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> But with longevity and other deeply existential problems, the horror of what’s happening has been tragically normalized. I will never understand this attitud

> But with longevity and other deeply existential problems, the horror of what’s happening has been tragically normalized. I will never understand this attitude. Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? How can we possibly reframe this as a "horror". The horror is this idea that personal identity can go on indefinitely. Aging is a process of coming to terms with death. None of this is being "tragically normalized". What's being normalized is the idea that we can have everything we want all the time forever without any spiritual or material costs.

apsec112 6y ago
"If a young child falls on the train tracks, it is good to save them, and if a 45-year-old suffers from a debilitating disease, it is good to cure them. If you have a logical turn of mind, you are bound to ask whether this is a special case of a general ethical principle which says “Life is good, death is bad; health is good, sickness is bad.” If so – and here we enter into controversial territory – we can follow this general principle to a surprising new conclusion: If a 95-year-old is threatened by death from old age, it would be good to drag them from those train tracks, if possible. And if a 120-year-old is starting to feel slightly sickly, it would be good to restore them to full vigor, if possible. With current technology it is not possible. But if the technology became available in some future year – given sufficiently advanced medical nanotechnology, or such other contrivances as future minds may devise – would you judge it a good thing, to save that life, and stay that debility? The important thing to remember, which I think all too many people forget, is that it is not a trick question." http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/ http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/
- mc32 6y ago
  I think one big problem I see is that there becomes no need for younger generations. It’ll all be old people. If you have low turnover then there is little change —society stagnates. If people had discovered 3x lifespans and birth rates were thirded in the 1900s, we’d be living near-ossified lifestyles (and other things) from back then. Also, the longer you live the more mental trauma there is to deal with. One lifetime is enough. As it is we have enough people who slowly decline and go crazy.
  - jniedrauer 6y ago
    A key dynamic shift that might offset this is that "old people" would suddenly have to plan for thousands of years. Many of the problems that generations currently solve are due to short-term thinking.
    - mc32 6y ago
      I think you’re being way optimistic. Longer lifespans means you can procrastinate and put things off even further.
- lisper 6y ago
  > if a 120-year-old is starting to feel slightly sickly, it would be good to restore them to full vigor, if possible That is far from clear. It is even far from clear that this is true all else being equal, and all else is definitely not equal. Extending longevity exacerbates the strain on global resources caused by overpopulation -- most notably at the moment, the capacity of the planet to absorb carbon emissions, but that's a detail. Exponential growth is not sustainable on a finite planet. If carbon weren't the limiting factor, it would be something else. But we humans were designed to die. Our evolutionary purpose is to raise children to the point where they are able to have children of their own. A longer lifespan than that doesn't advance our reproductive fitness, and so we're not designed to live any longer than that. So even if we could tweak our bodies to live longer, it is not a foregone conclusion that this would be healthy for our minds and souls.
  - jniedrauer 6y ago
    This really sounds like mind-body dualism. There's no difference between our "minds and souls", and we weren't designed to do anything. We have woken up and find ourselves in our present circumstances. But we don't have to accept them. We choose our destiny.
    - lisper 6y ago
      I was using the word "designed" metaphorically. Of course we were not actually designed. The point is that our fundamental nature is determined by evolution, and evolution only "cares" about reproductive fitness, so that's what we're "optimized" for. (I put these words in scare quotes because evolution doesn't actually "care" about anything, and it doesn't optimize, it merely satisfices.)
