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You'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 t

You'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.

CamperBob 15y ago
Put it this way, I'd like to see human mortality conquered, but I don't want to be alive when it happens. If you think class warfare is a problem now, wait until only the so-called "rich" get to live forever. The others will tear the world apart.
- pjscott 15y ago
  Why would only rich people get to live longer? Advanced technology has tended to get cheaper over time, often dramatically. I'm not saying that things wouldn't be scary and tumultuous for a while, but the alternative is to slowly sicken and decay into oblivion before you've had even a single century of life. This should not be a tough decision!
  - CamperBob 15y ago
    Yeah, it gets cheaper over time, but there will probably be at least a few years during which the technology will be more like private space travel. Imagine if the few people who've been able to book passage to the ISS were instead the only ones who could afford immortality. Those are not going to be fun years.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    Advanced technology has tended to get cheaper over time, often dramatically That's because as far as technology in the software industry goes, the bottleneck has been our own knowledge. That's why space travel to inhabitable planets is nothing more than an utopia right now, because for achieving the speed of light we need efficient fuel that can power a space-ship for several years. As far as this problem goes, our knowledge of the universe is not the only bottleneck -- building such a ship will also be freaking expensive in terms of material resources consumed. You really shouldn't confuse technological advancements in silicon chips manufacturing with anything else. Moore's law is severely limited to a niche ;-) the alternative is to slowly sicken and decay into oblivion before you've had even a single century of life. This should not be a tough decision! Advocates of immortality are completely oblivious to the social challenges this will bring. First of all -- nobody will be able to have children anymore, since that will over-populate the planet. It's already happening since humans don't have natural enemies and we live in times of peace. Yet as a species we feel the need to have children. Personally I would give my life just so my 1 year-old boy could live a happy life. And while it saddens me that one day he too will be dead, I don't want to rob him of one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling purposes in life -- that of raising children of his own. Of course, this is a problem of humanity in general -- we tend to be selfish mother-fuckers.
    - nova 15y ago
      Let me humbly suggest this video: http://vimeo.com/17513355 http://vimeo.com/17513355
    - jodrellblank 15y ago
      Advocates of immortality are completely oblivious to the social challenges this will bring. Not oblivious to them, but social challenges are so much more fixable than being dead that it should be a no-brainer.
      - bad_user 15y ago
        Personally I think fixing death problems is only a matter of technological progress. And in general technological problems are much easier than social ones as social problems sometimes do not admit technological fixes ;) With the problem I outlined above, modifying humans to not feel the need for children would make us much less human than replacing our body parts with pieces made from silicon. It is easy imagining living a 1000 happy years, but would you experience happiness at all if you were less human? And I am aware that happiness could be faked, but then what incentive would you have for living a good life and accomplishing stuff instead of living like a vegetable, as many drug addicts are doing? And if you can't be happy, since that's the ultimate goal of everybody, than what's the point to all this? In my humble opinion, cheating death is the easy part.
        jodrellblank 15y ago
        modifying humans to not feel the need for children would make us much less human than replacing our body parts with pieces made from silicon. It is easy imagining living a 1000 happy years, but would you experience happiness at all if you were less human? When you rephrase that to: "150,000 people die every day, and you want that to continue because changing the definition of 'human' feels a bit weird" it starts to look like less of a compelling argument. There are lots of reasons why developing life extension technologies will cause social and economic upheavals and potentially huge ripples, but fear of possible problems is not enough to make me say "well, I'm glad people died to avoid those problems". And I am aware that happiness could be faked, but then what incentive would you have for living a good life and accomplishing stuff instead of living like a vegetable, as many drug addicts are doing? Am I a drug addict today? Why would I be more likely to be a drug addict in 100 years? And if you can't be happy, since that's the ultimate goal of everybody, than what's the point to all this? Because we can (maybe) and because if we can, it's worse if we don't.
flipside 15y ago
Children only come into their own after their parents have left the picture, however it is that happens. Can you imagine being a part of the younger generation when immortality is discovered or extended longevity? Would jobs ever open up, or promotions be available? Nobody will retire at the top, so there will be extremely little turnover. How can the young hope to surpass the old if the old hold all the keys and never let go? Sure, aging is scary, but have you really thought through all the implications of curing it? Heck, have you even thought about why it exists in the first place? There are many cancer lines that never age, so why haven't organisms evolved that never get old? If you have an answer, I'd love to hear it.
- reasonattlm 15y ago
  Evolutionary explanation for the origin of aging: we age because the world changes. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/we-age-because-the-world-changes.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/we-age-because-th... And the fundamental mechanisms of aging got their start in single celled life, very early on. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/02/aubrey-de-grey-5.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/02/aubrey-de-grey-5.... None of which is a good reason for suffering aging when we could do something about it: it's just the mechanistic explanation for what is.
  - flipside 15y ago
    Interesting articles, sure, but I wish you'd addressed societal and generational impact (you can skip overpopulation concerns). Sure, we age because the world changes, but in case you haven't noticed, the rate of change in the human world is accelerating. It strikes me as a bad idea to bet on trends that are on a collision course by their very nature. Maybe there is a way to reconcile extreme longevity with human society, but if there is, I sure haven't heard it or found it on that website.

