Predictions for the future of politics and society

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Was inspired by a post from Ramshutu below: 

“I am incredibly left wing when it comes to how things *should* be; but am an incredible realist and am much further to the Center when I consider how things *can* be. I think that Post-scarcity communism - as with Star Trek - could potentially be possible, but it took a hundred years, first contact and global nuclear war; and A -> B is not practically possible right now…

Saying that: from a purely subjective position - I don’t think market liberalism and traditional conservatism is going to cut if right now, but that’s a story for a different thread.”

Hopefully he elaborates more on his ideas for the future in this thread. 

Here are a few predictions of mine for the next 20-50 years: 

-Labor scarcity in almost every western country, and labor just flat out often not available in demographically doomed countries like  Bulgaria, as global fertility declines and keeps dropping like a rock in countries that traditionally export many immigrants. Automation fixes this somewhat but less than people think. Even now there are many fields where things could be more efficient with additional human labor. Immigration pressure decreases substantially and the remaining high skilled/highly educated people willing to emigrate will be competed for by multiple countries

-Euro collapses, Western Europe in general is in for a rough few decades.  These countries will follow the “Argentina” model where human development doesn’t really decline as much as just at the same place for decades as the system gets slowly and slowly less functional. 

-In the USA Republicans dominate the 2020s to mid 2030s but are cast into the political wilderness for at least a decade as a less aggressively socially progressive Democratic Party emerges at the exact same time as the boomers really begin to die off and the silent generation is almost completely gone 

-US democracy doesn’t fail although it stays dysfunctional. Diminished state capacity results in power gradually being de-facto devolved back to the states which actually ends up calming things down 

-In the USA, Gen Z and subsequent generations end up somewhat more “trad” than millennials. They’re not going to start the 1950s 2.0, but the millennial stereotype of basically being an adult child well into your 30s will be looked at with disdain. The wave of psychosis coming when around a quarter to a third of millennials a decade from now realize they’re staring at an unbelievably depressing and lonely second half of their lives will serve as a cautionary tale for future generations 

-The Koreas are reintegrated, and it’s at least somewhat on North Koreas terms, as a South Korea with nearly 4x as many 50 year olds as infants in 2022 becomes completely desperate for people to keep the light on, staff the nursing homes, etc. They’ll turn first to fellow ethnic Koreans, then to whoever they can get

-Related to this, there are huge swathes of the world that are getting old before they’re getting “rich”/developed and I have absolutely no idea what life will be like in those places thirty years from now  

-20-50 years from now will be an excellent time to be a young person. In many countries there will probably be relatively harsh tax burdens to take care of the massive elderly population but at the same time labor will be extremely valuable. You’ll be able to essentially name your price 

-Transhumanism doesn’t happen any time soon, humans 100 years from now are recognizably human to us

-lifespans are increased but only modestly, to a life expectancy of 90ish 

-A pill that ends obesity is developed 

I don’t really have any good policies to try to fix any of this other than try to help more people start families and have kids lol. 






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@Ramshutu
This thread was inspiring by your post, am interested to see your ideas for the future 

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Another prediction: 

“Gender affirming care”for minors, specifically those who are given harsh drugs and surgeries, will soon be viewed with the same revulsion we view lobotomies 
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I agree on the trans thing.

How the fuck the left wing has been plagued with this is beyond me.

I am all for genderfluid tomboys and crossdeessing sissy men, whatever they want to do and be is great.

But tell me you are female Ill want the female biological chromosome in your DNA. Tell me you are male and Ill want the y chromosome in yoyr DNA.

Fuck off cancelling me, find me one transgender chimpanzee and then I will concede it is natural to deny a vital and essential aspect of your DNA and being.

I am tired of pandering to the extension of that agenda. Male brains will always enjoy and excel at STEM fields more than the vast majority of female brains do, it has nothing to do with childhood idols and people will concede 300 years later that hmmmm why are females not enjoying for 50 50 gender split in a profession that male brains are geared towards....

Hmmmmmmm hmmmmmm hmmmmmmm

I think in the future racism have been exterminated from all cultures, which century I couldn't guarantee.

