5 ms·
That's true, but nothing on the horizon is changing that for us in our lifetimes, no matter how desperately we wish for something else. Meanwhile problems with
by M_Grey 10y ago
That's true, but nothing on the horizon is changing that for us in our lifetimes, no matter how desperately we wish for something else. Meanwhile problems with solutions do exist, which could enable our species to be around and civilized for long enough to eventually reach that dream.
Our current course ends in death, not immortality.
- BadassFractal 10y agoWell, not with that attitude.
- M_Grey 10y agoBelieve it or not, a positive attitude isn't the magic ingredient to immortality, any more than a lack of skepticism helps a psychic work better. Science is a beautiful edifice, in part because it works in spite of attitude and expectation. The world can laugh at you while you putter away in your shed, but if you can fly at the end of the day, you're going down in history. The only thing that needs a positive attitude and a suspension of disbelief is fraud.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoSuspension of disbelief doesn't make science go better, but science that doesn't get popular support or widespread credibility doesn't get funded as readily, or accepted as quickly, or treated as urgent. And an excess of incredulity can become fear and rejection. 150,000 people die every day. That's bigger than a moderate-sized city. That's not a problem to casually get around to maybe thinking about in the perpetual "a few years from now but really never"; that's a problem we should be devoting a substantial part of our total resources to.
- nradov 10y agoWhy? There's no reason other than wishful thinking to expect that devoting substantially more resources would actually deliver significant life extension.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoThere are many such reasons to expect that research would produce good results, including past research that already has, and ongoing research that continues to.
- nradov 10y agoNo past research has ever pushed up the maximum age of humans. It remains at about 124. There has been no progress in that field. Other medical research has helped prevent people from dying early and that's certainly worth continuing. But that's not what we're discussing here.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThe past and ongoing research lets us understand in more details the processes that make humans have the maximum age. Unless you believe ~124 is a hard limit mandated by God himself (which, BTW., is something that the Bible says explicitly), that research is crucial to eventually overcoming the limit. Is there anything you believe that makes life extention a problem that's impossible to solve? Because if not, it's always a matter of throwing more resources at it.
- M_Grey 10y agoThere are other problems that show indications of having solutions, and which could realistically be applied to most or all humans. The dream of being an immortal Martian might be an appealing one, but it is no less a distraction or a religion at this point than people paying for salvation in Scientology or looking to the pope for an indulgence. I understand that this is something that's almost impossible to accept though.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoPersonally I'm not having much hope of either standing on Mars or living past the age of 100, but I do believe those - and others - are problems that need attention and serious resource investments. It pains me to see just how much productivity on this planet is wasted on utterly pointless things, when big problems affecting us all remain almost unaddressed.
- lz400 10y agoScience researches problems that are deemed important, and funding of those problems should be proportional to the importance of the problem. Death I argue is one of the most important problems of all so research on how to cure it should be funded much better than it is. If it happens in our lifetime or in our children's or in 100 years doesn't matter. What matters is that every day we accelerate the curing of aging we're saving 150K lives.