http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4003063.stm
"we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing.
It is not just an idea: it's a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time."
"This means that all parts of the project should be fully working in mice within just 10 years and we might take only another 10 years to get them all working in humans."
...what are we gonna do with all this immortal mice? ^^
Feed them to immortal catgirls.
A dramatic increase in life span like that could lead to a similarly dramatic decrease in people's willingness to take risks (or their willingness to let other people take risks). Paranoia would be the order of the day as everyone tries to maximise the insane number of opportunities they'd have in such a vast span of time... All the while letting most of those opportunities slip away for fear of sudden death.
Maybe achieving the greatest possible accomplishment in the shortest possible span of time prior to committing ritual suicide will become trendy.
Nah, it would be like a new huge hard disk or going broadband for the first time. First it's all "ooh aah great" and the next day it's "What? Only 1000 years?"
I've never understood that argument. Teenagers have an expected lifespan of near 80 years, yet take some foolhardy risks (and some do die).
Frankly, if people suddenly had their lives extended to 1,000 years... they'd probably keep on acting the same.
You seriously think people will weigh dying differently based on 60 or 980 years?
Based on my observations, that just isn't the case. Maybe I'm just surrounded by strange people in a strange land. Some people avoid risk no matter what, and some just don't care. I've never heard someone stop and say, "Well, I still have X years to live, maybe I'd better not do this..."
Life is worth nothing without risks and the values gained in danger.
By the logic of "people with long to live take less risks", shouldn't old people be taking risks all the time?
As death draws nearer, you get more careful because you have little time left, and you don't want to waste it. Teenagers take risks because death is something that happens to old people, not to them.
>Life is worth nothing without risks and the values gained in danger.
Is that the motto of "Jackass" or what? ^^;
Life is about the accomplishment of a purpose/dream/goal. It doesn't have to be dangerous, unless it's part of the package.
>By the logic of "people with long to live take less risks", shouldn't old people be taking risks all the time?
They're risking plenty from simply trying to stand up. Nasty, long-term risks like repetitive strain injury are in a different class than light thrills like skydiving.
I don't buy it.
And life is worth living longer, even without physical risk. I've looked at what I can do in 80 years, and decided it wasn't enough. Maybe you have to be an academic (or a wannabe-academic) to appreciate just how much there is out there to learn and do. It just can't be done in one lifetime (and it's a losing race, human knowledge is not growing linearly).
I'd love to meet some scientists who have more than three PhD's, and see what they can come up with. I've met a few who had two, and uniformly they were all an amazing bunch. Chatting to them was exhilarating.
>>11's argument falls flat because old people don't have the choice. They can't escape those ailments unless they die.
Without danger, risks and the unpredictable, the things that require the highest levels of ideals to deal with, life would be nothing but a bore, an endless series of mere calculations, in which creating art, shopping for food, searching for love, doing the dishes and the taxes blur all into the same kind of trivial and ultimatively nihilistic twilight, evoking only statistical drivel in its most exciting moments.
lol