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One thing that's not clear to me is the advantage of living longer. Why do some people feel the need to live longer? When I hear of blood transfusion and such,

One thing that's not clear to me is the advantage of living longer. Why do some people feel the need to live longer? When I hear of blood transfusion and such, it also feels like a lot of these technologies are being developed by snakeoil salespeople to other nongullible but strictly egocentric humans.

mindvirus 6y ago
One thing with aging research is it's also about healthier living - for example, letting people be healthier well into old age, even if the number of years is the same. In terms of why people want to live longer, I think it's just human nature at the end of the day - more time to do the things you enjoy and help the people you care about. Practically speaking, there are a lot of advantages to longer lives: - Generally, it means people will be healthier, which means reduced societal burden. - A deeper family structure can mean better education and childcare. You have more time to be with your friends and family, more time to pursue hobbies, more time to explore the world. - Scientists, engineers and researchers can spend more time building and leveraging their expertise. If people live 20% longer for example, I suspect there's more than a 20% increase in advancement because in so many fields breakthroughs happen near the end of your career. Of course, there will be consequences that need to be addressed. - Does this only lead to increased inequity, where the wealthy are able to accumulate wealth and knowledge even more easily due to access to anti aging. Already there's a 14 year difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest 1%, imagine if that was 50 years. - How do we adjust our social safety nets when people are living to 100 instead of 80? - How does this change over-population and over-consumption?
- mindfulplay 6y ago
  I see your point. I think there is an angle there. However, still feels like a rich person's game here: not sure if the average or below average conditions will improve (childhood mortality, adult mortality) in developing countries because of this. That's really where the "average" advantage seems to be: if life becomes better for everyone then they live longer.

mindvirus 6y ago

One thing with aging research is it's also about healthier living - for example, letting people be healthier well into old age, even if the number of years is the same. In terms of why people want to live longer, I think it's just human nature at the end of the day - more time to do the things you enjoy and help the people you care about. Practically speaking, there are a lot of advantages to longer lives: - Generally, it means people will be healthier, which means reduced societal burden. - A deeper family structure can mean better education and childcare. You have more time to be with your friends and family, more time to pursue hobbies, more time to explore the world. - Scientists, engineers and researchers can spend more time building and leveraging their expertise. If people live 20% longer for example, I suspect there's more than a 20% increase in advancement because in so many fields breakthroughs happen near the end of your career. Of course, there will be consequences that need to be addressed. - Does this only lead to increased inequity, where the wealthy are able to accumulate wealth and knowledge even more easily due to access to anti aging. Already there's a 14 year difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest 1%, imagine if that was 50 years. - How do we adjust our social safety nets when people are living to 100 instead of 80? - How does this change over-population and over-consumption?

mindfulplay 6y ago
I see your point. I think there is an angle there. However, still feels like a rich person's game here: not sure if the average or below average conditions will improve (childhood mortality, adult mortality) in developing countries because of this. That's really where the "average" advantage seems to be: if life becomes better for everyone then they live longer.