It’s 2025 and some voices like Yuval Noah Harari and Bryan Johnson are telling us that, perhaps within this century, science will have advanced enough to stop aging. It might be possible for (some) humans to perhaps live for hundreds of years. Amortality is not immortality: we can still get hit by a bus and die. Amortality means that, if lucky enough, and with the right technology, we might live indefinitely.

At this stage, I don’t know whether this will happen or not. What I am interested here is exploring the uncomfortable feeling that amortality gives me.

This discomfort can be split into two: the personal and the social.

The personal discomfort of amortality is that it removes a (the?) foundational certainty of human existence: knowing that you will die. Suddenly, it may be possible for you not to die, or to live a life so long that death is a distant prospect. This changes everything: do you need to strive to become amortal? How much can you help your loved ones to become amortal too? What if your parents, your partner, your kids, refuse the gift/curse of amortality and you have the certainty you will watch them die? What if amortality appears too late for your parents or (God forbid) your children to die? What if death is the right path but, being amortal, you live forever in fear of taking that step that before wasn’t optional? And, if you are amortal, wouldn’t that make you so risk-averse and keep you from living your best life?

The social discomfort of amortality is that it multiplies the current problems we have with resources and distribution of wealth. If people (particularly rich people) suddenly live to 300, what will that do to the housing market? What if people stop dying but they still continue to have kids? What happens if the average age of humans is around 150, and despite their health, they are extremely set in their ways and low-energy? What would happen to our culture? Would we fight civil wars for access to amortality (or housing)? Would some countries become amortal while others are mired in death by epidemic and poverty? Would the privileged have to live forever and have to watch that?

Perhaps we need to start thinking about these problems. I’m not sure, though. De facto, there’s already some amortality already available, in that certain health interventions (some of which cost money, like eating organic vegetables) can extend your life, and access to them is unequal. Amortality can be considered as a sort of continuum: if suddenly life expectancy at birth jumps to 120, we need to start dealing with a few of these problems.

What I do think is that much of the pushback against the idea of amortality springs from the discomfort of having now to contemplate these questions. Fun times!