A story for a story. My father had children from the age of 19 to 55. Born in the 1930s, passed in his 80s, he had a good life. As the youngest of many brothers by different mothers, our paths have diverged massively as we experience the world separated by decades.
And yet the commonality of genetics lays down a pattern of personality that is striking to see. We share the same baseline, the same personality flaws, the same basic interests manifest in different ways. We are in so many ways variation on a theme that is my father. And seeing all these examples of the same pattern aging, each person slowly becomes poorly fit for the world that evolves around them. We learn as children, grow into men, and eventually become rigid in our patterns. I expect this is reflected in basic biology of the brain.
The one thing that this has convinced me of, seeing these patterns far beyond what I can control, is that one day it will be my time to die, and this will be a good thing. I can pass on what I've done, the important lessons I've learned, but eventually I must make way for a new variations of genes, a new attempt at learning, a new crack at adapting to a changing world.
An individual dying is not an end, but part of a cycle of change, which is the core of what life is. Everything must die in the end, because to become static and unchanging is the real death, the real dragon that we should fear.
> Spiritual men sought to comfort those who were afraid of being eaten by the dragon (which included almost everyone, although many denied it in public) by promising another life after death, a life that would be free from the dragon-scourge. Other orators argued that the dragon has its place in the natural order and a moral right to be fed. They said that it was part of the very meaning of being human to end up in the dragon’s stomach. Others still maintained that the dragon was good for the human species because it kept the population size down. To what extent these arguments convinced the worried souls is not known. Most people tried to cope by not thinking about the grim end that awaited them.
Even if death is on balance a good thing, the process that precedes it of your body and mind deteriorating over several decades is not. It greatly decreases quality of life and increases medical expenses. A world where people enjoyed 80 or 100 years of good health and were then painlessly euthanized would be a huge improvement.
Also, COVID-19 would be barely noticeable if everyone had the risk profile of 30 year olds.
Imagine if we, somehow, had the technology to make humans live for 5000 years (bristlecone pine trees somehow manage it). Would you then say that we should still commit suicide at 90, in order to make room for the young?
My dad is in his 70's, and I consider his mortality to be a preventable tragedy, like a death from smallpox before the invention of the smallpox vaccine.
There's already a lot "unnatural" about humanity (unnatural only if you don't think of humanity as being part of nature). It used to be the case that about half of your siblings would die before reaching adulthood. Perhaps at the time, people felt that this gave their own life more meaning, and perhaps in some sense, it did. I'm still glad we don't have to go through that anymore, and grateful to generations past for spending the resources to make that so.
Children would have to be much rarer if we solve longevity, but our engineers and scientists would also be far more capable than they are right now, as they'll be able to accumulate far more knowledge and experience. Perhaps, once we solve longevity, it will be time to start the long term project of colonizing the solar system.
I think your first point gets to the heart of it. Yes, I'd be happy to be able to live to 5000, but there are also plenty of other people in the world I'm truly glad don't get to live much past 90. Until we figure out a societal system capable of reining in the extreme will to power present in some of the population, the dragon taking those people out makes me feel like he's on my side, even if I eventually have to pay the price, as well.
So, it's not that I don't wish for society to eventually conquer the dragon of death, but not until we conquer some of the even more pernicious social dragons that are currently being held in check by it.
Lets for a second imagine you're right, that a long lived human could take some drugs that returns them to a childlike state, sort of a Doctor Who-esque regeneration to readapt to a new world, a new teenage years. How many would take it? And would they really be any different? Is there a maximum to that?
Sure. Next problems. Are we going to fix the broken feedback loop of capitalism, where over time the rich keep getting richer? Are we just going to recreate the Meths from Altered Carbon? Those who can use their money to live forever, accumulating more and more wealth entirely voluntarily until they are as gods over the rest of humanity? To solve one problem is to spawn so many more dragons than aging ever was.
In a sense, rejuvenation would be a watershed moment like the development of agriculture. People living in agricultural societies were plagued with problems like malnutrition from poor diet variety and exploitation by states and tax collectors compared to their hunter-gatherer counterparts. But despite these problems, the world still became dominated by agricultural states because they could out-compete hunter-gatherers with their larger numbers and armies, force them off their traditional pastures, and convert those pastures to farmland.
If rejuvenated humans with centuries of experience are able to out-compete their younger counterparts then all the problems with stagnation in an immortal society would be a moot point. You could imagine this happening if rejuvenation preserved the mental capabilities of a 20-something well past 100. That would be decades of time to build up skill in politics, business, and technology, and to compete in such a society might well end up requiring decades of education and experience. Birthing a new person into this society would be a massive multi-decade investment to bring them up to speed that might require the resources of not just two parents but perhaps an entire extended family, which would be justified considering that any new member of this society will be around for centuries. People will be complaining in news columns about the stodginess and stagnation of their society, but proposals to limit the use of rejuvenation or allow younger members of society more power would be as outlandish as allowing a middle-schooler to become president. You simply can't compete without having 60+ years of experience, just like how hunter-gathers simply couldn't compete against a much larger agricultural population.
One thing I'd worry a lot about is stagnating in a moral/ideological sense, one of the few things guaranteeing change in political power is that no matter how powerful a politician is they'll eventually die and younger people that grew up differently have a chance to steer things.
Aging kills literally everyone. Sure, there will be problems when we stop it, but they won't be worse.
Advancing technology will help solve the problems of inequality too. In the same way that I have more luxuries than an ancient king, the poor of the future will (hopefully) live much better lives than the wealthy and powerful today, even if they're worse off than the wealthy and powerful of the future. Alternatively, ideas like "wealth" may erode as we get cheaper energy (fusion, better solar), better robots and AI. Productivity may go so high that everyone can have everything they want.
"Laisser la place aux jeunes" is a common french term to say one should make space for young people coming up. What is the anglophone equivalent? "Capture the rising elite" doesn't quite have the same connotations.
And yet the commonality of genetics lays down a pattern of personality that is striking to see. We share the same baseline, the same personality flaws, the same basic interests manifest in different ways. We are in so many ways variation on a theme that is my father. And seeing all these examples of the same pattern aging, each person slowly becomes poorly fit for the world that evolves around them. We learn as children, grow into men, and eventually become rigid in our patterns. I expect this is reflected in basic biology of the brain.
The one thing that this has convinced me of, seeing these patterns far beyond what I can control, is that one day it will be my time to die, and this will be a good thing. I can pass on what I've done, the important lessons I've learned, but eventually I must make way for a new variations of genes, a new attempt at learning, a new crack at adapting to a changing world.
An individual dying is not an end, but part of a cycle of change, which is the core of what life is. Everything must die in the end, because to become static and unchanging is the real death, the real dragon that we should fear.