Weird Science: When we become immortal

[Forlorn Drifter]

There's a certain Conan the Barbarian comic with a race of immortal (although not to violent death) peoples who use regular humans as a servant race. They would become masters in whatever they wished, did as they pleased, while the humans catered to their every need. Once they tired of living, they would choose ritual suicide falling from a great height, with various spiritual connotations. All of their possessions would go with them, including the humans that served them.
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I bring it up because I see that as being the only direction it would go. The immortal (the truly rich, or powerful) abusing the humans (the poor, the middle class). I would see it as having an effect on the views of life itself- why worry about the majority and their lives, when a select, gifted few can live for as long as they wish, solving all the worlds problems? Overpopulation would be solved by the immortals likely having less children, and the normal being used in a way that they may not get the chance to have children, or just be killed or left to their own devices while the immortal get to just live and have their fun. It would become a bigger gap than we already have between the rich and poor. Only the wealthy could afford to pay for this type of medical treatment, which would allow them to continue amassing wealth and using schemes and such to keep their wealth. It just doesn't seem to be a good idea to me.

I also believe, if something like this could become available to the masses, it would cause extreme social issues. The value of life will change without death- if I can't die, then why does anything matter? I'll still be here in 1000 years, and so will everybody else, so then what is the point of anything? Just have fun until you decide to off yourself. That doesn't seem like a good life to me. No risk, no reward. I know that I personally would get tired of life, but I wouldn't be able to commit suicide if that point ever came. Human nature also isn't at a point where we could handle it. With the value many people place on life because of the current threat of death, we already have constant war, hatred, violence, and self-inflicted damage. Imagine how little immortality would change this. Then imagine that someone who wanted to cause harm might be able to outlive the rest of us. Its horrific. I can't see much where it would lead besides nihilism and disenfranchisement of everything as we know it.

I don't think we'll ever get to that point though. Science is focused on so many different things, and immortality is one of the last anyone should worry about in any case, as far as I believe. Lets get people to the point that they can live full lives in our current lifespan. Lets figure out what to do with the overpopulation we're already headed for, and the issue of how to feed everyone. Lets get water to everyone who needs it. Lets focus on everything else first.

There's also many moral questions about the science that would lead to this-possibly stem cell use, use of genetic material from other organisms in humans, who should get it, if people even want it. Along with how far science still needs to get. Understanding of the aging process better, understanding about the effects of aging on the brain, how the brain works in and of itself.

I honestly would rather not think about it.

[Gamerforlife]

It's odd to me that people need death to give their lives meaning.

For me meaning comes from experiences, and I would love to have hundreds about hundreds of years to experience wonderful new things, learn new things, and grow and evolve into different people as I assimilate new skills and knowledge.

It's all very exciting to me. If anything, I think immortality would give life MORE meaning.

[J T]

It's odd to me that people need death to give their lives meaning.

This from the guy who is always criticizing video games for not having perma-death?

I'm teasing you, but it is an interesting analogy actually... don't games lose a lot of their fun when you have GOD mode on? What's the point of playing when you're invincible? I'm not saying IRL that death is our only challenge, but it is a pretty fundamental one.

In social psychology there is something called Terror Management Theory, which I'm not saying I fully endorse, but which does offer up a lot of interesting thoughts about how important death is to the experience of life. That conflict between wanting to live and knowing you are going to eventually die is so rudimentary to the human experience that it's kind of hard to imagine life feeling the same without the threat of death and the pressure of time. I'm not advocating for death, and I would like to see aging slowed; however, I think that an immortality experience will change people and their outlook on life in fundamental ways that are hard to predict.

[jp1]

I had a big thing typed up. For many reasons I wouldn't want to be immortal, it would be nice to have two or three lifetimes so I could really fit in everything I would love to do, but forever is not for me. Cracked had an article on it, portions of it are irrelevant based on some of the stipulations you made, but the top two points are still significant, I think.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18708_5- ... th_p2.html

Perhaps point #3 has some merit as well.

[Nemoide]

GUYS are you forgetting that Alex Chiu has been selling immortality rings for years and is STILL ALIVE?
(Seriously though, while immortality might be fun to think about, I can't think of it as being anything more than a fantasy.)

For one thing: what makes humans so special as to deserve INFINITE LIFE while every other creature dies? Yes there are some cnidarians that already lives without a set life-span, but is there any evidence that their lives are improved by this? Do they lead a more fulfilling existence than their shorter-lived jellyfish cousins? Is it AT ALL suggested that a life form could copy their adaptations while maintaining complex biological structures like a skeleton, muscles, brain, etc? Would those creatures have been able to live in the global conditions that existed a billion years ago? If not for that last one, then the odds are they may not be suited to life on earth in the future, assuming conditions will change again!

I mean, if someone could give me an enchanted immortality ring; my inclination would be to wear it. But in the meantime, I'm going to go with what the evidence suggests: that all people will die, that even civilizations and cultures will die, and that eventually the homo sapiens species will go extinct.

