You Don’t Want to Live Forever

this episode of because science is sponsored by Archer 1999 all new episodes premiere May 29th on FXX this is why you don't want the power of immortality super powers usually only change how some hero or villain lives out the rest of their lives get super strength for example and you might spend the next 40 years or so lifting cars up off train tracks to save people and whatnot and if you were to get super speed you might spend the rest of your adult life zipping around the world doing your hero thing that was good spaghett by the way but what if your superpower didn't just change your life it was life do you really want to live forever forever forever of all the superpowers we've evaluated on this program I think interestingly enough immortality might be one of the very oldest for example in the oldest surviving work of literature that humans have the epic of gilgamesh it's all about a quest for immortality so obviously we've been thinking about immortality for a long time and theoretically it does sound awesome you'd finally have enough time to say pick up the piano I still have super strength or APRA and add ultra idioma but if we think about this power scientifically I'm not sure you would take this apparent bargain vamos a empezar I still have super speed first how should we define immortality well the simplest and most straightforward definition of immortality would be that if you are immortal you are exempt from death why does it have to be so spooky but this version of immortality especially in pop culture usually comes with other superpowers like invulnerability which is a and other things so for this analysis we are going to instead focus on the most realistic version of immortality biological immortality generally speaking humans have three main causes of death disease aging and physical trauma and right now without some radical advancement in medical technology the only one of these causes that we can't really get around protect ourselves from or outright cure is aging biological immortality then would be the absence of aging but susceptibility to the other two causes of death in pop culture terms this is your classic what Highlander version of immortality where you could theoretically live forever because you don't age but you can still meet your end by other means for your life there can be only when if you stopped aging if anyone did it would be incredibly transformative as one of the biggest voices in life extension research and me in 30 years dr. Aubrey de Grey puts it aging is essential for metabolism but eventually that metabolism disrupts itself to death as we age our immune systems weaken our cells and our DNA in those cells accumulate damage and mutation and our cells eventually stop dividing over time we will succumb to the side effects of one of these disruptions whether that be heart disease or cancer in industrialized nations around 90 percent of the average deaths per day in those nations can be traced back to age-related causes if we were to end aging and become biologically immortal it would radically change Society or at least with a superpower change your life right now though our best efforts to extend the human life expectancy are just not fast enough to put us on the track towards immortality for example if you were to graph human life expectancy over time versus advancing technologies that extend that life expectancy it takes longer than one year to make a technology that extends human life by one year but if we could find some medicine or process or technology that extends human life expectancy so much in such a short of time that it outpaces how long it takes to research that advancement we would hit what is called longevity escape velocity where our lives over time could be continuously extended indefinitely biological immortality and it sounds crazy now maybe but researchers like me from an alternate timeline think we can actually hit this escape velocity yep even if humans never achieve biological immortality and stop aging at least we know it's possible you may have heard about this floaty boy in the news turritopsis dohrnii or the immortal jellyfish this creature is theoretically immortal because it has the ability to turn its adult body back into a ball of undifferentiated cells and then back into the first stage of its lifecycle it's kind of like if you are able to turn yourself into a ball of goo and then a baby to live your life again the Hydra is another Highlander style creature known for its amazing regenerative capabilities its cells also set it apart they do not experience what's called senescence or the eventual stoppage of cell division giving it a potentially unlimited lifespan now I've said theoretically and potentially very intentionally here because both of these creatures can just be eaten even if you are biologically immortal even if you're careful it can be a big risk and that's because in a life without end all the untimely deaths will become timely for you and they will happen to you a lot sooner than forever from now a falling coconut from where over the last 200 years or so human life expectancy has doubled which is amazing if you think about any other creature doing that in just a few generations in the early 1800s this advance in life expectancy was due to increases in sanitation education and housing and more recently vaccines and antibiotics have kept this trend on track now let's say in the near future some scientists figures out the key to biological immortality and in sooo with it and whatever's in that syringe could be its own episode but for now let's just say whatever it is it makes you hit longevity escape velocity and now you can blast past normal human life expectancy and age-related causes of death like Alzheimer's and cancer now you are biologically immortal just like some pop culture makes it out to be and your average life expectancy goes from around 71 point 5 to infinity or does it if you were to eliminate aging you would automatically eliminate some of the leading causes of death for the average human leaving only less likely non age-related causes of death like homicide and car accidents on a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone drops to zero even if you were biologically immortal eventually the unlikely ways to die would catch up with you and sooner than you may think here is a simulation by data visualization website poll stats what they wanted to figure out is how human life expectancy would change if you removed all of the natural age-related causes of death so no heart disease no cancer only ways to die would be getting struck by lightning which is very unlikely or falling off a ladder the poll staff simulation is a good approximation of what we are talking about with pop culture inspired biological immortality and what they found is that if you remove all these natural causes of death leaving only the unlikely ones like biological immortality would the human life expectancy