A 30% longer healthy life --
another 25-30 years, say -- is intriguing, and
is on the cusp of being worldchanging. As Alex
has noted in the past, a population that
regularly lives to (and beyond) the age of 100
forces us to confront questions about work,
relationships, family and our society in
general. But living to 100, even 140, may be
just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when
we figure out a way to live much longer
lives? Read on for an exploration of this
question.
Discoveries like the SIRT1
gene are important steps towards radical
longevity, even if they (in and of themselves)
don't directly cause it. The logic is
straightforward: since new discoveries continue
to happen, the longer one lives, the more likely
it is that discoveries leading to even longer
life will happen during one's lifetime. Even if
"true" extreme life extension* isn't figured out
for another century, surfing the waves of
discoveries could allow one to be here for it.
[*I'm skirting around the
otherwise obvious term "immortality" for a few
reasons: I consider it inaccurate (an immortal
would never die, while someone with a radically
long life could still be crushed by a bus); it's
mythical (that is, it's a term redolent with
symbolism and non-rational implications for many
people); and it's presumptuous (even if we
figure out how to keep the body going
indefinitely, there are still enough questions
about how the mind works for me to be
uncomfortable about the assumption that it could
go on forever).]
It's a good bet that, even if
the SIRT1 discovery doesn't lead to a boost to
lifespan in the next decade or two, other
pathways will. It's not simply because our
understanding of human biology is accelerating,
although it is. The real driver will be the
aging baby boom generation in the United States
demanding products and medical services to keep
it healthy and active. Pharmaceutical and
biotech companies are spending billions on
research to find breakthroughs to appeal to this
market. They'll be competing with each other to
roll out products that do more, last longer,
have fewer side-effects, and (ultimately) are
cheaper to buy and use. The generations that
came after the baby boom, who sometimes find
themselves living in the boomers' shadow, will
have had life & health extension treatments
beta-tested for them.
When improved understanding of
human physiology and genetics combines with
nanoscale medical tools, we face the possibility
of something much bigger than just adding a
couple of decades. If aging is largely the
result of accumulated cellular insults and the
biological processes which evolved to deal with
them, as the current thinking suggests, what
happens when cellular damage can be repaired and
genetic triage code turned off? While such
nanomedical life extension is not possible
today, we can imagine how it might work -- and
it appears to be increasingly plausible.
Of the various radical visions
of what this century might hold (including
machine intelligence, "uploading," and the
singularity), I think that extreme life
extension is the most likely. We're starting now
to see some of the early indicators that it may
be happening in the next few decades. We need to
be asking the right questions about what it
might mean now to be better prepared when
it does happen.
Talk to most people about
radical longevity and they'll almost always
raise the issue of population. While it may be a
common observation, it's not a bad one: many
critical implications fall out from it. A
growing life-extended population would force us
to deal with resource consumption. It also
raises employment questions, both "how do
younger generations work their way into
positions of more authority if the older
generation never has to give up those roles?"
and "what do people do with themselves when they
live so much longer?" What about housing? Taxes?
What about relationships?
While many marriages end in divorce, not all do.
What does "til death do we part" mean when death
may be centuries off? Can you imagine being with
your current partner for another fifty years?
Hundred years? Three hundred years? What if one
of you wants the treatment and the other
doesn't?
The economy and power
questions are crucial. Who can afford the life
extension treatments? Who are they denied to?
Are they only available in one country at first?
What do those who can't get the longevity
treatments think about those who can?
And there are questions about
the process itself. How does it work -- is it a
single "magic bullet" treatment or an ongoing
set of behavioral shifts and medical
interventions? To what degree does it change
brain plasticity along with overall
physiological vigor? Will the aging recipients
still think like older people or will they think
like younger people again? What about failed
pathways -- a treatment that looks good but
causes problems a few decades down the road? How
can people weigh their decision whether or not
to get such a treatment?
Ultimately, there are the
cultural questions. How does it change people's
behavior if they know that they could live for
centuries? Do they become more conservative?
More adventurous? Are they less likely to have
kids? How do they treat people who won't be
living extremely long lives? Do they start
thinking long term? Does society stagnate, or is
the concept of "stagnation" itself an artifact
of short-term thinking?
In
Toxic Memes, I explore a bit how much
longer lives change the way people think. Late
in the book, I include a brief vignette, notes
from a young man starting to realize what he has
in front of him:
I sit in the cafe at the
top of the arcology, looking out over
Seattle towards Mt. Rainier. I'm a good "end
of the cen" boy, blood full of nano and
brain hooked into the global net. So my
genome's not top of the line my parents
chose the best they could, at the time. I
have worlds at my fingertips and a long life
ahead of me.
That's the weird part. When I stop to
think about it, think about just how much
there is to see and how long I have to see
it, I get dizzy. It's like my brain just
didn't evolve to deal with the thought of a
life lived in so many places and for such a
long time. I get this urge to go find a hole
somewhere to hide in, turn off my links, and
live out a natural six-score-and-ten. I know
at least one kid in my pod who did just
that, about three weeks ago.
