With scientists now predicting that Humans may live up to 200 years within 200 years or less due to gene editing and medical advances authored by Ai should the process of human
procreation be limited to avoid over population?
If death becomes a rarity then increasing the population might put a strain on resources and adversely affect the quality of life of all. Having reached an optimum population then you could work on the basis of one out one in but that raises the question of who has the baby?
This raises ethical and moral questions.
On the other hand if you believe Elon Musk then we will have colonised other planets by the time we are living until 200 years old and that should eliminate the need for limiting the population.
I’m going to guess that you’re a young person that hasn’t seen the world much. Many countries around the world already practice this going both ways. Some will reward you for having kids some will punish, it all depends. Even more, some countries will pay you just to move there.
Does it really need to?
I knew it, you’re one of musks martians whose laughing at us mere earthlings. How is the moon rocketman? Im dropping my starlink subscription now.
(note: The field of A.I has been around for over 50 years. The turing test is a famous thought experiment from the field that might be worth exploring if you’re interested in the subject.)
AI is the huge unknown variable. We must prepare for a future we cannot predict. What can’t AI do? We don’t know. A very few things, presuambly.
If AI advances our age, it may also make logistical, resource-moving tasks more efficient. That could counterbalance overpopulation. If all goes well, I foresee a technical, distributionist future.
Flip a coin. If heads, overpopulation will be a problem: We simply don’t know.
Actually Johnathanrs, I’m an IT Veteran ( programmer and system designer - globally recognized) and am 73 years old. I am not an Elon Musk follower,he actually follows me.Not so good at profiling are we?
Not necessarily, as you could be following each other assuming that you’re statement was true.
If we take the premise seriously, then you would break most modern social programs that we have in place. One basic example is social security that is already under the pressure of collapse, atleast if you follow the popular opinion of what most media outlets are saying about it. Ethics would be the least of your worries as you would run into a huge amount of practical problems that would first need solving. One basic example is benefit programs for most american workers that includes a healthcare premium based on known statistics.
(Speaking of military service, at 200 years you would be young and could possible be eligible to reenlist. That raises the threshold to what 80-90 year old as the new maximum cutoff?)
I’ve been watching David Sinclair’s work on epigenetics and potential age reversal. There’s no guarantee it will work yet, but there is some solid evidence that it worked in mice. And there is also the potential for it to be used multiple times, meaning 200 years might not be the limit in that case. It would also mean living those years youthfully, not just getting older and older physically.
I think population and resource issues could occur, but that this kind of change to what humans have known as life up until then, will drastically alter society in multiple ways. I mean if you got to live multiple lifetimes, would marriage still be until death do you part? Or would we opt for a single lifetime as the commitment?
Another possibility is would it end current religions and/or create new religions? How might memory work after so many years? Will we fully remember our childhoods? Will we change so much over the course of multiple lifetimes to no longer recognize or remember who we were once?
Sinclair’s research team started human trials this year focused on using this technology in eye diseases. We might also be closer than we think, if it turns out to work well. Scientific advancement and technology have a way of compounding.
But enough rambling from me lol. I would agree that unless we were able to spread out beyond Earth you would have to limit births at some point. Fertility levels might be a factor on people who are older. If populations rise enough, more people might naturally opt out of raising children. But if you had to put limits, it would be very difficult to decide those rules.
Accelerating cycles of global heating-driven megastorms, floods, wildfires, famines, droughts, pandemics, etc will check “over-population”, which won’t itself be that catastrophic especially as global birth rates are projected to continue dropping compounded by, I suspect, the likelihood that ‘longevity therapies’ will be priced out of the reach of underdeveloped and (most) developing economies and maybe even the bottom half of populations in the developed world.
I think we need to take climate change seriously, which NO major government is doing currently or there won’t be enough resources, i.e.food to feed the world as is. Incidentally, no one in the world should be starving currently. There is adequate food for all. It just isn’t distributed fairly or justly!
We don’t and we could be eating differently and producing food differently but this assumes we tackle and conquer climate change before we are literally burnt out!
At the rate we’re going, by then, we will live in machines where we press buttons to feel things,and interact holographically to experience, while robots tend to our bodies.
Despite gene editing and medical advances, our lungs and brains, foods and environments, are already replete with microplastics and PFAS (“forever-chemicals”).