The Ancient Ones

The world in a hundred years will look very different because of AI, VR and brain-machine interfaces. Speculating about anything this far out in the future will most likely be wrong, but let’s still have some fun with it..

Today I want to write about one specific breakthrough. When science stops aging.

Let’s say that you don’t get any help from science stopping or slowing your aging. The oldest humans today seems to reach 120 years and seeing somebody hit their 100th birthday is not anything to write home about. Maybe the 120-years old are genetic freaks that your genes can’t compete with, but let’s say that you get 90 years as is. No weird wheatgrass, anti-ageing fountains or only eating raw kale diets.

Our grandparents’ generation and their limited ideas about diets and health can get around 90-years. Eating processed sugar, drinking alcohol, living off potatoes or rice, smoking and so on.

So what happens if you implemented the current knowledge about optimal health? Eating salads, drinking kale shakes and injecting yourself with raw ginger juice while avoiding sugar and junk food.

Light body stress also optimizes your health and increases your life expectancy. Exercise, saunas, cold exposure and fasting are examples that are showing a lot of promise turning you into wolverine. [pic]

This is not taking into account supplements and drugs that are studied, for their anti-ageing effects.

So if you implemented some of these guidelines what do you get in return? A maximum age of 110-years or 130-years? I don’t know. Maybe there is a biological ceiling that even a perfect lifestyle can’t traverse. But it is likely, that you will at least increase, your baseline from your parents and their parents’ generations.

All this is of course based on the assumptions that cancer and other diseases won’t finish you off before aging does. A realistic scenario given how fast technology is evolving.

So let’s be modest and say that if you take good care of your body with our current knowledge you could get to be 110 years old. How old are you know – 30? That leaves you with 80 years where science can progress in anti-ageing research before you’re out of time.

What are the odds that there won’t be new anti-ageing breakthroughs in those years? Say eating some bark from a tree or your dog’s fur or whatever actually is super freaking healthy. Or some new drug that at least will slow aging.

I would say unlikely.

So your 110 years might increase to 160 years. That gives you 50 years more for science so improve even more and so on.

It’s likely that science will have figured out a way to stop – or even reverse – aging in your lifetime (remember the speed of innovation is accelerating). Especially given the reason focus and progress in the anti-ageing field (foodnotes).

So what does that mean? It means that there is a high chance that you will live as long as you wish. Given that you don’t die from unnatural causes or before science figures this shit out.

I won’t go into all the moral dilemmas or issues the world will face because of this change. Overpopulation, food supply, and regulating birth rates will be a shitshow no doubt about it. But that is another discussion. For now, let’s look at what life could be like after the muddy water settles.

This will be one of the biggest changes in human history. And you will live through it. You will live through the End of Death.

One era where death was completely natural. You would see your loved one’s age and wither away and you yourself would feel the consequences of time. Fragile, in pain and confused you would live your last years before returning to the great spaghetti monster (or whatever you believe in). You will die as all life before you has done as part of the natural cycle. Maybe this era will be referred to as the “new” dark age.

Then the second era will come and aging will stop. Death will be looked upon as a disease that has been cured. New generations born in this era will speak with horror about the dark ages where death, disease and physical suffering was a normal part of life.

And you lived in both eras. You saw it happen. You and the few generations that lived on earth when it happened will witness the transition. Whether it’s going to be good or bad, there is no way around the fact that it’s a gigantic change for mankind.

The consequences of you living through the transition means that as long as you are alive, you will be one of the oldest humans in the universe. Alongside the rest of the current generations alive today, nobody will be older than you. People that were born before you will have died before the End of Death. People born after you will, of course, be younger than you. Let’s see what the future holds for our generations.

Humanity will have spread to multiple planets in different solar systems. The 8 billion that lived through the transitions will now have been reduced to 3 billion. Some didn’t choose to have their life extended and some died from a non-natural cause. Even more, after having lived for hundreds or thousands of years lost interested in life and decided it was time to say farewell.

