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Cynical answer: "because I'm getting old" :) Whatever the reason, this has the potential of being life-changing for a lot of people. Would love to see more bil

Cynical answer: "because I'm getting old" :) Whatever the reason, this has the potential of being life-changing for a lot of people. Would love to see more billionaires involved with this kind of initiative.

melling 9y ago
Would love to see more non-billionaires involved. You might not be far off on “he’s getting older”. When you’re younger, you don’t think about the impact of “old people” diseases. Hearing that a couple billion people will get Alzheimer’s is not nearly as impactful as seeing someone a little older than you with it.
- ido 9y ago
  Don't know about you but seeing my grandparents getting senile was enough to get me thinking (and fearing) "old people problems".
Filligree 9y ago
The reason doesn't really matter, this is still incredibly valuable work. Death is terrible, and should be eradicated, but Alzheimer's is a few steps above that. There's nothing worse than seeing a loved one be slowly destroyed by that horrific disease, and I'm so glad there are people willing to work on it.
- pmelendez 9y ago
  "Death is terrible, and should be eradicated" We are sensitive to death but it is the only mechanism I know that would control overconsumption of natural resources. If nobody dies, then we would deplete the resources in a few decades.
  - sheepdestroyer 9y ago
    We have death and at the same time over-consumption, so the control is not working that well. Did you mean that it would effectively control the over-consumption if better implemented (with a higher rate)?
    - freeflight 9y ago
      Parent merely stated that we are already over-consuming with rather high death rates, not having any deaths at all most certainly wouldn't help with our current unsustainable ways, as we'd most likely overpopulate the planet pretty quickly with all it's resulting woes (even more pollution, killing off the rest of the biosphere). Imho it'd only work the other way around: For us to beat death, we first have to solve our sustainability/resource problems. What point is there to "endlessly living" if the reality of that boils down to being stuck in overcrowded and miserable living conditions? That sounds more like hell than utopia.
      - Filligree 9y ago
        You're making the mistake of changing one parameter, but not projecting the entire world forwards. Immortality would be impossible without massive technological improvements that certainly would have other benefits; you can pretty well assume that both molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be mature by then. In combination, those should dramatically increase the carrying capacity of the world. Ignoring all of that, though... Don't you think it's likely that people will start caring more about the future onceb they know they'll live to see it?
        coldtea 9y ago
        >Immortality would be impossible without massive technological improvements that certainly would have other benefits; you can pretty well assume that both molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be mature by then. I don't think we'll see anything like increased exponential progress of the kind that has been (and has already slowed down) during the industrial age. All low hanging fruit have been gathered, and at this point there are diminishing returns. We will have a few breakthroughs here and there but nothing to write home about the way the steam engine, electricity or the computer have been. >Ignoring all of that, though... Don't you think it's likely that people will start caring more about the future once they know they'll live to see it? Most people are terrible managing their own lives a few years ahead, much less decades ahead. So no reason to think they'll be any more apt when its something so vague as centuries ahead.
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    On the other had, technological progress is also proportional to population, so not necessarily so..
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    > We are sensitive to death but it is the only mechanism I know that would control overconsumption of natural resources. Also prices. New kinds of mining are invented to circumvent cost restrictions. Otherwise, certain kinds of metals and gasses would stay forever buried as unusable junk. Also note that fish that are significantly easier to eat (not a lot of bones, easy to farm, etc.) are more utilized. "Trash fish" are usually just full of bones or too much work to prepare to eat in a tasty way.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >If nobody dies, then we would deplete the resources in a few decades. The idea of those wanting that is to perpetuate themselves (and their current generation) in eternity, screw successors.
