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A comment on The fight to cheat death is heating up. Parent comment

Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by pilom on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:00PM (#12271498)
Oh but how much fun is it to contemplate? How does love, war, work, retirement, achievement, purpose, etc. change once you can live forever? Or once some subset of humanity can live forever? If you were nearly immortal how long would you mourn the death of a non-immortal spouse? Would you work an additional 5 years before retirement on the off chance that they figure out how to make you immortal between now and then? How would you treat a person who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you couldn't afford? How would that treatment affect inflation? How would immortals affect inflation? There is so much awesome material here for science fiction writers!
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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by ryanhuff on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:07PM (#12271538)
If you were immortal, you could pay off a loan over hundreds of years. Imagine a mortgage of $500K being paid off over 3 years. Suddenly, paying $1M-$2M isn't such a barrier.
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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by derekp7 on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:26PM (#12271661)
It doesn't work that way -- the upper limit is still the monthly interest on the loan. So at 3%, 1M is still 25K per month. Unless I'm missing something? (I believe that there is a classification of interest-only loans currently).
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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by greedo on Thursday August 11, 2016 @07:58PM (#12272607)
Yes, your math is off. At 3% the annual interest on a $1M loan would be $30-$40K (depending on how the interest is calculated), per year. Monthly, that would only be around $2500-$3500. Principal repayment be +/- $833/month.
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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by yolesaber on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:17PM (#12271615)
> How would you treat a person who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you couldn't afford?

I'm thinking of a great Prachett-esque scene where the newly ageless billionaire walks out of the clinic and then slips on a banana (or a soylent puddle) and dies from head trauma.

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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by qbrass on Thursday August 11, 2016 @07:49PM (#12272561)
You could come up with a better ironic hell than that.

They walk outside, get assaulted by an angry mob of people opposed to the rich paying to live forever, and end up with locked-in syndrome for the next thousand years from the head trauma.

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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by yolesaber on Thursday August 11, 2016 @09:10PM (#12272863)
I'm a terse man. Take pithy on me.
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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by astazangasta on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:05PM (#12271530)
I fully intend to write this science fiction, but the fact that this COULD be reality (and I think the biology is tractable) should be sparking some sort of policy debate. There is actual capital flowing into these ventures... Speculative fiction is ten years behind where the money is.
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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by surlyadopter on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:10PM (#12271560)
Drew Magary beat you to it.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal

(It's a good read)

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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by mordocai on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:11PM (#12271568)
Pandora's Star is the first book of a series that explores many of these themes as well.
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Re:The fight to cheat death is heating up by __jal on Thursday August 11, 2016 @05:08PM (#12271541)
As frequently happens, Bruce Sterling was there. Pick up a copy of _Holy Fire_.
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