Then there’d be the problem with memories becoming fragmented and confused. You’d have to copy them into some digital storage, which would either be an addendum to the brain. Or if a separate store then does that storage device become the real you if the memories are in a living network — a program that can run at any time?

I think from about 120yrs most people would find that they have done everything realistically possible, and with no new experiences life becomes too familiar, until the original memories end up so corrupted that you lose any sense of your original self.

This kind of comment is hilarious. It’s saying “living forever is bad because you are meant to die before you live forever”.

Sorry, but anyone who wants an after-life has no business complaining about people who want to live a long actual life!

[quote]
(I suspect that I may disagree with the article’s author on various points, so I’ll comment on them while reading.)

Indeed, a cure for ageing would ideally imply eternal youth/beauty. *nods*

‘the rights of the current generation over the future generation’: people who are only potential people and who do not yet exist do not have rights, given the infinite number of potential people in (non-)existence. When people of both generations are alive at the same time, presumably they should be granted the same rights as equal members of society, neither over the other.

‘the rights of the individual versus the rights of the society’: Society being composed of individuals, the rights of a society might be said to be the summed rights of all the individuals who make it up. As a country exists for its people, not those people for their country, it makes little sense to disadvantage all ostensibly for the sake of all (possible exceptions being when there’s a clear way in which all in fact advantaged (?) by this seeming disadvantagement).

‘Overpopulation’: as acknowledged, this is not a new issue. This same argument about crowdedness can and has (I think?) been used about all technologies which allow greater production of food or longer lifespans or greater proportions of children who live to adulthood, et cetera.

Capitalistically, a too-large population will automatically prune itself down to meet the amount of resources available to sustain it. Socially, population control measures seem appropriate, as–to some degree–are or have been in place in China. Politically, socialists will probably keep giving free money to the poor and unemployed who breed rampantly, in exchange for their votes, but these are all existing problems to deal with during normal existence.

…I recall a certain matter about a person predicting mass starvation due to population increase, not being able to imagine the factors which then occurred and rendered it sustainable… however, both (?) directions are acknowledgeable as appropriate.

In short: overpopulation-related terror is not new; the same concerns would be applied similarly shortly anyway; either try to bring down all medical and other advances which support population growth, or try to bring down none and instead do something about birth rates directly, or do nothing and hope that it will eventually be self-limiting. Even if it’s called immortality, a human (or non-human, for that matter) body can only go so long with no money and no way of replenishing its stored energy.

*resumes reading; rests head in hand for a moment* Ah, that was acknowledged.

‘the only option’: there’s the possibility of relevant technological advances, colonisation of other planets, et cetera.

Reasonable pointing out that in many places the birth rate has already been self-limited. There not being enough children is only a concern in places of drastically decreasing population, or where there are fears of having to support an unworking elderly generation without having enough young workers to do so. Indeed, it’s similarly surprising to the above political trend that, despite stated concern in some places, no measures are being taken to encourage the opposite trend.

Odd to refer to choosing not to have a child as selfish, particularly in the context of overpopulation concerns. Is the parent who adopts a parentless child instead of creating yet another citizen to feed selfish?

Ah, a mention of China’s attempts. ‘not enough to curb population growth’… why, if each generation is half or less the size of the last?

‘but if society decided the majority wanted to live forever, and the right to reproduce was something worth sacrificing, the choice would then belong to the society and not the individual’: this does not necessarily follow. Immortality could, say, be withheld by those who had had children and those who chose it become unable to have children.

The phrase may have been referring to societal population decisions.

If each non-immortal family has a few children who choose to become immortal every generation, the number of immortal people will keep increasing in any case.

In many cases, the right to have children seems something that some parents do not deserve to have, and in many cases children have to be taken away by child services because of this, or else die when neglected by them.

Largely, the ‘overpopulation’ thoughts above apply.

