Alternate History: How Would Technology Develop....

[Spacescifi]

Scenario: After Jesus death in the first century mysteriously no one dies from old age anymore. Anyone older than 30 deages to 30.

How would the world look today technology wise and would the USA even exist?

My thoughts: This would be radical. The thing I find most fascinating is the LITERAL link to the past that never dies (people).

What that means is cultures no longer die off with the people that made them, they only evolve.

As for history, death being the huge factor in it, taking that out of the equation changes the outcome. Dramatically.

Basically what happens is that the most organized and ambitious civilizations dominate and evolve over time.

Ironically I think when you delete old age and death as a given, governments and civilizations ACTUALLY survive longer than they would have if not for natural death. Since competent people in charge tend to stay there instead of being replaced as a necessity because of old age/death.

Probably the most concerning thing is the evolutionary process... we will have already tried and seen what does and does not work for over two millenia when the year 2024 hits.

Mankind's superpower is not strength, for even beasts far surpass us there. Our superpower is our greater capacity for learning and choosing to learn from our mistakes.

My guess is, the world is western dominated faster than in the original timeline (Rome goes on a bit of a rampage) but like the original timeline, colonies (like the Americas) become self sustaining by either rebellion or being granted independence.

 

Edit: What would the world population look like in 2024 and would that even be sustainable?

Edit 2: Mozart might still die (died at 35 OTL) since he was a bit of a party animal. Beethoven would either have transitioned to rock music or be writing his 59th Symphony lol).

 

Edited August 29 by Spacescifi

[KSK]

The problem is that competent people may not have anything other than their own interests at heart and that a surviving civilization is not necessarily a good one in anything other than a strictly Darwinian sense, i.e. it is fit because it survived.

Try this on for size.

The granting of immortality after Jesus' death is seized upon as a sure sign of God's displeasure. For if we cannot die, we are trapped in this earthly sphere and are denied the  possibility of salvation and ascension to Heaven. Luckily, as His Apostles, the Eleven (Judas gets an even worse deal in this timeline for obvious reasons), can claim a provable link to the divine, and quickly take advantage of that by claiming that they, and they alone are the repositories of His wisdom. Follow them without question, and your salvation may yet be assured.

Of course, the Apostles are only human and sooner or later 'love thy neighbour' takes a back seat to putting the boot into anyone who persecuted the early Christians. Other bodies are subject to selectively exaggerated versions of Jesus' teachings, and it doesn't take long for the moneylenders to be expelled from everywhere and not just the Temple.

Long story short, with immortal Apostles in charge, society ossifies into a 1st Century theocracy with 1st Century social values. The notion of a peaceful transfer of power never occurs to immortal rulers (bye bye democracy), the Church takes an even harder line on natural philosophy than it did historically (bye bye science) and of course, the moneylenders have long been reviled (bye bye economics).

And when the last tree is cut down for firewood, and the deserts claim the last fields, then the Apostles find that their immortality was all for naught.

Edited September 3 by KSK

[darthgently]

Mortality is a gift.  It gives life poignancy and meaning and encourages the passing on of knowledge, wisdom, and wealth to the future.  

[Spacescifi]

6 hours ago, KSK said:

The problem is that competent people may not have anything other than their own interests at heart and that a surviving civilization is not necessarily a good one in anything other than a strictly Darwinian sense, i.e. it is fit because it survived.

Try this on for size.

The granting of immortality after Jesus' death is seized upon as a sure sign of God's displeasure. For if we cannot die, we are trapped in this earthly sphere and are denied the  possibility of salvation and ascension to Heaven. Luckily, as His Apostles, the Eleven (Judas gets an even worse deal in this timeline for obvious reasons), can claim a provable link to the divine, and quickly take advantage of that by claiming that they, and they alone are the repositories of His wisdom. Follow them without question, and your salvation may yet be assured.

Of course, the Apostles are only human and sooner or later 'love thy neighbour' takes a back seat to putting the boot into anyone who persecuted the early Christians. Other bodies are subject to selectively exaggerated versions of Jesus' teachings, and it doesn't take long for the moneylenders to be expelled from everywhere and not just the Temple.

Long story short, with immortal Apostles in charge, society ossifies into a 1st Century theocracy with 1st Century social values. The notion of a peaceful transfer of power never occurs to immortal rulers (bye bye democracy), the Church takes an even harder line on natural philosophy than it did historically (bye bye science) and of course, the moneylenders have long been reviled (bye bye economics).

And when the last tree is cut down for firewood, and the deserts claim the last fields, then the Apostles find that their immortality was all for naught.

 

I think this is a worse case scenario. I think it more likely entropy/murphy's law would prevail over the spread of uber theocracy.

