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ympb121 18 hours ago [-]
It may be a dumb reason to do it, but recently I've started to focus on my health a bit more because of news like this (more exercise and healthier food).
The thinking is, if we find a way to massively extend the human lifespan/reverse aging I want to live long enough for that.
I'd be pissed if we as humanity solved aging and I die just before that, not taking any chances.
dsign 15 hours ago [-]
I doubt that we will get there in my lifetime. Science is one thing, and maybe AI will super-charge some of it. But experiments will need to be made, and that needs brick and mortar labs, and labs need money, and at least right now, the absurd amounts of investments are not going in that direction. Oh, and did I mention regulators? They are very, very slow.
There could, however, be some promising signs down the road, like more capable in-silico methods, which will make it possible to bypass some/more of the brick and mortar labs. Another sign to watch for are orders of magnitude more companies and cartels of individuals doing advanced bioengineering outside of USA.
anotherpaul 13 hours ago [-]
Actually aging research is probably really well funded in comparison. Loads of billionaires are investing. So at least money is not the issue. Morals and time. Sure, and then regulators.
One big thing with aging research is though that it just needs time. No shortcuts really. You don't know it works until the first people love another few years.
coder-3 13 hours ago [-]
I'd be surprised if we don't get close to longevity escape velocity this century, given the rate of AI progress.
x______________ 12 hours ago [-]
> It may be a dumb reason to do it, but recently I've started to focus on my health a bit more because of news like this
A healthy mind and body leads an organism to want/be able to survive and thrive. Glad to hear you're there now.
> I'd be pissed if we as humanity solved aging and I die just before that
No, you wouldn't :)
vigilantpuma 1 hours ago [-]
I’d be pissed as I was dying if it seemed like we were on the cusp!
c22 16 hours ago [-]
Better stack your chips too. At this point I think there's a fair chance massive life extension will be available before I die, but I likely wont be able to afford it.
cryptoegorophy 15 hours ago [-]
Why? If you can live 500 years just focus 20 years on compound interest hard, then retire for 400 years?
roarcher 13 hours ago [-]
I reckon this would be self-correcting. If the average person could reach retirement in such a small fraction of their lifespan, then the vast majority of the population at any given time would be non-productive retirees. The economy would slow until your interest was zero and you'd be forced back to work. Eventually an equilibrium would be reached, wherein the average Joe could look forward to a rewarding and fulfilling career of, say, 450 years or so.
hdgvhicv 11 hours ago [-]
Or work 30 years on, 15 years off or similar. Build a career from scratch, fulfil what you want, then have a sabbatical, then return to a new career in a different field.
tuesdaynight 4 hours ago [-]
Crazy that we can think about immortality and singularity, but capitalism end is out of question. Humanity will probably be extincted in these scenarios and we are still talking about work. Hilarious
R_D_Olivaw 1 hours ago [-]
Every.single.time.
I cannot tell you how many conversations I've had about all the crazy, albeit possible, futures that may come. But there is such a definitive hard stop when trying to discuss a shift from capitalism. It must bind alongside their religious adherence receptors. Because it I SO damn entrenched. Like a neural block of sorts.
47 minutes ago [-]
roarcher 5 minutes ago [-]
Except nobody was trying to discuss a shift from capitalism. We were discussing how it might adapt to such a huge shift as people suddenly living 500 years. You know, because it's a fun thought experiment. People do that.
You are the one who seemingly can't tolerate a conversation that isn't centered on your preferred worldview.
_ink_ 10 hours ago [-]
But I can also invest in companies? If the population keeps growing, because less people die, the economy might just keep growing. Also if you can get 500 you might want to get more kids. So it will be exponential growth. What could go possible wrong?
ozgrakkurt 12 hours ago [-]
How do you image the world will work if everyone is living on "compound interest".
The economy is imploding because a tiny fraction of population is living on "compound interest" even now.
Swizec 15 hours ago [-]
> Why? If you can live 500 years just focus 20 years on compound interest hard, then retire for 400 years?
