[extropy-chat] Youthful characteristics

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sat Oct 30 17:26:36 UTC 2004


On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 03:44:16 -0700 (PDT), Al Brooks wrote:
> It depends on a guy's age. When he's 19 he wants it.
> When he's 55 he can probably do without it.
> 

I probably agree with this (Mick Jagger excepted). ;)

Then I got to thinking that there are a lot of youthful activities
that much of our civilization pretty well depends on. And a lot of
disruptive activities as well, of course.

Producing children is only one item, and that seems to be dying out in
first world society.
Fighting, in wars and privately, seems to be mostly a young male activity.
Breakthrough research, again, mostly a younger activity.
Working through the night on projects,  on new startups, etc. is
mostly for younger people with few outside commitments.
All kinds of reckless behaviour are usually associated with younger people.
You can probably think of more for yourself.

As people grow older, they get more experienced. Stuff outside work
becomes more important. They calm down, become less irresponsible. All
night disco dancing becomes less attractive (Spike excepted). ;)

So, I strongly suspect that a population of long-lived people,
virtually immortal, whether in human-like bodies or uploaded to a
molecular computer, will be very different to our present day
civilization. Think about losing all the above attributes that young
people bring.

I know some people claim that they will redesign themselves to remain
young in body and outlook, but you can't design out the many years of
experience which stop you doing the 'daft' things that young folk do.
An immortal civilization will be much quieter, much more careful, very
cautious about changing anything.

Sounds like a civilization of committee meetings where everyone talks,
but nobody does anything.

BillK



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