    - creep 9y ago
      This is also a fundamental problem of eternity. If one is eternal, he/she can create or destroy at will. But our current social model is based upon the creation of successors. In fact, the evolution of the universe seems to be based upon successors, upon the "future". In eternal life, time looks different. Nonetheless, physical bodies of any kind cannot seem to exist as they are for eternity. Even diamonds decay. Abstractions change as well-- ideas thought to be immortalized actually do change, actually do die. And they can be immortalized in time, in the past-- but towards the future, there has never been a concrete conception of such immortality, only in the frozen sense.
  - edanm 9y ago
    These are hard problems. The worst solution we can come up with is to literally kill everyone. We can find a better way.
  - folli 9y ago
    I'd rather willingly visit Futurama's suicide booth than slowly deteriorate due to Alzheimer's.
- ahussain 9y ago
  It's not common to share poems on HN, but this is a great spoken word piece about how terrible dementia and alzheimer's can be for families: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5HRBib3hNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5HRBib3hNs
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  > "Death is terrible, and should be eradicated" Is death really that terrible? There's plenty of things I'd like to try before I die, and I hope to live until I'm much older, but on the other hand becoming immortal doesn't seem like paradise to me. If I were to suggest what we'd be better off eradicating I'd suggest fear of death over death itself. I'd rather live 100 years free from fear of dying than 1000 years in constant fear of dying.
- creep 9y ago
  >Death is terrible, and should be eradicated I strongly disagree with this statement. We learn through death, and yet we don't know what death is. We do not know the fundamentals of death, yet it occurs on all abstractions. I think of this poetically, because I don't understand death. But all things being relative, life does not make sense without death. Edit: On this topic I would also like to point out the eagerness of the immortal mindset. We are living 30 years+ in comparison to our ancestors, but it seems we approach an asymptote. With alzheimers and other neuro-degenerative diseases, we lose our mental faculties. We lose memories, emotions, we lose everything. Yes this is the topic at hand, but does that not indicate something fundamental as well? We have a reached a point where living implies the dissolution of what we used to be, of what we spent so long striving towards the future to do. And at that point of degeneration, we no longer exist in that sense. We can no longer orient ourselves towards the future, and decay while living. If there is something after death-- if whatever composes our consciousness is actually tangible, autonomous, and not an emergent result of our brains (similarly, if emergence itself is autonomous), then after the alzheimers individual dies in body, he/she will not exist in consciousness either. After this point, his/her consciousness will have dissolved. And these are rather philosophical points, but this is how I see things. Science and philosophy, science and spirituality even, do coexist in my subjective experience.
projectramo 9y ago
Yes, the same self interest that made him spend vast sums of money and personal time on sub Saharan Africa. He should only get credit for things that couldn’t possibly help him personally.
- ggambetta 9y ago
  I strongly disagree - he should get credit for all the good things he does, regardless of the reasons. Within reason - the end doesn't justify the means.
  - gk1 9y ago
    The person you're responding to was being sarcastic.
    - ggambetta 9y ago
      I'm aware. I wanted to make my own position very clear.
adventured 9y ago
That answer isn't cynical, there's no cynicism involved in the context. There's nothing wrong with pursuing something because it might affect you personally. In fact, that's a particularly tremendous reason to do something. It makes it personal, it increases motivation. There is nothing wrong with self-interest. It's why all the people posting in this thread are still alive. A given person's spending in the developed world on their food budget in a year, is a scaled equivalent in resources to what Gates is probably going to spend on Alzheimer's. The difference is, if his investment pays off it helps millions of people. That's the best kind of self-interest.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  An awful lot of scientific progress has come about because of self-interest. See James Burke's "Connections" series.
skybrian 9y ago
Reading between the lines, it's probably more like "because my parents are getting old." If you weren't paying attention before, you will then.

