Leogao

On a personal level, the concept of immortality might lead to a sense of boredom or meaninglessness over time.

I would be worried that only the ultra-rich would have the longer lifespan.

They are not always the best, the most generous, the most humane, the smartest amongst us.

End quote.

Since it seemed like overpopulation and inequality were the main things people were worried about, I also asked a version of the question where I stipulated that these things were solved.

Surprisingly, this barely shifts people's opinions and we get almost exactly the same response.

My guess is this is a sign that the real objection is more about the vibes than any specific issue.

It's also a sobering reminder of the limitations of this methodology.

After the results for this experiment came in, I decided to test a bunch of other random weird beliefs.

If you want to guess at these before seeing the results or you're curious what the exact wording is because that can substantially change the result, click here to see all the questions I ran before scrolling down further.

If you're willing to spend a lot of time looking at a giant wall of questions before continuing with the rest of this post, it's really a great way to test your calibration.

First, despite being very pro-living forever, Americans are much more skeptical of cryonics.

Even if they could be revived a few decades after their death to live forever thereafter, only 27% are in favor of being preserved, and 46% are opposed, the rest are unsure.

Space colonization also has pretty lukewarm support, coming in at 37% in favor and 16% opposed, and cognitive enhancement for all is only a little bit more popular, 42% in favor, 19% opposed.

Also, for some reason, people are really opposed to a hypothetical cheap, painless, and safe arbitrary modification of physical appearance, only 23% in favor, with 37% opposed.

In retrospect, the backlash against Ozempic is a sign, but I was still quite surprised.

Terraforming other planets so that humans can live on them is also pretty unpopular, coming in at 37% in favour and 16% opposed.

Thankfully, for most of these questions, a huge chunk of people are still undecided.

One of the most surprising results to me was that only 51% of Americans are in favor of literal post-scarcity, complete freedom to work on anything you want, as much as you want, and still enjoy a high quality of life, with 25% opposing.

I was so shocked by this result not being 80% plus in favor that I reran a variant of this question with different wording.