7 ms·

Aging is encoded in our DNA with a purpose, if we will be able to fully understand how DNA works me might be able to partially disable it but will we want to? m

by givan 12y ago

Aging is encoded in our DNA with a purpose, if we will be able to fully understand how DNA works me might be able to partially disable it but will we want to? maybe when we will reach that level of knowledge we will also have the wisdom to understand the implications.

sanxiyn 12y ago
Do you want to die? Of course we will want to. I am sure there will be lots of side effects, but almost anything beats dying.
- perlgeek 12y ago
  > Do you want to die? IMHO this is the wrong question to ask. As long as you continue to age, and your body degrades, you'll eventually not object to dying any more, because living isn't much fun. The much more interesting question is: do you want to age beyond a certain point?
  - akurilin 12y ago
    Then, can we dramatically slow down the body's natural degradation mechanisms, or even better, start reversing a few of them? That'd be a very good question to answer.
  - tarpherder 12y ago
    Not aging implies that you won't age beyond a certain point, or do you mean something different? Also, the question you ask is relevant even today with regular aging, and it's already hotly debated looking at euthanasia. I'm guessing euthanasia will have to be legalized if we ever do find a "cure" for aging.
    - perlgeek 12y ago
      > Not aging implies that you won't age beyond a certain point, or do you mean something different? I mean that I don't want my 4 year old to stop ageing, please :-) So "stop ageing" is only good as long as we have some decent measure of control over it. (I feel like I'm really stating the obvious here, but I don't know the whole discussion well enough to know if I can assume that obvious stuff is well-understood...)
    - seren 12y ago
      I remember reading that even if we found a cure to ageing, our life expectancy would "only" be around 10 000 years because of various accidents (car crashes being probably the most major contributor).
      - sanxiyn 12y ago
        If we cure aging, we will become much more cautious.
        seren 12y ago
        It sure seems this is the current trend. However, I am not sure that after a few millennia, people would not get bored and start experimenting with more extreme activities like base jumping or space travel.
  - outworlder 12y ago
    Or even better, do we actually want to increase the maximum lifespan, or simply stop the body decay for as long as possible? I'd rather live 80 years in a body that worked as if it was still in its thirties, than 500 years in a senescent body.
- nicky0 12y ago
  Do you want to live forever? In a world where everyone lives forever? I'm pretty sure most people will have had enough after the first million or so years. Someone must have written sci-fi of this.
  - Ntrails 12y ago
    http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html A brilliant short story by asminov also briefly touches living forever and running out of space as it were.
  - Intermernet 12y ago
    I'd like to be able to choose when I die.
    - eidyia 12y ago
      You already do, but you also have a very strict deadline
    - ramanan 12y ago
      and what number would you choose ? waitbutwhy had an interesting discussion on this a few weeks back: http://waitbutwhy.com/table/how-long-would-you-live-if-you-could-choose-any-number-of-years http://waitbutwhy.com/table/how-long-would-you-live-if-you-c...
      - placebo 12y ago
        Thanks for the link. I think this is a fascinating question.
  - simonh 12y ago
    In Ian Banks Culture novels, the post-scarcity super-advanced civilization has lifespans of around 350 years (IIRC). They could be longer, but don't for cultural and social reasons. With Culture stories though, I'm never quite sure if Culture society has genuinely agreed on it's conventions freely, or if they are the result of subtle manipulation by the Minds (hyper-intelligent AIs that run the ships and habitats that host the Culture's biological population). For me if a population of immortals means a population without children I'm not sure it's such a great idea. I'm concerned about intellectual, cultural and technological ossification and ultimately degeneration without a continually renewing population. From a moral point of view, I don't buy the idea that death is something horrific to be avoided at all costs. Historically it's generally been accepted that there are things worth dying for, and countless throngs have sacrificed their lives, or at least willingly risked them, for causes they believed in. I'm specifically reminded of the case of a father a few years back that leaped in front of a lorry to push a child to safety, obviously knowing that he was sacrificing his own life to do so. Human life is precious and valuable, but not infinitely so and it's not obvious to me that an existing life is necessarily more valuable than a potential new one. I don't expect it will be politicaly possible or desirable to suppress life extending treatments and I don't really have any idea how this will all play out, but for me it's not a foregone conclusion that a future in which it is normal to indefinitely extend life is an ideal one.
- givan 12y ago
  Our species changes a little bit with every generation, it's called evolution, delaying or canceling this process will have negative effects on our specie because it will stop adapting at our constantly changing environment, we might live longer as an individual but we might die as a specie breaking something we don't understand.
waps 12y ago
That purpose may be "kill the old to make sure the world keeps changing, make sure new genetic experiements (ie. kids/offspring) get a chance". As we hopefully all know, nature isn't afraid to kill off a few people to get more useful experiments (how many animals die trying to have sex, for instance. That is not "necessary") Early animals didn't age, nor did they die. Some plants don't age (they still die due to illness or trauma, but not through old age). Even "mortal" animals today are offshoots of a central cell-line that doesn't age (ovi in women get their age reset upon birth then no longer age. Sperm get their age reset upon production. This goes for all animals that age, not just for humans). So you are immortal, in the sense that some of the cells that form part of your body won't age and die like the rest of you.
- mitteldorf 12y ago
  I agree - take a look at http://www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/SepMitteldorf.html http://www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/SepMitteldorf.html http://mathforum.org/~josh/Mitteldorf&Martins_Programmed-Aging-&-Evolvability.pdf http://mathforum.org/~josh/Mitteldorf&Martins_Programmed-Agi...
ekianjo 12y ago
> Aging is encoded in our DNA with a purpose Natural selection and evolution has no purpose. It does what works best in its environment. If mankind find that having longer and healthier lives benefits its species, we will probably go that way anyway.
- givan 12y ago
  The purpose is survival, failing to adapt means extinction.

