9 ms·

Woof, I'm middle aged, but that was still tough to read.

orangecat 4y ago
Yes. Once we dispense with the cliches that aging is "natural" and "a part of life" and actually think about what it entails, we should realize that it's a horrible thing which we should be devoting substantial resources to mitigating.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
  You'd think a few politicians would make promises to solve it.
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  Hesitant agree, but we must also keep the opposite side of the coin in mind. Any meaningful cure for aging would be suicide of the species unless we also have birth control figured out and in place everywhere. We'd need massive programs to control the size of a population that doesn't age and die. Once you start thinking just a little bit about this problem it becomes increasingly horrifying. If we cured aging today, how long before India or China enacts forced sterilization to prevent their populations from starving to death? How long before countries start to cull parts of the population? How could we possibly cope with Africa, where women have 5 kids in the hope one lives? Famine like the world has never seen. Energy wars over the last scraps of land you can put solar on. Fresh water in the middle east would be unobtainable and spark some of the worst wars ever. Then all the carbon emissions from an ever-larger population would destroy a climate that just barely survived the 2020s. Curing aging creates a thousand times as many problems as it solves. Curing aging without already having a population control system in place globally could very easily destroy us. I think we will eventually solve aging one way or another, but whether we can control the population of an entire planet I'm not so sure of.
  - pirate787 4y ago
    I think this is extraordinarily pessimistic and Malthusian. These problems are easily solved and the benefit of having all this human wisdom around would help solve them. Indeed the most advanced populations in the West and Asia are already in decline.
    - NegativeLatency 4y ago
      Regardless of if the problems should/could be solved it seems like people will continue to work towards living forever. It just seems like enough humans share the desire to make it happen eventually. And after all, wouldn't you like to keep your pet alive for a bit longer too?
      - stephc_int13 4y ago
        Strangely enough, the desire to live forever is shared by many, but the actual research has been rather anemic compared to almost everything else. Nothing close to the collective effort deployed for the Apollo program or the Manhattan project. I think that we're simply collectively skeptical about the outcome, seems too far off, too big of a moonshot, and also the fear of death is pushing us to rationalize the situation and find solace in the status quo. (death is part of life, this is natural, god's plan or even that life would be boring without death...)
    - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
      > Indeed the most advanced populations in the West and Asia are already in decline. Right, but they haven't defeated aging yet, like we're talking about.
  - SamPatt 4y ago
    Is there any advancement people won't decry? Defeating aging would be the most significant achievement in human history. But sure, let's worry about centuries old overpopulation concerns instead, despite having demonstrated them false continually. Yes, a 2-3°C increase in earth's temperature would be an unbearable cost for DEFEATING AGING. Aging and death are awful. Unavoidable, currently, and so must be acknowledged and prepared for, but still unspeakably destructive.
    - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
      > Is there any advancement people won't decry? Defeating aging would be the most significant achievement in human history. But sure, let's worry about centuries old overpopulation concerns instead, despite having demonstrated them false continually. Discussing concerns and potential scenarios doesn't have to be viewed as decrying. I would argue it's a normal and healthy way of advancing science safely.
    - vlovich123 4y ago
      > Aging and death are awful. For whom? For the dying and aging sure. For the young who want to make space for themselves in the world and make their own mark, ageless elderly could be a sentence to a life not worth living. The ability to progress career wise and find good work could be stunted. Political and social change could be halted even more than it is today. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do it if we can, but one thing that is certain is that it’s going to drastically adjust human society in a very unequal way.
      - stephc_int13 4y ago
        It is also awful at the civilization level. There is a huge amount of knowledge loss occurring every generation. Our culture and technology are evolving as they are supported by language, but this is barely enough and from the societal organization (politics) we keep collectively falling in the same traps over and over. Humanity could do with a bit more wisdom.
        mensetmanusman 4y ago
  - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    Not sure why you've been downvoted, because you bring up valid points. I have one to add, let's imagine that we science our way into living much longer - our bodies may continue to live, but what state will our minds maintain? Keeping a body alive by no means guarantees a healthy mind. We might discover that despite the healthy condition of the human body, no sense of self is able to survive over a few hundreds years before losing coherency. Perhaps the human brain just wasn't designed to contain more than one lifetime. In such a scenario we would be sitting on a whole lot of perfectly healthy vegetables who will continue to live very long lives thereafter. I for one never want to live as a vegetable. My dad told me the same thing, if ever he's a vegetable then pull the plug. I would do that for him, and I hope someone would do it for me if the day came.
