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Death is a tragedy. I see zero issue with longevity research. Any second-order societal effects can be dealt with, but this is absolutely not an area where we

Death is a tragedy. I see zero issue with longevity research. Any second-order societal effects can be dealt with, but this is absolutely not an area where we need regulations and deliberation of "safety" when literally everyone you know, your children, and your loved ones will die without this research. The problem of dying is a much more urgent problem than, say, overpopulation or duration of power. Those can be solved once we aren't all, well, dying.

Daniel_sk 2y ago
Death is by design and is a vital part of evolution. I don't have issues with trying to make our human lives a bit longer (and preserving same quality of life), but achieving biological immortality would open a lot more problems.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  This is getting close to negative eugenics. You might want to rethink your position.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    This is just what life is... We can spend all day talking about fairy tales of living forever but this is reality lol. What position is there to rethink ?
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Wrote the commentor on a sheet of glass and metal, sharing their thoughts at the speed of light over a planet-spanning communications network with thousands of nodes in low-Earth orbit, while others on that network acts as patrons to sponsor such research as "can we grow mouse fibroblasts in gatorade and other soft drinks as part of an ongoing project to build a meat robot?" (the answer, is this is surprisingly more viable than they expected). It's very easy to be overconfident where the boundary is between fairy tales and engineering, the boundary between fairy tales and science is even harder, and even domain experts can get that wrong in both directions.
  - sriram_malhar 2y ago
    Not really some variant of eugenics. GP didn't identify any subset of humanity
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      That evolution be allowed to operate unencumbered by mitigation on human populations is literally a eugenic position. It's not necessary to identify specific genes or traits that evolution would act on for this to hold.
- ben_w 2y ago
  There are species that have negligiable sensesence, QED death isn't vital part of evolution. But even if it was, why should we limit ourselves to evolution? Evolution did not design us to go to the moon, to split the atom, to have transplantable organs, to fly, to brush our teeth with fluorinated toothpaste, or to use contraceptives — it has only just managed to keep up with us wearing clothes and cooking our meals.
- digging 2y ago
  > Death is by design This betrays a deep misunderstanding of the mechanics of evolution. Design is literally not even part of the equation. I suspect you actually know that, but may have let an emotional response confuse your position. Radical ideas like "let's stop dying" often evoke powerful irrational responses from all sorts of people, but it's very important to stop and consider the source of that response. For example, I'm envious of those who would live in an age of immortality (if it were to happen), as I don't expect such an outcome for myself, but I don't want to take that away from them if it's a real possibility.
lm28469 2y ago
> Death is a tragedy. And so is life. One thing is sure, life is much better enjoyed when you don't spend the entirety of it trying to bend the rules and worrying about things you have no power over. If you're not fit, exercising two hours per day, eating clean food at every single meal, skipping alcohol, living in a rural area far from pollutants, &c. you have no business discussing longevity in the first place imho. It's too easy to wait for the silver bullet complaining about how death is tragic while letting ourselves rotting away every second of every day
- ben_w 2y ago
  There's a lot of things people can do to improve life expectancy, but it is impossible for most people to move to the countryside because houses aren't mobile like that. Even then, good as fitness is, it doesn't make us agesless. We can research aging without solving all the rest of the issues first — not even maximum life duration, as 81 years where your body clock never goes past 25 is still an improvement on 81 years where you slowly wind down from 25 onwards. Also with the food, there are often efforts to get the population as a whole to eat healthier, these get pushback that calls it "nanny state" (in the UK) or just outright denies the health impacts of the food that's being advised against (I wonder, find a "end fat shaming" headline, go into details, will you find a maker of junk food sponsored the research?)
- skeaker 2y ago
  Weird take. It's actually totally normal to be shaken by death, regardless of how fit you are. I would imagine most people don't want to die.
sriram_malhar 2y ago
> The problem of dying is a much more urgent problem than, say, overpopulation How are you not connecting overpopulation and longevity? The earth is already straining, even with the current level of population and longevity. If no one is dying until they are 200, and increasingly consuming like the richer nations, we are going to be living miserable lives. Perhaps the people who advocate for longevity should spend a year in any one of the third world's populated cities and experience it first-hand.
- ben_w 2y ago
  If we live to 25 and have 5 kids, population goes up. If we live to 200 and have 1 kid, population goes down. > and increasingly consuming like the richer nations, we are going to be living miserable lives. Tautologically false; if the worst off are empowered to consume as we do now, those lives will be *amazing*. Also, the sustainability level of consumption depends on tech, not population. If we wound back to 1930 tech and population, we were reliant on coal and oil, we couldn't substitute other things for them — if peak oil/coal had happened in that decade, we'd have been stuck; now we're good, coal is being phased out as fast as we can build the alternatives, and we have partial alternatives for oil and are working on the reminder.