The first version of this technology will only be available to billionaires. So if you reach 70 when it’s invented and are not a billionaire, you’ll never get to try the 500 years of compounding trick
We’re likely to see this stuff get invented in our lifetimes (I’m 38), maybe practical, but we’re def all too old to see it become widely available.
Then again, life extension will not be a singular technology. You could argue antibiotics and vaccines were the first big step and those became affordable within a few decades of invention
giardini 15 hours ago [-]
Make a loan and pay for the life extension treatment over your extended lifetime.
jusssi 13 hours ago [-]
If you're late on the monthly payment, they send a guy to repo the life extension.
voxelghost 13 hours ago [-]
They'll probably give us 300 years for the low-low price of total serfdom
inglor_cz 6 hours ago [-]
If most/all human work is replaced by AI, serfdom loses any economic sense.
voxelghost 5 hours ago [-]
It'll be like collecting pokemon
giardini 2 hours ago [-]
How like collecting pokemon? (not familiar with pokemon)
headz 4 hours ago [-]
> I'd be pissed if we as humanity solved aging and I die just before that, not taking any chances.
You wouldn't be pissed. You'd be dead.
kcarter80 17 hours ago [-]
Seems like you are interested in living longer. One cool trick to doing that has always been to focus on your health. Are you saying that before recent developments the extension of life benefit wasn't worth it for you? By the way, when you die it's impossible to be "pissed".
easygenes 17 hours ago [-]
Maybe they mean the compromises they're making didn't weigh out enough to be motivating over the thought of just a few more years, but if those few years might make the difference to catching an opportunity for double or more the years it's suddenly motivating enough.
jurgenburgen 7 hours ago [-]
The difference between a healthy lifestyle and a bad one can be much more than that though, decades or even more if we consider habits like smoking.
kcarter80 5 hours ago [-]
Maybe. But that's contingent on serious life extension possibilities only becoming apparent recently.
17 hours ago [-]
androiddrew 17 hours ago [-]
lol, I am kind of in the same mode of thought but just kind of expect it not to happen.
There was a really shitty movie starring Jared Leto I think about the same problem. Being the last guy to miss out on being immortal
smotched 17 hours ago [-]
Mr. Nobody is not a bad movie!
wonderwonder 13 hours ago [-]
There is a rumor that some employees at Anthropic have started smoking to prove their conviction that ASI will be here soon and that it will fix them.
Only something I have seen online, I cannot vouch for its validity
vinyl7 15 hours ago [-]
I'm not so sure humanity will be around that long
downrightmike 14 hours ago [-]
massive calorie deficit seems to be the best. But then you need to be on the edge of starvation the whole time
SubiculumCode 16 hours ago [-]
More like we solve aging but then we get smacked down by our new AI overlords
usrnm 13 hours ago [-]
But what about cancer? The cell still has the same DNA, so it will keep accumulating mutations over its extended lifetime, right?
inglor_cz 6 hours ago [-]
Well, we aren't purely stochastic machines passively subject to entropy. We also have some DNA repair mechanisms, which work better when we are younger, and maybe could be restored to their youthful function. Plus, if a cell is beyond repair, other mechanisms can simply whack it and it will later be replaced by a new cell grown from the stem cell population (of course with some limits). But that again means having a youthful stem cell population.
cbeach 9 hours ago [-]
This is an uninformed suggestion, but is it possible to take a large collection of cells from across the body and work out which ones carry the untainted DNA by statistical methods?
taneq 18 hours ago [-]
Sounds like the immortal jellyfish solution. We squeeze entropy out of our DNA by creating a new fresh cell (ovum) that’s very sensitive to genetic defects, meaning if it survives it’s probably good. The jellyfish just shrinks back to a single cell (presumably with some mechanism for keeping the ‘best’ cell) to reset the damage. This is doing the same thing, but piece by piece.
