6 ms·

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 disturbin

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.
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    What's worse: having a 700 year old Xi Jinping, or having an extra 600 years of entirely unmitigated aging worldwide - with all the death and suffering that entails? There is plenty of politicians I truly hate. But I don't hate any of them enough to doom billions to an early grave just to get at them. If you think that Xi Jinping should die, then I can't help but think that a better solution to that would be to actually kill Xi Jinping. Far less collateral damage involved. >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. There's this tendency for people nowadays to take this kind of shitty Black Mirror logic, and assume that the inevitable outcome is the one that maximizes the grimdark factor. In reality, there's no reason to expect that anti-aging treatments would work any different from something like Ozempic or laser eye surgery. Sure, those were hideously expensive to develop - but are now affordable to upper middle class, and fully expected to get more available over time. You earn more by selling a $1000 smartphone to everyone than you could ever earn by selling a billion dollar megayacht to a dozen billionaires looking to buy one. With anti-aging tech, the economic incentive to reduce the costs and reach a wider audience is immense. The demand is going to be there: a lot of what the cosmetics industry does now is fight the mere appearance of aging, and that's an industry worth hundreds of billions by itself.
    - kulahan 1y ago
      Xi Jinping is worse, by orders of magnitude. Death is part of the necessary cycle of biology, and in no way is it bad. It’s certainly SAD, but in no way is it bad. Rotting isn’t this horrible mark on your body, it’s the beauty of nature recycling things so that the new has a chance. Not only that, but could you imagine the absolutely incredible strain on Earth’s resources if we had 50 billion people instead of 8 billion? Global warming would’ve happened ages ago, and we’d be far, FAR beyond it now. In this scenario, it should be obvious nobody has a yacht, let alone a smartphone. There simply isn’t enough to go around here on earth. There simply isn’t any positive to immortality, besides “well I won’t be sad about that one particular thing anymore”, which is… really lame when compared against the untold damage this will do. I’m a little surprised you’re not taking any time to explain the benefits here, because I’m not actually seeing any besides you not having to cope with nature anymore. Edit: I should also mention that I’m not looking for shitty black mirror outcomes, I’m just looking at the modern world, which continues to stratify massively, and pretty much has (with few exceptions) since time immemorial. Can you explain why things will suddenly become fair and equitable when nobody dies for some reason?
- lurking_swe 1y ago
  i’ll leave you with this to ponder. It would be pretty weird if george washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc were here with us today. We’d probably still be debating if slavery is acceptable or not LOL. People complain about boomers hoarding all the wealth and “never letting go” so younger folks can take the reins. Imagine how much worse it would be if those boomers lived until 200? Imagine how much more fossil fuel we’d be burning if we all lived until 200? You know how old people tend to get stubborn? Not all, but most? Now imagine if the U.S. government was comprised of mostly people age 100+. Imagine how they would do keeping up with changes that affect youngsters in 2025? Imagine how bad the housing crisis would be in 2025. Imagine how unmotivated people would be in day to day life if they knew they’d live to 200 years? In summary…if everyone could easily live forever, that is not a good thing. It would drastically change society as we know it, and not 100% for the better. I’d argue it would actually make things worse. Death is literally a biological process that affects all living organisms on this planet, and in the galaxy. Sorry if that’s hard to accept? I personally find it beautiful how “energy” is recycled once we die, through the soil, and eventually into other things - like a tree, etc.
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    I find it hard to imagine that an 80 years old politician today spends a lot of time thinking of what would happen 50 or 100 years down the line. And things like fossil fuel use are very much a "50 to 100 years down the line" kind of problem. Now, if that very politician thought that with the way anti-aging technology is going, he'll probably live to 150, maybe 200 if he's lucky? That might change the equation - for the better. I don't think that "kill everyone to avoid the risk of the political system getting marginally worse" is an optimal solution. I'd rather deal with aging and the shittiness of politics as two separate problems with a minor overlap. >I personally find it beautiful how “energy” is recycled once we die, through the soil, and eventually into other things - like a tree, etc. I think that this is nothing but socially accepted cope. A load of pseudo-profound bullshit that might be easier to accept than the idea that aging and death are really fucking bad and we aren't doing much to stop them. And that even if we did, we and our loved ones may not be the ones to ever benefit from it.
    - 1y ago

