[Doomhammer]

... or at least very longevity?

I'm really curious.

Thanks.

Edit: I ask this because I really don't want to stop existing. I'm sure this is true of you guys as well.

[Citizen J]

We have the capability of extending your life almost indefinitely. Unfortunately, your genes tend to unravel as you age. By the time you're two hundred years old, you will be little more than a cancerous blob kept alive by machines. I imagine it would be quite painful if your brain was not calcified and completely cancerous.

Have you changed your mind about not wanting to die?

[smashthestate]

Can we stop genes from 'unraveling'? I think that's what he's getting at.

[Torwan]

Genetics and nanotechnology are very new technologies and are slowly unfolding their capabilities.

It's impossible to speculate what can be done. However, I do believe that the current life span can be vastly extended with genetic engineering and nano technology.

The more interesting question is:
What happens to people when they can live for 500 or even 1000 years? What happens to society?

SciFi-author Alastair Reynolds has concentrated on this subject in his "Revelation Space"-space opera. His conclusions:

- People who can live that long avoid life-threatening risks. If your life expectancy is 500 years, you have a lot to lose if you risk your life at the age of 25.
- People get incredibly bored. After 200, 300 years there's not much new to explore. People will become "weird" and "excentric".
- Society slows down. Just imagine: A lifespan of 500 years. That would mean that social development would slow down by 80% (if we assume that the current lifespan is 100 years), because the senior generation in charge of things would rule longer. Just imagine yourself being ruled by the people of 1507 and you'll know what I mean. Just imagine: A 500-year-lifespan. The Roman Empire would just be four generations away. Your Great-Grandfather could tell you about Caesar and Jesus first hand!
(Assuming, of course, the paradox of fast social development in that time, but I think you'll get the image)

[Doomhammer]

Have you changed your mind about not wanting to die?

Assuming that there is a way to rectify this situation, i.e. reinforcing healthy genes, removing cancerous ones etc, then the answer is no.

- People who can live that long avoid life-threatening risks. If your life expectancy is 500 years, you have a lot to lose if you risk your life at the age of 25.

Then don't risk your life.

- People get incredibly bored. After 200, 300 years there's not much new to explore. People will become "weird" and "excentric".

Possibly. Again, not a severe problem. You can always find stuff to do.

[Torwan]

Then don't risk your life.

Don't say that so quickly. If you really have that much to lose - would you fly? Or drive in a car? Use a free-fall tower or go bungee-jumping?

Fifty years from now, that kind of travel may be regarded hazardous because of the many dangers in air- and car travel. Maybe a completely safe way of travelling will be invented. Would you like to lose 475 years of life because you couldn't wait another fifty?

That kind of thinking may arise.

Possibly. Again, not a severe problem. You can always find stuff to do.

Easier said than done. People today are often "life fatigued" or content with their life when they have lived 85, 90, 100 years. "I had a good and interesting life" etc.

What if they could add another 400? After your twelve marriage or your twentieth kid, that stuff won't be that interesting anymore. After your sixth career, your new boss won't be that good in motivating you to work double-shifts ("Listen, pal, I've heard that speech fifteen times the last 200 years, try something new!").

Boredom may be a real problem.

[Rodion]

The universe is infinite, by definition. Time is infinite, also by definition. I imagine it is not only possible, but inevitable, that an exact copy of each existing persona will, some day, be recreated. And then again. And again.

But, I suppose you're referring to your current lifetime. No, I don't think it is possible to extend life indefinetly, at this point. I'm optimistic about cryogenics becoming viable, though. Of course, there is always a chance you'll run into a scam and have your frozen body fed to street dogs...

I ask this because I really don't want to stop existing.

It gets better with age. In the mean-time, do what I do - study biology, in hopes of making yourself immortal.

[ThomasJ]

Boredom may be a real problem.

Compounded by the fact that everyone would have to have less sex because of the severe over population problems, although sex with a 200 year old doesn't sound too appealing. At the least, most governments would probably require that you get permission before having a child to limit the number of births.

[Russkie]

Earth has already an overpopulation problem, what do you think will happen if people live to 200-500 now?

You will have famine, which will lead to war over food. Most of the World will look like Africa pretty quickly.

[Raoul]

In "The Selfish Gene" Richard Dawkins (of current "God Delusion" infamy) proposes a method whereby human life-span could be massively extended. Unfortunately, it's only a hypothesis, not a theory, and it's too unethical to implement, but he does propose it as an interesting biological thought experiment.

The idea rests on the fact that people who survive longer are more likely to pass on sets of genes that will survive longer to their children. Not in the sense of being canny or tough enough to survive, but in the sense that some genes are predisposed to fail and develop cancer (for example).

So, if everyone reproduces at age 50, one can assume a slightly higher possibility of children that will live to 50. He suggests that gradually, the age of reproduction be pushed up and up, conceivably upping human life span to several centuries.

One problem I see with this is that the older the parents are, the more likely the pregnancy is to have problems, and of course that the hypothesis doesn't help the origional poster, who wanted his own life span expanded.

[Citizen J]

First off, I think completely synthetic nanotechnology is a dead end. It will never be as good as what we already have available in genetic engineering. Why reinvent the wheel?