But then another part of me kicks in, and
I see the kinds of options I have now, the
kinds of opportunities I'll have that my
parents never had, and their parents
couldn't even imagine. There's another kid
in my pod who talks about checking out Alpha
Centauri like she's already bought tickets
or something, she just can't imagine that
such a thing wouldn't be possible sometime
in her life. Or, as she sometimes says it,
she just can't imagine that her life
wouldn't be long enough to see that
possibility. She's probably right, too.
I look around at the mass of people here
in this arc, and around the world, content
just to eat all day, sleep all night, and
scrump with their virts when they get bored.
That's not the world I want to live in. If
my only choices are running away and hiding
in some Isolate hole or in deep space,
same difference or becoming a
barely-sentient cow... well, then I need to
find another choice, don't I?
Chuck Nix, The New Century
Sucks And It Hasn't Even Started, 2099
How the economic and social
questions unfold is, in part, contingent upon
how we get to radical longevity. Four biological
approaches to extreme life extension come to
mind. Let's set aside, for the moment, any sort
of non-biological scenarios -- uploads,
singularities and the like. Not that they're
categorically impossible, but that their
implications are even larger than just living a
very, very long time. All of these longevity
scenarios are laden with discomfiting questions,
and each has its own unique implications.
probably the least likely. That's the one I call
"Magic Pill" -- you take a (literal or
metaphorical) anti-aging pill, the physical toll
of the years slips away, and you spend the
centuries in your healthy twentysomething body.
This is a world where the only "old" people are
those who chose not to take the treatment, those
who for some biomedical reason couldn't take it,
and those who couldn't afford to take it -- as
noted, the question of access and expense is an
important one. This world would likely be the
most immediately disruptive, with the sudden
re-introduction of populations combining the
vigor of youth and the accumulated knowledge
(and wealth) of age.
one I think of as "Holy Fire" longevity,
after the Bruce Sterling book of that name. If
you haven't read it, go read it now. I'll wait.
In this scenario, your older body is subject to
a regimen of biotechnological and
nanotechnological treatments that effectively
"resets" you to the aforementioned healthy
twentysomething body. After that, aging
re-commences, and you would presumably need
another aging reset half a century later. This
is a world where older people are still
relatively commonplace, but occasionally return
as a younger version of themselves after a
vacation. One possible social result is a
"rebirthing" ritual, where the newly-young
person voluntarily gives up aspects of his or
her previous life. As the medical technologies
for body resets would probably be complicated
and expensive for quite some time, and therefore
slow to disseminate widely, such "rebirthing"
would be a strong social moderator on the
ability of the long-lived rich to continue to
concentrate wealth.
unfortunately, probably the most likely. It's
the one I call "Dorian Gray," where aging
isn't reversed, but it is slowed considerably.
Coupled with incremental improvements and
techniques for making sure that old age doesn't
mean ill health, you'd eventually see people far
older than possible today. "Radical longevity"
doesn't come about as the result of a specific
technology, but as the result of myriad
otherwise desirable medical treatments. I
suspect that this scenario eventually results in
serious social disruption, as there would be few
social leveling elements in the technology. It
would tend to exacerbate current imbalances of
wealth and power, and would be the most likely
to trigger serious push-back and resentment in
the long-run.
the biggest questions. I think of it as "Immortal
Kids" -- a treatment for radical life
extension that can only be performed in the
early days after conception (or in a test tube).
Anyone now alive could never get it, but any
child born with this treatment would be able to
live far, far longer than previous generations.
The choice to live a very long time would be
taken out of one's own hands, and will have been
the choice of one's parents. How many parents
would say "yes" to this? How many would say
"no?" If some kids have this treatment and
others don't, how do they sort themselves out
socially? Do they feel resentment towards their
parents for the choice made? How many parents
will resent the extended lives of their kids?
-----------
One saving grace of the last
three scenarios is that the effects unfold
slowly. Extending the human lifespan by 30, 50,
100, 500 years (or more) doesn't have an
immediate and noticeable result. The death rate
from age-related illnesses would presumably
drop, but people will still die from violence or
accidents. Even as the rate of population growth
slowly ticks upwards, the social impact of
living for a very long time would only really be
felt once a critical mass of people actually
do live for a very long time. A world where
the human lifespan was 200 instead of 100
wouldn't actually feel all that different for a
good bit of time.
It's very likely that we will
be the ones who get to decide how a world of
radically long lives turns out. If we manage to
survive the next decade, it's a good bet we'll
be seeing the latter half of the twenty-first
century. If we make it to 2075 (or so), it's
hard to imagine researchers not having figured
by then out how to live much longer still,
barring some sort of planetary disaster. Radical
longevity will be ours to choose, if we want it.
How long do you want to
live? If you just want your natural span, would
you accept others choosing long lifespans for
themselves? Do you think you'd change your mind
if you saw friends, family, loved ones opting
for longer lives? If you want to live as long as
you can (in good health), what are you willing
to give up to do so? Would you be willing to be
sterilized, to have to give up your accumulated
financial wealth, or even to move off-planet?
Like it or not, these are
questions we will almost certainly be asked,
sooner than we may wish.