On 06-Dec-08 17:00, somebody wrote:
[snipped some reiteration]

>> (and in my view
>> unrealistic) view on mankind. It in no way invalidates mine. Of course I
>>   though about positive effects, but my estimation is simply that at
>> least for the coming millennia greed and egoistic behaviour would
>> dominate society.
> 
> Selfishness is necessary and fine. But selfishness need not contradict
> cooperation, in fact, we cooperate out of selfishness. Extension of lifespan
> better aligns selfishness with needs of society. Are you an AGW proponent,
> for instance? 
Not sure about the A but the GW could be global warming.
> In that case, it should be obvious that had we have lifespans
> of couple of centuries or millenia, we'd be doing a lot more about the
> issue.
It is obvious that it would be even harder to change anything, because 
everyone in charge had tens of years to dig in and in general disasters 
tend to not hit those in charge.

[snip]

>> There are however people who are (biologically) unable
>> to think through the consequences of what they do and don't care what it
>> means to other people.
> 
> There will always be pathalogical cases. There will be religious nuts who
> don't care about their or others' lives. That's not a relevant argument. 

Good, because I was not talking about those. I was thinking of the 
professor that manages to make sure that no one else in his field gets 
money. About the slightly corrupt CEO that uses his power to keep 
competent people out of the board. About the man that owns enough media 
to control much of the information in a country. All not really 
pathological and all in possession of skills needed to build a 
company/research field but skills that will result in a lot of trouble 
for others if left unchecked for too long.

> We live with those people with a life span of 80, and next generations can 
> also live with them with an age span of 800.
> 
>> So before extending the lifespan of mankind first
>> find the empathy genes, test everyone who owns more than 100k$ starting
>> at the top and prevent those that are unfit for the next society from
>> reproducing. That group would contain a lot of bankers and captains of
>> industry, so good luck in passing that bill.
> 
> What's wrong with being wealthy (and 100k$ is a pitifully small amount for
> any such consideration anyway)?

Nothing is wrong being wealthy AFAIAC. It is simply that new wealthy 
people often tend to have characteristics that are not beneficial for 
society in the long run. It is relatively OK if they stop working after 
65 and hand over to a new generation. Which was my point, I think.

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