5 ms·
So what happens if we eliminate aging? Would we be doomed to work until the end of time, forever being in a state where you don't have enough money for the infi
by alexb_ 4y ago
So what happens if we eliminate aging? Would we be doomed to work until the end of time, forever being in a state where you don't have enough money for the infinite retirement?
- irrational 4y agoSeriously, the older I get the more I look forward to Resting in Peace. No more taxes, no more mortgage or rent, no more bills, etc. I'm not trying to hurry the process, but I'm not going to be sad when my time is up.
- boc 4y agoLeast depressed HN user. But seriously, life should be fun. If it's not I'd encourage you to think about how you can make a change, even if it's just your mindset.
- wwwhizz 4y agoI'm not depressed in the slightest myself, but I just don't see why we try to keep all people alive, all the time, at all cost. Yes, I'm exaggerating a bit, but at some point life ends, and I'm fine with that. If I have had a nice length of life (lets say something like 70 years), and am no longer happy, healthy or capable of taking care of myself, don't save me next time I need saving (in order to live longer).
- cj 4y ago(You may already know this) but at least in the US, it's common for older patients to put a DNR (do not resuscitate) order on their medical file, making it so life saving measures won't be taken near/at end of life. Most commonly this means that CPR can't be performed.
- ChicagoBoy11 4y agoI hope you get a chance to look back on this comment and maybe see it as a call to add things in your life that would make you no longer agree with. Granter, for the vast majority of us there are a lot of these less-than-desirable things that we all need to deal which, at any given time, may even occupy an overwhelming portion of our time. And, the more we age, the more we are bound to have more and more of those But, I'd argue that should be a call for you to be even more intentional about adding more joy, beauty, and real, meaningful pleasure into your life. Those are the things we most easily give up, and if we're not careful we're bound to have little of it around.
- inglor_cz 4y ago"but I'm not going to be sad when my time is up." Depends on the manner of your exit. You may not be blessed with a merciful swift stroke in your sleep. Some ways of dying (like ALS) are absolutely horrible and I am sure that in the concoction of emotions that the victim feels, sadness is a significant component. Regardless of what they imagined when they were 40 and death was still a distant event.
- irrational 4y agoI'm way way older than 40, but the side of the family I most take after has a genetic history of living into our 100s with no significant illnesses. My great grandfather lived until he was 103 and was perfectly healthy in all ways until 2 weeks before he died when very quickly his body shut down and he passed away. No illnesses, just pure old age. His daughter, my grandmother, will be celebrating her 100th birthday soon. She still drives, walks without assistance, lives alone in her own home, etc. I'm not exactly a spring chicken, but I have zero health issues. I don't even ever have headaches. So, most likely I'll avoid the terrible deaths. Here's hoping.
- inglor_cz 4y agoIn that case I understand your position much better than before. This is quite an enviable situation to be in.
- kiba 4y agoThese are all the result of the socioeconomic and political systems you live in. It is not inevitable to living. Plus, aging will reduce the quality of life you have.
- the__alchemist 4y agoI'm curious if you'll still hold this attitude when death appears larger than a dot on the horizon.
- aeternum 4y agoThis is such a strange take. If there were some disease that started killing people quickly when they reach 35, we would consider it such a tragedy. Yet we have this disease, it's called aging, and it just takes awhile to kill people. For some reason it is considered by many to be normal and good.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThe $1M/year cost will ensure the tiniest percentage of the top 1% will have access.
- throwuxiytayq 4y agoPrecisely! Same thing as currently with access to vaccination and vitamin D.
- faluzure 4y agoPhhhhtttt, next you'll tell me the $25K 4k TV I bought in 2012 can be bought by the masses for next to nothing.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThat's great if the item/service in question can be mass produced. How much has the cost of a heart transplant gone down since its invention in 1967?
- spaced-out 4y agoDepends on what country you're looking at.
- jjk166 4y agoWhich a cure for aging would be.
- ceejayoz 4y agoHow would we know that before it exists?
- jjk166 4y agoBecause for it to qualify as a cure it must be mass producible. If it only works on one person, you haven't cured aging, you've merely repaired a body. Realistically though, we have a pretty good idea of what we're looking for. We don't know the exact combination of chemicals that cures aging, but we know it's going to be a combination of chemicals, and we know we can mass produce those.
- spacephysics 4y agoA more optimistic outlook may be that the value of human life goes up, as age increases, to where training and education has an even greater net positive impact on society. Further, typically anti-aging implies better health, which we can infer would lead to less strain on our current health care system (in the US). But you do have a point, where this could be exploited. But seeing the pushback in France regarding raising retirement age, I’d hope we could come together as a country and push back against such efforts.
