Eternal Youth
The pursuit of immortality is a tantalising idea that appears in science and technology as well as works of art and literature. But who actually wants to live forever? What does it mean to ‘cure’ ageing? And what might be some unforeseen consequences of perpetual longevity?
In this week’s episode, we discuss the age-old problem of ageing. We discuss the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents dataset, demographics, education, governance, resource allocation, economics, intergenerational social interactions, family life, monogamy and cultural stagnation vs innovation. Finally, we share our best examples of the elderly.
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph and this week we're discussing eternal youth. Nick, who wants to live forever?
Speaker B:Good question. Well, they do. There are some who say that the first person to live to a thousand has already been born. But then I think they've been saying that for a long time. But I think seriously, progress is being made in the direction of doing something about this age-old problem of ageing, which, you know, as I can see visually, is something that you suffer from, particularly acutely. I'm glad you're saying that visually. Yeah, but, you know, so actually, I mean, that sounds very exciting. What does it mean, I think, is what we want to talk about. So what actually does it mean to cure ageing? Literally, what does that involve? I'm not saying how to do it, but what do you have to do to do it? And then, you know, what are the things that we know we will have to change as a result of people no longer ageing? Are there going to be things where actually it turns out we hit some hard constraint where we all go doolally at the age of 150 for some reason we haven't anticipated? And then, you know, what are the slightly less obvious further down the road effects that, you know, the effects on things like culture and, you know, daily life that aren't directly to do with ageing but actually turn out to be a result of it? So, yeah, I think we just want to do a quick whizz through the, you know, the implications of eternal youth so that we can
Speaker A:be best prepared when it happens. Yeah, I mean, I'm not intentionally pissing on our own chips here, but this sounds familiar to our one on teleportation, which, you know, it feels like there's some overlap. So, yeah, so to summarise that was what are some of the challenges, how we might do it, something, because you said it, yeah, and then what does it all mean, what are the implications? Yeah. Who's going to, do you want to kick us off, Peter, or are we
Speaker C:going to come straight to? Well, I think Nick was going to, it might be helpful to sketch out a type of immortality, what are the rules of this game? Yeah, what have we done? Because there are all sorts of problems, we could cure ageing but not, say, heart disease or dementia or something and then we'd be in a very sorry state. Yeah, well, I mean, we'd feel like proper chumps then. Well, actually, we might forget all about the problem. Yeah. So, because also we're
Speaker A:talking about rules, because we've, this week we're talking about eternal youth, now, youth,
Speaker B:like you could be young. Okay, so let's talk about what we're doing, what we're doing here, what the Aleph boffins have done when they've cured ageing. So, there is, I think, basically two distinct strands of activity here. One is actual cellular ageing. So, you're, you know, the decay of your regenerative capacity and the, you know, the entropy of your molecular structures. The thing that makes you look old and wrinkly, no, not you, obviously, but that makes one look old and wrinkly and does all the other stuff like make us go bald and all the stuff that means that we physically are not as good as we used to be. We stop that. Rule number one is we fix that, right? Yeah. So, now you can, we effectively, we can just sort of freeze time at some age. Are you able to walk it back? Well, I don't know. No, I'm going to say we're not, you aren't,
Speaker C:that's too difficult. So, whatever age you're at, you're stuck there. Yeah, that somehow,
Speaker B:like through using some kind of genetic modification or whatever, we just basically are able to keep going as though we're 21. We better get on with it fast, because I don't want to get much physical. Well, no. Well, we'll touch on that. Too late, Peter, too late. But, okay. So, the implication is actually, one obvious implication is that, for example, reproduction is not going to tail off. So, women are no longer, you know, going to stop being able to have babies, for example, because they'll be effectively, functionally, you know, 25 for the rest of their life. The other thing we do need to do. It's not going to just affect this
Speaker A:reproductive stuff. It doesn't just affect women, by the way. I mean, we men, anyway,
