[amrcnimgrnt]

You can't reverse aging, that's a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

You might be able to restore the body's ability to regenerate itself. But that's a terrible idea. I shudder at the idea of living to 120, never mind 200. Imagine being born in 1821 and having to live today. Imagine how confusing that would be.

[anyfoo]

> You can't reverse aging, that's a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Next time someone asks me to do the dishes, I will tell them the same. Hopefully they also forgot about the sun providing energy into the system.

[amrcnimgrnt]

Now start doing the math for how much power (I made it easy, I I'm only asking for the rate) that is required to keep someone alive indefinitely.

Don't cheat! Don't use the caloric needs of a fully grown adult. Their bodies stoically accept a lot of the damage done by entropy. You have expend additional energy to reverse it.

Don't cheat, remember to account for a population growth rate == the current birth rate.

If you don't like having to account for the growth rate, please give a moral explanation for why some select few get to live forever and others croak.

How much power do you need? How are you supplying this power? It's cute to say "Sun". But solar panels (let's assume 100% efficient) require surface area that would otherwise be used by plant and animals for their existence.

So live forever by

1. Radically transforming the Earth into a massive ball of polycrystalline silicon 2. Giving eternity to only a (very) select few.

[elzbardico]

>You can't reverse aging, that's a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

We are not closed Systems

[amrcnimgrnt]

Reversing the flow of aging is reversing entropy locally, so you're, overall, increasing entropy more outside of your body.

The live forever types are just assuming that energy will be plentiful enough to sustain hundreds of billions of people indefinitely [1] and heat easy to dissipate

[1] The population of the earth is stable at 7 billion only because people have this nasty habit of dying. If we stopped doing that, the population would grow exponentially at the birth rate of 1.7%. Or a doubling every 42 years. In 160 years (not that far off from the current record of longevity) the world's population would hit 100 billion people.

Of course the "live forever" types never mention that eternity is a promise for the privileged, and not for the masses.

[distantaidenn]

Huh? If you were an immortal, you don't just suddenly appear out of time. A person born in 1821 and still alive today would know more about the world than anyone else.

[anyfoo]

Yeah. I was born and lived before the Internet (in its widespread form) existed. Life was very different back then, and I am not confused.

As long as changes happen gradually, I don't see the problem. If they don't, people of almost all ages will be confused.

[amrcnimgrnt]

"Yeah. I was born and lived before the Internet (in its widespread form) existed."

So you're in-between the age of 40 to 60? Let's say you're 60, born in 1961:

- Your local pop radio station often plays a rock song from your adolescence. The Queen of Pop whose posters adorned your room and so scandalized your grand-parents still sings at the Super Bowl.

- The Star Wars movie you geeked out as a teen/young adult has become a billion dollar franchise your grandkids drag you to

- The ATM you learned to use thirty years ago are still around basically unchanged.

- the quarter the tooth fairy left you as a kid that you found in the tin can of boyhood treasures is still accepted as currency

Compare that to a 60 year old person born in 1820.

They have yet to have seen a train: most people in the world at the time lived their whole lives in their villages far from any railroad. China's first railroad was built in 1875, and quickly dismantled. (China, alone, in the 19th century had between 30 to 38% of the world population)

Most likely this person lives in feudally arranged society. The emancipation of the serfs in Russia was in the mid 1800s, and that was the last of the European countries to remove feudalism.

In the anglo saxon world, women were effective properties of their spouses.

The superiority/inferiority of races was obvious to the learned classes.

Slavery was practiced throughout the world except Europe and then the US.

Homosexuality was punishable by execution most everwhere in the world

Sexual roles were well defined and strictly obeyed according to local customs (i.e. they weren't universal norms, but norms existed universally).

The only way to fly was in a hot air baloon. The only people who ever witnessed this lived in Paris or in London

Steel existed but was extremely expensive and not used for construction. Wrought iron was used instead, and it was a brittle mess that resulted in catastrophes. As a result the buildings in urban areas were typically no more than 6 stories high. Religious buildings were much taller, but projects that took centuries to build.

Communicating with someone across the Atlantic took weeks.

Now, let's say our hypothetical person living in 1880 and born in 1820 lived another 60 years.

The airplane is invented and used to devastating effect in multiple wars

The automobile is invented, and by 1940 mass produced.

Throughout the world, therefore, buses provide transport to remote area that aren't serviceable by rail

Skyscrapers pop up.

A world war has impacted most people in the world. A new one has just started.

A communist society exists and has mechanized death killing millions.

Telecommunication, first by wired-telegraph, then by wireless telegraph, and finally by radio exists and enables instant communication across the globe. The most remote villages can receive the BBC world service, often in their native language.

Our gentleman most likely wouldn't be aware of this development but classical physics has been shattered, the concept of time turned upside down. The atomic era has also begun, but most people will be blissfully unaware for another 5 years.

Penicillin is about to revolutionize life expectancy.

I think this person born in 1820 would be very uncomfortable if living today.

[aaaaaaaaaaab]

Related: the movie “The Man from Earth”

[mucle6]

I'd take being confused over being dead

[amrcnimgrnt]

You haven't thought it through. It's terrible to be confused, whereas, it's nothing to be dead. You just rot, blissfully unaware.

Unless you're religious. Then it's not death you should fear, but the judgement.