I don't want to sound like Captain Pessimist: it's just how nature seems to work!

[MrPopo]

For one thing: what makes humans so special as to deserve INFINITE LIFE while every other creature dies?

Simple; we have developed a way to do so. Things die because they can. The billions of years of evolution has developed a series of organisms that can reproduce, but once reproduction happens the evolutionary pressure doesn't care anymore, so there's a lot of bad genes across species that say "eh, you start breaking down at some point". Those genes don't get selected out because they express after reproduction.

As I mentioned earlier, we already inhabit environments we wouldn't normally be able to survive in thanks to our technology, and we will continue doing so (extraplanetary colonization is not that far away). If we get to the point that we've conquered senescence (which is really what this question is about) it stands to reason that our knowledge of genetics is high enough to allow us to engage in other human enhancement as needed to manually adapt as needed.

[samsonlonghair]

Entropy always prevails in all biological systems. The only hope for immortality is to transfer our consciousness to computer networks. Once we can transfer our minds and all their functions to computers, we can make infinite exact copies of ourselves across the network.

Unfortunately, such computers seem to be generations away from us. Without a significant advancement in computer science, I don't foresee this kind of immortality within our lifetimes.

[Nemoide]

For one thing: what makes humans so special as to deserve INFINITE LIFE while every other creature dies?

Simple; we have developed a way to do so.

But we haven't. I'm thinking more of comments like

I think it's our eventual destiny, living forever.

There is no material basis for the notion that human can, should, or ever theoretically might live forever.

If we get to the point that we've conquered senescence...

My basic point is that I think it's unreasonable to assume that such a point is possible.

Also I'll go ahead and say the prospect of a medical breakthrough allowing for immortality also creates socially horrifying implication. Who becomes immortal and who doesn't? I'm imagining only the richest individuals will be allowed to undergo "immortality therapy" but then there's the issue of overpopulation. Assuming a LOT fewer people are dying, there would be WAY more people than can comfortably live in a sustained ecosystem. Eventually I imagine even some immortals would find themselves second-class citizens: "oh sorry, you don't NEED food & water so you can just stay hungry for the next decade, you can handle hunger pangs until then" or "well, all the real estate in temperate areas has become ridiculously expensive so you can spend a hundred years deep in the Gobi desert."

[Forlorn Drifter]

We won't ever be able to create immortality where we won't be able to eat- that's inevitable, life needs food and water. We can't even feed ourselves well enough as it is, let alone if we have to worry about feeding individuals for centuries or more.

[J T]

As I mentioned earlier, we already inhabit environments we wouldn't normally be able to survive in thanks to our technology, and we will continue doing so (extraplanetary colonization is not that far away). If we get to the point that we've conquered senescence (which is really what this question is about) it stands to reason that our knowledge of genetics is high enough to allow us to engage in other human enhancement as needed to manually adapt as needed.

Sometimes I wonder if humans are on the verge of becoming a macro-level version of the selfish gene. Thus, we have the drive to live forever, and we conquer our genes drive to live forever. Beyond anti-senescence though, we may live on with replicating clones, which is basically the genes' strategy to live forever. As samsonlonghair suggested, this might be digital copies of ourselves.

Once we can transfer our minds and all their functions to computers, we can make infinite exact copies of ourselves across the network.

This is a weird thought. If you create a clone that thinks it is me and has all my memories, it nevertheless ceases to be me right at its point of its creation because it no longer inhabits my vantage point on the universe. There is a bifurcation at the point of my clone's conception that makes us ever so slightly different, and that difference will only become more drastic with time and experience, similar to how genetically identical twins lead very different lives. With a digital clone, you have shared history right up until the clone's creation. In some sci-fi future I could imagine some sort of death "air bag" clone that "inflates" to life at the instance of my death, so that my personality gets to keep on living, but I feel it is kind of cheating because "I" still died and it's only my clone that continues living. It's also weird to think about making digital backups of myself, because if a perfect digital clone is me, then we have somehow crafted sentience in biomechanical form, and everytime I "overwrite" a backup, I would be killing one of myselves. (funny sidenote: spellcheck doesn't accept 'myselves' as a word).

Maybe to get around the problem of each clone suddenly having different experiences than me and therefore not being me, I could network all of my clones and share cloud memories. Then I would be like one of the Cylons in the Battlestar Galactica remake that has the shared memories of all of the other copies of its production line. But would that totally destroy me psychologically? Like, I would remember every time I or one of my clones died. That terror and pain would forever be a part of me. Enough times dying could really mess with your head. Or what if one of my invincible immortal clones gets sucked out the airlock and is just floating around in space, unable to die, yet still connected to our shared experience cloud network. If I am still walking on earth, but networked to that clone, I now have that horrifying experience continually being downloaded into my existence. I don't know if I could take it.