The rich and powerful would be the first people to get such treatment. That brutal dictator everyone hopes will finally die of natural causes after numerous coups and assassination attempts have all failed? The loudmouthed, racist, inexplicably influential national politician who keeps running and getting elected in his district? The media mogul who owns a quarter of the newspapers and broadcast television networks in each of a few major countries, and heavily pushes his own agendas through them? Yeah, they're all gonna be around for a couple more centuries now. Have fun with all these practically-immortal despots, world! =)

"Curing" death is a terrible idea.

You'd obviously have to ensure that radical life extension will become available to everyone who wants it, not just to some oligarchs. But admittedly that's a real concern...given trends in automation and large parts of the population becoming economically superfluous, there's already a real danger anyway of oligarchs becoming all-powerful and democracy being abolished.

Even if it could be made affordable for anyone who wanted it (I doubt this would happen), that would just lead to the already-mentioned problems of too many people, too little space and food. Also, without accompanying cures for common old-age afflictions, longer life would be meaningless, as even if people's bodies kept functioning far longer, it'd just be 30 more years (or 80, or 150, or whatever) of senility and dependence on others.

There's also the matter of the lack of universality of such a thing meaning that the extended-life set get to watch everyone they care about who doesn't have access to -- or doesn't want -- such prolonged life age and die around them. And you know how a lot of very old (and some not-so-old) people have trouble being able to relate to the modern age, the culture that's grown up around them since they hit middle age? Imagine how alienated such a person would feel after living for 250 years or more, as opposed to 100 or less.

Then there's the fact that a lot of changes in societal attitudes and mores only occur with the passing of the older generations. I mean, people think we've got a lot of race issues in the U.S. now; imagine if there were lots of people from the generations that thought government-sanctioned segregation (and vigilante "justice" for anyone who threatened that system) were still around, influencing public attitudes and policies. For that matter, imagine if the rich slave-owning generation still ran the South.

This is a case where the natural human fear of death, coupled with baseless optimism & failure to practically consider all the ramifications, could lead to crippling problems for all humanity.
(Yes, I have thought about this a lot, why do you ask? :) )

No, the goal would obviously be to rejuvenate people or stop/slow aging, so people wouldn't spend another 50 years at the level of an 80-year old, but rather at the level of someone in the 20-50 age range. And the tests with mice I mentioned imply something like this might be possible. The old mice in that test got rejuvenated by the blood plasma infusion, their physical and cognitive state reverted back to that of young mice!
As for the rest of your objections that's all hypothetical...no one can say with certainty what the consequences of radical life extension would be. But I think it could be great and I want it to happen.

I kinda see the whole "general discussion" section as being a place for off-topic conversations.

That said, my ultimate life goal is to live forever. So far so good.

Dependency is okay, that's acknowledged with relationships. It seems like it's when people are without valued relationships and connections that people become less valued themselves by others.

I've noticed people have already gotten used to everyone they knew dying, and getting to know new people. Fatal accidents happen, infants don't make it to childhood, children don't make it adulthood… It seems to me people are already living long enough to reflect on such matters, and I expect each one already continues to feel differently each day, each hour, each minute, as they always have through life.

So you're pointing out you weren't born thinking all of this, that your thoughts have been developing and changing. Are you special in that way? I mean, couldn't anyone you've generalized as impediments to cultural progress also have a change of heart or change their minds along with their life? Wouldn't it be more likely for them to do so as they live longer, observing what happens throughout the ages, and continue to adapt? Maybe even express how they used to think one way (perhaps idealizing) and now think in another (perhaps realizing) after having personally experienced such events?

It seems to me this has already happened…

Your having known a few older people who still readily form new relationships does not by any means make that the rule.

Have you met people? Humanity, as a species, adapts very well to change over time. Individual humans, on the other hand, are far less prone to radical adaptations, even when faced with the pressing need for change; and the capacity to learn and adapt easily lessens with age. Most children pick up and new information much more easily than most thirty-somethings, who in turn do so more easily than most sixty-somethings, etc. Capacity for learning is not infinite, and the mind only becomes less elastic after childhood.
Most bigots don't just suddenly stop thinking that way, and selfish assholes don't generally become less self-centered, just as naturally cheery, chipper people don't one day stop making happy chit-chat about how nice a day it is with everyone they meet. The capacity for significant change is there in most people, of course, but any lasting change along these lines seems to be pretty rare.