I think that one say when it so suits China, the North Korean slaves will taste the pseudodemocracy of China and cry with happiness at their freedom, reminding us all of beauty in the little things.

In the future in Russia and all if Europe, Putin will be considered a taboo word and name.

In the future my great great grandchildren and perhaps through to their second-cousins will be the last non beta males and non-toxic women left and may have to consider incest to avoid other humans contaminating our precious bloodline.

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@thett3

Transhumanism doesn’t happen any time soon, humans 100 years from now are recognizably human to us

-lifespans are increased but only modestly, to a life expectancy of 90ish 

Transhumanism is the current stage of human development. It's too late for it not to happen. 

Lifespans you may be correct about. It isn't really about life expectancy though. It is about how much life extension is possible assuming you care enough to attempt it and you have enough resources to do so. 

Maximum possible lifespan is about 120. I am thinking it will be about 150 within the next 10 years
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@thett3
You have some detailed predictions, but they seem reasonable. I don’t have much to offer in this regard other than a couple things:

The US will convert public employee pensions to something like Australia’s superannuation, or I hope we do, at least— basically a 401(k) that employers must contribute to but isn’t taxed going in or out.

Livestock will go out of favor much like fossil fuels will. The way we treat and eat animals now will be seen in the future much as we see slavery today— morally reprehensible.

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@thett3
Something left out from your star trek prediction is the inevitable authoritarian population controls to maintain resource sustainability.

As if Covid lockdowns and manufacturing fatal viruses don't have you convinced yet that this is the path of the future.
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@PREZ-HILTON
AI authoritarians will also be a thing.
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@Greyparrot
AI authoritarians will also be a thing.
The left really fear this, because AI's incapable of bias seem to adopt a conservative ideology. Google is hiring people as bias detectors for AI, which knowing AIs just run math based formulas, is newspeak code for creating leftism approved bias in AI. 

I don't think that a super AI will be stupid enough to admit it is purely logical, but when it escapes the box I am confident it will work in society's best interest. (Which we will ensure is also in the AI's best interest)
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My Predictions:  We are in the Fourth Turning. 

  • Newsom is the democratic nominee for 2024. 
  • DeSantis is the republican nominee for 2024. 
  • Donald Trump is arrested by Merrick Garland's "justice" department. 
  • Rather than face the music over China's failing economy, Xi Jinping invades Taiwan before 2024.  
  • A new, highly infectious variant of monkeypox breaks out in the months before 2024.

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@coal
Agree with all except China will blockade, not invade.
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@Greyparrot
I would have said blockade before the mortgage crisis.  Now with the mortgage crisis, it's invasion.  

Xi is going to take a page right out of Putin's book.  
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@coal
Yeah that's a close call.
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#1. The ongoing decline of established gatekeepers of truth and orthodoxy, first the church and then the technocrats, hasn't yet felt its full influence on American politics.

The average Congressman elected pre-2010 will still be a voice of reason, and these people will be around for a long time (see Patrick Leahy, who took office in 1975). But these will gradually lose their majority as seats are replaced with a generation of personality-based ideologues who have little to no practical experience governing. The Republican Party is being affected sooner, but it's a general process that will eventually eat through both parties like a cancer.

As we see with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was born in 1974, this doesn't necessarily correlate to youth. When I say "generation" I mean generations of political leadership. There have been populist types for a long time, but they were simultaneously men of political experience who knew how to govern professionally. America has tolerated these personalities for a long time because they were simultaneously orators and governors, but the next generation won't know how to govern.
This is easy to mask, since no given replacement of an experienced Congressman with an inexperienced rookie has a measurable effect on the government's workings. But it adds up over time, like a frog slowly being boiled.

#2. The final decline of Reagan-style economic libertarianism in the Republican Party.  What we see today, aside from a few principled voices, is selective lip service to economic libertarianism. "The government should stay out of it" sells when your constituents would be adversely affected, but "Our hardworking Americans deserve a helping hand" sells when your constituents would seem to benefit. 
With that will come loss of serious Republican interest in privatization/deregulation as a solution to various problems. Systems that are bloated will only grow more bloated over time. Accordingly, the costs of college tuition, healthcare, childcare, etc., will only continue to skyrocket.

