8 ms·

You want to "take on the end of life", you want to "redesign death"? you want to be radical? and that means putting the metaphorial mirrors on the gurneys, and

by fizixer 12y ago

You want to "take on the end of life", you want to "redesign death"? you want to be radical? and that means putting the metaphorial mirrors on the gurneys, and creating an iphone app "After I Go" and "reforming end-of-life care"? Here's how you take it on if you really feel like being a radical: you upend the culture of pro-aging trance [1] that has gripped 99.9% of the world population: - Aging/death is natural. - Aging/death is good. - Aging/death is normal. - Aging/death is inevitable. - Aging/death is necessary. Believe it or not, everyone hates diseases, but everyone seems to love death (including most medical doctors and researchers), except when that deathist himself/herself is diagnosed with something terminal, or when it's too late in any other sense for that person. When you have a good idea about how we could change that, I'd be more inclined to call you radical. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RITCdrOEO9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RITCdrOEO9Y EDIT 1: I'm sorry if I sound harsh. I just feel very intensely about this topic.

sowhatquestion 12y ago
Bravo to this post. Whether or not you agree with Aubrey de Grey, you have to admit that he is a true radical, whereas the man portrayed in this article strikes me as little more than a conceited tinkerer--one of our contemporary capitalist hippies who seem to combine the worst of both those worlds. Death cannot be "redesigned" because it is the end of a dynamic human life, with all the possibilities entailed by that life. It is intrinsically "a downer." Let's do something about that.
kndyry 12y ago
This very much reminds me of Nick Bostrom's 'The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant' [0]. [0] http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
Dewie 12y ago
> You want to "take on the end of life", you want to "redesign death"? you want to be radical? and that means putting the metaphorial mirrors on the gurneys, and creating an iphone app "After I Go"? I had my doubts about the title and how pompous it sounded, suspecting that it wasn't nearly as radical or visionary as it sounded. But jeez, that's it? Thanks for saving me the trouble of skimming that thing.
dullcrisp 12y ago
Okay, supposing you've done that. How will this help people who are dying, supposing these people still exist?
- maaku 12y ago
  Eventually there won't be people dying. That's the whole god damn point.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    How do you plan to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics?
ForHackernews 12y ago
Pssst...memento mori. :)
philwelch 12y ago
I think the problem is actually exactly the opposite. People are horribly afraid of dying and incredibly uncomfortable discussing it. No one accepts death as part of life and everyone wastes a lot of time and money treating terminal illnesses without actually recovering very many QALY's from the effort. People invent religions that posit some sort of afterlife so they can comfort themselves with the belief that they are immortal, and this is such a powerful impulse that even the supposedly non-religious, like de Grey, recreate this belief in the guise of science fiction. “Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different. "So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that’s how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment.” Excerpt From: Marcus Aurelius & Gregory Hays. “Meditations.”
- dchichkov 12y ago
  It looks like in your excerpt from 'Meditations' you've had a phrase: "You should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment." Judging by it, it looks like Aurelius expects some kind of after-life. And this is exactly what you suggest not to do "people invent religions that posit some sort of afterlife", so I'm not sure how this quotation from this early AD emperor can either confirm or deny your own statement.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    Having read Marcus Aurelius extensively, he doesn't seem to expect a personal afterlife at all but rather as a dissolution back into one's constituent parts--material and spiritual--from which new life could arise. He writes repeatedly about the futility of worrying about one's place in history, because of the inevitability not only of one's own death but of the deaths of everyone who could have possibly cared about or remembered one's accomplishments anyway. It's definitely worth a read; the Hays translation in particular is extremely approachable.
swatow 12y ago
I think that, in spite of some pro-aging/death views, society acts to prevent aging and death by treating disease. You seem to want a radical solution, but I think the main reason that there are few people trying to directly prevent aging/death, is because the medical profession doesn't consider this possible at this time.
- fizixer 12y ago
  Here's the truth about the medical profession, based on my internet search over the last couple of years as an enthusiast on this topic. It's a sleeping giant. It's like the mechanical engineers of 1880s who had the idea of the impossibility of flight so entrenched in their minds that not only they kept claiming that it's impossible, they were quite proactive in dismissing the efforts of those trying to do something about it. (I always like to use this link: http://www.spacequotations.com/predictions.html http://www.spacequotations.com/predictions.html). If people had attempted flight in 1690s, it would not have gotten us anywhere. The science and engineering wasn't developed enough. But at some point, someone had to realize that "yes, now we have enough knowledge, resources and tools, to give it a last push". And that was what flight pioneers realized in 1890s, and 1900s. For aging, are we in the 1690s, or 1890s of flight? If it comes down to medical community agreeing to seek an answer to that, consider that a solved problem for someone like me. The problem is, most medical researchers simply dismiss the idea as over-ambitious, resort to ad-hominems, socioeconomic criticisms, and (surprise, surprise) the pro-aging trance, instead of technical critique. So the honest discussion about the technology gets lost in all that noise.
