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In case it's insightful, I've correspondingly never understood the common contentment with death. The world is an incredible place, and there's so much to exper

In case it's insightful, I've correspondingly never understood the common contentment with death. The world is an incredible place, and there's so much to experience and do. If I had the time there's hundreds of careers I could spend a lifetime in each trying to develop mastery. I think I could live a thousand lives with the people I care about and not be done. I've had to choose one life, and it's a nice one, but if it wasn't for some limit forced upon me, if it was really my choice, then there's a lot more I'd like to do. I suspect in hundreds or thousands of years we'll look back at age-related death culturally the same way we look at infant mortality during the medieval ages: commonly accepted as part of life at the time, but unnecessary and completely solvable in retrospective. I think fear is the wrong word per-say. If it's something I can't change, that's fine. But if there's an avenue to change it, even if unlikely, why not try?

xlii 4y ago
For a counter thought: while I absolutely agree with you in terms of richness of life, I don’t think pursuing endless life is a sound idea. As parent poster wrote, we like nostalgia, because we clutch to our experiences. We compare them instead of collecting it. On the other side the more we experience something the more we stall or get bored. Even with other people - with increase of lifespan we also increased number of divorces, lost connections etc. That doesn’t make us happier. One could argue that we, as humans, suffer more today from out deteriorating bodies, than people in medieval time, when it was shorter, and that we suffer more psychologically due to increased influx of information, global conscience and artificial constructs we build every day. Resources would also be an issue, so even if immortality would be obtainable it’d be either reserved for the richest or would divide people with almost impassable line splitting centuries of servitude and centuries of indulgence. So to answer your question - why not? Because it’ll bring suffer to many on many levels except for a blessed few and we should focus first on making life great for everyone present before trying to make it infinitely longer. Joking lightly (as subject is very deep) - it’s somewhat useful skill to know when to get off the stage.
- Rubinsalamander 4y ago
  It would not only be for the rich. Healthcare cost are incredibly expensive especially later in live so governments have a strong inventive to provide it for everyone. Also people wont have to retire anymore (also great for government) The most expensive part about it would probably be research, but since every person on the planet is a potential user and there a big savings in Healthcare and Pension i don't see costs being a problem. Humans dont progress in terms of biological evolution anymore but instead technologically. The increased lifespan would allow scientist to master multiple fields which would be great for progress.
  - xlii 4y ago
    Access to “high end” care (which I suppose would be one) is already high cost which is not that accessible even with technology presence. As of 2019 1/3 of world’s population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water. Would they be glad that instead of clean water and sanitary conditions they were granted endless life? It’s nice to focus on optimistic outcomes but except for genius scientists world is full of mobsters, greedy bankers and ruthless corporation heads. They’d had a chance for longevity way sooner than the best of scientists (who have “infinite memory” trait, which isn’t true even for the healthiest of humans). Sure, we’re speculating (and it’s fun) but I’d invite to mix at least 30% of “what could go wrong” as part of the context. Let’s have a thought experiment: who would be the first to get such treatment - Nobel prize winner or a dictator? What would be the route, who would pay for that, would they even want that (as that’s not guaranteed).
    - Rubinsalamander 4y ago
      Dictator could pay more for it but would probably be to paranoid to actually do it until its proven technologically. So my bet would be on the Noble Prize winner because of curiosity and good connections to the people working on the technology. If the technology first emerges you could probably get it quite cheaply because its not proven yet. Afterwards there will be a scarity due to everyone wanting it which will drive prices up. In the long run it becomes a free commodity due to being a net saving for governments. But even if the rich and ruthless get it first, that doesnt matter much in the long run. Medical improvements tend to get cheaper with time. The incentives are there to provide it to everyone. And especially so in a democracy.
dcow 4y ago
If we don’t die we don’t evolve. If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. I do feel the pull on my heartstrings in your comment (wouldn’t that be wonderful), but an engineer will expand to fit as much time as you give them. We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > If we don’t die we don’t evolve. Sure we will, just not in the traditional natural-selection sense. In many ways humans have "beaten" evolution by finding medical means to allow "unfit" humans to live full lives, and often pass on their genes. Evolution in the future could be via technical means, either through advancements in medicine, or with cybernetic implants. If humans could ever become intellectually & ethically pure enough to be trusted with genetic engineering ourselves, that's another form of self-made evolution. > If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. That's a very personal thing, and just an opinion. With changes in lifespan, attitudes change, purpose changes, and people change their outlook. Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s. Now life expectancy is in the 70s and 80s. And yet we don't look at this doubling of our lifespans and believe that all that extra time robs our lives of meaning. So why should that be the case if we could live to be 500? > We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation. Perhaps, but that should be a floating limit that gets adjusted upward with life expectancy. If people regularly lived to be 200, maybe 190-year-olds wouldn't be fit to serve, but a 100-year-old? Why not? And if we managed to push that to 400, those 190-year-olds would start to seem pretty relevant; it would be an injustice to deny them participation in the political system. Regardless, our idea of society itself would need a huge overhaul even if our lifespans were doubled, let alone made effectively limitless. Political participation would likely be the least of our worries.