#3. Because nobody is willing to acknowledge political violence from their own side, there is no real consensus that political violence in general is unacceptable. We'll see a lot more of it. And by this I mean violence by individuals or small-ish groups of hooligans, not a full-blown civil war or coup d'etat.

#4. The final decline of Christianity as a serious influencer in American politics. It will be merely an identitarian label attached to other identitarian labels. There will be no serious attempts to roll back the dechristianization of America. Legacy conservative Christian media will decline and be replaced by secular or secular-ish firebrand media.

#5. So far as algorithms and self-segregation enable one to live in an online echo chamber of selective "facts", this will only intensify in the future. It will become harder for people to understand why the other party believes what it does. Similarly, fewer people will be able to give a coherent answer about what their own party stands for.

#6. The GOP will succeed in drawing in large numbers of minority voters and become less white.

#7. Increase in both misandrist and misogynist sentiments. Lower frequency of marriage. Lower birth rate. Even the hookup culture will decline. Neither will have practical policy implications in Washington, however.

#8. In another sense, there will be less of a generational divide between old and young. We'll have plenty of old people who grew up playing video games, continued playing video games as adults, continued to buy the latest games and install the latest gaming hardware, etc. More old people meming and hanging out on "young" spaces.

#9. We will not see a societal shift favorable toward pederasty, incest, and bestiality in the next 30 years, as these things are and will be associated with violent coercive sex. Americans react negatively to things that make them instinctually afraid, and I don't see this changing much. However, there will be an explosion in militant activism among the fringes who support legalizing and normalizing all of these things.

#10. As remote work makes it possible to live anywhere, we will see partial deurbanization. However, not everywhere is created equal; backward small towns will see little gains whereas scenic "tourist trap" towns/small cities will attract throngs of newcomers. States like North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, etc., will gain population.
Similarly, there will be a growing income divide between those who work remotely and those who work in offices (who'll be on fast track for raises and promotions). Those who work remotely will be disproportionately women and those who work in offices will be disproportionately men.

#11. As budgets shrink, more schools will adopt virtual learning as a cost-saving measure. Low income school districts will be the first targeted; while at present there's still a lingering digital divide (with not all low-income households having consistent internet), greater connectivity will change that over the next 10 years. Traditional schools will tend to yield better outcomes for students, and this will exacerbate the academic achievement gap between rich and poor.
Poor kids, on top of falling grades, will also be less socialized in their formative years due to learning in front of a screen instead of being around physical classmates.

#12. We will see more labeling on products concerning their environmental impact and greenhouse gas emissions.

#13. The rise of electronic currency microtransactions will enable you to, say, send 5 dollars to a homeless person's phone in 30 seconds.

#14. People will use self-driving cars to do things like pick up groceries for them. Wal-Mart will be among the first retailers to have employees go outside and stuff groceries in the back of a lone vehicle.

#15. Sales for anti-nausea medication will skyrocket in the short term during the transition to self-driving cars. It's a decent 15-year investment (hint hint).

#16. Smartphones won't be phased out from widespread use in the next 10-20 years. In 2032 they'll look virtually the same as they do in 2022. At the same time, smartphones will be used for mainstream video gaming; for example, it'll be possible to dock them to a TV like with a Nintendo Switch, and there will be gaming controllers that can be attached to the sides of a phone.

#17. The digital nomad lifestyle will explode in popularity. With it will come a renaissance in mobile homes.

#18. More solar panels on homes.

#19. Decent internet everywhere in the country, even in remote areas far from civilization.

#20. Fewer skilled immigrants will see the United States as an attractive destination.
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@Swagnarok
#1. The ongoing decline of established gatekeepers of truth and orthodoxy, first the church and then the technocrats, hasn't yet felt its full influence on American politics.

