4 ms·

If I had a chance of beating cancer and extending my life by a lot, I'd rather die fighting.

programjames 2y ago
You're currently dying of the "being human" cancer. Are you working on or donating to anti-aging research, or do you prefer to do other things with your time? It just comes down to your discount factor. Based on inflation, it's typically about 0.95/year, so you would expect to care about ~10% as much for things 50 years in the future. This means if you had a ~10% better quality of life not working on anti-aging, you're guaranteed to be better off. In reality, you should hedge your bets; if everyone spent just a little time on the disease, we could cure "being human". The same applies to dying fighting cancer. You should be willing to do some experimental procedures, but not if it eliminates your happiness for the rest of your life.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  One assumption people making such arguments implicitly assume is that such things are possible, which is not a given. It could well be that you could have infinite money, a billion scientists, and make no progress whatsoever. And I'm only referring to cancer there. Anti-aging seems even less likely. I think there's a lot of cognitive dissonance on this topic from people like Ray Kurzweil. The overwhelming majority of increases in life expectancy over the past millennia have come from reductions in childhood mortality. It's not like people in the past just hit 40 years old and randomly keeled over. But rather people were quite unlikely to make it out of childhood. If one person dies in childhood and the other at 80, you have a life expectancy of 40 years old but it's rather misleading! In reality the average life expectancy (for those that made it out of childhood) has remained pretty similar for millennia - around 70 years. [1] So for instance the Founding Fathers died at an average age of 72. John Adams lived to 90, and Sam Adams/Jay/Franklin/Madison died in their 80s. The only two who died before their 60s were Hamilton, who was killed in a duel, and Hancock, who'd had poor health throughout most of his life. This is a nice sample because you had Founding Fathers as young as 18 (Monroe) when the Declaration of Independence was signed, so we're certainly not seeing a surviorship bias. They were certainly wealthier than average, but all the wealth in the world doesn't matter when state of the art healthcare was doing things like treating infections by bloodletting (including by leeches) to get rid of 'bad blood' or 'balance the 4 humors.' [1] - https://aeon.co/ideas/think-everyone-died-young-in-ancient-societies-think-again https://aeon.co/ideas/think-everyone-died-young-in-ancient-s...
  - kelnos 2y ago
    Not arguing against your general point that post-childhood life expectancy has always been fairly high, but I don't think rich aristocrats make for a "nice sample" when talking about longevity.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Most of the logic about endless life expectancy take improvement in healthcare as the fundamental driving factor. And in the past, the wealthy were no better off than the impoverished here because you couldn't buy that which didn't exist. Germ theory didn't exist, let alone antibiotics, even hand washing as a thing before surgery didn't yet exist. And what I was alluding to in my comment was what happened to George Washington. He died at a relatively early age of 67 of a throat infection, or of the 5 pints of blood that was taken from him to 'cure' that infection leaving portraits of him on his death bed as being white as a ghost.
      - cogman10 2y ago
        > the wealthy were no better off than the impoverished here Eh, in some ways but not all ways. The wealthy, for example, were much more likely to receive proper levels of nutrition. They could afford to eat well balanced meals. If you are poor, you're living off of whatever you can scrounge up or grow.
        somenameforme 2y ago
        Yeah for sure they were also less likely to end up eating unclean food, involuntarily fall victim to the consequences of war, unable to escape famines (oft related to the former), and countless other such things. But in many ways I think this is a desirable bias. Because when we look at past vs present life expectancy, what we're mostly interested in, as far as these topics go, is how medical technology is improving things. The implied question is 'What would ones life expectancy be without modern medicine?' And the upper classes of times past basically answer this for us. The one thing we need to ensure is that we're not picking a literal survivorship bias. So for instance when looking all the way back to Ancient Greece one again finds an average age of death of about 70 years old. But many people point out that if Plato died when he was 20 instead of when he was 80, then we might never have heard of him. So the sample is somewhat biased. This is kind of true, but it's also true that nearly all of these people we would have known about if they died when 40, but anyhow this is all a really annoying and subjective debate - so things like the Founding Fathers are much nicer because there there's 0 argument of survivorship bias.
- drysine 2y ago
  >donating to anti-aging research Not as much as I should've. You've made a good point, thanks.
jajko 2y ago
I would not. I would focus on family and friends, leaving as little mess to work through for them after my passing and making the best out of remaining days. Quality > quantity for me, always.
- kelnos 2y ago
  There are always thresholds, though. Would you accept a 10% decrease in the quality of your life in exchange for an extra year? I probably would. I probably still would if that was a 20% decrease. But I probably wouldn't go for that extra year if I had to accept a 90% decrease in the quality of my life. The threshold is a personal decision. There are no right or wrong answers. We should even indulge someone who would accept that 90% decrease for an extra year. That should be their choice, and even if I wouldn't make it myself, that's neither here nor there.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    > Would you accept a 10% decrease in the quality of your life in exchange for an extra year? I probably would. I probably still would if that was a 20% decrease. But I probably wouldn't go for that extra year if I had to accept a 90% decrease in the quality of my life. The context is _clinical trials_, tho, so that's not generally what's on offer.
agumonkey 2y ago
I would believe that for many people, simply having a chance at fighting would improve the odds.

