Is it worth living forever if *everyone* does?

[meadowlander]

I'm having one of the "birthdays that make you think" in 2026 which sent me down the rabbit hole of googling how far away we are from new medical technologies that will significantly expand the length of human life.

While a lot of this, I'm sure, will be wishcasting at best and snake oil at worst, I do think with AI we're probably in the 5-10 year range from a big bump up in average life expectancy (barring some kind of catastrophic war, plague, etc.) with more to come afterwards including a potential event horizon where medical advancements come faster than the extent they extend human life essentially making people immortal if they choose to be.

Then it occurred to me that this will also apply to other people. Including the worst other people. And that some of the worst other people are the ones most keen to develop this technology and hoard it for themselves.

Leaving aside debate over if and when this technology becomes feasible and assuming it is affordable enough to be widely available, is it worth living forever in a world where Trump also lives forever, for example? I've always been frustrated by "cut off your nose to spite your face" Republicans who'd rather not have affordable health care, thank you, if it means brown people get it too. Would you actually give up the opportunity for eternal life just to see the end of Trump? I suppose the key for me would be does he hold power forever or does he eventually face actual consequences for his actions?

Will solving aging and death necessarily mean we become less horrible to each other or does it just mean the worst assholes never go away? I suppose it's not so bad if it means an opportunity to prosecute and imprison Trump forever. But will it change the way we look at things like "life in prison" when that actually means "eternal confinement"? Would it mean the death penalty is used more often?

Would it make a difference if we had infinite time to educate people and to have important discussions with them - ie, would people in general eventually become wiser and more virtuous or are they likely, with no sense of urgency in life, to spend even more time on TikTok dances and nonsense memes and less on the things that actually matter?

[live love laugh]

1. I'm still mulling over my answers to the questions but thanks for the food for thought.

Last edited Sun Dec 21, 2025, 04:03 PM - Edit history (1)

[Polybius]

2. Yes, but what about crimes?

Let's say the average life expectancy jumps to 1,000 years. If you're 600 and are running for President, should it matter if you committed a very serious crime at 50? You did 20 years in prison, but have been clean for over 500 years. Should something you did over 500 years ago be held against you?

[meadowlander]

5. Yes, that's a great question too. With a long enough amount of time, is any crime forgivable?

I suppose it matters what you did in the intervening 500 years. I think people should be able to redeem themselves and show that they have changed their character. So the crime at 50 shouldn't matter if you served your time and then spent 500 years taking in orphans or whatever and also you renounce your former actions and try to make amends to the people harmed by them.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Not something most of us will have to worry about

As science and medical advancements are being restricted, you can bet the advances continue for those able to pay for it. The rest of us will never be told about it because our part of society is being forced to move backwards.

[Morbius]

35. Yes.

The wealthy will live longer; the rest of us will not. Simple as that.

Also, things might be different if medical science could extend the earlier part of life. All we can do is forestall death to a degree, and it doesn't look like medical science will soon be able to do anything else. Living to be 200 years old would suck if I was feeble for a majority of it.

[meadowlander]

36. AI has played a major role in advances in Alzheimers treatment

and may one day offer prevention or a cure:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/can-ai-help-us-find-a-dementia-cure

It's also helping to diagnosis diseases (and risks of diseases based on genetic analysis) sooner which enables better treatment options:

https://www.cancerresearch.org/blog/ai-cancer

AI is also being used to research therapies to reverse the effects of aging:

https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/the-end-of-ageing-a-new-ai-is-developing-drugs-to-fight-your-biological-clock

I think it's very unlikely that future medical advances will only prolong life without also improving quality of life during those additional years.

[CTyankee]

6. It seems to me that this is a question of how you live your life.

Writers and artists have dealt with this question constantly. We read it in poetry and see it in the visual arts. This can lead to despair or a struggle that goes on to find some meaning, somewhere that makes life worth living to the fullest even tho the sorrow and pain are almost unthinkable.

