I never understood the people who argue for indefinite life extension. Imagine a world
with essentially no children. No generation of young adults growing up and spurring change in the world. I think it would not just take away a crucial part of the human experience, but our entire economic system would collapse. There's just too much of it tied into the constant churn of people.
(Of course, you might imagine indefinite life extension springing into existence only after we've started rapid colonisation of space; a pipe dream if I ever saw one. Even then, Earth would still be holden to what I describe.)
In two-three generations, most everyone alive in the countries where life extension was widely adopted would be old farts that didn't want to take up much further debt, with few new ideas and not much drive left in them. "Science advances one funeral at a time", as do many other fields key to human progress.
Meanwhile, the countries too poor to see mass adoption of life extension would out-grow and out-innovate our collective asses faster than you can say "collapse of Western civilisation".
So you'd live forever, but in increasing poverty (due the countries that produce most of the things you buy having much higher growth than yours) in a stagnant, crumbling society.
If we were to invent indefinite life extension that was affordable beyond the 0.1%, I think it would be the ultimate tragedy of the commons.
(Of course, you might imagine indefinite life extension springing into existence only after we've started rapid colonisation of space; a pipe dream if I ever saw one. Even then, Earth would still be holden to what I describe.)
In two-three generations, most everyone alive in the countries where life extension was widely adopted would be old farts that didn't want to take up much further debt, with few new ideas and not much drive left in them. "Science advances one funeral at a time", as do many other fields key to human progress.
Meanwhile, the countries too poor to see mass adoption of life extension would out-grow and out-innovate our collective asses faster than you can say "collapse of Western civilisation".
So you'd live forever, but in increasing poverty (due the countries that produce most of the things you buy having much higher growth than yours) in a stagnant, crumbling society.
If we were to invent indefinite life extension that was affordable beyond the 0.1%, I think it would be the ultimate tragedy of the commons.