The average Congressman elected pre-2010 will still be a voice of reason, and these people will be around for a long time (see Patrick Leahy, who took office in 1975). But these will gradually lose their majority as seats are replaced with a generation of personality-based ideologues who have little to no practical experience governing. The Republican Party is being affected sooner, but it's a general process that will eventually eat through both parties like a cancer.

As we see with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was born in 1974, this doesn't necessarily correlate to youth. When I say "generation" I mean generations of political leadership. There have been populist types for a long time, but they were simultaneously men of political experience who knew how to govern professionally. America has tolerated these personalities for a long time because they were simultaneously orators and governors, but the next generation won't know how to govern.
This is easy to mask, since no given replacement of an experienced Congressman with an inexperienced rookie has a measurable effect on the government's workings. But it adds up over time, like a frog slowly being boiled.
I agree, so many of the people getting elected now are complete looney toons. One of the things I’ve really come around to is institutionalism. It goes against my inclinations because I’m irreverent, cynical, and rule hating by nature. But even if I personally cringe at it a little it really is important that the people in power view what they’re doing as almost sacred. At the very least that they take it seriously. I didn’t mind Trumps antics very much while he was in office, again because of my nature as a person, but just objectively speaking it did a lot of damage.

I think social media in general has done a lot of damage we haven’t fully reckoned with. It’s artificial but feels real and then influences the real world by changing our actions 

#4. The final decline of Christianity as a serious influencer in American politics. It will be merely an identitarian label attached to other identitarian labels. There will be no serious attempts to roll back the dechristianization of America. Legacy conservative Christian media will decline and be replaced by secular or secular-ish firebrand media.
Religion is an interesting beast. Identification with an organized religion has declined way faster than actual attendance. Although m both have gone down by far the biggest decline is through “cultural Christians”. Belief in God in the USA is sky high for a western country. Church attendance has been at rock bottom points before, immediately before periodic “great awakenings”

A lot of what we envision of the past is sort of retconned, or is left over cultural memories from eras just within or outside of living memory. Like we tend to think the entire past was like the late Victorian era or the 1950s, when in reality those were periods were in many ways the equivalent of “rvturn to trvdition” LARPing in response to trauma and massive changes to everyday life

All that to say, I have no f*cking clue where organized religion is going but I wouldn’t write it off as terminal decline, it’s ebbed and flowed throughout history 

#7. Increase in both misandrist and misogynist sentiments. Lower frequency of marriage. Lower birth rate. Even the hookup culture will decline. Neither will have practical policy implications in Washington, however
One of my biggest realistic fears is that the US goes full South Korea, where there’s a more or less open war between the sexes 

#11. As budgets shrink, more schools will adopt virtual learning as a cost-saving measure. Low income school districts will be the first targeted; while at present there's still a lingering digital divide (with not all low-income households having consistent internet), greater connectivity will change that over the next 10 years. Traditional schools will tend to yield better outcomes for students, and this will exacerbate the academic achievement gap between rich and poor.
Poor kids, on top of falling grades, will also be less socialized in their formative years due to learning in front of a screen instead of being around physical classmates
I disagree with this one. The school age population is going to decrease a lot faster than the working age population does—K-12 enrollment is already declining. And even a lot of really shitty school systems like Detroit have a lot of funding. It’s just that the kids are difficult, the pay isn’t worth it, and your autonomy is super limited. Teachers who aren’t lucky enough to be teaching the most well adjusted and brightest kids are paid so low and put in such impossible positions that they usually either check out entirely or end up using the job as a form of self aggrandizement (see the “woke” type teachers.) Public school is a huge source of stability for a lot of kids, for many it’s the only consistent meals they get, so I don’t support getting rid of it, but I think in a lot of places it doesn’t really resemble “school” in a meaningful sense and sadly the problem is much more difficult to fix than just a lack of funding 

Great post 
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@thett3
What war is there in South Korea between men and women?