melling 9y ago

Would love to see more non-billionaires involved. You might not be far off on “he’s getting older”. When you’re younger, you don’t think about the impact of “old people” diseases. Hearing that a couple billion people will get Alzheimer’s is not nearly as impactful as seeing someone a little older than you with it.

ido 9y ago
Don't know about you but seeing my grandparents getting senile was enough to get me thinking (and fearing) "old people problems".

Filligree 9y ago

The reason doesn't really matter, this is still incredibly valuable work. Death is terrible, and should be eradicated, but Alzheimer's is a few steps above that. There's nothing worse than seeing a loved one be slowly destroyed by that horrific disease, and I'm so glad there are people willing to work on it.

pmelendez 9y ago
"Death is terrible, and should be eradicated" We are sensitive to death but it is the only mechanism I know that would control overconsumption of natural resources. If nobody dies, then we would deplete the resources in a few decades.
- sheepdestroyer 9y ago
  We have death and at the same time over-consumption, so the control is not working that well. Did you mean that it would effectively control the over-consumption if better implemented (with a higher rate)?
  - freeflight 9y ago
    Parent merely stated that we are already over-consuming with rather high death rates, not having any deaths at all most certainly wouldn't help with our current unsustainable ways, as we'd most likely overpopulate the planet pretty quickly with all it's resulting woes (even more pollution, killing off the rest of the biosphere). Imho it'd only work the other way around: For us to beat death, we first have to solve our sustainability/resource problems. What point is there to "endlessly living" if the reality of that boils down to being stuck in overcrowded and miserable living conditions? That sounds more like hell than utopia.
    - Filligree 9y ago
      You're making the mistake of changing one parameter, but not projecting the entire world forwards. Immortality would be impossible without massive technological improvements that certainly would have other benefits; you can pretty well assume that both molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be mature by then. In combination, those should dramatically increase the carrying capacity of the world. Ignoring all of that, though... Don't you think it's likely that people will start caring more about the future onceb they know they'll live to see it?
      - coldtea 9y ago
        >Immortality would be impossible without massive technological improvements that certainly would have other benefits; you can pretty well assume that both molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be mature by then. I don't think we'll see anything like increased exponential progress of the kind that has been (and has already slowed down) during the industrial age. All low hanging fruit have been gathered, and at this point there are diminishing returns. We will have a few breakthroughs here and there but nothing to write home about the way the steam engine, electricity or the computer have been. >Ignoring all of that, though... Don't you think it's likely that people will start caring more about the future once they know they'll live to see it? Most people are terrible managing their own lives a few years ahead, much less decades ahead. So no reason to think they'll be any more apt when its something so vague as centuries ahead.
- Chris2048 9y ago
  On the other had, technological progress is also proportional to population, so not necessarily so..
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > We are sensitive to death but it is the only mechanism I know that would control overconsumption of natural resources. Also prices. New kinds of mining are invented to circumvent cost restrictions. Otherwise, certain kinds of metals and gasses would stay forever buried as unusable junk. Also note that fish that are significantly easier to eat (not a lot of bones, easy to farm, etc.) are more utilized. "Trash fish" are usually just full of bones or too much work to prepare to eat in a tasty way.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >If nobody dies, then we would deplete the resources in a few decades. The idea of those wanting that is to perpetuate themselves (and their current generation) in eternity, screw successors.
  - creep 9y ago
    This is also a fundamental problem of eternity. If one is eternal, he/she can create or destroy at will. But our current social model is based upon the creation of successors. In fact, the evolution of the universe seems to be based upon successors, upon the "future". In eternal life, time looks different. Nonetheless, physical bodies of any kind cannot seem to exist as they are for eternity. Even diamonds decay. Abstractions change as well-- ideas thought to be immortalized actually do change, actually do die. And they can be immortalized in time, in the past-- but towards the future, there has never been a concrete conception of such immortality, only in the frozen sense.
- edanm 9y ago
  These are hard problems. The worst solution we can come up with is to literally kill everyone. We can find a better way.
- folli 9y ago
  I'd rather willingly visit Futurama's suicide booth than slowly deteriorate due to Alzheimer's.
ahussain 9y ago
It's not common to share poems on HN, but this is a great spoken word piece about how terrible dementia and alzheimer's can be for families: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5HRBib3hNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5HRBib3hNs
ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "Death is terrible, and should be eradicated" Is death really that terrible? There's plenty of things I'd like to try before I die, and I hope to live until I'm much older, but on the other hand becoming immortal doesn't seem like paradise to me. If I were to suggest what we'd be better off eradicating I'd suggest fear of death over death itself. I'd rather live 100 years free from fear of dying than 1000 years in constant fear of dying.
creep 9y ago
>Death is terrible, and should be eradicated I strongly disagree with this statement. We learn through death, and yet we don't know what death is. We do not know the fundamentals of death, yet it occurs on all abstractions. I think of this poetically, because I don't understand death. But all things being relative, life does not make sense without death. Edit: On this topic I would also like to point out the eagerness of the immortal mindset. We are living 30 years+ in comparison to our ancestors, but it seems we approach an asymptote. With alzheimers and other neuro-degenerative diseases, we lose our mental faculties. We lose memories, emotions, we lose everything. Yes this is the topic at hand, but does that not indicate something fundamental as well? We have a reached a point where living implies the dissolution of what we used to be, of what we spent so long striving towards the future to do. And at that point of degeneration, we no longer exist in that sense. We can no longer orient ourselves towards the future, and decay while living. If there is something after death-- if whatever composes our consciousness is actually tangible, autonomous, and not an emergent result of our brains (similarly, if emergence itself is autonomous), then after the alzheimers individual dies in body, he/she will not exist in consciousness either. After this point, his/her consciousness will have dissolved. And these are rather philosophical points, but this is how I see things. Science and philosophy, science and spirituality even, do coexist in my subjective experience.

projectramo 9y ago

Yes, the same self interest that made him spend vast sums of money and personal time on sub Saharan Africa. He should only get credit for things that couldn’t possibly help him personally.

ggambetta 9y ago
I strongly disagree - he should get credit for all the good things he does, regardless of the reasons. Within reason - the end doesn't justify the means.
- gk1 9y ago
  The person you're responding to was being sarcastic.
  - ggambetta 9y ago
    I'm aware. I wanted to make my own position very clear.

adventured 9y ago

That answer isn't cynical, there's no cynicism involved in the context. There's nothing wrong with pursuing something because it might affect you personally. In fact, that's a particularly tremendous reason to do something. It makes it personal, it increases motivation. There is nothing wrong with self-interest. It's why all the people posting in this thread are still alive. A given person's spending in the developed world on their food budget in a year, is a scaled equivalent in resources to what Gates is probably going to spend on Alzheimer's. The difference is, if his investment pays off it helps millions of people. That's the best kind of self-interest.

WalterBright 9y ago
An awful lot of scientific progress has come about because of self-interest. See James Burke's "Connections" series.

skybrian 9y ago

Reading between the lines, it's probably more like "because my parents are getting old." If you weren't paying attention before, you will then.