next »

[CowBoyDan]

Overpopulation is still a problem with space colonization.  Its unrealistic to think we can send 100 million people per year into space to a new home(100 million people will be born this year, even more next year).  Also keep in mind their new home will have its own growth.

Space colonization is the answer to preventing extinction from a world wide apocolypse, not overpopulation.

That said, overpopulation has natural and evolutionary corrective measures, when a resource gets scarce, people will kill for it.  Its really self balancing.  On statistical average the more capable beings will survive.

Having kids is out of my equation, so I'd pick immortal.  I'm not sure I'd want to live forever, but as it has been pointed out its not really immortal (only till some programmer screws up the metric/imperial units and your ship to mars crashes into the surface of the planet)

[Paul Eres]

with a network of space elevators transporting billions of people between planets would be possible. not easy to do, but immortality isn't easy to do either

[Superb Joe]

did anyone mention bone loss yet

[Superb Joe]

does alendronate sodium even work in space? how do you stop it scarring the oesophagus when there's no gravity

[Player Ʒ]

it's been shown that the planet can support over 10 trillion people if done right; also, space colonization of other planets will probably be feasible by the time medical immortality arrives, so this question is kind of a non-issue.

By the time we get to that point, we'd be intelligent enough to not desire kids at all.

[Paul Eres]

i think that may be letting your own biases influence what you think the most intelligent people will like -- i know many people who want kids, and many people who don't want kids, and the people who don't want kids aren't any more (or less) intelligent than the people who do want kids

[Richard Kain]

did anyone mention bone loss yet

I'm not going to have to worry about bone loss, I'm going to be a cyborg. Calcium intake and the effects of a zero-g environment don't apply when your bones are constructed from high-density synthetic polymers.

All of the childless immortals are going to look pretty stupid when my cyborg brethren rise up and overthrow them.

[DavidCaruso]

Immortality would make me one or more of the following: 1) decaying flesh-falling-off zombie, 2) eternally childish with no opportunity for mental growth or maturity thanks to my physical growth and maturity being stunted (the mind in my brain is a physical part of my body), 3) a nihilist, so no thanks. Give me death and kids.

[Schoq]

Mental growth is much harder with an old person's brain than a young person's brain.
Have you tried teaching a 60 year old a new language? Or to use a computer?

After 25 or so, the changes in your body aren't symptoms of maturity but of decay.

[eiyukabe]

Easiest poll in the world for me. I don't particularly desire kids anyway, and medical immortality (where you still have the option to die if, say, your planet is blown up and you're floating alone in space for billions of years) sounds really ideal. I can already tell I won't have time to do all the things I want and make all the games I want to make in even a 120 year life.

The problem with this view of immortality though is that no one really dies of "old age" as if there is a clock counting down in our bodies ready to shut them off. It's really more about overcoming various diseases that just happen to have higher chances of occurrence as we age. With that said I don't think it's as easy as "we will discover immortality this century", but more likely that we will fight off diseases to the point where the expected lifespan (barring accidents and aggressive acts) grows faster than one year per year, at which point we have reached an escape velocity of sorts and can merely play the waiting game.

Of course, if our society keeps heading in the direction it is going now, then the rich will become immortal overlords and we will all be kept alive as long as we serve their purposes. If that's the case, I don't particularly care for immortality or for bringing a child into such a world.

[CowBoyDan]

with a network of space elevators transporting billions of people between planets would be possible. not easy to do, but immortality isn't easy to do either

As long as population growth is exponential any species will outgrow its habitat.  No matter how much you decrease the constant in front of an exponential growth function it will always approach infinity, and quite quickly.

Assuming we sent 1 person from earth to mars for every child born (wouldn't make sense to send a bunch of babies, so they would have substitutes, say a parent instead), it would take only 70 years for mars to reach earths population.  That's at TODAYS growth/death rate where people still die from old age.  Assuming there were more habitable mars/earth like planets, in the 70 years following they would fill 2 more planets, 70 more years will fill 4 additional planets.

So 210 years and we would have 8 planets (including the one we are on now) with 7 billion people each.  Thats right, 210 years from now, we'll have about 56 billion humans.  Now, regardless of whether you believe earth is at or approaching overpopulation, its pretty clear that eventually we'll run out of space and energy.  Just imagine if every habitable planet in the galaxy had to ship off 100 million people a year to find new planets to live on.  If I were having kids I'd put dibs on the Andromeda galaxy, its pretty.

[Paul Eres]

Mental growth is much harder with an old person's brain than a young person's brain.
Have you tried teaching a 60 year old a new language? Or to use a computer?

After 25 or so, the changes in your body aren't symptoms of maturity but of decay.

immortality doesn't mean you stay as an old person though. it means eternal youth, not eternally being old. so the changes that you describe would not apply to people who don't age, because they are symptoms of aging

[Paul Eres]

As long as population growth is exponential any species will outgrow its habitat.  No matter how much you decrease the constant in front of an exponential growth function it will always approach infinity, and quite quickly.

population growth is never exponential though, not even under perfect conditions

[DavidCaruso]

Mental growth is much harder with an old person's brain than a young person's brain.
Have you tried teaching a 60 year old a new language? Or to use a computer?

After 25 or so, the changes in your body aren't symptoms of maturity but of decay.

Yep, so that's another reason to not be immortal, because either my brain is in complete stasis (eternal youth) or my brain keeps getting older and decaying (eternal aging.) I lose no matter what. And there's also the issue of memory capacity (and therefore loss), watching your kids and grandkids die, etc.

I can already tell I won't have time to do all the things I want and make all the games I want to make in even a 120 year life.

That's a good thing. And if you did have infinite time (and therefore, over a long enough period of time, essentially infinite resources) to make something then it would never get finished since you'd keep expanding it, or scrapping it to work on something new without being able to focus on one particular thing you want to make awesome (because why do you need to, you have infinite time to theoretically do anything you want.) Limitations and adversity breed greatness and creativity, life span is one of those limitations.

[newbans]

Neither; I'd rather not be here forever or leave anyone else here to suffer it.