jumps to around 9000 years yes living a hundred times longer would be extremely significant I'm not arguing that I'm arguing that this is not exactly immortality is it it's just eight to nine thousand years and it also means that when you meet your end it's gonna be through one of these unlikely ways and it is not going to be pleasant and I'm not just putting some weird check on biological immortality either nature does this too for example Langosta do not experience cellular senescence their cells never stop dividing and therefore they could theoretically be as reproductively fit as they want to forever and grow in size forever yet when we look in the oceans we do not see mega Langosta everywhere the largest that we found is about the mass of a toddler a toddler with pincers they are still susceptible to disease and predation and as they get larger it takes more and more energy to molt their shells eventually they run out of that energy and die in their shells any kind of realistic biological immortality will still be subjected to nature's checks and balances and therefore cannot be true immortality making this power kind of a kind of a misnomer even underwater was that aqua sean connery now I know what many of you are probably thinking right now but Kyle even if realistic immortality isn't forever I'd still take nine thousand years over my typical lifespan okay sure what I am saying is that even living this long is the biggest problem with this power let's say that we did conquer death we figured out how to upload our minds to computers or resolve all of the big problems with cryonics now we have true complete immortality however this still comes along with serious life-changing existential problems the biggest criticism that you'll hear is that if you aren't completely immortal you will have to bear witness to every single person that you know love or care about passing away you can always make new friends you could even make a new family over time but the idea of not being able to even share the supposed fruits of immortality is hard to accept and would there be a point to doing and seeing potentially everything if you're going to forget a lot of it if you reduce the complexity of the human brain potentially the most complicated thing in the universe down to just it's neurons and the connections between them then a rudimentary estimate for how much storage space our brains can hold is around two-and-a-half petabytes or two and a half million gigabytes this is a lot but it is not infinite and from behavioral studies we know an important part of living life and experiencing and learning is forgetting for example after this video is over you are probably gonna just forget the exact color of my shirt but will hopefully remember something about what I said about immortality the point is is that your brain prioritizes some information and remembers it and deletes other information or forgets it if one of the supposed benefits of immortality complete immortality is accumulating all the life experience that you couldn't get in just one normal human lifetime then this is not evolved to deal with unlimited experience if there is some finite amount that you can remember and then therefore you have to forget everything else in one human lifetime it doesn't matter if you forget your first birthday but if you are a mortal for all time necessarily and you forget something that you could have only learned with immortality like Laura the OMA 5,000 years ago it is a serious non obvious endpoint to this supposed benefit magical complete immortality has huge quality of life problems too for example if you are living forever your chances of contracting an incurable illness and being sick forever is a hundred percent now I'm not saying that people can't live while sick but if you knew this was gonna happen if you became immortal would you choose to become immortal Yale philosopher Shelly Kagan argues in his book death that immortality would also lead to extreme boredom an infinite life necessarily exhausts all potential experience well before or that life is over leading to extreme boredom and if you forget because of our brains or some magical reason so much of that life that you are never bored what was the point of even having that experience in the first place in Kagan's view death is actually a rescue from the unbearable tedium of immortality or just like what if you fell into an abandoned mineshaft or an unbearable uncaring void and you were stuck there for literally ever until the end of time you just had to sit there all cramped I can't even imagine how bad that would be so why don't you actually want the power of immortality someone freedom from the mineshaft well if you had a more realistic version of immortality you wouldn't be truly immortal and you'd be bound to die in some unlikely and very unpleasant way and even if you were truly magically invulnerable and amoral you'd have to deal with bigger philosophical and existential problems like losing all of your loved ones and your friends and your family and your memories and your connections to society and probably your will to live mortality might be in and of itself a superpower from the point of view of an immortal person death may be what makes us feel alive because science I'm stuck oh I'm stuck Hey [Music] there's a lot of other existential and quality-of-life problems that we didn't even get into with a complete magical immortality to like if you were living forever literally forever just imagine how hard it would be for society to cope with you and for you to cope with society not only would you be the most famous person in the world and you'd probably be immediately dissected by someone if you think music sucks now compared to what you liked when you were a kid imagine how you're gonna feel in 20 you know a 2500 year as people say it and what what what is this bleep blorp music when I was a kid I liked Pink Floyd and now it's all I don't know goop goop goop that's not music now that's what I call music 2,500 thanks again to Archer 1999 and FXX for sponsoring today's episode this season sterling Archer lana kane and their crew of acid tongue misfits are on board the m/v Seamus salvage ship an important question arises as they explore deep space and try to outsmart giant aliens intergalactic pirates and vicious bounty hunters how will they survive each other welcome to the space-tastic world of Archer 1999 new episodes of Archer 1999 premiere may 29th on FXX thank you so much for watching Mustafa if you want more of me and want to suggest ideas for future episodes you can follow me and because science here at these social media handles also the full series of the science of MORTAL KOMBAT is up on the channel I think you're gonna enjoy it if you haven't seen it also the very first episode of our spin-off show because space with Archer himself h john benjamin is now live you're gonna want to check it out with dr. mu Wow is it great and am i jealous yes [Music]

