Great response. I just can't help but imagine an upperclass of immortals being extremely protective of their prospective infinite existence to the point that a large group of them would have no problem committing genocide to keep it that way. After all, it would be easy to cast mortals as a lesser being in a future in which others have become almost god like.
Hopefully there will be some sort of colonization of space at that point and they can at least leave Earth to us mortals.
Ultimately I just don't read enough sci-fi to have all the debate points down. I'm just trying to apply to marxist concepts to something which perhaps will have completely eclipsed Karl's reality.
For being godlike, mere longevity is not enough. And to commit genocide you need an army. Why the army would do it for you instead of killing you and dividing your enormous wealth between themselves? You'd need something more than longevity to manage that. Also, what would be the profit in committing genocide? You'd position yourself as an individual that is extremely dangerous and posing risk to everybody, so that more people would be willing to go to greater lengths to get the world rid of you. And longer you live, more chances are one of these people will get lucky. So why increase your risk? If I ever became an immortal rich man, first thing I'd do is to institute a huge philanthropic programs and advertise the heck out of them, so hurting me would be like hurting Santa Claus - only a completely depraved man would think of doing this, and if he did others would try to stop him. Why should I assume actual rich men are stupider than me and can't see it? After all they could see enough to actually become rich, unlike me - so I must assume their practical smarts exceed mine, and they won't behave in completely impractical way just to be evil.
Personally built and programmed by the said billionaire? Well, if he can personally produce, program and control an army of robots, he will be godlike. But then he also can produce an army of manufacturing plants to satisfy basically every need of the population. Why be a most hated being in the universe if he can be the most loved one?
Uhuh. Now here's the question though : which problem is easier, and will be solved first. Because the second problem solved will be stillborn.
a) make humans immortal
b) make a non-human conscious being that's immortal
I would argue that we're much closer to b), and that it's a much easier problem to solve.
Even if the above is wrong, an artificial lifeform would solve many more problems that merely immortality. How do you let humans operate in tiny spaces (e.g. in tubes with a diameter of 2cm). How do you let humans operate "in the large", e.g. moving 5000ton concrete blocks ? How do you let humans operate in unstable conditions (e.g. mining, handling explosives, on the battlefield, ...). How do you build a star-trek transporter (for computer programs, that's a solved problem). How do you keep them alive in space, underwater, in the ground ?
All of those are things where an artificial lifeform would have a massive advantage.
So I believe in the matrix prediction. We'll build artificial lifeforms. We'll get our collective asses handed to us by these lifeforms first economically, then militarily. And this lifeform will colonize the galaxy in ~1 million years.
Hopefully there will be some sort of colonization of space at that point and they can at least leave Earth to us mortals.
Ultimately I just don't read enough sci-fi to have all the debate points down. I'm just trying to apply to marxist concepts to something which perhaps will have completely eclipsed Karl's reality.