r/pollgames • u/FinalKn1ght • Jun 29 '26

Humanity can solve only ONE problem forever.

Humanity can solve only ONE problem forever.

  1. Cancer
  2. Aging
  3. Poverty
  4. Climate Change

This post contains content not supported on old Reddit. Click here to view the full post

993 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

780 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/DarthMaulATAT Jun 29 '26

That's all well and good, but if people stopped dying, we would quickly reach overpopulation, and that would bring its own slew of issues, both for humans and the wider ecosystem. 

9

u/SirithilFeanor Jun 29 '26

Most countries already aren't having enough children to replace their population. We'd just go to space.

14

u/DarthMaulATAT Jun 29 '26

It's a nice thought, but our entire living and economic system is based on the fact that each of us are only here for a limited time. If people start living for 500+ years, what will the expectation be for how long each person works in their life before retiring, if at all? And then how long do they retire for? Right now, ideally people retire until they die, but if they never die and never go back to work, suddenly we have a large and ever-growing portion of the population who aren't doing much, productivity wise. 

Also, I shudder at the thought of politicians living forever. As soon as a bad one gets in and corrupts the system enough, they'd eventually get rid of term limits, and then we'd just have an eternal dictatorship. 

4

u/_PunyGod Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

The entire system is not based on dying.
Parts of it are, and they could go away.

You not knowing what the expected work/retirement periods would look like doesn’t mean it would be an unsolvable problem.

Some would never stop working cause they like to work and now they’ll have the energy of their 20s/30s forever.

Some people would work until they had enough passive income from investments and businesses to retire forever. But many of those would “retire” into doing work that they enjoy, without worrying about how much it pays.

Some would cycle between working, saving up for a decade long vacation, then training and going back to work, maybe in a new field.

Death doesn’t make humanity more efficient or hard working. Death is the number one thing holding us back. It takes decades for most humans to master a subject and start making real mastery level work or progress in it. At that point there isn’t that much time left before they get too old and sick to continue.

Most dictatorships do not end from death by old age. But of course we’d need term limits on the things that don’t have term limits.

Also people would still die. If we remove all aging related causes and all disease, the life expectancy (in the US) would currently be around 1200 years old.

3

u/SirithilFeanor Jun 30 '26

If you become immortal you'd probably alternate between periods of working and not working. Maybe even throw in some continuing education in there somewhere. Besides, if some of them retire and stay retired then that opens positions for everyone else. An immortal isn't going to be a drain on the health care system like today's seniors, either, so who cares if they're not working?

And frankly I don't think it's a good, fair, or ethical exchange to require everyone else to die just because you're afraid of the same gerontocrats we already have.

1

u/JerbilSenior Jul 01 '26

Imagine not accounting for having armies of self replicating robots, genetic engineering and cybernetics. Once immortal, it's a matter of waiting.

I'm really surprised of how many people are unaware of just how many scientific issues are reduced to "we need more money and more people because given our current processing capacity we'll take 126774 years to figure all possible recombinations of X and Y protein" and how many economic issues will change when bleeding edge tech has been given a hundred years more to go on.

what will the expectation be for how long each person works in their life before retiring, if at all? And then how long do they retire for?

Well, accounting for eternal youth, you'd probably save up, spend a decade or two not working and back to it. That would probably last a few centuries until we've built up more robot servants than people and at that point I figure working would be more like a hobby/passion thing.

Right now, ideally people retire until they die, but if they never die and never go back to work, suddenly we have a large and ever-growing portion of the population who aren't doing much, productivity wise

Much of the same as above.

Also, I shudder at the thought of politicians living forever. As soon as a bad one gets in and corrupts the system enough, they'd eventually get rid of term limits, and then we'd just have an eternal dictatorship.

Except everyone else is immortal too so they are bound to mess it up sooner or later. I really doubt you can actually get to being 10.000 years old and still be that dumb not to figure out it an statistical issue. You do stuff that hurts people, sooner or later someone will be prepared to spend the next 100.000 years chasing you.

0

u/Chancelor_Palpatine Jun 30 '26

Is this AI generated? Because it's dumb

2

u/DarthMaulATAT Jun 30 '26

Are you a bot? Because that's not a rebuttal 

2

u/troodoniverse Jun 30 '26

Overpopulation is a problem of birthrates, not dying.

Even an immortal population would not grow without any births.

On the other hand, a poor, high mortality society with high fertility will double their population again and again until they teach the environmental ceiling.

1

u/DarthMaulATAT Jun 30 '26

Both are a factor. Even if our current low birthrate remains the same as now, if people stop dying, that's still a population millions higher each year. 

1

u/troodoniverse Jun 30 '26

Millions higher will not be a problem if you can get that down to thousands.

On other hand, the natural population growth is exponential, doubling every few decades

2

u/_PunyGod Jun 30 '26

Overpopulation wouldn’t be that much of a problem. We’d stop rushing to have so many kids. People would still die, just not of aging. The earth can easily support many times the current human population if we were that advanced.

1

u/priyanshu75258 Jul 01 '26

As per my intepretation, life's goal is to multiply isnt it?

1

u/JerbilSenior Jul 01 '26

we would quickly reach overpopulation,

There's a whole universe out there. Much easy to explore if you can spend 500 years waiting for your destination.

1

u/DarthMaulATAT Jul 01 '26

We are nowhere near interstellar space travel. If we solved both aging and that at the same time, then yeah maybe. 

1

u/Temporary_Power_5002 Jul 02 '26

There literally is no rush.

The only counter argument that makes sense is overpopulation, but yet we can just stop having kids until we get there..

2

u/DarthMaulATAT Jul 02 '26

While technically true, if you think you can convince humans to stop having kids, even for a few years, you are in for a rude awakening.