Perhaps quality of life is the basic moral issue here.
Joel Send a noteboard - 28/02/2013 08:16:48 PM
It is relevant both to the desirability of living past the age most people are physically and/or mentally incapicitated AND finite global resources longer-lived First World populations would need.
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Well, I doubt we'll ever get around entropy and energy conservation but who can say? That upper limit, just by known techniques, is still pretty absurdly high, given billions of years with billions of solar system each with billions if not trillions or more people in each I wouldn't be surprised if someone found an escape clause. I mean a billion worlds with just Earth population and normal modern people would have more thought occur every minute then the whole human race has had in its entire existence. The sort of Malthusian limits at full solar let alone galactic or bigger are safely in the zone where you can ignore them under the assumption being far more like to be dealt with better, one way or another, down the road. Currently the Second Law is not really an issue against continued expansion, there are more immediate technical rather than fundamental phsyical hurdles to leap.
View original postThe article cites the relevant consideration: Sustainability. I thought about this the other day when I saw you reference global population projections in that thread on the new coal tech (to which I meant to respond, though it is a bit late now.) I am not endorsing some sort of extremist Zero Population Growth approach (for one thing, current projections show global human populations leveling off about midway through this century,) but finite resources put an upper bound on how high human population can rise before quality of life begins to fall. We can nudge that a bit with new energy sources and improved efficiency, but the Second Law of Thermodynamics is ultimately inescapable, hence it lies at the root of virtually not only all intra- but interspecies conflicts.
Well, I doubt we'll ever get around entropy and energy conservation but who can say? That upper limit, just by known techniques, is still pretty absurdly high, given billions of years with billions of solar system each with billions if not trillions or more people in each I wouldn't be surprised if someone found an escape clause. I mean a billion worlds with just Earth population and normal modern people would have more thought occur every minute then the whole human race has had in its entire existence. The sort of Malthusian limits at full solar let alone galactic or bigger are safely in the zone where you can ignore them under the assumption being far more like to be dealt with better, one way or another, down the road. Currently the Second Law is not really an issue against continued expansion, there are more immediate technical rather than fundamental phsyical hurdles to leap.
Until/unless extraterrrestrial colonies become feasible entropy is (naturally) an increasing problem for life. Ironically, consumption of finite fossil fuels actually OBSCURES even as it highlights that: Rising fuel costs convince many people energy production that was not economical before now is. Extracting oil from shale (for example) is not significantly easier or cheaper than ever; oil prices have simply climbed until it is PROFITABLE. It still CONSUMES as much energy as always, which is bad news from an entropic perspective. That is my basic problem with hydrogen fuel cells: Electrolysis must always use more energy than burning hydrogen produces; it does not provide energy, only make it portable for a cost.
Meanwhile, more life—humans, livestock, amoebæ; whatever—means more demands on our finite terrestrial energy supply. Finding previously untapped resources helps, but that basic dynamic cannot change. If we increase human life expectancy 20% (or whatever) we better increase human energy sources by the same amount, else we have a problem, or rather, exacerbate an existing one.
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The ever-thinner sliced pie issue and Malthusian problems have usually not been good guides to what should or did happen thereafter. I'm not even gonna touch the Soylent Green thing.
View original postIf extraterrestrial colonies become practical in the near future that might change (though only if those colonies rapidly become self-sufficient; otherwise they will only exacerbate rather than resolve the fundamental problem.) Until/unless that happens though anything and everything that permanently increases the human population, or any animal population, without proportionately increasing our energy supply must reducte overall living standards. Soylent Green was not just about plankton following animals into extinction; it was every bit as much about the food and energy demands of a New York City with twice its current population. It is no coincidence sustainabilitys widespread relevance emerged at the same time the longevity of postwar wealth and medicine became the Western norm.
The ever-thinner sliced pie issue and Malthusian problems have usually not been good guides to what should or did happen thereafter. I'm not even gonna touch the Soylent Green thing.
Oh? Growing populations have not competed over shrinking resources since life began? Animals have not killed each other over resources, man has not routinely fought wars over them? Did I just imprint too heavily on Avalon Hills Civilization, where war is actually impossible, but any time there are more people in an area than it can support "conflict" ensues until that is no longer true. War has often been a VERY Malthusian "solution" to human demands for resources exceeding availability.