Religion solves this problem for a lot of people but I cannot do that. Devoting great parts of my life to studying art and asking myself what the artist is trying to tell us with their works has been a way of dealing with it, for me at least as I have no religion to help me along. So art becomes my religion in that it helps me, in a visual sense. I guess you can say that art is my drug of choice.

The greatest painting in the world is, to me, Rembrandt's "Return of the Prodigal Son." It is Rembrandt's portrayal of remarkable forbearance and forgiving and he uses light and shadow with great force. It will make you weep. I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

[meadowlander]

14. That's a very moving painting. Thanks for sharing it.

I'm sure it's a coincidence but interesting that the forgiving father is on the left and the judgmental brother is on the right :-D

[anciano]

7. Although new technological innovations may extend the human lifespan

to some degree, I don't believe in the concept of human immortality.
Here is an interesting quotation from "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius: "Consider that before long you will be nobody and nowhere, nor will any of the things exist which you now see, nor any of those who are now living. For all things are formed by nature to change and be turned and to perish, in order that other things in continuous succession may exist."

[MineralMan]

8. I Turned 80 in 2025. That has to be one of "those years."

Anyhow, I think that predictions of extreme longevity are pipe dreams. We seem to have evolved to have a lifespan of maybe 80 years, if we're lucky. Some live longer, of course, but most do not. Even in Old Testament days, it says, "The days of man are three score and ten. If it is another ten, they are full of pain and sorrow." And that's about how it still is, despite all of our medical advances. My parents both lived to 96, but they did not enjoy their decade decade one bit. As my father said many times, "We live to long to enjoy living long."

If there are some sort of advances that enable a longer lifespan than we now have, most likely few will be able to afford the needed treatments. Already, most of us can't afford end of life healthcare.

I'm not sure I would even welcome an extra 10 or 20 years. I'm tired a lot. I can't do everything I would like to do. It's not going to get better. It never does after a certain point. I'm quite satisfied with my life, overall. It's been quite an interesting trip. How much longer do I get? I have no idea, nor do I want to know.

"Three score and 10." I'm another 10 past that. Not bad. I'm good with that.

[Iwasthere]

18. I am personally embracing Eastern medicine as well as my family and most friends

Western medicine seems to be there only when you're sick and then you're givin prescriptions that interfere with all your other medications. I'm 69, I only go to the doc if I break a bone or have bad injuries. I take no pills. My blood pressure is 130 over 90, sometimes a little more. I eat whole organic foods low in carbs and high in protein. No sugary processed junk ever! I do take Tumeric, D3/k2 (5000 mg), creatine, a daily vitamin, magnesiums, a powerful probiotic, and I eat fermented foods often (keeps gut biome in order). Eating a Mediterranean diet will not only lengthen your life it will make your final years far more enjoyable, in my opinion. I ignore the constant barrage of encouragements to get tested for this or that. Cancer doesn't scare me, I can mitigate that. They did a study of centurians bodies after they died and in many found evidence of many untreated old cancers. Most of the time you will not die FROM untreated cancers, you'll simply die with it. Prostate cancers are a prime example (very slow moving).

[Skittles]

41. I eat all kinds of processed, sugary junk

I take no medications and my BP last week when I donated platelets was 95/61

[hamsterjill]

44. Bingo!

It's all about genetics in my opinion. You've either got 'em or you don't.

Congrats on your health!

[artemisia1]

9. "Death is the price we pay for progress." -- Doctor Who

Often death is the only way a new theory or paradigm is accepted -- its opponents die off. Long life breeds patriarchy and stagnation.

[meadowlander]

11. Even with death, it's amazing how hard it is to make a bad idea go away.

[EdmondDantes_]

12. I don't think living forever would be good

I think mortality helps with growth on average.

And then there's the more mundane stuff. If nobody dies, how long before the world becomes so overpopulated that everyone stops having kids? Before there's no open space because we needed it for apartments or farmland? Before we all become nihilistic because what's the point, we've seen it all 10 times? What happens to marriage (or the equivalent)? To employment? Who wants to work forever?

