If we are to conceive radical longevity enhancement as a real possibility, it stems from this idea that society itself is going to undergo radical changes in the way it is organized. Ageism is a systematic bias that uses age as a mean of discrimination. In one of its manifestation, ageism stems from a belief that older people are frail and diminished, which leads to decisions that robs them from their autonomy and of their empowerment. Such a vision of ageism would likely be greatly reduced, if not completely eradicated, by the types of treatments that would provide the ability to remain youthful even as the years go by and by. However, another type of ageism, one that considers youth to be immature and lacking in experience is going to become a lot more problematic as the general active population is going to become older and older.
In a society where experience is one of the most important factor for employment, and where employment is effectively vital to a person’s well-being, how will a 30 year old young adult be able to have any hopes of competing with someone who has a hundred years of experience in any given field? If radical longevity enhancement were to become a reality, we would soon end up living in a world of elders where the place of the much smaller younger generations is going to be increasingly hard to take. Market as it is now is highly dependent on older people going on retirement to free up spaces for the younger workers to take over. If people can keep their jobs for hundreds of years, what is it going to mean for the people who don’t have one?
I think this problem could be easily overcome by putting measures that are going to change the way people perceive work. By implanting a minimum income measure, jobs would turn from a life-line people have to cling onto for their own survival to something you do for you own self-growth and the good of society. If people are able to leave their jobs to start working on personal projects, the job market will become much more flexible and is going to have the space necessary for younger people to take their places. Furthermore, there could be other measures implanted within the system to allow for even more flexibility. Free education seems like a no brainer, since it would allow people to get the type of knowledge and abilities that do compensate for a lack of experience in any given field. Free schooling, when combined with minimum income measures, are also going to allow anyone to leave their fields whenever they feel the need to in order to take on new challenges. This combination is probably the best way to ensure that people will be able to live happy productive lives at pretty much any age.
In conclusion, I believe that ageism in a society that progressively gets older and older will indeed become a serious concern for the younger generations. However, I believe that there are measures that we can take that are going to make the transition much smoother and allow everyone to benefit from a society in which people no longer age.
the transhumanist chick 
I think employers would not want to keep anyone on payroll for 100 years, considering that fresh blood could be offered a lower wage whereas staff with seniority would generally expect raises and promotions over time.
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I was more thinking about a group of people hogging the field. For example, someone who has 100 years of building bridges will always be more attractive than the person who is fresh out of school. This would lead to saturation of the market very quickly. I’m pretty sure this is what we saw in the 80’s and 90’s when young people simply couldn’t get a job in a market saturated by the Boomers. For older people to leave their field and try something new, basic income and free education would therefore be necessary.
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You wrote: “In a society where experience is one of the most important factor for employment, and where employment is effectively vital to a person’s well-being, how will a 30 year old young adult be able to have any hopes of competing with someone who has a hundred years of experience in any given field?”
The same way a teenager who’s been driving for a few months competes with folks who have been driving for decades. I think as with everything else, experience plateaus after awhile. Further practice yields diminishing returns.
You wrote: “By implanting a minimum income measure, jobs would turn from a life-line people have to cling onto for their own survival to something you do for you own self-growth and the good of society. If people are able to leave their jobs to start working on personal projects, the job market will become much more flexible and is going to have the space necessary for younger people to take their places.”
I agree with your assessment. There’s an RPG out there called Nova Praxis that deals with post-scarcity economies. A system based on reputation above and beyond a base pay amount would probably replace modern currency. No names are coming to mind at the moment, but I’m positive a lot of scientists and writers out there have fleshed out this idea in great detail.
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While it is true that experience is not a guarantee for performance, there is a distinction to be made between competitive fields and complacent fields. Performance is the result of two main variables: Deliberate practice and plasticity. Therefore, there are two reasons why performance reach a plateau and can even decline as someone stays in a field for a while: As they age, their plasticity, or their ability to learn new tricks, go down as people experience slow cognitive and physical decline caused by degenerative aging, and people also reduce the number of hours engaged in deliberate practice as their priorities in life tend to change with time and old age (and also upon seeing their diminished plasticity).
If we consider that degenerative aging will be a thing of the past in a post-aging world, plasticity should remain constant. The only other variable is the amount of deliberate practice, which explains the big difference there would be between a competitive field and a complacent field. In fields which are very competitive or tightly regulated, such as business, medicine, engineering, research and pretty much anything that requires you to stay on top of your game, a decline or a plateau in performance would mean that someone else might take your place. The incentive for deliberate practice is therefore great and this is why I don’t think we can expect to see a plateau in performance once degenerative aging is removed.
Complacent jobs, however, which include any repetitive job that doesn’t require you to stay on top of your game, such as white collar or blue collar function jobs, does indeed allow people to stop deliberate practice once they just know how to do it and still be able to keep their jobs. However, this is also the kind of job which has the best chances of being replaced by robots and AI in their times, which means that it is unlikely that they will constitute a reasonable alternative for the younger generation in a post-aging society.
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Lifelong learning would have to become normal. I consider how little education my grandparents had, and how ignorant they were about some things. I wonder if I’m perhaps the same compared to the next generation.
We easily absorb skills and knowledge in our childhood that mystify older adults. Is this a developmental stage? How would the elderly retrieve the flexibility of their formative years, to remap their neural connections to cope with an ever more rapidly changing world? Is this even possible with brains structured like ours?
Just thoughts.
Ian
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I think you would love reading this article: http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/can-i-make-my-brain-as-plastic-as-a-childs/
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I did! Thanks for sharing.
Re-opening the developmental window….
I can see the potential in treatment. Increase plasticity during intensive programming, and reduce it when things are reorganized.
I see the potential for education. There is probably an optimal level of plasticity at which children learn best, and I would guess most children are not at it, being evolutionarily programmed for a different kind and pace of learning. Individually adjusted “plasticity” might optimize receptivity. It would also decrease individual differences in learning, at least on that metric. Education might be greatly increased in intensity: depth, breadth, and rate.
For “normal” adults, then, retraining might be a periodic, intensive, drug-assisted month off from work.
We evolved in a world in which we could learn all we needed to as youth: all the details of one’s culture, all the plants and animals in one’s environment, social skills, etc. But the culture and natural environment were nearly static, so after a period of learning, it makes sense for our brains to become set in their ways. The adult role would be maintaining knowledge and traditions unchanged, for transmission to the next generations.
In our fluid world, knowledge and culture become obsolete, and we have access to vastly more of it. Maybe we should turn on the plasticity and leave it on?
If you’re not 13 anymore, an event sometimes taps into the childhood brain, and you recognize it with a wave of nostalgia. Learning a new language does it, or exposure to well-structured literature. Creating a symbol system to code phonemes and common words (don’t ask) is very like relearning to read and write. Sometimes a simple social interaction gives insight into another person’s mind/character, something I can emulate and integrate into my own identity and my “theory of mind” during interactions. Or studying mathematics as an adult. Or music. There really is so much to learn.
These moments of awareness, change, and learning are always euphoric.
Sign me up.
Ian
P.S. Do you have a favourite place to find such articles?
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aeon.co is a good one.
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