[Cinema] In Time movie

[Sughs]

Hi everyone. I recently saw the movie "In Time" and i loved it, one of my dreams is to be immortal, live forever, never age. But if the future would be anything like this movie i think i prefer to live 70 / 80 years and die than have a clock in my arm when i turn 25 and be thinking about dead all the time.

If we get immortality, or at least something that lets us live until 120+ years, lets say a pill if we don't want to die we will be practically slaves to the government. For example your are 80 but whit the pill you apparent 40 and you are healthy, but if you don't work and stay a few days without the pill you die.

What i am saying is that the movie idea of immortality is pretty scary with clock or pill if this is the future i think i prefer to die with 80 than being a slave to the government and thinking about dead every second for centuries.

What do you think?

[Deleted]

The Human Population is now over 7 billion which is absolutely disgusting.

If Immortality was achieved the world population would skyrocket, would expect to see it doube to 14 billion people within 15-20 years. If it was obtained there would need to be strict regulations and indeed sterilisation to keep the population under control.

It would also lead to euthansia and eugenics on mass in order to increase the workforce.

If this didn't happen we would need another planet within 20 years in order to keep up with the resource demand. We'd need another solar system within 100 years and we'd proberly colonize the entire galaxy within 5-10,000 years and then when one galaxy is full we'd need another galaxy every 20 years as the population would continue to double.

It's just disgusting, it's like a virus.

I can see the attraction and usefullness of keeping a 25 year old body for 80-100 years but death is absolutely neccessary.

[Sughs]

Yeah, i agree with you that's why in the movie they raise the price of everything every day, so the poor die when they can't afford the prices anymore.
I think that it happens already for Europe, America, Asia, etc to live like they live a few thousands die in Africa every week.

But even without immortality we will reach that point, it just takes longer. Every year the life span goes higher and in a few decades we will live until 120 / 130 instead 80 and we will reach 10 billion really soon.

[Deleted]

The increasing life expectancy is one of the key reasons for the current economic crysis.

If people are paying taxes for 47 years and then claiming a pension for 15 it is somewhat sustainable.
If people are paying taxes for 37 years and then claiming a pension for 25 years this is unsustainable and will collapse the economy. This is precisely what is happening in Greece.

If life expectancy increases to 100 the governments of the world will have to increase the retirement age to 80 or beyond which is impractable. Not only will the elderly be physically or mentally incapable of performing a huge proportion of jobs but they will be effectively stealing jobs from the younger people in the population and so the average number of years spent paying taxes will decrease.

It will lead to total meltdown, and a very high chance of wars and a mass culling of the human population.

[Sughs]

I need to agree with you again but if we reach a life expectancy of 100 maybe medicine will have advanced enough to able people to work until they are 80 or something.

Just think about it, people aged 40 now look younger and healthier than people of 30 from a lets say...100 years ago.

[Deleted]

A couple of things:

1. The Movie: In Time, was really quite bad. While the premise and the setup were good, the story and execution were not. I had a hard time justifying the movie to my friends after seeing it, and rightfully so.

2. Despite popular propaganda, overpopulation in itself, isn't a real threat to the world as a whole. Yes, overpopulation is a localized problem, especially in India and parts of Asia, but I wouldn't call it a global problem. The real challenges are pollution, waste-management and how to feed all of them. Those are the dangers, overpopulation is not. Population growth should also slow down as the standard of living increases world-wide, which is does, slowly but surely.

3. I'm not sure if immortality is a goal worth achieving. All of our values and principles are based on the idea that life is finite, and thus special. Most of our appreciation is born off the fact that all life eventually ends. Without death, much of live would become meaningless. I can see science trying to extend our life-expectancy towards 100 years but that's about as far as I'd currently consider reasonable.

As far more worthy goal would be imo, to allow people to age in dignity and enjoy the fruits of their lives and labor, rather than have them decay slowly due to physical limitations, dementia and Alzheimer.

Allowing seniors to age in dignity is far more worth-while than trying to attain immortality for the young.


The only thing that'd drive me towards immortality is my burning curiosity about the future. When will space-travel evolve? Will we meet E.T. life? What about relative world-peace? What are the 10th generation consoles going to be capable of? Will the singularity occur? Etc...

[Zanno]

The Human Population is now over 7 billion which is absolutely disgusting.

If Immortality was achieved the world population would skyrocket, would expect to see it doube to 14 billion people within 15-20 years. If it was obtained there would need to be strict regulations and indeed sterilisation to keep the population under control.

It would also lead to euthansia and eugenics on mass in order to increase the workforce.

If this didn't happen we would need another planet within 20 years in order to keep up with the resource demand. We'd need another solar system within 100 years and we'd proberly colonize the entire galaxy within 5-10,000 years and then when one galaxy is full we'd need another galaxy every 20 years as the population would continue to double.

It's just disgusting, it's like a virus.

I can see the attraction and usefullness of keeping a 25 year old body for 80-100 years but death is absolutely neccessary.

Let's get some facts straight.

The human population is not a problem. If you take every single human being on the planet and drop them in the state of Texas, each person could live fairly comfortably.

The problem is not the number of people. The problem is the number of people condensed into a single social environment.

With regards to the OP, I'm not sure I like either scenario.

[roboscorcher]

To my understanding, aging occurs as a way to prevent the likelihood of getting cancer. It's along story as to why, and I'm not an expert on it, but I don't think we'll be seeing immortality until we figure out how to improve cellular metabolsim so that cancer is prevented.

Assuming we do this, immortality would vastly increase the rate of overpopulation. If we had a way to inhabit other planets at the time, I would be okay with it, but I don't think we'll be living on another planet anytime soon. I hope I'm wrong though :P