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > A longer lifespan than that doesn't advance our reproductive fitness, and so we're not designed to live any longer than that. So even if we could tweak our bodies to live longer, it is not a foregone conclusion that this would be healthy for our minds and souls. It's also not a foregone conclusion that this wouldn't be healthy for our minds and souls. The problem with death is that it's irreversible. At any point, you can decide you're too bored or too miserable, and end your existence. But once that decision is made - usually for you - it cannot be reversed. So it's better to err on the side of more options, i.e. more years to live.
- zhoujianfu 6y ago
  Agreed... “people shouldn’t live forever... except for me” seems to be a popular sentiment, but it’s along the lines of “people shouldn’t get this or that freedom/resource... except for me.”
JoshTriplett 6y ago
> Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? Because they're horrific tragedies that we should be fighting tooth and nail until they're extinguished and nobody ever has to deal with them again. They should be consigned to the history books. > Aging is a process of coming to terms with death. Aging is a biological problem that we continue to debug. And nothing should make us "come to terms" with being obliterated. If someone is attacking you, you don't "come to terms" with your impending injury or death, you fight back. When a problem has thus far been a seemingly immutable property of life, it can be difficult to envision a world where that property has been overcome. It can be difficult to even see it as a problem. And it's understandable that people's first instinct is to somehow justify the status quo, that there must be a good reason that 150,000 people die every day. One step towards solving the problem is to reset that expectation, to get people to recognize the problem as a problem rather than a "fact". In the meantime, progress will continue to be made by people who see it as a problem, but far too slowly without more widespread support. Every day longer it takes is 150,000 people lost.
- dekhn 6y ago
  This sort of leaves out the reality that decomposing bodies are a critical part of the ecosystem, and that eliminating death in humans would have huge ecological consequences beyond just the nutrients of decomposing bodies. If/when you have reasonable solutions for overpopulation, massive resource consumption by advanced societies, and pollution, then we can talk about longevity.
  - jniedrauer 6y ago
    A relatively simple solution is that the price of admission for biological immortality is voluntary sterilization. No doubt this would be circumvented by the elite, but it probably wouldn't lead to runaway population growth.
    - dekhn 6y ago
      "A relatively simple solution.... is voluntary sterlization". We're discussing what would be one of the most consequential technological changes in the existence of humanity. There are no "relatively simple solutions".
realbarack 6y ago
Could you describe what you think the spiritual and mental costs are? I love life (I've been fortunate to live in health and relative privilege) and would very much prefer an additional 150 years before eternal nothingness, assuming sound mind and body. It's not clear to me what spiritual downsides I would experience.
AbrahamParangi 6y ago
If you don't believe progress can be made, then don't worry about others who strive to make it. Worst case they're wrong. Best case, you're wrong and the whole world moves upward. Otherwise it's just crab bucket mentality.
jniedrauer 6y ago
If someone has been artificially kept alive beyond their natural lifespan, and you had the power to reverse the effect such that they instantly died, would that be ethical? Attempting to preserve the status quo of aging and death is the same thing in a more roundabout way.
lachlan-sneff 6y ago
I hate this perspective. Aging and imminent death aren't valuable. This is a view popularized by "deathists" and those paralyzed by fear of death.
fizixer 6y ago
At what age would you like to have: - Alzheimer's? - Cancer? - Arthritis?
jonstewart 6y ago