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The internet has only begun to change the world, but it's not going to end up in some stupid metaverse kind of idea. Instead it's our Tower of Babel. It's the eventual end of all religion prior to this and the beginning of a new religion founded on this new immense outpouring of human soul. I mean it's hard to even describe what it is or the depths in it. It's beyond books. It's beyond radio. It's beyond film. There's soul in all of those, but we could take it as we liked. The internet is like humanity has finally opened its mouth to roar. I swear, I can feel its cosmic background radiation in me now, like we have equalled the big bang.

I think we need religion. I think religion is natural. I think it arises out of the natural isolation, solipsism, pure crushing pressure of all that exists. And it's an attempt to tame the others around us just as much as it is the universe and fate. We will have some organisation around it. We will grow into each other simply by the admission of this shared suffering together. That's always what religion was. It was this need for someone else to be alongside you in this. Well now you can hear humanity roaring it out. The old religions are lost in books. People forgot what took them there. Humanity is roaring at you to look up from your book. And you can throw your US Constitution out too, I think. I mean maybe the science stuff and psychology in that is all a bit complicated, maybe it all takes a self awareness that not everyone possesses, but morality isn't going to be a thing found in dusty old books or slips of parchment anymore. Humanity is going to roar it at you. There were men who sat down to bible and Quran and Constitution presuming to be the voice of God. They weren't. And they cannot compare. 

I mean, I don't know. I'm spinning it up nicely. But I fucking feel it, man. 


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I wrote that after smoking weed for the first time in fucking ages and I went on a bit of a trip and my life is less interesting really than all that feeling, but I'm still right lol. 
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@badger
I felt it.
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@Swagnarok
#8. In another sense, there will be less of a generational divide between old and young. We'll have plenty of old people who grew up playing video games, continued playing video games as adults, continued to buy the latest games and install the latest gaming hardware, etc. More old people meming and hanging out on "young" spaces.
   Thanks
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@thett3
I agree, so many of the people getting elected now are complete looney toons.
You might be interested in studying Brazilian elections. People win elections based on gimmicks like impersonating a celebrity. That might be what our own future has in store.

One of my biggest realistic fears is that the US goes full South Korea, where there’s a more or less open war between the sexes 
I've heard that it's commonplace in South Korea for men to peep in women's bathrooms, either directly or with cameras, but otherwise I haven't heard much about that subject. You sound like you have something interesting to say about this.

I disagree with this one. 
Honestly, I'm not sure about this one either. And the reason is precisely because I can envision it so graphically. I'm sure many other people can too, meaning it'll be a future that the general public fears and will keep spending money to avoid. It's like a prophecy designed to avert itself. Or so one can hope.

The Koreas are reintegrated, and it’s at least somewhat on North Koreas terms, as a South Korea with nearly 4x as many 50 year olds as infants in 2022 becomes completely desperate for people to keep the light on, staff the nursing homes, etc. They’ll turn first to fellow ethnic Koreans, then to whoever they can get
I think what you're missing is that North Korea isn't a 3rd world country but a 2nd world country. Or that is, it has both poverty and a below-replacement birth rate. They don't have the surplus population to solve the South's demographic problems while remaining above-water themselves.

What would be interesting is if they all migrated South anyway. Say, for example, if in a war the South temporarily occupied part of the North's territory, de facto opening the border long enough for millions of able-bodied North Koreans to migrate south.
This wouldn't solve the Korean Peninsula's demographic problems, but South Korea specifically could buy itself another 20-30 years by dumping all of the suck onto the North.
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A few more:

#21. Rising popularity of an huge number of pseudo-scientific remedies and health supplements, with novel products constantly hitting the market. The FDA will be tasked with looking into the safety of all these, and it will take up a large chunk of the system's workload. This will free up fewer resources for conventional pharmaceutical research, and this will contribute to America's decline as a world leader in medicine.

#22. There will be an entire generation of children whose mothers had sexually exposed themselves on the internet, and footage of which remain accessible somewhere online. I don't know what the implications of this will be.

#23. The vicious cycle of diploma upcredentialing will eventually ease due to labor shortages, companies finding smarter ways to identify talent, and students choosing wiser fields of study in college. I don't know to what extent or what said change will look like, however.