Edit: And wow, that abstract appears to have eaten an entire thesaurus.
marliechiller 8 hours ago [-]
Are professionals in that field looking at that abstract and thinking its a good one? My scholarly background was in Geology and I remember a lot of messaging on making the abstract as simple as possible for the reader to grok the paper from that alone. Then, if they wanted to, they could read the rest in detail, where the prose may be more complicated (where necessary)
Because this is the worst timeline, we're getting cell reprogramming used to grow artificial brains to run AI workloads before functional aging remediation... let alone GTA VI.
snvzz 11 hours ago [-]
As a reminder re: aging, SENS Foundation, as well as LEVF (and its ongoing RMR2 experiment) exist.
layer8 19 hours ago [-]
If something like this ever becomes a practical application on the organismal level, the octogenarian dictators of the world will rejoice.
mullingitover 17 hours ago [-]
An individual pancreas cell discovering the secret to immortality is a triumph for that cell, and a real bad thing for the body. This is like that, but for the entire human population.
skissane 17 hours ago [-]
Even if medical science one day eliminates aging and disease, nobody is going to live forever—eventually you’ll succumb to an accident, or war, or homicide.
consp 13 hours ago [-]
I'd say famine is equally as likely if not more at scale.
torben-friis 19 hours ago [-]
Eh, we might see some benefit to leaders having a reason to care about stuff 10+ years from now.
Waterluvian 18 hours ago [-]
I feel like AI has opened a door of plausibility to Black Mirror or Twilight Zone concepts more than any other novel technology in my lifetime.
What if living 300 years meant the entire tempo of human living changes. That we all just slow right down because having control over our aging and when it happens. To be able to decide to extend your 20s… or not. To spend decades in your 30s. How would that change what’s important to us?
idiotsecant 15 hours ago [-]
I think it's much more likely that those who were first to 200-300 years old will use those years to build resources and deny them to others, especially those not yet modified. It would be a permanent over class. Less Issac Asimov, more Richard K. Morgan.
axus 19 hours ago [-]
That'll be the commoners' problem; they'll be planning out how to survive the next 300 years.
deadbabe 18 hours ago [-]
They cannot survive the next 300 years unless we all survive the next 300 years. A dictator is motivated by having power over others, not being some lone survivalist fending for himself in nature.
LastTrain 14 hours ago [-]
Playing along here, they don’t need /all/ of us to survive, just the desirable ones.
malloryerik 18 hours ago [-]
Putin keeps talking about living forever, which makes his nuclear threats a bit less worrisome.
neom 18 hours ago [-]
If you're listening just covered this the other day, they did a good job, worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQFE_3Mr4yQ (If you're listening is generally pretty good)
EA-3167 19 hours ago [-]
I’d be far more worried about this causing turbo cancer than immortality in dictators.
King-Aaron 19 hours ago [-]
It might be beneficial if it gives turbo cancer to the dictators, of course.
bitwize 18 hours ago [-]
It turns out that if you trigger all four Yamanaka factors—yeah, turbo cancer. But if you trigger only three of the four, you can trigger a reversion to the stem cell state without the increased cancer risk.
robwwilliams 17 hours ago [-]
Dubious. Do you have a reference or two? In general biological systems are not this simple.
deadbabe 18 hours ago [-]
What if we cure cancer with AI very soon? Give it 10 years.
vibrio 17 hours ago [-]
Remind me of the chance some same AI kills us all before 10 years?
EA-3167 17 hours ago [-]
Funny you mention that, I guess this is a new cult maxim for the faithful?
To expand, we might find out the hard way that having an expiration date was a feature of our species, not a flaw.
card_zero 18 hours ago [-]
Walk me through it: in order to get dictators killed, because they defend themselves very effectively, we should put everybody on the planet under a biological death sentence, which will get the dictators too.
No, I cannot endorse this.
setr 18 hours ago [-]
Science moves forward one death at a time
So at least two systems run better with the implicit time limit.
card_zero 18 hours ago [-]
We should kill the dictators deliberately, improve our biology deliberately, and get stuffy old people like me to change their minds deliberately. No stupid use of death as a proxy, it's a horribly blunt instrument. "Let your ideas die in your place".
