Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

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If you are under a certain age in any country (say <30) do you not feel like you live in a world ruled by the conservatism and culture of an older generation? These prior generations have the head start to protect their status quo. Imagining every generation persisting on top of another, all sorts of strange and dark likelihoods fill my imagination.

Just because they have a desire to protect the status quo does not actually mean that they can protect the status quo.

A population of 7 billion+ immortals where the vast majority are set in their ways is terrifying, and being born into such an oppressive world would fill me with dread.

As opposed to having humans who can't remember the past because the experience of the old generation passed away?

Those who don't remember the lesson of history are doomed to repeat it?

Yes, the world will be confronted with new problems that we don't have to deal with before. We may have to seriously consider population control and other measures.

But does anybody seriously want to go to the old status quo where old people are given serious diseases like cancers, Alzheimer and heart attacks, where they are forced to suffer until they finally die, often not of their own choice?

Some thoughts:

- I can also imagine a world where the 0.01% continue to accumulate wealth, they will certainly have a growing ability to protect their position. The world has finite resources, when "immortality" is discovered will certainly have an effect on wealth and power distributions.

- I would argue many people today forget what happens to them/society within years well within their lifetimes.

- "Population control / other measures" -- hence my dread.

- I think improving quality of life is very different than extending it into multi-generational periods.

I don't think wealth accumulation is an issue. However, heritage is what heavily contributes to wealth accumulation. With aging gone, and subsequently, heritage heavily delayed, wealth distribution gap will become smaller, not larger.

Life expectancy increases tend to decrease birth rate. And with Elon Musk currently working on colonizing Mars, and seasteading making some progress, there will likely be a lot of place to live in by the time we work out aging. Actually, if both fail, there is a place for 6 billion more people on Earth.

You're afraid of your own prejudices about something that isn't even here yet. And I don't understand your use of word "immortality": it is aging we are discussing here, a condition that causes people to die, often in misery and pain over long periods of time. I think it is a very humane, global, noble cause, and I honestly don't understand how you can be so cynical about it.

For as so long we have a positive birthrate, we'll reach the point of using all the energy that our local sun and technology can provide.

We'll have to consider population control.

There are multiple issues with this idea. First, I just don't think you can really tell that from this perspective. That's just thinking too far into the future. This sort of argument is likely to look like a Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 [1] to our descendants.

[1]: http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-...

Have you actually considered how many people it would take to use all energy that sun and future tech can provide? I'm sure no human being can give you even a rough estimate.

It's not like solving aging will break markets. There's a balance between supply & demand, which will indirectly regulate birth rate due to parenting costs.

Universe is really vast, if not infinite. And when we have more people, alive, and doing meaningful things while automation takes over menial tasks, it's really going to make us tackle other problems faster, like transportation.

Have you actually considered how many people it would take to use all energy that sun and future tech can provide? I'm sure no human being can give you even a rough estimate.

It's an unimaginably large number of humans. Seven billion human beings is a drop in the bucket as far as I am concerned.

Universe is really vast, if not infinite. And when we have more people, alive, and doing meaningful things while automation takes over menial tasks, it's really going to make us tackle other problems faster, like transportation.

There's only so much matters and so many stars in the universe. Granted, they can last a stupendous long time, especially red dwarf stars.

Future technologies aren't something that can't be predicted entirely, but we can only consider the laws of physics as we know of to constrain our prediction.

Last time I check, there is no way to produce unlimited energy for eternity, no way to defeat entropy. Until that happen, we'll have to consider population control unless our numbers are stable or in decline.

Before you get too worried about this overpopulation, go take a good look at the birth rates in developed countries.

It'll be fine.

Probably the opposite will happen, actually. Just liked caged animals that don't breed, our habitat will so far be removed from our natural one, our species may die out from lack of ability to form natural male-female relationships anymore.

If you improve health, you improve lifespan.

And if you cure all diseases, you'll get multi-generational lifespan.

There is no escaping that kind of logic.

Unless your solution is to embed a suicide switch into all humans when they reach the cutting-off age, say at 100, or 150 or 200.

How would anybody convince me that people deserves to die for the next generation of human beings to be born is a good thing beyond me.

Either we rise up to the challenge or condemn future humanity to this kind of fate.

> Those who don't remember the lesson of history are doomed to repeat it

This maxim is hardly a law of nature; it's sometimes true and sometimes false.

Also, we have managed to escape this problem many times in history: by studying history. Human knowledge accumulates and is refined throughout the generations. Sure, more information has been lost than retained, but repeating mistakes is not inevitable.

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