"The first person to live to [200, 300, 500, 1000] has already been born"

[Amine]

@ Amine..who said that? Peng did, that's who.  My cheif concern is precisely that there -would- be new people.  That's why I can't see immortality as a desirable thing until we have some plan (that doesn't involve the fuhrer's suggestions) for dealing with the exponential burden.  We've got alot on our plate as is.

The exponential burden already seems to be taking care of itself. These days developed nations face the problem of a lack of population growth. Of course if no one ever died population would still accumulate, but faster than carrying capacity? I mean we are careening to the point where people are essentially pod creatures like in the Matrix. That's a bit far-out, but it hints at certain possibilities I think. Add that to mega-efficient energy technology, desalination, etc. and you might be looking at a possible population of trillions. Is that unrealistic? I mean not long ago it would have been outrageous to think the world could support 7 billion. Even if we don't become pod people, what about technologies like in-vitro meat? What about something like asteroid mining? The asteroid belt alone contains enough matter to support a population of quadrillions.

I'm getting self-indulgent now, but it seems fatalistic to shut down this idea by declaring population an insurmountable problem when we don't even know. We certainly didn't make such arguments about eradicating smallpox, for instance. If we hadn't, the world would have like a billion fewer people in it. Literally.