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I would appreciate if the "norm" was recognized to be not having your body rot away over time. It really is simple: aging is incredibly harmful and undesirable

I would appreciate if the "norm" was recognized to be not having your body rot away over time. It really is simple: aging is incredibly harmful and undesirable. It strips away your quality of life until there isn't much left and then you die. It doesn't take any more than that for it to be declared a disease. Whether it's "natural" or whether "everyone has it" is a distraction. If everyone was born with cancer, that wouldn't make cancer any less of a disease.

1718627440 1y ago
> It really is simple: aging is incredibly harmful and undesirable. Doesn't make it a disease. Dying is a normal part of life as well as the decline before that. > If everyone was born with cancer, that wouldn't make cancer any less of a disease. No, then the people not having cancer would have the disease. > I would appreciate if the "norm" was recognized That's not how a norm works. You get that by doing trials and statistics, not by wanting it to be different.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  Starvation used to be "a normal part of life". So was having half your children die before they hit the age of 10. That was the normal, natural outcome of having a child - if you want to have grandchildren, just make more children! Some of them would live, surely! This is how it was - until humans decided that this sucks and something should be done about that. I see no reason not to dispose of aging at the earliest opportunity. And this starts by recognizing: aging sucks for everyone, and should be disposed of.
  - lelandbatey 1y ago
    It's not fightable or optional, so it's less like starvation and more like gravity. Humans have decided that we'd like to "dispose" of aging, but unfortunately reality has this annoying habit of not responding to our categorization and despite thinking of it as a disease we cannot fight it like we can other diseases. Those other things you mentioned are considered outside of the usual because we have been able to make them less common through effort; despite all our effort though, aging isn't something we have that control over. We're all gonna die, of old age or a short-sharp-shock, at least until we figure out some wild medical breakthroughs. Once we have those breakthroughs, sure folks might start thinking of aging as a disease that's not "normal" or a thing that we can actually avoid, but until then it's a fact of life, same as gravity, the sun, or the tides.
    - jamiek88 1y ago
      I’d argue we won’t get those anti aging breakthroughs unless we take it seriously as a disease. It’s just biology. It can be fixed with enough research. There’s nothing magical or spiritual about aging it’s just another thing for humans to beat. Lots of people get viscerally up feelings about it though for some reason. Not sure why. I’ve had people spitting purple angry when I say the above.
      - viking123 1y ago
        There's way more aging research now than like 10 years ago, I think the field is also starting to understand that playing whack a mole with 50 different diseases on a 80 year old is not really the winning strategy.
    - ACCount37 1y ago
      It's less "not fightable" and more "no one is seriously trying". Compare the amount of funding aging research gets with something like Alzheimer's. Which is also a degenerative disease, and worth fighting against - but nowhere near as prevalent. I don't doubt that it would be incredibly hard to stop aging altogether. But if the effort was there, we might get a way to reduce the severity of aging within a few decades of research. The sheer benefits of being able to reduce the severity of "aging associated" things in a world with aging population would be immense.
kulahan 1y ago
I wouldn’t call one of the most essential parts of the life process (moving towards the end of your life involuntarily) a disease. It’s actually very disturbing how people seem not to be worried about the growing potential for immortality. THAT is a disease, if anything.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  If you want to decay and rot and die a miserable death, that's your choice. If your genuine preference is that all of your friends and family and your own children should decay and rot and die a miserable death too, then that's your opinion and you can hold onto it. But don't you dare force that outcome onto everyone. In my eyes, "decay and rot and the inevitability of a miserable death is a good thing actually" is a fucking insane viewpoint to hold. The only possible reason I see to hold onto it is that it's the socially accepted cope. If you truly believe that nothing can be done about aging, then "death is good acktually" makes for a good coping mechanism. I'd rather humans cope less and problem-solve more.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  - kulahan 1y ago
    If you want the world to be run by a 700 year old Xi jinping, if you want your children to suffer under a thousand year rule of monopolistic Bezos, if you want to see Altered Carbon become a reality, then that’s your opinion and you can hold on to it. But don’t you dare force that on anyone else. See how unconvincing these platitudes are? I literally cannot imagine why you would want infinite life. The short timespan is 99% of the reason life is so valuable. We need to do what we can with the time we’re given. I never said nothing could be done about aging anyways. I think we’ll reach the point where people only die when they choose to. That’s also a pure dystopia, because it’s beyond naive to think this would be some commonplace technology afforded to everyone and not just the ruling class. Imagine if King George were still ruling England. No rules can change ever - he’s the king. Hope you like eternal monarchy. I sometimes wonder if people are so afraid of death because they never talk about it frankly? My wife and I converse about it regularly.
carlosjobim 1y ago
All living beings have protective mechanism against all the degenerative effects of aging, and this has been true for over a billion years now. That protective mechanism is reproduction. Your viral infections, bacterial infections, broken bones, bad backs, polluted lungs, corrupted mind, and just general wear and tear, does not get transmitted. It's a clean start in life.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  And the "protective mechanism" humans have against dementia is that they eventually stop being capable of feeding themselves and die. Which does get rid of dementia alright. But I fail to see that as an acceptable solution.
- viking123 1y ago
  There is epigenetic age reset that happens during the conception that "resets" the cells to their young version like kind of a factory reset that cleans up the aging marks and other offsets that have happened during life so they don't get transmitted to the offspring. Learning to apply this process to the living human is quite big research topic. Obviously nature had to figure some kind of mechanism how to not transmit the cellural damage forward.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    It is applied to the living human (or other being), when it is born. Applying the process to already old people would be the abomination of desolation and turn this planet into a hellish dimension of unimaginable proportions, and it would of course exterminate humanity. You have to remember that when humanity is exterminated, that means forever.