  - dullcrisp 12y ago
    > Here's the truth about the medical profession, based on my internet search over the last couple of years as an enthusiast on this topic. You say this without irony?
    - hueving 12y ago
      You don't have to be a member of a community to recognize something about it from the outside. People can critique scientology without being members. The same can be done with medical research goals.
jsnathan 12y ago
Suppose we cure aging. If there is such a "culture" of pro-aging, then supposedly you expect them to refuse the treatment? I do not see that happening in the long-term. Maybe a few fringe sects, but never the majority. Instead, as soon as some people use such treatment, most everyone else will as well. What this conjecture tells me, is that this "culture" is probably just based on the belief that anyone who refuses to accept aging, must be a fool. If however a cure is demonstrated, this belief will be disproven, and people will quite immediately embrace longevity. Or.. do you expect otherwise?
- fizixer 12y ago
  I tried to create a detailed response to this but in the end I gave up (also I have other things to tend to). Please. It is not okay to keep supporting an idea until the minute the counter to that idea becomes available, when you'll be eager to benefit from the "counter" solution. It was not okay for Ayn Rand to be a libertarian all her life, only to start collecting welfare checks at the end of her life when she went broke. I'm not even getting into the practical aspects of how badly the pro-aging trance is affecting the funding problem.
  - jsnathan 12y ago
    Until the possibility is established, many people are going to make fun of, and sideline those working on a solution. However, I think this thought experiment can bring them to understand that their own beliefs are temporary. If there was a popular movie that followed the plot of how the cure of aging was slowly accepted in society, for example. Just a short story might be a start. I think the problem is not that people "support" the idea, but that they are not properly aware of the alternative.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    People have a fairly strict limit on the kinds of counterfactuals they can conceive, and thus use as "measuring sticks" for evaluating the actual facts. Even the very imaginative still require a leg up in terms of being told, sometimes, being supplied with information, that what their mind had registered as constant was actually quite variable. Ayn Rand didn't change her views. Period. She was just blatantly self-serving. Most people do not support some Moral Ideal of Death. They just consider the actual dying bit inevitable. This is why they will change their minds once you show, in the real world, that it's changeable.
jpiabrantes 12y ago
Here is the TED talk of Aubrey de Grey about mortality: http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag... Worth watching
bad_user 12y ago
I fear getting old - don't fear death itself, but the thought of being incapable of taking care of myself, of becoming a burden for my children, or of dying in pain. I fear Alzheimer's or dementia or cancer more than I fear the thought of going into an eternal slumber. > Believe it or not, everyone hates diseases, but everyone seems to love death That's totally understandable IMHO. People are conservative in nature and an anti-aging treatment would change the very fabric of our society. Examples: death would no longer be a potential cure for despotism. We would no longer be able to raise children. What would happen with a brain that has 500 years worth of memories? Etc, etc... This is one of those cases in which we think further than our own personal interest. And surely, if an anti-aging treatment gets invented, I don't think anybody would reject it, mostly because we are creatures favoring instant gratification. Therefore I have trouble believing that Aubrey de Grey couldn't get funding because the population is against such a treatment. The simplest possible reason for why Aubrey de Grey couldn't get funding is because the potential investors saw snake oil.
MichaelGG 12y ago
You're not harsh enough. On life extension research, the article says: One way or another, Bennett told me, “We’re all holding hands and saying, ‘Forget that shit. Not going to happen.’” While that may apply to some or many people interested in life extension, to dismiss all research as useless, while claiming to need to "sense-make" around the "design experience" of death at "The Convening", yikes. I really hate attacking them personally, but their big idea was that someone might leave a letter for other people? Perhaps what they were missing was a study "how-might-we" of "empowering" people with a "hybrid digital-analog" death. Seriously, am I totally out of line here or is this an emperor lacking clothes scenario? If you hired these folks and they talked like that while billing you -- you just smile and go along with it? (The product idea is sound: I'd buy a dead mans switch product if it comes with a stackable, provable M-of-N secret system, maybe with plausible deniability (so my family can't be compelled to reveal secrets). Can't imagine that's a large market, though.)
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Death, in the abstract, has very little wrong with it, and also very little to recommend it. Almost all the assorted ways to die, however, are fucking terrible. And the funny thing is, if the world is so "deathist", why have so few countries legalized voluntary euthanasia? http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/
cafebeen 12y ago
I think people are skeptical, which is fair, given that having cure for aging would also suggest having cures for basic health problems like cancer, heart disease, mental decline.

