About that quote: If life is not worth living for 1000 years, then why is it worth living for 80? And if it’s worth living for 80, why not 1000? If you don’t want to live 1000 years, why not kill yourself now?
Is there some utility function that is positive up to 80 years but starts to become negative after that? (independent of level of health, since we’re implicitly assuming that if you lived for 1000 years you’d be reasonably healthy during most of that time). If so, what is it?
In practical terms, this perspective helps me to disengage from current events that don’t matter much in the long run. At my current age (55), for example, American Presidents come and go subjectively quickly, so I tend to ignore them as much as possible compared with longer-term trends like the demographic social engineering in the U.S. that bloggers like Steve Sailer write about. I also tend to ignore geek fads that will allegedly “change everything,” like Bitcoin, 3D printing and seasteading, until the beta testers beat the hell out of these innovations and we can get a more realistic view of what they can do despite what the hype and propaganda say.
If the relative (dis)value of gains or losses for society at large regress to a mean over time, why wouldn’t this trend extend to what happens to us personally? Why wouldn’t everything we observe or experience not matter as much? In a lifetime of centuries, if I see everything I now love degrade or disappear, I may also have the opportunity to grow a more nuanced love for things or persons that are more robust over time. The sting of pain at losing something loved in our first century of living may fade as its dwarfed by how deeply we feel the loss or gain of love for something greater, something that can only be appreciated in a lifetime spanning centuries.
Empirically, it seems to be nearly identical to the age of retirement as things stand. Lots of 70 year olds are just punching the clock most of the time(though there’s certainly exceptions).
I don’t claim that we’ve extended life as long as our attention spans can allow. I think we could live longer and be okay. But current human psychology and culture are not designed for extremely long lives, even if we solved the issues of physiology.
I know, but that’s not the biggest reason for retirement. Remember, a lot of people despise their jobs—they’re looking to get out as soon as they can. A lot more don’t really hate it, but wait for the time when they can quit working financially(due to pensions, etc.), and leave as soon as they can, because retirement is seen as more fun. Those aren’t dependant on aging.
A lot of people who say they’re looking to get out of retirement as soon as they can are optimising for it very poorly, as the early retirement community will argue and in many cases demonstrate. If you’re in a sufficiently high-earning job OR are sufficiently frugal that you can save two thirds of what you earn or more and still enjoy your life with expenses at that level, you can retire in about ten to fifteen years. Social effects dominate—if you earn three times the median salary or more, probably most of your peers earn comparable amounts and spend ~90% of what they earn, so trying to live on what’s actually a perfectly normal amount to live on seems like extreme deprivation. And what the social effects do is keep the age of retirement at the age it was set at by governments enacting the first pension schemes a hundred years ago when everyone was a factory worker. And that age was decided upon based on health deteriorating.
I concur that if the issues of physiology are solved, the layout of culture and psychology would have to change to accommodate, lest quality of life decreases. Just because humans might start living for several more centuries or millenia into the future doesn’t mean we can assume there’s a hunky-dory post-scarcity wonderland waiting for us there. For one, a longer lifespan means longer time meant working to save for a future of greater needs and wants, to sustain that longer lifespan. Maybe humans would despair that several more centuries of living means several more centuries of work. Alternatively, as how humans experience time changes as a function of how long they live, they may be more willing to work longer if there’s a greater diversity of work, and more opportunity for novel experiences and projects that a shorter lifespan couldn’t afford.
I think life after 80 goes downhill not just because of health but because people you are familiar with and things start going away. Things change so quickly the world starts to become unfamiliar to you. Its like living on an alien planet. I think living to 1000 years would require one to leave the world, do some adjusting/re-education/reworking and then re-engaging with the world again. It would be like every 100 years going back to college and starting again. New friends, new music, new everything so that one could keep going.
About that quote: If life is not worth living for 1000 years, then why is it worth living for 80? And if it’s worth living for 80, why not 1000? If you don’t want to live 1000 years, why not kill yourself now?
Is there some utility function that is positive up to 80 years but starts to become negative after that? (independent of level of health, since we’re implicitly assuming that if you lived for 1000 years you’d be reasonably healthy during most of that time). If so, what is it?
I’m jumping on this bandwagon.
User advancedatheist wrote:
If the relative (dis)value of gains or losses for society at large regress to a mean over time, why wouldn’t this trend extend to what happens to us personally? Why wouldn’t everything we observe or experience not matter as much? In a lifetime of centuries, if I see everything I now love degrade or disappear, I may also have the opportunity to grow a more nuanced love for things or persons that are more robust over time. The sting of pain at losing something loved in our first century of living may fade as its dwarfed by how deeply we feel the loss or gain of love for something greater, something that can only be appreciated in a lifetime spanning centuries.
Boredom.
Why is the threshold for boredom 80 years?
Empirically, it seems to be nearly identical to the age of retirement as things stand. Lots of 70 year olds are just punching the clock most of the time(though there’s certainly exceptions).
I don’t claim that we’ve extended life as long as our attention spans can allow. I think we could live longer and be okay. But current human psychology and culture are not designed for extremely long lives, even if we solved the issues of physiology.
It’s the age of retirement because physical and mental health decreases but I explicitly said assume reasonable health.
I know, but that’s not the biggest reason for retirement. Remember, a lot of people despise their jobs—they’re looking to get out as soon as they can. A lot more don’t really hate it, but wait for the time when they can quit working financially(due to pensions, etc.), and leave as soon as they can, because retirement is seen as more fun. Those aren’t dependant on aging.
A lot of people who say they’re looking to get out of retirement as soon as they can are optimising for it very poorly, as the early retirement community will argue and in many cases demonstrate. If you’re in a sufficiently high-earning job OR are sufficiently frugal that you can save two thirds of what you earn or more and still enjoy your life with expenses at that level, you can retire in about ten to fifteen years. Social effects dominate—if you earn three times the median salary or more, probably most of your peers earn comparable amounts and spend ~90% of what they earn, so trying to live on what’s actually a perfectly normal amount to live on seems like extreme deprivation. And what the social effects do is keep the age of retirement at the age it was set at by governments enacting the first pension schemes a hundred years ago when everyone was a factory worker. And that age was decided upon based on health deteriorating.
No arguments. My comment isn’t that all people are perfectly rational, it’s that many people dislike their jobs.
I concur that if the issues of physiology are solved, the layout of culture and psychology would have to change to accommodate, lest quality of life decreases. Just because humans might start living for several more centuries or millenia into the future doesn’t mean we can assume there’s a hunky-dory post-scarcity wonderland waiting for us there. For one, a longer lifespan means longer time meant working to save for a future of greater needs and wants, to sustain that longer lifespan. Maybe humans would despair that several more centuries of living means several more centuries of work. Alternatively, as how humans experience time changes as a function of how long they live, they may be more willing to work longer if there’s a greater diversity of work, and more opportunity for novel experiences and projects that a shorter lifespan couldn’t afford.
Boredom, memory issues, etc. discussion—it’s both about psychological effects of aging at present tech levels, and what long lives might be like if there were no physiological aging
I think life after 80 goes downhill not just because of health but because people you are familiar with and things start going away. Things change so quickly the world starts to become unfamiliar to you. Its like living on an alien planet. I think living to 1000 years would require one to leave the world, do some adjusting/re-education/reworking and then re-engaging with the world again. It would be like every 100 years going back to college and starting again. New friends, new music, new everything so that one could keep going.