From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 26 2000 - 13:43:02 MST
>From: Adrian Tymes <wingcat@pacbell.net>
>
>Zero Powers wrote:
> > My point was simply that it will be
> > much easier to get people to support longevity research once it is clear
> > that the environment will be able to support 10 billion people who like
>to
> > make babies but don't like to die. It is hard to convince people that
> > indefinite life spans won't presently sap our environmental and
>agricultural
> > resources when people now typically only live less than 80 years and yet
>a
> > good percentage of us are living in poverty and starving.
>
>I'm not sure that such could be done, at least not just by funding
>medical infrastructure. Suppose that we do manage to cure death - which
>is what we propose to do here. Unless this cure causes sterility and
>can not be applied to anyone who has already sired a child, this would
>make humanity's growth rate permanently positive, barring catastrophies.
>Therefore, we could never be satisfied with having the world support X
>billion humans, for we would know that there would always be more than X
>at some future date. Barring expansion into space - which remains only
>a theory until we actually have working and inhabited space stations or
>other colonies off of Earth, and thus is not currently a solution that
>many will entrust their futures to without some backup plan - this means
>that our planet would have to support an indefinitely growing number of
>people.
>
>I think there may be a solution to this, though. As has been noted, all
>doomsday predictions assume no enhancement of technology to support
>increased demand. What if we could make popular the notion that
>technology will *always* rise to meet the challenge, at least for our
>most critical needs (which, logically, would have more people working on
>them to bring technology up to snuff)? If most of the public accepted
>that we will always find a way to make enough food to feed all our
>people - even if we sometimes stumble in actually getting the food to
>the hungriest of mouths, but not in such a way as to make a larger
>fraction of humanity hungry - then all "can the Earth support X billion
>humans" questions become moot, no?
This assumes a level of optimism which I don't think we are apt to find in
the real world.
> > >2. The amount of money needed to make decent progress towards longevity
> > >- to take the level you quoted, $100 million - would have very little
> > >practical impact on supplying "normal" medical care.
> >
> > I question whether $100 million would have very much impact on longevity
> > research. My guess is that there is currently at least that much being
> > spent right now on aging research and other research that will be of
>value
> > to life extensionists. And sure $100 million would not end hunger, but
>you
> > could damn sure build a lot of irrigation with it.
>
>And what do you do about the soldiers who hijack the farmers' harvest at
>gunpoint, so that they and their bosses may feast while the farmer
>starves? The main cause of hunger is not a lack of food production.
I agree that poor management (and things like corruption and civil war) are
among the biggest contributors to hunger in the 3rd world. But that will
only partially help to mollify those who would support alleviation of world
hunger and poverty over immortality research.
> > >3. Longevity research may well advance "normal" medical care in ways
> > >that purely investing in "normal" medical care would never accomplish.
> > >For example, if one were to find a generic vaccine that made humans
> > >immune to most or all viruses, that would have immediate applications
> > >toward preventing people from getting sick - but such is much more
> > >likely to be discovered by researchers looking to minimize health
> > >problems over infinite lives, as opposed to researchers looking to just
> > >let people live long enough to die at 60 or 70.
> >
> > Perhaps, but I still maintain that if you couch it in terms like
>immortality
> > or indefinite life span research, you are simply not going to make any
> > headway with the public, at least until we have global poverty,
>ignorance
> > and hunger already under control.
>
>Define "under control". I am pessimistic that these problems can be
>reduced enough that they dissapear from the public eye, at least within
>the predictable future.
"Under control" certainly does not mean "eliminated." I think all you would
need is steadily increasing significant progress.
> > >4. For the past several centuries, there have been some in the world
>who
> > >have lived better than the others. One way to introduce immortality
>for
> > >everyone would be to introduce it for the rich first, then as time goes
> > >on - and the technology becomes more familiar and (one hopes)
> > >simpler/less expensive - introduce it to everyone else. ("Poverty"
> > >these days is not quite as hard a life as "poverty" was 100 years ago,
> > >at least in almost any industrialized country, due in part to this
> > >practice.)
> >
> > Oh sure, that's likely to go over *really* well. "Hey, lets all fund a
> > bunch of way-out research so Bill Gates can live forever, while millions
>of
> > kids in the third world (not to mention a few thousand right in the good
>old
> > US of A) go to bed hungry every night." Nobody's going to touch that
>with a
> > 10 foot pole. Not Republicans, not Democrats, nobody.
>
>I'm not saying that that's what we advertise, just that that's what will
>probably happen. But this does suggest "let the rest of the world
>bugger off; we want to make *you* live forever" types of memes,
>targetted at anyone who is aware of people in worse poverty than
>themselves...which would, I suspect, cover most of people in any kind of
>position to fund longevity research. (For instance: most Americans can
>be convinced that there are poorer people in other countries. If they
>think that citizens of the USA will be among the first to benefit from
>this research, and perhaps almost the only ones save for some rich
>non-Americans, they might have little problem if their government
>supports said research. Repeat for any country where the citizens have
>an effective political voice...and where they don't, then sell only to
>those who do control the purse strings; similar for non-country holders
>of wealth. A cynical approach, perhaps, but might this work?)
I think this presumes a level of gullibility and self-deception that you are
not likely to find in the real world (at least in sufficient amounts to make
that plan workable).
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
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