by fizixer 12y ago

sowhatquestion 12y ago

Bravo to this post. Whether or not you agree with Aubrey de Grey, you have to admit that he is a true radical, whereas the man portrayed in this article strikes me as little more than a conceited tinkerer--one of our contemporary capitalist hippies who seem to combine the worst of both those worlds. Death cannot be "redesigned" because it is the end of a dynamic human life, with all the possibilities entailed by that life. It is intrinsically "a downer." Let's do something about that.

kndyry 12y ago

This very much reminds me of Nick Bostrom's 'The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant' [0]. [0] http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

Dewie 12y ago

> You want to "take on the end of life", you want to "redesign death"? you want to be radical? and that means putting the metaphorial mirrors on the gurneys, and creating an iphone app "After I Go"? I had my doubts about the title and how pompous it sounded, suspecting that it wasn't nearly as radical or visionary as it sounded. But jeez, that's it? Thanks for saving me the trouble of skimming that thing.

dullcrisp 12y ago

Okay, supposing you've done that. How will this help people who are dying, supposing these people still exist?

maaku 12y ago
Eventually there won't be people dying. That's the whole god damn point.
- philwelch 12y ago
  How do you plan to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics?

ForHackernews 12y ago

Pssst...memento mori. :)

philwelch 12y ago

I think the problem is actually exactly the opposite. People are horribly afraid of dying and incredibly uncomfortable discussing it. No one accepts death as part of life and everyone wastes a lot of time and money treating terminal illnesses without actually recovering very many QALY's from the effort. People invent religions that posit some sort of afterlife so they can comfort themselves with the belief that they are immortal, and this is such a powerful impulse that even the supposedly non-religious, like de Grey, recreate this belief in the guise of science fiction. “Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different. "So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that’s how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment.” Excerpt From: Marcus Aurelius & Gregory Hays. “Meditations.”

dchichkov 12y ago
It looks like in your excerpt from 'Meditations' you've had a phrase: "You should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment." Judging by it, it looks like Aurelius expects some kind of after-life. And this is exactly what you suggest not to do "people invent religions that posit some sort of afterlife", so I'm not sure how this quotation from this early AD emperor can either confirm or deny your own statement.
- philwelch 12y ago
  Having read Marcus Aurelius extensively, he doesn't seem to expect a personal afterlife at all but rather as a dissolution back into one's constituent parts--material and spiritual--from which new life could arise. He writes repeatedly about the futility of worrying about one's place in history, because of the inevitability not only of one's own death but of the deaths of everyone who could have possibly cared about or remembered one's accomplishments anyway. It's definitely worth a read; the Hays translation in particular is extremely approachable.

swatow 12y ago

I think that, in spite of some pro-aging/death views, society acts to prevent aging and death by treating disease. You seem to want a radical solution, but I think the main reason that there are few people trying to directly prevent aging/death, is because the medical profession doesn't consider this possible at this time.

fizixer 12y ago
Here's the truth about the medical profession, based on my internet search over the last couple of years as an enthusiast on this topic. It's a sleeping giant. It's like the mechanical engineers of 1880s who had the idea of the impossibility of flight so entrenched in their minds that not only they kept claiming that it's impossible, they were quite proactive in dismissing the efforts of those trying to do something about it. (I always like to use this link: http://www.spacequotations.com/predictions.html http://www.spacequotations.com/predictions.html). If people had attempted flight in 1690s, it would not have gotten us anywhere. The science and engineering wasn't developed enough. But at some point, someone had to realize that "yes, now we have enough knowledge, resources and tools, to give it a last push". And that was what flight pioneers realized in 1890s, and 1900s. For aging, are we in the 1690s, or 1890s of flight? If it comes down to medical community agreeing to seek an answer to that, consider that a solved problem for someone like me. The problem is, most medical researchers simply dismiss the idea as over-ambitious, resort to ad-hominems, socioeconomic criticisms, and (surprise, surprise) the pro-aging trance, instead of technical critique. So the honest discussion about the technology gets lost in all that noise.
- dullcrisp 12y ago
  > Here's the truth about the medical profession, based on my internet search over the last couple of years as an enthusiast on this topic. You say this without irony?
  - hueving 12y ago
    You don't have to be a member of a community to recognize something about it from the outside. People can critique scientology without being members. The same can be done with medical research goals.

