4 replies to this topic

[kjaggard]

If some of us make it past the 120 years mark in birthdays, or 200, or escape age related death completely do you suppose there may be a humanity wide feeling of survivors guilty.

I'm thinking of a point over 100 years from now where I will look back at people I knew today. People I've stood in rooms with struggling hard to change things about our world for the better and to protect the future for us all, and I know half of them are too old now to make it to the 120 mark. Some likely only have a decade and a half left.

Will those that live to see 200 feel like it's unfair that luck saved them when others they knew and cared for fell just a few years short of making the trip with us?

Will those who never age berate themselves for not having pushed the technological edge faster and harder for those that didn't quite make it through?

Imagine knowing that you will not sicken or die of old age, barring superman killing events you will likely see millenia pass and yet many people you knew and talked with, shared adventures and meals with never saw 180 years. It would be like a plague wiped out billions of children before they had a chance to grow up and realise their full potential as human being.

ninety year old grandparents will be people we remember having lived not even into adulthood, not even 1% of what is accepted a a full life. Those that make it will know that they rode the edge and almost went the other way but survived, and they won't ever really know why, what roll of the dice allowed them through and so many friends and loved ones to lose that chance. Could things have played out differently?

Do you think this will be something humanity will struggle with? What answers or solutions to this do you think we might have?

[MarcusAurelius]

Thats a very interesting proposition you make.

I have to say that the survivors guilt will be transitory and more felt by some than others. Picture it this way, if you led a largely solitary life or one that didn't seem very socially fulfilling the singularity will hold alot of promise. Being that a future where you can make a world of your making virtually and living forever (or a very long time) will far out outweigh the sentimentality that might be endured for a few years. And the apparent guilt of outliving live long friends will be a novelty that wears off in time as you develop further and pit your growing colossal intellect to other endeavors. I remember having the same sentiments of old teachers I grew up in primary school that shaped my infancy significantly but I knew passed away long ago. It would be incredible to be able to visit them, tell them that you are who you are because of their inspiration. But some things are just the way they are and all we can do is live with that fact and mature. In much the same way that sometimes we can't control a relationship that ends suddenly with the opposite sex, and they can be painful moments in our lives.

Either way if you are able to live for one million years and its still plaguing your mind. Then perhaps thats ample enough time to upgrade yourself significantly and invent time travel and do something about it. But my guess is that by the time you accomplish that, you will be so noticeably different that travelling back in time in that state of trans-humanism would be like an amoeba that became a thinking and imaginative sentient being trying to go back and relate to his microscopic world again. There would be some obvious obstacles in that alone.

[Livid]

There will probably just be large groups of First Generation Longevity Patients, to support each other and provide therapy for each other, other generations after probably wont have the same sense of community.

[Anu]

There will probably just be large groups of First Generation Longevity Patients, to support each other and provide therapy for each other, other generations after probably wont have the same sense of community.

i actually think that further generations will feel it harder
just imagino living 1000 years with the same person and suddenly in a accident or something that person dies
it will have big psicollogical damages on a person

[Livid]

There will probably just be large groups of First Generation Longevity Patients, to support each other and provide therapy for each other, other generations after probably wont have the same sense of community.

i actually think that further generations will feel it harder
just imagino living 1000 years with the same person and suddenly in a accident or something that person dies
it will have big psicollogical damages on a person

Hrm you have a point but the first generation will have to get used to a world where it dynamically shifts where other generations would have been long dead. Grief is a psychologically interesting subject, I am not sure if the grief felt living with someone for 50 years is going to be any less than living with someone for 500 years. Super longevity societies are going to have less contact with death but they are going to still have it, we will just have to hope that Grief treatments will be fully researched and implemented by then.