I think “the idea that we can have everything we want all the time” has been normalized for Peter Thiel (et al), so he’s working on the “forever” aspect.
echelon 6y ago
> Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? Death is the greatest weakness of humanity, and to think otherwise is fatalist. We don't have to live eighty years at best and die. We can do better. If everyone on this planet had solving death as their single-minded focus, we'd accomplish it within our lifetimes.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  > If everyone on this planet had solving death as their single-minded focus, we'd accomplish it within our lifetimes. This is a particularly advanced form of wishful thinking.
  - echelon 6y ago
    It's not wishful thinking. It's not going to happen. We can, however, do a better job of championing science and long-term thinking. I think setting a high water mark inspires people to reach for the stars, if only to land on the moon. I like to imagine that world so that I can see the delta between.
- abjKT26nO8 6y ago
  > Death is the greatest weakness of humanity, and to think otherwise is fatalist. We don't have to live eighty years at best and die. We can do better. Science advances one funeral at a time. ~ Max Planck I'd add to that that it's not only science that advances in this way.
corpMaverick 6y ago
Death is the greatest equalizer. It worries me that even now you have rich people that are 70 and are still trying to make more money abusing other people. Imagine if you could keep your wealth for 50 more years. Further more if money is the gateway to 50 more years. Money would be even more important than it is now. I really don't want to significantly expand lifespans unless we can keep things fair for everybody.
- TomMarius 6y ago
  I don't think it's good to make 99% suffer because 1% could keep their wealth.
realtalk_sp 6y ago
The only reason we exist is because our genes "wish" to remain immortal. Not dying is the fullest realization of our biological (and likely only empirically valid) purpose. Science also suggests that consciousness ceases with death. It seems strictly preferable to exist as opposed to not exist. Looked at this way, pursuing immortality is utterly rational. In fact, it's surprising this isn't our highest current priority.
- lliamander 6y ago
  "Genes" remaining immortal is quite distinct from an organism remaining immortal. I would say that death+reproduction is a better solution to preserving genes than immortality.
  - realtalk_sp 6y ago
    > I would say that death+reproduction is a better solution to preserving genes than immortality. It's just the solution nature came up with. It's also optimal at a population level and far less so at the organism level. Again: it is strictly preferable (by a very wide philosophical margin) to exist than to not exist. Of course, anyone who believes otherwise would be welcome to not participate in the concept of biological immortality.
    - lliamander 6y ago
      > It's just the solution nature came up with. It's also optimal at a population level and far less so at the organism level. My point is that what is optimal for the organism is different than what is optimal for it's genes, and that trying to derive the biological purpose based on the "desire" of our genes is invalid (or at least, it does not imply that our purpose is to continue existing as individual organisms). > Again: it is strictly preferable (by a very wide philosophical margin) to exist than to not exist. Agreed, which is why I think religious pursuits are also perfectly rational. If there is some eternal, transcendent reality outside of the material world, and we have a chance of participating in that reality, it is preferable to do so. I hold nothing against those who would wish to extend human life. My critique was just regarding what I understood to be your chain of reasoning from genetic imperative to biological purpose.
concordDance 6y ago
Ageing in particular is hugely expensive (most medicine is spent on the old and the old cannot work effectively) and causes incalculably huge ammounts of suffering (COVID-19? War? Racist killings? Rape pandemics? Drug addiction? None cause as much suffering as ageing). Is it wrong to repair someone's heart, brain, joints, skin, bones, kidneys, liver or muscles? If not, why is it wrong to prevent them degenerating in the first place?