CamperBob 15y ago

Put it this way, I'd like to see human mortality conquered, but I don't want to be alive when it happens. If you think class warfare is a problem now, wait until only the so-called "rich" get to live forever. The others will tear the world apart.

pjscott 15y ago
Why would only rich people get to live longer? Advanced technology has tended to get cheaper over time, often dramatically. I'm not saying that things wouldn't be scary and tumultuous for a while, but the alternative is to slowly sicken and decay into oblivion before you've had even a single century of life. This should not be a tough decision!
- CamperBob 15y ago
  Yeah, it gets cheaper over time, but there will probably be at least a few years during which the technology will be more like private space travel. Imagine if the few people who've been able to book passage to the ISS were instead the only ones who could afford immortality. Those are not going to be fun years.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Advanced technology has tended to get cheaper over time, often dramatically That's because as far as technology in the software industry goes, the bottleneck has been our own knowledge. That's why space travel to inhabitable planets is nothing more than an utopia right now, because for achieving the speed of light we need efficient fuel that can power a space-ship for several years. As far as this problem goes, our knowledge of the universe is not the only bottleneck -- building such a ship will also be freaking expensive in terms of material resources consumed. You really shouldn't confuse technological advancements in silicon chips manufacturing with anything else. Moore's law is severely limited to a niche ;-) the alternative is to slowly sicken and decay into oblivion before you've had even a single century of life. This should not be a tough decision! Advocates of immortality are completely oblivious to the social challenges this will bring. First of all -- nobody will be able to have children anymore, since that will over-populate the planet. It's already happening since humans don't have natural enemies and we live in times of peace. Yet as a species we feel the need to have children. Personally I would give my life just so my 1 year-old boy could live a happy life. And while it saddens me that one day he too will be dead, I don't want to rob him of one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling purposes in life -- that of raising children of his own. Of course, this is a problem of humanity in general -- we tend to be selfish mother-fuckers.
  - nova 15y ago
    Let me humbly suggest this video: http://vimeo.com/17513355 http://vimeo.com/17513355
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    Advocates of immortality are completely oblivious to the social challenges this will bring. Not oblivious to them, but social challenges are so much more fixable than being dead that it should be a no-brainer.
    - bad_user 15y ago
      Personally I think fixing death problems is only a matter of technological progress. And in general technological problems are much easier than social ones as social problems sometimes do not admit technological fixes ;) With the problem I outlined above, modifying humans to not feel the need for children would make us much less human than replacing our body parts with pieces made from silicon. It is easy imagining living a 1000 happy years, but would you experience happiness at all if you were less human? And I am aware that happiness could be faked, but then what incentive would you have for living a good life and accomplishing stuff instead of living like a vegetable, as many drug addicts are doing? And if you can't be happy, since that's the ultimate goal of everybody, than what's the point to all this? In my humble opinion, cheating death is the easy part.
      - jodrellblank 15y ago
        modifying humans to not feel the need for children would make us much less human than replacing our body parts with pieces made from silicon. It is easy imagining living a 1000 happy years, but would you experience happiness at all if you were less human? When you rephrase that to: "150,000 people die every day, and you want that to continue because changing the definition of 'human' feels a bit weird" it starts to look like less of a compelling argument. There are lots of reasons why developing life extension technologies will cause social and economic upheavals and potentially huge ripples, but fear of possible problems is not enough to make me say "well, I'm glad people died to avoid those problems". And I am aware that happiness could be faked, but then what incentive would you have for living a good life and accomplishing stuff instead of living like a vegetable, as many drug addicts are doing? Am I a drug addict today? Why would I be more likely to be a drug addict in 100 years? And if you can't be happy, since that's the ultimate goal of everybody, than what's the point to all this? Because we can (maybe) and because if we can, it's worse if we don't.

flipside 15y ago

Children only come into their own after their parents have left the picture, however it is that happens. Can you imagine being a part of the younger generation when immortality is discovered or extended longevity? Would jobs ever open up, or promotions be available? Nobody will retire at the top, so there will be extremely little turnover. How can the young hope to surpass the old if the old hold all the keys and never let go? Sure, aging is scary, but have you really thought through all the implications of curing it? Heck, have you even thought about why it exists in the first place? There are many cancer lines that never age, so why haven't organisms evolved that never get old? If you have an answer, I'd love to hear it.

reasonattlm 15y ago
Evolutionary explanation for the origin of aging: we age because the world changes. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/we-age-because-the-world-changes.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/we-age-because-th... And the fundamental mechanisms of aging got their start in single celled life, very early on. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/02/aubrey-de-grey-5.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/02/aubrey-de-grey-5.... None of which is a good reason for suffering aging when we could do something about it: it's just the mechanistic explanation for what is.
- flipside 15y ago
  Interesting articles, sure, but I wish you'd addressed societal and generational impact (you can skip overpopulation concerns). Sure, we age because the world changes, but in case you haven't noticed, the rate of change in the human world is accelerating. It strikes me as a bad idea to bet on trends that are on a collision course by their very nature. Maybe there is a way to reconcile extreme longevity with human society, but if there is, I sure haven't heard it or found it on that website.