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I think we’re approaching a point in human evolution where we should all be obsessed with death. Like, spending R&R time on biology. 100 years ago, it would be

I think we’re approaching a point in human evolution where we should all be obsessed with death. Like, spending R&R time on biology. 100 years ago, it would be unhealthy - it was certainly an unavoidable outcome. I had this view going through high school and college - biology/anatomy classes never interested me. They were fairly hocus pocus in my eyes - like we were scratching the surface of a world we barely understood and wouldn’t master for dozens of generations. As if a Neanderthal discovered a computer and attempted to understand how it worked - they’d get there, but the original Neanderthal would be long dead before any real answers surfaced. This changed recently. The hockey stick of progress is clearly forming in biology. With technology like CRISPR, we are starting to get the tools to reverse engineer and bend life to our will. Death doesn’t seem inevitable for my children anymore; our generation might actually be able to partially solve it - at least enough to buy the next generation enough time to fully solve it.

joeberon 5y ago
sofixa 5y ago
I don't think death is a thing that can be "solved" ( as in, it's not a problem per se and "solving" it will only cause a lot of problems). There's only a finite amount of resources on the planet after all, so we can't have everybody live for as long as they want while also making children.
- r3trohack3r 5y ago
  It’s only technically true that there are a finite number of resources on the planet. But I don’t think that’s true in any meaningful sense. This isn’t zero sum - humans are able to expand the available resources and have already demonstrated they are capable of that. We are well past earths natural carrying capacity for our species - and we have been for quite a long time. But humans have solved those problems. Yes we’ve created problems in the process, but we are solving those too. So far nothing indicates to me that humans can’t continue solving the growing pains on earth long enough to get access to the (nearly) limitless supply of resources available in the cosmos.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> This isn’t zero sum - humans are able to expand the available resources and have already demonstrated they are capable of that. Nonsense. People are getting better at accessing resources that were hard to get at. But doing so is just a symptom of the low hanging fruit running out.
    - astrange 5y ago
      We’re not going to use up all the sunlight and the US uses less water than it did in the 60s (and emits less CO2 per year than it did in the 2000s). That includes offshoring it too. Degrowth has no good evidence for it because it’s false. It’s just another version of baby boomers deciding their own children aren’t allowed to inherit their wealth.
- frontman1988 5y ago
  Living longer lives will definitely increase space travel. More people would be ready to sacrifice a few decades of their lives if that means space exploration. We would eventually colonize the solar system. I feel if we could literally halt death a lot of hedonism would stop. That YOLO feeling that plagues most of humanity would mostly go away. We would suddenly be a species with a clear aim. To know more about the universe and ourselves. We would find meaning in our lives and hopefully wisen up a little.
MegaButts 5y ago
I'd say avoiding death is about as likely as overtaking the speed of light. It seems like science fiction to me. No matter how much progress we make, we might be trying to do something that's literally impossible. That doesn't mean we can't research it, and certainly we can discover things that are useful. But there's really no reason to believe immortality is achievable. And honestly there are lots of works of fiction on why it's actually bad for humanity.
- LandStander 5y ago
  I don't want true immortality, but it would be momentous if we could significantly extend people's active lifespan. Imagine if 100 was the new 50, and 200 was the new 100.
  - LocalH 5y ago
    For every person who would benefit from that, there would be someone harmed by that. We should instead focus on ways to alter our very perception of time - paying attention to the actual passage of time will usually slow it down for you. Time is very fluid for us, most of us just don’t realize it.
  - aaron_m04 5y ago
    Counterpoint: imagine if we got 50 extra years of extremely low quality life at great financial cost, and the courts decided that withholding the longevity treatment from anyone was a crime. The result would be lots of misery and a wealth transfer from regular people to the medical and pharma industry.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    I think this misses the point of the essay completely. Hoping for life extension like that is simply a form of procrastination. What is it you hope to do better if only you could have more time? The hourglass has already been turn over, what are you going to do before the sand runs out? Go!
    - bombcar 5y ago
bambax 5y ago
