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by falcolas
4579 days ago
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The recent Torchwood miniseries Miracle Day spent a good 6 episodes talking over this very point. It's worth watching, if only for some good speculative fiction about how humanity would really respond if we suddenly were immortal. In short, we have a lot more pressing problems to address with the basic human condition before we make ourselves immortal... Removing things like homelessness and poverty would be more beneficial first steps (and ironically would go a long ways to increasing the average lifespan of our population). |
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In fact, there is a whole class of problems that cannot be meaningfully tackled by addressing them directly. I imagine a physician in the dark ages "treating" people suffering from acute pestilence would say there are more pressing concerns than research into invisible microbes. An aid worker in Africa fighting disease and poverty would say there are more pressing things than life extension and nanotechnology.
And then, unexpectedly to a lot of people, whole classes of problems just disappear because of the consequences of a newly discovered technology. Right now, fighting poverty with advanced 3D printers seems like lunacy or heresy, because our society is based on scarcity. Eliminating unwanted death and disease looks like a maniacal pipe dream that frightens a lot of people, because our civilization is based on death and superstition.
From a psychological perspective it's interesting that heroically fighting a losing battle against certain consequences of our deficiencies is considered good and honorable, while eliminating the root causes is strictly taboo.
As an aside, I liked Miracle Day (but not as much as The Children of Earth, by a long shot), but it portrays a very gruesome and technically implausible form of "immortality". It's clear why they chose to do it like this, because the whole plot hinged pretty much on the monstrosity of that effect. That's however not what it would look like if/when we become adept at life extension.