In the worst case scenario, you can permit any family to reproduce, but at the forfeit of any and all government support. They are then free to live and die as they wish, without being a drain on society. Even if a child produced suffers and then dies, it will have existed and then returned to its previous state, which can be argued as being preferable to never existing in the first place; finding this not preferable can lead directly to ending the process sooner, and reaching the same end-point as if it had been preferable. Alternatively, it can be argued that subjectively there is no distinction between not existing and having never existed, as the subject is not in a position to have subjective experiences.

‘Equality and Prejudice’: the majority forcing minorities to do things against their will tends to go badly, depending on context. Better to leave those do not follow to themselves, and allow them to destroy themselves if they so will (or act as if they do).

‘Torn in two’: an advantage of planet colonisation. There’s already such dissimilarity though with the English class system, or in the differences between countries.

‘pain-free in your sleep’: carbon monoxide is relevant. This is assuming that these people want to die, rather than all shooting for immortality and/or living long enough to attain safety through redundancy.

The ‘only acceptable solution’ claim seems short-sighted.

It’s a common thread throughout history that those who find life worth living live, while those who don’t do not.
Not having cake may be sad, but the pleasure of intellectual discovery (and otherwise) trumps such straightfoward pleasures.

…hmm, there’s a request for comments. I may copy and paste this.
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about your point about people feeling fulfillment in life being coupled to having children. i think this fulfillment is tied to the length of our lives and the fact that we do die. when we have children we feel we are leaving a piece of ourselves behind and in someways we live on. if we had extended lives i think that feeling would diminish in correlation with the length of our lives. as others have written with increasing quality and length of life we see an increase in the age at which people procreate. like peter said if we could live to 200 you would probably see people having children at around the 100 year mark, thus slowing down population growth in a natural manner.

the other thought that doesn’t seem to be talked about is the slowing down of the genetic evolutionary process that would occur with decreasing intervals between new generations. though this would probably be replaced by drug and gene therapies and a closer integration of our carbon based bodies with silicon based hardware to provide evolutionary advances to the current generation that may or may not have occurred naturally in the next generation

To my mind, the main point I’m thinking of would be if such a process would be permanent, a treatment or a cure. As things go, treatments are more profitable than cures. If this anti-aging treatment costs half a year’s earning for a middle-class person, but only lasts ten years, that’s an exponentially greater profit than a cure that costs double but lasts indefinitely. Given the way the world works, a treatment seems more likely than a cure, which seems to lessen the gravity of issues such as overcrowding, scarcity of resources, and your mind buckling under the strain of ten lifetimes worth of menial labour.

It could also be a Repo Men scenario, with prohibitively high costs, but anyone can be approved for a loan. If you fall behind on payments, they come and take back their product and possibly kill you in the process. I can see how something like this could happen, where you see a pricetag of $613, 299.99, with a plan to pay it in monthly increments of $800 for the next 766 months, give or take. What you don’t notice is the 8% interest rate, which may increase how much you have to pay off tenfold by the time those 766 months elapse.
If death is no longer a certainty, taxes would become moreso.

I can only hope that a cure, or treatment, for aging would result in a less fast-paced lifestyle than I see so many people following. Who knows, maybe this could be the cure for rush hour, but hopefully not spur a spread of apathy.

I wonder if life imprisonment would be considered a worse punishment if you can live indefinitely?

To continue this rambling, I can see artificial agelessness having more merit than biological agelessness. It seems to me that electricity is easier to generate and store than food is, which could result in there being a much higher sustainable population limit, and also solve overpopulation. Unless someone invents a sexbot that can get pregnant, at which point the whole issue becomes more confused.
Once you crack downloading a consciousness, I can see many conditions and disabilities being cured almost by default. Paralysis, acquired sensory damage and degradation, cancers and other biological conditions, et cetera, seems to me that robot bodies would cure those. However, I can imagine how people might react badly to the idea of putting their ‘life’ in the hands of a software program. Then there’s the religious issues, oh boy the religious firestorms that would ensue. Let the robot revolution begin!

What was selfish was my parents having three children with zero ability to provide for them throughout their childhood.