Even assuming if longer lives did lead to less innovation (a stance which I have some qualms about, because there’s something to be said for synthesis of large bodies of knowledge), who are you to make the choice of picking innovation over billions of lives saved? The pace of innovation beyond really long lives really only matters if we are facing extraterrestrial competition. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be better to reach Awesome Technology X in 1,000 rather than 750 years if many fewer billions of people die along the way?

But that being said, I think you’re treating this a little one-sided. First of all, I think overpopulation is a huge problem, and underlies many of the problems facing the environment, including global warming. I wouldn’t mind seeing a third to a sixth of our current population. Even if we eventually develop the ability to establish off-world colonies (and I really hope we do), we’re going to do a lot of damage to the environment, not to mention experience a lot of suffering for scare resources, in the time we’re all crammed together on Earth.

There’s also the issue that Gregory Maxwell brought up. In Isaac Asimov’s Robot series, he deals with the Spacers, those of have colonized other worlds. They’ve also used genetic engineering to increase their lifespan to around 3 or 4 centuries, and in the novels, the dragging out of their lives greatly affected the pace of innovation on their worlds. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, man’s mortality is his gift, rather than lingering forever like the elves.

Of course, these writers and I could all be falling into the very trap you describe. I just feel, though, as part of a broader principle, that change, while difficult, is ultimately good.

Have you read Cory Doctorow’s work, especially Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom? It’s mostly an exploration of human nature, once the problems of material and lifespan scarcity have been solved. Everything’s not perfect, of course, but it’s one of the more convincing arguments I’ve seen for research in this area.

Some people argue that we need youth to break the status-quo. That if we know we could live for a very long time we will take fewer risks… I think there may be some merit to these points, but substantially prolonging of life doesn’t mean there is no more room for youth, or no more reasons to take risks. Besides that our species has adapted to many changes and challenges, … living a long time hardly seems like the worst.

Death by old age might, in fact, turn out to be good. But even if we discover that it was good, it remains hard to argue that it should be entirely outside of our control. If we were to somehow eliminate death by old age but still decided needed it we could implement a compulsory age of death, like in logan’s run. It sounds horrific, but if you think about it some I think you will agree with me that it could be no worse than our current practice of allowing people to age-to-death and it is a more honest approach.

Modern medical science has actually done very little to increase our lifespans. People often throw about numbers indicating fantastic improvements in life expectancy, but these are always expectancy from birth. This graph tells a more complete and more disappointing story.

I can’t find a graph of it, but the life expectancies of the *oldest *people have changed even less over time. I think that really puts all the healthy lifestyle crazes into perspective. While living healthy *will* impact your life expectancy and quality of life, the improvement between a typical lifestyle and a very healthy one are not that substantial and do not justify the huge amount of time and money which are sunk by people into those sorts of programs. The money would be better spent on figuring out how to extend people’s lifespans.

Anti-aging science is pretty hard, or it will become hard quickly once we’ve bothered to solve the low hanging fruit. Aging occurs slowly and it can be hard to separate it from beneficial processes. It’s quite likely that as we solve some aging related issues we will discover that the next set are exponentially harder. Say we solve the cell death clock, genetic deteriorations (and the resulting cancers), buildups of arterial plaques, and the most common neurodegenerative disorders.. perhaps then people will comfortably live to 150 years old, but then gradually go insane because evolution never selected for a mind that lasts that long.

But even slight improvements, so long as they are increases in the amount of time we spend healthy, would be of enormous benefit, far more so than the treatment of many serious diseases especially since many of them could be avoided by a dampening of the aging process.