NOT DONE
If there’s one promise of advanced tech in general, is that it almost guarantees an eternal unchangingness, or “homeostasis.”
What are you reminded of when you describe a world where:
- Work is not needed (AI thinks for us while robots do labor)
- No sickness or death (due to advanced medicine and anti-aging tech)
- No new life (due to an end or eliminated demand for new people)
Detailing each:
1. Work is not needed: The first premise of a “workless” or “universal basic income” driven world is standard fare among leading technologists. Many assume that if AI and robots do all the work better than people, then we will not need to, nor will we be able to keep up with, the rate of their development. That is, they will accelerate in their abilities mental/physical, much faster than we will. Eventually, new paradigm shifts such as the need to tax corporations to pay for the masses while the masses just do whatever they want with their unlimited, free time.
2. No sickness or death: Anti-aging technologies: are generally believed to come about this or the following decade, and soon followed by an actual reversal of aging. “Aging” is composed of a few known causes. Many companies are working on this and aging does indeed seem to be biologically reversible, so I won’t spend time on this either.
3. No new life: Few, if anyone, has spoken about the consequences of unlimited ease with no death. Such advances in tech will likely lead to a reduction or even end of childbearing. In the last couple of hundred years, the wealthier people get, the fewer children are born. This is quite obvious by looking at wealthy populations around the world. The richest countries/locations, whether large cities, or countries like South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong, have the lowest fertility rates in the world
[chart]
If lifespans increase indefinitely, or never die as is predicted by many ______, then it’s quite predictable most people will also put off having children indefinitely. In South Korea, it is the main reason people do not have children, as everyone is trying to keep up, or catch up, with the Jones’.
The downward trend in population that most demographers and governments are currently predicting, and actually occurring. Japan is losing more people faster due to low fertility rates, along with a lack of immigration, than any other country. Its population has been decreasing for over a decade with fertility rates not much higher than 1, meaning, that is how many children a women on average will have in her lifetime. No surprise then that they are incorporating humanoid robots faster than any other country. Other advanced nations, like the US and Europe tend to keep their populations growing with immigration, in light of the sub-replacement fertility rates.
Anti-aging technology will accelerate this drop in fertility. Governments may even apply pressure (or force) to reduce childbearing if they perceive children an unnecessary burden, cost, or environmental/pollution-causing risk. Even without the governments help, society in general will continue resort to the timeless approach of regulating fertility, which I call the “social control of fertility.”
In a world with no death and no new life, combined with the fact that robots can replace all physical labor, and AI will do mental labor, this situation bears an uncanny resemblance to the oldest story in all of comparative mythology and also many religions of course.
The main difference between the original Garden of Eden and the tech-utopia version is that in the modern one, people will be able to consume unending amounts of pleasure of all kinds–unlimited pleasure at no cost–a permanent high on drugs might be a good comparison, but without the risk of overdoes from technologically-perfected pleasures. Few people seem to recall the tree of Life in the Garden, which had they eaten of it, would have lived forever in their sins.
Am I the only one sounding the alarm of an unrestrained, infinite “pleasure” in a world where over time, the immorality of pleasure is increasingly forgotten?
3 Examples of How the Modern Life is Increasingly Unchanging – Homeostasis
As the length of time increases for life, the slower people progress through life.
It is almost as if all life events are distributed at the same proportions no matter how long people live.
Marriage: When people lived to be 40 on average, marriage was at ______ and
Childbearing: The first child was born around ________. Now that the average age has increased significantly, the average age of marriage and first child continues to increase proportionally.
Living at home:
Educational inflation
The Decline of the Family as Evidence
Is the general direction of society today a mystery or surprise to anyone? Did anyone predict the world we live in today even just a generation ago? Notice the progression over time:
- Divorce, the first clear step in family disintegration accelerated in the _________
- A few decades later, male/male, female/female relationship marriages were no longer seen by many as essential, nor even under a great taboo that existed just a few years previously.
- The next logical step would be simply to forgo the marriage process in the first place, ensuring shorter process to the same end, and now with no children at all.
- If marriage is no longer a thing, then dating and moving out of one’s parent’s home seems optional/pointless to many. (chart).
- On the larger view, birth rates have essentially continued to slow with time over decades, and chances are, that will continue in the long run (even if a short-term event such as war stops it temporarily)
- Predicting even further forward, even speaking to other people face to face seems to decrease in perceptual value to many. I will return to this in a later chapter.
Notice how every step is almost a foregon conclusion when you use the main idea that when society does not value more people, then the supply (its behavior) follows.
This suggests that values are like fashion, rooted in fleeting desires and ever-changing tastes, and subtly permeate society over time. Where is the solid ground to stand on? If families and fertility are not valued, then the moral restraints on human pleasure will almost inevitably decline.