Speaker B:keep going. Sorry. Just putting that out there. In a different way. The other thing we need to do, as Peter touched on, is cure a whole bunch of deaths that happen through natural causes, which would, even if you cured aging and we all look 25, we also need to make sure that we're not getting, you know, we're not dying of cancer. So, that is, some of that is wear and tear, right? So, I think a lot of the cardiovascular problems actually are going to be cured when you cure cellular aging. But, obviously, there are all the things which Peter's touching on, cancer, and to some extent, as I understand it, and I'm not an oncologist, but that a lot of, you know, the reason people get cancer is effectively to do with sort of cellular reproduction. Age is a big factor, obviously. But, you know, then actually, effectively, every time your cells regenerate, you're rolling the dice. There's some chance you might get unlucky. And so, we cure all that, get rid of all that. So, there's no longer any such thing as like dying of old age. So, the two strands are the diseases that kill you, they've gone, and the actual physical aging process, we've fixed that. Don't all thank us at once. But, obviously, that's it. You can still get run over. Like, medical science hasn't somehow, not able to bring you back to life if your head gets torn off. That's all we've done. All we've done is cure aging and cure all age-related disease. Which is not bad, right? I know,
Speaker A:it's not bad. The question is, what do we do after breakfast? Yeah, because I think, again, we talked about this once, which is if you sort of, and you'd worked it out, because you could do all this number stuff, which is your chance of accident, exactly. It would work out where you'd probably live a thousand years before you got run over by a bus or something. Yeah, I've revised
Speaker B:that estimate upwards, actually. Oh, excellent. Yeah, I think it's more like 10,000. I think, it's actually quite, I know I often get wistful over the sad loss of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents dataset. But again, if Rishi is listening, please refund that dataset. It was really useful, knowing what accidents people die in. It's really hard to find out how many people die of accidents, right? But I think it is about 1% of deaths or something, which basically works out as per year, something like one in 10,000. I don't know.
Speaker A:Which means, I'm jumping ahead a bit here, I know, but wouldn't you be pissed off if you sort of, you know, if you only make it to 74 or something, or 602, or, you know.
Speaker C:Yeah, but I was jumping ahead a little bit. That's potentially an interesting implication for kind of people's outlook on life and their sort of psychology. If you've got this potential to live forever, you've got almost an, you've got an unlimited potential, really. You could do anything, at any time, and you can achieve an infinite amount of stuff, more or less. But you could just get run over by a bus. And one in 10,000, to somebody who's very, very, very old, might seem like quite high odds of death. And so, there's a day where people might
Speaker B:become more risk averse. It might become more funnier if you have a rabid non-smoker who's been a vegetarian, and they get run over at the young age of 120, and they get run over by a
Speaker C:bus. But if you were, if you were sort of 10,000 years old, and you were, you were looking forward to the next 100,000 years of life, and all the things you're going to achieve in there, you might, you might get into a sort of mental state where actually you don't want to go anywhere, do anything, because the risk is so high. So you might, which makes me think, well, are there new psychological disorders that you, you get? I think he's going too far
Speaker A:into the interesting, he's gone too deep, too soon. And there's also, is 100 years equivalent to 100,000 years? Is a life, is a human lifespan the same, no matter what the number is? Anyway.
Speaker B:Four score years in 10. Well, okay. So, so, sorry, there is a really important thing we need to, we need to talk about. But we need to frame some stuff. Sorry, go on. Well, we do, we need to decide how memory and experience, et cetera, is going to work, right? Because I think we, we have to say that your memory is allowed to keep working. It's a bit like in Groundhog Day, you know, it's like the, actually the one thing that doesn't get reset is his brain. Yeah, yeah. And I, and I think, you know, let's say we're letting people live potentially to 1,000 or 10,000. What I, what I wanted to check was, well, is our brain going to get full, right? Well, it, it turns out that's the wrong metaphor for human memory. That it is not like a hard drive where as you experience stuff, it gradually fills up. I was trying to find, is there anyone ever in recorded history who has suddenly got amnesia because their hard drive is full? It turns out no. And I think the reason is that we, we, the, what our memory is, is essentially a sort of accrual of patterns that we have experienced kind of thing. Rather than, so it's a bit more like, it's a bit more like, you know, chat GPT or something, rather than a set of information addressable locations, which is how people. Yeah, but surely you run out of capacity. Well, well, well, so the thing is, A, it's never happened. And B, there are, you know, there are sort of allegedly people with eidetic memories who can have an enormously detailed level of recall, which suggests that our capacity is underutilised. But, but, but I mean, I, There must be some limit. There must be some limit to the amount of, let's call what it is you want to, to memorise, some information, which has a certain quantity of bits, there must just be a limit. No matter how cleverly you arrange your neurons, there's got to be a limit. But what I'm, what I'm trying to say is, let's just pretend, let's pretend that that's, let's not worry about that. Let's just pretend that we've got the rest of eternity to fix that. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:So hold on, let's slow down a bit. Okay, so we're talking about what are the seven things we need to consider, right?
