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> Peter Thiel once said something along the lines that nobody is against aging research, because in practice what you’re solving for are problems everybody want
by resoluteteeth 5y ago
> Peter Thiel once said something along the lines that nobody is against aging research, because in practice what you’re solving for are problems everybody wants cures for, like Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s, etc.
> I often think about that quote because aging is such an intractably hard problem, we’ve sort of collectively rationalized it as something “good”. You see it in many religious traditions. In the zeitgeist. That somehow death gives life meaning. Makes it good.
> But I’ve never found anybody who thinks cancer is a good thing. Nobody sane at least.
This seems to be suggesting that people (have convinced themselves that they) dislike aging research because they have convinced themself that aging is good, which... I just don't think is true? I think most people would like to not get old, but they are just skeptical about this research.
In other words, aging research doesn't have a bad reputation because people are morally opposed to aging research, it has a bad reputation because it's just pretty dismal as science.
A lot of aging research makes assumptions (such as the "programmed aging" theory) that are widely believed to be false by mainstream scientists, simply because that's the only scenario in which it is actually feasible to "solve" aging at our current level of technology.
As Peter Thiel said in that quote, most people want to solve diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer.
The problem with a lot of aging research is that we haven't solved these diseases, and it seems like we simply can't solve them yet because we don't understand enough about how the human body works. We can't even prevent hair from turning gray or (in a satisfactory way) balding. The idea that we can seriously slow or stop aging overall at a point in time where we can't even solve these individual diseases frankly seems pretty unlikely.
- ericmcer 5y agoPeople don't want to get old, sick and die, but they also recognize that removing death across our entire species would have scary implications.
- adamisom 5y agoYes. I expect some variation of “society needs death” to be 100x more common than more careful considerations of whether aging research has questionable models
- TheRealNGenius 5y agoConsider if world leaders didn't die. That would potentially mean an indefinite rule in the cases where there is no peaceful transfer of power. That means no change. This means being governed by an increasingly old person, whose ideas and beliefs haven't changed since the stone ages. "[Death] is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." Edit: By downvoting without commenting why you disagree, you're only further reinforcing my point. Think about it.
- krageon 5y ago> That means no change. This presupposes people cannot change, which you haven't supported sufficiently with your argument.
- selestify 5y agoThe general population has indeed been observed to be resistant to change. Max Planck noted that science advances one funeral at a time, and the same appears to be true of social norms as well (e.g. really old people being forgiven for blatantly racist behavior because they’re “from a different time.”) The fact that a minority of people are able to adapt their views over time does not change how the general population does not do this.
- TheRealNGenius 5y agoLet's not forget that one old wanker is presumably responsible for the ongoing bloodshed and travesty in Ukraine
- lenkite 5y agoOh but he has changed - changed for the worse.
- D-Coder 5y agoSo everyone gets the death penalty instead.
- Dudeman112 5y ago>In other words, aging research doesn't have a bad reputation because people are morally opposed to aging research, it has a bad reputation because it's just pretty dismal as science The quality of the science has nothing to do with it. Being against aging has the same emotional reaction from people in general as pissing in public. That's not how people would react if their issue was with the science.
- 0_gravitas 5y agoI've seen many many people (even on this site!) romanticize death.