The Price of Immortality: The Race to Live Forever (Peter Ward)

The Michael Shermer Show # 271

Shermer and Ward discuss: religious immortality • Church of Perpetual Life in Florida • what it means to live forever • why lives have doubled in length the past century • Stein’s Law: things that can’t go on forever won’t • Why do we age and die? • how to live to 100, 1000, 10,000 years • escape velocity to reach immortality • Aubrey de Grey’s program • tech billionaires programs • transhumanists/extropians • diet, exercise, supplements, stem cells, telomeres, and other aging hacks • Ray Kurzweil • cryonics • nanotechnology • brain preservation • mind uploading and digital immortality • Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory

Peter Ward is a British business and technology reporter whose reporting has taken him across the globe. Reporting from Dubai, he covered the energy sector in the Middle East before earning a degree in business journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His writing has appeared in Wired, The Atlantic, The Economist, GQ, BBC Science Focus, and Newsweek.

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[BrentNally]

These are topics I’ve been thinking about, researching and interviewing experts on for years. I agree with most of the perspectives discussed in this video but disagree on a few key points. Anyways, thanks for the video and I hope to see more content like this here soon!

[jeffersonianideal]

"The key here, I think, is to not think of death as an end, but think of it more as a very effective way of cutting down on your expenses."

-Woody Allen

[SHurd-rcgo]

I'm heading towards 87, and have been ready to die for years. But I hang out with many peers, whose egos don't want to let go.
Thank you both for this fascinating talk.

[albionicamerican]

The cryonicists' goal is not weird in itself. It only sounds weird because of the timing. In a technologically competent civilization a few centuries from now, people will call the ability to live indefinitely in good physical and cognitive shape something like "good health, " instead of the current nerd term "transhumanism, " because they will accept that as a normal condition of life.

[Myshcan]

"Genetically our bodies are completely coded to die." (20:36). I had assumed that was the case, but reevaluated when I was informed that in our evolution individuals did not die of old age. They died of other causes long before they would have reached a point where any genetic code to die would have become applicable. So, now I am wondering if there is evidence for the proposition that our bodies are coded to die.

[fullmatthew]

Michael, "Ship in a Bottle" is one of my favorite Star Trek episodes as well!

[albionicamerican]

As for Terror Management Theory, when you do something which can actually keep you from dying, you don't call that "terror management, " but something else, like "effective health care." Terror management is what we should call the things we do in response to death *_which don't work, _* like, oh, praying to Jesus.

In other words, rationally we should manage our risk, not our terror.

[justgivemethetruth]

I just want to die when I'm darn good and ready to. That's all. Is that too much to ask?
How could one human brain begin to hold the memories of 200 years? I don't think it's
possible without some kind of technological augmentation.

[jeremywvarietyofviewpoints]

I suspect if we lived indefinitely life wouldn't become more or less meaningful during life. Dying won't make life more meaningful. Living a long time may make the distant past less meaningful. Either way some people would complain and other people would be happy. Some people would achieve a lot and others wouldn't. Personally I would prefer not to be forced to age and die.

[wraithofsolidarity]

What's the difference between you and quantum fluctuations that are exactly like you? Is that a different person?

[LeonKukkuk]

In this country in which no one dies not everything as sordid as we have just described, nor, in this society torn between the hope of living forever and the fear of never dying, did the voracious maphia succeed in getting its talons into every section by corrupting souls, subjugating bodies, and besmirching the little that remained of the fine principles of old . . . [As Intermitências da Morte, José Saramago]

[DeconvertedMan]

Eat healthy and exercise eh? well... here is to science finding a different way to let me live forever :D

[richardnunziata]

I listen to the first 15 min and found all there arguments poor and ill informed as if they had already reach the conclusion and where simple making statements to support it.

[steenrasmussen]

Forever is a time! As much as I enjoy my own company, being trapped in one consciousness for all eternity sounds like hell!

[TracyPicabia]

If you've a mind to dig some more into the psychology of the immortalists, and those of us who just don't fancy dying, and are willing to die laughing at the same time I can highly recommend The Motion of the Body Through Space: A Novel. by Lionel Shriver

[AndrewDoe]

I would like to try living for longer...maybe not FOREVER... but a lot longer... but I want to be healthy, and not have to worry about making money or other threats to my freedom (such as not having to worry about tyrannical governments or nasty societal trends... like a religious inquisition.... or being enslaved by a superior alien race, etc.) or.. I think it would rock. There's lots of stuff I would do. Lots of ways I would try to improve my character.

[honeyspiderii]

First they ignore us, then they laugh at us, then they fight us, then we win. It is good to see our opposition moving into phase 3. The singularity is right on schedule.

[jimwalshonline]

As Isaac Asimov said, who the hell wants to live forever; after a hundred thousand years or so, you'd be climbing the walls...

[robertdeffenbaugh]

The price of Immortality is an eternity of depression.
Most Immortals committed suicide and I’m close to my breaking point.
I want to die like everyone else.
I was born in 88, 016 BC.

[richardthomas]

In Neal Stephenson's recent book Fall (Or Dodge in Hell), people's minds are uploaded when they die but create their own world in the computer (or the cloud instantiated on satellites).