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    > "Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s." Citation needed; because that's commonly believed to be average life expectancy - brought down by infant mortality. If you made it past ~5 years old, you had a good chance of living to 60-80. "The days of our years are threescore years and ten" - Psalm 90:10, the King James Bible. "A man will spend ten years as a child before he understands death and life. He spends another ten years acquiring the instruction by which he will be able to live. He spends another ten years earning and gaining possessions by which to live. He spends another ten years up to old age, when his heart becomes is counsellor. There remain sixty years of the whole life, which Thoth has assigned to be the man of god." - A passage from The Insinger Papyrus, in the Ptolemaic period"
epicureanideal 4y ago
I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. (Note that for those who discuss this semi-regularly, that's understood to be very different than seeking a cure for any particular age related disease, which usually we attempt to address when it's too late.). There are groups like https://www.levf.org/ https://www.levf.org/ doing some early work like Robust Mouse Rejuvenation (in mid-life for mice) to try to figure out how to help us all live much longer. https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-study-1 https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-stud...
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. Faced with their own mortality, a bunch of aging billionaires and multimillionaires tend to pour money into longevity research. I'd be very upset if governments increased spending on fighting senescence today, instead of lower-hanging fruit .
  - yreg 4y ago
    When Elon was asked why longetivity research didn't pick his interest as worthy of an investment, he said: >It is important for us to die because most of the time people don't change their mind, they just die. If you live forever, we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.
    - epicureanideal 4y ago
      The opposite could also be true though. Longer lifespans permit more people gaining education, working more years, saving more money with a longer term vision, and rising to be a new economic upper class. Short lifespans make that a very difficult to coordinate multi generational project. There are also solutions like term limits, or generational tenure limits or something that could help reduce any negative effects without needing to continue unnecessary loss of life.
fock 4y ago
> I suspect in hundreds or thousands of years we'll look back at age-related death culturally the same way we look at infant mortality during the medieval ages Currently our culture/civilisation can be expected with my life. We won't adapt as you can see by us not adapting even now for mitigation on a societal level at all. But yes, death of old age is the sorrow of our days!
tgv 4y ago
Infant mortality is quite different: we know that infants are supposed to live. Extending life is the opposite: death is the normal, even unavoidable end. The comparison is misplaced. > I could spend a lifetime in each trying to develop mastery No, you couldn't. You would still be your aged brain, not capable of learning hundreds of professions, and your frail body, not capable of replacing its cells any longer. It requires more than a better way to heat up a corpse to extend life. I'll leave you with this (paraphrase of a) quote: millions long for immortality, but don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
- c22 4y ago
  A spider might have up to 1000 babies of which only a small percentage survive. Are the unlucky hundreds of spiderlings that perish supposed to live?
  - tgv 4y ago
    Sorry, I didn't know we were talking about spiders.
    - c22 4y ago
      It's fine if you don't want to talk about spiders.
- p1esk 4y ago
  I’m amazed that people who argue against immortality often assume it will come with a frail body and an aged brain. Why? To me, the most basic form of immortality is achieved by reversal of aging, including a brain. Your body is just a machine, it’s pretty obvious it can be repaired, even if we don’t know how yet.
  - tgv 4y ago
    > even if we don’t know how yet How would you fix your brain? Its capacity is obviously limited, and tinkering with plasticity almost certainly will have unexpected and undesirable consequences. You simply won't be the same person.
JakeAl 4y ago
The notion that immortality is a good idea fades with age. Youth is more important, because as you age opportunities and options vanish and ailments and limitations arise. If you can give me immortality, health and my youth, I may reconsider.
- stanete 4y ago
  That's why what most research is trying to extend healthspan and lifespan. All drugs that are in clinical studies today are either trying to push the old part to later in life or just targeting what is making us old so we don't well, get old. The goal is to maintain that youth.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Pretty much everyone who is getting frozen want youth rather than prolonged old age, they think a cure for aging will eventually happen. I'd certainly rather live 100 years with a 20 year old body than 200 years with a 90 year old one.
afiori 4y ago
This is a beautiful feeling, but I believe it is far too easy to dismiss how risky "eliminating death" could be. To offer one example democracy would be mostly impossible in a post mortality world. Also immortal humans would be either fertile or infertile and both cases would create quite weird situations. If I can conclude with some posturing, it is part of human nature to strive toward better conditions and solve the problems around us. This might be our demise, as both giving up on that nature and following it to its logical end might lead to our end.
xd 4y ago
