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Never thought I'd see so many people rooting for death here on HN. What a dour, pessimistic place this has become.
by modeless 1y ago
Never thought I'd see so many people rooting for death here on HN. What a dour, pessimistic place this has become.
- drooby 1y agoThere is plenty of reason to welcome death. And be optimistic about its presence. As Max Planck observed: "Science progresses one funeral at a time". And really, the same can be said for political beliefs. Humans are stubborn creatures that stratify power. Death has always been the great equalizer. But perhaps soon, no longer.
- ants_everywhere 1y agoScience progresses because it makes a disciplined study of the world with numerical predictions that are checked for accuracy. Politics is treated by most people as essentially a religion. And religion does not progress with death. It just cycles through periods of greater fundamentalism and less fundamentalism. There aren't enough people studying political science and studying it rigorously enough for the Planck observation to apply.
- scoopdewoop 1y agoThat is a really naive epistemology. Science as an objective methodology that churns out truth doesn't exist. Its a human endeavor full of interests. Religion is also a human endeavor full of interests, and can also ascertain certain truths. Often people who subscribe to scientism gloat that even in the farthest reaches of space, other aliens will arrive at the same equations. Similarly, I think at the farthest reaches of space aliens will have to reckon with wickedness, duty, hospitality, forgiveness, etc. It can even make numerical predictions like "there will always be the poor". So far so true.
- ants_everywhere 1y agoThis is just a bunch of cold-war style anti-science critique stuff. It's frankly not worth responding to. There are reasonable things to say about science, but the anti-objectivity bit was an attempt to undermine science and reduce opposition to political rule by fiat. The rise in authoritarian rhetoric and beliefs is why we're seeing the anti-science and anti-expert ideas become fashionable again. Notice that the anti-expert/anti-intellectual/anti-science people always have something else they're selling you that conflicts with the experts/intellectuals/science. Anyway, good luck.
- scoopdewoop 1y agoThis isn't an anti-science critique. It's a philosophical argument about how science actually operates. I'm not coming at this from a populist authoritarian angle! (Literally my views were influenced by Feyerabend, an academic and leftist anarchist) The tobacco-funded studies that failed to prove cigarettes harmful? Those were scientists doing "objective methodology." Pharmaceutical companies suppressing unfavorable trials? Scientists. The replication crisis? Scientists following the same process. These aren't exceptions. They show that science is a human practice embedded in institutional and economic contexts. Acknowledging that science involves human interests doesn't undermine it. It's how you maintain critical perspective when bad actors claim scientific authority. Or should I trust the current experts that Tylenol causes Autism?
- illiac786 1y agoI agree. People stop changing their mind at some point. Social progress is only possible when old generations die. To think scientists are some sort of truth seeking machines, unbiased, isolated from society, is naive. Also I really dislike the categorisation into scientists and non-scientists, this really makes science sound like a dogma. I prefer inventors, pioneers, or simply curious people.
- arcwhite 1y agoOr do people stop changing their minds because they're worn down, their brains no longer as capable of making space and joy for new ideas? Which these stem cells, if they pan out, very specifically fix
- CyberDildonics 1y agoBy definition things that are true are science and things that have no evidence are religion.
- mediaman 1y agoThat understanding of what science is, in its de facto form of practice to date, is remarkably ungrounded from the history of science.
- ants_everywhere 1y agoNope it's remarkably consistent with the history of science, which I've studied pretty extensively.
- eamag 1y agodo you have any result of this study, like an essay or a video? Would be curious to read too
- mhb 1y agoIt's even worse than that. When people who have experience die, new people arise to repeat their mistakes. Witness the NYC mayoral race.
- m463 1y agocode reviews could go much quicker...
- sho 1y agoThis just sounds like rationalization to me, just-so stories we tell ourselves to feel better about something we can't change anyway, so isn't it lucky that everything is perfect just the way it is! I think it's nonsense. Society is the way it is because of the prevailing conditions. We haven't really had to deal with getting rid of dead wood in science because death always did that anyway, if death goes away then we'll just adapt. That witticism from Planck is just an observation of the times, not some universal, uh, constant. > There is plenty of reason to welcome death Maybe we should welcome it even faster then! If death speeds up science so much, then maybe society shouldn't provide health care to scientists at all. In fact maybe we should euthanize all scientists at age 50 - or earlier. Right?
- ethbr1 1y agoAsk yourself if most older people reliably update their beliefs as the world changes. If the answer is "No, they don't," then it follows that part of progress is newer generations moving into positions of authority and bringing their new ideas with them.
- modeless 1y agoPart of curing aging would be restoring youthful brain characteristics such as openness to change. Which honestly seems like a small and easy task when compared to the whole endeavor of curing aging.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoIt's not that old people are not open to change, they just very reasonably disregard all the bullshit that contradicts their experience. To achieve plasticity of beliefs people will have to forget stuff. Which closes the circle, nature already invented all that: your kids are a version of you that's free from both the baggage of harmful mutations and the baggage of harmful presuppositions. Not at all clear to me why we want to reinvent an inferior version of this process, it works remarkably well.
- 1y ago
- manmal 1y agoI don’t know where I saw that number, but supposedly the mean age of an immortal human will be 500 years due to accidents. True immortality is not a thing.
- pas 1y agomind uploading and backups
- cmccart 1y agoMaybe 500 years by today's behavioral standards. I assume that if people were told you could live ~forever barring an accident leading to your death, many people in society would behave VERY differently. The risk profile of you or me getting in a car to drive to the store is VERY different than someone with age-and-sickness-proof-but-accident-vulnerable immortality.
