5 ms·

With all the work on longevity going on right now, and the near-infinite demand for it should it ever come to market, it's almost inevitable that someone will e

by mabbo 10y ago

With all the work on longevity going on right now, and the near-infinite demand for it should it ever come to market, it's almost inevitable that someone will eventually have drugs/procedures that buy you more years. The only real question in my mind is whether we are the first generation to live forever, or the last generation to die?

goatlover 10y ago
If you don't die of aging, you'll die of something else, be it cancer, heart disease, an accident, etc. And anyway, entropy has the final say no matter what you do to upload or back yourself up.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > If you don't die of aging, you'll die of something else, be it cancer, heart disease, an accident, etc. All of those things are fixable too, and the medical ones are heavily correlated with aging. Cancer, in particular, is becoming more prevalent because it's almost a "default": if you don't die of anything else, and you continue to experience aging-related degeneration, you have a high likelihood of getting cancer. > And anyway, entropy has the final say no matter what you do to upload or back yourself up. Give us a few billion years to work on that one.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Great, so you can live for the Alzheimer's.
    - hx87 10y ago
      If you stop aging itself, the probability of acquiring Alzheimer's is very low.
      - djsumdog 10y ago
        Not if the Prion hypothesis is true. Unless we find a way to treat Prion and other protein folding based diseases.
      - duaneb 10y ago
        You talk about aging as if it's a single thing. You'd have to solve every symptom of again to solve it. This is absurd.
        JoshTriplett 10y ago
        I don't (just) want to solve the symptoms; I want to address the cause. Many degenerative conditions are symptoms (directly or indirectly) of aging, and are heavily correlated with age, but the current approach to treating them is little better than palliative care of the symptoms. Curing those conditions would be good, but stopping the degeneration that causes them in the first place would be better. Yes, there are multiple components of aging and degeneration, and all of them will need a solution. What's absurd, though, is saying "oh, it's multiple things, so it must be impossible to fix".
        duaneb 10y ago
        Thank god nobody around here is saying that!
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      As long as there's life, there's hope. Some of the current research on Alzheimer's suggests that memories may not be lost, just inaccessible, and may thus be recoverable.
      - duaneb 10y ago
        > As long as there's life, there's hope. You're probably also against doctor-assisted suicide.
        JoshTriplett 10y ago
        No, I'm not. It's your life, you can choose to end it if you wish. Even if we had a complete cure for all aging and death, you should still be able to choose to not exist. I would never choose that myself, but I would also never tell someone else how to handle their life.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
> The only real question in my mind is whether we are the first generation to live forever, or the last generation to die? Really? Right now life expectancy for people in their 80s is increasing by substantially less than a year each decade, and that rate is slowing: http://i.imgur.com/7J2BPqA.png http://i.imgur.com/7J2BPqA.png Your hypothesis is that rate will increase from abou 0.6 years per decade (down from ~1 a decade ago) to 10 years per decade, within 20-40 years? This is what that looks like: http://i.imgur.com/4eS78VU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/4eS78VU.jpg Immortality means a slope like those yellow lines. You're saying the curve is going to either turn up sharply like line A or line B, and there is no chance of line C continuing for the next few decades. In other words, something dramatic would have to change. But there are no current indications that this is likely.
djsumdog 10y ago
I think we're further away from that singularity than you think. It would take decades of testing before human trials could begin on any type of treatment. Initially it'd probably only be trailed on the elderly and it'd probably have a high rate of cancer as a side-effect (cause making cells that don't know how to die might be a bad thing)
ska 10y ago
"The only real question in my mind is whether we are the first generation to live forever, or the last generation to die?" That is an incredibly optimistic view of where our understanding and technology are.

by mabbo 10y ago

goatlover 10y ago

If you don't die of aging, you'll die of something else, be it cancer, heart disease, an accident, etc. And anyway, entropy has the final say no matter what you do to upload or back yourself up.

JoshTriplett 10y ago
> If you don't die of aging, you'll die of something else, be it cancer, heart disease, an accident, etc. All of those things are fixable too, and the medical ones are heavily correlated with aging. Cancer, in particular, is becoming more prevalent because it's almost a "default": if you don't die of anything else, and you continue to experience aging-related degeneration, you have a high likelihood of getting cancer. > And anyway, entropy has the final say no matter what you do to upload or back yourself up. Give us a few billion years to work on that one.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Great, so you can live for the Alzheimer's.
  - hx87 10y ago
    If you stop aging itself, the probability of acquiring Alzheimer's is very low.
    - djsumdog 10y ago
      Not if the Prion hypothesis is true. Unless we find a way to treat Prion and other protein folding based diseases.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      You talk about aging as if it's a single thing. You'd have to solve every symptom of again to solve it. This is absurd.
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        I don't (just) want to solve the symptoms; I want to address the cause. Many degenerative conditions are symptoms (directly or indirectly) of aging, and are heavily correlated with age, but the current approach to treating them is little better than palliative care of the symptoms. Curing those conditions would be good, but stopping the degeneration that causes them in the first place would be better. Yes, there are multiple components of aging and degeneration, and all of them will need a solution. What's absurd, though, is saying "oh, it's multiple things, so it must be impossible to fix".
        duaneb 10y ago
        Thank god nobody around here is saying that!
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    As long as there's life, there's hope. Some of the current research on Alzheimer's suggests that memories may not be lost, just inaccessible, and may thus be recoverable.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      > As long as there's life, there's hope. You're probably also against doctor-assisted suicide.
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        No, I'm not. It's your life, you can choose to end it if you wish. Even if we had a complete cure for all aging and death, you should still be able to choose to not exist. I would never choose that myself, but I would also never tell someone else how to handle their life.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

> The only real question in my mind is whether we are the first generation to live forever, or the last generation to die? Really? Right now life expectancy for people in their 80s is increasing by substantially less than a year each decade, and that rate is slowing: http://i.imgur.com/7J2BPqA.png http://i.imgur.com/7J2BPqA.png Your hypothesis is that rate will increase from abou 0.6 years per decade (down from ~1 a decade ago) to 10 years per decade, within 20-40 years? This is what that looks like: http://i.imgur.com/4eS78VU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/4eS78VU.jpg Immortality means a slope like those yellow lines. You're saying the curve is going to either turn up sharply like line A or line B, and there is no chance of line C continuing for the next few decades. In other words, something dramatic would have to change. But there are no current indications that this is likely.

djsumdog 10y ago

I think we're further away from that singularity than you think. It would take decades of testing before human trials could begin on any type of treatment. Initially it'd probably only be trailed on the elderly and it'd probably have a high rate of cancer as a side-effect (cause making cells that don't know how to die might be a bad thing)

ska 10y ago

"The only real question in my mind is whether we are the first generation to live forever, or the last generation to die?" That is an incredibly optimistic view of where our understanding and technology are.