Superlongevity Article

I ran across an article by Mark Walker on the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which got me thinking about things related issues surrounding life extension. Specifically I'm now background processing (in my brain, lest you think I'm smart enough to have a computer model built) the economic impacts of at least some percentage of the population having radically longer life spans.

Go read the article if you haven't. This post is largely to capture the comments I posted there.

Here were my comments (which are likely to make sense only if you've read Mark's article):

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the thought-stimulating article! Some comments:

In the population model presented, it seems as though the replacement rate would be applied to EVERYONE, not just the mortal. There is no assumption given that long-lived individuals won't breed at the replacement rate. So if reproduction continued only at the replacement rate, there would be an increase in population as long-lived individuals had replacement
offspring but did not die.

There is at least some reason to speculate that very long-lived individuals may actually reproduce above the replacement rate. Assuming that such individuals retained the capabilities of the relatively "young", I would not be surprised to see second or third relationships yielding children as a way of further strengthening a relationship, or even out of a desire to see how a different pairing results in differences in children. After all, if one might live for a thousand years, the 20 or so years that it takes to raise a child may seem pretty trivial, to be undertaken whenever it seemed interesting.

If one then chooses to hold the population constant (that is, no growth; which seems like a relatively arbitrary decision given no other information) then we get in to a situation where whatever factors are conspiring to keep the population steady force increased pressure on members of the population, potentially leading to revolts on one side or another (or the creation or exacerbation of factions not strictly aligned on the long-/short-lived spectrum) resulting in people being selected to die in some way (lottery, war, etc) to relieve the pressure. Worth keeping in mind is that pressure is likely to be applied across all individuals living at the time, not just the mortals.

One thing one might consider to help relieve this pressure would be to offer individuals large cash payments to maintain a "short-lived" life. This, on the face of it, solves very little in that as long as the long-lived continue to breed they will continue to put pressure on whatever is acting to stabilize the population (resources, for example). Since it seems likely that individuals would not be considered old enough to actively decide to live a short life until after the age where a short-lived individual would be able to conceive and care for children, it is therefore unlikely that rules that a free society are likely to adopt would be abe to successfully curb the expanding population.

Speaking of resources, things get complicated when one talks about resources too far into the future assuming that individuals are undertaking bio-modification of some sort or another. Given the present rate of technological progress, and the fact that life extension body modifications are likely to be developed concurrently, or at least only slightly ahead
of modifications for less dire reasons (such as improving the capabilities/efficiencies of the body system). It is therefore likely that whatever modifications humans undertake to themselves is likely to significantly alter the resources required to sustain an individual body. This may come from such abilities as to reconfigure ones body to suit a situation, which may allow an individual to adopt a much less resource heavy physical construction until need for a more resource-heavy body is required. This could alternately be accomplished by separating one's "consiousness" entirely from any physical presence,
again, except when needed. Inded, if consciousness is able to be separated from a physical body and Moore's law keeps moving along for several more generations, then an "individual" may take up very few resources at all (and any further efficiencies discovered would likely be easily propigated to all other "individuals" existing at the time).

Interestingly, if superlongevity does come about, it seems very likely that views on suicide will need to change at least somewhat. If it is theoretically possible for someone to live forever, we are likely to have to respect the will of some percentage of this long-lived population to be done with their living experience and either opt out of further life-supporting care or, equally likely, actively terminate their mortal existance. I wouldn't be surprised to find, hundreds of years hence, age of consent laws that treat suicide as akin to drinking: you must be old enough (say, 50 or 75) to be considered to have enough experience to make an informed choice.



It would be interesting if the backlash over the ability to live for a very long time was an increase in individuals not opting for life-saving procedures of any kind. The dissonance that is likely to arise between people who have chosen to become very long lived versus those who see it as antithetical to their religious/moral beliefs seems likely to cause at least some fracturing along these lines; it will be interesting to see what causes people to take sides. Even if the whole process of becoming long-lived unfolds over a long period of time so that individuals don't have to confront the idea of suddenly having a super-old population, I wouldn't be surprised to find a group of "young" people who become outraged by the idea (perhaps with a return to fundamentalism such as we are seeing now among some groups of people here and abroad) and gain traction on the idea as part of some larger dogma attractive to those who have not yet had to face the decision of living just a little bit longer.