alt Hacker NewsAs I said in another comment, I'm against immortality because old people need to make way for new generations. But this comment is cute. I like the idea that we'd be there and we're able to see how people are doing, but we're not influencing the world anymore. Though I could also imagine at some point it could become depressing in bad times when there's nothing you can do, or boring after tens of thousands of years of repetition. I can also imagine some bad spirits trying to break out and influence worldly affairs.
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I'm not sure why people have it in their heads that this "making way" requires one to be cast into the formless void instead of, like, a gated community.
Maybe we could set it up so the “spirits” can just talk to the “living” when the latter start the conversation. That seems like a reasonable way of setting things up.
It’s all a bit fanciful of course—we’d basically be setting up an emulation of various spiritual beliefs, and there’s no reason to believe anybody would go along with the constraints. But it is fun to think about.
Impossible to know if there is something like Sheol after death, so we thought, "why not make our own eternal emptiness?"
> old people need to make way for new generations
The main problem with extended lifespan will not be that some people will amass extreme wealth and power while living centuries, and they'll oppress the younger generations, who will not have a fair chance in life.
The much more likely problem will be that old people will not adjust to the new technologies. Lots of them will be victims to "pig butchering" schemes. Or they'll simply be illiterate in the new ways of life. If medicine makes tremendous progress, we might end up with a good chunk of our society being elderly, healthy, but socially unadjusted and estranged. Especially with more and more people being childless. Imagine someone who is 110 years old, with no living relatives, secluded in a nursing home, not knowing how to use the internet, or whatever the equivalent of that will be at that point in time.
These people deserve pity. But to they need to "make way for new generations"? That feels a bit eugenic to me.