A very short survey on attitudes towards biological immortality

A negative impact I think you lightly touched upon but want to further expand upon is how will this affect social change in this country. Like lets imagine we go back and say somehow we as humanity discovery this biological immortality around 1886ish (this is going to be very Americancentric) and again lets abstract this and say its given to everyone even though that is unrealistic. I don't think we as a society would have made much progress in terms of rights for women and minorities if we had the lead weight of these god damn fossils outdated view points (their children sort of prove that with the whole bullshit of the daughters of the confederacy and the impact they had in the last 100 years). Hell that is a problem even in the modern world, where our politicians are ancient people in their bloody 50-70s, like congress' median age is 58, some of the most active voters are also the elderly. So we see this problem in the current world and it will only get worse if people had immortality. This doesn't even talk about the idea of the impact this will have on the economy, the idea of retiring is already a foreign concept to many people in this modern world and once again this problem gets worse with immortality since you are literally going to be forced to work till you die.

Like immortality is cool as a concept when its only given to you and a few people you want to select but it gets bloody messy once its a thing that can be handed out willy nilly. It can apply to many concepts like the idea that humans no longer have to sleep, bloody awesome when its only a select few people but once its the norm and seen as the standard it will affect so many different aspects of life. "Well you don't have to sleep Johnson so work for 16 hours or you will get shitcanned because I will find someone who will!".

Also super appealing. Achieving this advancement will be our first step in exploring the universe. Seeing as we've as yet found no others, it falls on us to become the "precursors"

The prospect of getting older - now that I'm older - and running out of time, ability or mental sharpness has had a negative impact on me in the last couple years.
There are so many things I still want to do, try, and create. Some of which I have a lot of regrets that I haven't done yet. Some of which I fear I've grown too old to accomplish.

I'd really like to live a lot longer. Now, fear of death, running out of time and my body and mind degrading have established a firm purchase on part of my mind.

What I'd love to be able to do is survive the trip to another planet and spend a couple decades researching and exploring the local flora/fauna.

I agree that billionaires will own it but... advanced tools like the crispr are available to almost anyone today and as science progress is posted and talked about, I think there will be a lot of people that can duplicate the work.

The medical side to things is definitely a huge step up. On a personal side, I think it would be cool to be able to actually witness history as it's being made. Sure, we already are, but there's going to be so much more. I'm a big fan of horror, and one discussion I've has more than once with people is "Would you become a vampire if given the chance?" And while the whole drinking blood thing is a turn off, there is the idea of getting to see humanity evolve. If anything, I almost would rather have had that option earlier. Getting to see everything from the mid 1800s to now would be perfect. But they say there's no better time than the present, so I guess if given the chance, I would actually consider going the immortal route to see everything.

But the whole financial factor is also the big thing that makes me really question if I could support it. We are already seeing how fucked capitalism can be. And since it would likely only be for the rich for awhile, it would mean they can just take even longer to set up a world for them even more than it already is. Eventually they might start to offer it to us, but it would be more so for working purposes. Line Bezos will provide it to people for free... as long as they work for him. But once they quit, they no longer have it available. So either work 60 hours a week minimum for Amazon, or you don't get to be immortal.

I agree there's a lot of interesting things to discuss about this topic. It can hardly be contained in a short survey like this.

For the additional thoughts I put:
Positive: Selfish human thinking restricts most people to considering only how their actions will impact the world within their lifetime. The potential for living hundreds or thousands of years could allow people to think more long term about their actions. Very few things are persued in the 50-year time span, let alone planning for something that could take 200 years.
Negative: People may be much less willing to take risks. If the only things that can kill you are possible to avoid entirely, wouldn't you?

I hadn't considered how bad the unequal access could be in the way that you talked about. I was thinking it would be one of those things like advanced cancer treatments, for example, that the mega-rich get access to when it is first developed and then within a few years to decades it becomes the standard of care. What I didn't consider is that whatever the breakthrough is that allows immortality may need to be near-constantly applied for it to work. Almost like a potion of immortality that lasts only weeks. Even if the cost of the treatment is lowered very quickly it's not likely it will be something as simple as insulin for treating diabetes or aspirin for treating blood pressure. It could take decades for it to become affordable for the upper class and may never become economical to give to everyone. Having a class of people who die of old age and a class who doesn't is some super dystopian cyberpunk type shit.

Agreed. It's a net negative until we equalize wealth. If the rich exist, they'll corrupt it from inception

Well, because obviously they see the progress being promised as unnecessary. If I genuinely believed (or even suspected) that only the act of keeping a hair band on your wrist or enjoying the color green were the keys to Immortality, of course I'd be against scientific immortality because they'd be visibly wandering in the wrong direction like idiots.

I'm actually not religious and I am having trouble with that question. My personal views tend toward Alan Watts' weirdly perfect mashup of science-with-buddhist-elements, i.e. the you cannot kill me in a way that matters mushroom meme, and how one answers that also depends on how they define death and immortality in the first place.

If it's the soul, you're probably religious and the answer is no, because keeping a soul where it isn't meant to stay would be abhorrent to you.

If it's the body, you probably love the idea because you're terrified of nonexistence.

But to not believe in a "soul" and also recognize that matter is indestructible leaves me unable to answer that in a satisfying way. Because, to me, it seems a given that I'm already immortal.

I can physically die, sure, that kid in the ocean exploded. He's not doing too great. But then all the atoms that are me right now will just reform into plants or a bear or something. In Zhuangzi's dream of the butterfly, the answer is both. Or, if you're not the reading type, this quote from a TV sitcom.

Parts of me will be conscious again eventually, and none of me is going anywhere. If you and your family aren't strict vegans, the bones in your leg used to be grass, and now that's alive again.

One could argue (very effectively) that a person is the sum of their memories and that they die when their brain dies, but this does suggest I've died several times now as I form new memories and forget old ones. As I live longer and mainly seem to fuck up more, I have to admit it's an excellent point that doesn't make me less tired.

How do I answer whether an obvious law of the universe is desirable? From my viewpoint, this research is idealogically unnecessary for me, and being forced to spend multiple eternities in only one form, unable to let go of anything that's happened, would be a horrifying trap.

Though I'm religious, I'm very against the church as an anarchist (but I digress); though the idea that science and medicine can push forward much quicker with immortality I know it will just further divide the social classes and make the demagogues into demigods.

There's no chance that immortality would be distributed fairly amongst everyone, those that can pay its price will take it and the rest will be left to rot. Old money will become immortal money and further consecrate it's power while using the rest as fodder.

I know it will do good, but I can't imagine that good outweighing the bad.

It's not in kbin. It's a Microsoft Office form (similar to a Google Form or Strawpoll).

Survey was thought provoking and fun. 9/10 :)