CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

[Malacite]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

True, but it doesn't mean we have to be stupid about it either - see: Nuclear Power & The atomic bomb.

[Armando]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

or the secret to eternal youth (we're supposedly 40 years away from that one) etc. etc.

This is one of those things I hope doesn't happen. Not for any religious reason, purely practical. Besides obvious population problems it could cause, old dogmas need to die with the old people that preserved them. We need people to keep on dying in due time so newer generations can prosper without old ideologies tying them down.

Also the secret to youth is exercise. Everyone wants a silver bullet though.

[Taskmage]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

This is one of those things I hope doesn't happen. Not for any religious reason, purely practical. Besides obvious population problems it could cause, old dogmas need to die with the old people that preserved them. We need people to keep on dying in due time so newer generations can prosper without old ideologies tying them down.

That or our cultural firmware needs to be updated as it applies to reexamining and updating our beliefs. Whatever medical advances lead to indefinite longevity may also offer some advantage in this by enhancing the neural plasticity of older brains, or more fancifully by providing a technological platform for housing minds that sheds the evolutionary baggage of the wetware we currently use.

I think many of us hope that population issues will be somewhat relieved by advances in technology that allow us to reach environments on other planets and in other solar systems and adapt them to support human life. It's probably not a silver bullet, but it's a partial solution, and a good idea anyway just to not have all our eggs in one basket. One unlucky meteor strike or gamma ray burst in the next couple centuries and we're all toast.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

I say artificial gravity and warp drive (or something like it) before holodecks and replicators simply because I expect industrial, brute force applications to come before consumerist, fine-grained applications. First room-sized ballistic weapon calculators, then personal computers and further iteration into ipads and whatnot. Temporal stasis was kindof out there.

Apple is already making life on the Enterprise look dated. Google could bring back VR in a serious way after they're done putting the Internet in your glasses and contacts.

I tend to believe more in the Ghost in the Shell/Deus Ex future than a Star Trek one anyway. Anyone want a USB port in the back of thier neck?

[Raydeus]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

Apple? What exactly are you talking about? Their latest achievement, the iPad, is a straight ripoff of the pads almost all characters carried around on board the Enterprise D. Same with the connectivity between devices and all the other stuff Apple "innovated" with.

Augmented reality is a different subject but again, internet glasses and AR were both featured in ST.

So I'm still waiting for the next step in the same way HD widescreen displays and electronic control made TOS lightbulb CRT technology look dated. But it hasn't happened yet, after all the ultra HD display I posted about a few months ago is barely enough to cover for a viewscreen on a Defiant.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

Politically (because someone had to bring it up), eternal physical life is a nightmare. The very reason that the US has Presidential term limits in the first place is because, as Armando mentioned, we need to make room for new dogmas to have a shot in order for civilization to evolve as a whole. It's bad enough that the disaster that is Congress refuses to give itself any term limits, but what if the likes of Murdoch and the Koch Bros. got to stick around forever (or Olbermann and Krugman, for that matter)? Exacerbating this fact is that an eternal longevity treatment will inevitably be reserved for only the deepest possible pockets. It's kind of sad when the best-case scenario would prohibit anyone on the Supreme Court from being on such a treatment.

tl;dr: "Who wants to live forever?" Dictators.

[Raydeus]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

But then, people gets used to and makes preparations for longer lives. Not that long ago the life expectancy was of 35 years. And it has more than doubled since but you don't see people minds that much, and when it doubles again with life expectancies of 150 years instead of 70-80 you'll see the same pattern except there will be more stages of life added into the mix.

Back in the 35 year times there was no adolescence, childs went straight to adulthood because there wasn't time for anything else. Nowadays Adolescence is a big part of life, and as life expectancy extends so will our adaptation to more time on this world. Living forever only means that trip to the next solar system of 500 years isn't as farfetched as it looked before, and long term changes to the atmosphere will start to matter more because they will occur on people's life time. Social changes will happen and we will adapt to our new life expectancies.

And to go back to Star Trek this subject is discussed in Insurrection, spending 75 years perfecting a skill was normal in that society and "children" were more than 50 years old.

It's all a matter of perspective, and ours will change along with our lives.

- - - Updated - - -

PS > It will also impact on our desire to have children. Many people see their off-spring as the continuation of their life on earth, but once we can stay here forever children will play a different role than that of species survival and more towards increasing our numbers for space exploration.

Quoting the Borg, "We will adapt."

[Armando]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

Sorry Ray, I gotta side with YM. Worst case scenario, only the super rich get to live that long. Best case scenario, everyone gets to live really long and you have politicians still being retarded and handling how your great-great-great-grandchildren live.

And to go back to Star Trek this subject is discussed in Insurrection, spending 75 years perfecting a skill was normal in that society and "children" were more than 50 years old.

In practice you'll still be booted out of your house at 18 and expected to be done with college within 4-6 years, you'll just have to save up more for retirement or retire later. Back in the 35-year-lifespan times there was no industrial revolution and the world ran on manual labor. Of course kids had no childhood.

[Raydeus]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

Even if you are talking about slavery by the super rich making the people immortal has more advantages.

You get more experienced workers. You save on retirement expenses (for instance Japan is about to get buried by the elderly in the coming century) since there is no retirement, and you save on the expenses of having to raise children to replace older (and very experienced) workers exiting the market due to old age. Not to mention older and more experienced subjects are much more stable than younger generations and require much less indoctrination.

Even the economic realities of it all point towards extending life. The economical gains all sectors can experience far surpass what little resistance the Farma companies could present, specially if they have the population addicted to some sort of eternal youth medicine.

So, the way I see it even in the Orwellian scenario (which I'm sure will happen in the following decades before we can advance or destroy ourselves) having people living longer has way more benefits than risks.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

So, Ray prefers a society that has gone stagnant. Noted.

[Etra]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

You save on retirement expenses (for instance Japan is about to get buried by the elderly in the coming century) since there is no retirement

You save on retirement expenses...since there is no retirement

since there is no retirement

Fuck.
That.
Shit.

[Raydeus]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

Lulz, we live now longer than ever and yet society has changed more rapidly than ever before. What makes you think that the advancing technology and the longer life spans would stagnate humanity in any way? On the contrary, if you have more time in this world you have way more incentives to make and find new stuff to make your life interesting even if it takes a while.

[Armando]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

You get more experienced workers.

That sounds like the perfect way to continue to perpetuate the catch-22 of "You need experience before we'll hire you." Also, you could end up with a 150-year-old programmer that's still the only dude in the company that knows how to handle that program written in Fortran.

Lulz, we live now longer than ever and yet society has changed more rapidly than ever before.

The way we live has changed faster than ever before. We still have plenty of sexist, racist, homophobic, bigoted holdouts. People change slower than technology.

[Etra]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

Lulz, we live now longer than ever and yet society has changed more rapidly than ever before. What makes you think that the advancing technology and the longer life spans would stagnate humanity in any way? On the contrary, if you have more time in this world you have way more incentives to make and find new stuff to make your life interesting even if it takes a while.

Wrong. You have more incentives to make and find new stuff in the world because your life is short.

[Raydeus]

Re: CERN announces new particle discovered. Consistent with the Higgs Boson.

Fuck.
That.
Shit.

Dude, if you had more time you could just go back to study and switch to another field if the one you are in bores you. You could learn many musical instruments or persue more than one career in a single life time. Ask any 60 year old if they would like to go back to school and try something different than what they specialized in the first time around.

Also consider how people decays way more rapidly once they stop working. You may be looking forward to resting for a few decades, but ask any old person and they will tell you is freaking boring unless they have the health to try new stuff, which may or may not include another career or specialization.