    - rolenthedeep 4y ago
      People don't like facing up to the negative consequences of new technologies. It forces them to consider the wild concept of "other people"
  - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    A cure for aging, would, of course, not be shared equally across the globe. It would be monopolized by the very rich, who would establish a permanent aristocracy. Cultural attitudes would be frozen in time. It would be a hellscape for everyone except the very top.
    - stephc_int13 4y ago
      Why would it be different for aging that any other medicine? Not perfectly distributed, but largely available nonetheless.
      - mensetmanusman 4y ago
        Because immortality is different than health-span…
    - astrange 4y ago
      Rich people aren't rich enough to do that. That's just not enough customers.
      - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
        How much would Warren Buffett pay to be 20 years old again?
        astrange 4y ago
        The revealed preferences aren't promising, considering his unhealthy diet.
  - KSteffensen 4y ago
    Another aspect here is that there will be no change or evolution in society if no one dies from old age. Everything will be controlled by grumpy old men! They will look like they are 25, but the mindsets will be ossified. Let's make it so everyone's body is 25 until they suddenly painlessly die around age 125 or so.
- coderenegade 4y ago
  But it is natural. Preventing aging would be tantamount to creating forever kings, because like anything, the benefits wouldn't be distributed evenly throughout society. I'd rather a world where everyone has their time and everyone ages, than one in which a few people live forever. Not to mention, if you don't die of old age, what do you die of? The alternatives aren't great, unless assisted suicide becomes an option. The solutions to the horrors of aging are psychological and social, not scientific, and entail coming to terms with your own mortality (life is fatal, your capacity will inevitably fade), and having mechanisms in place so that the elderly can live with dignity. Anything else seems like a sure path to dystopia.
  - causality0 4y ago
    I'll deal with forever kings if it means not dying. I quite enjoy life.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      But those that get it first will be the wealthiest. Many of those wouldn’t use their gain for good and may actually use it to do harm. An eternal Putin? A permanent Xi?
      - stephc_int13 4y ago
        Don't be fooled by this idea that those individuals have any real power. They are in a silent contract with the aristocracy around them, and the same process repeats all the way down the base of the pyramid. The only reason it is difficult to get rid of tyrants is because a large amount of people in their countries benefits from this arrangement.
        lostlogin 4y ago
        Oh for sure, but that isn’t all that helpful if you’re on the receiving end of their genocidal behaviour.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  The laws of thermodynamics would like a word with you:)
  - chroma 4y ago
    The human body is not a closed system.
- sph 4y ago
  I agree with the first part, not the second. It is fine for humanity to work on aging, but I don't think it's a societal imperative. Death and aging sucks; and that is fine. It is part of being alive. The utter fear of death many of us harbour inside is a strong force that manifests itself in many beautiful forms. I am terribly afraid of death, yet I would not choose to upload my consciousness to a machine. I would not put myself in suspended animation. I would not like to live 300 years either. There is deep comfort in knowing that my days on this planet are limited and life is short. Better get a move on.
  - krageon 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - defrost 4y ago
      Bit of false equivilance coupled with shallow less than ankle deep rush to judgement there.
    - sph 4y ago
      What a shallow, and insulting dismissal. Have a good day.
      - dang 4y ago
        Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - mattclarkdotnet 4y ago
      Accepting death as normal is not the same as being suicidal. I’m intrigued by the large number of people who pop up in these discussions who are clearly either petrified of death or convinced their life should go on forever.
    - dang 4y ago
      Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- AllegedAlec 4y ago
  But ageing is natural and is part of life. It's not pretty, and oftentimes it's horrific, but it's both of those things. And there's a certain hubris in thinking that we wouldn't make the situation worse by trying to change it.
  - jgilias 4y ago
    Cancer is also natural and a part of life. I don’t think those are valid reasons for not tackling a health issue.
    - AllegedAlec 4y ago
      Yeah, but I don't believe that ageing is a health issue.
      - jgilias 4y ago
        How do you define a health issue?
- nradov 4y ago
  No thanks. It would prefer to devote my resources to having a good life for myself and my family right now instead of wasting resources on aging research that might never produce useful results. It's fine for people to die of old age. If you want to reduce the effects of aging we already know how to do that though physical activity, proper diet, sleep hygiene, toxin avoidance, etc. Most people don't care enough about aging to optimize those factors.