Speaker B:Well, we haven't quite got there. I'm merely, I'm still, I'm just finishing the rules off. Oh, you're still finishing off the rules? Well, I'm just, what I'm saying is that, look, the thing is, the obvious problem is, We're not getting to the implications yet. We're way off from that. No, no, no, it's just, it's just that there's this problem of, oh, what, what if it turns out we've only got 300 years worth of memory in our brains? What I'm saying is, let's pretend that's not true, even if it is, just to make things easier. So we are just basically accruing experience, and the century between, you know, your year 800 and 900, your brain is working as well as it does now. Anything else? No, I think that's enough to be getting on with.
Speaker A:Just then, as a quick aside, apparently, this thing of running out of capacity, I know we're going to disregard that, but apparently forgetfulness as we get older is that, I think, which is what we consider, what your brain considers to be not useful information, like people's names, for example, because you're getting sort of, your brain is filling up with other stuff. This is quite technical language, I know I'm using here, but it's, it's actually, we shouldn't worry about getting forgetful, it's just, it's just that your brain doesn't need that anymore. I'm not explaining that very well.
Speaker B:I know, I was trying to avoid talking about this, but I think the gist is that your brain is picking up on information that's surprising. Yeah. That is, that is how things get encoded in memory, is if they're sufficiently informative, which is why you remember a lot from, you know, from when you're younger and less from your 30s or 40s. You know, and so as you get older and more experienced, things are just less surprising, because you've seen it all before. So I think, you know, it's a fair assumption. But anyway, that's not why I'm doing it. Yeah, no, quite.
Speaker A:So yeah, so we're talking about rules now, is that right? No, we've just done that.
Speaker B:Remember, remember granddad? Bloody hell. So what is the next bit? I've forgotten. Now we want to talk about implicate, like, what does it do? What's first order effects? Let's, let's deal with first order effects. So are we onto the implications yet?
Speaker A:Yes, that's what we mean. So we are onto this bit. Yeah. I thought we weren't coming to that so much later. Okay, fine.
Speaker C:We haven't literally got all of eternity to do this topic. So. You're bought into this idea.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, maybe. But all right, well, look, Peter, over to you. Let's go to one of the implications.
Speaker C:Okay, well, I haven't really thought about short term implications, but longer term implications. So we could shoot some short term implications. So very quickly, population growth is going to start accelerating because we're not we're not losing the old people to be replaced by new people. We've got we've got all of everybody. So if you think the current pensions crisis is bad, just wait. Well, yeah, but I'm optimistic, though, because one of the things that one of the big limiting factors on global economic growth is human capital and lack thereof. So we could we could really start achieving many more greater things with more people. As long as we can arrange ourselves and our effort in an effective way. So that's a positive thing. We felt like we need a global dictatorship to do this. But keep going. Yeah, maybe. So that but yeah, but we're going to longer term effect, though. We're going to start running out of resources on earth. Be that like simple things like there's not enough space.
Speaker A:And but the great thing is if we can solve something like eternal youth or yeah, surely we can solve all sorts of other things. So yeah, I think I think all these other problems. You're breaking the rules. We didn't say you could do that.
Speaker B:You're not allowed to just do that as well. Just because we solve one hard thing doesn't make all hard things easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:But that's absurd. Because if if you like this fantastically impossible thing that we managed to fix. It's not impossible. And our rules are. But that's the only impossible thing.
