[rsync]

"I could understand the impulse people would have to not extend their lives if that's truly what they wanted, but the almost _cultural_ belief that seeking immortality is Bad and Wrong, something only pursued by cartoon villains and insane emperors ..."

I've spent some time thinking about this. Bear with me ...

First, let me agree with you that I am flabbergasted by the notion that one would have nothing but ill-use for another 40 or 80 or 200 years of life - I would certainly find good and productive use for it, provided I was in good physical and mental health.

However, I ask you to consider the most liberal and progressive figures of the 18th century. Pick any that you like (hint: they're all men). Now bring them forward to the present and they are impossibly reactionary and conservative. Their wives didn't wear pants, they would refuse to speak to a divorced woman in public (if such a woman was even present) and they probably believed that homosexuals had no place in society.

That's us 200 years from now. No matter how "woke" you are or how liberal or progressive you believe your attitudes to be: either civilization collapses, or you're hopelessly - even dangerously - conservative and reactionary 200 years from now.

To put it succinctly: progressive people, and their opinions, turn into reactionary conservatives with nothing but the passage of time.

So now consider if all of those "woke" 18th century (white males) were walking around with us today. How does that affect politics and civilization ? We don't need to do a thought experiment - it's right here in front of us: the "villians" in the housing/NIMBY/prop13 debate are basically anyone over the age of 50 who owns property. Those people aren't even a full generation away from us and we're trying to decide whether they're just sort-of evil or all-the-way evil.

So yes, there is a cultural resistance to people living (a lot) longer and if you can extrapolate political mores forward 50-100-150-200 years I think you can see how quickly that would get murderous - and I do mean that.

...

Looking deeper, I think the prohibition is more than a political one, as I've described above, but one of individual vs. group optimization. You are thinking of your personal self as the organism - and that makes sense because we aren't bees or ants. However, there are other units that can be thought of as an organism and there is, by definition, a conflict between optimizing for the individual vs. optimizing for the tribe/race/species.

Remember: we have a word for what happens when a single cell reserves resources and prolongs its own life at the expense of the larger organism: cancer.

[UnFleshedOne]

People can change world-views multiple times in their lifetime, maybe this plasticity is just another thing we'll need to preserve as part of improvements designed for staying younger longer.

Arguably, for example in science, advancing it "one funeral at a time" is too slow even at current life expectancy. So one way of speeding it up is killing any prominent scientists over 30. Lots of benefits, right? We would have moon bases in early hundreds BC if humanity adopted that approach!

Advancing societal progress one generation worth of funerals at a time doesn't sound like a good strategy either. I propose reeducations camps instead. Similarly to how slavery during the time of its invention was a great humanitarian advance (alternative was literally death), imperative to keep up with times would be a good alternative to death as well.

Seriously though, changing society to value rationality, (in lesswrong kind of sense, with obligatory Crisis Of Faith exercises, etc) might be not much harder than extending life expectancy to 1k years.

Re: cancer -- society is not an organism, there is no inherent worth of society separate from what benefits it conveys to individual members. In other words, maybe that's my individual organismic bias showing, but individual cells live for the benefit of the host organism, while society exists for the benefit of individual members. Cancer cells are freedom loving cells!

[stcredzero]

That's us 200 years from now. No matter how "woke" you are or how liberal or progressive you believe your attitudes to be: either civilization collapses, or you're hopelessly - even dangerously - conservative and reactionary 200 years from now.

I knew a young woman in college who was extremely homophobic. I witnessed her bonding with a gay activist over soap operas and changing her mind. People change and adapt. Also, if you look back at history, you'll find people more "woke" than you.

if you can extrapolate political mores forward 50-100-150-200 years

Human history doesn't really work like that. We may be going beyond human history with AI, and it would work quite like that either.

Remember: we have a word for what happens when a single cell reserves resources and prolongs its own life at the expense of the larger organism: cancer.

A single alien AI that controls the resources of an entire solar system would likely see our civilization in these terms.

