Philosophical Questions: Life Expectancy
Apr. 23rd, 2022 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithPeople have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.
19. How would humanity change if all humans’ life expectancy was significantly increased (let’s say to around 500 years)?
Well, usually that's a disaster. Consider that:
* Any large, fast change creates a lot more problems than a smaller or slower change. This one is big. The slower it happens, the higher the chance of avoiding disaster, but changes in longevity tend to come in larger packets. Consider how many countries currently have a big population problem because modern medicine increased lifespan while decreasing mortality, and it took a generation or two for family size to drop. Now imagine that problem with a 500-year lifespan. Overpopulation is almost certain to increase.
* What part of the lifespan is getting extended? Modern medicine places most of the gains toward the end., Unless the process can somehow extend only the middle, it would just extend the unpleasant phase. Extending childhood or adolescence is ruinous because then the psychological development and physical development tend to get out of synch.
* Employers already want only a narrow range of workers, roughly ages 25-35, and they don't want to pay a lifetime's earnings for that time. They don't want people right out of school, and the older workers get, the less desirable because they're more expensive to support. The main exceptions are in industries where experience correlates strongly with improved performance or earning potential. If we can't get employers to hire people at 50, they certainly won't want to hire people at 100 or 500. We already have a bad and growing problem where the official retirement age (67) is much higher than the point where employers are willing to pay workers and the point where increasing problems of age make work uncomfortable or impossible. Plus if old people can hold jobs for centuries, then it becomes harder and harder for young people to compete at all, which kills motivation.
* Lots of people want extended lifespan, or immortality, who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Bored people make trouble from scratch.
* Technology is already progressing faster than people can keep up with. This change would increase that problem by more than a factor of five.
* Science progresses at roughly the rate old scientists die off. This change would increase that problem by more than a factor of five.
So I wouldn't recommend this. Humanity in this dimension has none of the skills needed to handle it successfully. They can't even manage to address climate change effectively. Though it would be hilarious to see rich people jump on life extension and then realize that they just trapped themselves in the world they've been shitting on.
19. How would humanity change if all humans’ life expectancy was significantly increased (let’s say to around 500 years)?
Well, usually that's a disaster. Consider that:
* Any large, fast change creates a lot more problems than a smaller or slower change. This one is big. The slower it happens, the higher the chance of avoiding disaster, but changes in longevity tend to come in larger packets. Consider how many countries currently have a big population problem because modern medicine increased lifespan while decreasing mortality, and it took a generation or two for family size to drop. Now imagine that problem with a 500-year lifespan. Overpopulation is almost certain to increase.
* What part of the lifespan is getting extended? Modern medicine places most of the gains toward the end., Unless the process can somehow extend only the middle, it would just extend the unpleasant phase. Extending childhood or adolescence is ruinous because then the psychological development and physical development tend to get out of synch.
* Employers already want only a narrow range of workers, roughly ages 25-35, and they don't want to pay a lifetime's earnings for that time. They don't want people right out of school, and the older workers get, the less desirable because they're more expensive to support. The main exceptions are in industries where experience correlates strongly with improved performance or earning potential. If we can't get employers to hire people at 50, they certainly won't want to hire people at 100 or 500. We already have a bad and growing problem where the official retirement age (67) is much higher than the point where employers are willing to pay workers and the point where increasing problems of age make work uncomfortable or impossible. Plus if old people can hold jobs for centuries, then it becomes harder and harder for young people to compete at all, which kills motivation.
* Lots of people want extended lifespan, or immortality, who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Bored people make trouble from scratch.
* Technology is already progressing faster than people can keep up with. This change would increase that problem by more than a factor of five.
* Science progresses at roughly the rate old scientists die off. This change would increase that problem by more than a factor of five.
So I wouldn't recommend this. Humanity in this dimension has none of the skills needed to handle it successfully. They can't even manage to address climate change effectively. Though it would be hilarious to see rich people jump on life extension and then realize that they just trapped themselves in the world they've been shitting on.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-23 05:56 pm (UTC)...which, in turn, up the chance of revolutions. Combined with the overpopulation thing...
(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-23 06:10 pm (UTC)There is also the point that any treatment to prolong life would almost certainly be very expensive. So, imagine the world where the rich and powerful are effectively immortal, but the remaining 99% live a normal life span...
You would see immense wealth inequalities, towering resentment in the majority of the population and stagnation at the top stalling social change and mobility.
The only way it wouldn't blow up in a generation or less, would be if the ruling elite reorganised society to be crushingly oppressive and so tightly controlled in all aspects of life that it would make modern China look like an anarchistic hotbed of permissiveness in comparison.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-24 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-24 01:11 pm (UTC)Oh I know, my point is that it would/will continue to be expensive long after it shouldn't be.
Same as insulin, for much the same reasons.
Another obstacle
Date: 2022-04-23 06:14 pm (UTC)More generally, change is a serious issue. Right now, in general (with plenty of exceptions), older people seem more resistant to change than younger people. I suspect this may be a byproduct of not expecting to be around to see the outcome, and that may relax some should that no longer be the case, but change is still more a young person's game than an older person's, and younger people are more likely to be on their "A" game there. But if that doesn't happen, that way lies stasis -- and evidence strongly supports the concept that stasis leads to death.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-23 11:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-24 01:31 am (UTC)As you tangentially mention, there are other factors within the "life span is now 500 years," which would have to be answered before commenting on the effect of it. I'm rather reminded of the proverb "we get too soon old and too late smart." (Variants exist in other languages, as with many proverbs.) - what part of life is extended? Do we spend 480 years in physically vigorous young adulthood, or 420 years in decrepitude. (Wasn't there some Greek mythology about someone who asked for eternal life, but forgot to ask for eternal youth?) - fertility changes or again, lasts that entire period. - is it available to everyone equally?