Speaker B:I'm afraid we've cured cellular aging. We have not found a way to cram, you know, 200 square meters of material into 100 square meters. I'll give you the space.
Speaker C:Plus I'll give you within the within the few generations we'll have, you know, twice or 10 times the number of researchers in any given field. Which might which might make problems more big problems. Preservation of knowledge. Not necessarily. Some big problems might be insoluble.
Speaker B:Yeah, this is the if they can put a man on the moon fallacy. Yeah. Why can't they invent a pill that turns water into petrol?
Speaker C:Anyway, keep going. Um, so. So I think, yeah. So I think there's lots of interesting sort of psychological mental health things because we didn't fix mental health problems. We've fixed physical health problems that would, you know, near term affect individuals. So if you if you now no longer have to care about, you know, maximizing your time on Earth to achieve things you want to achieve. Um, not that many people actually think that way. But if you're no longer constrained in that way, what's to stop you just sitting around watching telly all day and just, you know, having a sort of listless lack, you know, a lack of drive.
Speaker B:Because the problem of eternal delay. Yeah. We do that next century. Yeah.
Speaker C:You might end up being everyone turns into sort of teenagers again, where actually they feel like they've got the rest of their life ahead of them and they just want to have it.
Speaker B:Well, I think if I feel like we do need to talk about the things that we would have that would be affected first. I think this is really interesting. But I think we we've got to talk about the short term. Yeah. Let's talk about real physical. So some things that we need to think about how they're going to work. Right. Well, we've got a bit of a problem of what to do with the oldies. That's us, Fraser. Like any if you're if they cure aging now, we're eternally frozen in as sort of prime. Yeah. And the rest of the world is just going to be more and more 25 year olds. I mean, that's all we're going to see. It'll be like Instagram filters. But for real, everyone in the world and we'll be the dwindling minority.
Speaker C:We're going to have a bar, but we'll be ever more obscure, ever more sort of niche and obscure. We'll be an interesting curio. Yeah. We'll become more and more and more popular.
Speaker B:People will come to visit to see what we look like. Yeah. So there's there's there's that problem. We've got education systems. How does it work? You know, at the moment, we're kind of pretty much geared around. We've got this trade off between learning stuff and doing stuff. But now it's like, well, maybe that can all just, you know, we can we can go back to university at the age 300 or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, you go to primary school for a few hundred years. Well, right. I mean, how's that going to work?
Speaker B:Is it going to be, you know, a bit of back and forth or is it going to be the first actually the first 200 years? You're basically doing a really long PhD or, you know.
Speaker C:Yeah. Or do you have or can you develop? Everyone can develop into sort of ultra generalists where you maybe you do a different job. 40 years here. This job. 40 years here. That job. 40 years here. That job. By the time you've done 500 jobs from a range of different things. And what if you've got a crap job? You're going to know you're going to know loads of stuff. Well, you know, maybe. Well, crap jobs still need to be done. Right. So maybe you kind of have to take your turn doing crap jobs. But with the experience of multiple lifetimes.
Speaker B:200 years of packing potatoes. Yeah. Your turn now.
Speaker C:And you're going to you're going to be pretty sort of wise, I'd say. Yeah. You're going to be able to then go on to solve. Really complicated problem or tackle really complicated problems in novel ways. Drawing on all that experience. So really kind of that's I think that's exciting. Or being 200 years of packing potatoes. Yeah. Peeling potatoes.
Speaker B:So says that government, government policy, which, you know, the obvious things are like, well, at the moment, we have a government every five years. So you're likely to go through, let's say, 10 governments in a lifetime. Do we like that number? Like, actually, perhaps we want governments that are going to last for 50 years from now on. Because, you know, actually, it would make much more sense to have a much longer term sort of policy agenda if we're all living much longer. The focus of our policies is likely to be way different as well. Like what's a year or two here? What's a Great Depression? It's nothing. It's a blip in the ocean. You know, perhaps we, you know, the policy agenda becomes much more about things like climate change, where suddenly 100 years is no longer someone else's problem. So you've got, you know, but so there's what do we do with the political system?
