3 ms·

So, we are seriously embarking on a path where normal aging is pathologized? Where we ultimately will view a normal biological life span as insufficient, a life

So, we are seriously embarking on a path where normal aging is pathologized? Where we ultimately will view a normal biological life span as insufficient, a lifespan that is encoded in our genes through a multitude different mechanisms over billions of years. Mechanisms that we barely know the outlines of. So, just like I nowadays must strive to get a sense of the real person behind all the makeup, lip filler and botox, I should in future expect to have to differentiate between real people and synthetically and genetically enhanced such? Well, I'm sure there is a big market opportunity here. But I'm not sure I like it.

jackblemming 5y ago
I'm not a big fan of your appeal to nature fallacy (which has been used to attack LGBT people), but you're welcome to your opinion. Please just don't oppress those who disagree. Especially when this type of research can save lives.
- stareatgoats 5y ago
  Agree appeal to nature can be misplaced, but this is not your run-of-the-mill such. We are talking about (or at least what I am talking about) changing the genetic makeup of humans in order to allow a longer lifespan. It is actually one of the cases where appeal to nature is rational, and not a fallacy. It is not the same as saying men and women are "designed" by nature to mate with each other, therefore only men and women can have sex (nature has plenty of evidence that same-sex-sex btw, so appeal to nature in that case is a actually double fallacy). You final line is puzzling. How could I possibly "oppress those who disagree"? Because I assume you can't mean that I should simply shut up? As for saving lives, I'm all for saving people from dying before their time is up. But it is probably time to accept that we can't go on curing people forever. Just like a tree falls over and goes back to the ecosystem after a set number of years (give or take), we as humans are not constructed to live much longer than 100 years (give or take), and that is not a tragedy. It is life.
  - jackblemming 5y ago
    >nature has plenty of evidence that same-sex-sex btw, so appeal to nature in that case is a actually double fallacy I said LGBT, not "gay" on purpose. >Because I assume you can't mean that I should simply shut up? I mean don't vote to ban research, much like many did for stem cell research which probably collectively set back all of humanity.
nikanj 5y ago
Telling someone they should die of old age because it’s Natural? How is that any different from telling people to die of diabetes or cancer?
- stareatgoats 5y ago
  Consider for a moment that everything is different in some aspect. Nothing discernible is the same. So, your question is certainly valid: how is a biologically encoded lifespan different than trying to avoid death by treating various illnesses? But your comment seems to imply that there is no valid difference, to which I beg to differ. The essential difference is this: the quest to extend human life span beyond the encoding found in the genes of our species is obviously different than trying to essentially reach the predestined life encoded in the genes of our species. This is why we experience tragedy when someone "dies before their time", especially children, but also young adults and so on up until the non-tragic but nonetheless sad deaths of 100-yearolds, who had lived a "long and fulfilling life". I'm sure this does not convince the hardened transhumanist of the qualitative difference, but there you go. It's how I look at it anyway, without knowing exactly how we can control the current scramble to obtain and exploit the crucial IPs in this domain.
- magpi3 5y ago
  We live on a finite planet with finite resources. What do you do with children if immortality becomes a thing? Should we sterilize people? Kill the young if it gets too much? Or maybe a good old fashioned war between the "old" and young will solve the problem. Look at what's happening in Japan, where the young struggle to get a job because their elders are retiring older and older. Now imagine, they never retire because they are immortal. The only way someone dies is by accident of if someone kills them. How would such a world not devolve into a dystopia?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
PartiallyTyped 5y ago
This reply is certainly not up to HN standards, referring to a) the appeal to nature, and b) some vain appeal to purity. To show the absurdity of the position, consider a person who undergoes Lasik surgery, or wears glasses, who need to have surgeries for scoliosis, consider color blindness. Under the appeal to nature, we should not be helping people for any of these issues precisely because we going against what nature intended. This also includes caesarean surgery, absence of which could leave millions of women and newborn children to die.
- stareatgoats 5y ago
  While I appreciate that you may have a fuller insight into what constitutes HN standards than me, it doesn't seem like that honestly. This is because you paint what we call a strawman view of my position, and argue against that. It is common among students probably because one has recently discovered the power of abstraction and reduction, but gets gradually more rare as you approach my age (approaching 70 years old), where these kind of argument tricks have been dismantled a thousand times or more. Instead of assuming that I'm an idiot, maybe you should assume that I have already considered the simplest counterarguments (see sibling reply). Come to think of it, isn't there there something along those lines in the HN guidelines?
  - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
    I did not assume you are an idiot, perhaps you are projecting? Had I assumed you were one, I'd have pressed the downvote and ignored your comment because I would not have considered the discussion worthwhile. The image that you portrayed of yourself is that of a vain person, one that limits themselves to appearances instead of inner qualities such as a person's inner world, beliefs and views. You chose to express that your filter is first and foremost a superficial one, you chose to express that people who have corrections to their DNA for example are somehow less of a __real__ human here: > I should in future expect to have to differentiate between real people and synthetically and genetically enhanced such? The immediate implication of this position is that correcting a person's genes due to a slight error, e.g. androgen insensitivity due to AR mutations, makes them less of a human ergo do not deserve the same treatment and rights as everyone else. In contrast, correcting for such issues would reduce the probability of cancer in this case, enable the people to have children and avoid a whole class of DSD. You painted that portrait all the way through, nobody else. Perhaps the inability to grasp the consequences of such positions is an argument as to why I should not have bothered.
jdrc 5y ago
> where normal aging is pathologized Since time immemorial. Pretty much every religion promised eternal (after)life
- stareatgoats 5y ago
  I don't think I have come across any one religion which imagines the afterlife as anything resembling the physical existence, on the contrary: the afterlife is usually pictured as something opposite, and eternal and exalted existence vs the earthly, ephemeral one. One might actually expect there to be an objection to transhumanism on these grounds. But I haven't given that much thought honestly - I'm not religious.
  - jdrc 5y ago
    The premise is the same, the continuation of personhood in time

jackblemming 5y ago

I'm not a big fan of your appeal to nature fallacy (which has been used to attack LGBT people), but you're welcome to your opinion. Please just don't oppress those who disagree. Especially when this type of research can save lives.