1718627440 1y ago

> It really is simple: aging is incredibly harmful and undesirable. Doesn't make it a disease. Dying is a normal part of life as well as the decline before that. > If everyone was born with cancer, that wouldn't make cancer any less of a disease. No, then the people not having cancer would have the disease. > I would appreciate if the "norm" was recognized That's not how a norm works. You get that by doing trials and statistics, not by wanting it to be different.

ACCount37 1y ago
Starvation used to be "a normal part of life". So was having half your children die before they hit the age of 10. That was the normal, natural outcome of having a child - if you want to have grandchildren, just make more children! Some of them would live, surely! This is how it was - until humans decided that this sucks and something should be done about that. I see no reason not to dispose of aging at the earliest opportunity. And this starts by recognizing: aging sucks for everyone, and should be disposed of.
- lelandbatey 1y ago
  It's not fightable or optional, so it's less like starvation and more like gravity. Humans have decided that we'd like to "dispose" of aging, but unfortunately reality has this annoying habit of not responding to our categorization and despite thinking of it as a disease we cannot fight it like we can other diseases. Those other things you mentioned are considered outside of the usual because we have been able to make them less common through effort; despite all our effort though, aging isn't something we have that control over. We're all gonna die, of old age or a short-sharp-shock, at least until we figure out some wild medical breakthroughs. Once we have those breakthroughs, sure folks might start thinking of aging as a disease that's not "normal" or a thing that we can actually avoid, but until then it's a fact of life, same as gravity, the sun, or the tides.
  - jamiek88 1y ago
    I’d argue we won’t get those anti aging breakthroughs unless we take it seriously as a disease. It’s just biology. It can be fixed with enough research. There’s nothing magical or spiritual about aging it’s just another thing for humans to beat. Lots of people get viscerally up feelings about it though for some reason. Not sure why. I’ve had people spitting purple angry when I say the above.
    - viking123 1y ago
      There's way more aging research now than like 10 years ago, I think the field is also starting to understand that playing whack a mole with 50 different diseases on a 80 year old is not really the winning strategy.
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    It's less "not fightable" and more "no one is seriously trying". Compare the amount of funding aging research gets with something like Alzheimer's. Which is also a degenerative disease, and worth fighting against - but nowhere near as prevalent. I don't doubt that it would be incredibly hard to stop aging altogether. But if the effort was there, we might get a way to reduce the severity of aging within a few decades of research. The sheer benefits of being able to reduce the severity of "aging associated" things in a world with aging population would be immense.

kulahan 1y ago

I wouldn’t call one of the most essential parts of the life process (moving towards the end of your life involuntarily) a disease. It’s actually very disturbing how people seem not to be worried about the growing potential for immortality. THAT is a disease, if anything.

ACCount37 1y ago
If you want to decay and rot and die a miserable death, that's your choice. If your genuine preference is that all of your friends and family and your own children should decay and rot and die a miserable death too, then that's your opinion and you can hold onto it. But don't you dare force that outcome onto everyone. In my eyes, "decay and rot and the inevitability of a miserable death is a good thing actually" is a fucking insane viewpoint to hold. The only possible reason I see to hold onto it is that it's the socially accepted cope. If you truly believe that nothing can be done about aging, then "death is good acktually" makes for a good coping mechanism. I'd rather humans cope less and problem-solve more.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- kulahan 1y ago
  If you want the world to be run by a 700 year old Xi jinping, if you want your children to suffer under a thousand year rule of monopolistic Bezos, if you want to see Altered Carbon become a reality, then that’s your opinion and you can hold on to it. But don’t you dare force that on anyone else. See how unconvincing these platitudes are? I literally cannot imagine why you would want infinite life. The short timespan is 99% of the reason life is so valuable. We need to do what we can with the time we’re given. I never said nothing could be done about aging anyways. I think we’ll reach the point where people only die when they choose to. That’s also a pure dystopia, because it’s beyond naive to think this would be some commonplace technology afforded to everyone and not just the ruling class. Imagine if King George were still ruling England. No rules can change ever - he’s the king. Hope you like eternal monarchy. I sometimes wonder if people are so afraid of death because they never talk about it frankly? My wife and I converse about it regularly.

carlosjobim 1y ago

All living beings have protective mechanism against all the degenerative effects of aging, and this has been true for over a billion years now. That protective mechanism is reproduction. Your viral infections, bacterial infections, broken bones, bad backs, polluted lungs, corrupted mind, and just general wear and tear, does not get transmitted. It's a clean start in life.

ACCount37 1y ago
And the "protective mechanism" humans have against dementia is that they eventually stop being capable of feeding themselves and die. Which does get rid of dementia alright. But I fail to see that as an acceptable solution.
viking123 1y ago
There is epigenetic age reset that happens during the conception that "resets" the cells to their young version like kind of a factory reset that cleans up the aging marks and other offsets that have happened during life so they don't get transmitted to the offspring. Learning to apply this process to the living human is quite big research topic. Obviously nature had to figure some kind of mechanism how to not transmit the cellural damage forward.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  It is applied to the living human (or other being), when it is born. Applying the process to already old people would be the abomination of desolation and turn this planet into a hellish dimension of unimaginable proportions, and it would of course exterminate humanity. You have to remember that when humanity is exterminated, that means forever.