Comments on: Witness for the future

By: Gregory

Gregory — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:37:24 +0000

Listen, if you assume that people are people all over the world all throughout time, then the sort of people who are willing to risk their lives NOW will be willing to risk their lives LATER as well. And they will be found EVERYWHERE. So stop worrying about risk averseness. At the very least there will be Christians who do not count life on Earth something to be hoarded like a miser hoards his gold.

Besides, if someone’s willing to KILL me, and I have the prospect of living up to 950+ if I stop him, won’t you think that would make me far more amenable to the ‘parking lot’ Nuke’N'Pave solution?

Personally, of course, I’m all for extending life… but immortality? That’s nonsense, because we live in a closed system and entropy generally guarantees we will not have usable energy forever.

But yeah, a coupla million years doesn’t sound so bad… except you’d have to work for almost all that time. That’s not so good.

By: shanartisan

shanartisan — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:02:25 +0000

For a sci-fi novel discussing this very thing, I’d recommend “The Ceres Solution”, whose author I regrettably don’t remember since losing my physical copy of the book. Excellent discussion of that very tendency of society to become risk-averse. There should still be some copies floating around.

By: Reason

Reason — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:47:35 +0000

So I suppose you posters above are all in favor or returning to the ago, not so many centuries, ago when life expectancies were half of what they were today? Since you all seem to feel that more life is a terrible thing, fraught with risk. After all, from the perspective of those halycon days of suffering, parasitism, and disease, who could have known the horrors that would come from a doubling of life expectancy?

Why the mind boggles. Old people of 50 or 60 actually living an active life rather than being bedridden with the consequences of their disease burden. The horror of it!

By: Alice

Alice — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:15:37 +0000

Beware of unintended consequences!

If most people can look forward to centuries of healthy life, and the only real risk is accidental or violent death, society might become extremely risk averse.

Then, when a group of people appears who are prepared to die for their cause, there may be no-one willing to stand against them.

This could lead to long life — in servitude.

By: David

David — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:23:11 +0000

Infatuous boy – who wants to live for ever!

By: Alisa

Alisa — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:14:08 +0000

Yeah, let’s kill them before they get too ugly.

By: Charles Butler

Charles Butler — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:13:44 +0000

Umm, who’s going to pay for their upkeep? Lord Keynes, we imagine.

By: jake

jake — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:16:55 +0000

Struldbruggs. Gulliver (Book III, Ch X) They were the most mortifying Sight I ever beheld, and the Women more horrible than the Men. Besides the usual Deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional Ghastliness in Proportion to their Number of Years, which is not to be described, and among half a Dozen I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there were not above a Century or two between them.