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There are many downsides to curing aging, but none of them are as bad as the current situation: 100,000 deaths every day. It's worse than you can imagine; those
by ggreer 13y ago
There are many downsides to curing aging, but none of them are as bad as the current situation: 100,000 deaths every day. It's worse than you can imagine; those 100,000 people experienced decades of mental and physical decline before they died.
I think you are confused about the economics of the situation. Who will pay for retirement benefits? Aging is why we retire. If we never got old, we could work as long as we wanted.
Even if anti-aging treatments remain expensive for decades after they're invented, it will still be economically worthwhile to treat everyone. This is because age-related diseases are more expensive. Alzheimer's. Cancer. Heart disease. Dementia. COPD. These diseases slowly kill their victims, causing immense suffering. Treatments for most of them are ineffectual and cost millions for each patient. When it comes to cost, rejuvenation therapies have a low bar to get over.
My grandmother died this month. She had a form of rheumatoid arthritis that slowly turned her lungs into scar tissue. My only consolation is that her mind didn't go before she died. If only rich people could avoid her fate, I wouldn't mind a bit. The fewer people who suffer as she did, the better.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago>I think you are confused about the economics of the situation. Who will pay for retirement benefits? Aging is why we retire. If we never got old, we could work as long as we wanted. Completely backwards. "We're old and can't work anymore" is the excuse used to publicly justify finally being allowed not to work anymore in a Calvinist-capitalist culture. What we actually want is to minimize the portion of our lifespan spent working for mere wages. Mind, one reason I've come to support anti-aging and automation advancements is davka that they force our culture to actually confront these issues, that they "heighten the contradictions" as we Marxists say, rather than pretending everything's fine and letting the system get away with its sins.