12 ms·
Beg to differ. I'd say that if you're not feeling pressed, that you have too little time left, then you don't have anywhere near an adequate view of the plausib
by reasonattlm 15y ago
Beg to differ. I'd say that if you're not feeling pressed, that you have too little time left, then you don't have anywhere near an adequate view of the plausible future. A golden age lies ahead, of glittering marvels to make all that has come so far pale to insignificance. But unless we step up to the plate and master biotechnology a lot faster and better than is presently managed, all of us reading this now will miss both that future and lives of health and transcendence lasting centuries in which to enjoy it.
As I put it here:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/13/longevity-science-needs-documentation/ http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/13/longevity-science-needs-...
"We all express the symptoms of a fatal, inherited degenerative condition called aging - or so the joke goes. It's a dark joke, but there's truth to be found in it, as is often the case in black humor. Unfortunately, all too few people think of themselves as patients suffering aging, and fewer still would call themselves patient advocates, agitating for research leading towards therapies and cures for aging. This is a sorry state of affairs: given that our time is limited and ticking away, the tasks upon the table should always include some consideration of aging. What can we do about it? How can we engineer a research community, funding and support to make real progress within our lifetimes? If you don't spend at least some of your time on this issue, then you're fiddling while Rome burns. Time is the most precious thing we have, and we live on the cusp of technologies that will allow us to gain more of it - but those advances in medicine won't happen soon enough unless we work at it."
- john_b 15y agoI think you missed the author's point. The article wasn't about gaining more (or infinite) time. It was about maximizing your joy in life by living in such a way that you can be proud of your accomplishments without being overwhelmed by the need to continually out-do yourself or others. How long you live is completely irrelevant to that point. And if you are not enjoying your life because you're feeling so pressed and anxious, then living forever won't change that--that's a mentality problem. Not to mention the disappointment you might feel if you die before the onset of the much hyped biotech revolution, having placed your hopes for happiness in its arrival.
- Jach 15y agoWhile I can agree with the author's point I think it was poorly expressed (your summary is better) and the way he suggests embodying the point seems contradictory to making an effort against Death. Though I think if people did have a certain expectation to live billions of years we wouldn't have very many hurried people around, though that's just my own speculation. > Not to mention the disappointment you might feel if you die before the onset of the much hyped biotech revolution, having placed your hopes for happiness in its arrival. At least the disappointment would be brief since by the time you're close enough to death to feel it you won't be alive much longer. Though I would find it pitiable that a person refuses to be happy their entire life and would only be happy being essentially immortal; it seems like many 'immortalists' are actually quite content in their current lives but want that to go on as long as possible.
- kiba 15y agoThey would also take great effort to find black swans and long shot. Living a really long life can make you ambitious. If you're an old 75 years old, than you might be predisposed to the short term. The young don't know they have it, and the old don't care. If you're going to live on the average lifespan of a 100,000 thousand years and improving, than 50 years is no problem to be wasting your time on big projects. You can wait for your space probes to report to you, make big colonization effort that span centuries, and solve scientific questions that will take decades to unravel.
- uast23 15y agoJust for your first line, feeling pressed is different from feeling depressed, and I think that the article is referring to "feeling depressed". It is more or less trying to convey the same message as yours which conveys doing something instead of sitting idle. It's just that you want to get things done in a hurry. See the analogies to believe - Gordon Gekko, Bill Gates.
- alnayyir 15y agoThis is exemplary of the materialistic mindset that some people will get wrapped up in at times, missing the real point. Disclaimers: I am an engineer, materialist, and a nihilist.
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- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- tectonic 15y agoHey reasonattlm, I just read through your comment history and it looks like every single comment is about life extension. While I sorely hope that your optimism turns out to be warranted, I also hope that you're living and enjoying your life today, on the off-chance that it's not.
- dasil003 15y agoI hope his optimism is unwarranted. While I certainly would have a hard time turning down the opportunity to live longer, I don't think greatly extending peoples lives will be good for the individuals, society or the planet. Life and death is a beautiful cycle; not something to be defeated due an overwhelming fear of death.
- loire280 15y agoDeath can never be defeated - besides accidents and catastrophes, there's always entropy - but life can have some interesting twists if your life extends longer and your mind extends further. However, I think even a few small changes to mental capacity or an extension of life expectancy beyond 2-3x will make the recipients something other than human. Our brains have many quirks that limit our ability to reason, understand, or act rationally, but those quirks are essential to our humanity and our ability to love. I think for this reason alone, few will elect to have very drastic changes made to their minds or their lives.
- sans-serif 15y agoWould you have said this back when human lifespan averaged 40? Thanks but I think I'd sign up.
- reasonattlm 15y agoYou'll have to explain a little harder how the great suffering currently afflicting hundreds of millions of people due to aging is both beautiful and good for them. Or the hundred thousand people who died from aging in the past 24 hours: was it good for them as individuals? How about their families and companions? In short, I don't think you've thought your position through particularly carefully.
- robryan 15y agoWhile living longer certainly benefits the individual I don't think it's a sure thing that would benefit society as a whole. Certainly it's a debate that would have to go hand in hand with any major breakthroughs in the area.
- BrandonM 15y agoWe already live in a golden age. Many people spend their time wishing they had lived in some romanticized past; you seem to take the opposite approach. Each new technology brings with it both novelty/convenience and a nostalgia for the past. Because of recorded music, we had a long stretch where few people knew the joy of creating and sharing music themselves. The whole point of the article was to enjoy the journey. I hope you don't spend yours with your sights set on a distant (perhaps impossible) goal and miss out on the joys of living your life as it is today.
- pjscott 15y agoYour advice, while technically good, is a remarkable non-sequitur. We live in some pretty amazing times, and personally I have a happy life. Why would I want to become increasingly frail and infirm, and then die? It is precisely because I place such a high value on my life that I don't want to have it cut tragically short.
- yters 15y agoWe'll never live for ever due to entropy. Obey physics, it's the law!
- pjscott 15y agoI would happily settle for a few thousand years. Even a few hundred would be a major improvement over the grim darkness of the current wither-and-die-young system.
- yters 15y agoIt's all a matter of what you do with the time. Back a couple hundred years ago our lifespans would be undreamed up, we're living roughly twice as long as your average medieval peasant. But it is still too short! I'm skeptical we'll ever have enough, given that we also live in the most affluent society in all of history yet we complain about not having enough.
- danenania 15y agoEveryone and everything dies/decays/is destroyed eventually. Does it really matter if it happens after 100 years or a 1000 years or even a million? The universe will continue existing and existing and whatever time you were alive will become less than a speck of dust in relation. ¨Life is preparation for death¨ no matter how long it lasts. We are beings of transience and impermanence. If you aren´t satisfied with 80 years, you won´t be satisfied with 8000.
- nitrogen 15y agoWe are beings of transience and impermanence. If you aren´t satisfied with 80 years, you won´t be satisfied with 8000. Satisfaction and permanence are not binary attributes. One needn't find complete contentment in any arbitrary lifespan to conclude that one could be more satisfied with a long life span than a short one. Plus, the longer one lives, the more likely it is that some true form of permanent conscious existence may be discovered and/or invented.