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> Your brain at 90 is mostly useless even if you're not afflicted with a serious condition. You can't learn and adapt You are factually incorrect. You can, in

> Your brain at 90 is mostly useless even if you're not afflicted with a serious condition. You can't learn and adapt You are factually incorrect. You can, in fact, learn and adapt in your 90s. Sometimes (not always) the brain has degraded and can't do so as well, but that's a problem we should work to fix. And there is some evidence to suggest that cause and effect go in both directions there: if you keep learning and adapting your brain remains more capable of doing so. People talking about longevity and improving lifespan are primarily not talking about having people go on for centuries looking and feeling like they're 90. They're talking about having people go on for centuries or longer looking and feeling like they're 50 or better. Many of the same things that make us age and die are also what make us have much worse health (physical and mental) in our 90s than in our 40s or 50s. Fixing those things will both help us live longer and help us be healthier for longer.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I said "at 90 you can't learn and adapt like you could in your 20s". You chose to cut off my quote so it sounds like I said something else, and argue with the strawman you created. This alone means it's pointless discussing anything with you, as there's no basic intellectual honesty here. If your claim is that most people at 90 are as intellectually flexible and capable as 20 year old people, that's a rather drastic deviation from basic facts of reality. Another reason it's pointless discussing anything with you. "We should fix this"... yeah ok, fix it. We're not discussing that, but just mechanically extending days of life. Those two things are not the same thing. While you're "fixing this" (mental performance at 90) you'll find entropy is rather unforgivable, especially for cells which can't divide so you'll have to essentially completely redo our biology in order to "fix this". Good luck.
polishdude20 3y ago
They won't help us change our minds though. The problem with having people in their 90's capable of the same things as people in their 30's is that they'd hold positions of power longer. Old ideas would live on much longer
- ben_w 3y ago
  How can you be so confident about a hypothetical with zero examples? All the 90 year olds today are necessarily stuck with 90 year old brains.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    Indeed. And why advocate death as the solution to a problem better handled with term limits and similar mechanisms?
    - throw__away7391 3y ago
      Because right now you don't have the option to choose, so you try to convince yourself that the only choice you have is the one you would have picked anyway. It's quite a common phenomenon, I guess a sort of survival strategy.
- antihipocrat 3y ago
  Many people change their ideas as they age, the ones that don't are more noticeable and reinforce the stereotype.
  - PeterisP 3y ago
    There is some truth in saying that science progresses one funeral at a time, and in political structures some of the most effective checks on abuse of power is that even the most shrewd dictator eventually dies. Longevity has its benefits, but if the powerful people can become effectively immortal, then that does have some risks of dystopian stagnation. Like, imagine USSR if Stalin would never die, or Salazar and Franco still holding power in Portugal and Spain, because democracy only became possible when their health failed; and lack of change at top management of megacorporations and major privately held businesses because their owners and CEOs now can be eternal.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

I said "at 90 you can't learn and adapt like you could in your 20s". You chose to cut off my quote so it sounds like I said something else, and argue with the strawman you created. This alone means it's pointless discussing anything with you, as there's no basic intellectual honesty here. If your claim is that most people at 90 are as intellectually flexible and capable as 20 year old people, that's a rather drastic deviation from basic facts of reality. Another reason it's pointless discussing anything with you. "We should fix this"... yeah ok, fix it. We're not discussing that, but just mechanically extending days of life. Those two things are not the same thing. While you're "fixing this" (mental performance at 90) you'll find entropy is rather unforgivable, especially for cells which can't divide so you'll have to essentially completely redo our biology in order to "fix this". Good luck.

polishdude20 3y ago

They won't help us change our minds though. The problem with having people in their 90's capable of the same things as people in their 30's is that they'd hold positions of power longer. Old ideas would live on much longer

ben_w 3y ago
How can you be so confident about a hypothetical with zero examples? All the 90 year olds today are necessarily stuck with 90 year old brains.
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  Indeed. And why advocate death as the solution to a problem better handled with term limits and similar mechanisms?
  - throw__away7391 3y ago
    Because right now you don't have the option to choose, so you try to convince yourself that the only choice you have is the one you would have picked anyway. It's quite a common phenomenon, I guess a sort of survival strategy.
antihipocrat 3y ago
Many people change their ideas as they age, the ones that don't are more noticeable and reinforce the stereotype.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  There is some truth in saying that science progresses one funeral at a time, and in political structures some of the most effective checks on abuse of power is that even the most shrewd dictator eventually dies. Longevity has its benefits, but if the powerful people can become effectively immortal, then that does have some risks of dystopian stagnation. Like, imagine USSR if Stalin would never die, or Salazar and Franco still holding power in Portugal and Spain, because democracy only became possible when their health failed; and lack of change at top management of megacorporations and major privately held businesses because their owners and CEOs now can be eternal.