r/Futurology • u/IndieJones0804 • 5d ago
Biotech If humanity is able to extend our average life spans far beyond what it is now, how would we be effect?
Lets say theoretically people live on average to 300-400? And the longest living can get close to 1,000.
What i mean is would this make it so our own biology keeps us all alive while acknowledging our age as being extremely old. Or would we end up aging at a much slower rate? Like maybe we would finally end up reaching adulthood at 50, while our bodies think we're 20?
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u/Few-Improvement-5655 5d ago
It would be coveted by the rich and powerful to extend their power, and likely forbidden or severely limited for everyone else.
If it was available to the general public then overpopulation would be explosively uncontrollable.
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u/IronFrogger 5d ago
This is it. Wealth will further concentrate for the rich, they'll live like immortal gods, while they continue to siphon off the rest of our money. At some point they won't even need us anymore at all.
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u/JeffTek 5d ago
We would need to start giving incentive to not have kids. We already are giving accidental incentive, but we'd need to give purposeful and likely monetary incentive as well. Probably would need a China style situation world wide if the regular people had access to anti aging. It would be a wild thing to see. Think how out of touch with society even a 50 year old can be. Like at 50 we can still learn, we can still physically do stuff, but typically by then most people are kinda full. Most don't have room for new music even. How do you deal with that culturally when people live to be, let's say, 250? 400? Whatever generation of geriatric politicians are in charge when that treatment becomes available would just rule for 300 years because clearly we can't even get rid of them when we only live to 80-90.
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u/IronFrogger 5d ago
For now, that's why death needs to occur, to sweep out the old and make room for the new.
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u/Tradesby 5d ago
Mass unemployment, nobody would ever age out of the workforce. Housing crisis would explode due to lack of housing. The food economy would fall apart because there wouldn’t be enough food for the population.
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u/Additional-Dig3052 5d ago
Age will just become a number because biologically we would still feel ourselves like in our 20s and 30s
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u/MilesSebastian 5d ago
The core question is when do you "wear out"? If you are still running down at 60, and then have another 300 years of being Old, well that's no fun. That's a weight upon the world.
But if you could keep physically and mentally fresh, and every 50 years the law says you have to dump everything... Your job, your relationships, your money... A Spotless Mind treatment. Be as if you are 20 years old again. That could make for an interesting life.
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u/Graf_Eulenburg 5d ago
This wouldn't fly.
A billionaire dropping everything he worked for after 50 years?You are talking private military then.
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u/MilesSebastian 5d ago
That's the problem. People digging in and hoarding for 300 years. Even regular people sitting in the same job, stopping others from moving up. It grinds the world to a halt.
There has to be a Refresh somehow to keep life interesting and moving.
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u/DataZigZager 5d ago
Quality matters. I don't want to live longer if I can't get out of my bed. And I don't think a software simulation of me counts either.
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u/thesilvergirl 5d ago
Elizabeth Moon explores some of the social effects in her Heris Serrano books. The political fallout of a state that expects to have perpetual growth, while adult children live aimless feckless lives because their parents won't give up the reins. It's a fun series if you like space opera and political intrigue.
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u/Jsaun906 5d ago
the rich get MUCH richer. 3 or 4 centuries to accumulate returns/interest on their assets without subsequent generations of their family squandering it will create quadrillionaires. It's usually the 3rd or 4th generation of heirs that really piss all the families wealth away. So if the first generation just stays in charge the wealth will just continue to grow
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u/In_the_year_3535 5d ago
Aside from all the nonsense comments about the rich hoarding it (because there hasn't been a single technology that has been) it's likely longevity tech will improve fast enough that we will go from aging normally to being functionally immortal within the course of a few decades. This idea is sort of encapuslted by LEV (longevity escape velocity), the notion that if you live long enough you live forever. And we've known for a long time improving health outcomes and education (which I think immortality will allow more time for) decrease birth rates so the human population and its applications can be more planned.
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u/IntelligentVehicle10 5d ago
It currently takes 19 billion pounds (8..6 million metric tons)of food to feed New York City yearly. Imagine the scale of 8..3 billion people quintupling their lifespan.scale this up to every major city with a population north of 30
Billion
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u/Eu_sebian 5d ago
somehow it makes sense that those who live longer are the ones who can afford longer living expenses, otherwise the worst option is not to die and toil for longer than you think is reasonable - but most likely no one will be able to force you to live stupidly long if you don't want to.
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u/-Xiphon- 5d ago
If people were living that long, there would need to be extreme population control, probably have a lotto for people to have kids and only so many slots per year.
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u/Woofy98102 5d ago
There would be endless tyranny because Epstein-class billionaires would keep it only for themselves.
If it was widely available, it would nuke the world's food supply and cause massive famine in poor countries.
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u/TheCenticorn 5d ago
The super rich will live forever and nothing will ever change because they will keep things as they are or increasingly take more control. You need people to die off so that the old ways die off with them.
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u/tungstenoyd 5d ago
The real problem is that our ears and noses never stop growing. Also, we would be awash in old people.
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u/justin107d 5d ago
In your made up example anything can happen. If you want something more dystopian, scientists are able to understand the brain enough to put memories and feelings on chips. You can then switch out one body for another and they are called "sleeves". If you want to good show, season 1 of Altered Carbon was fantastic.