apsec112 6y ago

"If a young child falls on the train tracks, it is good to save them, and if a 45-year-old suffers from a debilitating disease, it is good to cure them. If you have a logical turn of mind, you are bound to ask whether this is a special case of a general ethical principle which says “Life is good, death is bad; health is good, sickness is bad.” If so – and here we enter into controversial territory – we can follow this general principle to a surprising new conclusion: If a 95-year-old is threatened by death from old age, it would be good to drag them from those train tracks, if possible. And if a 120-year-old is starting to feel slightly sickly, it would be good to restore them to full vigor, if possible. With current technology it is not possible. But if the technology became available in some future year – given sufficiently advanced medical nanotechnology, or such other contrivances as future minds may devise – would you judge it a good thing, to save that life, and stay that debility? The important thing to remember, which I think all too many people forget, is that it is not a trick question." http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/ http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/

mc32 6y ago
I think one big problem I see is that there becomes no need for younger generations. It’ll all be old people. If you have low turnover then there is little change —society stagnates. If people had discovered 3x lifespans and birth rates were thirded in the 1900s, we’d be living near-ossified lifestyles (and other things) from back then. Also, the longer you live the more mental trauma there is to deal with. One lifetime is enough. As it is we have enough people who slowly decline and go crazy.
- jniedrauer 6y ago
  A key dynamic shift that might offset this is that "old people" would suddenly have to plan for thousands of years. Many of the problems that generations currently solve are due to short-term thinking.
  - mc32 6y ago
    I think you’re being way optimistic. Longer lifespans means you can procrastinate and put things off even further.
lisper 6y ago
> if a 120-year-old is starting to feel slightly sickly, it would be good to restore them to full vigor, if possible That is far from clear. It is even far from clear that this is true all else being equal, and all else is definitely not equal. Extending longevity exacerbates the strain on global resources caused by overpopulation -- most notably at the moment, the capacity of the planet to absorb carbon emissions, but that's a detail. Exponential growth is not sustainable on a finite planet. If carbon weren't the limiting factor, it would be something else. But we humans were designed to die. Our evolutionary purpose is to raise children to the point where they are able to have children of their own. A longer lifespan than that doesn't advance our reproductive fitness, and so we're not designed to live any longer than that. So even if we could tweak our bodies to live longer, it is not a foregone conclusion that this would be healthy for our minds and souls.
- jniedrauer 6y ago
  This really sounds like mind-body dualism. There's no difference between our "minds and souls", and we weren't designed to do anything. We have woken up and find ourselves in our present circumstances. But we don't have to accept them. We choose our destiny.
  - lisper 6y ago
    I was using the word "designed" metaphorically. Of course we were not actually designed. The point is that our fundamental nature is determined by evolution, and evolution only "cares" about reproductive fitness, so that's what we're "optimized" for. (I put these words in scare quotes because evolution doesn't actually "care" about anything, and it doesn't optimize, it merely satisfices.)
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > A longer lifespan than that doesn't advance our reproductive fitness, and so we're not designed to live any longer than that. So even if we could tweak our bodies to live longer, it is not a foregone conclusion that this would be healthy for our minds and souls. It's also not a foregone conclusion that this wouldn't be healthy for our minds and souls. The problem with death is that it's irreversible. At any point, you can decide you're too bored or too miserable, and end your existence. But once that decision is made - usually for you - it cannot be reversed. So it's better to err on the side of more options, i.e. more years to live.
zhoujianfu 6y ago
Agreed... “people shouldn’t live forever... except for me” seems to be a popular sentiment, but it’s along the lines of “people shouldn’t get this or that freedom/resource... except for me.”

JoshTriplett 6y ago

> Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? Because they're horrific tragedies that we should be fighting tooth and nail until they're extinguished and nobody ever has to deal with them again. They should be consigned to the history books. > Aging is a process of coming to terms with death. Aging is a biological problem that we continue to debug. And nothing should make us "come to terms" with being obliterated. If someone is attacking you, you don't "come to terms" with your impending injury or death, you fight back. When a problem has thus far been a seemingly immutable property of life, it can be difficult to envision a world where that property has been overcome. It can be difficult to even see it as a problem. And it's understandable that people's first instinct is to somehow justify the status quo, that there must be a good reason that 150,000 people die every day. One step towards solving the problem is to reset that expectation, to get people to recognize the problem as a problem rather than a "fact". In the meantime, progress will continue to be made by people who see it as a problem, but far too slowly without more widespread support. Every day longer it takes is 150,000 people lost.

dekhn 6y ago
This sort of leaves out the reality that decomposing bodies are a critical part of the ecosystem, and that eliminating death in humans would have huge ecological consequences beyond just the nutrients of decomposing bodies. If/when you have reasonable solutions for overpopulation, massive resource consumption by advanced societies, and pollution, then we can talk about longevity.
- jniedrauer 6y ago
  A relatively simple solution is that the price of admission for biological immortality is voluntary sterilization. No doubt this would be circumvented by the elite, but it probably wouldn't lead to runaway population growth.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    "A relatively simple solution.... is voluntary sterlization". We're discussing what would be one of the most consequential technological changes in the existence of humanity. There are no "relatively simple solutions".

realbarack 6y ago

Could you describe what you think the spiritual and mental costs are? I love life (I've been fortunate to live in health and relative privilege) and would very much prefer an additional 150 years before eternal nothingness, assuming sound mind and body. It's not clear to me what spiritual downsides I would experience.

