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Part 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

Part 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 ago
It'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.
- ben_w 1y ago
  > Not at all clear to me why we want to reinvent an inferior version of this process, it works remarkably well. That sounds like something that someone who is not open to change would say.
  - alexey-salmin 1y ago
    Absolutely. Progress is a delicate balance of accepting change and being conservative. Not all change is worth accepting, but if I'm wrong about this one my death will eventually put an end to me being wrong.
    - card_zero 1y ago
      That's an inversion of Pascal's wager. Pascal says if I'm right about this my death will reward me, therefore I believe, and you've come up with if I'm wrong about this my death will criticise me, therefore I believe.
      - alexey-salmin 1y ago
        Do you agree with the Pascal's wager then? I don't and if mine is an inversion, I don't see a problem with it. It's not scary to make a mistake if any decision you make is temporary anyhow. Knowing that I die no matter what I do with my life gives me so much more freedom in how I can live it.
        card_zero 1y ago
        I think it's the same kind of idea, because it shuts down any duty to worry about whether you are right. You get to be a dogmatist, since dogmatists die eventually. The second sentence deserves some response, but I don't know what to make of it. Mistakes are good, surely? More mistakes faster. Well, I suppose you mean something like life-ruining mistakes, but in the first place I'm not sure there really can be any - unless you have a low threshold for "ruined" - and in the second place, immortality gives you endless hope of staging a comeback.
        alexey-salmin 1y ago
        I don't really see an issue with it either, though it depends on what exactly you mean by a dogmatist. Literally everyone operates within some framework of unprovable dogmas to be able to tell good from evil and to decide how to act. Accepting that fact is a IMO a better path than striving for some sort of non-existent objective skepticism (but that's only better within my framework of what better is, of course). And surely I worry whether I'm right, and all the time. It's just that when I worry and estimate the expected value of my decisions, I don't get NaNs and INFs. My life is not infinitely valuable to me, engaging in activities that involve possible loss of my life is often a good decision because the upside is good. That's largely true because I die anyway, I'm not sure the same calculations would hold if I were immortal. UPD to respond to the second part that was added later > Well, I suppose you mean something like life-ruining mistakes, but in the first place I'm not sure there really can be any - unless you have a low threshold for "ruined" - and in the second place, immortality gives you endless hope of staging a comeback. It's remarkably easy to ruin your life by dying or getting a permanent disability. Would you climb a mountain with a risk of avalanches and rockfalls if you were otherwise immortal? Even commuting to work by bicycle becomes questionable, chances of getting hit by a car on a crossing are pretty high compared to taking the metro.

Part 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 ago

It'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.

ben_w 1y ago
> Not at all clear to me why we want to reinvent an inferior version of this process, it works remarkably well. That sounds like something that someone who is not open to change would say.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  Absolutely. Progress is a delicate balance of accepting change and being conservative. Not all change is worth accepting, but if I'm wrong about this one my death will eventually put an end to me being wrong.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    That's an inversion of Pascal's wager. Pascal says if I'm right about this my death will reward me, therefore I believe, and you've come up with if I'm wrong about this my death will criticise me, therefore I believe.
    - alexey-salmin 1y ago
      Do you agree with the Pascal's wager then? I don't and if mine is an inversion, I don't see a problem with it. It's not scary to make a mistake if any decision you make is temporary anyhow. Knowing that I die no matter what I do with my life gives me so much more freedom in how I can live it.
      - card_zero 1y ago
        I think it's the same kind of idea, because it shuts down any duty to worry about whether you are right. You get to be a dogmatist, since dogmatists die eventually. The second sentence deserves some response, but I don't know what to make of it. Mistakes are good, surely? More mistakes faster. Well, I suppose you mean something like life-ruining mistakes, but in the first place I'm not sure there really can be any - unless you have a low threshold for "ruined" - and in the second place, immortality gives you endless hope of staging a comeback.
        alexey-salmin 1y ago
        I don't really see an issue with it either, though it depends on what exactly you mean by a dogmatist. Literally everyone operates within some framework of unprovable dogmas to be able to tell good from evil and to decide how to act. Accepting that fact is a IMO a better path than striving for some sort of non-existent objective skepticism (but that's only better within my framework of what better is, of course). And surely I worry whether I'm right, and all the time. It's just that when I worry and estimate the expected value of my decisions, I don't get NaNs and INFs. My life is not infinitely valuable to me, engaging in activities that involve possible loss of my life is often a good decision because the upside is good. That's largely true because I die anyway, I'm not sure the same calculations would hold if I were immortal. UPD to respond to the second part that was added later > Well, I suppose you mean something like life-ruining mistakes, but in the first place I'm not sure there really can be any - unless you have a low threshold for "ruined" - and in the second place, immortality gives you endless hope of staging a comeback. It's remarkably easy to ruin your life by dying or getting a permanent disability. Would you climb a mountain with a risk of avalanches and rockfalls if you were otherwise immortal? Even commuting to work by bicycle becomes questionable, chances of getting hit by a car on a crossing are pretty high compared to taking the metro.