View original postSustainability has always been an issue all the way back to hunter-gatherer times and it's just a modern conceit in the face of evidence and common sense to assume our ancestors weren't well aware of these issues. I doubt there were a lack of chieftains who looked around and knew they couldn't realistically expand their territory and knew they couldn't squeeze much more out, or that their people were unable to comprehend the issue when he came out and said "Okay guys, we can have less kids, be pickier about the ones we let live, kill of our sick and elderly, exile or kill troublemakers an undesirables, or try to invade our neighbors, or some combination of those... preference?" and feudal cultures regularly practiced deliberate population control.
All true; whose position are you advocating?
We perceive and articulate the details and implications of resource scarcity better, mainly from experience, but globalism is, for the first time, making many old regional problems a single global one. Primitive cultures could always, at least potentially, head over the next hill to seek an uninhabited region to help support them. That is no longer a terrestrial option; it can only be pursued via dubious and currently impossible Martian colonies. We would not send centenarian colonists, regardless, so I see no Caves of Steel solution (if that even qualifies as such.) As for Soylent Green, remember it was plausible enough for an NRA president to play the lead. 
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Even if you can't find a way to just get people to not age the analogy might be a car you just keep replacing parts on, the last piece of the original will likely still be around long after you've had to replace some parts repeatedly and its still the same car after every piece has been replaced, after all most of your body is not composed of atoms that were in you when you reached adulthood, as opposed to a car or refrigerator which usually hits the junkyard long before most of its atoms have been replaced.
View original postFortunately or not, I doubt we need fear continuing longevity increases overpopulating the planet to the point of social collapse. The increase in life expectancy since the Industrial Revolution looks more dramatic than it is because it continued so long, but there is real reason to question whether that pace is itself sustainable. It is considered an axiom that few Bronze Age humans lived past 30, but it is just as in/valid to say few Medieval ones lived past 50, and that few pre-atomic ones lived past 60. That is probably a net positive, but we may be at the point of marginal returns, because, having eliminated most deaths from wild animals, exposure, deprivation, injury and illness, Western deaths are increasingly due to the the human body simply grinding to a halt from wear.
Even if you can't find a way to just get people to not age the analogy might be a car you just keep replacing parts on, the last piece of the original will likely still be around long after you've had to replace some parts repeatedly and its still the same car after every piece has been replaced, after all most of your body is not composed of atoms that were in you when you reached adulthood, as opposed to a car or refrigerator which usually hits the junkyard long before most of its atoms have been replaced.
Replacing a body is a very different matter than just preserving it, with far greater resource demands, and raises a whole OTHER host of moral questions, like the ethics of "organ-farming" animals or even humans. Yet we cannot replace the brain or its parts; we do not even know where to begin. That moots much of the effectiveness in both replacing other organs or making them last 500 years.
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I feel obliged to point out that its very hard to stick a satelite into orbit but we sure have hung a lot of them up there since the notion was first seriously contemplated less than a human life ago, back when it took entire buildings to house computers with less power then an iPad. We haven't known much about DNA until relatively recently even compared to rocketry and computers.I think it is way too soon to be talking about limitations on what we can or can't do with DNA, especially since we've been able to start printing the stuff. I don't even think its all that absurd to think someone might have an 'oh, duh' moment in the next couple decades and come up with a cheap and easy never-age technique. It's only been about a decade since we really knew much more about DNA then its general function and existence.
View original postCarefully and consistently maintained diet and exercise could well push the longevity envelope higher, but a world where most people live past 90 or 100 is not very plausible. As our bodies degrade from wear, making activity more limited and less rewarding, there is a real question whether anyone would WANT to live longer than that. Regardless, we are unlikely to find a way to replace/regenerate telomeres or reverse cellular free radical damage. It is hard to believe our life expectancy could nearly double, as during the 10,000 years between the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, or even rise ~25% as in the succeeding 200 years. An increase of a "mere" 15% over the next 50 years, comparable to that over the last 50, is plausible, but, in my unprofessional opinion, anything more is dubious.
I feel obliged to point out that its very hard to stick a satelite into orbit but we sure have hung a lot of them up there since the notion was first seriously contemplated less than a human life ago, back when it took entire buildings to house computers with less power then an iPad. We haven't known much about DNA until relatively recently even compared to rocketry and computers.I think it is way too soon to be talking about limitations on what we can or can't do with DNA, especially since we've been able to start printing the stuff. I don't even think its all that absurd to think someone might have an 'oh, duh' moment in the next couple decades and come up with a cheap and easy never-age technique. It's only been about a decade since we really knew much more about DNA then its general function and existence.
