Hypothetical scenario: Human development and aging are accelerated

[BitVyper]

Over the course of a couple generations (evolution Hollywood style?), human biology changes drastically and irrevocably. We start to develop mentally and physically much faster, and our lifespans fall to the 30-40 year range. Infancy now lasts less than a year, and our children are well into the childhood stages by the time they're two. Sexual maturity is around ten. "Old age" is late twenties-ish, but we're generally physically and mentally more fit in our later years.

How do things go for society and humanity in general?

[Osterbaum]

I finally get to tap that young ass.

EDIT: Yeah and I guess we make even more short-sighted decisions, if that's even possible.

[Viridis]

I think we might start losing little bits of culture faster. Harder to pass down information if we don't live as long.

Basically, the overall effects would be pressing fast-forward on generations passing.

[Ecks]

So wait, all of that stuff is not happening already?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I don't think much would change really.

[BitVyper]

I think it would affect the way we conduct politics pretty drastically. Currently, you can pretty much fit almost an entire political career in the time it takes for the latest generation to hit voting age. With a society that would be wanting to vote at age ten, this couldn't stay the same. Even old politicians would have to be more mindful of newer ideals.

Edit: Probably a smaller percentage of your life could be spent in retirement too.

[BloodyMage]

We'd have less time to do the things we love?

It probably wouldn't be much different from the medieval days when the life expectancy was about 30 or so. While that's just people dying younger and not really developing or ageing faster, the effects are probably the same: less time to do stuff and more motivation to do them sooner rather than later.

[krogothwolf]

Does this mean we'll have even more Favrism going on?

[bluestarultor]

I'd say it would put a huge damper on our progress, honestly. A lot of childhood is learning how to function in society, and with less time to develop communication skills, that would suffer. Also, education would be positively awful. Kids these days aren't learning so much as being crammed with info to regurgitate on tests, and this was BEFORE No Child Left Behind. With so much information to learn, school would need to be at least twelve hours a day, every day, possibly minus Sunday and even then if we tossed out religion somehow. The worst school systems would make Japan's current one look positively limp.

Then once people were grown up, they'd have very little time to advance science or even create entertainment. A single game or movie might be a lifetime endeavor. And scientific research would suffer immensely as all the most brilliant minds kicked the bucket before they could complete their work with little chance of a replacement.

Even worse, the "take care of it later" mentality could paradoxically get even worse as people realized that the problems of the world will never happen in their lifetimes. Climate change has enough problems now. Can you imagine how lazy people would be if the effects wouldn't finally manifest until their grandchildren were grown and they were long dead?




Basically, such a radical shift in human physiology would likely cause irreparable damage to our place in the world, society, and environment.

[Azisien]

We would drop the whole humans lingo, start talking really fast so as to not waste time, and call ourselves Salarians.

[Osterbaum]

I saw that post coming, but wasn't quite as so lame to make it myself.

[Azisien]

Hey, you got me in the mood, you can deal with it.

[Nique]

Real change takes time. Decades. Lower our lifespan and the more we would stagnate (sp?)

[tacticslion]

... put a huge damper on our progress... "take care of it later" mentality could ... get even worse as people realized that the problems of the world will never happen in their lifetimes. ...

Real change takes time. Decades. Lower our lifespan and the more we would stagnate (sp?)

Yeah, this is what would happen. People are inherently lazy and taken with their own interests. Shorten our lifespan, we'd have less of a reason to look out for others. Our society would, in effect, implode. Yes, people would mature faster (that's the good news, actually, and the one thing that would stave off reverting to the middle ages quite so fast), but really our culture would probably implode. I grant that this would depend heavily upon how rapid the shift to early-age comes. If it started, say, with the kids that are being born right now - we'd lose our entire culture within two generations. The first generation would have the oldies left over to guide them, but following that, we'd lose it all. We simply don't have the mental capacity - regardless of maturity - to learn all we'd need to learn fast enough to keep our society as it currently stands running. I highly doubt human nature would change with our lifespans as well - wars would be fought as various factions blamed eachother over all sorts of stuff, probably even spewing the nonsense that "they" (whoever the "enemy" in question was) started the whole thing and thus causing all sorts of calamity there. Realistically, it'd probably be the end of the human race within four generations (due to lack of adequately trained survival skills), or the end of true "technological/modern" civilization within that time, never to rise again. There just wouldn't be the time to develop the nice things we've come to rely on and that our first and second (and probably third) generation children would as well. The fourth would be the make-or-brake point, if we survive that long.