[H2O Man]

13. It depends.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. I see no reason to believe that AI will significantly extend human life in the next decade, even for the ultra-rich

It takes a decade for any big medical advance to get from "hey, we know how to do it in theory" to "we're doing it in real life". And we currently don't have the faintest idea how to do it in theory.

We don't have any indication that AI will become more intelligent than the best humans in the next decade either.

If or when it does eventually does (and I concede that the rich fuckers would love to pour their billions into extending their lives, rather than, say, solving the energy needs of the world (eg fusion), global warming, poverty, etc.), then yes, it'll be the worst people in the world who get it first, rather than you or me. And even if we get it, it won't be "everyone" - they'll never allow the world's poor to get it.

And that's because the environmental implications of "everyone" living "forever" would be truly appalling.

[meadowlander]

17. It's already being used to improve diagnostics

to detect diseases earlier, allowing earlier treatment and a greater chance of survival:

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/08/ai-transforming-global-health/

It's being used to accelerate assessment of existing plants and other known compounds for pharmacological uses:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666521225001206

It can also be used to continuously monitor vital signs enabling better control of chronic conditions and enable faster response to critical medical events:

https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/18/vital-signs-data-valuable-medical-ai/

There's also work being done on new therapies to identify and remove or manipulate senescent cells:

https://dukechronicle.com/article/duke-university-professor-ai-cell-aging-deep-science-artificial-intelligence-20251028

https://www.nad.com/news/how-scientists-plan-to-cure-aging-with-ai

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomokoyokoi/2025/04/26/how-ai-is-rewriting-the-future-of-aging/

I'm not saying we're going to have all of these treatments tomorrow. But, like I said, I think we'll be seeing unbelievable advances in medical technology in the next ten years and even more in the next 2-3 decades. My cynical side says the overwhelming and desperate demand for these therapies combined with the profit motive will mean that if there is any way to make them affordable and widely available, they will be. There's no reason necessarily that they will be expensive or rely on scarce resources.

Nobody is going to volunteer to die or to let their kids and other loved ones die to save the environment. People are going to be clamouring for access to these technologies and social norms will adjust accordingly. We're already seeing more and more people deciding to be childless by choice. That's a much easier decision to make if you can wait until you're 200 to have kids and then use genetic engineering to design your kid instead of being tied to a biological clock. And overpopulation will in part be addressed by space colonisation.

Of course the transition will likely be damaging to the environment but when was the last time that the fact that something would be damaging to the environment meant that we chose not to develop a technology we were otherwise on track to discovering? Has this ever happened with anything other than nuclear weapons? We're going to have these technologies and then the challenge will be how do we adapt our society to accommodate them.

[anciano]

21. FWIW, I believe that the natural limitations of existence, such as death and decay,

are inevitable, and that Mother Nature and Father Time are omnipotent and always have been. No previous technological innovations have changed that reality, and I don't think there is any reason to believe that AI will magically change it either.

[highplainsdem]

16. There's absolutely no evidence that AI will "solve aging and death" ever, let alone in the near future.

That's a pipe dream offered by AI fans and peddlers, some of whom.have admitted to hoping that they'll live forever once a godlike superintelligent AI they dream of is so grateful.for being created that it will make them godlike and immortal, too.

Those people have zero interest in extending those benefits to everyone. Their plans are for an elite tech oligarchy. They have no plans to help all the people whose jobs they expect AI to take.

What will be impacting most people's health in the fairly near future are food shortages due to climate change, and pervasive toxins in both the environment and too many refined foods.

The AI bros will do nothing to help with those problems. They're much more likely to crash the economy, and they're already worsening pollution.

[meadowlander]

19. I don't think we should go into the next election

being the party of "eat less, have more vegetables and turn your air conditioning down".

Republicans have grasped that young people are thirsting for vision and hope - even if it's a silly version of it like med beds and Martian colonies.

