this guy is asking the wrong question. “Forever” isn’t the option, it’s “indefinitely,” or “as long as I want to live.” No one is going to live forever, unless you think we’ll get around the heat death of the universe somehow, and there will always be accidents, regardless of how advanced biomedical technology becomes. But ignoring that issue, given my experience with cryonics, the numbers don’t surprise me at all. Of course, it’s one thing to say you only want to live to be eighty when it’s a theoretical issue, decades from now. A lot of those people change their minds when the time actually approaches.

22 thoughts on “How Long Do You Want To Live?”

  2. That question always makes me wonder if, with the progress of medical science and understanding of aging, there might be people alive today who could live .. , well, for a very, very, long time.

  3. A sufficiently advanced civilization (to use Kip Thorne’s terminology) might be able to manipulate wormholes. Let’s assume for fun that they can be sufficiently small and tidal effects managed to keep it from ending the existence of any matter within a stone’s throw (improbable, but stick with me here).

    Now, coax a human body to extrude a copy of itself across said micro-wormhole. Interconnect via the central nervous system, perhaps.

    Ensure that the resulting human can withstand the “end” of one of its members.

    This resolves the whole issue of whether a “conscious machine” is even necessary. (And, no, I do not intend to permit others to decide for me that consciousness is illusory just because they say so, either – like the man says, if you want to transfer your self into a machine, you first.)

    Now, you can be in two (or more) places at once.

    Using such a technology (if possible), accidents need not end your life, either.

    I’ve always been a bit of a fan of clustering computers for high availability. Maybe we can do it with ourselves, too.

  4. How long would you like to live in the body of a 30 y.o. with enough wealth that it isn’t an issue?

    Might get a different answer from how long would you like to live in the body of a centurion?

    Mostly, we aren’t dealing with raising the absolute age, but raising the average age to the limit of about 120 and perhaps delaying old age to about 90.

    Quality of life matters.

    1. Yeah, living in the body of a centenarian could be burdensome. But living in the body of a centurion? How do you say, “Make my bed, pour me a tall glass of wine, and bring my chariot (automobile) around up front!”

  6. At least a week longer than Woodrow Wilson Smith (AKA Lazarus Long) Curt he’s just over 2000 years old at the beginning of “Time Enough for Love”, he’s about 2100 years old.

    I’d settle for a thousand, but two-thousand would be really cool.

  7. Because no one posted it yet, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUZfxaLrNNw

    I only want to live forever if there are sword fights and decapitation leads to gaining all the power and knowledge of the loser. There can be only one and after that we really don’t know cause that part keeps changing.

    I am not sure who the NYT author talked to but he clearly didn’t factor in the popularity of vampires shows and movies.

    Ken Anthony brings up some good points about how long you live as an old person.

    1. I never really “got” the Highlander mythos.

      Are they Highlanders as in Highland Scot? And then what does this type of immortal being have anything to do with Scotland? Does this connect to some other literature or mythos?

      And a Highlander doesn’t live forever because there is always another Highlander around swinging his sword at neck level?

      And what does a Highlander gain by head chopping all of the other Highlanders — wealth, world domination, foxier babes? I mean is that it? And couldn’t Highlanders form some kind of MAD compact that they would be content with their putative immortality and would eschew this head Highlander (excuse the pun) objective? I mean, what forces a Highlander to engage in the “Highlander Hunger Games” apart from more ambitious Highlanders coming after them?

      And is being a Highlander a form of damnation as in a Flying Dutchman or a vampire? Are there “good” Highlanders and “evil” Highlanders, or is the Highlander mythos pure pagan and outside Judeo-Christian good and evil? And if you are a “good” Highlander and headchop an “evil” Highlander, strictly for self-defense purposes, and you acquire the vanquished’s powers and knowledge, does that make you “evil”, kinda like the Voldomort’s wand thing in Harry Potter?

      And is the first person to reply “Squirrel!” to my post in reality a Highlander who has just blown their cover and made themselves vulnerable to any Highlanders browsing this Web site?

      1. The “highlander” of the films was a Scottish highlander who discovers that he’s one of the “immortals” when he gets clobbered (by the main bad guy of the first film, I think).

        And couldn’t Highlanders form some kind of MAD compact that they would be content with their putative immortality and would eschew this head Highlander (excuse the pun) objective?

        The problem seems to be that a considerable portion of the immortals were head-chopping maniacs and likely to agree to such a compact only to lure potential victims within reach.

  9. A close relative of mine is a senior executive at one of the big Big Pharmas. He told me that they pretended to back Obamacare just to give themselves a stay of execution. But if and when it goes into effect, the industry will change radically. He said, “Look around at all the drugs on the market now. They’re the only ones you’ll ever see for the rest of your life.”

    I don’t hold out any hope for major breakthroughs in medicine any more, at least in my lifetime.

      1. “But the model for many new cancer drugs (the biggest category in drug company pipelines) and for drugs for rare diseases is that the companies charge a price no individual can pay, and then try to get insurers and governments to pay for them.”

        Is that the one you meant, Bob? Oddly the article only numbers points 4 and 5.

        Do you really think the government will continue to pay massive costs for treatment? Because I sure don’t, and I’ve got four letters why: I, P, A, and B.

    2. Broadly speaking, there are two reasons to prefer free markets over government-based solutions.

      One reason is utilitarian, that the historical record shows that markets work whereas government central planning fails badly, and even many of the anti-capitalist examples of market failure have the hand of government interference in there somewhere.

      A second reason is that free choice, personal responsibility, and liberty are ends in themselves. I remember being scolded by someone regarding my Conservative indoctrination for emphasizing Reason 1, that liberty works, rather than Reason 2, that we would value liberty for its own sake even if people in Soviet Russia were materially better off in some bizarro world.

      Rand Paul’s speech dissing “Obamacare” pounded on Reason 2, to my mind, at the expense of Reason 1, that is, providing universal healthcare is a laudable objective, but the PPACA is bad legislation, badly enacted that will take all of the problems of our current system already with heavy government participation and make them worse. That Rand Paul and many others believe it to be unconstitutional is “inside baseball” as to persuading independent voters, who will be told by the Obama campaign that the PPACA has all kinds of must-have benefits in it for them.

      Even George Will is suffering from this, going on to say, two out of every three voters self identifies as “conservative”, so “prove it” by voting in the tough medicine and tough love of the slate promising to repeal the PPACA and reform Medicare.

  10. Until I run out of places to see, books to read and things to do. And since I’ve found I can actually forget enough of a book I’ve already read that I can enjoy reading it again, that might very well be a lot longer than I used to imagine.

    1. I agree with your comment, and I like the way you put it. But on the other hand, keep your comment in mind while googling “real life 50 first dates”.

  11. Good point, Rand. His surveys would make much more sense if he broke it down into what was the age of the respondents. Quite likely for his lectures in front of college students they might say by and large 80 years. But if he gave the lecture in a retirement community quite likely the answer would be over 100 years.

    Bob Clark

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