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.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  What's worse: having a 700 year old Xi Jinping, or having an extra 600 years of entirely unmitigated aging worldwide - with all the death and suffering that entails? There is plenty of politicians I truly hate. But I don't hate any of them enough to doom billions to an early grave just to get at them. If you think that Xi Jinping should die, then I can't help but think that a better solution to that would be to actually kill Xi Jinping. Far less collateral damage involved. >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. There's this tendency for people nowadays to take this kind of shitty Black Mirror logic, and assume that the inevitable outcome is the one that maximizes the grimdark factor. In reality, there's no reason to expect that anti-aging treatments would work any different from something like Ozempic or laser eye surgery. Sure, those were hideously expensive to develop - but are now affordable to upper middle class, and fully expected to get more available over time. You earn more by selling a $1000 smartphone to everyone than you could ever earn by selling a billion dollar megayacht to a dozen billionaires looking to buy one. With anti-aging tech, the economic incentive to reduce the costs and reach a wider audience is immense. The demand is going to be there: a lot of what the cosmetics industry does now is fight the mere appearance of aging, and that's an industry worth hundreds of billions by itself.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    Xi Jinping is worse, by orders of magnitude. Death is part of the necessary cycle of biology, and in no way is it bad. It’s certainly SAD, but in no way is it bad. Rotting isn’t this horrible mark on your body, it’s the beauty of nature recycling things so that the new has a chance. Not only that, but could you imagine the absolutely incredible strain on Earth’s resources if we had 50 billion people instead of 8 billion? Global warming would’ve happened ages ago, and we’d be far, FAR beyond it now. In this scenario, it should be obvious nobody has a yacht, let alone a smartphone. There simply isn’t enough to go around here on earth. There simply isn’t any positive to immortality, besides “well I won’t be sad about that one particular thing anymore”, which is… really lame when compared against the untold damage this will do. I’m a little surprised you’re not taking any time to explain the benefits here, because I’m not actually seeing any besides you not having to cope with nature anymore. Edit: I should also mention that I’m not looking for shitty black mirror outcomes, I’m just looking at the modern world, which continues to stratify massively, and pretty much has (with few exceptions) since time immemorial. Can you explain why things will suddenly become fair and equitable when nobody dies for some reason?
lurking_swe 1y ago
i’ll leave you with this to ponder. It would be pretty weird if george washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc were here with us today. We’d probably still be debating if slavery is acceptable or not LOL. People complain about boomers hoarding all the wealth and “never letting go” so younger folks can take the reins. Imagine how much worse it would be if those boomers lived until 200? Imagine how much more fossil fuel we’d be burning if we all lived until 200? You know how old people tend to get stubborn? Not all, but most? Now imagine if the U.S. government was comprised of mostly people age 100+. Imagine how they would do keeping up with changes that affect youngsters in 2025? Imagine how bad the housing crisis would be in 2025. Imagine how unmotivated people would be in day to day life if they knew they’d live to 200 years? In summary…if everyone could easily live forever, that is not a good thing. It would drastically change society as we know it, and not 100% for the better. I’d argue it would actually make things worse. Death is literally a biological process that affects all living organisms on this planet, and in the galaxy. Sorry if that’s hard to accept? I personally find it beautiful how “energy” is recycled once we die, through the soil, and eventually into other things - like a tree, etc.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  I find it hard to imagine that an 80 years old politician today spends a lot of time thinking of what would happen 50 or 100 years down the line. And things like fossil fuel use are very much a "50 to 100 years down the line" kind of problem. Now, if that very politician thought that with the way anti-aging technology is going, he'll probably live to 150, maybe 200 if he's lucky? That might change the equation - for the better. I don't think that "kill everyone to avoid the risk of the political system getting marginally worse" is an optimal solution. I'd rather deal with aging and the shittiness of politics as two separate problems with a minor overlap. >I personally find it beautiful how “energy” is recycled once we die, through the soil, and eventually into other things - like a tree, etc. I think that this is nothing but socially accepted cope. A load of pseudo-profound bullshit that might be easier to accept than the idea that aging and death are really fucking bad and we aren't doing much to stop them. And that even if we did, we and our loved ones may not be the ones to ever benefit from it.
  - 1y ago