- ben_w 1y ago> There is plenty of reason to welcome death. Only when painfully ill, this reverses old age symptoms correlated with some of those painful conditions. > As Max Planck observed: "Science progresses one funeral at a time". If the aphorism was causally true, Spanish Flu, the Nazi's death camps, and Pol Pot's Cambodia would've created a lot more science than they did. Even for politics: the Holodomor didn't end Stalin; the deaths in WW1 didn't change the world order enough to prevent WW2.
- inglor_cz 1y agoYou don't understand the aphorism if you think that death in itself causes scientific progress. It means something else. When old, entrenched scientists die, they lose their ability to prevent younger scientists from studying topics they personally don't like. Dead people cannot deny the living use of labs, grants etc. Plenty of otherwise impeccable great minds died "stuck" on bad ideas. For example, the great German pathologist Rudolf Virchow utterly rejected the idea of archaic humans existing, and did his best to slow down the research on the Neanderthals etc. Einstein himself rejected the quantum theory, though, to his credit, he didn't prevent others from studying it. Ancel Keys, who lived to be almost 100, tried to destroy career of every nutritional scientist who toyed with the idea that saturated fats may not be the killers he pronounced them to be, and defended sugar from more scrutiny.
- ben_w 1y agoIf (and to the extent that) the aphorism isn't causal, then it is irrelevant to a hypothetical where we solve death.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- UltraSane 1y agoScience might progress faster if people can spend hundreds of years becoming experts in multiple fields.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoMany people here have kids, it changes the way you see life and death quite a bit.
- AndrewDucker 1y agoYes, it's made me determined to live as long as possible, so that I can see more of my kids' lives.
- munksbeer 1y agoI have kids. I want to live much longer.
- subscribed 1y agoI have kids. The current crop of the politicians in the most important/impactful countries is frankly terrifying.
- Terr_ 1y agoI think the last several months have been very un-optimistic for quite a lot of us. Especially when it comes what's being done by aged people that have also accumulated power.
- inglor_cz 1y agoI don't particularly like death, but the potential societal stasis caused by longer lives is a problem as well. Already when living to our 80s and 90s, we can see the top strata of the society (CEO level, Parliaments) overflowing with very old people who don't want to relax their grip on power. The current US Senate is older than the Brezhnev politburo, widely considered a gerontocracy, once was. It is the same elsewhere. Few powerful people are as self-aware as Benedict XIV. was, or their lust for power is simply too big. In autocracies, people like Putin, Erdogan, Khamenei and Xi built very resilient systems that could support them for decades, if not centuries, and death is the only way that can reliably get them out of the way. I suppose that not even the Americans would like to see various replays of Biden vs. Trump for several election cycles, and the Supreme Court is a veritable gerontocracy as well. If longevity research succeeds, the younger justices like Gorsuch and Barrett may well stay on the bench until 2070 or even longer, shaping rules for a world they will no longer understand. If we ever are to achieve very long lives, we need to expand into the universe as well, so that the younger generations can build their own domains somewhere else, unburdened by the dictates of the old.
- profstasiak 1y agoseriously, HN has gone mad recently. The amount of doom in commentators is just off the chart. I always loved going into HN comments, because the insights you could read here were very often of better quality than linked sources. Now it's mostly doom and despair
- munksbeer 1y agoI've been reading HN for a number of years, I think I only discovered it around 2018. I didn't register at first. It felt better then, but that could be my wrong memory. I really agree with you. I wish I could find somewhere with as many interesting people to discuss technology and/or science without so much pavlovian cynicism.
- dingdingdang 1y agoThis is literally amazing research, just because we are getting closer to rejuvenating tissue does not imply that suddenly we will stop dying - it just means vastly increased health span which means less health care cost and more joy in life! Congratulations to the authors of this paper!
- Larrikin 1y agoI expect if people use healthcare 2x less, then the insurance companies and other companies that make their money from the sick will simply charge 4x more when you need healthcare.
- AngryData 1y agoIm not sure this will reduce healthcare costs very much since age related care is already the largest bulk of healthcare costs and living longer at an advanced age, even if relatively healthy, gives more time to accrue costs and age related problems.
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y agoDeath holds profound significance, it acts as a mental reset Accumulating traumas across an eternity would harm society And I think it's unfair to reserve that for the wealthy, if anything, eugenics should determine who gains access, only the most genetically advantaged should be allowed, in an effort to protect and strengthen humankind But I don't think our society is ready to have this discussion, hence why, aging and death should not be frowned upon
- bilsbie 1y agoIt’s kind of new anti human belief system that a lot of people Here have.
- subscribed 1y agoJust imagine Putin, Netanyahu, Musk, Thiel and Trump living 2x longer in the great health. Because this technology won't be available to these raising the humanity, but to those ruthless.
- tomhowsalterego 1y agoYeah I’m imagining people living 2x as longer in the great health. I don’t see any problems. If you want to kill someone, go ahead, that’s between you and them and your reasons for thinking they should die at a certain age. But I have no qualms about anyone living longer, healthier lives. This includes you.
- mielioort 1y ago[dead]
- orionsbelt 1y agoI like it here but this place has always been dour and pessimistic.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- snapplebobapple 1y agoReally? I am surprised it is this low.
- jibal 1y agoEquating realism to pessimism is intellectually dishonest. I'm at an age where many of my friends have died and many more soon will. Even in the most optimistic scenario this technology will not become normalized in my lifetime--and if it does become normalized there will be many undesirable consequences. In any case, global warming will destroy human civilization and this technology will die with it.
- littlestymaar 1y agoTolkien didn't call death “The gift of Ilúvatar” for nothing. In fact, even in our world, age-related death is an evolved trait, this isn't something obvious but that's something that arised through the natural selection because it improves fitness.