Comment by Windchaser
21 hours ago
I mean, wanting billionaires to not live forever (read: wanting power structures to not become excessively entrenched) is a pretty different thing.
I'd even be fine with people who are billionaires living forever, so long as they don't remain billionaires / don't fuck with politics / etc.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Fundamentally the problem with living forever goes beyond billionaires. People get stuck in their ways of thinking, the mindset of living forever is completely different. Why should I even listen to someone who only lives a mere 40 years? What is a suitable punishment for someone that lives forever? How does it change murder?
Philosophically, living forever may be corrupt by nature.
The only way to tear down tiers of society is for some of those tiers to literally die off.
> Fundamentally the problem with living forever goes beyond billionaires. People get stuck in their ways of thinking > Philosophically, living forever may be corrupt by nature
Sure, if people get stuck in their ways forever. But what if they don't?
If we can solve longevity, we might also be able to "solve" brain plasticity, therapy, psychology, sociology, etc., such that people's beliefs will be more flexible and people's minds more open.
I think it is incorrect to assume that we would solve biology while all of the fields researching the health of the mind made little progress.
We shouldn't imagine the future as being like today, only different in a few key ways - this is the trap of sci-fi authors. The future will be different in more ways than we expect. We might well fix 'old people are stuck in their ways' before we fix longevity.