Speaker C:And a lot of political system is about working out how resources are allocated. Right. And that's going to be very complicated.
Speaker A:Yeah, with different constituencies and interested parties.
Speaker C:So you can have a big, big spectral range depending on how well we sort of handle this, where actually a slightly sorry, dystopian sounding place would be where people born, I'm assuming we're still having babies, right? Yeah. And they were just getting loads of 24, 25 year olds. Not long after this starts happening, the people who were there first, i.e. us, will have accumulated and sort of own everything. Yeah. And then these new people won't have any space to sort of grow into, as it were.
Speaker B:Yeah, right. So we've got the problem of like inheritance and wealth. Yeah. And at the moment, it kind of works. You know, the wealth gets basically, you've got 100 years to build some up and then you get, then you have to give, you've got to pass it on. As Peter says, what happens when there's no natural mechanism to pass on wealth? But also like things like, so sort of age restrictions on things, which at the moment, I think seem very geared around 100 year lifespan, things like the voting age, like maybe we want to raise that to 100. It seems to me. And then, but what do we do? Do we ditch retirement altogether? Surely we have to get rid of retirement, got to get rid of pensions. That is just, doesn't make sense when everyone is like, bear in mind, we don't, we no longer have the concept of old people, right? There are people who are old, but you can't just look at them. They don't look old. Everyone looks kind of, you know, the same age. So how does, so all of our kind of policies about what do we do about end of life stuff and get rid of all that.
Speaker A:So just one thing, a lot of things we're talking about, it seems to me that we're also talking about questions of, I don't know how to quite frame it, but of scale and metrics, right? Which is that, is it that our scale just adapts and a thousand year person is now the same as a hundred years old person, right? Or is it, and that sort of just spreads out and we're in our midlife in our 500s, right? Yeah. Or is it that actually it kind of stays, it's always accumulating and there is something different and the scale doesn't change. What else?
Speaker B:What becomes the differentiator? Yeah. At the moment, I think a big part of how we interact with people is how old they are. I mean, are they roughly our age? In which case we can look them eye to eye and talk about, you know, talk about Keith Chegwin or are they like an oldie and you've got to fall back on, you know, the likes of Fred Astaire or are they a young person and I haven't a fucking clue what they're on about.
Speaker A:And also, how do we know? Because as we've said, what are the signalers, right? Or the signifiers? Because as you, a lot of it right now is visual, right? And apart from the dwindling people who are sort of relics, we don't know. So do they have to wear different clothes? So we know what we're dealing with? Or do we see that they wear move? Or is it their behaviour with certain devices?
Speaker C:We go, oh God, it's one of those 200 year olds. Meeting somebody who's 25 versus somebody who's 4,000 years old, they're going to be quite different people. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And also, generations. It's fascinating. So I definitely believe that people who have great grandchildren don't give a toss about them, right? Or do they? Maybe I'm wrong, but like, I mean, let's say you've got, I don't know what the average is, right?
Speaker B:I've got a definitive answer.
Speaker A:Brilliant. Because let's say you've got, I don't know what the averages are for each, but let's say you've got, I don't know, six grandchildren and you've got, I don't know, 15 great grandchildren. Well, what about all the way down? You've got a couple of hundred. Well, we actually know the answer. We've got the answer.
Speaker B:You know why? Because families go sideways as well as up and down. And at the moment, you've got, you and a cousin have about one eighth of the genetic material in common. And a second cousin, about one in 32th of your genetic material in common. And I would say that's at the point where you sort of family become basically people you know. So I think I'm going to draw the line and say it's about one in 10 to one in 20 is where the line of like, they're my family and I treat them different to strangers is. I mean, I've got several second cousins, but I don't really treat them any different. They're not people like, you know, you see them at family gatherings and things, but there might as well be people on the street, really. So what this turns out to mean is that that cutoff is about the great, great grandparent level. I think there is a difference between sideways and horizontal and vertical. No, when we're all living like to 10,000 that sideways and vertical are the same. I mean, I think I'll let you have this. Fine. You know, yeah. No, but you've got to make that mental, realise that it becomes, there is no longer up and down. That's meaningless. It's just how distant are you from someone?
