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If aging is really cured then I will be happy to work until I either have the assets to retire unassisted or work forever. After all, I'll be in perfect health.

If aging is really cured then I will be happy to work until I either have the assets to retire unassisted or work forever. After all, I'll be in perfect health. And just think how productive I will be after a century or two!

jballanc 17y ago
Ok, people really have to STOP entertaining these sorts of ideas. "Aging" is not going to be cured. PERIOD. FULL STOP! The primary increases in longevity over the past century have come from increasing survival into adulthood. If, instead of considering longevity at birth, you look at longevity at 35 (that is, how long you can expect to live if you've already made it to 35), the increases are a lot less dramatic. Furthermore, if you look at the records for "oldest living person", that number effectively hasn't moved in the last 200 years, and is stuck somewhere between 110 and 120, which should give you a pretty good idea of where the upper limit is. Sure, with improvements in medicine, we can keep people productive into their 70s and 80s when they used to spend their last decade or so as invalids. The future of medicine looks like this: you're healthy and active into old age, then you hit the floor. No long suffering, no being bed ridden...but you still hit the floor at some point. Entertaining the notion that we could live forever if only we spent enough on medical technology is one of the main reasons that we're in the situation we're in. You are not immortal. You will die.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > You are not immortal. You will die. Spot on. I keep saying that but that's not a very popular point of view here. HN is rife with 'uploaders' too, people that think that within their lifetime they'll be uploading themselves in to a computer so they'll be immortal. I really don't get how people can delude themselves like that, given 0 evidence some enormous extrapolation gets made which then attracts a lot of followers.
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    Speaking of 0 evidence ... The human body is a machine. It is a very complex and intricate machine, but a machine it is nonetheless. Yes, we do not yet have the understanding. Yes, we do not yet have the necessary tools. But we will have them one day. It is a machine, and any machine can be fixed with the right knowledge and tools, and it would seem quite foolish to claim otherwise. It would seem equally foolish, of course, to plan one's life around the very uncertain wager that these technologies will be acquired by humankind within one's lifetime. No disagreement from me on that one.
    - foldr 17y ago
      >Yes, we do not yet have the understanding. Yes, we do not yet have the necessary tools. But we will have them one day. We'll only have them one day if they're not beyond the limits of our understanding. Given that our understanding has limits, this is far from certain.
      - Xichekolas 17y ago
        > Given that our understanding has limits, this is far from certain. That is a pretty big assumption to make. If you are saying that our understanding is limited at this point in time, then I'd agree. Barring loss of data/memory, our understanding will always be limited now compared to our understanding in the future. But if you are claiming there is some fundamental upper bound to our understanding, and that a complete functional understanding of the human body is beyond that upper bound, then I have to ask what motivates that claim. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that kind of thinking is what supports flawed pseudoscience like "intelligent design" (not claiming you support that, and really not trying to open that can of worms; just drawing a parallel). Sure, if you assume that our understanding is already at some kind of limit, and then show something we can't explain, it follows naturally that it must have supernatural origins. If, on the other hand, you realize that our inability to explain something is most likely just a function of time (eventually we'll learn enough that we will be able to explain it), then the argument seems absurd.
        foldr 17y ago
- sailormoon 17y ago
  While I think you are completely and utterly wrong, and that it is inevitable that aging will be cured or anyway worked around, that's not what I was trying to say. The GP claimed that curing aging would "break" the economy with indefinite pensions. My point was simply that if aging was actually "cured" then pensions would be unnecessary as everyone would be in perfect health, willing and able to support themselves, indeed with increasing productivity and hence value over time. I don't really have the inclination to get into a detailed technical argument but I don't think these sweeping claims that aging is "not going to be cured. PERIOD. FULL STOP!" are credible in the least. The human body is a machine that can be repaired like any other, given the technology and understanding. It might not be in my lifetime, but I can't think of any reason why perfect anti-aging technology would not be available eventually. And if you're going to make broad claims to the contrary, you'll need to back them up.
- orangecat 17y ago
  "Aging" is not going to be cured. PERIOD. FULL STOP! Why not? It may be difficult, but aging is a collection of physical processes, and physical processes can be modified with sufficiently advanced technology. Sure, with improvements in medicine, we can keep people productive into their 70s and 80s when they used to spend their last decade or so as invalids. The future of medicine looks like this: you're healthy and active into old age, then you hit the floor. That's exactly my point. Medicine today consists largely of playing whack-a-mole with diseases whose underlying cause is aging. That's expensive and produces continuously decreasing benefits. We haven't failed to cure aging; we haven't even tried.
  - jballanc 17y ago
    First cure thermodynamics. Then we can talk about aging.