Death can't be "solved" because it's not a problem, it's a solution. If we defeat death (and we may) then a host of terrifying problems will arise from that, starting from the sharing of resources, who gets to enjoy that technology, etc. Defeating death is a great plot idea for a dystopian novel, but in reality it's the ultimate selfish pursuit.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I very much doubt that most people will actually live forever even if it becomes possible. At some point you are just done, and if you accept that, you’ll die. It may be at 50, 100, 150, maybe 200. But I don’t think humans are mentally made for spans of time much larger than that.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    Greg Egan's novel "Incandescence" has a short story prequel/teaser named "Riding the Crocodile" which sets the backdrop for the novel in the form of a post-human couple's last big journey, they set out to do something and at the end of the story they decide that even though their success opens up many exciting new possibilities they are not the ones to pursue those possibilities and so they just slip away and die. https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html
- rowanG077 5y ago
  And any other technology is not the ultimate selfish pursuit? The reason we have nice electricity, cities, running water is purely so we can live in more comfort. This is just as, if not more, selfish as wanting a longer healthy lifespan.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Was that the original reason for Western cities? They were famously diseased and covered in horse poop until modernity happened. But public goods like that are shared with other people; it’s not like you keep all the water in your single-family house. That house though…
bsenftner 5y ago
We need a maturity revolution across the entire globe for any technological immortality to be created that is not as a maximum profit seeking corporate nightmare. I suspect we're at a point technologically we can finally see the horizon, but like a mirage it is further away than it appears.
arboghast 5y ago
I reached the same conclusion as you when I became a biology student and started to learn about morphogenesis, epigenetic reprogramming, DNA repair enzymes, etc. I wouldn’t have said that a few years ago and would have accepted my fate. However, now my perspective has changed because we’re on the verge of a revolution in biotech (we’ll, one could argue we are in the middle) where we understand enough of the aging process - not all of it - to reverse it or at least slow it down. However, I’m really disappointed with some of the people in the field such as David Sinclair who have become snake oil salesman and almost charlatans, pushing inconclusive science as facts (e.g. resveratrol, sirtuins, etc) and I think it hurts the field more than anything else. Interesting years ahead, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t mind living a few more decades as long as I’m healthy and active.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> I think we’re approaching a point in human evolution where we should all be obsessed with death. Like, spending R&R time on biology. I believe we are going in that direction in general. Then one day some crazy person wakes up and decides to wage a war and kill thousands for some fantasy, threatening the rest of the world with nukes. So at the end of the day biology itself is not enough, preventing climate change is not enough. Similar to what we have in IT security, we need to have a way for coordinated global action that would correspond to new threats. As a humanity, we more or less started to learn how to deal with a global pandemic, what are the gravest mistakes, how the governments must not communicate with the public and so on. We are constantly learning and evolving.
javajosh 5y ago
Of all the paths to human annihilation, immortality is certainly the most interesting one.
kkfx 5y ago
In certain phase of life IMO probably most of us think about death, but until we are able to became "pure intellects" who can switch from an artificial-biological body to another witch means live forever from the single human being point of view we will keep dying no matter how we try to change. One thing too many forget is that being alive is not the single target. Being alive but for instance in a wheelchair might not be that desirable, and that the most stupid example. So we add new category of research to push for instance old age effects in the future, and since we can't do that much we just mock them up like "hey menopause can be nice with 'treatments'" or "hey thanks to analgesics we can ignore back pain, articular pain etc" masking them under the carpet and often if we mask too much shortening our active life. The most important fact IMVHO is living to live, enjoying their life, and that's the issue: balancing the today/short term pleasure to the longer term ones. I have no recipe for that, probably an entire life is needed to find the right balance and once found that will not apply much for a younger self so the game began again.
jtsiskin 5y ago
I think you would like The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant - https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
kaba0 5y ago
We are still absolutely on the Neanderthal discovered the computer level. Even with CRISPR, how are you going to replace existing structures that doesn’t naturally grow continuously, like our very brains? They accumulate all sorts of waste materials and you have absolutely no way to replace that specific axon with a new one in its place. That would also require complete control on creating new proteins, where we are absolutely at the beginning, and not even that may be enough. We are basically made with single-use components, not everything is just a constantly dividing bunch of cells.