Speaker A:No, but one horizontal is not the same as one vertical for different reasons.
Speaker B:Anyway, if my theory is true, the limit, it turns out to be about the great, great grandparent
Speaker C:I get where Ray's going with this because it's the way you feel about your siblings, not the way you feel about your genetic.
Speaker B:Remember that your mum and your dad and your uncle all look the same as you.
Speaker C:There is a sort of qualitative difference between just plain genetic similarity and direct genetic similarity. Did my sperm make that, did go on to become that person or part of that person? Yeah. Feels different to, do I happen to have similar genes to this other person who's a cousin? Yeah.
Speaker B:You're right on that if you think of it as a lattice of people that you're connected to.
Speaker C:Yeah, no, but look, I see what you're saying and I definitely. I understand that it's mathematically, sort of logically it's the same, but I think there's a sort of qualitative emotional difference.
Speaker B:Okay, there is, and there is quite a lot of evidence that the degree of attachment people feel to their family is directly related to the amount of DNA they have in common.
Speaker A:But what I will say is that, no, listen, when the numbers get so big, like 50, 100, whether it's horizontal or vertical, all that kind of stuff kind of doesn't really matter anymore. And I think that's absolutely true.
Speaker B:So, so the answer, the objectively correct answer is, is a great, great grandparent level. So basically, intuitively, I was right. Brilliant. Your family. So in my case, I mean, I had one great grandparent, for example, who I knew for a few years and then they died, you know, I was about five or six or something. What we're talking about is I'm going to have, you know, eight of them and they're all going to be, you know, at family gatherings and I'll get to know them quite well. And, you know, but then beyond that, they're going to start to be 16. I can't even remember that one's name. You know, so that makes sense to me. So, but instead of having a family, which continues over time, but is refreshed with new members, family is more like a bubble that surrounds you, like we have with cousins and things. So we each have our own independent family and it's no longer seen as one single entity that moves over time, but as a portion of the biggest.
Speaker C:But there's overlaps between these bubbles, right? But as a group, you have to decide where your bubble becomes too diffuse. Because, you know, maybe you just fall out with some people and there's an actual cut off. But, you know, people adjacent to you will care about the next people and so on.
Speaker A:And apologies, you know, on behalf of Nick, because, you know, he's bogged us down in his argumentative way with this one thing. We need to sort of get onto other things as well.
Speaker B:Family, this very minor thing of family life. I think it is, this is, I think it's a major question. Like, I think we've really got to think about it. But I don't think people think about this in the level of detail they should.
Speaker C:Well, I mean, stick with family then. Okay, fair enough, go on. Marriage and partnerships and relationships and things. Yeah, go on, yeah. So, I mean, Western society is largely pretty monogamous, right? And does it make sense to keep it that way? Because the monogamy is sort of based around the concept of a stable household for bringing up children. But it's got a natural cut off, which is till death do us part. Yeah. Right? Does that make sense? Are you going to get bored of? Till boredom do us part. Till boredom do us part. Think how many kids you could have. Or do we naturally move to a sort of more polyamorous kind of way, where actually we, you know, there's time, we can develop relationships, multiple relationships in parallel, you know, maybe settle down for a few thousand years.
Speaker B:Go out with Lucy for 50 years. Yeah, and then actually, sorry, yeah.
Speaker C:And so partnerships would have to be, would may have more of a kind of. Fluid. Sort of contractual sort of nature to them, where you need to discuss what each party is trying to get out of the relationship rather than it being like, oh, I love you. And then that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah, my mind is fizzing with stuff.