Without age related death people would be terrified to experience anything incase it lead to their death.. crossing the road would be an incredibly high risk activity in such a future.
lynx23 4y ago
I sincerely hope you are wrong. Not being able to accept that things go, and new things come about, feels pathological to me.
- tetris11 4y ago
  As well as getting used to the idea of losing loved ones. Anyone who doesn't feel anything from the loss of close relationship, or conversely, does not seek out to make new ones, isn't likely going to be a well adjusted noble immortal with humanities best intententions at heart (see: Man From Earth), but an immoral perpetual leach that only serves themselves (see: various vampire films).
- spuz 4y ago
  Living 1000 years wouldn't necessarily imply resistance to change. I'm not sure why you think that it would.
  - neuronic 4y ago
    I subjectively disagree from observation. Change in viewpoints, lifestyle or behavior become exceedingly rare the older people get. Also, the youth is always incapable, stupid and wrong. It's so much of a phenomenon that I wouldn't dare blaming anyone for this. It almost seems to be part of normal development. People just tend to become more mentally rigid with age and they have a perfect justification ready for you: experience. They have seen it all and can therefore judge everything and everyone (without considering changed circumstances of course which would require to adjust the mental frame that was rigidly formed across the ages).
    - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
      Everyone has brain damage that accumulates over the course of your life. A 50-year old has a lot fewer brain cells than a 20-year old; I wonder what would happen if you regrew them?
JaumeGreen 4y ago
When I was younger I wanted to live forever, nowadays I'm more at peace with the idea of death. There are a couple of things that make death bearable. Any longevity treatment should placate the first and we should aim to compensate the second with plenty of change in our lives. First is physical ailments. Even a healthy person will accumulate aches, and those will slowly erode they will to live. Several of my grandparents (and some that were not mine) have expressed that they were waiting to be taken, and I'd wager that would be a part. Second is the mental fatigue. Not only your mental state is akin to your physical one, so you might be mentally exhausted, but also you begin to get bored with most media. It's hard to find a story that hasn't been told before, music that you find original and good, few dishes that you still dare to discover, ... . Apart from the personal point of view there's also the general one. There two more problem arise. Sustainability, as the planet can support what it can. The society and the way resources are managed will have to change a lot if people live longer. But don't worry because... Power. You'd go from families holding power to individuals. No longer the young master will spend all the money and none will be left, because their parents will have control over that. Situation could become even more oppressive with them withholding the longevity treatments, giving some to their employees and none to the general public. So while I agree with your sentiment, which is also beautifully expressed in HPNOR, I'd say that there's a lot of transformations to be made before it's good.
- will5421 4y ago
  HPNOR?
  - krustyburger 4y ago
    Harry Potter and the Now Older Reader
  - JaumeGreen 4y ago
    HPMOR [0], sorry. Harry Potter and the methods of rationality. A Harry Potter fanfic that is quite interesting. [0] http://www.hpmor.com/ http://www.hpmor.com/
richardw 4y ago
I’ve found learning harder as I age. I can still do it, but I don’t think we’re as elastic as we are at 5, or 18. I’m guessing but I think it’s both internal changes and the sheer product of an expanded mental landscape. We have more to consider than a freshman. I think focusing really hard and making changes is easier when you have less on your plate. In a few years, an 18 year old can transform the trajectory of their life. It’s much harder when you’re 50. This isn’t absolute. Of course with an infinite life some of these restrictions go away, but unless we get rid of the meat minds I think we’ll have some built-in limitations that are core to who we are as humans. I honestly think I learn more than most of my peers because I keep trying to, but I do find myself getting less interested in the latest fad. Some amazing people can learn entirely new life journeys, Carmack or SamA, say. But look at most people you know. Most are going to keep plugging away getting crankier and crankier. If those people hold power and grow their wealth indefinitely, I think that’s a net negative. Max Plank said, paraphrased: Science progresses one funeral at a time. We make way for the youth to have their go, with our influence reducing over time. This all ends when AI arrives anyway. Change has to outpace us. Someone or something will get your wish of indefinite life, and we’ll find out how these patterns change.
- inkblotuniverse 4y ago
  That mental calcification, if it's so universal, seems like it's probably partly physiological in nature. It's the sort of thing that could be changed, in time, if people wanted to make themselves more or less neuroplastic.
olau 4y ago
There's are a point in death. So if you fix death, then you also have to fix the problems that death fixes.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Why would there necessarily be a point to death?
psychphysic 4y ago
HN is always good for a interesting comment or two. But rarely do you get an excellent back and forth as these thought provoking, diametrically opposite but equally compelling comments!
ano88888 4y ago
It is also incredibly for me to belive the parent comment about the contentment with death. Why don't people want to escape death? These people are either extremely religious and brainwashed or they are big hypocrites why say morally correct shit like this but will do anything to extend their life if it is within their reach
m4rtink 4y ago
Yeah! And it would also elreduce ones stress level quite a bit, with a lot of "you need to do X before you are too old for it" no longer being a problem as well as all the emotional damage of people you know dying all the time, especially as you grow old.
jodrellblank 4y ago