Yes. Once we dispense with the cliches that aging is "natural" and "a part of life" and actually think about what it entails, we should realize that it's a horrible thing which we should be devoting substantial resources to mitigating.

0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
You'd think a few politicians would make promises to solve it.
rolenthedeep 4y ago
Hesitant agree, but we must also keep the opposite side of the coin in mind. Any meaningful cure for aging would be suicide of the species unless we also have birth control figured out and in place everywhere. We'd need massive programs to control the size of a population that doesn't age and die. Once you start thinking just a little bit about this problem it becomes increasingly horrifying. If we cured aging today, how long before India or China enacts forced sterilization to prevent their populations from starving to death? How long before countries start to cull parts of the population? How could we possibly cope with Africa, where women have 5 kids in the hope one lives? Famine like the world has never seen. Energy wars over the last scraps of land you can put solar on. Fresh water in the middle east would be unobtainable and spark some of the worst wars ever. Then all the carbon emissions from an ever-larger population would destroy a climate that just barely survived the 2020s. Curing aging creates a thousand times as many problems as it solves. Curing aging without already having a population control system in place globally could very easily destroy us. I think we will eventually solve aging one way or another, but whether we can control the population of an entire planet I'm not so sure of.
- pirate787 4y ago
  I think this is extraordinarily pessimistic and Malthusian. These problems are easily solved and the benefit of having all this human wisdom around would help solve them. Indeed the most advanced populations in the West and Asia are already in decline.
  - NegativeLatency 4y ago
    Regardless of if the problems should/could be solved it seems like people will continue to work towards living forever. It just seems like enough humans share the desire to make it happen eventually. And after all, wouldn't you like to keep your pet alive for a bit longer too?
    - stephc_int13 4y ago
      Strangely enough, the desire to live forever is shared by many, but the actual research has been rather anemic compared to almost everything else. Nothing close to the collective effort deployed for the Apollo program or the Manhattan project. I think that we're simply collectively skeptical about the outcome, seems too far off, too big of a moonshot, and also the fear of death is pushing us to rationalize the situation and find solace in the status quo. (death is part of life, this is natural, god's plan or even that life would be boring without death...)
  - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    > Indeed the most advanced populations in the West and Asia are already in decline. Right, but they haven't defeated aging yet, like we're talking about.
- SamPatt 4y ago
  Is there any advancement people won't decry? Defeating aging would be the most significant achievement in human history. But sure, let's worry about centuries old overpopulation concerns instead, despite having demonstrated them false continually. Yes, a 2-3°C increase in earth's temperature would be an unbearable cost for DEFEATING AGING. Aging and death are awful. Unavoidable, currently, and so must be acknowledged and prepared for, but still unspeakably destructive.
  - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    > Is there any advancement people won't decry? Defeating aging would be the most significant achievement in human history. But sure, let's worry about centuries old overpopulation concerns instead, despite having demonstrated them false continually. Discussing concerns and potential scenarios doesn't have to be viewed as decrying. I would argue it's a normal and healthy way of advancing science safely.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    > Aging and death are awful. For whom? For the dying and aging sure. For the young who want to make space for themselves in the world and make their own mark, ageless elderly could be a sentence to a life not worth living. The ability to progress career wise and find good work could be stunted. Political and social change could be halted even more than it is today. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do it if we can, but one thing that is certain is that it’s going to drastically adjust human society in a very unequal way.
    - stephc_int13 4y ago
      It is also awful at the civilization level. There is a huge amount of knowledge loss occurring every generation. Our culture and technology are evolving as they are supported by language, but this is barely enough and from the societal organization (politics) we keep collectively falling in the same traps over and over. Humanity could do with a bit more wisdom.
      - mensetmanusman 4y ago
- dumpsterdiver 4y ago
  Not sure why you've been downvoted, because you bring up valid points. I have one to add, let's imagine that we science our way into living much longer - our bodies may continue to live, but what state will our minds maintain? Keeping a body alive by no means guarantees a healthy mind. We might discover that despite the healthy condition of the human body, no sense of self is able to survive over a few hundreds years before losing coherency. Perhaps the human brain just wasn't designed to contain more than one lifetime. In such a scenario we would be sitting on a whole lot of perfectly healthy vegetables who will continue to live very long lives thereafter. I for one never want to live as a vegetable. My dad told me the same thing, if ever he's a vegetable then pull the plug. I would do that for him, and I hope someone would do it for me if the day came.