by givan 12y ago

sanxiyn 12y ago

Do you want to die? Of course we will want to. I am sure there will be lots of side effects, but almost anything beats dying.

perlgeek 12y ago
> Do you want to die? IMHO this is the wrong question to ask. As long as you continue to age, and your body degrades, you'll eventually not object to dying any more, because living isn't much fun. The much more interesting question is: do you want to age beyond a certain point?
- akurilin 12y ago
  Then, can we dramatically slow down the body's natural degradation mechanisms, or even better, start reversing a few of them? That'd be a very good question to answer.
- tarpherder 12y ago
  Not aging implies that you won't age beyond a certain point, or do you mean something different? Also, the question you ask is relevant even today with regular aging, and it's already hotly debated looking at euthanasia. I'm guessing euthanasia will have to be legalized if we ever do find a "cure" for aging.
  - perlgeek 12y ago
    > Not aging implies that you won't age beyond a certain point, or do you mean something different? I mean that I don't want my 4 year old to stop ageing, please :-) So "stop ageing" is only good as long as we have some decent measure of control over it. (I feel like I'm really stating the obvious here, but I don't know the whole discussion well enough to know if I can assume that obvious stuff is well-understood...)
  - seren 12y ago
    I remember reading that even if we found a cure to ageing, our life expectancy would "only" be around 10 000 years because of various accidents (car crashes being probably the most major contributor).
    - sanxiyn 12y ago
      If we cure aging, we will become much more cautious.
      - seren 12y ago
        It sure seems this is the current trend. However, I am not sure that after a few millennia, people would not get bored and start experimenting with more extreme activities like base jumping or space travel.
- outworlder 12y ago
  Or even better, do we actually want to increase the maximum lifespan, or simply stop the body decay for as long as possible? I'd rather live 80 years in a body that worked as if it was still in its thirties, than 500 years in a senescent body.
nicky0 12y ago
Do you want to live forever? In a world where everyone lives forever? I'm pretty sure most people will have had enough after the first million or so years. Someone must have written sci-fi of this.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html A brilliant short story by asminov also briefly touches living forever and running out of space as it were.
- Intermernet 12y ago
  I'd like to be able to choose when I die.
  - eidyia 12y ago
    You already do, but you also have a very strict deadline
  - ramanan 12y ago
    and what number would you choose ? waitbutwhy had an interesting discussion on this a few weeks back: http://waitbutwhy.com/table/how-long-would-you-live-if-you-could-choose-any-number-of-years http://waitbutwhy.com/table/how-long-would-you-live-if-you-c...
    - placebo 12y ago
      Thanks for the link. I think this is a fascinating question.
- simonh 12y ago
  In Ian Banks Culture novels, the post-scarcity super-advanced civilization has lifespans of around 350 years (IIRC). They could be longer, but don't for cultural and social reasons. With Culture stories though, I'm never quite sure if Culture society has genuinely agreed on it's conventions freely, or if they are the result of subtle manipulation by the Minds (hyper-intelligent AIs that run the ships and habitats that host the Culture's biological population). For me if a population of immortals means a population without children I'm not sure it's such a great idea. I'm concerned about intellectual, cultural and technological ossification and ultimately degeneration without a continually renewing population. From a moral point of view, I don't buy the idea that death is something horrific to be avoided at all costs. Historically it's generally been accepted that there are things worth dying for, and countless throngs have sacrificed their lives, or at least willingly risked them, for causes they believed in. I'm specifically reminded of the case of a father a few years back that leaped in front of a lorry to push a child to safety, obviously knowing that he was sacrificing his own life to do so. Human life is precious and valuable, but not infinitely so and it's not obvious to me that an existing life is necessarily more valuable than a potential new one. I don't expect it will be politicaly possible or desirable to suppress life extending treatments and I don't really have any idea how this will all play out, but for me it's not a foregone conclusion that a future in which it is normal to indefinitely extend life is an ideal one.
givan 12y ago
Our species changes a little bit with every generation, it's called evolution, delaying or canceling this process will have negative effects on our specie because it will stop adapting at our constantly changing environment, we might live longer as an individual but we might die as a specie breaking something we don't understand.

waps 12y ago

That purpose may be "kill the old to make sure the world keeps changing, make sure new genetic experiements (ie. kids/offspring) get a chance". As we hopefully all know, nature isn't afraid to kill off a few people to get more useful experiments (how many animals die trying to have sex, for instance. That is not "necessary") Early animals didn't age, nor did they die. Some plants don't age (they still die due to illness or trauma, but not through old age). Even "mortal" animals today are offshoots of a central cell-line that doesn't age (ovi in women get their age reset upon birth then no longer age. Sperm get their age reset upon production. This goes for all animals that age, not just for humans). So you are immortal, in the sense that some of the cells that form part of your body won't age and die like the rest of you.

mitteldorf 12y ago
I agree - take a look at http://www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/SepMitteldorf.html http://www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/SepMitteldorf.html http://mathforum.org/~josh/Mitteldorf&Martins_Programmed-Aging-&-Evolvability.pdf http://mathforum.org/~josh/Mitteldorf&Martins_Programmed-Agi...

ekianjo 12y ago

> Aging is encoded in our DNA with a purpose Natural selection and evolution has no purpose. It does what works best in its environment. If mankind find that having longer and healthier lives benefits its species, we will probably go that way anyway.

givan 12y ago
The purpose is survival, failing to adapt means extinction.