After all, fear of death is a large part of ANY organized theocracy. Take that away and people have more incentive to take what is theirs because death won't stop them.

Also a literal link to the past would actualky hurt myths of what people did or did not do, since eye witnesses would exist to say otherwise.

Unless you have the power to get rid of them, which in of itself is kind of horrifying.

 

As power will then be in destroying information/life rather than preserving it since knowledge preservation will be a given so long immortal folks are not killed off and they keep writing books or talking.

Edited September 3 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

How would the world look today technology wise and would the USA even exist?

Full of 30 yo virgins.

Full of ex-80yo retirees, become unqualified 30 yo which had lost their pension and full of outdated skills.

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

How would the world look today technology wise and would the USA even exist?

Why? The masons would anyway need a safe colony, separated by ocean from the real world.

So, probably even the dollar design would be same.

Though, as the told volunteers from Africa would be able to farm the cotton and tabacco immortally, the slave trading and related problems would be less accented.

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

What that means is cultures no longer die off with the people that made them, they only evolve.

Lawyers would have lost a half of their income. No ancested property, no internal family battles.

Like if the 300 yo zoomers don't have some property to care about the ancesting.

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

Basically what happens is that the most organized and ambitious civilizations dominate and evolve over time.

It has. Just you don't belong to, so aren't told about.

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

I think when you delete old age and death as a given, governments and civilizations ACTUALLY survive longer

Some countries ruled by the same persons for centuries, some others by a couple of their peers, infinitely swapping every several years with 50:50 votes.

(Just a theoretical, fictional model, never being actually real. Don't think about the EU, US, or something in between. Purely hypothetical.)

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

My guess is, the world is western dominated faster than in the original timeline (Rome goes on a bit of a rampage) but like the original timeline, colonies (like the Americas) become self sustaining by either rebellion or being granted independence.

After the 24th rebellion, raised by the same immortal persons, they would be tired, and would stop playing the pendence/de-pendence game.

But yeah, total promisquity, as after 300 years of adultery they would just forget, who had(n't) already slept with whom, and whom was that single blond hair on husband's shoulder belong to.

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

What would the world population look like in 2024 and would that even be sustainable?

~5 mln of free humans + ~200 mln of underhumans to serve them.

Others other hanged by themselves, or helped by the neighbors.

(Of course, counting only the adults, without the biofactory volatile resource, aka expendable toddlers).

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

Mozart might still die (died at 35 OTL) since he was a bit of a party animal.

No, since he was having too long tongue.

On 8/30/2024 at 12:09 AM, Spacescifi said:

Beethoven would either have transitioned to rock music or be writing his 59th Symphony lol).

Would be playing his Moonlight Sonata on the Moon.

As he's anyway deaf, he doesn't need air to hear it.

7 hours ago, KSK said:

possibility of salvation and ascension to Heaven

This was an optimistical pov.

Now, let's listen the opposite party and compare the crowds size.

7 hours ago, KSK said:

His Apostles, the Eleven (Judas gets an even worse deal in this timeline for obvious reasons)

Technically, >12, not counting the additional 70 ones.

7 hours ago, KSK said:

Judas gets an even worse deal in this timeline for obvious reasons

No officially authorized witnesses of his post-Gethsemane adventures. Only rumors.

7 hours ago, KSK said:

the Apostles are only human

Body-augmented directly with particles of the authentic Corpus Christi (firstly Last Supper, thenly Pentecost). Others received it via indirect sources.

7 hours ago, KSK said:

to be expelled from everywhere

after having sprode the Corpus Christi among the local communes, so technically being depleted.

So,

7 hours ago, KSK said:

with immortal Apostles in charge

living in Basilica cryptas and far monasteries, far from the changed worldly needs and deeds, the society would be even not aware of the several tens more old monks.

7 hours ago, KSK said:

And when the last tree is cut down for firewood, and the deserts claim the last fields, then the Apostles find that

the sinful material world has gone, and the united world of spirit is everywhere (not gnosticism, of course).

Of course, in the optimistic finale.

Spoiler

_{Not impossible, if to be verified soon, lol.
Technically, my place is  500 m far from the local hypothetical 2 Mt GZ. So, good chances to inform the forum about the post-details, unless the usual 502 error.}

 

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

Mortality is a gift.  It gives life poignancy and meaning and encourages the passing on of knowledge, wisdom, and wealth to the future.  

And possibility of deserting and making others have their headache with all this stuff, instead of endlessly bothering yourself.

***

So, basically it would stay same.

Edited September 3 by kerbiloid

[KSK]

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

I think this is a worse case scenario. I think it more likely entropy/murphy's law would prevail over the spread of uber theocracy.