Second, OK, I'll play this game. Assuming that some miracle drug or technology comes along that extends our lives by... let's just say 500 years. Damn, I would have a ball with that. There's so many things I could actually concentrate on mastering that I don't have to bounce from one to the next in just a couple of years. Methusalean longevity is what you make of it. If all you ever want to do is play video games for half your live, then that's what you will do even if your life is 500 years. For people like myself, there's a million things we can do and it would only take a sacrifice of 100 years to establish ourselves finanacially. After that, it's 300 years of college and other training for all the things I want to do. Damn, I should be so lucky.

As for being risk adverse, I don't know very many teens who think about their own mortality. So I seriously doubt that any would even if they have 500 years to go. Only those 'middle aged' would consider their mortality. But then, they do already. Again, it's a matter of personality. I imagine there's a lot of thrillseekers who, after a few hundred years, end up so jaded that unless they're massively risking their lives, they won't feel a thing.

Eccentricity? People are eccentric now. I agree, people will get more set in their ways. After a few hundred years, they're likely to be quite unusual - and perhaps wise too.

Boredom? Shit, there's far too much to explore to be bored. But then, if the extent of your interests is playing video games, then I can imagine one getting bored. Again, the answer lies entirely in the personality, not the world.

Things will slow down? Not a chance - some people will, some people won't. Again it's personal choice and personality that matters more than external conditions. People might have to learn to be more patient. But others will just take it to mean they have 400 more years to rule the world. And they just can't wait to get started.

What Richard Dawkins proposes will take dozens if not hundreds of generations before it bears any noticeable results. The human body is optimized to peak in the teens and twenties and decline after that. We can almost double one's lifespan simply by blocking insulin use within our fat cells. (Source) But there's a whole lot of factors involved; not just insulin. It's not just the genes that unravel; growth regulation, the immune system, environmental damage, etc., all play a role in the aging process. It's possible to double our lifespans by altering our genes at the blastocyst stage of development. But beyond that, genetics takes a back seat to environment as the leading cause of damage.

[smashthestate]

My question is this:

What if humans are able to live forever via scientific advances, but there's really a Heaven. Wow, that'd be a joke on us I guess!

[Raoul]

What Richard Dawkins proposes will take dozens if not hundreds of generations before it bears any noticeable results. The human body is optimized to peak in the teens and twenties and decline after that. We can almost double one's lifespan simply by blocking insulin use within our fat cells. (Source) But there's a whole lot of factors involved; not just insulin. It's not just the genes that unravel; growth regulation, the immune system, environmental damage, etc., all play a role in the aging process. It's possible to double our lifespans by altering our genes at the blastocyst stage of development. But beyond that, genetics takes a back seat to environment as the leading cause of damage.

- One of the stated problems with Dawkin's proposal was that it would take generations to bear fruit.

- Also, increasing a lifespan by 50% =/= 'almost doubling' it. Increasing it by 50% means adding 50% of the original span, ie, half the original span to the original span, which leaves you with 1.5 of the original span.

- 'We' cannot do this. Your source is concerned with how that works on the fruit fly, and postulates that we may some day be able to use similar techniques on humans.

[MistyTiger]

What's so bad about dying? Not to sound heartless, but if nobody died and babies kept on being born, eventually there would be no room left for the newcomers. Earth would become overcrowded.

I know I'll die one day, but I don't want to die a terrible death. Right now, that is my biggest fear.

If we could live forever, would we value life any less? Would we take it for granted? If we know we'll die, we'll try to make our lives the most fulfilling and we'll try to savor every moment. If we could be immortal, we could be nonchalant about things. Any thoughts on this?

[Photonmaton]

Even with the best technology and whatnot heatdeath will eventually kill all life in the end. Fucking entropy, preventing us from being drunken party-robots for all eternity.

[redcarpet]

I hope it can be obtained. I don't want to die, politics is too interesting to allow mortality to force my departure.

If we were like Tolkien's elves in having immortal lifespans with very slow aging, but still can be killed, then I'd be happy.

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

All things in the universe decay, that is the law of nature.

To expect that humanity should be immortal when the mountains are not immortal, is really silly.

[Citizen J]

I assume that if we survive long enough to witness the heat death of the universe, we will have figured out a way of escaping this universe or to create another. The few trillion years of scientific inquiry available to us should be sufficient to figure it out if it's at all possible.

The main problem is in surviving that long; either as individuals or as a species. We're not conservationsistic enough, IMO.

[electron]

There's a system called "Cryonics".
They preserve your body after your death and your body just waits for a long time until science finds a way to restore it. Check Google for info

[Galoredk]

To expect that humanity should be immortal when the mountains are not immortal, is really silly.

Huh

Anyway, as far as I remember they have already kept skincells alive far longer than normal through stemcells. At the end of a DNA string is something called telomer, which decays a bit for every time a cell splits. When there is no more telomer the cell dies. What scientists have found out is that stemcells can trigger telomer production so that newly split cells retain the telomer and then live potentially forever.

Please forgive me for being inaccurate, I saw this on Discovery channel a few years ago and my memory might be inaccurate. But it is something like that