Decline and the next dark age?

[Perd Hapley]

Humans DO expect to live forever, because we were made to..

[PTK]

Your statement is based on...? Religion? Science of some sort? Personal views?

The Bible says that corporeal life is a few hundred years, at best.
Science tells us that there is, indeed, a limit to our bodies' resistance to aging.

So, if it's a personal view, do tell. You've got me interested. :)

[Nick1911]

Humans DO expect to live forever, because we were made to..

 

I think that's provably false.  When people become very old it seems that their bodily systems just degrade to the point that they don't keep the person alive anymore.

All living things age and have a finite lifespan.

[Perd Hapley]

The Bible says that death is a penalty for sin, not part of our nature.

[Nick1911]

The Bible says that death is a penalty for sin, not part of our nature.

Ohhhhh I see.  I must be tired today - that should have been obvious.  Forgot who I was talking to there for a moment.

Of course, I disagree with you, but each to his own.

[Perd Hapley]

 Forgot who I was talking to there for a moment.

Yeah, cause I'm just alway sayin crazy stuff. 

[PTK]

Still paying for original sin, can we really be considered to still be expecting eternal life here on Earth? I do see where you're coming from now, and I'd thoroughly enjoy elucidation of your point. :)

[Perd Hapley]

Still paying for original sin, can we really be considered to still be expecting eternal life here on Earth? I do see where you're coming from now, and I'd thoroughly enjoy elucidation of your point. :)

There's a reason why we have expressions like "Ya gotta die sometime," and "Live each day as if it were your last." Because we always expect to have another day.

There's a reason why we regard death as something to be fought, tooth and nail. There's a reason why people try to reassure us that death is just a part of the cycle of life. It's because death is not supposed to happen to us. It is not part of life. If it seems tragic and makes people cry, it's because it is a punishment.

Naturally, people have other explanations for our abhorrence of death, and there is some truth to those, as well.

[AJ Dual]

I see no scientific reason a human couldn't be modified or engineered if not to be effectively immortal, barring accidents, to at least last several centuries in good health, barring traumatic accident, or an exceptionally virulent infectious disease, until further advancements could make it true immortality.

Genetic modifications on lab animals has double or tripled their life span already. And one can presume that lab conditions in terms of cleanliness, the absence of predators and accidents, the animals were living longer than their wild counterparts already.

Do I think serious life extension is as simple as simply lengthening the telomeres on our genes, or creating a mechanism to lengthen them each time a cell divides? No, it'll be more complex than that. There are many human cells and tissues that are programmed to only divide a certain number of times, and those would have to be addressed, without turning into tissues that never stop growing, or some kind of cancer...

And there's probably dozens of biological mechanisms or complex systems that run-down and age in our bodies. Although if they didn't start turning up until after I was 90-100 (and in a body that didn't age much past 40 or so until then...) I'd take the chance. Tuning them all, and the unintended side-effects will be complex for sure.

It certainly poses lots of interesting questions, even if everything works perfectly biologically, what happens to a person after X-hundred years of existence to their cognition, to their memories? Do older and older memories fade and get re-written in around a 100-odd year "window", does the brain lock up, or go insane?

However, I see no real fundamental scientific reason that effective biological immortality is impossible.

Although post-human machine storage seems "easier". Brain/computer interfaces need only be designed for that, still a huge challenge, but we've already got some progress in that in terms of ECG,s', MRI's, experimental vision systems, and brain controlled prosthesis. It also negates any Malthusian problems that may/will happen in terms of population and physical resource/space needs.

[PTK]

This is, without a doubt, the coolest conversation going on APS. THIS is why I come here. :)

[MicroBalrog]

There's a reason why we have expressions like "Ya gotta die sometime," and "Live each day as if it were your last." Because we always expect to have another day.
l.

Okay, let me explain my previous statements.

You have planned -every person has planned - his life around certain assumptions about his projected lifespan. We expect to live up to around 75-80 years, and spend the last 15-20 years in retirement because old age makes us unable to work. We expect our physical capacity to be reduced drastically after a certain age.

Our social assumptions and rules are based, among other things, on this factor.

Now, perhaps the term 'posthuman' used in this thread is inadequate, but here's my point: the introduction of a higher lifespan as standard would alter the ways in which human beings deal with the time they have left, and the social conventions related to this would alter.

Similar impacts on mindset, culture, and thought can result from other changes. In fact, culture and mindset are only in part formed by 'human nature', and in part are ever-changing.

The people shaped by these advances would not be like us, in the same way that the people who inhabited the 14th century are not like us. Perhaps it's useful to have a name for these people - 'cyborgs', perhaps?

[Hawkmoon]

Yeah, that's why I said direct transoceanic crossings.  

Going straight from Spain to the Caribbean takes a much higher endurance craft than the Ireland-Iceland hop, just like it is going to take a much higher endurance craft to do an Earth to Mars hop, rather than just Earth to Moon.

Oh. You mean like, say ... Iceland to Massachusetts? Where there are archeological digs of pre-Columbian settlements that the experts all seem to agree are of Viking origin.

[Hawkmoon]

You have planned -every person has planned - his life around certain assumptions about his projected lifespan. We expect to live up to around 75-80 years, and spend the last 15-20 years in retirement because old age makes us unable to work. We expect our physical capacity to be reduced drastically after a certain age.

Our social assumptions and rules are based, among other things, on this factor.

But what if our assumptions are incorrect, and we age and die not because we have to, but because we have been brainwashed to believe that's what must happen? Methuselah lived to be 969 years of age (Gen. 5: 21-27). Why should any of us settle for less?

[MicroBalrog]

But what if our assumptions are incorrect, and we age and die not because we have to, but because we have been brainwashed to believe that's what must happen? Methuselah lived to be 969 years of age (Gen. 5: 21-27). Why should any of us settle for less?