It's like liquid crystals, those got discovered in the late 19th century about the same time they were noticing pus-filled bandages had what they came to realize was DNA but it wasn't really seriously studied in a mass effort till the 50s and 60s, but we went from 7-segment digital watches and clocks when we were kids, to the cheap and total replacement of vacuum tube 'Radiation King' TV's and monitors of our youth. When I was just starting formal study of physics the Buckyball was the new cool thing as was real, genuine superconductors, the C60 buckyball was supplanted by the carbon nanotube and very recently by graphene, a super material of uncalculable worth... which is manufactured with pencil lead and scotch tape and now with DVD players. I'm not trying to diminish Novoselov but the wonder material he developed is essentially an 'oh, duh' and I'll be astonished if mass production takes more than another decade to get rolling and if it isn't incorporated into virtually every damn thing within a decade thereafter.
Anything is possible, but dismissing a serious problem on the grounds someone somewhere will eventually eliminate it with a revolutionary discovery is VERY irresponsible. My dad expected flat screen TVs about the time I finished HS in '91, predicted they would be thin and light enough to hang on the wall like paintings and display great ark works in standby mode like screensavers. That lowered no ones rent or grocery bills though, not even ours. We may beat telomeres, perhaps even without making cancer a communicable epidemic, but I would not bet on it (as you seem to be almost literally doing,) certainly not soon. Either way, people will still need food, shelter and medical care, and still be willing to kill to survive.
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Well, the solution will depend on the problem. Obviously if a longevity technique meant you were 80 before you were as physiologically beat up as the average 65 year old the solution is to raise retirement to 80 and tell people not to be stupid about it. If the technique means you hit the equivalent of 65 at 65 and chug along unable to work for another century then you have to flatly tell people that if they can't make their own arrangements too damn bad. If it is just 'don't age' then you tell people retirement is an outdated concept and they should seek 'sabbatical', work, save up cash, and go on vacation for a couple years then go back to work, or work less but constantly, as circumstance and preference dictate. There may or may not be constraints, until we see what those are it's a moot point. It's the equivalent of worrying about the effect of video games on children and internet porn on relationships when you've just manufactured the first silicon chip, nobody did that of course because none of them envisioned either of those. Until we have the problem literally in our lap the pros and cons can't be weighed with pragmatism in mind, only basic morality.
View original postPerhaps a better question, one directly bearing on sustainability but that its fiercest advocates resolutely avoid, is what longer healthier lives combined with the Second Law of Thermodynamics mean for the welfare state. Western social security and retirement medical insurance set retirement age at the current life expectancy, ~65, but retirement age has remained flat ever since, despite Western life expectancy increasing a full decade. Paired with falling birth rates, that is an actuarial disaster.
Well, the solution will depend on the problem. Obviously if a longevity technique meant you were 80 before you were as physiologically beat up as the average 65 year old the solution is to raise retirement to 80 and tell people not to be stupid about it. If the technique means you hit the equivalent of 65 at 65 and chug along unable to work for another century then you have to flatly tell people that if they can't make their own arrangements too damn bad. If it is just 'don't age' then you tell people retirement is an outdated concept and they should seek 'sabbatical', work, save up cash, and go on vacation for a couple years then go back to work, or work less but constantly, as circumstance and preference dictate. There may or may not be constraints, until we see what those are it's a moot point. It's the equivalent of worrying about the effect of video games on children and internet porn on relationships when you've just manufactured the first silicon chip, nobody did that of course because none of them envisioned either of those. Until we have the problem literally in our lap the pros and cons can't be weighed with pragmatism in mind, only basic morality.
Let's say you had 3 miracle drugs and that people joined the workforce at 20, retired at 60, and died at 80, just to keep the math easy.
Drug 1: People reach maturity at 40, retire at 120, and die at 160 - no real meaningful change in resources, people still a quarter growing, half working, and a quarter dying, except that someone working in their field for 80 years is probably way more productive than one who has been for 40.
Er, no, that is still a BIG change in resources, because people do not spontaneously generate energy (Matrix trilogy notwithstanding:) We CONSUME it. So people living for 160 years but only working for 80 would mean each 1) consumed twice as many finite resources and 2) were negligibly productive twice as long. We might call the 30 year old adolescent an investment on their 80 years of productiveness (without diminishing the energy cost one whit,) but not the 130 year old geriatric who would consume for another 30 years without producing anything. Perhaps their 80 productive years should earn a comfortable retirement, but as you note, it would not work that way when resources are extremely and increasingly scarce.
View original postDrug 2: People reach maturity at 20, retire at 60, and die at 120 - this is not so good, they spend one third rather than one half of their life producing
Drug 3: Mature at 20, retire at 140, die at 160 - This is very good, people produce for 120 of their 160 years, 75% of it, education and retirement cost are minimal compared to production.