[Faark]

This is an interesting aspect. But our inability to or having a hard time of changing our fundamental believes seems like a bug to me. I'd hope its one of those health issues we'll learn to mitigate. Btw, do you guys also despise the concept of a global learning rate in AI/ML? There has to be a better way than just assuming "the current state is good enough, now lets only fix details". Humans certainly don't work that way.

But back to topic... even without, I have a hard time accepting that you can simply extrapolate the current "old people behavior" happening for a few hundred years longer. A lot of issues would suddenly affect them. They'd have already lived though multiple revolutions (e.g. new tech, maybe like not paying with hard cash anymore) and internalize this as a part of life. Actually, we're close to having to learn this right now, with how fast progress has accelerated.

But yeah, making it work with stuff like actively seeking peers across a diverse spectrum would probably require drastic effort with a significant burden placed on the individual.

[vokep]

But only some of the ideology from then is reactionary and conservative by today's standards.

Why the assumption that Past = Right/Conservative and Future = Left/Progressive? I grew up with about this view of politics, but I don't think it's accurate. It seems like a nice simplification, but it's a gross oversimplification that paints anything right of center as being obviously backwards.

[rsync]

"Why the assumption that Past = Right/Conservative and Future = Left/Progressive?"

No, that's not really what I am saying ... and you are correct, that would be a very blunt oversimplification (or just plain wrong).

What I am saying is that in an unbroken thread of society (that is, absent disaster or revolution or other "resets") views and mores become viewed as more and more conservative by each successive generation that succeeds them.

As I wrote, "progressive people, and their opinions, turn into reactionary conservatives with nothing but the passage of time." I don't mean that those people become conservatives, I mean that successive generations view them as more and more conservative.

I don't think that implies that conservative views are backwards - unless you start with an assumption that "new is always better". I don't assume that.

[saltcured]

I understood your original point. Implicitly, you are assuming that people develop their values and beliefs and lose plasticity over time, so they will not adapt to the societal changes happening around them.

I think the underlying thought experiment "would I want to be immortal" is plagued by these and other unspoken assumptions. We simply don't know what it would mean to have a lifespan decoupled from our evolutionary experience. Clearly, we have psychological and emotional development coupled to our physical development and our functional roles within human society.

What does it mean to freeze our physical health at our "prime" of 20s-30s? Would it also freeze our cognition and emotion? Or would an accumulation of experience still shift our minds into very different modes incongruent with what we assume of young adults? Think of idioms like "young at heart", "wise for her age", or "has an old soul". Will people freeze with one personality, or all trend towards some world-weary and sage disposition as they witness more and more of life and loss?

And what of pathologies and maladaption? When would people reproduce, if they are immortal? Where does evolutionary pressure provide feedback, if traits can erupt with arbitrarily inter-generational delay?

Can an economic and social system develop to handle immortal participants? The worst aspects of primacy could emerge, if actual individuals can take the place of dynasties and corporations as permanent centers of wealth and power. Conversely, would any potentially immortal individual want to take on great personal risk for the betterment of a larger group? How does this change with time? Would centuries of experience lead one to sacrifice for the young, or would the absence of decrepitude encourage selfish delusions of grandeur, thinking that an accumulation of vast experience should be preserved by spilling blood of relatively empty youth...?

[rsync]

"I understood your original point. Implicitly, you are assuming that people develop their values and beliefs and lose plasticity over time, so they will not adapt to the societal changes happening around them."

With respect, we're talking past one another.

I am not talking about the persons whose lives are extended.

I am talking about their new contemporaries - their "younger peers" who, in the past, would have never found themselves cohabitating with people who had lived 1xx or 2xx years ago.

It is those future young people who I think will have a very hard time accepting any views of any kind coming from any "great old ones" - no matter how plastic or malleable or open-minded those old people might be.

Their sin is simply being old and youth defines itself by breaking with the old. Right now there's a throttle on that struggle because people die. Without that throttle, the young will, I fear, kill the "vampires".

