[spot5050]

If a clever scientist were to discover a potion that would enable any individual to live forever, the human race would to go extinct.

True or false?

[Windmills]

Why would it? The ability of the planet to support life would still remain vested in its ecosystems, and not necessarily the lifespans of the organisms feeding off it. In one sense, it could be argued that "life" has had a 3.5 billion-or-so lifespan, but that longevity hasn't been the cause of extinction. Overall, I'd say it's more a matter of rates of resource use and renewal rather than which organisms are living long or short lives. A small village of immortals living in harmony with the natural world should theoretically be able to survive until the sun dies.

[Narz]

What changes? Humans already "live forever" thru their children. If anything it would make people more careful. When I talk to my mother about the future she says "Well, I won't be there". If old people actually had to live to see the world they helped create/destroy they'd perhaps be a little more careful .

[macchendra]

Such a compound is already known. I don't know if it makes you live forever, but it does lengthen your lifespan to about 1000 years barring accident. There are also secondary protocols that you must follow after taking the elixir.

The thing is, you can't even tell people about it. No one will believe you. But it is said that it will be as it was in the days of Noah....

I think it would be a complete disaster. I was however forced to reveal it to disprove an attempt to frame me for administering the "antidote", but the revelation is well hidden in a place filled with self-discredited loons.

[evilgenius]

I think what you are really getting at with this question is whether man as he lives now is a scourge on the planet. One need only look at the projections for an eventual slowdown - and reversal of the growth trend, well outside of any resource limits or other such external constraints, to see that this isn't true. The population will level off at about 9 billion on its own, without PO or GW to enforce it. The culprit as I understand it is mostly a more widely distributed global prosperity and the trend of empowerment for women. Sure, you could have a world shaking collapse together with a resultant new feudalism, but even that would not stop the ideas which are largely behind these trends. Almost certainly it would delay their eventual fulfillment, but not derail them.

That being said, the biggest danger inherent to an elixir as mentioned would be entrenchment of power in the hands of those who by default hold the strings at the time of its implementation. In short, it's the same danger present in the rule of primogeniture.

The age old argument of whether democracy eventually always resolves itself into mob rule vs democracy is the answer to those who would enslave us would again rise up to prominence in a world where everybody lived forever. Whole new economic schemes would have to be developed in order to redistribute wealth such that there could be movement from station to station in life, rather than class division and socioeconomic partisanship. The cycles of life which promote such things would still have to function, even if groups of smarter immortals cornered the market in one thing or another.

[spot5050]

If a clever scientist were to discover a potion that would enable any individual to live forever, the human race would to go extinct.

True or false?

The results of the vote are;

Yes... 6
No.... 6

I think that an elexir of life would kill our species.

Every living species reproduces. There are no species alive that do not reproduce. Reproduction is a requirement of life.

[evilgenius]

Beyond just taking a mixture, what about a human race that has found out how to raise its dead? Imagine us, 120 or so billion strong and growing, against the universe. I like it until I realize that I certainly wouldn't want everyone to live again, or for some to continue forever. Who gets to make those calls? You can't base it on intelligence, too many truly evil people are quite intelligent. You might be able to base it on works, but then how would you decide when it came to people who were either late bloomers or whose lives were too complicated to so easily judge them? Who would watch over biases which would doom some who don't deserve it? Unless you wanted to confront the ghastly prospect of killing off many you have already raised you would have to figure these and other things out ahead of time. Mind you, you could raise all save the known truly wicked on the first go and allow everybody else to hash the rest out over a period of, say, a thousand years, during which they would do nothing more than be themselves. In this way they would either confirm or condemn themselves.