Why life is absurd
I couldn't agree more that our humanity places truly absurd limits on our existence. You get, if you're lucky 30-40 years of solid productivity after 20-30 years of training. Maybe enough time to create one or two solid accomplishments before your capacity for thought, and soon enough your capacity for life is extinguished.Also consider the economic argument. On the one hand, the level of investment experts make in becoming so is squandered by death. And yet, this also levels the playing field for newborns, since you don't have to compete against the guy with 8,000 years of experience.I think human intelligence hits an asymptote due to mortality. There's only so deep an individual can go, and a limit on how much you can replace depth with breadth.We enter and exit this world as babes. 100 years is in many ways a pathetic excuse for an existence. Obviously extending that would have to focus on quality not quantity, and has supremely disruptive economic effects (on par with strong AI) but I do not doubt there are great leaps we will take toward this end over the next 500 years.One nice side-effect of a millennial-scale existence would hopefully be a more macro and less cyclical approach to "current affairs".