We need to acknowledge that we are living in extraordinary times, that the next 2-3 decades will bring about remarkable changes that have the potential to significantly better peoples' lives. The challenge is to harness that change so that everyone reaps the benefits from it and so that appropriate guardrails are put in place to protect people.

Let's be the party that's advocating for that and not the party of "don't build data centres - let China get there first" and "just suck it up and live with cancer - the cure is just a pipe dream and decades away anyway".

Where is our generation's JFK to set a productive goal for our society to aim towards? Something that we all agree would be beneficial for the advancement of humanity?

[highplainsdem]

20. The AI industry is controlled by robber barons who have no interest in democracy. We will not find

any sort of salvation through AI, especially flawed generative AI built on the theft of the world's intellectual property. That will not get us anywhere near a cure for cancer, which is not attainable through stealing the world's writing, visual art, film and music.

The vision should be of restoring democracy and our checks and balances and building a healthy society, not distracting people with AI slop and gaslighting talk of abundance through AI.

[meadowlander]

26. AI is a tool, like the internet and the printing press.

Good people will use it for good things, bad people will use it for bad things, and a lot of people are probably mostly going to use it for porn.

I gave you about half a dozen examples in the links in my last post of how scientists are using AI right now to improve and extend peoples' lives. I'm sure a quick google search will give you dozens more. That's not gaslighting. It's what is in fact already happening all around us right now. What's gaslighting is making people think they can ignore how AI will change our lives and just carry on as normal or that somehow picketing outside a data centre will accomplish anything besides making Democrats look like out-of-touch miserable idiots - like the original French saboteurs throwing shoes into the machine works at factories.

To restore democracy we need people to vote for our party. And people will vote for the party that gives them hope for the future and that makes them feel safe in times of change. Not the party pissing in the wind against inevitable technological change.

Nobody believes at this point that AI can be stopped. So what is the Democratic party's position on it? It can be "Stop talking about it and focus on making do with less in your life to protect the environment" or it can be "How can we harness and regulate this to make peoples' lives better while keeping them and the environment safe?" In other words, how do we support and even accelerate good people using it for good things and stop bad people using it for bad things.

One of those is a winning political message and one of them is not. And the only institution we have that will be able to combat a dystopian tech oligarchy is democratic government with a mandate for robust regulation so let's do everything in our power to make sure that we get that.

[highplainsdem]

28. The pro-AI arguments that you're making - that it can't be stopped, that it's a race with China, that

no one should oppose data centers - are EXACTLY the arguments made by the tech oligarchs as reasons to OPPOSE regulation. That's all anti-regulation. The AI bros and Republucans might want Democrats echoing their pro-AI arguments, but we shouldn't.

I didn't look closely at the medical links you posted in part because I've seen plenty of articles on genAI not helping in medicine, and usually the type of AI that is helping is not generative AI. But the main reason is that none of those improvements you say AI will bring will get us close to immortality. Especially when we're dealing with an administration and tech barons focused on denying people health care - using genAI now to deny approval for even Medicare recipients. They want to deny people food as well. We've seen that already.

I wasn't recommending that people eat less. I said we could be facing food shortages from climate change. That's a widely accepted prediction, not a goal.

https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/climate-change-cuts-global-crop-yields-even-when-farmers-adapt

And there are no answers for that from AI robber barons who don't care how much environmental damage they do, and who are allied with an administration that's a disaster for the environment.

There is no Magic AI Fairy that will turn the AI companies into the good guys, so we should give them everything they want. That's nonsense. The AI companies are a threat to the economy, both with the AI bubble and the threat to workers' jobs. They're a threat to education. They're destructive of both the natural environment and our information ecosystem, which they're poisining with slop.

You're imagining a utopia with AI.

The reality is Elon Musk tearing apart the government with a team of hackers and stealing all that data, while polluting Memphis for his data center there.

The reality is AI companies trying to get the American taxpayer on the hook for all the losses when the AI bubble bursts.

