I hate all the debate about health care. Is it a right or a privilege? If you can't afford it, should you do without it? If you provide it to people that can't afford it, how does society afford it? What do you do about end of life care, where costs usually explode in the last months of a person's life? If there is a concensus that a person is terminally ill, and no matter what you do they will still only life a short time, do we (assuming society has anything to say about it since they are paying the bills, or assuming an insurance company has anything to say about it because they too are paying the bills) still throw an extreme amount of effort at someone just to try to be doing something?
Well, I have a mixture of opinions, confusion, and ambivalence about these questions myself, but it's not really important what I think (to anyone but me - which is my point: who cares what I think).
I was pondering immortality (or near immortality). As a counterpoint to overpopulation. I believe our current medical studies will provide treatments that will reverse general aging in humans before much longer. I crafted this thought experiment in my mind after listening to some opinions about three weeks ago, and today a Dan Carlin Common Sense Podcast came out that pondered a similar question and reminded me about my thoughts. His point was to ask what happens when a human accumulates 500 years worth of experience, how does that change them?
My point was looking at how we would manage immortality treatments. I'm assuming that this would be a one time procedure (possibly not a valid assumption, as it could be something that required maintenance) and that it would be expensive.
I imagined a debate about this treatment. Assuming that it would be in great demand, and assuming that some form of governmental regulation or oversight of the procedure would be enacted, how would this work? Who merits the treatment? From a simplistic point of view, I was thinking in terms of a simple cash balance sheet. Who is contributing to society and who is taking from society. This debate comes up from time to time when people are discussing taxes, unemployment, and welfare. I have heard the opinion that we should limit people who are a net drain on the economy or the government taxation versus benefits equation. From a simple cost control and regulation of the benefits of health care, would the same question be applied to immortality treatments.
Think about it from a practical standpoint. If you had to limit this in some way, if this was not something that was possible to provide to everyone, how would you determine who you provided it to? What if some prominent party or person was rallying to prevent the "takers" from being immortal and thus permanent takers, a permanent drain on society? What if simple planetary survival dictated that this was necessary? As a side note, would it be reasonable to require that those that requested and were granted immortality would also have to give up any future procreation? Would this be another separation point, a class of people who would live and die limited lifespans, but would procreate? They would continue to mix genes and promote our evolution, so there would be some value to have a separation, the price of making a family being eventual death.
But let's say that the notion that one had to be a net contributor took hold and was determined to be a requirement. Can you imagine how that would work? How would you determine net worth to society? How would you determine who was a drain? Some might suggest just looking at a tax return, but if you used wealth as the only dividing line, wouldn't that be a recipe for a world with an increasing number of people incapable of doing ordinary labor?
How do you measure the intangibles? Stephen Hawking would not be someone you would want to keep around forever from a standpoint of his physical contributions, but what would a few hundred years of life extension do to his ability to discover new things? What about love? What about people with no commercial or capitalistic success that are nevertheless loved more intensely than many are? You have to admit that many people have a higher emotional value to society, like Nelson Mandela, for example. Or Mother Teresa. How would you value them?
Who gets to be immortal? How would you answer that question? What other answers that other people may come up with would be offensive to you?
What would you require of people who opted to be immortal? Would you limit their wealth, because compound interest is often heralded as the vehicle to wealth, and if you live forever, does your wealth just keep increasing without limit? Would they have a retirement age? If you didn't, you'd have a perpetual social security drain on the system, far beyond the amount the individual ever put into the system. What if your price for immortality was that you could never rest, relax, slow down, take it easy? What if retirement had to be sacrificed to justify immortality?
I think in reality, as a practical matter, people would not want to live forever. I think some would try for it, but I believe that rather than accumulating more and more experience and becoming uber-wise, they might tend to get burned out and tired of learning and working. Many would become depressed and decide they were tired of life. If life wasn't always threatening to be withdrawn from you, would you tend to cling to it less tightly? Would dangerous pursuits be more attractive at some point? Sky diving or climbing mountains would suddenly seem more attractive, or perhaps something truly dangerous like shark wrestling.
Are we even equipped to handle an extremely long life time? Would we tend to go insane from cumulative stress or pain? Perhaps it wouldn't be immortality, but just doubling or tripling your life span. Would that change all the calculations? Could materialism be lessened by immortality? Could it be that the pursuit of experiences, achievements, or accomplishments would start to be more important than things? Of course, if you lived long enough, your things would be rotting and breaking down and would need replacement.
I don't know my answers to any of these questions, because each answer I've proposed to myself has good and bad points to it. I don't know if immortality would be a good thing or a terrible thing.
I do know that I would want to try it myself. I would want to see where we are going with this life, with our global society, with the planet we inhabit. I want to see flying cars, free energy, a restored environment, space colonization, ocean colonization, and a possible collective intelligence. I assume that if humans were going to live a long time, they'd take better care of the planet, themselves, and each other.
Oh, and I assume immortality doesn't mean you live forever in the body of a 100 year old with failing physical and mental capabilities. If you can't be in reasonably good health, there's no point to the whole exercise. I'm not sure about pets. Do you want your dog to live forever with you?
We're of an age. This question may actually have to be addressed in my lifetime.
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