[ben_w]

Longevity is neither necessary nor required for "running out of space".

If the mean person has more than 2 kids, the population grows until it can't, no matter how long or short our lives.

If we cure aging and all disease, our half-life due to accidents and homicide is (currently) somewhere around 1000 years — the same "2 kids" rule applies.

[maxehmookau]

I really hope I die of something natural, quietly, in my sleep at a reasonable age instead of a freak accident or being murdered.

[ben_w]

My mum died that way.

Alzheimer's, leading to not drinking enough water (not that anyone around her was aware of that until the coroner's report), leading to kidney failure.

Her last day was very obviously painful, and given the nature of the condition, I suspect that the instantaneous experience of pain was her whole universe.

My dad died from bowel cancer; took a year of gradually wasting away. That was also natural.

[croes]

I doubt that that is what parent meant.

More like you go to sleep and never wake up again. No fear, no pain.

[xvector]

I would much rather spend another 900+ years with my loved ones (or however long I want) rather than being forced to die so ridiculously early.

Put another way: if you knew for a fact that you would get murdered 40 years from now, would you choose end it all via peaceful lethal injection today? I very much doubt it.

For every person dying "peacefully" on their deathbed, truly happy to succumb to death, there are 1000 more people that would do anything in their final moments to physically reset to the age of 20.

Also, think bigger - if technology continues to progress, we won't be biological a few hundred years from now. We'll be digitized, each consciousness likely spanning multiple redundant nodes throughout the planet or solar system. So these freak accidents are not relevant - nothing short of a cosmic event would kill you. It's highly unlikely that you'll die before whenever you choose to die - our lives would be indefinite for all practical purposes.

---

Edit because of the ridiculous HN rate limit:

> The "short" life span is one reason we take risks.

No, it's why you take risks. I'm happy to take risks - the fact that I'll die one day has no bearing on, say, my decision to go paragliding this weekend, or to push hard for a promo.

Risk does not necessarily arise out of the certainty of death, it can arise out of any number of other factors.

> I bet we would get a dystopia with long living dicators and short living peasants.

People have said this about most therapies historically but this has never come to pass.

Anyways, why throw up your hands and give up immediately? That attitude never got our species anywhere.

> Altered Carbon style, eh? Cool, sign me up for a cortical stack.

A bit more clever than that :) Individual consciousnesses could be distributed to avoid death from a single cortical stack being crushed.

[metadat]

Altered Carbon style, eh? Cool, sign me up for a cortical stack.

[croes]

The "short" life span is one reason we take risks.

Would you rather climb a mountain and risk losing your life in an accident if it means 50 years of remaining life or 950 years?

[ben_w]

1000 years would give me time to climb all the mountains, walk all the rivers, hike all the trails, and start a family, write those books, and learn to play those instruments, and still have time for a round-trip to another star.

[peteradio]

Why would the owners of this technology ever share it with you?

[ben_w]

Why does Gates give away so much money? Because the money itself makes no difference to his life any more.

Why do people leak documents? Because they think other people's secrets should be public information.

Why do we create ownership rights over information, such as patents and copyright, in the first place? To incentivise people to make more of those things. Why are these rights time-limited? Because nobody can, with a straight face, continue to claim they need any greater incentives than they already have.

Why go governments have Eminent Domain? Because the best interest of the people (or the nation) isn't the same as the best interest of the existing owners.

Why did the October Revolution and the Cuban Revolution happen? Because enough of the right people in the right place at the right time, decided that the old system of combined ruling-and-owning was bad.

[croes]

Guys like Putin would love that.

I bet we would get a dystopia with long living dicators and short living peasants.

[xvector]

The argument that "advanced medical therapies are only available to the rich" simply has not been proven true throughout human history.

[squarefoot]

With healthcare only the rich can afford, in some places we're already at that point.

[croes]

But they gain 50-60 years at max, not 600-1000 years.

And the poor will still exist if longevity is discovered.

[ben_w]

Longevity discovered by AI, implies[0] AI which is so good that none of us can work for money anyway — it comes with an economic change too large to make a reasonable projection of what happens next, as it's more different from what we have today than either Communism (any of them) or Neoliberalism is from Ancient Greek city states using electrum.

[0] but we can't say for sure until we have it, thanks to all the other things we assumed would need human-like AI and didn't, like Chess, Go, writing code, etc.