[YurgenJurgensen]

You have only considered the consequences of you living forever. It wouldn’t just be you, it’d be everyone. Well, more likely, it’d just be the rich, and you’d just have to hope you’re rich enough to afford it. And good luck with social mobility in a world where the ‘generational wealth’ doesn’t need the ‘generational’ part. You’ll find that an internship at a company with the potential to eventually give a high-paying job in a few decades needs 80 years of experience, three PhDs and a personal recommendation letter from at least one legendary figure just to make it to interview because you’re competing in a job market with immortals.

This feels similar to the people who advocate for dictatorships because they picture themselves as the dictators, and end up having their faces eaten by leopards. Statistically, you’re overwhelmingly likely to not end up in the elite in this new deathless world.

[terryf]

I'm certainly not part of the elite even in the current deathful world :)

And yes, of course there will be issues, difficult ones. But life is, was and will always be filled with difficulty, obstacles, struggles and failures. Mine certainly is.

However, I believe in progress and overcoming obstacles and I believe that if we ever manage to extend life, we will figure out ways to make it work.

There is a lot of talk how finding jobs is more difficult these days if you are young and do not have experience. That real-estate is so expensive that nobody is able to afford it.

And I'm sure it's true.

But I also see a lot of young people succeeding and thriving in ways that I could not even have thought of. Therefore, I think there is reason to believe that the next generation will be able to find a way to make it work. As has every generation before.

When I was younger I used to think that situations in the world are now radically different from what the previous generation had to deal with. And on the first level of abstraction, they are! Computers did not exist for the generation before me. So of course it was new.

However, that is just the first level of abstraction. Take the second level of abstraction and you can look back and identify things that are completely new for each new generation. I mean, how different was the concept of going to work in a factory with a loom from the previous generation where machines did not exist at all!

[mathgeek]

> Therefore, I think there is reason to believe that the next generation will be able to find a way to make it work. As has every generation before.

It’s worth remembering that many generations lost a significant percentage of their population to war, death, famine, etc. They didn’t always find a way to make it work without significant death and suffering. Many who died probably wouldn’t say “we made it work” for their own lives.

[terryf]

This is certainly true, but I don't understand what you are trying to say in the context of this thread?

[keiferski]

Yes I think most people here aren’t considering the fact that technology is rarely evenly distributed.

Rawls’ veil of ignorance is relevant here:

In the original position, you are asked to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

[BenFranklin100]

Except in the short term, technology is one of the few things that almost always ends being distributed evenly. 2000 years ago, the only way to get running water was to be Ceaser and command a slave, “Go run and get me water.” Now one turns a tap. Similar arguments can be made to innovations ranging from household appliances to medical advances that were only available to the wealthy 50 years ago.

You also overestimate the power of entrenched interests and underestimate the political agency of those who live in a functioning democracy.

[wizzwizz4]

Ancient Romans had tap water. We get the word "plumbing" from Latin. Also, from https://www.unesco.org/reports/wwdr/en/2024/s:

> As of 2022, 2.2 billion people were without access to safely managed drinking water (SDG Target 6.1).

I don't think this invalidates your general point, but your specific example is wrong.

[BenFranklin100]

Thanks for the comment. The Roman water system is indeed a marvel and did vastly facilitate access to water for the masses. Specifically though, I was referring to having easy access to tap water within one’s home. That, to my knowledge, was not common, whereas today nearly everyone in the first and second world has that [1].

[1] “It was very rare for a pipe to supply water directly to the home of a private citizen, since Romans would have to acquire an official authorization to validate the direct tap. Water mostly serviced the ground floor in buildings, rarely supplying the upper floors due to the difficulty this would provide in the gravity-powered system. Residents of apartment buildings who lived in the upper floors would have to carry water upstairs and store it in their rooms for sanitary uses” from https://engineeringrome.org/the-water-system-of-ancient-rome....

And yes, there is still many parts of the world still in poverty, but that is changing rapidly and doesn’t change the larger point that technology, by and large, democratizes and filters to the poor.

[keiferski]

In broad strokes, you are correct, however in this case specifically I'm not so sure. Access to healthcare today is extremely unequal. I really doubt it'll become less unequal when immortality is on the line.

[BenFranklin100]

Unequal or not, the the bottom quarter today have better health care than the top quarter 75 years ago. Technology filters down to the masses. We can discuss timelines, but the basic fact is indisputable.

You have provided no evidence that the diffusion of technology will be different under an extended lifespan regime. You just make a bald statement.

[keiferski]

I'm not sure how that is an argument against my initial comment. So the advancements will supposedly drift down to the lower classes over time. Society will still be unequal, and at that point the people with access to the best longevity tech will already be in power.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to provide evidence of a future speculative event, but as I said, more life is about as strong as an incentive as is possible. There are plenty of examples of powerful technology that didn't become more accessible. Nuclear weapons as a prime example.

Now I don't think longevity tech, if such a thing is even possible (and I'm skeptical) will be as restricted as nuclear weapons. But to think that there won't be massive inequalities in access to it + strong power incentives to not distribute it seems naive to me.

[BenFranklin100]

If you put nuclear weapons and extended lifespans in the same bucket, you’ve lost the script. Good night.

[DennisP]

Elites are not the only ones who get cancer treatments. Since the diseases of aging are extremely expensive, it's even likely that national health insurance programs would pay for anti-aging treatments. Longer lifespans would also help counter lower fertility, which is an economic problem for most developed nations.

Long-term, sure, maybe we end up with a social mobility problem. But solving that seems less difficult than solving aging. Even if we didn't solve it, I'm not convinced it would be a bad trade.

Imagine we lived in world with an average lifespan of a thousand years but little social mobility. And some prominent person said "hey I know how to fix this, we'll just kill everyone on their 90th birthday." I doubt many people would consider that a viable solution, rather than a ridiculously bad one.

[robertlagrant]

> This feels similar to the people who advocate for dictatorships because they picture themselves as the dictators, and end up having their faces eaten by leopards. Statistically, you’re overwhelmingly likely to not end up in the elite in this new deathless world.

I don't think I've ever heard of anyone saying this.

[elzbardico]

The idea we have of "Generational Wealth" depends on compouding returns and compounding returns require perpetual economic growth which is something that in a sufficiently long timeline is simply not possible.

Also, on capitalism, economic growth is also dependent at some level on population growth.

Eternal life would probably require some kind of socialism.

[robertlagrant]

Well, generational wealth only continues to work if you continue to provide value, somehow. Your money gets inflated away otherwise.