I've lived a modern day life of comfort, opportunities and experiences unimaginable compared to even my grandparents (all deceased now). I've been to places and had opportunities to try things which they never did. Compared to my grandma who cooked during food rationing and had to save sugar rations to make a cake, who lived a frugal life of 'make do and mend', I have the spare money and first world surroundings to indulge any ordinary luxury[1] on a whim - meal at a restaurant, new clothes, ticket to a show, buy a household goods item or entertaining gadget, holiday abroad in a hotel on a couple of day's notice, all no problem. I've travelled more than she ever did, owned more things than she ever did, experienced many kinds of novelty and variety that she never did. Is that enough? Can I go now? Isn't that enough? I still have possibly 3-4 decades of life left to average life expectancy, and for what - to grind through more experiences? Even though I've already had vastly more than most humans who ever lived? I have no great purpose to achieve, there's nothing I can do which millions of others can't do. The main reason to go on living is because dying would hurt others unnecessarily. Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind. > "but if it wasn't for some limit forced upon me, if it was really my choice, then there's a lot more I'd like to do." It seems common that people who become rich enough to do anything end up depressed doing nothing. Taking the forcing function out seems to make people miserable rather than happy. Even people who said beforehand that they had lots they'd like to do often seem to lose motivation to actually do any of it. [1] there's a phrase.
- endtime 4y ago
  > Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind. Speak for yourself, but please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective. (I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to.)
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    > "Speak for yourself" Whom do you think I am speaking for? > "please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective." "I want everything" is a youthful perspective that adults grow out of by gaining things and realising that drowning in endless things isn't happiness, it's a hoarding disorder. People with a PetaByte storage array of media aren't the happiest film watchers on the planet, people with a garage full of Lamborghinis aren't the best drivers or the happiest people, Billionaires aren't satisfied with 'enough' money. Indeed, the opposite as one anecdote in this thread commented - a child with nothing who gets an orange is happy; a child with 9 consoles who gets a 10th console and wants an 11th, isn't happy. Saying "I want 1000000 consoles" seems more cringeworthy than convincing. "I want a career" "I want ten careers!" "I want a pony" "I want a hundred lifetimes of pony ownership!". "I want to master an instrument" "I want to master infinity instruments!". Ok mr oneupper. But it makes no difference whether "you" lived all those lives you can't remember, or someone else did. No difference at all. In fact, you may as well assume that other people are you, and their lives are ones you lived and can no longer remember. Everything becomes much simpler and it makes just as much sense. > "I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to." I suspect they are against suicide; why would someone who promotes longevity so much also be pro-dying-early? I also suspect one of the reasons our societies are against suicide is because workers can't be allowed an easy escape from their suffering. The kind of people who are in favour of working infinity lifetimes of careers are probably in the upper/white collar classes if they see that as a good thing; to a huge amount of the world, retirement is the carrot dangled ahead of them and dozens of lifetimes of work would be a pretty bad thing.
kikokikokiko 4y ago
A world where no people ever died of natural causes would become, fast, a world where war would be the rule, and not the exception. In one generation alone, Earth would go from 7 billion people, to 14 billion. It would be Hell on Earth, literally.
- TchoBeer 4y ago
  You're assuming that birth rates would remain the same, when that immediately feels like it would not at all be the case.
Valakas_ 4y ago
It's a form of Stockholm syndrome and a coping mechanism against immense, inescapable pain. It's the 4th F of trauma coping mechanisms: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn. When something is very painful and inescapable you can: Fight it, run away from it (not talk about it, ignore it, pretend it's not there or won't happen, mentally distract away from it with constant stimulation), freeze (dissociate, numbness, ie shut down emotions, be stoic, feel nothing or little) or fawn (appease, please, embrace the pain in order to feel a sense of control over it, believe it's good, you want it or is positive in some way, thereby releasing yourself from the torment of powerlessness+pain).
tambourine_man 4y ago
Even if we manage to keep our neurons and connections young forever, they are limited. My guess is that we’ll inevitably begin to forget the older, less important stuff even with a completely healthy brain simply due to size constrain.
sjcsjc 4y ago
Just FYI, it's per se, not per say. Cheers
- chrisfosterelli 4y ago
  Thanks. My bad.
latexr 4y ago
> per-say Quick note because you seem like the type of person who’d like to know, it’s “per se”: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per_se https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per_se
- chrisfosterelli 4y ago
  Yes, thanks. You're right (though I can no longer edit).
DrThunder 4y ago
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
Note that you're whole comment is from the perspective of how you benefit from immortality. If we think of some collective 'Gaia Hypothesis' rather than yourself, then keeping you (specifically) around forever is kind of a big commitment, no? Perhaps you are just not that big of a deal to be worthy of keeping around? And how would you square keeping you around and not Joe? Is it resources based? Than we would be stuck with a collective of eternal wealthy people, which judging by the sample of mortals available today sounds pretty uninteresting. Yes it's amazing and you're having your turn at it right now! Enjoy it and then pass it forward.