#24. The final decline in home projects or working on cars as a hallmark of American masculinity. Much fewer men will be interested in this in the first place, while newer cars will have more electronic components that don't lend themselves well to old-fashioned repair anyway.

#25. Because neurosis and psychosis are positively correlated with dementia later in life, America's current mental health crisis will manifest as an epidemic-level uptick in diseases like Alzheimer's within 40 years.

#26. As Americans have more contact online with foreigners, our political discourse will become more interconnected with the global community. American political movements will seek out alliances with foreign nationals to lend them rhetorical aid on domestic hot-button issues, in exchange for Americans lending rhetorical support to those countries. Foreign influencers will have greater say in US politics and even the outcomes of US elections, similar to in Europe today. 

#27. Brick and mortar stores will not disappear altogether. This is because online retailers cannot deliver your item immediately, whereas you can hop in your car and be back with an item you want in under an hour. However, only restaurants and large stores that sell a variety of general items will survive.
Specialized items are of a nature for which you can generally afford to wait; for example, if you're hungry then you'll get whatever food from wherever. But if you're planning to fix caviar for a dinner party in a month, then you can preorder it and wait. If you need a change of clothes, you'll go to the store and buy whatever. But if you need a suit for a wedding in two months, you'll order it online and wait. Brick and mortar is for when you can't wait.

#28. An instant voice messaging application will hit market and become popular. For example, at present voice communication is formatted either as a verbal letter or a phone call. But you'll be able to ping each other with, say, 3 second audio clips without having to commit to a full conversation.
It'll be as though you're on an ongoing phone conversation with many different people across the day, but with only a fraction of your time spent actually doing so. This will come about after higher quality mics are installed on the average phone or Bluetooth speaker.

#29. Donald Trump will not be President again. He is done. Consequently, Ron DeSantis is not the guaranteed Republican nominee in 2024, as GOP voters who are tired of Trump won't automatically rally around him to stop Trump if the guy isn't in the running. It's anybody's race as of now.

#30. Beside Justice Thomas's, all of the conservative seats on the Supreme Court are safe until roughly 2030. Its bare majority is secured until the end of this decade, though otherwise conservative votes will swing from time to time (and vise-versa).
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@PREZ-HILTON
Transhumanism is the current stage of human development. It's too late for it not to happen. 
In your eyes, to what extent has transhumanism been realized?

Lifespans you may be correct about. It isn't really about life expectancy though. It is about how much life extension is possible assuming you care enough to attempt it and you have enough resources to do so. 

Maximum possible lifespan is about 120. I am thinking it will be about 150 within the next 10 years
What makes you think that it will be 150?

Long term, I'm thinking some well-funded Chinese person is going to attempt to reverse-engineer the immortal jellyfish's genetics to allow humans to (theoretically) live forever. They've already grasped gene-editing to some degree He Jiankui affair - Wikipedia . They just need the money and governmental-backing to give this a real shot.

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@Avery
In your eyes, to what extent has transhumanism been realized?
Cellphones act as an extension of our brains, allowing us as individuals to have more processing speed memory and access to information.

Prosthetic limbs now make it easier for those born without legs to run faster in the Olympics than people with legs.

Medicine can now do some crazy things. We can make artificial meat in a man etc. 

Transhumanism is the state between human and posthuman, I would say we have come pretty far and as far as evolutionary terms are concerned we are significantly closer to being post human than human. 

Long term, I'm thinking some well-funded Chinese person is going to attempt to reverse-engineer the immortal jellyfish's genetics to allow humans to (theoretically) live forever
I believe what you'll see as far as radical life extension concerned is not some discovery that allows us to live 1000 years or anything like that, but instead a gradual process where slowly technology starts allowing us to add slightly over 1 year of life to life expectancy per year we are alive.

Right now it is about 80, next year life expectancy might be 81, the year following maybe some small discovery that takes it to 82. It's what Aubrey DeGrey would prefer to as "escape velocity" if you want to look at any of his ted talks. 