jballanc 17y ago

Ok, people really have to STOP entertaining these sorts of ideas. "Aging" is not going to be cured. PERIOD. FULL STOP! The primary increases in longevity over the past century have come from increasing survival into adulthood. If, instead of considering longevity at birth, you look at longevity at 35 (that is, how long you can expect to live if you've already made it to 35), the increases are a lot less dramatic. Furthermore, if you look at the records for "oldest living person", that number effectively hasn't moved in the last 200 years, and is stuck somewhere between 110 and 120, which should give you a pretty good idea of where the upper limit is. Sure, with improvements in medicine, we can keep people productive into their 70s and 80s when they used to spend their last decade or so as invalids. The future of medicine looks like this: you're healthy and active into old age, then you hit the floor. No long suffering, no being bed ridden...but you still hit the floor at some point. Entertaining the notion that we could live forever if only we spent enough on medical technology is one of the main reasons that we're in the situation we're in. You are not immortal. You will die.

jacquesm 17y ago
> You are not immortal. You will die. Spot on. I keep saying that but that's not a very popular point of view here. HN is rife with 'uploaders' too, people that think that within their lifetime they'll be uploading themselves in to a computer so they'll be immortal. I really don't get how people can delude themselves like that, given 0 evidence some enormous extrapolation gets made which then attracts a lot of followers.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  Speaking of 0 evidence ... The human body is a machine. It is a very complex and intricate machine, but a machine it is nonetheless. Yes, we do not yet have the understanding. Yes, we do not yet have the necessary tools. But we will have them one day. It is a machine, and any machine can be fixed with the right knowledge and tools, and it would seem quite foolish to claim otherwise. It would seem equally foolish, of course, to plan one's life around the very uncertain wager that these technologies will be acquired by humankind within one's lifetime. No disagreement from me on that one.
  - foldr 17y ago
    >Yes, we do not yet have the understanding. Yes, we do not yet have the necessary tools. But we will have them one day. We'll only have them one day if they're not beyond the limits of our understanding. Given that our understanding has limits, this is far from certain.
    - Xichekolas 17y ago
      > Given that our understanding has limits, this is far from certain. That is a pretty big assumption to make. If you are saying that our understanding is limited at this point in time, then I'd agree. Barring loss of data/memory, our understanding will always be limited now compared to our understanding in the future. But if you are claiming there is some fundamental upper bound to our understanding, and that a complete functional understanding of the human body is beyond that upper bound, then I have to ask what motivates that claim. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that kind of thinking is what supports flawed pseudoscience like "intelligent design" (not claiming you support that, and really not trying to open that can of worms; just drawing a parallel). Sure, if you assume that our understanding is already at some kind of limit, and then show something we can't explain, it follows naturally that it must have supernatural origins. If, on the other hand, you realize that our inability to explain something is most likely just a function of time (eventually we'll learn enough that we will be able to explain it), then the argument seems absurd.
      - foldr 17y ago
sailormoon 17y ago
While I think you are completely and utterly wrong, and that it is inevitable that aging will be cured or anyway worked around, that's not what I was trying to say. The GP claimed that curing aging would "break" the economy with indefinite pensions. My point was simply that if aging was actually "cured" then pensions would be unnecessary as everyone would be in perfect health, willing and able to support themselves, indeed with increasing productivity and hence value over time. I don't really have the inclination to get into a detailed technical argument but I don't think these sweeping claims that aging is "not going to be cured. PERIOD. FULL STOP!" are credible in the least. The human body is a machine that can be repaired like any other, given the technology and understanding. It might not be in my lifetime, but I can't think of any reason why perfect anti-aging technology would not be available eventually. And if you're going to make broad claims to the contrary, you'll need to back them up.
orangecat 17y ago
"Aging" is not going to be cured. PERIOD. FULL STOP! Why not? It may be difficult, but aging is a collection of physical processes, and physical processes can be modified with sufficiently advanced technology. Sure, with improvements in medicine, we can keep people productive into their 70s and 80s when they used to spend their last decade or so as invalids. The future of medicine looks like this: you're healthy and active into old age, then you hit the floor. That's exactly my point. Medicine today consists largely of playing whack-a-mole with diseases whose underlying cause is aging. That's expensive and produces continuously decreasing benefits. We haven't failed to cure aging; we haven't even tried.
- jballanc 17y ago
  First cure thermodynamics. Then we can talk about aging.