I'm honestly not even sure what point you're trying to make for most of that paragraph. If you're saying that I wasn't born contemplating mortality, and that I only really started doing so as I grew up, then...yeah? But saying an underdeveloped mind can't grasp heavy concepts as well as a fully developed one isn't (or shouldn't be) anything revelatory. But (contrary to AARP propaganda :P ), minds don't continue to get better and more capable the more decades of use they've had; they start to wear out and fail, just like any other body part. And again, this affects educability and adaptability.
This is part (only part) of the problem I have with this idea that "living forever = awesome!!!" -- for any kind of extended lifespan to be in any way useful or beneficial, it would have to come with provisions to cease (or tremendously slow) the processes of aging, as well. And, again, solving THAT problem leads inevitably to all sorts of other social problems for which practical (and practicable) solutions need to be thought out before creating such a world-changing...uh, change.

Awesome! Now all we need is to set up the secret clone farms where blood plasma from vat-grown juvenile humans can be harvested for injection into our immortal overlords! ;P

Parts of my objection are hypothetical. But it doesn't take a professional mathematician to figure out that a planet where people stop dying of old age, but continue to breed at the same rate they've always done, and where not-insignificant numbers people were already living in poverty before death by natural causes ceased, is going to have massive problems related to food and water availability, at the very least. As I mentioned in my reply to thomq, these are problems which need to be faced before they're banging on the door, not brushed aside because "Well, who can know the future? Amirite? I'm sure everything will turn out fine. (Besides, IDON'TWANNADIE.)"

Well, who says people would breed at the same rate? Most of the developed world is below replacement fertility anyway, even parts of India and e.g. Iran have quite low birth rates by now. Only some Islamic countries and Africa still have very high birth rates, and that's a problem anyway, quite unconnected to radical life extension.
I think you're far too pessimistic about this.

And I think this is another global warming waiting to happen. "No, that's not a thing." "Well, even if it is a thing, we won't have to worry about the effects for a long time." "What do you mean, 'global warming'? The weather's just fine!"
Humans don't have a great track record when it comes to thinking long-term. Medium-term seems to be the best we can usually muster. And I'd rather be the buzzkill pointing out all the ways a planned house could go wrong before it's built, than keep quiet and have to later live with a poorly built house with a slanted floor, cracks in the foundation, and an inadequately supported roof, just because everyone else thought it looked so cool in the concept drawings. :)

Ok, you've convinced me...radical life extension for everyone is a bad idea. So I'll be the only one who gets it and then I'll rule as immortal god-king, with thousands of beautiful concubines at my side, over you mere mortals :-))))

Haven't seen that science fiction movie yet,what's the name of it?

That would be Soylent Green.

And on an earlier post by Hunchbluntly, "Humans don't have a great track record when it comes to thinking long-term. Medium-term seems to be the best we can usually muster." That would be because the decision makers are politicians who need votes to keep their jobs. If politicians tried to introduce maximum birth numbers as one way of population control if life could be enhanced to, say, 150 years, they would not only not get re-elected, they would be crucified, burnt and disembowelled by the YumanRights brigade.

Sorry,off gaming.Seen it and quiet a good picture.But it's not the right movie as people die in it.

That's bound to get awkward after 70 or so years when you have to deal with the logistics of dismissing the thousands of elderly concubines you're destined to outlive. You might also consider a preemptive vasectomy lest you lose track of countless offspring and have to worry about unfortunate mishaps when recruiting new concubines who may themselves be equally unaware of the relation.

Of course, that's assuming your mind and sex drive remain intact the whole time. Being that you'd be the only one receiving this immortality, it stands to reason that you'd be the first human test subject, which means the process won't have been perfected and unfortunate side effects may occur. You could conceivably get around that by allowing others to test the life extension techniques first and subsequently murdering them after a sufficient amount of time has passed (something that comes with its own pitfalls, obviously), but that would only be possible if we're dealing with little more than a lengthened natural lifespan, and in that case you'd no doubt be toppled by revolution or disease long before any of these things become a problem.