  - rolenthedeep 4y ago
    People don't like facing up to the negative consequences of new technologies. It forces them to consider the wild concept of "other people"
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  A cure for aging, would, of course, not be shared equally across the globe. It would be monopolized by the very rich, who would establish a permanent aristocracy. Cultural attitudes would be frozen in time. It would be a hellscape for everyone except the very top.
  - stephc_int13 4y ago
    Why would it be different for aging that any other medicine? Not perfectly distributed, but largely available nonetheless.
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Because immortality is different than health-span…
  - astrange 4y ago
    Rich people aren't rich enough to do that. That's just not enough customers.
    - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
      How much would Warren Buffett pay to be 20 years old again?
      - astrange 4y ago
        The revealed preferences aren't promising, considering his unhealthy diet.
- KSteffensen 4y ago
  Another aspect here is that there will be no change or evolution in society if no one dies from old age. Everything will be controlled by grumpy old men! They will look like they are 25, but the mindsets will be ossified. Let's make it so everyone's body is 25 until they suddenly painlessly die around age 125 or so.
coderenegade 4y ago
But it is natural. Preventing aging would be tantamount to creating forever kings, because like anything, the benefits wouldn't be distributed evenly throughout society. I'd rather a world where everyone has their time and everyone ages, than one in which a few people live forever. Not to mention, if you don't die of old age, what do you die of? The alternatives aren't great, unless assisted suicide becomes an option. The solutions to the horrors of aging are psychological and social, not scientific, and entail coming to terms with your own mortality (life is fatal, your capacity will inevitably fade), and having mechanisms in place so that the elderly can live with dignity. Anything else seems like a sure path to dystopia.
- causality0 4y ago
  I'll deal with forever kings if it means not dying. I quite enjoy life.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    But those that get it first will be the wealthiest. Many of those wouldn’t use their gain for good and may actually use it to do harm. An eternal Putin? A permanent Xi?
    - stephc_int13 4y ago
      Don't be fooled by this idea that those individuals have any real power. They are in a silent contract with the aristocracy around them, and the same process repeats all the way down the base of the pyramid. The only reason it is difficult to get rid of tyrants is because a large amount of people in their countries benefits from this arrangement.
      - lostlogin 4y ago
        Oh for sure, but that isn’t all that helpful if you’re on the receiving end of their genocidal behaviour.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
The laws of thermodynamics would like a word with you:)
- chroma 4y ago
  The human body is not a closed system.
sph 4y ago
I agree with the first part, not the second. It is fine for humanity to work on aging, but I don't think it's a societal imperative. Death and aging sucks; and that is fine. It is part of being alive. The utter fear of death many of us harbour inside is a strong force that manifests itself in many beautiful forms. I am terribly afraid of death, yet I would not choose to upload my consciousness to a machine. I would not put myself in suspended animation. I would not like to live 300 years either. There is deep comfort in knowing that my days on this planet are limited and life is short. Better get a move on.
- krageon 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - defrost 4y ago
    Bit of false equivilance coupled with shallow less than ankle deep rush to judgement there.
  - sph 4y ago
    What a shallow, and insulting dismissal. Have a good day.
    - dang 4y ago
      Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - mattclarkdotnet 4y ago
    Accepting death as normal is not the same as being suicidal. I’m intrigued by the large number of people who pop up in these discussions who are clearly either petrified of death or convinced their life should go on forever.
  - dang 4y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
AllegedAlec 4y ago
But ageing is natural and is part of life. It's not pretty, and oftentimes it's horrific, but it's both of those things. And there's a certain hubris in thinking that we wouldn't make the situation worse by trying to change it.
- jgilias 4y ago
  Cancer is also natural and a part of life. I don’t think those are valid reasons for not tackling a health issue.
  - AllegedAlec 4y ago
    Yeah, but I don't believe that ageing is a health issue.
    - jgilias 4y ago
      How do you define a health issue?
nradov 4y ago
No thanks. It would prefer to devote my resources to having a good life for myself and my family right now instead of wasting resources on aging research that might never produce useful results. It's fine for people to die of old age. If you want to reduce the effects of aging we already know how to do that though physical activity, proper diet, sleep hygiene, toxin avoidance, etc. Most people don't care enough about aging to optimize those factors.