The reality is AI bros getting the Trump admin to announce it will do all it can to stop states from regulating AI in any way.

They've done polls that show very few people believe AI will improve their lives.

And that includes young people, who are well aware that there's less hiring of new college grads because of AI. AI bros are dreaming of a future where companies don't need human workers. That's the dream they're peddling to businesses.

[meadowlander]

29. So what's your plan for winning an election in that context?

[anciano]

30. You didn't address this to me, but with all due respect

to hpd, I will jump in and share my two cents anyway. It has been my observation that voters usually vote pocketbook issues. Theoretical musing about AI is not exactly a red hot vote attracting magnet.
So Team Blue needs to stay focused on ideas to improve our daily lives in the "dirty here and now" instead of a "whimsical sweet bye and bye".

[meadowlander]

32. Except that how we manage AI is how you improve peoples' daily lives

or at least you can't ignore the impact that it will have on it.

People are worried about the impact that AI will have on their jobs. Our platform should address that directly - either by supporting universal basic income or progressive taxation of the productivity benefits of AI in a way that uplifts everyone.

There is no point tinkering around the edges pretending that policy interventions will drop the price of eggs or negotiating a discount on a handful of current medications while AI makes 60% of the jobs we currently do redundant in the next few years. We need a clear plan that tackles the threats and the opportunities head on or we look increasingly irrelevant and disconnected from the issues of most concern to voters - how can I get a job, how can I keep it, how can I find an affordable place to live, and if I can't get a job because there just isn't that much work left post-AI and large scale automation how do I pay for what I need to survive?

How AI is managed will be central to all of those questions and there is no realistic way to address them without addressing AI.

[highplainsdem]

31. Can't be sure at this point what the main issue will be. But boosting the AI industry and pretending

it can offer utopia can't be part of the platform when the tech lords want nothing short of subservience from politicians. Democrats' focus on AI needs to be on regulation. AI companies have to be brought under control, and their alliance with Trump can't be ignored. Telling people unregulated AI will help them will just push voters to hand more power to the AI industry and RW politicians.

Democrats can't ever offer tech lords the unregulated capitalism they want. Not without violating all liberal principles. The days of Silicon Valley CEOs and VCs supporting Democrats and being liberal, or mostly liberal, are over.

The Labour Party in the UK is apparently losing support as it tries to pander to AI companies. And those companies are not going to reward Labour with their support if they think they can get more concessions from the Tories or the Reform Party.

[meadowlander]

34. I didn't say that it would offer an utopia.

I suggested that it will accelerate advancements in medicine that will extend human lifespans and posed some questions on what the implications for that would be for our society.

And I've said repeatedly that Democrats should focus on regulation to address the worst potential abuses.

But to get regulation you have to win. So what is your plan to win?

Silicon Valley isn't a monolith and many of the workers are liberal, even if the CEOs and VCs are less and less so. They tend to be more libertarian than culturally conservative. If they sense that the nativist anti-immigrant wing of the Republican party is going to cut off their sweet, sweet cheap visa pipeline, they could swing back or break off altogether. If we were the party that was working with them to put sensible controls in place but also to fund and support obvious opportunities, we'd have them back in our camp again.

Most actual human beings already use AI at work now and that will be more and more true in the next few years. As they use it, they will see that it's not a boogey man. It's a powered up version of Clippy or Alexis that can work quickly with massive data sets. It needs to be regulated so it doesn't become something worse than that. But to pretend that it offers no potential benefits for people, that the fact that the companies are owned by weird ammoral douchebags (as if 99% of current companies aren't already), and to set ourselves up as the party that opposes all AI makes us look like out of touch contrarians who are sitting on our comfy retirements and don't care about what happens to young people.

Why did we lose the last election? Because Trump told young people that Democrats were coming for their TikTok. And because the Republicans have spent the last 30 years painting Democrats as holier than thou scolds who want to take away your hamburgers, make you take cold showers in the dark, and live in a shoebox composting your own poo until the flood waters carry you away.

