Meaningless Rants

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And so there I was in the funeral parlor at midnight, waiting for my grandma’s body to be washed and dressed and pumped with formaldehyde. My cousin Dann was there too, breaking his nightly hunting trip in his MMORPG world. I couldn’t remember how it started, but we were just talking and he was watching grandma’s body intently and I joked: "are you thinking about your own mortality?"

He said, "I’m not going to die."

I laughed at him that time. We bantered some more about his immortality, and he said something to the effect that on his day, technology will catch up and be able to delay aging. Or something like that, I’m actually kindda skecthy to the details.

I remembered that banter again because yesterday, as I explored the sea of Wikipedia, I came upon an article entitled Indefinite Lifespan. [How did I *stumble* on that article>?:  Age of Empire II -> Age of Empire III -> Fountain of Youth -> The Fountain Movie -> Indefinite Lifespan. I didn't mention the other articles littering my taskbar below] They have a term called "Actuarial escape velocity" where there would a point (if ever) that we would be able to extend life expectancy by a year per year. That would make our lifespan indefinite by definition. Of course, bear in mind that it’s different from immortality, which is more fiction (unable to die even after you got hit by bullets, or never ever getting any sickness).

That looked awesome the first time I read it. But after 5 seconds, there are some nagging questions. Wouldn’t that make every death even MORE of a catastrophe? When everybody could live indefinitely, any accident will become such calamity. Suddenly, we would become much more risk-averse: we stopped playing dangerous sports like skiing, or diving, or gliding. Heck, would we then stopped playing contact sports? If even an injury is viewed as ending the possibility of extending life indefinitely, who would want to play soccer? Life threatening job like policemen and firemen will be valued with a premium. And we would have cars installed with airbags for each limbs everywhere, and imagine the insurance we have to pay for taking an airplane!

And the further I think about it, the more terrible the idea sounds. Indefinite lifespan would really lead to population explosion if we keep up the propagation rate. In advanced countries where this is realized, the people will consists of old people who probably would have less incentive to have kids anyway. That doesn’t consider the possibility of population control by the government. What a strain it would be to this planet.

Can we ever cure aging? Maybe. But you know, I’d be happy if I can live to become 100 years old, but I think that would be it. I wouldn’t want to live for much longer after that, and keep deluding myself that I can escape death because when it comes, it would be much more painful if I were led to believe that I wouldn’t die.

Now if they could make people forever young, maybe in our prime (30 years?), would that change my mind? I mean, for sure the quality of life between a 100 years old Adrian and a forever 30 years old Adrian would be different. But anyway, a forever 30 years old Adrian who’s afraid to ski and break his 30 years old body is probably not worth it. So yeah, I’ll stick with my mortality.