These all involved people living longer but are totally different problems and concerns, trying to develop a 'plan' for those events prior to knowing which one isn't doable because they have nothing in common in practical terms
ALL those cases involve equal resource CONSUMPTION: Food, shelter and medical care for 160 years of human life CONSUMES equal resources however productive one is/not. Whatever they produce will not include electricity, farmland or oxygen, all of which they will consume.
"Flatly tell[ing] people that if they can't make their own arrangements too damn bad" is very much a moral issue, hence the articles ethical reference. It is why my mother mocks self-absorbed wealthy people by saying they consider everyone no longer productive liabilities who should have the decency to die (which irks me solely because she paraphrases me without attribution 
.) That is a moral debate, as is euthanasia for "healthy" but incapacitated elderly people. Increasing human life spans 100% would increase those moral debates proportionately.
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I don't think most Americans in our age rang take retiring at 65 for granted, Joel, we're noted for being rather cynical and people have been talking about the inevitable collapse or rollback in age on SS for a long while.
View original postMaintaining retirement insurance when only 10-20% survive to use it and birth rates exceed replacement level is much easier than when 50% of people live long enough to earn benefits and population growth becomes static. Public retiree benefits were established for people who beat the odds, because surviving beyond life expectancy was unlikely enough retaining the abilty to work AS WELL was quite rare. Ironically though, few enjoying todays greater life expectancies are old enough to remember the basis of public retirement insurance. Most of us take retiring at 65 for granted (even when retirement benefits are inadequate for that,) but the programs were created in the days before bypass surgeries and artificial hips, when most were UNABLE to work past 65, if they even lived that long.
I don't think most Americans in our age rang take retiring at 65 for granted, Joel, we're noted for being rather cynical and people have been talking about the inevitable collapse or rollback in age on SS for a long while.
When I said, "most of us," I meant the US public as a whole, not just those of our fellow twenty- and thirty-somethings who never outgrew flipping off their parents and calling them heartless idiotic hypocrites.
Hopefully most of us get past "Santa is a lie so I cut myself and commit petty arsons" by retirement age. Social Securitys collapse is far from inevitable (America and Italys horrid mismanagement notwithstanding, it is doing fine throughout most of the rest of the industrialized world,) but rolling back retirement age is: It has been federal law since 1983—we increased it TWO years, phased in by 2027! 
That ain't gonna do it.
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The question on the table though isn't social security but whether or not longer lifespans are immoral or undesirable. That has to be an 'in and of itself' discussion same as something like capital punishment. If you say 'we should execute all felons because they are eating valuable food' you're in a different argument and one that doesn't revolve around life expectancy, that's just another factor in a classic argument, that whole Calculus of Despair, which we always have to do, even if currently the nastier form is having to pick between the the drunkard, the seventy year old, and the mother of three hit by a car as to who gets the single liver we have for transplant. Those are separate from morality of longer life in of itself.
View original postSooner or later we must adjust to the new numerical reality, and rising life expectancies and overall health bring that day ever closer.
The question on the table though isn't social security but whether or not longer lifespans are immoral or undesirable. That has to be an 'in and of itself' discussion same as something like capital punishment. If you say 'we should execute all felons because they are eating valuable food' you're in a different argument and one that doesn't revolve around life expectancy, that's just another factor in a classic argument, that whole Calculus of Despair, which we always have to do, even if currently the nastier form is having to pick between the the drunkard, the seventy year old, and the mother of three hit by a car as to who gets the single liver we have for transplant. Those are separate from morality of longer life in of itself.
Spoken like a scientist isolated from researchs practical effects.
Longer lifespans are not moral issues IN THEMSELVES, but life is not lived in a vacuum. Significantly raising lifespans (or rather, raising it further) would carry a host of huge, immediate and MORAL practical concerns. Cavalierly ignoring them and doing it anyway, or assuming science will "somehow" magically elimate them, IS immoral in itself, and why many people fear loosing technological genies from their bottles.
Honorbound and honored to be Bonded to Mahtaliel Sedai
Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
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Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
This message last edited by Joel on 28/02/2013 at 08:26:21 PM
Scientists claim 72 is the new 30
- 26/02/2013 03:06:04 AM
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"New" is a relative term, as its usage here demonstrates.
- 26/02/2013 04:31:24 AM
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Re: "New" is a relative term, as its usage here demonstrates.
- 26/02/2013 08:28:58 AM
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Perhaps quality of life is the basic moral issue here.
- 28/02/2013 08:16:48 PM
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I don't see why it would be immoral, but I can see why it would be undesirable
- 26/02/2013 04:59:32 AM
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