Exactly my point.

[De Selby]

There have definitely been people who expected to live forever, and did not.  There is no evidence of people living longer, at any time in history, than we do now.  Our DNA continues to exist in this world because of reproduction.  There'd be no need for it (indeed, it'd be a bad thing) if we were designed to live forever.

Technology is great - it gives us things that aren't natural, like extended lifespans.

[Perd Hapley]

Technology is great - it gives us things that aren't natural, like extended lifespans.

And silly putty.

[erictank]

There's a reason why we have expressions like "Ya gotta die sometime," and "Live each day as if it were your last." Because we always expect to have another day.

There's a reason why we regard death as something to be fought, tooth and nail. There's a reason why people try to reassure us that death is just a part of the cycle of life. It's because death is not supposed to happen to us. It is not part of life. If it seems tragic and makes people cry, it's because it is a punishment.

Naturally, people have other explanations for our abhorrence of death, and there is some truth to those, as well.

At the risk of going too far down the religious-discussion road (which doesn't seem to apply in this thread, at least, anyways):

So your God is punishing me, indeed imposing capital punishment against me according to what you just said, a bare minimum of 6000 years down the road for what my alleged ancestors did?

One more reason I don't subscribe to organized religion.  You can blame me for what I do, or for what I don't what I should be doing.  You don't get to blame me for stuff my dad, or grandmother, or ancestors thousands of years ago did.

And aren't we supposed to be made in God's image, anyways?  If that's the case, if we are as He made us, then isn't it His fault?  If it's not, then we're imposing our will against God's design - and WINNING (for certain values of the term, at least).  Any way you look at it, He seems to lose.  There's just too much in what I've seen of organized religion which doesn't make sense to me.  That's just one example.

I'll rely on science's ability to extend and improve our lives, thanks.  And given the enormous weaknesses inherent in my own body's biological design (thanks again up there for those issues, by the way...  ), the idea of replacing sections or the entire thing with cybernetic replacements under certain circumstances, or uploading my mind to electronic storage, is not one which I find particularly frightening.  Will I ever get to do so?  Don't know.

[KD5NRH]

Actual AMERICANS are saying, "Hey, dude?  Titan has a couple hundred times the amount of liquid hydrocarbons of the entire planet..."

Thus proving that interplanetary travel is not only possible, but simple, since the dinosaurs must have been able to do it in order to get there and become methane, etc.
 

[KD5NRH]

Though, admittedly, I don't know what the deal is with the guy in the middle. You put him in between some amputees, so I'm assuming...

X-ray vision cybernetic implants and an amputee fetish.

[Perd Hapley]

So your God is punishing me, indeed imposing capital punishment against me according to what you just said, a bare minimum of 6000 years down the road for what my alleged ancestors did?

Yeah, I don't get that either, but a lot of people think it works that way. Actually, we all make the same choice Adam made, and that's what we're punished for. (Except for small children, and perhaps the mentally disabled.)

And aren't we supposed to be made in God's image, anyways?  If that's the case, if we are as He made us, then isn't it His fault? 

No. Too many Christians think that the "fallen nature" of mankind is some flaw in the design, or something imposed on us by Adam, or by God as punishment, or whatever. That's nonsense. We sin because we are made with consciousness, consciences, the ability to reason and create, and with free will. We're made in the image of God, but there's no way that God could make creatures with His perfection, because - well, because. How could He? So, being so much like God, we begin to think that we can make our own rules and be the gods of our own lives. This is what sin is, and God can't be blamed for it, unless you want to blame him for making free-thinking individuals with the ability to make their own choices about how to live and what to believe. [rant off]

I'll rely on science's ability to extend and improve our lives, thanks. 

Yeah, I do too. Nothing un-Christian about that.

[Tallpine]

Thus proving that interplanetary travel is not only possible, but simple, since the dinosaurs must have been able to do it in order to get there and become methane, etc.
 

Inflatable dinosaurs, maybe ? 

[roo_ster]

Adam was created in the image of God.

The rest of us are created in the image of the fallen Adam.

'Leastways, that is my reading of that bit of Genesis.

Also, I see no problem using technology to extend/improve our lives, as long as we do not violate basic moral tenets such as crafting humans to serve as parts bins.

[Antibubba]

To kinda get back to the origins of the thread, the problem isn't the technology, it's how we see ourselves implementing it.  We have the technology to get to the moon, dig out the ice crystals, make hydrogen and helium, and smelt ore to build the rocket to Mars.  But that isn't an elegant solution, and the "visionaries" want something simple and yet complete.  That's what Apollo looks like to us today, but we forget the tragedy of Apollo 1.  Apollo was a work in progress.

We also overlook the difference between getting people up and getting stuff up.  We aren't too far from building an orbit-capable mass driver that will hurl all the raw materials we need before we rocket ourselves up.

[SteveT]

Yes, there is a "human nature". We are not born a blank slate.

My little 7 month old already has a clear personality and has had one for 7 months. She just has an ability to express it more.

Have you ever seen an infant angry? I have. She wasn't angry at anyone, but trying to crawl you could tell she was getting angry because she knew what she wanted to do but was unable to do it.

This was a 3 month old infant. I also watched her, at a few weeks old (meaning 3-4 weeks), give me the same "What are you doing!?" eyebrow raise and pulling her head back that I do when I tried a new way to play with her. An expression I had never used with her, but that I immediately recognized.

Admittedly, I already believed that nature is hugely inborn and nurture simply helps mold that nature. My experience with my little girl has confirmed that opinion; in fact it has made me lean even more towards nature.

That's an awesome description of the truth.

[Lanius]

That people even thought nurture is most important completely boggles me.

Blank slate my arse. Too bad I can't go back in time to gloat over how completely wrong they were...