xlii 4y ago

For a counter thought: while I absolutely agree with you in terms of richness of life, I don’t think pursuing endless life is a sound idea. As parent poster wrote, we like nostalgia, because we clutch to our experiences. We compare them instead of collecting it. On the other side the more we experience something the more we stall or get bored. Even with other people - with increase of lifespan we also increased number of divorces, lost connections etc. That doesn’t make us happier. One could argue that we, as humans, suffer more today from out deteriorating bodies, than people in medieval time, when it was shorter, and that we suffer more psychologically due to increased influx of information, global conscience and artificial constructs we build every day. Resources would also be an issue, so even if immortality would be obtainable it’d be either reserved for the richest or would divide people with almost impassable line splitting centuries of servitude and centuries of indulgence. So to answer your question - why not? Because it’ll bring suffer to many on many levels except for a blessed few and we should focus first on making life great for everyone present before trying to make it infinitely longer. Joking lightly (as subject is very deep) - it’s somewhat useful skill to know when to get off the stage.

Rubinsalamander 4y ago
It would not only be for the rich. Healthcare cost are incredibly expensive especially later in live so governments have a strong inventive to provide it for everyone. Also people wont have to retire anymore (also great for government) The most expensive part about it would probably be research, but since every person on the planet is a potential user and there a big savings in Healthcare and Pension i don't see costs being a problem. Humans dont progress in terms of biological evolution anymore but instead technologically. The increased lifespan would allow scientist to master multiple fields which would be great for progress.
- xlii 4y ago
  Access to “high end” care (which I suppose would be one) is already high cost which is not that accessible even with technology presence. As of 2019 1/3 of world’s population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water. Would they be glad that instead of clean water and sanitary conditions they were granted endless life? It’s nice to focus on optimistic outcomes but except for genius scientists world is full of mobsters, greedy bankers and ruthless corporation heads. They’d had a chance for longevity way sooner than the best of scientists (who have “infinite memory” trait, which isn’t true even for the healthiest of humans). Sure, we’re speculating (and it’s fun) but I’d invite to mix at least 30% of “what could go wrong” as part of the context. Let’s have a thought experiment: who would be the first to get such treatment - Nobel prize winner or a dictator? What would be the route, who would pay for that, would they even want that (as that’s not guaranteed).
  - Rubinsalamander 4y ago
    Dictator could pay more for it but would probably be to paranoid to actually do it until its proven technologically. So my bet would be on the Noble Prize winner because of curiosity and good connections to the people working on the technology. If the technology first emerges you could probably get it quite cheaply because its not proven yet. Afterwards there will be a scarity due to everyone wanting it which will drive prices up. In the long run it becomes a free commodity due to being a net saving for governments. But even if the rich and ruthless get it first, that doesnt matter much in the long run. Medical improvements tend to get cheaper with time. The incentives are there to provide it to everyone. And especially so in a democracy.

dcow 4y ago

If we don’t die we don’t evolve. If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. I do feel the pull on my heartstrings in your comment (wouldn’t that be wonderful), but an engineer will expand to fit as much time as you give them. We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation.

kelnos 4y ago
> If we don’t die we don’t evolve. Sure we will, just not in the traditional natural-selection sense. In many ways humans have "beaten" evolution by finding medical means to allow "unfit" humans to live full lives, and often pass on their genes. Evolution in the future could be via technical means, either through advancements in medicine, or with cybernetic implants. If humans could ever become intellectually & ethically pure enough to be trusted with genetic engineering ourselves, that's another form of self-made evolution. > If we had many lives then each one would be less meaningful. That's a very personal thing, and just an opinion. With changes in lifespan, attitudes change, purpose changes, and people change their outlook. Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s. Now life expectancy is in the 70s and 80s. And yet we don't look at this doubling of our lifespans and believe that all that extra time robs our lives of meaning. So why should that be the case if we could live to be 500? > We’d at least need to put age limits on political participation. Perhaps, but that should be a floating limit that gets adjusted upward with life expectancy. If people regularly lived to be 200, maybe 190-year-olds wouldn't be fit to serve, but a 100-year-old? Why not? And if we managed to push that to 400, those 190-year-olds would start to seem pretty relevant; it would be an injustice to deny them participation in the political system. Regardless, our idea of society itself would need a huge overhaul even if our lifespans were doubled, let alone made effectively limitless. Political participation would likely be the least of our worries.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  > "Once upon a time, humans lived much shorter lives, with many/most not making it out of their 30s." Citation needed; because that's commonly believed to be average life expectancy - brought down by infant mortality. If you made it past ~5 years old, you had a good chance of living to 60-80. "The days of our years are threescore years and ten" - Psalm 90:10, the King James Bible. "A man will spend ten years as a child before he understands death and life. He spends another ten years acquiring the instruction by which he will be able to live. He spends another ten years earning and gaining possessions by which to live. He spends another ten years up to old age, when his heart becomes is counsellor. There remain sixty years of the whole life, which Thoth has assigned to be the man of god." - A passage from The Insinger Papyrus, in the Ptolemaic period"