Just wait until everyone under 35 has an AI girlfriend or boyfriend and a AI therapist, has a job that relies on AI and spends 90% of their free time generating AI photos and videos to enjoy and share and see how far we get as the party that wants to take AI away from them.

"AI will inevitably lead to a dystopian nightmare so we might as well all just give up now" is not a party platform.

We win by being the party that is for something. What do you want to be for?

[highplainsdem]

37. wow.

Just wait until everyone under 35 has an AI girlfriend or boyfriend and a AI therapist, has a job that relies on AI and spends 90% of their free time generating AI photos and videos to enjoy and share and see how far we get as the party that wants to take AI away from them.

What you're describing there is Idiocracy. Fake romance, fake therapist, time wasted on fake photos and videos. People that stupid and willing to settle for simulations of everything probably couldn't be lured by anything except a padded cocoon with tubes to slide pablum into their mouths and remove waste. Trump might like that kind of future, though, as long as the cocoon included a sexbot, or part of one.

But I don't think very many people with a functioning brain would find your AI-obsessed future appealing in any way. And if anyone was so ensnared by AI, they'd not only be dumbed down but easily manipulated by the AI companies that have them under almost constant surveillance.

Which is an argument to regulate AI companies asap, and as much as possible, including getting kids to step back from the addictive chatbots now.

[meadowlander]

38. This is just going in circles at this point but I'll give it one final go as simple as I can state it:

To regulate something, you need to be in power. To be in power you need to win an election. To win an election you need to offer people somethings besides "I'm going to take away the thing you like". What do you want to offer them?

[highplainsdem]

39. You overestimate how much people like AI. Offering to get genAI the hell out of our devices and the

internet would be a huge draw for most people.

More regulation of the AI companies as well as social media platforms would be a huge draw for most people.

Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg et alii are NOT heroes, except to AI fans and cultists.

See this Pew Research poll.from September on how Americans view AI. They're most in favor of AI helping with weather forecasts.

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans-view-ai-and-its-impact-on-people-and-society/

That poll also showed that adults under 30, who have more experience with AI than older adults, are more aware of the harm it does:

Furthermore, majorities of adults under 30 say the increased use of AI in society will make people worse at thinking creatively (61%) and forming meaningful relationships with other people (58%). In comparison, about four-in-ten adults ages 65 and older say AI will make people worse in these areas.

Trump did not win because people love AI. He won because of pocketbook issues and misogyny and racism.

There's no reason to believe we have to offer voters a high-tech carrot. Especially when there's little evidence they want one - or consider AI one. And when that tech bubble is a threat to the economy.

We need to offer sanity and authenticity. Trump and the tech bros offer delusions and fraud.

[meadowlander]

42. You would probably get the same survey numbers asking about TikTok or YouTube

and yet people still join and enjoy those platforms anyway.

I'm sure at least 60% of the population would agree that eating sugar is bad for you, but sales of sugar and fizzy drinks are also up. If surveyed at least 60% would agree there are better uses for your time and things that are better for your health, relationships and long-term happiness than video games, porn, reality TV, doomscrolling, coffee, fan fiction, buying lottery tickets, watching professional sports or plastic surgery. But try running on a platform of banning any of those things and see how far you get.

80% of people agree it's dangerous to jay walk and do it anyway. 90% of people drive over the speed limit at least some of the time. You can understand intellectually that something isn't the best for you and still do it either because you enjoy it enough that it is worth the trade off or because you can't help yourself or because the consequences are too abstract.

85% of businesses and 70% of home consumers have already adopted AI, regardless of what your survey says. Most people don't hate AI. They use it at work and at home and they can see that it is a tool which can sometimes be pretty useful if you put it to the right tasks. They agree that it needs sensible regulation and that it will cause significant social upheaval that will have to be managed. But they don't think it's something that needs to be banned. Your poll doesn't even show that.

