Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

AnarchButterfly wrote

You can have your lifespan extended, but there is a bit of upkeep required for the treatment to be effective. These new procedures are very advanced and specialized, so naturally you have to go to a specific life extension clinic. There they run tests to estimate your current expected lifespan and determine around how many extra years the treatments will give you.

Since you'll need to keep coming back for checkups and follow-up treatments, which only get more frequent once you've lived past your natural lifespan, it ends up costing quite a bit. While the treatment gives you many extra years to live, it only moderately delays the worst of aging's problems, so it gets harder to come up with the money as time goes on.

Thankfully they offer a sort of retirement plan, complete with housing that has on-site medical staff once you're too old to live on your own. They calculate the projected medical costs for your extended years and offer you a loan, which is interest free once you've passed your natural lifespan.

It can be hard to pay it back in time, so they offer debt forgiveness in the form of employment. Housing and basic necessities are offered for free, with a small cash stipend deducted from your loan repayment. These plans are very popular, so excess employees are often contracted out in large groups to provide a flexible workforce to governments and other businesses. With cost-reduced labor, this has meant greater efficiency in infrastructure projects and increased profits for participating companies.

I've also heard of a new way to reduce your loan significantly, I think it might've had something to do with the military...

6

ukuleleclass wrote

can't tell if you're writing a dystopic short story or describing reality..

5

roanoke9 wrote

Can we start a pool on the dystopian side effects? Not counting immortal rich fucks finally being a science thing and not science fiction, that's a given. More like faustian bargain scenarios: I' ll go first : longer life span, but pain sensitivity is amplified considerably and cannot die by any means until the new lifespan is expended.

4

ArmyOfNone wrote (edited )

They'll never achieve immortality, as this is contrary to base principles of entropy physics. That's a scam. But they can extend their livespans long enough to find ways to implant their minds into "ageless" machines.

2

roanoke9 wrote

Oh, I know. I was going for the maximum faustian irony. As per my original premise. The Dune prequel books involve just such dystopian cyborg elites, as well as a rogue ai tyrant which led to the Butlerian Jihad to destroy all thinking machines, etc.

2

ArmyOfNone wrote

Damn, I didn't even know there were prequel books! And they look fine...

1

roanoke9 wrote

They're okay. Written by his son, based on notes he left. Not as well written, though easier and more explicitly dystopic imo.

1

Exlurker wrote

On the plus side, if the Billionaires extend their lives beyond senility they'll just turn into slobbering wrecks and be too old to do anything.

3

fortmis wrote

a good number of them are slobbering wrecks even without this eternal mice life treatment

2

anarresinfoshop wrote

Mice live only months in the wild but can survive two to three years in the lab.

This experiment only shows a method to extend the life of sick, unnaturally old mice.

What is the value of "life extension", if it only seems to prolong suffering before death?

What is the value of science that tortures and kills these mice, for this purpose?

All important questions, especially for research done with public tax money. In our state, Oregon, the state tax revenues are disproportionately taken from minimum wage full time workers. This research is likely done with federal money, which is a more progressive tax system, but regardless it's a question of importance to working class people who could benefit from resources being allocated according to their needs and interests.

What would a working class scientific community look like? This is a primary interest within our group, we are interested to promote working class people to study the sciences.

That said, it is an interesting study. Thank you for sharing it, I had not seen this.

2