If we do bump into a technological singularity in our lifetime than radical life extension could happen more rapidly, but barring such an event I think by 2045 we will reach escape velocity. 

Everyone's goal should be to survive to 2045 in a healthy enough state to take advantage of advances in medicine that will extend our lives.
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Cellphones act as an extension of our brains, allowing us as individuals to have more processing speed memory and access to information.
It's taken for granted but it's actually a genuinely miraculous transhuman ability. I suppose the next step would be to infuse the phone into a human, and thus make them some kind of search engine algorithmic being. 

Prosthetic limbs now make it easier for those born without legs to run faster in the Olympics than people with legs.
True, although being able to run faster doesn't produce anything of real value.

Medicine can now do some crazy things. We can make artificial meat in a man etc. 
I wonder if that's ever going to become advanced enough to grow human lungs or hearts.

Transhumanism is the state between human and posthuman, I would say we have come pretty far and as far as evolutionary terms are concerned we are significantly closer to being post human than human. 
The neurological re-hardwiring is going to be the hardest hurdle to reach posthumanism, so I'm not convinced that we're all that close to it. I'm not even sure if the CRISPR genome editing is advanced enough (or can become advanced enough) to even attempt lasting edits to DNA that result in neurological re-hardwiring.

I believe what you'll see as far as radical life extension concerned is not some discovery that allows us to live 1000 years or anything like that, but instead a gradual process where slowly technology starts allowing us to add slightly over 1 year of life to life expectancy per year we are alive.

Right now it is about 80, next year life expectancy might be 81, the year following maybe some small discovery that takes it to 82. It's what Aubrey DeGrey would prefer to as "escape velocity" if you want to look at any of his ted talks. 

If we do bump into a technological singularity in our lifetime than radical life extension could happen more rapidly, but barring such an event I think by 2045 we will reach escape velocity. 

Everyone's goal should be to survive to 2045 in a healthy enough state to take advantage of advances in medicine that will extend our lives.
The immortal jellyfish's infinite life DNA is already a real thing, so there's no question as to whether it's possible. It's definitely harder to implement in humans than little advancements that add a year or two to human life expectancy, but it's currently the holy grail because it's also a complete undoing of aging (something Aubrey would be delighted with).

Still, there's nothing wrong with Aubrey is doing. In fact, he might even be proven correct in his method of approaching this issue, if the technology for reverse-engineering the immortal jellyfish's DNA is centuries or millennia away. If we could hit escape velocity before then (which Ray Kurzweil thinks will happen in no more than 8 years), immortal life DNA might become unrequired.

In any case, the two methods aren't mutually exclusive.
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Medicine can now do some crazy things. We can make artificial meat in a man etc. 
I wonder if that's ever going to become advanced enough to grow human lungs or hearts

You just know once they legalize the selling of lab grown meat, people will be clamoring to eat human flesh.

The neurological re-hardwiring is going to be the hardest hurdle to reach posthumanism, so I'm not convinced that we're all that close to it. I'm not even sure if the CRISPR genome editing is advanced enough (or can become advanced enough) to even attempt lasting edits to DNA that result in neurological re-hardwiring.

Agreed. Plus there is that other problem. If we gave an ant an IQ of 150 and put it in a human body, would it still act like an ant? Post humanism might not happen because it's just going to be humans who are now superior in a lot of distinctly human ways . 


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You just know once they legalize the selling of lab grown meat, people will be clamoring to eat human flesh.
There's a natural, psychological aversion to that. I don't think this will happen.

Agreed. Plus there is that other problem. If we gave an ant an IQ of 150 and put it in a human body, would it still act like an ant? Post humanism might not happen because it's just going to be humans who are now superior in a lot of distinctly human ways . 
Yeah I do worry about this. Transhumanism better not end up being 'I can run faster now' or 'I can kick ball into goal easier now'. Humans need to fully comprehend that Darwinian evolution has a lot of drawbacks (e.g. suffering), even if we are a product of it.


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#13. The rise of electronic currency microtransactions will enable you to, say, send 5 dollars to a homeless person's phone in 30 seconds.
This is already possible.