Still, all populated planets have several people from the dark ages. Yet, seeing one is rare and when one dies, willingly or unwillingly, it’s a big deal and is covered in local news. There is a good chance that our generations will be some of the most powerful and influential people because of the way wealth accumulates. Imagine Warren Buffets fortune if he had 5000 years to grow it.. Maybe we’ll have a facebook group called the “the good old times”.

If you have decided to spend your 5000 years well, learning, growing and accumulating wealth you will be powerful and wise.

Want to take a degree in mathematics, physics, and biology? Or philosophy, literature, and physiology? Devote a couple of decades here and there to your studies. Knowledge will be even more valuable since the ROI will be infinitely better. You spend x years learning something and you have eternity to apply it. Versus today where you can use your knowledge for 40-60 years.

Of course, there will be rapid scientific progress so your knowledge will be quickly outdated. You would have to spend a lot of time keeping up to date with the advances not to be one of those annoying old know-it-alls. Hopefully, at some point, we will have found the theory of everything and when you got that down you should be good.

Your knowledge, wisdom, and self-understanding will skyrocket. You know that feeling when you think back at your 20-year-old self and remember how retarded you were? The same apply when you’re 40 and think back at when you were 30 (I assume). At least for me, thinking back a couple of years, I smile and shake my head at my foolish younger self. If you are willing to grow and learn about yourself imagine where you would be in 5000 years. Want to:

The possibilities are endless. Spend a couple of years trying all the different ways of life until you find what makes you happy. On this journey, you will find buckets of wisdom (you will also be an annoying dinner guest PIC). Or you find that you function best when you alternate between different lifestyles. Whatever it is. You will have eternity to figure out it. After 5000 years of practice, you will have gotten a lot better at optimizing your peace of mind and generally happiness.

No more laying on your deathbed full of regrets on how you should have spent more time with your kids or started that company or travel more or…

The point is; you won’t have to chose a way of life when you’re 20 and stick to it until you’re dead. Do it all and see what works for you.

If you’re a lazy fucker, there is a chance that you will be in your basement playing world of warcraft patch 10002.4.9. Note to self: Don’t start again when virtual reality comes to Azeroth.

Assuming that we haven’t figure out how to download and keep a backup copy of your brain/spirit there will now be a lot less of us. Given enough time that 0.01% chance of dying per year from murder/accidents/space monster will add up. Also, most of us have chosen suicide after having tried all possible experiences for hundreds of times. There is only one great mystery left. What comes after death? A mystery that seems tempting to solve after having mojitos for the 10.000th times, looking at the moons of Endoor while getting a blowjob from your robot butler.  The 3 billion survivors will have been reduced to 30.000 million. On the bright side, there will be a lot less spam in our facebook group.

Humanity has spread to most of the galaxy and now populates millions of planets. That means even visiting a planet where one of us that lived through the end of death will be a rare thing. Not to talk about actually seeing one or hearing one speak will be a lot rarer than seeing royalty or famous people today. It might even be so rare that there will be a special name for us.

The ones that have wandered the galaxy for eons. The ones that lived in the dark ages and have seen the great expansion of human life becoming interstellar.

The most powerful families will most likely have been started by an ancient one. They might have so incomprehensible amounts of wealth that they own entire planets.

Living for that long will also mean that the ones that are still alive will live very protected and sheltered lives. Want to go bunjy jump? There is only a 0.002% of something going wrong. Erhmm no thanks. The price on the line is not 60 years of life but an eternity. Bad deal for a quick rush (especially given that you can do it in VR or pay somebody to do it and hook your brain up to their sensory input).

You might live in a fortress and never leave to minimize your chance of dying. After thousands of years of living like that without anybody seeing you, your existents will be more of a legend covered in mystery. (“the legends goes that in that fortress lives an ancient one”. Don’t ever go near or the guardians might see you as a potential threat!”).

When an Ancient One dies it’s a big deal. The news will spread through the galaxy that one of the oldest beings has died. Humanity will gasp and the facebook group will share their 27-hour long memory montage of all the reunions we had with the deceased.

???

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Or a more likely scenario. Humanity is dead and an AI rules the universe but what fun is that to mentally masturbate to.