The deepest fear people have had since the Catholics invented the seven deadly sins isn’t death itself, but greed. What happens when power no longer decays?
Extreme life extension(a form of greed), introduced into a system that has no effective antidote to accumulation, doesn’t eliminate scarcity. Greed isn’t just a moral failing; it’s an exponential force. Technology scales incentives, and without structural limits, it will scale exclusion just as efficiently as abundance.
We can already see this in Africa, where poverty persists far more from incentive structures and hoarding than from true scarcity. Immortality in such a system wouldn’t solve that problem. It would immortalize it.
The most likely outcome from immortality is to split the human species into multiple new species with only one of those species indulging in the absence of scarcity while the rest suffer scarcity eternally. Okay that is a bit too dramatic but that is a valid prediction from the current state.
Survival is an enduring struggle against scarcity. The pursuit of technology transforms scarcity into abundance. Thus, our pursuit of technology is ultimately a struggle for enduring survival.
The deepest fear people have had since the Catholics invented the seven deadly sins isn’t death itself, but greed. What happens when power no longer decays?
Extreme life extension(a form of greed), introduced into a system that has no effective antidote to accumulation, doesn’t eliminate scarcity. Greed isn’t just a moral failing; it’s an exponential force. Technology scales incentives, and without structural limits, it will scale exclusion just as efficiently as abundance.
We can already see this in Africa, where poverty persists far more from incentive structures and hoarding than from true scarcity. Immortality in such a system wouldn’t solve that problem. It would immortalize it.
The most likely outcome from immortality is to split the human species into multiple new species with only one of those species indulging in the absence of scarcity while the rest suffer scarcity eternally. Okay that is a bit too dramatic but that is a valid prediction from the current state.
🔥🔥
beautiful once again 💞
I grew up in Aspen during the 70s-80s. The influential parents of my time there ranged from John Denver to Hunter S. Thompson. Trying to find ways to inspire influencers of today by some of the originals…before the computer. https://open.substack.com/pub/growingupaspen/p/children-of-the-algorithm-age?r=2g93c&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
what a blog man, what an article. had a fantastic time reading this.
Survival is an enduring struggle against scarcity. The pursuit of technology transforms scarcity into abundance. Thus, our pursuit of technology is ultimately a struggle for enduring survival.