"andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:493### [at] hotmailcom...
> On 06-Dec-08 17:00, somebody wrote:

> >> (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.

Anthropogenic 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.

Doesn't make sense. "Those in charge" cannot be in charge for millenia
without any kind of accountability. You seem to be very stuck into a caste
system, them vs us attitude, black and white thinking.

If anything, a short lifespan supports the rich vs poor division. Except a
lucky few, it's extremely difficult for a poor man to transition to a rich
man within a few decades. Give millenia, and you'll get more homogeneity.
You can have people going from rich to poor and back again dozens of times
in a lifetime.

> >> 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.

Good. Because small schemes like that may work for 5 years, but they sure
won't work for 50 or 500 or 5000. Do you really think it's feasible for a
professor to hoard a secret for that long or prevent others' grants? I
already mentioned that "get rich quick" schemes and screwing your fellow
humans get more difficult with longer lifespans. And frankly, if you have
thousands of years to live, you'll be less likely to resort to those even if
they were feasible. The returns are really not worth the effort.

> > 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.

Much more than the wealthy, it's poor people who have characteristics that
are not beneficial to society.

> It is relatively OK if they stop working after
> 65 and hand over to a new generation. Which was my point, I think.

It would be a miracle if 65, which happens to be the present retirement age,
to be the optimum retirement age ever, under all possible circumstances.
Unless you have a very convincing argument that we are currently living the
ideal lifespan, based on generic principles that are not merely rehashings
of "is thus ought to" argument, I'm not buying it.

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