> There are some interesting physical problems with immortality, too. I'm not so sure how we'll cope with a population size when people are rarely removed from that population. Isaac Asimov wrote about a similar problem when the global population rate was growing steadily: if the number of humans around doubles every twenty years or fifty years, in almost no time we'd fill the projected size of the universe. Clearly population growth *can't* go exponentially for any length of time.


I read this before work today, and thought about it the whole way in. Unfortunately they frown on Internet use here, so it's going to be brief for now.

The one thought that popped into my head and stuck is our justice system. At first I was thinking that maybe we'd become more lenient towards murderers because we could actually use the reduction of physical bodies on the planet.. but then my head snapped back to reality and I realized that we'd probably become a lot tougher on criminals. The death penalty would be invoked for anyone who was a murderer and it would probably be carried out a lot quicker. It might also be used for slightly lesser crimes because of the convenience. Ultimately I think we might see a severe drop in crime if things began being carried out this way.

Then again.. maybe I'm wrong. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

famous