We should count ourselves incredibly lucky that our lives are finite. I think that death leads to the progress of society generation by generation and if we lived forever we would stagnate as a society. Wanting to live forever is something the ego naturally wants for itself but it's very selfish.
excellent point!
It might progress even faster because you'd quickly get hyper intelligent people who don't have to start from scratch on anything
another excellent point! i think this is one of the few positives, and it's huge!
I think some time in the future, there will come a time where the population is very unbalanced.
i think that too (life being unbalanced has been going on for very long, but it will be moro so in the future)
fascinating thread, so thank you for posting :)
we might be able to become immortal, but that might have terrible consequences
we're too arrogant, selfish, and shortsighted to consider fundamental implications
like it was mentioned above:
- nature needs to upgrade itself through evolution (newer improved version of us)
- eliminate weaknesses, and promote success for both: physical attributes (DNA) and intellect
- evolution generated intelligence, but our current intelligence is limited - it must evolve to get to higher levels, even if human intelligence is much higher than all the rest of the animals
imagine we became immortal, right now - 8 billion people
the only way to evolve is by adding new members
- live is already unsustainable as it is (more births than deaths)
- consuming all resources available (nature is unable to regenerate fast enough)
- the current 8 billion will need diversity in DNA
— potential of 8 billion deaths caused by a virus
— if no viruses: +134 million births (vs -67 million deaths) (
2022) - avg 100 m / year, 1 billion / 10 years
— 100 years from now we'll get to about 20 billion - exponential overpopulation
—- because nature will never be able to generate enough resources:
—- we need to conquer space, and Mars is not considered naturally inhabitable
—- we need
exoplanets - not possible in 100 years (maybe 1,000 years from now - big maybe!)
other factors:
- 8 billion with current intelligence vs 12 billion at (much) higher levels of intelligence
— 8 billion of extremely unhappy people (12 billion miserable from other reasons, such us philosophy)
- current mental memory capacity - no one ever thinks of this:
— is our memory considered infinite? (i don't think so, but our suffering will be)
—- even if we have infinite memory - are we able to handle/bear it? (with current mental health care?)
- another one that is quite obvious, related to current level of intelligence
— we will be extremely bored - immortality is very troubling, because of other strict limitations
i think we can come up with a lot more, but probably won't: shot first, ask questions later (so we'll shot ourself in the foot:)