Interestingly, Orson Scott Card wrote a short story about something like this happening. It's quite fascinating, and effectively people rarely lived past 28. In his version civilization survived, more or less, but wasn't optimal. Also there were a ton of psychological disorders that came from what they developed to "mature" kids faster. Anyhoo, I'd recommend it (it's called "Geriatric Ward" (sp?) if I remember correctly, in his most recently published "Unpublished Short Stories of Orson Scott Card" or something like that. It was a bit of a bummer, and kind of creepy - not in the OSC way, either - but it was interesting.

[Doc ock rokc]

if such things happen then most likely the rate of time perspective would increase as well as our biology and mental abilities speed up along side. The observation would be that the seasons would be slower in comparison to ours. It would be conroversy when a Guy spends 20 years to find out that "time has accelerated" and that he actually spent 10 years on his research.

[bluestarultor]

What episode was it in Star Trek, something about a war that went on for two weeks? Basically, they had cloning that was hyper-efficient and there was a war that had been going on for like hundreds of generations, and nobody remembered what had started it and all assumed it had been going on for a long time, but it turned out that those hundreds of generations had been warring for all of two weeks. Kinda puts stuff in perspective. Short lifespans suck.

[tacticslion]

if such things happen then most likely the rate of time perspective would increase as well as our biology and mental abilities speed up along side. The observation would be that the seasons would be slower in comparison to ours. It would be conroversy when a Guy spends 20 years to find out that "time has accelerated" and that he actually spent 10 years on his research.

The problem is that simple biological rapidity does not equal greater or more rapid mental acuity (sp?). Those 10 years of research? They're still only ten years. Even an earlier rate of maturity doesn't grant the extra time lost from simply having our average life-spans cut to a third. Our "rate of time perspective" would "speed up", sure, but we'd still only be able to move our now rapidly-aging human muscles and organs so quickly, our biological impulses would still take as long to process, and we'd simply have less time to practice anything we wanted to. In short, the human race would lose the time it needs to develop advanced skills. There would likely be a few catastrophic mistakes made (a plant meltdown or two, a nuke launch or four, etc) that would devistate a large portion of the planet, and we simply wouldn't have time to learn how to deal with it because we don't have the time to learn how to deal with it now. Just because some aspects of our biology change, doesn't mean the earth moves faster around the sun, or physical-chemical reaction-rates alter themselves to accomidate. It would be an unparalleled disaster, I should think.

[BitVyper]

What episode was it in Star Trek, something about a war that went on for two weeks? Basically, they had cloning that was hyper-efficient and there was a war that had been going on for like hundreds of generations, and nobody remembered what had started it and all assumed it had been going on for a long time, but it turned out that those hundreds of generations had been warring for all of two weeks. Kinda puts stuff in perspective. Short lifespans suck.

That was Doctor Who.

Jackass.

[bluestarultor]

That was Doctor Who.

Jackass.

:ohdear:


I guessed Star Trek because there was a lesson involved. Or there seemed to be when I was thinking about it. Memory jogged, off to walk that one off.

[Magic_Marker]

Stargate had an episode where people aged super fast. People lived happy but stagnant lives where nothing changed for thousands of years.

[Hanuman]

Humans are pretty fragile, but I assume you do mean that their ability to metabolize stress hormones follows in ratio.

I don't know if we would do better or worse, 3rd world countries seem to do alright even despite horrible horrible environments which force them to mature faster.

Cant be worse than slowly making the entire world uninhabitable, right?

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Stargate had an episode where people aged super fast. People lived happy but stagnant lives where nothing changed for thousands of years.

Yeah but they were also made to think that aging a year every day was normal, and never questioned it.

We'd probably just go on as usual, like we did for thousands of years before we had decent medicine and understanding of diet. It's only really the last couple hundred years that people started to live really long.

[Amake]

I think a key point would be people realizing that they're going to die. It would be less painful perhaps because it's so inevitable. We're going to have to live with the reality of death in a way that no one under the age of 80 does today that I know. Young people today (under 40) generally honestly believe they are going to live forever, or at least so long death is not worth worrying about. Nor any cause for a sense of urgency.

The gods are watching: Have you ever made any plans that include your own death?