In other words, declining fertility, and the perception of a decreased need for each other / children, is really fundamental behind all of the above trends, and today I see no end in sight. This in turn causes society to change its values. If/when the ability to extend life arrives, which seems likely, the above issues, and increasingly corrupt societal behavior should accelerate for the most part. In fact, you might be able to stay 21 years old forever, with no family nor children of your own, while you live eternally in your parent’s basement eternally surfing the Matrix that we currently call the Internet. Well, many people are already there today, minus the anti-aging part–give that just a few more years.
The general thought in social science is that fertility rates slow in developing countries as the result of need for children (useful workers) declines, while the effort of raising children (costs) increases. In other words, children in urban environments are more of a liability than an asset. On the other hand, it may be more that as that life gets easier and safer, children are seen more of a burden than a blessing.
Singapore citizens have 1 child per couple on average currently the 3rd lowest fertility rates in the world, just behind Hong Kong (0.9) and South Korea (0.8). In a 2023 survey the top three reasons people stated they did not want children were:
- “can’t afford to raise children in Singapore. “
- “Do not like children or want to become a parent.”
- “Would impact career and current lifestyle. “
Besides the striking claim that one of the richest countries in the world cannot afford children, the reality seems that the life of luxury, or convenience and ease, makes the idea of having children seem relatively painful to many. Perhaps the claim that they cannot afford them is because parents are not willing to sacrifice other costs–even the GINI index which attempts to measure differences in wealth (or “wealth inequality”) within a population is lower in Singapore than much of Africa, which has far more children on average, so it seems on the surface to be more about reasons 2 and 3 (above), with “1” possibly the result of “keeping up with the Jones.”
In that same piece one potential parent says “People will say I am selfish, and I agree. I am selfish, I want my life for myself. I’ve got nothing against kids … I know I can be a good father if I have one. But the question is, why do I need to have a kid? And if I cannot answer that, I don’t think it’s right to have a kid born into this world.”
Like the need for each other, the perceived need for children seems to be decreasing over the decades.
Even Genesis states that the two primary purposes of Adam and Eve after being ejected from the garden were work and family. If AI (generalized intelligence) and robots (generalized labor) replace the need to think or exert effort, then chances are the desire to have children will evaporate on the whole, with perhaps even few even noticing the gradual changes over time as people tend to do.
Anti-aging will accelerate homeostasis
seems uninteresting already. What is more meaningful? Your 78th birthday (or your 1,623rd birthday because you never die), or a child’s 10th birthday? the growth and excitement of new life, whether experienced by a child or observing parent, will diminish.
So, as life gets longer, and technology speeds up, the events in our lives, at least what I would call the significant ones, decrease at an inverse rate.
Is Death Useful or Important? Surely death is an unnecessary artifact
Some would argue that a life without death is actually a good thing, and sure, it seems good in the short run. However, Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, wrote:
“The meaning of human existence is based upon its irreversible quality. An individual’s responsibility in life must therefore be understood in terms of temporality and singularity” (Frankl 1986, p. 64).
“Man’s Search for Meaning”
He also notes that only with the realization of finite time can we recognize the full gravity of life, therefore I conclude:
Via the realization of finite time can one recognize the full gravity of life; therefore, it logically follows that with unlimited time, there will be no gravity, and no meaning.
If a person knows they will live forever, and work to survive is optional, then what will motivate them to even get out of bed in the morning? Not much. We even see a bit of this behavior growing in recent years.
He believes that creativity and loving relationships provide meaning. While some creativity, or art, is useful, it is decreasingly useful in large amounts, without somehitng to contrast is with. He also describes the world through his personal viewpoint. I, on the other hand, think its important not to see only what is possible, but what is likely, typical, and possible across a wide spectrum.
Will technology increase love? Trends for the last half-century show that relationships are less stable, and therefore less loving over time, as the world gets wealthier because in essence, people seemingly no longer need each other economically, emotionally, .
Knowing that death will never happen, will cause most people to procrastinate indefinitely. You already see it in wealthy countries today as the average age of marriage and child-bearing increases.
The New Testament, as well as most religious texts are focused heavily on loving others.
Conclusion
Recall that in the story of Adam and Eve that there were two trees (somehow most people seem to forget that). The second tree, the “tree of life,” represented immunity to death. While it does seem death did not exist before they ate the forbidden fruit, clearly the tree of life meant the would never die. I find it odd that it was even there in the first place, unless purely for the message that if people were to live in a world of sin, but never die, then that would frustrate the purpose of man and plan of God. Now, I know many people don’t think of this story as literal, but that’s not necessary, because if it really does speak metaphorical truth, the future may hold some surprises.
If the future is a place where pleasure is limitless, changelessness is the status quo, and the possibility of new life and new experiences in the cycle we call life ceases, then I am not sure I am cut out for the future. I am not the only one though:
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Steve Jobs
HumanIT 