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PaperclipPerfector
9mo ago
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If some race of people lived for 200 years, would their civilization progress faster or slower relative to the control civilization? Assume no cross-contamination of ideas and comparable periods of youth and senescence (no struldbrugs)
On one hand, their rulers would grow increasingly conservative with age, projecting their influence far into the future. Imagine the Founding Fathers sticking around for the civil war and WWI, explaining what exactly their intent was when they wrote this or that amendment.
On the other hand, imagine one of the brilliant scientists that had an outsized impact on the world. Borlaug, Pasteur, von Neuman, etc. Now give them 120 more years to live. This won't just quadruple their output: now they can collaborate with a much larger cohort of scientists. Building dream teams like the Manhattan project will be much easier.
On the gripping hand, all these long-lived people are going to have sex, validating the worst predictions Malthus had regarding carrying capacity. Who has time for science, unless it's the science of waging war against your neighbors before they do the same to you? Would a civilization like this hit a worse local optimum and be passed by the shorter-lived one, stuck with the sharpest and deadliest stone or copper tools in existence?
On the other gripping hand, elephants and parrots haven't outbred all other birds and mammals. Perhaps the longer-lived people would have evolved into extreme K-strategists even before their discovery of fire or tools?
Whenever the topic of human longevity comes up I always think of things like physical maturity, emotional maturity, the general weight of life experiences accruing over time, memory, and the relative speed of physical decrepitude and cognitive decline.
Say there were in fact a race that had a lifespan of 200 years. One would have to factor in--how long would it take to wean a child ? How long childhood itself? Adolescence? How long until the brain reached its peak, or maturity, or whatever we understand to be top, not-getting-that-much-better-than-this? Would sexual maturity, or fertility for women, be the same as for us, we who live to around 70? Peak physical strength, would it just develop slower and last longer? Would diseases like their equivalent of cancer take longer to kill them?
And what of cognition? My memory is sometimes very good, particularly long term. I can tell you exactly what you said that one time, can accurately quote movie lines from films I've seen once, I can tell you about how thick into the book and where roughly in the page Fermina Daza has her moment of revulsion against Florentino Ariza. But how long will this annoying ability last? How long would it last for them?
Accidents would presumably still happen, meaning deaths by accident would still also occur, culling a certain number and with that culling leaving mourners behind. At my age one of the main reflections I have on my life is how many people I have known and, yes, loved, are no longer in it, because they're in the grave.
Wanting to live forever I often think is a dream of the young, who are still this side of the inevitable losses and life experiences that come to us all. Tolkien had his characters refer to death as "The Gift of Men" (humans).
There is the idea in OPs post that conservatism comes with age, naturally, and certainly that seems intuitive. Arguably so does wisdom, at least up until it doesn't. I think the question is interesting , but the temptation to make it too simple is a danger.
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I believe it's been shown before that scientists, artists etcetera reach peak productivity in their 'prime', which is to say 25-40 years old, and if they continue to be productive beyond that are generally less innovative or groundbreaking. One thing I noted during Oppenheimer was how young the Alamos set was. Is this a matter of age, or is it a matter of most people only really being able to generate one or two great ideas?
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Imagine if the human lifespan was just 30 years. Does anyone think that would be better for human progress? Is it really plausible that three score and ten is the optimal lifespan for civilizational progress?
I don't think that years of fertility is the binding constraint on number of kids.
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I could go so many ways with this. On the one hand, it may cause civilization to progress slower. Even now, with all the dying boomers, and their deathgrips on the levers of power, the US seems utterly incapable of meeting the challenges it faces. Their beliefs, and what they think the world is, is just too ossified in their minds. Give them another 100 years, and I can't fathom the hell of stagnation and decline we'd be in. And it's arguable this has been an increasingly severe problem the last 30 years.
I'm just not sure allowing the old blood of a civilization to further fester, stagnate, and stand in the way of the youth is beneficial. I think such a civilization would trend even harder towards some sort of stagnation, like an uncontacted African tribe.
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