Re:Google’s Ray Kurzweil predicts how the world will change
by justin66 on Monday January 13, 2014 @11:08AM
(#7051328)
> A planet with 7 billion people that live forever and are still actively procreating is likely to quickly have overpopulation issues.
The weird part is that it might not make us slam into the inevitable planetary population limit much faster than we otherwise would. Somebody (one of the senescence nuts, maybe - sorry, I don't have a link) did a pretty convincing study indicating the average lifetime might not even double if we get rid of sickness and cellular aging.
You can see the logic: take into account all the things that kill people and aren't related to disease and aging and model around that. Accidents, crime, and war are still going to exist.
The mathematical model isn't perfect. It's interesting to speculate as to whether we as a race would become greater or lesser risk-takers after finding out aging wasn't a problem.
The weird part is that it might not make us slam into the inevitable planetary population limit much faster than we otherwise would. Somebody (one of the senescence nuts, maybe - sorry, I don't have a link) did a pretty convincing study indicating the average lifetime might not even double if we get rid of sickness and cellular aging.
You can see the logic: take into account all the things that kill people and aren't related to disease and aging and model around that. Accidents, crime, and war are still going to exist.
The mathematical model isn't perfect. It's interesting to speculate as to whether we as a race would become greater or lesser risk-takers after finding out aging wasn't a problem.