stareatgoats 5y ago
Agree appeal to nature can be misplaced, but this is not your run-of-the-mill such. We are talking about (or at least what I am talking about) changing the genetic makeup of humans in order to allow a longer lifespan. It is actually one of the cases where appeal to nature is rational, and not a fallacy. It is not the same as saying men and women are "designed" by nature to mate with each other, therefore only men and women can have sex (nature has plenty of evidence that same-sex-sex btw, so appeal to nature in that case is a actually double fallacy). You final line is puzzling. How could I possibly "oppress those who disagree"? Because I assume you can't mean that I should simply shut up? As for saving lives, I'm all for saving people from dying before their time is up. But it is probably time to accept that we can't go on curing people forever. Just like a tree falls over and goes back to the ecosystem after a set number of years (give or take), we as humans are not constructed to live much longer than 100 years (give or take), and that is not a tragedy. It is life.
- jackblemming 5y ago
  >nature has plenty of evidence that same-sex-sex btw, so appeal to nature in that case is a actually double fallacy I said LGBT, not "gay" on purpose. >Because I assume you can't mean that I should simply shut up? I mean don't vote to ban research, much like many did for stem cell research which probably collectively set back all of humanity.

nikanj 5y ago

Telling someone they should die of old age because it’s Natural? How is that any different from telling people to die of diabetes or cancer?

stareatgoats 5y ago
Consider for a moment that everything is different in some aspect. Nothing discernible is the same. So, your question is certainly valid: how is a biologically encoded lifespan different than trying to avoid death by treating various illnesses? But your comment seems to imply that there is no valid difference, to which I beg to differ. The essential difference is this: the quest to extend human life span beyond the encoding found in the genes of our species is obviously different than trying to essentially reach the predestined life encoded in the genes of our species. This is why we experience tragedy when someone "dies before their time", especially children, but also young adults and so on up until the non-tragic but nonetheless sad deaths of 100-yearolds, who had lived a "long and fulfilling life". I'm sure this does not convince the hardened transhumanist of the qualitative difference, but there you go. It's how I look at it anyway, without knowing exactly how we can control the current scramble to obtain and exploit the crucial IPs in this domain.
magpi3 5y ago
We live on a finite planet with finite resources. What do you do with children if immortality becomes a thing? Should we sterilize people? Kill the young if it gets too much? Or maybe a good old fashioned war between the "old" and young will solve the problem. Look at what's happening in Japan, where the young struggle to get a job because their elders are retiring older and older. Now imagine, they never retire because they are immortal. The only way someone dies is by accident of if someone kills them. How would such a world not devolve into a dystopia?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

PartiallyTyped 5y ago

This reply is certainly not up to HN standards, referring to a) the appeal to nature, and b) some vain appeal to purity. To show the absurdity of the position, consider a person who undergoes Lasik surgery, or wears glasses, who need to have surgeries for scoliosis, consider color blindness. Under the appeal to nature, we should not be helping people for any of these issues precisely because we going against what nature intended. This also includes caesarean surgery, absence of which could leave millions of women and newborn children to die.

stareatgoats 5y ago
While I appreciate that you may have a fuller insight into what constitutes HN standards than me, it doesn't seem like that honestly. This is because you paint what we call a strawman view of my position, and argue against that. It is common among students probably because one has recently discovered the power of abstraction and reduction, but gets gradually more rare as you approach my age (approaching 70 years old), where these kind of argument tricks have been dismantled a thousand times or more. Instead of assuming that I'm an idiot, maybe you should assume that I have already considered the simplest counterarguments (see sibling reply). Come to think of it, isn't there there something along those lines in the HN guidelines?
- PartiallyTyped 5y ago
  I did not assume you are an idiot, perhaps you are projecting? Had I assumed you were one, I'd have pressed the downvote and ignored your comment because I would not have considered the discussion worthwhile. The image that you portrayed of yourself is that of a vain person, one that limits themselves to appearances instead of inner qualities such as a person's inner world, beliefs and views. You chose to express that your filter is first and foremost a superficial one, you chose to express that people who have corrections to their DNA for example are somehow less of a __real__ human here: > I should in future expect to have to differentiate between real people and synthetically and genetically enhanced such? The immediate implication of this position is that correcting a person's genes due to a slight error, e.g. androgen insensitivity due to AR mutations, makes them less of a human ergo do not deserve the same treatment and rights as everyone else. In contrast, correcting for such issues would reduce the probability of cancer in this case, enable the people to have children and avoid a whole class of DSD. You painted that portrait all the way through, nobody else. Perhaps the inability to grasp the consequences of such positions is an argument as to why I should not have bothered.

jdrc 5y ago

> where normal aging is pathologized Since time immemorial. Pretty much every religion promised eternal (after)life

stareatgoats 5y ago
I don't think I have come across any one religion which imagines the afterlife as anything resembling the physical existence, on the contrary: the afterlife is usually pictured as something opposite, and eternal and exalted existence vs the earthly, ephemeral one. One might actually expect there to be an objection to transhumanism on these grounds. But I haven't given that much thought honestly - I'm not religious.
- jdrc 5y ago
  The premise is the same, the continuation of personhood in time