joeberon 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

I don't think death is a thing that can be "solved" ( as in, it's not a problem per se and "solving" it will only cause a lot of problems). There's only a finite amount of resources on the planet after all, so we can't have everybody live for as long as they want while also making children.

r3trohack3r 5y ago
It’s only technically true that there are a finite number of resources on the planet. But I don’t think that’s true in any meaningful sense. This isn’t zero sum - humans are able to expand the available resources and have already demonstrated they are capable of that. We are well past earths natural carrying capacity for our species - and we have been for quite a long time. But humans have solved those problems. Yes we’ve created problems in the process, but we are solving those too. So far nothing indicates to me that humans can’t continue solving the growing pains on earth long enough to get access to the (nearly) limitless supply of resources available in the cosmos.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> This isn’t zero sum - humans are able to expand the available resources and have already demonstrated they are capable of that. Nonsense. People are getting better at accessing resources that were hard to get at. But doing so is just a symptom of the low hanging fruit running out.
  - astrange 5y ago
    We’re not going to use up all the sunlight and the US uses less water than it did in the 60s (and emits less CO2 per year than it did in the 2000s). That includes offshoring it too. Degrowth has no good evidence for it because it’s false. It’s just another version of baby boomers deciding their own children aren’t allowed to inherit their wealth.
frontman1988 5y ago
Living longer lives will definitely increase space travel. More people would be ready to sacrifice a few decades of their lives if that means space exploration. We would eventually colonize the solar system. I feel if we could literally halt death a lot of hedonism would stop. That YOLO feeling that plagues most of humanity would mostly go away. We would suddenly be a species with a clear aim. To know more about the universe and ourselves. We would find meaning in our lives and hopefully wisen up a little.

MegaButts 5y ago

I'd say avoiding death is about as likely as overtaking the speed of light. It seems like science fiction to me. No matter how much progress we make, we might be trying to do something that's literally impossible. That doesn't mean we can't research it, and certainly we can discover things that are useful. But there's really no reason to believe immortality is achievable. And honestly there are lots of works of fiction on why it's actually bad for humanity.

LandStander 5y ago
I don't want true immortality, but it would be momentous if we could significantly extend people's active lifespan. Imagine if 100 was the new 50, and 200 was the new 100.
- LocalH 5y ago
  For every person who would benefit from that, there would be someone harmed by that. We should instead focus on ways to alter our very perception of time - paying attention to the actual passage of time will usually slow it down for you. Time is very fluid for us, most of us just don’t realize it.
- aaron_m04 5y ago
  Counterpoint: imagine if we got 50 extra years of extremely low quality life at great financial cost, and the courts decided that withholding the longevity treatment from anyone was a crime. The result would be lots of misery and a wealth transfer from regular people to the medical and pharma industry.
- phkahler 5y ago
  I think this misses the point of the essay completely. Hoping for life extension like that is simply a form of procrastination. What is it you hope to do better if only you could have more time? The hourglass has already been turn over, what are you going to do before the sand runs out? Go!
  - bombcar 5y ago

