Improving Our Standard of Living (Wattpad Edition)

Chapter 54: Life Extension

Our bodies fail us as we age, reducing our quality of life. Eventually, we die.

Without life, there is no quality of life. To write a book about improving our living standards without addressing the greatest cause of death and reduced quality of life—age-related diseases—would be to ignore the elephant in the room.

Other than the obvious, there's another benefit to living longer. It gives us a vested interest in the future and allows us to plan accordingly. Humanity needs that mindset now more than ever.

One reason so many people don't care about global warming, declining biodiversity, soil degradation, and dwindling resources, is because they don't think they'll live long enough to encounter these problems.

But if they thought they had a good chance of being alive centuries from now, it would change their perspective on everything. They would care more about improving the human condition and solving long-term problems. They would realize that elevating the global standard of living is the best chance they have of humanity developing the tools to cure aging.

Some people view futurists as believing that technology will solve all the world's problems, and that we don't have to do anything. But in my experience, futurists are particularly interested in addressing global challenges because they want to improve the odds of living to see the future. The greatest motivator to improving the human condition is the realization that doing so increases the odds of being alive to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Go to any futurist blog, forum, or public event. Read any book by a futurist, or watch any YouTube video created by one. Observe companies run by futurists such as Google, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors, and you will quickly realize how intensely interested these individuals are in improving global living standards.

Take this book for example. I want to live to see the future, so you better believe I've done my homework on how to improve the human condition. I have no use for conscious biases or bad research. They would get in the way of my objective.

It's not a contradiction to be both an optimist and someone dedicated to improving global quality of life. Living standards are rising, but a futurist doesn't say "Job well done! Let's wait for things to get better." He or she says, "Let's figure out how we can improve the human condition even more and make the future better than it otherwise would be. As a bonus, doing these things will increase the odds that humanity will be wealthy enough and advanced enough to cure age-related diseases."

Some people might consider it egocentric to be concerned with life extension when there are other problems to solve, like poverty.

But there's no conflict between being interested in extending life and reducing poverty. A world with less poverty in it is more likely to develop tools to cure diseases, explore the stars, and do other amazing things.

Perhaps the best strategy for prolonging life is poverty reduction.

Let's say I'm a billionaire that wants to extend my life. The greatest chance I have of doing that is to be actively involved in projects that improve the human condition. I should invest my money toward uplifting the developing world out of poverty. I could, for instance, create companies or non-profit organizations dedicated to providing cheap internet access to poor families, even at the risk of not making much profit myself. The profit motive could remain, but to achieve my goal, it should be secondary to bettering global quality of life.

Once the developing world becomes fully industrialized, billions of people will be added to the global economy. That means more research and development. A rich, happy world is more likely to develop cures for age-related diseases than one in which there is a divide between a handful of wealthy countries and a bunch of poor ones.