Speaker B:So I think, yeah, we talked about this thing about, you know, what's your, what's your sort of expected age? And I think, so I think about, just to make this calculation explicit, I think about 1% of deaths are accidental, which might surprise people at really low, like most people die of, you know, diseases and things. So assuming that's true, and around about 1% of people die per year, I think about one in 10,000 people per year die in an accident. So we've now got, we've got an average lifespan of 10,000, right? But, and Peter touched on this, but what does that do to our perception of risk? And what is a risky activity, for one thing? Now, this is where it comes down to how much of our behaviour is sort of rational, how much of it is cultural. So in other words, we kind of learned what acceptable risks are from those around us, and how much is innate. So let's just take what would, we don't, let's assume we don't know the answer and look at what the implications would be. So if, if our risk assessment is rational, then we should stop using step ladders. Stop going, stop living in houses with stairs. Yeah, stop having baths. Stop having baths. Stop doing anything. Remember, we don't have to worry about diseases so much. So to some extent, we can cut loose a bit on the fags and the booze.
Speaker C:Stop using electrical appliances with exposed elements. Definitely stop doing that.
Speaker B:Stop, yeah, crossing the road. We would want to be really super sure every time we cross the road, etc. So basically, and I'm not saying we would do those, I'm saying it's rational to do that. When you've got a thousand years on the line or 10,000 years to lose, you absolutely need to be super, but at the same time, we've got a lot more people. So interesting implication number one, your life becomes much more precious to you and much less precious to everyone else. Yeah, it's inflation, isn't it? Right. So that's interesting. So we should care a lot more about our own preservation and a lot less about other people's preservation, right? Where does that lead you? Well, in lots of places. But the other thing it does is, you know, I think I mentioned this is one of my sort of pet theories, really, which is that sort of what separates success from failure over the course of a life is really multiple decisions. It's lots and lots of very small decisions, you know, which are like 51-49 versus 49-51. And I think, you know, it's sort of being able to make just the sensible call more often than the stupid call. And I think the people who make the stupid call more often, you know, that's where one of the big drivers of inequality, right, is kind of your capacity to make good decisions. Now, this massively exacerbates that problem, right? So you've got someone who's making a good decision over the course of 10,000 years versus someone who is making just ever so slightly worse decisions. The difference in outcome is enormous. So in other words, like, let's imagine we've got a one in 10,000 chance of dying.
Speaker C:Yeah, the divergence will be, well, this is like, yeah, algorithmic, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, but just to look at something really obvious like accidents. So if you've got one in 10,000 chance of dying in an accident, let's say on average, so you've got over your 100 years, you've got about, you know, what, 10% chance of, no, 1% chance of dying in an accident during your lifetime, right? Let's say that. So that's equivalent to, let's say, a year of time that you lose. Someone who's really reckless and stupid and doubles their chance of dying in an accident, they lose two years. But now we're talking about the difference between like thousands and thousands of years difference in lifetime from that little, you know, so it's the same sort of proportion, but that proportion is a proportion of a much, much bigger thing. So yeah, I mean, that's, I think, a thing to worry about is like, well, what are we going to do about that kind of inequality?
Speaker A:Right, because it's not just in lifespan, right? It's, I think, as you're saying, it's in all aspects, right? So you're going to get these massive divergences in terms of inequality. Wow, look, we need to stop, unfortunately, but it's just, this is a shame because there's so much more to go into here. You happy to stop? I've got a question. Go for it, Peter.
Speaker C:There's one more I think we need to be wary of. Brilliant. For the lots of long-term goodness of humanity. It's kind of related to cultural stagnation versus innovation. This is one thing that would worry me a great deal. Do we get, with sort of more and more old people, and some of them very, very old, and a lot of them also potentially, as we've mentioned before, controlling everything, owning everything. What does that do to the clash between sort of preserving traditional values versus embracing new ideas? And there's a big danger of massive cultural lock-in, where the way we do things now, no matter how inefficient, for example, the happy birthday theme, right? I'm hoping that one day that's going to get replaced by something better. Imagine an eternity of the happy birthday theme. How awful that would be. And then, by analogy, other things that aren't optimal.
Speaker A:I think a lot of these problems, and I think they are problems that we're talking about, could also be framed in terms of awareness, right? Is we would be aware of these changes. I think a good way to go about this would be to somehow magically, or through science, enact all these things. Through the power of science. Yeah, through the power of science. But at the same time...