epicureanideal 4y ago

I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. (Note that for those who discuss this semi-regularly, that's understood to be very different than seeking a cure for any particular age related disease, which usually we attempt to address when it's too late.). There are groups like https://www.levf.org/ https://www.levf.org/ doing some early work like Robust Mouse Rejuvenation (in mid-life for mice) to try to figure out how to help us all live much longer. https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-study-1 https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-stud...

sangnoir 4y ago
> I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. Faced with their own mortality, a bunch of aging billionaires and multimillionaires tend to pour money into longevity research. I'd be very upset if governments increased spending on fighting senescence today, instead of lower-hanging fruit .
- yreg 4y ago
  When Elon was asked why longetivity research didn't pick his interest as worthy of an investment, he said: >It is important for us to die because most of the time people don't change their mind, they just die. If you live forever, we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    The opposite could also be true though. Longer lifespans permit more people gaining education, working more years, saving more money with a longer term vision, and rising to be a new economic upper class. Short lifespans make that a very difficult to coordinate multi generational project. There are also solutions like term limits, or generational tenure limits or something that could help reduce any negative effects without needing to continue unnecessary loss of life.

fock 4y ago

> I suspect in hundreds or thousands of years we'll look back at age-related death culturally the same way we look at infant mortality during the medieval ages Currently our culture/civilisation can be expected with my life. We won't adapt as you can see by us not adapting even now for mitigation on a societal level at all. But yes, death of old age is the sorrow of our days!

tgv 4y ago

Infant mortality is quite different: we know that infants are supposed to live. Extending life is the opposite: death is the normal, even unavoidable end. The comparison is misplaced. > I could spend a lifetime in each trying to develop mastery No, you couldn't. You would still be your aged brain, not capable of learning hundreds of professions, and your frail body, not capable of replacing its cells any longer. It requires more than a better way to heat up a corpse to extend life. I'll leave you with this (paraphrase of a) quote: millions long for immortality, but don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

c22 4y ago
A spider might have up to 1000 babies of which only a small percentage survive. Are the unlucky hundreds of spiderlings that perish supposed to live?
- tgv 4y ago
  Sorry, I didn't know we were talking about spiders.
  - c22 4y ago
    It's fine if you don't want to talk about spiders.
p1esk 4y ago
I’m amazed that people who argue against immortality often assume it will come with a frail body and an aged brain. Why? To me, the most basic form of immortality is achieved by reversal of aging, including a brain. Your body is just a machine, it’s pretty obvious it can be repaired, even if we don’t know how yet.
- tgv 4y ago
  > even if we don’t know how yet How would you fix your brain? Its capacity is obviously limited, and tinkering with plasticity almost certainly will have unexpected and undesirable consequences. You simply won't be the same person.

JakeAl 4y ago

The notion that immortality is a good idea fades with age. Youth is more important, because as you age opportunities and options vanish and ailments and limitations arise. If you can give me immortality, health and my youth, I may reconsider.

stanete 4y ago
That's why what most research is trying to extend healthspan and lifespan. All drugs that are in clinical studies today are either trying to push the old part to later in life or just targeting what is making us old so we don't well, get old. The goal is to maintain that youth.
concordDance 4y ago
Pretty much everyone who is getting frozen want youth rather than prolonged old age, they think a cure for aging will eventually happen. I'd certainly rather live 100 years with a 20 year old body than 200 years with a 90 year old one.

afiori 4y ago

This is a beautiful feeling, but I believe it is far too easy to dismiss how risky "eliminating death" could be. To offer one example democracy would be mostly impossible in a post mortality world. Also immortal humans would be either fertile or infertile and both cases would create quite weird situations. If I can conclude with some posturing, it is part of human nature to strive toward better conditions and solve the problems around us. This might be our demise, as both giving up on that nature and following it to its logical end might lead to our end.

xd 4y ago

Without age related death people would be terrified to experience anything incase it lead to their death.. crossing the road would be an incredibly high risk activity in such a future.

lynx23 4y ago

I sincerely hope you are wrong. Not being able to accept that things go, and new things come about, feels pathological to me.