1. After all, fear of death is a large part of ANY organized theocracy. Take that away and people have more incentive to take what is theirs because death won't stop them.

2. Also a literal link to the past would actualky hurt myths of what people did or did not do, since eye witnesses would exist to say otherwise. Unless you have the power to get rid of them, which in of itself is kind of horrifying.

3. As power will then be in destroying information/life rather than preserving it since knowledge preservation will be a given so long immortal folks are not killed off and they keep writing books or talking.

1.  I disagree but I'm no theologist and perhaps this isn't the place to debate such things. But anyway, I'd argue that fear of the afterlife is a large part of any organised theocracy, rather than fear of death.  Which sounds a bit pedantic, but sinners (however one chooses to define sin) fear the afterlife because they're not going to a better place. The saved (again, however one chooses to define saved), do not fear the afterlife (and thus have no fear of death) because they are. Of course, in a theocracy, those in charge get to define the sinners and to define the behaviour that makes one a sinner.

2. That cuts both ways. A literal link to the past can reinforce a myth too, although I suppose that it stops being a myth if it can be proven to be true.

3. As it always has been.

On a related note, I agree with @darthgently especially the wealth part. Historically, most people have valued possessions, and possessions have usually been linked to status, whether that's modern day conspicuous consumption, or the gaudy accumulation of gold and jewels by assorted kings, warlords and despots (but I repeat myself). Holding onto stuff and accumulating more stuff is what humans  do, and that's going to be problematic when everyone has a theoretically infinite amount of time to accumulate in. There's a finite amount of stuff in this world, and the immortals who were there from the start will get the lions share of it to the detriment of everyone else, and eventually themselves.

I'd also argue that death is required for change because it allows old ideas to literally and figuratively die out.  Societies almost invariably have a conservative element and that's going to be amplified by immortality simply because ideas stick around for longer and have more opportunity to fossilise into tradition.

TLDR:  I don't see any way in which your scenario ends well, and that's avoiding the elephant in the room that is population control and how it's managed. Spoiler - I'm thinking badly, probably to the extent of making China's one-child policy look egalitarian and humane.

Edit.  And, back to the original question, science and technology flourish best in reasonably stable, organised, and not too repressive societies that value learning for learnings sake. Technological progress relies on a certain amount of blue skies thinking to generate the new concepts that drive that progress. Applied science (and what is technology if not applied science?) without blue skies thinking, ends up going round in circles, making marginally better buggy whips rather than automobiles.

I don't think universal immortality from 0BC onwards will lend itself to such societies.

Edited September 3 by KSK

[DeadJohn]

On 8/29/2024 at 5:09 PM, Spacescifi said:

no one dies from old age anymore. Anyone older than 30 deages to 30

How would diseases operate in your theoretical world? Many diseases aren't the result of being "old" but rather build up over time.

Things like cancer, clogged arteries, background radiation, or wear & tear on our joints build up over time. If the biological aging process halted at 30, people that physically look 30 years old might still be dying after 100 years of life. If diseases still work much like they do today, and evolved along with a modified humanity, people would not be immortal.

On the other hand, if these magical humans are immune to disease, the world would be vastly different:

• No one would care about the environment because there wouldn't be any health ramifications from pollution. The entire world would be a Superfund site.
• Burn coal because no one can get lung disease.
• Use unshielded nuclear reactors because cancer can't get us.
• Nuclear weapons might be a commonly-used weapon because fallout wouldn't be a concern. Nuke your neighbor and immediately rebuild in their flattened cities.
• The world population would exceed the feasible food supply. The oceans would be completely depleted of fish. Economically powerful nations would have factory farming on a scale we can barely imagine, and weak nations would starve into nonexistence.
• Mandatory sterilization at birth might be a worldwide law to manage that starvation. Only a few people could have children to replace 30 years olds that died from murder or accidents.
• Old ideas would persist because the old people who hold those ideas would still be alive. Maybe we'd still be burning "witches". Society would change much slower than it does in the real world.

 

[darthgently]

Because it has come up a few times, I just want to get it on the record in the thread that new ideas are not always better than old ones.  New  ideas are inherently less tested than old ideas.  And many good old ideas must have something going for them as they are still here centuries later in the strongest and the more free societies.  That said, new ideas are obviously necessary and can advantageous once tested and refined before going all in.  But new ideas per se are certainly not a panacea.  And the old ideas that are "bad" often aren't really that old and were really merely bad untested new ideas a few decades or a century back that people went all in on without skepticism.

[Spacescifi]

25 minutes ago, DeadJohn said:

How would diseases operate in your theoretical world? Many diseases aren't the result of being "old" but rather build up over time.