- Dudeman112 4y agoYou can always just off yourself if you don't like the life you have Those of us who actually like the life they live would at least have the option of continuing that life
- flanbiscuit 4y agoThere's a French sci-fi show on Netflix called Ad Vitam that actually tackles this very issue. I didn't finish it but I found the overall world they built in the show interesting. from: https://www.heavenofhorror.com/reviews/ad-vitam-season-1-netflix-review/ https://www.heavenofhorror.com/reviews/ad-vitam-season-1-net... > Obviously, this poses quite a few problems; One is overpopulation and the other is the fact that there’s no need for the next generation. People aren’t getting older and they simply change jobs because they get bored. How do you enter the job market, when your competition is essentially a few years older than you (looks and health wise), while having decades more experience than you? The answer: You don’t. > Basically, the laws have been changed making anyone younger than 30 years old a minor. Also, you can’t choose to regenerate until your 30th birthday. As someone stated in Ad Vitam “They’ve turned youth into a waiting room”. You’re not old enough to do anything and really, you’re not needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Vitam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Vitam
- faluzure 4y agoOnly if you project our current system onto a world where people don't die from age related diseases. Expect massive social change.
- jayd16 4y agoSustainability because a selfish interest, so that's kinda nice.
- raptorraver 4y agoAlso we'd need to solve the overpopulation if this ever made it to mainstream. But don't we worry, most likely the only the richest would have access to this anti-aging products.
- ben_w 4y agoI doubt we'd face overpopulation… at least for a few millennia, but on timescales like that you need to ask about Dyson swarms etc. anyway, not just this planet. First, eternal youth isn't a cure for all illnesses. Second, even if all illnesses were also cured and the only causes of death were injuries, malicious or accidental, the average human lifetime would be something like 1000 years (at current rates). Third, as nations get richer, the reproduction rate goes down, and in many cases is currently below replacement. I also don't expect it to only be available to the rich. The first 5-20 years perhaps, but in my lifetime full genome sequencing has gone from impossible at any price to a few hundred USD. I expect similar for anti-aging. Even if the stuff is patented and restricted, I can say similar about heroin and cocaine, and yet the black market for those exists.
- yadoomerta 4y agoarguably, we're facing overpopulation right now
- unity1001 4y agoWe don't have overpopulation. Statistics show that in the current mode of food production, we can support a few multiples of the population we have today. But the economic system does not even permit supporting what we have, because it needs to make food scarce and extract maximum price for it to profit. That's why millions of tons of food rot in warehouses somewhere around the world to not disturb the food prices in the market while people starve somewhere else. In such a system, you can never solve overpopulation - the less people there are, the more system will try to make things more scarce to extract more profit from those people. A system built to be inefficient (from our perspective) so that it can be efficent from the profiteers' perspective
- inglor_cz 4y agoElimination of aging is still pretty far away. But reduction of chronic disease burden may be within reach. If people around 60 or 70 still felt like they were 30, that would be a massive improvement against the status quo.
- nradov 4y agoWe already know how to greatly reduce the burden of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which is the #1 chronic disease cause of death and disability. But most patients still don't take the recommended preventative measures. https://peterattiamd.com/ama43/ https://peterattiamd.com/ama43/ People seem to want some kind of magic pill that will prevent chronic diseases while still allowing them to eat junk food and not exercise. They are going to be disappointed.
- inglor_cz 4y agoIt is not all about heart disease or cancer. For example, I know some perfectly thin people with debilitating arthritis. A chronic disease need not be fatal or even life-shortening in order to make your aged years unbearable. Eating well and exercising enough pushes all sorts of problems a decade or two away, I know it pretty well. But that still does not mean that the last quarter or so of your life will be OK. The intended target of anti-aging is precisely this part of lifespan that sadly cannot be called healthspan.
- varjag 4y agoAll petty dictatorships become fossilized forever with eternal God King Emperors in charge.
- jjk166 4y agoOld age historically hasn't been the most common cause of death for dictators, nonetheless the only.
- ben_w 4y agoImpossible to forecast. With sufficient AI (doesn't need to be AGI or ASI), we're all fundamentally unemployable no matter how long or short our lives. Without AI, eternal youth might very well do what you fear.