You're currently dying of the "being human" cancer. Are you working on or donating to anti-aging research, or do you prefer to do other things with your time? It just comes down to your discount factor. Based on inflation, it's typically about 0.95/year, so you would expect to care about ~10% as much for things 50 years in the future. This means if you had a ~10% better quality of life not working on anti-aging, you're guaranteed to be better off. In reality, you should hedge your bets; if everyone spent just a little time on the disease, we could cure "being human". The same applies to dying fighting cancer. You should be willing to do some experimental procedures, but not if it eliminates your happiness for the rest of your life.

somenameforme 2y ago
One assumption people making such arguments implicitly assume is that such things are possible, which is not a given. It could well be that you could have infinite money, a billion scientists, and make no progress whatsoever. And I'm only referring to cancer there. Anti-aging seems even less likely. I think there's a lot of cognitive dissonance on this topic from people like Ray Kurzweil. The overwhelming majority of increases in life expectancy over the past millennia have come from reductions in childhood mortality. It's not like people in the past just hit 40 years old and randomly keeled over. But rather people were quite unlikely to make it out of childhood. If one person dies in childhood and the other at 80, you have a life expectancy of 40 years old but it's rather misleading! In reality the average life expectancy (for those that made it out of childhood) has remained pretty similar for millennia - around 70 years. [1] So for instance the Founding Fathers died at an average age of 72. John Adams lived to 90, and Sam Adams/Jay/Franklin/Madison died in their 80s. The only two who died before their 60s were Hamilton, who was killed in a duel, and Hancock, who'd had poor health throughout most of his life. This is a nice sample because you had Founding Fathers as young as 18 (Monroe) when the Declaration of Independence was signed, so we're certainly not seeing a surviorship bias. They were certainly wealthier than average, but all the wealth in the world doesn't matter when state of the art healthcare was doing things like treating infections by bloodletting (including by leeches) to get rid of 'bad blood' or 'balance the 4 humors.' [1] - https://aeon.co/ideas/think-everyone-died-young-in-ancient-societies-think-again https://aeon.co/ideas/think-everyone-died-young-in-ancient-s...
- kelnos 2y ago
  Not arguing against your general point that post-childhood life expectancy has always been fairly high, but I don't think rich aristocrats make for a "nice sample" when talking about longevity.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Most of the logic about endless life expectancy take improvement in healthcare as the fundamental driving factor. And in the past, the wealthy were no better off than the impoverished here because you couldn't buy that which didn't exist. Germ theory didn't exist, let alone antibiotics, even hand washing as a thing before surgery didn't yet exist. And what I was alluding to in my comment was what happened to George Washington. He died at a relatively early age of 67 of a throat infection, or of the 5 pints of blood that was taken from him to 'cure' that infection leaving portraits of him on his death bed as being white as a ghost.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      > the wealthy were no better off than the impoverished here Eh, in some ways but not all ways. The wealthy, for example, were much more likely to receive proper levels of nutrition. They could afford to eat well balanced meals. If you are poor, you're living off of whatever you can scrounge up or grow.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        Yeah for sure they were also less likely to end up eating unclean food, involuntarily fall victim to the consequences of war, unable to escape famines (oft related to the former), and countless other such things. But in many ways I think this is a desirable bias. Because when we look at past vs present life expectancy, what we're mostly interested in, as far as these topics go, is how medical technology is improving things. The implied question is 'What would ones life expectancy be without modern medicine?' And the upper classes of times past basically answer this for us. The one thing we need to ensure is that we're not picking a literal survivorship bias. So for instance when looking all the way back to Ancient Greece one again finds an average age of death of about 70 years old. But many people point out that if Plato died when he was 20 instead of when he was 80, then we might never have heard of him. So the sample is somewhat biased. This is kind of true, but it's also true that nearly all of these people we would have known about if they died when 40, but anyhow this is all a really annoying and subjective debate - so things like the Founding Fathers are much nicer because there there's 0 argument of survivorship bias.
drysine 2y ago
>donating to anti-aging research Not as much as I should've. You've made a good point, thanks.

jajko 2y ago

I would not. I would focus on family and friends, leaving as little mess to work through for them after my passing and making the best out of remaining days. Quality > quantity for me, always.

kelnos 2y ago
There are always thresholds, though. Would you accept a 10% decrease in the quality of your life in exchange for an extra year? I probably would. I probably still would if that was a 20% decrease. But I probably wouldn't go for that extra year if I had to accept a 90% decrease in the quality of my life. The threshold is a personal decision. There are no right or wrong answers. We should even indulge someone who would accept that 90% decrease for an extra year. That should be their choice, and even if I wouldn't make it myself, that's neither here nor there.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > Would you accept a 10% decrease in the quality of your life in exchange for an extra year? I probably would. I probably still would if that was a 20% decrease. But I probably wouldn't go for that extra year if I had to accept a 90% decrease in the quality of my life. The context is _clinical trials_, tho, so that's not generally what's on offer.

agumonkey 2y ago

I would believe that for many people, simply having a chance at fighting would improve the odds.