tetris11 4y ago
As well as getting used to the idea of losing loved ones. Anyone who doesn't feel anything from the loss of close relationship, or conversely, does not seek out to make new ones, isn't likely going to be a well adjusted noble immortal with humanities best intententions at heart (see: Man From Earth), but an immoral perpetual leach that only serves themselves (see: various vampire films).
spuz 4y ago
Living 1000 years wouldn't necessarily imply resistance to change. I'm not sure why you think that it would.
- neuronic 4y ago
  I subjectively disagree from observation. Change in viewpoints, lifestyle or behavior become exceedingly rare the older people get. Also, the youth is always incapable, stupid and wrong. It's so much of a phenomenon that I wouldn't dare blaming anyone for this. It almost seems to be part of normal development. People just tend to become more mentally rigid with age and they have a perfect justification ready for you: experience. They have seen it all and can therefore judge everything and everyone (without considering changed circumstances of course which would require to adjust the mental frame that was rigidly formed across the ages).
  - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
    Everyone has brain damage that accumulates over the course of your life. A 50-year old has a lot fewer brain cells than a 20-year old; I wonder what would happen if you regrew them?

JaumeGreen 4y ago

When I was younger I wanted to live forever, nowadays I'm more at peace with the idea of death. There are a couple of things that make death bearable. Any longevity treatment should placate the first and we should aim to compensate the second with plenty of change in our lives. First is physical ailments. Even a healthy person will accumulate aches, and those will slowly erode they will to live. Several of my grandparents (and some that were not mine) have expressed that they were waiting to be taken, and I'd wager that would be a part. Second is the mental fatigue. Not only your mental state is akin to your physical one, so you might be mentally exhausted, but also you begin to get bored with most media. It's hard to find a story that hasn't been told before, music that you find original and good, few dishes that you still dare to discover, ... . Apart from the personal point of view there's also the general one. There two more problem arise. Sustainability, as the planet can support what it can. The society and the way resources are managed will have to change a lot if people live longer. But don't worry because... Power. You'd go from families holding power to individuals. No longer the young master will spend all the money and none will be left, because their parents will have control over that. Situation could become even more oppressive with them withholding the longevity treatments, giving some to their employees and none to the general public. So while I agree with your sentiment, which is also beautifully expressed in HPNOR, I'd say that there's a lot of transformations to be made before it's good.

will5421 4y ago
HPNOR?
- krustyburger 4y ago
  Harry Potter and the Now Older Reader
- JaumeGreen 4y ago
  HPMOR [0], sorry. Harry Potter and the methods of rationality. A Harry Potter fanfic that is quite interesting. [0] http://www.hpmor.com/ http://www.hpmor.com/

richardw 4y ago

I’ve found learning harder as I age. I can still do it, but I don’t think we’re as elastic as we are at 5, or 18. I’m guessing but I think it’s both internal changes and the sheer product of an expanded mental landscape. We have more to consider than a freshman. I think focusing really hard and making changes is easier when you have less on your plate. In a few years, an 18 year old can transform the trajectory of their life. It’s much harder when you’re 50. This isn’t absolute. Of course with an infinite life some of these restrictions go away, but unless we get rid of the meat minds I think we’ll have some built-in limitations that are core to who we are as humans. I honestly think I learn more than most of my peers because I keep trying to, but I do find myself getting less interested in the latest fad. Some amazing people can learn entirely new life journeys, Carmack or SamA, say. But look at most people you know. Most are going to keep plugging away getting crankier and crankier. If those people hold power and grow their wealth indefinitely, I think that’s a net negative. Max Plank said, paraphrased: Science progresses one funeral at a time. We make way for the youth to have their go, with our influence reducing over time. This all ends when AI arrives anyway. Change has to outpace us. Someone or something will get your wish of indefinite life, and we’ll find out how these patterns change.

inkblotuniverse 4y ago
That mental calcification, if it's so universal, seems like it's probably partly physiological in nature. It's the sort of thing that could be changed, in time, if people wanted to make themselves more or less neuroplastic.

olau 4y ago

There's are a point in death. So if you fix death, then you also have to fix the problems that death fixes.

concordDance 4y ago
Why would there necessarily be a point to death?

psychphysic 4y ago

HN is always good for a interesting comment or two. But rarely do you get an excellent back and forth as these thought provoking, diametrically opposite but equally compelling comments!

ano88888 4y ago

It is also incredibly for me to belive the parent comment about the contentment with death. Why don't people want to escape death? These people are either extremely religious and brainwashed or they are big hypocrites why say morally correct shit like this but will do anything to extend their life if it is within their reach

m4rtink 4y ago

Yeah! And it would also elreduce ones stress level quite a bit, with a lot of "you need to do X before you are too old for it" no longer being a problem as well as all the emotional damage of people you know dying all the time, especially as you grow old.