jsnathan 12y ago

Suppose we cure aging. If there is such a "culture" of pro-aging, then supposedly you expect them to refuse the treatment? I do not see that happening in the long-term. Maybe a few fringe sects, but never the majority. Instead, as soon as some people use such treatment, most everyone else will as well. What this conjecture tells me, is that this "culture" is probably just based on the belief that anyone who refuses to accept aging, must be a fool. If however a cure is demonstrated, this belief will be disproven, and people will quite immediately embrace longevity. Or.. do you expect otherwise?

fizixer 12y ago
I tried to create a detailed response to this but in the end I gave up (also I have other things to tend to). Please. It is not okay to keep supporting an idea until the minute the counter to that idea becomes available, when you'll be eager to benefit from the "counter" solution. It was not okay for Ayn Rand to be a libertarian all her life, only to start collecting welfare checks at the end of her life when she went broke. I'm not even getting into the practical aspects of how badly the pro-aging trance is affecting the funding problem.
- jsnathan 12y ago
  Until the possibility is established, many people are going to make fun of, and sideline those working on a solution. However, I think this thought experiment can bring them to understand that their own beliefs are temporary. If there was a popular movie that followed the plot of how the cure of aging was slowly accepted in society, for example. Just a short story might be a start. I think the problem is not that people "support" the idea, but that they are not properly aware of the alternative.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  People have a fairly strict limit on the kinds of counterfactuals they can conceive, and thus use as "measuring sticks" for evaluating the actual facts. Even the very imaginative still require a leg up in terms of being told, sometimes, being supplied with information, that what their mind had registered as constant was actually quite variable. Ayn Rand didn't change her views. Period. She was just blatantly self-serving. Most people do not support some Moral Ideal of Death. They just consider the actual dying bit inevitable. This is why they will change their minds once you show, in the real world, that it's changeable.

jpiabrantes 12y ago

Here is the TED talk of Aubrey de Grey about mortality: http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag... Worth watching

bad_user 12y ago

I fear getting old - don't fear death itself, but the thought of being incapable of taking care of myself, of becoming a burden for my children, or of dying in pain. I fear Alzheimer's or dementia or cancer more than I fear the thought of going into an eternal slumber. > Believe it or not, everyone hates diseases, but everyone seems to love death That's totally understandable IMHO. People are conservative in nature and an anti-aging treatment would change the very fabric of our society. Examples: death would no longer be a potential cure for despotism. We would no longer be able to raise children. What would happen with a brain that has 500 years worth of memories? Etc, etc... This is one of those cases in which we think further than our own personal interest. And surely, if an anti-aging treatment gets invented, I don't think anybody would reject it, mostly because we are creatures favoring instant gratification. Therefore I have trouble believing that Aubrey de Grey couldn't get funding because the population is against such a treatment. The simplest possible reason for why Aubrey de Grey couldn't get funding is because the potential investors saw snake oil.

MichaelGG 12y ago

You're not harsh enough. On life extension research, the article says: One way or another, Bennett told me, “We’re all holding hands and saying, ‘Forget that shit. Not going to happen.’” While that may apply to some or many people interested in life extension, to dismiss all research as useless, while claiming to need to "sense-make" around the "design experience" of death at "The Convening", yikes. I really hate attacking them personally, but their big idea was that someone might leave a letter for other people? Perhaps what they were missing was a study "how-might-we" of "empowering" people with a "hybrid digital-analog" death. Seriously, am I totally out of line here or is this an emperor lacking clothes scenario? If you hired these folks and they talked like that while billing you -- you just smile and go along with it? (The product idea is sound: I'd buy a dead mans switch product if it comes with a stackable, provable M-of-N secret system, maybe with plausible deniability (so my family can't be compelled to reveal secrets). Can't imagine that's a large market, though.)

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

Death, in the abstract, has very little wrong with it, and also very little to recommend it. Almost all the assorted ways to die, however, are fucking terrible. And the funny thing is, if the world is so "deathist", why have so few countries legalized voluntary euthanasia? http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/

cafebeen 12y ago

I think people are skeptical, which is fair, given that having cure for aging would also suggest having cures for basic health problems like cancer, heart disease, mental decline.