I think overall things would stagnate for the reasons that you and the other commenters have mentioned. There would be a relatively brief population surge, but would likely go back to having 1-2 children/family. On the other hand, since grannie would still be alive for another 400+ years, the total population would go way up, and I doubt we could feed that many, leading to famine and then war. Human stupidity is endless, as knowledge may increase, but wisdom rarely does.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-24 01:53 am (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2022-04-24 03:11 am (UTC)Yyyyeah. That's one big advantage of farmemory: you don't avoid making mistakes, but you can avoid repeating a lot of mistakes that you remember making previously.
>> Do we spend 480 years in physically vigorous young adulthood, or 420 years in decrepitude.<<
Exactly. That's why I mentioned that extant extensions mostly come toward the end: ways to stop people from dying, rather than ways to extend the healthiest part of the lifespan. We don't have a 'pause' button; you need telomere control for that. What we have is a way to avoid a lot of the easier deaths. This leaves a majority of people with a very limited range of options:
* dying suddenly of old age, which is fine
* dying more-or-less comfortably of something relatively quick
* dying a slow, miserable, tortuous death over months or even decades.
Statistically speaking, the death nobody wants is the one almost everyone gets: alone, in pain, in a hospital, trapped in a slowly rotting body. So let's not increase that problem.
>> - fertility changes or again, lasts that entire period. <<
Depends on the methodology.
If you can extend young adulthood, usually fertility comes with it.
If you extend childhood, which is a common botch with some lines of research, then you have people with psychological maturity stuck in an immature body for decades or worse, centuries. They tend to go insane.
If you extend old age, then you wind up with a different problem: needing people to reproduce during a relatively brief window of opportunity, when they won't want to. We already have that problem because we've made it all but impossible for young people to start a family. By the time they're allowed out on their own, after college, often the "leave parental territory" tide has turned and they wind up back with their parents ... sans mate, offspring, and job. It's too expensive for young people now to get a car, a house, have babies. And by the time they can afford it, their fertility is often waning or gone. Now, I happen to believe there are way too many humans on Earth so falling population is good for the planet, but it's damn hard on the people.
>> - is it available to everyone equally? <<
Again, that depends on the methodology. Some are elaborate, expensive, highly limited, and create self-solving problems. Any despotic system is inherently unstable and will be overthrown. The real problem is when you have LOTS of long-lived people who don't know what the fuck they're doing and create very long-lived problems as a result. You can overthrow a handful of rich demigods. It's difficult or impossible to overthrow the mainstream. You pretty much have to wait for ennui to set in, then plan a blitzkrieg, and it's ugly because you have to wipe out as many as possible to prevent a recurrence.
>> There would be a relatively brief population surge, but would likely go back to having 1-2 children/family. On the other hand, since grannie would still be alive for another 400+ years, the total population would go way up,<<
Yeah, it's not a fast surge, it's a slow creep. Replacement is 2.1 children per couple, to account for individuals who do not reproduce. The exact balance of births and deaths needed for equilibrium, however, depends on the rate of each. Lots of deaths means you need a high reproductive rate. Few deaths mean you need a very low rate. If people only have 1 child per century, that's still 5 per person or 10 per couple, which is a lot even if they were dying at normal rates. And you tend to lose the sibling effect, because people start thinking it's weird to have kids close together. It's more like extra aunts/uncles, which already happens in spread-out families, and it has its upsides, but losing all the sibling ties seriously undermines people's social skills.
>> and I doubt we could feed that many, leading to famine and then war.<<
That's very predictable. Add in the extremely increased terror of death caused by lifespan extension, too.
>> Human stupidity is endless, as knowledge may increase, but wisdom rarely does.<<
Wisdom definitely increases. Humanity has learned a lot over the millennia. They make (mostly) different mistakes now than they used to. The problem is that technology and society size are growing faster than wisdom, or rather, the societies that have come to dominate have that problem. The Amish are still working with the rule, "Before adopting a new piece of technology, first decide whether it would do more harm than good. If so, do not adopt it." I am quite confident they would look at life extension and refuse to have anything to do with it because of its deleterious effect on family life and community.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2022-04-24 04:33 am (UTC)I read a scifi once with a similar conflict.
The mainstream had found out how to speed-age youngsters, so they could quite plausibly know, like, seven generations of their descendants. ("We love our children, and we are excited to meet them.")
The minority preferred raising children the slow way ("We love our children and we want to take care of them"), which the majority thought was crazy, disgusting and almost abusive.
The conflict was mostly about childrearing, not population, but, yeah...
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2022-04-24 05:05 am (UTC)* If you don't have a way to upload knowledge, you get people who look like adults but have the lived experience of a toddler. The current trend toward infantilization is causing similar problems.
* If you have a basic way to upload knowledge, you get cookie-cutter kids, which undermines individuality and diversity.
* If you have a personalized way to upload knowledge, you run into the problem where people may prefer the simulations to real life.
* And of course, speed-growing generally undermines the connection to this plane. No matter how good you get, you're always going to lose more than the natural way, which sucks.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2022-04-24 10:50 pm (UTC)