jodrellblank 4y ago

I've lived a modern day life of comfort, opportunities and experiences unimaginable compared to even my grandparents (all deceased now). I've been to places and had opportunities to try things which they never did. Compared to my grandma who cooked during food rationing and had to save sugar rations to make a cake, who lived a frugal life of 'make do and mend', I have the spare money and first world surroundings to indulge any ordinary luxury[1] on a whim - meal at a restaurant, new clothes, ticket to a show, buy a household goods item or entertaining gadget, holiday abroad in a hotel on a couple of day's notice, all no problem. I've travelled more than she ever did, owned more things than she ever did, experienced many kinds of novelty and variety that she never did. Is that enough? Can I go now? Isn't that enough? I still have possibly 3-4 decades of life left to average life expectancy, and for what - to grind through more experiences? Even though I've already had vastly more than most humans who ever lived? I have no great purpose to achieve, there's nothing I can do which millions of others can't do. The main reason to go on living is because dying would hurt others unnecessarily. Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind. > "but if it wasn't for some limit forced upon me, if it was really my choice, then there's a lot more I'd like to do." It seems common that people who become rich enough to do anything end up depressed doing nothing. Taking the forcing function out seems to make people miserable rather than happy. Even people who said beforehand that they had lots they'd like to do often seem to lose motivation to actually do any of it. [1] there's a phrase.

endtime 4y ago
> Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind. Speak for yourself, but please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective. (I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to.)
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  > "Speak for yourself" Whom do you think I am speaking for? > "please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective." "I want everything" is a youthful perspective that adults grow out of by gaining things and realising that drowning in endless things isn't happiness, it's a hoarding disorder. People with a PetaByte storage array of media aren't the happiest film watchers on the planet, people with a garage full of Lamborghinis aren't the best drivers or the happiest people, Billionaires aren't satisfied with 'enough' money. Indeed, the opposite as one anecdote in this thread commented - a child with nothing who gets an orange is happy; a child with 9 consoles who gets a 10th console and wants an 11th, isn't happy. Saying "I want 1000000 consoles" seems more cringeworthy than convincing. "I want a career" "I want ten careers!" "I want a pony" "I want a hundred lifetimes of pony ownership!". "I want to master an instrument" "I want to master infinity instruments!". Ok mr oneupper. But it makes no difference whether "you" lived all those lives you can't remember, or someone else did. No difference at all. In fact, you may as well assume that other people are you, and their lives are ones you lived and can no longer remember. Everything becomes much simpler and it makes just as much sense. > "I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to." I suspect they are against suicide; why would someone who promotes longevity so much also be pro-dying-early? I also suspect one of the reasons our societies are against suicide is because workers can't be allowed an easy escape from their suffering. The kind of people who are in favour of working infinity lifetimes of careers are probably in the upper/white collar classes if they see that as a good thing; to a huge amount of the world, retirement is the carrot dangled ahead of them and dozens of lifetimes of work would be a pretty bad thing.

kikokikokiko 4y ago

A world where no people ever died of natural causes would become, fast, a world where war would be the rule, and not the exception. In one generation alone, Earth would go from 7 billion people, to 14 billion. It would be Hell on Earth, literally.

TchoBeer 4y ago
You're assuming that birth rates would remain the same, when that immediately feels like it would not at all be the case.

Valakas_ 4y ago

It's a form of Stockholm syndrome and a coping mechanism against immense, inescapable pain. It's the 4th F of trauma coping mechanisms: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn. When something is very painful and inescapable you can: Fight it, run away from it (not talk about it, ignore it, pretend it's not there or won't happen, mentally distract away from it with constant stimulation), freeze (dissociate, numbness, ie shut down emotions, be stoic, feel nothing or little) or fawn (appease, please, embrace the pain in order to feel a sense of control over it, believe it's good, you want it or is positive in some way, thereby releasing yourself from the torment of powerlessness+pain).

tambourine_man 4y ago

Even if we manage to keep our neurons and connections young forever, they are limited. My guess is that we’ll inevitably begin to forget the older, less important stuff even with a completely healthy brain simply due to size constrain.

sjcsjc 4y ago

Just FYI, it's per se, not per say. Cheers

chrisfosterelli 4y ago
Thanks. My bad.

latexr 4y ago

> per-say Quick note because you seem like the type of person who’d like to know, it’s “per se”: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per_se https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per_se

chrisfosterelli 4y ago
Yes, thanks. You're right (though I can no longer edit).

DrThunder 4y ago

DoingIsLearning 4y ago

Note that you're whole comment is from the perspective of how you benefit from immortality. If we think of some collective 'Gaia Hypothesis' rather than yourself, then keeping you (specifically) around forever is kind of a big commitment, no? Perhaps you are just not that big of a deal to be worthy of keeping around? And how would you square keeping you around and not Joe? Is it resources based? Than we would be stuck with a collective of eternal wealthy people, which judging by the sample of mortals available today sounds pretty uninteresting. Yes it's amazing and you're having your turn at it right now! Enjoy it and then pass it forward.