[saltcured]

To me, you still seem to be implicitly assuming that the old person would be reflecting "old" perspectives. I don't necessarily disagree with this assumption, but I think you may be overlooking how much your argument depends on this. And, I am not sure that the dreamers of life extension share this assumption.

Playing devil's advocate: If one had the permanent physical and cognitive characteristics of someone in their 20s-30s, might they not continue to pass as a young person? Unless you look up their identity in some registry, you wouldn't necessarily be able to identify a cohort. Here is urban Southern California, I see plenty of "old" people in their 50s-60s who are trying to pass as young people all the time. What if they don't have to mask fading hair and eyes, sagging or blotchy skin, aching joints, gravely voices, or personality changes?

You describe a person from 200 years ago existing today, as if they step out of a time machine. But, if they have had 200 years to absorb pop culture, mannerisms, dialect, etc. then how would you know? They won't be repelled by garlic nor invisible in mirrors. They won't even be afraid of sunlight (no skin aging!) and their blood-sucking may not be distinguishable from any young go-getter's.

[MadWombat]

So essentially, you are suggesting that people should die earlier, because you don't like old people :)

[rsync]

"So essentially, you are suggesting that people should die earlier, because you don't like old people :)"

No, not at all.

I am saying that one should be wary of living much longer than a typical lifespan because when people see vampires, they hunt them down and kill them.

[magduf]

>However, I ask you to consider the most liberal and progressive figures of the 18th century

People change over time. My mother is over 80 now, and happily buys all kinds of stuff on Amazon with her laptop or smartphone, even though she said decades ago she didn't see the need for a computer. Her politics are also quite liberal, a lot more so than a lot of 20-somethings I talk to these days who seem to be a bunch of MAGA fans.

Also, how do you know that progressive people from the 18th century would have a problem talking to a divorced woman or women wearing pants? Just because that was the standard of the day doesn't mean that everyone from those times agreed with that.

>progressive people, and their opinions, turn into reactionary conservatives with nothing but the passage of time.

This simply isn't true at all. Many of today's conservatives are quite young, and lots of liberals are quite old. One of the most liberal SCOTUS justices is on her deathbed now, while the youngest one is a Trump appointee.

[rsync]

"progressive people, and their opinions, turn into reactionary conservatives with nothing but the passage of time."

I'm sorry - that line makes it sound like I am saying those people who were progressive become, themselves, reactionary conservatives.

What I am trying to say is that viewed by successive, future generations those people become reactionary conservatives. That is, simply the passage of time changes the view, from outside, of those people.

"Many of today's conservatives are quite young, and lots of liberals are quite old."

Agreed. What I am saying is that, absent a revolution or other reset of our current society, both of those groups will be considered, 200 years from now, quite conservative.

An example looking backward:

Find me the most liberal and the most conservative participants at the signing of the US Declaration of Independence - now let's sign them up to speak at Berkeley tomorrow and see how that goes. See what I'm saying ?

[magduf]

You're falling victim to the classic fallacy that societies get more liberal with time. That simply isn't true at all, and you can see it many times in history. Here's a couple of examples: 1) Roman society vs. Medieval feudal society vs western society in the 15-1800s. The Romans had slaves, but the slaves could own money, buy their own freedom, etc., so they were really more like "indentured servants", so this already makes them more liberal and respecting of human rights than America in the early 1800s. Romans had freedom of religion: no one was burned at the stake for believing the wrong kind of religion there. You can't say the same for Medieval times. 2) Ancient Greece vs. everything until about 40 years ago: in ancient Greece and nearby areas, homosexuality was not only tolerated, but encouraged among military members to improve unit cohesion. We're only now tolerating homosexuality again, and even then, not that well. 3) America in the 1920s vs. America in the 1940s-60s. Remember "flappers", speakeasies, etc.? Society was more liberal in the 20s than later.

I can easily find examples of people in my own social circles (mainly through family contacts) where there's young people who are die-hard conservatives, MAGA fans, Christian zealots, etc., and older and elderly people who are staunch defenders of Roe v. Wade.

The things you identify as "liberal" vs. "conservative" simply do not correlate very well with age or generation at all.