bambax 5y ago

Death can't be "solved" because it's not a problem, it's a solution. If we defeat death (and we may) then a host of terrifying problems will arise from that, starting from the sharing of resources, who gets to enjoy that technology, etc. Defeating death is a great plot idea for a dystopian novel, but in reality it's the ultimate selfish pursuit.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Aeolun 5y ago
I very much doubt that most people will actually live forever even if it becomes possible. At some point you are just done, and if you accept that, you’ll die. It may be at 50, 100, 150, maybe 200. But I don’t think humans are mentally made for spans of time much larger than that.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  Greg Egan's novel "Incandescence" has a short story prequel/teaser named "Riding the Crocodile" which sets the backdrop for the novel in the form of a post-human couple's last big journey, they set out to do something and at the end of the story they decide that even though their success opens up many exciting new possibilities they are not the ones to pursue those possibilities and so they just slip away and die. https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html https://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html
rowanG077 5y ago
And any other technology is not the ultimate selfish pursuit? The reason we have nice electricity, cities, running water is purely so we can live in more comfort. This is just as, if not more, selfish as wanting a longer healthy lifespan.
- astrange 5y ago
  Was that the original reason for Western cities? They were famously diseased and covered in horse poop until modernity happened. But public goods like that are shared with other people; it’s not like you keep all the water in your single-family house. That house though…

bsenftner 5y ago

We need a maturity revolution across the entire globe for any technological immortality to be created that is not as a maximum profit seeking corporate nightmare. I suspect we're at a point technologically we can finally see the horizon, but like a mirage it is further away than it appears.

arboghast 5y ago

I reached the same conclusion as you when I became a biology student and started to learn about morphogenesis, epigenetic reprogramming, DNA repair enzymes, etc. I wouldn’t have said that a few years ago and would have accepted my fate. However, now my perspective has changed because we’re on the verge of a revolution in biotech (we’ll, one could argue we are in the middle) where we understand enough of the aging process - not all of it - to reverse it or at least slow it down. However, I’m really disappointed with some of the people in the field such as David Sinclair who have become snake oil salesman and almost charlatans, pushing inconclusive science as facts (e.g. resveratrol, sirtuins, etc) and I think it hurts the field more than anything else. Interesting years ahead, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t mind living a few more decades as long as I’m healthy and active.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

> I think we’re approaching a point in human evolution where we should all be obsessed with death. Like, spending R&R time on biology. I believe we are going in that direction in general. Then one day some crazy person wakes up and decides to wage a war and kill thousands for some fantasy, threatening the rest of the world with nukes. So at the end of the day biology itself is not enough, preventing climate change is not enough. Similar to what we have in IT security, we need to have a way for coordinated global action that would correspond to new threats. As a humanity, we more or less started to learn how to deal with a global pandemic, what are the gravest mistakes, how the governments must not communicate with the public and so on. We are constantly learning and evolving.

javajosh 5y ago

Of all the paths to human annihilation, immortality is certainly the most interesting one.

kkfx 5y ago

In certain phase of life IMO probably most of us think about death, but until we are able to became "pure intellects" who can switch from an artificial-biological body to another witch means live forever from the single human being point of view we will keep dying no matter how we try to change. One thing too many forget is that being alive is not the single target. Being alive but for instance in a wheelchair might not be that desirable, and that the most stupid example. So we add new category of research to push for instance old age effects in the future, and since we can't do that much we just mock them up like "hey menopause can be nice with 'treatments'" or "hey thanks to analgesics we can ignore back pain, articular pain etc" masking them under the carpet and often if we mask too much shortening our active life. The most important fact IMVHO is living to live, enjoying their life, and that's the issue: balancing the today/short term pleasure to the longer term ones. I have no recipe for that, probably an entire life is needed to find the right balance and once found that will not apply much for a younger self so the game began again.

jtsiskin 5y ago

I think you would like The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant - https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

kaba0 5y ago

We are still absolutely on the Neanderthal discovered the computer level. Even with CRISPR, how are you going to replace existing structures that doesn’t naturally grow continuously, like our very brains? They accumulate all sorts of waste materials and you have absolutely no way to replace that specific axon with a new one in its place. That would also require complete control on creating new proteins, where we are absolutely at the beginning, and not even that may be enough. We are basically made with single-use components, not everything is just a constantly dividing bunch of cells.