Channel: Because Science

Views: 2,380,428

Rating: 4.8618989 out of 5

Keywords: Nerdist, Because Science, Kyle Hill, Biology, Immortality, super powers, super heroes, comics, holy grail, fountain of youth

Id: t7huIVy7YY4

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/gynoidgearhead]

I still do want to be immortal, dude.

A lot of the things he brings up as issues - that you'd eventually forget everything - honestly sound like advantages. Endless neuroplasticity, for one thing. (Plus you'd be able to play Mass Effect for the first time multiple times.)

We have an enormous universe to explore. Without negligible senescence, most of us will never get to see almost any of it; and even with it, the expansion of the universe will constantly carry away parts. How the hell does one get bored when faced with something like that?

[u/Anle-]

Upvote comments like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7huIVy7YY4&lc=UgzsrdTLmlHFijRKu654AaABAg

[u/vauss88]

That is because they are starting to get older and realize they are mortal.

[u/accountno543210]

My grandma's book club talks about longevity more than this ghostsub. Boooo!

[u/DyingShell]

For one thing, the saying that you’d die after 9000 years on average is completely useless because it assumes the statistics will be the same in 9000 years, let alone our bodies. By that time our bodies would mostly be made up of prosthetics, we would be much less vulnerable to physical trauma. Also, the cars (if that Is still a thing by then) would be much safer making the risk even lower of dying. (We could engineer an environment that is completely harmless to us, just like we are already trying to do, in Sweden a mere 300 people die in car crashes per year, and that is with our fragile bodies of today)

Also, if we had biological immortality that would greatly alter the way we think of risk and the risks we take on a daily basis, you would theoretically have an infinite potential and who would risk losing such a thing? I know for sure that I would stay in my home forever, unless I can confirm with 100 percent certainty that my life is not at risk. Why would I bother going outside when I can stay in a virtual reality instead? All I could ever hope to do I can do with a computer.

The argument that it would be hard to share the supposed fruits of immortality with loved ones isn’t exactly an argument, there are plenty of people who’d go on living anyway with no guilt whatsoever, why would they feel guilty about such a trivial thing? And again, that’s assuming we think the same as we do today which I doubt would be the case.

Basically, he argues from the point of today how it would be in 9000 years, and about the limited storage thing we might have infinite knowledge through the use of servers that store it for us, meaning we don’t hold the information in our own brain at all times but can tap into a server if we need it. This way we have “infinite” storage. About the “extreme boredom” all I have to say is, we don’t know that.

[u/vorpalglorp]

Fictional immortality does not equal life extension. Fictional immortality does not belong in a youtube video about science. Life extension would greatly help mankind. It's pointless to talk about fictional immortality.