AbrahamParangi 6y ago

If you don't believe progress can be made, then don't worry about others who strive to make it. Worst case they're wrong. Best case, you're wrong and the whole world moves upward. Otherwise it's just crab bucket mentality.

jniedrauer 6y ago

If someone has been artificially kept alive beyond their natural lifespan, and you had the power to reverse the effect such that they instantly died, would that be ethical? Attempting to preserve the status quo of aging and death is the same thing in a more roundabout way.

lachlan-sneff 6y ago

I hate this perspective. Aging and imminent death aren't valuable. This is a view popularized by "deathists" and those paralyzed by fear of death.

fizixer 6y ago

At what age would you like to have: - Alzheimer's? - Cancer? - Arthritis?

jonstewart 6y ago

I think “the idea that we can have everything we want all the time” has been normalized for Peter Thiel (et al), so he’s working on the “forever” aspect.

echelon 6y ago

> Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? Death is the greatest weakness of humanity, and to think otherwise is fatalist. We don't have to live eighty years at best and die. We can do better. If everyone on this planet had solving death as their single-minded focus, we'd accomplish it within our lifetimes.

klmadfejno 6y ago
> If everyone on this planet had solving death as their single-minded focus, we'd accomplish it within our lifetimes. This is a particularly advanced form of wishful thinking.
- echelon 6y ago
  It's not wishful thinking. It's not going to happen. We can, however, do a better job of championing science and long-term thinking. I think setting a high water mark inspires people to reach for the stars, if only to land on the moon. I like to imagine that world so that I can see the delta between.
abjKT26nO8 6y ago
> Death is the greatest weakness of humanity, and to think otherwise is fatalist. We don't have to live eighty years at best and die. We can do better. Science advances one funeral at a time. ~ Max Planck I'd add to that that it's not only science that advances in this way.

corpMaverick 6y ago

Death is the greatest equalizer. It worries me that even now you have rich people that are 70 and are still trying to make more money abusing other people. Imagine if you could keep your wealth for 50 more years. Further more if money is the gateway to 50 more years. Money would be even more important than it is now. I really don't want to significantly expand lifespans unless we can keep things fair for everybody.

TomMarius 6y ago
I don't think it's good to make 99% suffer because 1% could keep their wealth.

realtalk_sp 6y ago

The only reason we exist is because our genes "wish" to remain immortal. Not dying is the fullest realization of our biological (and likely only empirically valid) purpose. Science also suggests that consciousness ceases with death. It seems strictly preferable to exist as opposed to not exist. Looked at this way, pursuing immortality is utterly rational. In fact, it's surprising this isn't our highest current priority.

lliamander 6y ago
"Genes" remaining immortal is quite distinct from an organism remaining immortal. I would say that death+reproduction is a better solution to preserving genes than immortality.
- realtalk_sp 6y ago
  > I would say that death+reproduction is a better solution to preserving genes than immortality. It's just the solution nature came up with. It's also optimal at a population level and far less so at the organism level. Again: it is strictly preferable (by a very wide philosophical margin) to exist than to not exist. Of course, anyone who believes otherwise would be welcome to not participate in the concept of biological immortality.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    > It's just the solution nature came up with. It's also optimal at a population level and far less so at the organism level. My point is that what is optimal for the organism is different than what is optimal for it's genes, and that trying to derive the biological purpose based on the "desire" of our genes is invalid (or at least, it does not imply that our purpose is to continue existing as individual organisms). > Again: it is strictly preferable (by a very wide philosophical margin) to exist than to not exist. Agreed, which is why I think religious pursuits are also perfectly rational. If there is some eternal, transcendent reality outside of the material world, and we have a chance of participating in that reality, it is preferable to do so. I hold nothing against those who would wish to extend human life. My critique was just regarding what I understood to be your chain of reasoning from genetic imperative to biological purpose.

concordDance 6y ago

Ageing in particular is hugely expensive (most medicine is spent on the old and the old cannot work effectively) and causes incalculably huge ammounts of suffering (COVID-19? War? Racist killings? Rape pandemics? Drug addiction? None cause as much suffering as ageing). Is it wrong to repair someone's heart, brain, joints, skin, bones, kidneys, liver or muscles? If not, why is it wrong to prevent them degenerating in the first place?