Speaker C:We'll go in the cupboard and we'll get some science out.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, we need to have a universal memory wipe of aspects. We need to wake up and not realise that this is not normal.
Speaker B:Well, I think the transition is going to be really interesting.
Speaker A:Yeah, and that's where a lot of this is from. We just need to accept as a given, like we do now, like, you know, at four score and ten.
Speaker B:I didn't quite get to sort of the alternative to, that's the kind of rational response to these changes, which are just to behave in a very different way or to have a very different perception of costs and benefits and risks and so on. That changes a huge amount about the things that we do. But what if, and this is the, what if a lot of that behaviour is in fact just innate? Like if we have evolved to think of, you know, to feel what the risks of going up a step ladder are and that, you know, and that's based around us, you know, wanting to live basically just about long enough to have some children and then, you know, nature doesn't really care what happens to us at that point. So we've evolved to take the right amount of risk to live for about 50 years. But what if that can't be changed? You know, what if, okay, well, we, you know, when you're 18, you still fancy going for a ride on a fast motorbike and there's just nothing, you know, it's, that isn't, it turns out that that isn't to do with the cost-benefit analysis.
Speaker A:Yeah, and you've got that mad, wild urge to go and sort of walk up the stairs and have a shower and not knowing how crazy that is.
Speaker B:So, so, so, yeah, it might be that we will then come up against these constraints, these hidden, these don't even appear constraints. Might not be the solution. No, but exactly. It might just be the innate behaviour. Might be a silly idea. But anyway, I thought I'd put that out there.
Speaker A:This is a bit of a can of worms, this.
Speaker B:Peter, put it on hold. Switch off the anti-ageing machine.
Speaker C:Yeah, we'll recall the air sprayers that are flying over. Yeah.
Speaker A:Look, super quick, best example of, of super old person.
Speaker B:Well, I mean, I know the answer, obviously, and it's Yoda.
Speaker A:OK, Yoda.
Speaker B:Yes, he's, when 800 years you reach, look so good, you will not. He, as he so rightly says, and actually, I think, interestingly, me and my friends during, when we first saw Empire Strikes Back, came to the conclusion that he was actually a person, just, and that's what you look like when you're 800 years old, and he used the force to be old. What is interesting is that it turns out Yoda's kind of a species. And there's like another Yoda, female Yoda, called Yaddle and stuff. And she looks the same. Is there? And it's like, well, actually, he's pretty good then for an 800-year-old, like, Yoda guy. I always assumed the green skin and the big ears were just a thing that happened to people when they got older. So, but obviously, I mean, he's, he's what, if I had to live to 800, I think he's got such a good attitude.
Speaker A:Wise, very wise.
Speaker B:But he's also, he just doesn't take anything too seriously. And I think, I feel like that's, that would be the right attitude in a world where we lived to 10,000. Yeah.
Speaker A:And we shed this sort of ego. And yeah, yeah. Give me a moment. I might have one.
Speaker B:It's got to be the Red Lady from... Oh, from Game of Thrones.
Speaker A:Yeah, I won't go to why I quite like her. But I mean, you know, that's a...
Speaker B:Well, do you like her in her truthful?
Speaker A:Not so much. Anyway, yeah. Peter?
Speaker C:I'm quite fond of Gandalf. He's quite old. That guy's good, isn't he? Yeah. And he sort of, he displays that trope of old and therefore wise, you know, seen lots of things, seen, been there before, has an answer.
Speaker B:I actually think, you know, and that's, it's got that in common with Yoda, that having these big long lifespans, if fiction is to be believed, causes you to have an outlook on life where nothing should be taken that seriously. This has all happened before, and it will happen again. And, you know, we, you know, don't worry too much. Don't sweat the small stuff. And I feel like that would be, that's a really good lesson to learn. So yeah, perhaps bring it on.
Speaker A:Wise words, Nick, wise words. In the meantime, I was just imagining a planet of one trillion people, a third of whom were Gandalfs, a third of whom were Yodas, and a third of whom were Red Ladies. Do with that what you want. Okay. All right. We'll stop there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph. Until next time. Goodbye.
