Ray Kurzweil: Immortality within 15 years.

"Howard Brazee" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 24 Dec 2007 12:02:39 -0800, Jon Schild
wrote:

Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a
posthuman world?

Absolutely. And it isn't that hard a question. Maybe when you are 20 or
30 the idea of living forever seems attractive, but wait until you get
older and assorted body parts no longer work like they should. Then you
can understand the full meaning of a button I have seen at several
worldcons:

"Immortality -- A Fate Worse than Death"

Even with eternal youth, would you want to live to be 1000? Remember

Yes.

the world keeps changing and you would be an obvious outsider. It

No. Not if everyone were immortal.

would be hard to keep interested in life for a thousand years.

You underestimate how interesting life and the universe can be--and for
immortals, travel to the stars becomes totally doable, even at
subrelativistic speeds.

Would you even recognize yourself after that long?

People change in a decade or two or three. Growth requires change.

And 1000 years is nothing compared to 1,000,000 years. Which is less
than nothing compared to infinity.

-- Ken from Chicago

"Splicer" wrote in message
...
Jon Schild wrote on 24 Dec 2007:

Absolutely. And it isn't that hard a question. Maybe when you are 20 or
30 the idea of living forever seems attractive, but wait until you get
older and assorted body parts no longer work like they should. Then you
can understand the full meaning of a button I have seen at several
worldcons:

"Immortality -- A Fate Worse than Death"


The question for me is, "Who gets to be immortal"? Let's say the treatment
is extremely expensive and only the very wealthy can afford it - will the
poor *******s (i.e. The rest of the world) sit idly by while people they
probably don't like to begin with, get to live forever? If only the
wealthy can afford it, I'd suggest that once treated they hide.

Boring. The more interesting question would be if EVERYONE was immortal.

-- Ken from Chicago

"Ken from Chicago" wrote on 25 Dec 2007:

Boring. The more interesting question would be if EVERYONE was immortal.


Except that I wasn't trying to write a good story, I was merely posing a
question regarding haves and have-nots when immortality gets thrown into
the mix.

In article ,
Howard Brazee said:

Even with eternal youth, would you want to live to be 1000?

Ask me again when I'm 999.

--
William December Starr

In article ,
Splicer said:

The question for me is, "Who gets to be immortal"? Let's say the
treatment is extremely expensive and only the very wealthy can
afford it - will the poor *******s (i.e. The rest of the world)
sit idly by while people they probably don't like to begin with,
get to live forever?

For the most part they put up with all the rest of the **** that the
wealthy and powerful rain down upon them; what's one more inequity?

--
William December Starr

"Splicer" wrote in message
...
"Ken from Chicago" wrote on 25 Dec 2007:

Boring. The more interesting question would be if EVERYONE was immortal.


Except that I wasn't trying to write a good story, I was merely posing a
question regarding haves and have-nots when immortality gets thrown into
the mix.

Like you don't know? Come on, there's a billion stories about haves vs
havenots. The commoners rebel against TPTB claim the luxuries for everyone.

-- Ken from Chicago

On Tue, 25 Dec 2007 14:20:57 -0600, "Ken from Chicago"
wrote:

Even with eternal youth, would you want to live to be 1000? Remember

Yes.

Possibly for me - but I doubt it. I keep seeing people getting tired
of the same old thing or becoming rigid in unattractive ways.

the world keeps changing and you would be an obvious outsider. It

No. Not if everyone were immortal.

Only if the future generations have no power.

would be hard to keep interested in life for a thousand years.

You underestimate how interesting life and the universe can be--and for
immortals, travel to the stars becomes totally doable, even at
subrelativistic speeds.

I am doing wild guessing here - I have know way of knowing how long
this delight can continue - but I see people not wanting to see more
new stuff.

Would you even recognize yourself after that long?

People change in a decade or two or three. Growth requires change.

And 1000 years is nothing compared to 1,000,000 years. Which is less
than nothing compared to infinity.

So what do you guess the half-life is of how long average people will
be interested in living?

In rec.arts.sf.science Howard Brazee wrote:
On Tue, 25 Dec 2007 14:20:57 -0600, "Ken from Chicago"
wrote:
the world keeps changing and you would be an obvious outsider. It

No. Not if everyone were immortal.

Only if the future generations have no power.

It has been argued that the only thing which allows true change is the old
leaders dying off to make room for the new. If this is true, then when the
old leaders stop dying off, change will cease.

I don't know if I really believe it, but it's somewhat convincing.

would be hard to keep interested in life for a thousand years.

You underestimate how interesting life and the universe can be--and for
immortals, travel to the stars becomes totally doable, even at
subrelativistic speeds.

I am doing wild guessing here - I have know way of knowing how long
this delight can continue - but I see people not wanting to see more
new stuff.

Do you really need to know in advance? When you get to the point where you
don't want to live any longer, stop. Any realistic immortality should not
prevent suicide, so infinite immortality should only be a concern if your
preference for dying naturally over dying by your own hand is greater than
your preference for a longer life, or if you wouldn't want to live past a
certain age but you're afraid you might change your mind before you get
there.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

In rec.arts.sf.science Splicer wrote:
The question for me is, "Who gets to be immortal"? Let's say the treatment
is extremely expensive and only the very wealthy can afford it - will the
poor *******s (i.e. The rest of the world) sit idly by while people they
probably don't like to begin with, get to live forever? If only the
wealthy can afford it, I'd suggest that once treated they hide.

I don't think that realistic immortality will consist of "the treatment".
*If* this comes to pass, it will happen gradually due to a large set of
disparate treatments and cures. You're not going to wake up one day and
find out that if you walk into a clinic with a $100 million check you will
walk out immortal. Instead you will wake up and discover that you will no
longer die of lung cancer, or suffer from Alzheimer's, or get one of
thirteen specific types of leukemia.

Vernor Vinge's _Rainbows End_ paints what I think is the most realistic
picture of this. The protagonist is restored to effectively full youth and
vitality after suffering from Alzheimer's. There are a lot of old people
around who have had varying degrees of success, but the protagonist is
particularly lucky because his ailments happened to line up very nicely
with what medicine was able to treat effectively. As such a thing
continues, people would become immortal as their expanding life expectancy
surpasses the rate at which they use it up. People would still die in
accidents or of rare diseases, but the incidence would get continually
smaller.

So how does this apply to the quoted text? Simple: since immortality would
be conferred so gradually that even its recipients probably won't realize
it when they've attained it, there's no trigger to cause poor people to
revolt. In the US, rich people can already afford significantly better
health care than poor people. According to a study I bumped into whose
trustworthiness is completely unknown, the life expectancy of Asian women
in certain areas of the country is nearly forty years greater than that of
Native Americans in certain other areas. Even larger gaps exist between
the people in very rich countries compared to very poor countries. But
nobody is revolting over this, and so long as life extension continues to
be a gradual process, I don't think anybody will.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

On Dec 24, 3:02 pm, Jon Schild wrote:
Robert Clark wrote:
Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a
posthuman world?

Absolutely. And it isn't that hard a question. Maybe when you are 20 or
30 the idea of living forever seems attractive, but wait until you get
older and assorted body parts no longer work like they should. Then you
can understand the full meaning of a button I have seen at several
worldcons:

"Immortality -- A Fate Worse than Death"

--
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei

The quest for immortality also presupposes that what comes after
death is nothingness, or can not be many times better than life.


Bob Clark