Daniel_sk 2y ago

Death is by design and is a vital part of evolution. I don't have issues with trying to make our human lives a bit longer (and preserving same quality of life), but achieving biological immortality would open a lot more problems.

pfdietz 2y ago
This is getting close to negative eugenics. You might want to rethink your position.
- lm28469 2y ago
  This is just what life is... We can spend all day talking about fairy tales of living forever but this is reality lol. What position is there to rethink ?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Wrote the commentor on a sheet of glass and metal, sharing their thoughts at the speed of light over a planet-spanning communications network with thousands of nodes in low-Earth orbit, while others on that network acts as patrons to sponsor such research as "can we grow mouse fibroblasts in gatorade and other soft drinks as part of an ongoing project to build a meat robot?" (the answer, is this is surprisingly more viable than they expected). It's very easy to be overconfident where the boundary is between fairy tales and engineering, the boundary between fairy tales and science is even harder, and even domain experts can get that wrong in both directions.
- sriram_malhar 2y ago
  Not really some variant of eugenics. GP didn't identify any subset of humanity
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    That evolution be allowed to operate unencumbered by mitigation on human populations is literally a eugenic position. It's not necessary to identify specific genes or traits that evolution would act on for this to hold.
ben_w 2y ago
There are species that have negligiable sensesence, QED death isn't vital part of evolution. But even if it was, why should we limit ourselves to evolution? Evolution did not design us to go to the moon, to split the atom, to have transplantable organs, to fly, to brush our teeth with fluorinated toothpaste, or to use contraceptives — it has only just managed to keep up with us wearing clothes and cooking our meals.
digging 2y ago
> Death is by design This betrays a deep misunderstanding of the mechanics of evolution. Design is literally not even part of the equation. I suspect you actually know that, but may have let an emotional response confuse your position. Radical ideas like "let's stop dying" often evoke powerful irrational responses from all sorts of people, but it's very important to stop and consider the source of that response. For example, I'm envious of those who would live in an age of immortality (if it were to happen), as I don't expect such an outcome for myself, but I don't want to take that away from them if it's a real possibility.

lm28469 2y ago

> Death is a tragedy. And so is life. One thing is sure, life is much better enjoyed when you don't spend the entirety of it trying to bend the rules and worrying about things you have no power over. If you're not fit, exercising two hours per day, eating clean food at every single meal, skipping alcohol, living in a rural area far from pollutants, &c. you have no business discussing longevity in the first place imho. It's too easy to wait for the silver bullet complaining about how death is tragic while letting ourselves rotting away every second of every day

ben_w 2y ago
There's a lot of things people can do to improve life expectancy, but it is impossible for most people to move to the countryside because houses aren't mobile like that. Even then, good as fitness is, it doesn't make us agesless. We can research aging without solving all the rest of the issues first — not even maximum life duration, as 81 years where your body clock never goes past 25 is still an improvement on 81 years where you slowly wind down from 25 onwards. Also with the food, there are often efforts to get the population as a whole to eat healthier, these get pushback that calls it "nanny state" (in the UK) or just outright denies the health impacts of the food that's being advised against (I wonder, find a "end fat shaming" headline, go into details, will you find a maker of junk food sponsored the research?)
skeaker 2y ago
Weird take. It's actually totally normal to be shaken by death, regardless of how fit you are. I would imagine most people don't want to die.

sriram_malhar 2y ago

> The problem of dying is a much more urgent problem than, say, overpopulation How are you not connecting overpopulation and longevity? The earth is already straining, even with the current level of population and longevity. If no one is dying until they are 200, and increasingly consuming like the richer nations, we are going to be living miserable lives. Perhaps the people who advocate for longevity should spend a year in any one of the third world's populated cities and experience it first-hand.

ben_w 2y ago
If we live to 25 and have 5 kids, population goes up. If we live to 200 and have 1 kid, population goes down. > and increasingly consuming like the richer nations, we are going to be living miserable lives. Tautologically false; if the worst off are empowered to consume as we do now, those lives will be *amazing*. Also, the sustainability level of consumption depends on tech, not population. If we wound back to 1930 tech and population, we were reliant on coal and oil, we couldn't substitute other things for them — if peak oil/coal had happened in that decade, we'd have been stuck; now we're good, coal is being phased out as fast as we can build the alternatives, and we have partial alternatives for oil and are working on the reminder.