The first immortal human?
There is a fascinating article by Bryan Appleyard in this week's Sunday Times. In it, he postulates that the first immortal human being may already have been born. He bases this thought on the premise that, at present rates of progress, we should be able to produce the first immortal mouse by about 2020 and that we should have extended that to humans about twenty years later. So, a child living now may have the option by about the age of 40 to arrest the ageing process and live forever. "Forever", he argues, averages out at about 1400 years as this is the average time statisticians have computed before a fatal accident would occur. Some people would go on for thousands of years while some would be killed in their early 100's or even in their teens.
He addresses some of the implications of this development. For example, he argues that human memory is ineffective over such long time scales and so we would continuously change, forgetting the person we were and becoming someone different. We would have to choose between having children and living forever, as the population could not accommodate both. Overall, however, he seems to assume that this development is a good thing.
I think it is a bad thing and we should ask ourselves how we are going to handle the possibility of immortality when it arrives. Here are some of my concerns:
Entrepreneurial drive would decline. Shortage of time is a key driver of entrepreneurial activity. In my case, I reached a point at which I realised that I either started my own business now or not at all. The realisation that I had all the time in the world would have caused me to put it off forever.
New ideas would dry up. New ideas come from new people. Old people can improve things, but they do not have the radical eye of youth, untainted by experience. Only young people can fully fail to appreciate that something cannot be done.
Relationships would eventually fail. Nobody could stay married for 1000 years to a constantly evolving person.
Life would become so dull. We would soon find that we had done everything new that we could think of and then we would get so bored.
We would become over-cautious. The thought that a risk like climbing a mountain might cost you eternity is a much greater deterrent than the thought that we might knock a few decades off our lives.
Immortality? I'm against it.
He addresses some of the implications of this development. For example, he argues that human memory is ineffective over such long time scales and so we would continuously change, forgetting the person we were and becoming someone different. We would have to choose between having children and living forever, as the population could not accommodate both. Overall, however, he seems to assume that this development is a good thing.
I think it is a bad thing and we should ask ourselves how we are going to handle the possibility of immortality when it arrives. Here are some of my concerns:
Entrepreneurial drive would decline. Shortage of time is a key driver of entrepreneurial activity. In my case, I reached a point at which I realised that I either started my own business now or not at all. The realisation that I had all the time in the world would have caused me to put it off forever.
New ideas would dry up. New ideas come from new people. Old people can improve things, but they do not have the radical eye of youth, untainted by experience. Only young people can fully fail to appreciate that something cannot be done.
Relationships would eventually fail. Nobody could stay married for 1000 years to a constantly evolving person.
Life would become so dull. We would soon find that we had done everything new that we could think of and then we would get so bored.
We would become over-cautious. The thought that a risk like climbing a mountain might cost you eternity is a much greater deterrent than the thought that we might knock a few decades off our lives.
Immortality? I'm against it.
posted by Hugh M | 12:59 pm
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