Things like cancer, clogged arteries, background radiation, or wear & tear on our joints build up over time. If the biological aging process halted at 30, people that physically look 30 years old might still be dying after 100 years of life. If diseases still work much like they do today, and evolved along with a modified humanity, people would not be immortal.

On the other hand, if these magical humans are immune to disease, the world would be vastly different:

• No one would care about the environment because there wouldn't be any health ramifications from pollution. The entire world would be a Superfund site.
• Burn coal because no one can get lung disease.
• Use unshielded nuclear reactors because cancer can't get us.
• Nuclear weapons might be a commonly-used weapon because fallout wouldn't be a concern. Nuke your neighbor and immediately rebuild in their flattened cities.
• The world population would exceed the feasible food supply. The oceans would be completely depleted of fish. Economically powerful nations would have factory farming on a scale we can barely imagine, and weak nations would starve into nonexistence.
• Mandatory sterilization at birth might be a worldwide law to manage that starvation. Only a few people could have children to replace 30 years olds that died from murder or accidents.
• Old ideas would persist because the old people who hold those ideas would still be alive. Maybe we'd still be burning "witches". Society would change much slower than it does in the real world.

 

 

The body has natural healing systems, so provided you eat right and treat the body well chronic disease could be overcome or reversed... since everyone reverts to a HEALTHY 30 year body without deformity or disease.

Any diseases or deformity from there on after is on them or the environment they live in.

They would not be immune to poison/radiation, but could heal over time if the damage is stopped.

Think like a much slower version of the healing factor Wolverine has... meaning non-fatal wounds or injuries you could actually heal from if given time to do so.

Granted some will abuse this but that's a given for anything involving life in general so...

[StrandedonEarth]

It would become a choice between mass starvation or strict birth control. The young would revolt against the ossified ideas of the elders, who would face constant threats of assassination

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

It would become a choice between mass starvation or strict birth control. The young would revolt against the ossified ideas of the elders, who would face constant threats of assassination

Sounds an awful lot like Krypton lol (they went with birth control).

Edited September 4 by Spacescifi

[magnemoe]

On 8/29/2024 at 11:09 PM, Spacescifi said:

Scenario: After Jesus death in the first century mysteriously no one dies from old age anymore. Anyone older than 30 deages to 30.

How would the world look today technology wise and would the USA even exist?

My thoughts: This would be radical. The thing I find most fascinating is the LITERAL link to the past that never dies (people).

What that means is cultures no longer die off with the people that made them, they only evolve.

As for history, death being the huge factor in it, taking that out of the equation changes the outcome. Dramatically.

Basically what happens is that the most organized and ambitious civilizations dominate and evolve over time.

Ironically I think when you delete old age and death as a given, governments and civilizations ACTUALLY survive longer than they would have if not for natural death. Since competent people in charge tend to stay there instead of being replaced as a necessity because of old age/death.

Probably the most concerning thing is the evolutionary process... we will have already tried and seen what does and does not work for over two millenia when the year 2024 hits.

Mankind's superpower is not strength, for even beasts far surpass us there. Our superpower is our greater capacity for learning and choosing to learn from our mistakes.

My guess is, the world is western dominated faster than in the original timeline (Rome goes on a bit of a rampage) but like the original timeline, colonies (like the Americas) become self sustaining by either rebellion or being granted independence.

 

Edit: What would the world population look like in 2024 and would that even be sustainable?

Edit 2: Mozart might still die (died at 35 OTL) since he was a bit of a party animal. Beethoven would either have transitioned to rock music or be writing his 59th Symphony lol).

 

I assume this is elf style immortality, you simply do not age past an age. You can still die, now then you get old you also get an good immune system so you have an less risk of diseases but its always an major risk. 
Also other factor like famine, disease, accidents and violence including wars even if staying young includes cleaning out the system of lead in your blood an soot in your lungs living in an house with an open fireplace and cancer rate stays as an 30 years old.

You will still die, if wealthy and careful you might live for some hundreds years. But the past was dangerous and medical care was very primitive. Lots of infections simply kill you. 
Read somewhere that today if you did not age and was immune to diseases and cancer your average living age would be around 1000 years. 
Now if living very long is on the table I assume at least the wealthy would want focus more on effective medicine, the entire thing was a mess until the late 19th century. 
They could get the basic right in the bronze age if lucky. washing hands, boiling tools and use wine later booze to sterilize the area. 
But assume this did not happen but medicine progressed faster. 
I don't think much changes except faster population growth, women do not stop having babies helps a lot here. 
More famines probably but also an rapider development of technology as people live longer and get more experience. 

excrements hit the fan then you get to the around 1880 medicine level, an population boom much stronger than today. 
Pray that they can make fertilizers in bulk at this time.