[highplainsdem]

43. What you say here

85% of businesses and 70% of home consumers have already adopted AI, regardless of what your survey says. Most people don't hate AI. They use it at work and at home and they can see that it is a tool which can sometimes be pretty useful if you put it to the right tasks. They agree that it needs sensible regulation and that it will cause significant social upheaval that will have to be managed. But they don't think it's something that needs to be banned. Your poll doesn't even show that.

doesn't match any of the stories I read. It sounds like AI industry hype, as did your comments earlier that AI is inevitable, people shouldn't oppose data centers, etc.

I've read thousands of news stories on AI in the last few years (and posted hundreds of OPs about them here), read tens of thousands of social media posts, and corresponded with a few AI experts quoted in news stories. I'll go with what I learned from them.

AI companies have lost incredible amounts of money, which is why they want federal help.

They've been disappointed that people and businesses are much more reluctant to use genAI than they expected (people wouldn't have used calculators, either, if they hallucinated).

The issue of the AI companies having stolen the world's intellectual property for training data has not gone away and will not go away, no matter how often Sam Altman and others say that if the world wants their hallucinating chatbots, they'll have to let the AI companies get away with that theft, because the AI companies will have no chance of a profit if they have to pay for what they stole.

Read Ed Zitron about how untenable their business model is. They're kept afloat by circular financing and delusional investers. And again, they want assurances of a federal bailout when the bubble bursts.

I'm looking forward to it bursting, before they do more damage. And the execs and owners responsible for the intellectual property theft (and likely business fraud as well) belong jn prison.

They aren't saviors. They aren't visionaries of the future (btw, science fiction writers, like other writers, take a very dim view of AI companies and gen AI, and SF fans foolishly using chatbots to save time preparing for a convention this past year found out that was not acceptable in the SF fan and writer community - I think I posted here about that news story, too... EDITING to link to that OP: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220288413 ).

The AI bros are con artists, and they're peddling the most harmful non-weapon tech ever developed.

[uponit7771]

22. The first to claim public option as part of platform will win

[meadowlander]

27. Or UBI.

[flvegan]

23. What will the new retirement age be? Social security kicks in at what, 100? 110?

Sounds like the oligarchs' dream. Keep the drones working, filling their coffers. Billionaires become trillionaires.

Cool thing is that if the human race can achieve some sort of average lifespan of 125 or whatever ridiculous number, complete collapse will happen much sooner and it won't even matter. Imagine another 40 or 50 years for each person, all the cheap plastic crap they can buy and dispose of. The future wars over water will be epic!

[0rganism]

24. I really don't think F47 is going to make it to your "event horizon"

Presidencies age their officeholders hard, even when their primary job concerns appear to be golf and self-aggrandizement. Also, there's plenty of caveats regarding this tech-fueled immortality you envision: does it prevent abrupt deaths through acts of natural and/or human violence? I doubt all the medicine in the world would save F47 from the guillotine blade, should that be his fate.

Medical immortality does ensure all remaining deaths are of the sudden violence variety.

That said, I might well pursue such longevity myself for an opportunity to watch the eventual turning of the tide.

[Intractable]

25. Who Wants to Live Forever

One of my favorite Queen songs.

[WarGamer]

33. Of course it's worthwhile...

There's always another book to read, another hobby to pursue or just plain spend time in your own head.

[BlueSpot]

40. Not unless it makes it hurt less

I'm just blown away at how every passing year makes things hurt more. I'm very active but, put me on the floor and it's harder to get up. Kneel and I get bruised knees. Squat and my hips hurt. Think I have arthritis invading my fingers. Haven't taken any OTC meds for them, much less prescriptions, yet but the ache is very real (as is the twisting from how they used to be). And I'm just in my 60's. Maybe I don't do the right exercises but I don't want to live forever if everything always just hurts more.

AI might diagnose issues better, but will it make things hurt less?

[Rebl2]

45. I have

no desire to live forever or even to 85 or 90. After seeing my parents gradually go downhill (wasn’t pretty) I don’t want that. I am also very tired of being in pain from arthritis since childhood.