- melling 4y agoHey, 6 years ago I wrote a blog to address the need to waste hours having such a discussion. It’s a form of bike shedding. Immortality is a really hard problem so we kill time playing “what if” https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/03/ https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/03/ “”” Some stories on HN are a complete waste of time. Little real knowledge is ever included in the threads. No one learns anything. We just bullshit for a few hours. And this happens a few times a year for each topic. My first suggestion is stories related to immortality. Most of the comments immediately turn philosophical. “Death gives life meaning” “It’ll only be for rich people” “The money should be spent on something better.” On HN, most people don’t want to learn anything about aging. No one discusses the basic science that we might gain by doing the research. The knowledge gained could have benefits in other areas of medicine like heart disease and cancer, for example. You aren’t going to want to live forever and have Alzheimer’s. “””
- alexb_ 4y agoThe idea that "will my life ever have meaning" and "will I be forced to work for all of eternity" is just bikeshedding is absolutely ludicrous. What is with this new thing where we call death a "disease" anyways? A disease implies that getting rid of it is a good thing. It's sneaking a very controversial statement (dying should be eradicated) into the post.
- melling 4y agoAs I stated 6 years ago, we aren’t likely to “cure death” anytime soon. So, rather than run into the weeds and wax philosophical, maybe we can give it a good effort “Finally, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that death is going to be an easy disease to cure. Maybe we’ll get a few breakthroughs over the next couple of decades and we’ll figure out how to add a few extra healthy years to the average person. We definitely need to move beyond long term studies and peer deeper into our bodies.”
- dfxm12 4y agoEven if "we" eliminate aging, don't worry about it. Most of us can nary afford insulin. If you have to work, you'll be priced out of this for sure.
- ben_w 4y agoThat's pretty much just the USA being weird, not a necessary economic truth: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-insulin-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-i...
- seydor 4y agoWe should legalize suicide
- nradov 4y agoSuicide is legal. The authorities don't prosecute anyone who commits suicide. If you want legalized assisted suicide for those with terminal diseases then that's a tricky issue. It's a good idea in principle but we need careful controls to prevent abuse or coercion.
- yamazakiwi 4y agoI saw an article on HN about this exact thing about a month ago concerning Canada's expansion of "assisted suicide" procedures. It was pretty fascinating! Edit: There are a few posts, but this is the one with the most engagement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34149793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34149793
- hcarvalhoalves 4y agoThis is already happening. Longevity increases, productivity increases, but workers are always near bankruptcy and working until death.
- nebula8804 4y agoI don't think this is happening in the US. They work you until it is time to collect social security. The society and its terrible health care system and garbage food is engineered to keep you alive until it is time to collect retirement benefits and then many just die. (including my father who worked as an engineer eating the standard American diet until he died one month before his retirement at age 64).
- ericmcer 4y agoWhy not just have a fluid work/retirement cycle? Work for a few years, take a year or two off, switch industries, etc. We would need stricter capitalism I think. Immortals would be even more self-absorbed, and lack the motivating aspects of mortality. I personally would be content to throw away a few decades doing drugs and playing video games if I had unlimited time.
- jjk166 4y agoOnly if you were very bad at financial planning. When you save up for retirement you're putting money away in investments such that you can live off the interest generated from your savings. Exactly how much you need depends on a number of factors like how exposed to risk your portfolio is and inflation rates, but typically a fund 20-25x your annual living expenses will allow you to live off the interest indefinitely. Putting that much away in 40 years is difficult and most people have to draw down their savings at the end, but with more time it gets much easier. For example you put away $300/mo for 40 years with 7% compounding interest you'll wind up with around 700k in retirement savings, which would give you about $35k/yr inflation adjusted in retirement - enough to live on but you'd probably have to draw down for things like vacations and emergency expenses. On the other hand saving the same amount over 80 years would give you $11.4 million inflation adjusted, enough to draw $570k/yr inflation adjusted forever. No one wants to work an 80 year career when life expectancy is around 80 years and the first and last quarter of that time you're not in a reasonable condition to work. But if you're living to be a few hundred years old, then those extra 40 years are nothing. Of course this assumes that the economic system remains reasonably unchanged. It's possible that once we're all living such long lives and everyone has had enough time to build up large amounts of wealth that patterns of consumption and growth will be significantly different. But that said, the current expectation that people save up for retirement or die destitute is really a product of our current system and would likely change as well.
- staticman2 4y ago"20-25x your annual living expenses will allow you to live off the interest indefinitely" That isn't a rule of thumb for an infinite lifespan. It's probably not even a rule of thumb for surviving retirement from 1928 through 1938. 7% compound interest is a wacky assumption considering over the last 122 years global equity has returned real returns of 5.3%.
- breakpointalpha 4y agoIt's a lucky thing, for sure, but many upper-middle class people in the West take a few years off of work for various reasons now already. Sabbaticals, child care, travel, etc. If human lifespans increase to many centuries, it would be reasonable to assume a productive person could take a five to ten year break every so often without losing too much ground to their peers.
- primax 4y agoRupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos get to live forever. Ugh.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoLikely, only the super rich would be able to use it. They live forever with power and luxury and while everyone else works and dies in squalor -- see every science fiction story ever.