Besides, maybe it's the young people who are the most dogmatic. Studies are inconclusive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle#Rebuttal If we're going to go around killing people for having rigid ideas, perhaps concentrate on the young ones, for statistical reasons.
idiotsecant 15 hours ago [-]
Humans who get old and comfortable often become quite terrible people.
card_zero 14 hours ago [-]
That's a perception. Do they, though? If so, why? "I hope I die before I get old", sang The Who. Roger Daltrey is 82. Trump (slightly younger) was one of His Generation, although I expect he probably wasn't a mod. But what I mean is, the coercive oppression visited upon you by your elders is coming from the youth of yesterday, who had it lurking in them latently, waiting to gain status and money and influence. Those things arrive gradually (if at all) along with age, and I guess they make a person complacently comfortable, but the driving cause is that the person is a coercive dogmatist with a drive to oppress inferiors, and always was in most cases, because we don't usually learn to be wronger,* only how to express our terrible attitudes. So age isn't doing this, it's just revealing it.
* Undoubtedly sometimes the spark of malevolence develops into more coherent and sophisticated badness, I have to admit, so an old person has had more time to mature into being truly terrible. But this is against the pressure of rationality.
mullingitover 17 hours ago [-]
It's a feature of every species that evolves. You can't evolve if you're striving to outcompete your offspring. You quickly game out that not having offspring is the winning chess move there. Now you're not having offspring, and thus you're not evolving. Then the environment changes and you, being unable to adapt in any way, go extinct.
c22 12 hours ago [-]
Cheating senescence is kind of the ultimate adaptation. If we can crack this then I'd expect designing other artificial adaptations to be quite tractable in the future.
suslik 18 hours ago [-]
Of course it's a feature; it still doesn't mean it cannot be stopped or considerably postponed.
TedDoesntTalk 18 hours ago [-]
I’m always fascinated by people who think death can be “stopped” (not postponed, but eliminated). Fascinating.
suslik 18 hours ago [-]
Is there a reason why it can't possibly be stopped?
TedDoesntTalk 18 hours ago [-]
Everything we have witnessed that arises also passes away. Every living thing, every dead thing - even stars and planets - arise and pass away.
I feel it’s the ultimate hubris to think we can cheat death.
Moreover, why would you want immortality?
Many books of fiction and poetry discuss the curse of immortality.
Here are a few:
The Immortal, Jorge Luis Borges (1947)
A man discovers a source of immortality, but eternity eventually destroys the significance of individual experiences. When everything can happen infinitely, nothing feels particularly important.
The Mortal Immortal — Mary Shelley (1833) - also wrote Frankenstein
A man drinks an elixir and lives for centuries without substantially aging. He watches his wife grow old and die, and becomes increasingly alienated from humanity. Shelley focuses on loneliness and the psychological weight of endless time.
All Men Are Mortal — Simone de Beauvoir (1946)
An immortal man lives through centuries of history, relationships, and political upheaval. Gradually he discovers that even extraordinary achievements seem meaningless when time is unlimited.
The Makropulos Affair — Karel Čapek (1922)
A woman lives more than 300 years through an elixir. She retains her youth but becomes emotionally exhausted, cynical, and incapable of finding pleasure.
—
There are more. Sure, these are fiction. But use your imagination. Why would you want immortality, even if you could retain perfect health indefinitely?
suslik 12 hours ago [-]
> Everything we have witnessed that arises also passes away. Every living thing, every dead thing - even stars and planets - arise and pass away.
The context was if biological aging and age-related death can be stopped / prevented / reversed, and I don't see in what you wrote an argument against that. Those are a set of biochemical processes, and if there exist a scientific principle which would prevent modulating them successfully, you didn't name it.
> Moreover, why would you want immortality?
First, this is an orthogonal question. Whether I don't want something to happen, doesn't mean it can't, or won't: I never wanted to be replaced by LLMs, but those got invented anyway. Anyhow, the immortality we're talking about isn't of the kind where you are unable to die no matter what, it's just you don't age. You are permanently 22 - but so is everyone around you. I don't know, maybe it gets boring after 300 years, maybe after 300.000 - but I'd rather try and take myself out when I feel like it than die feeling there's so much more to experience (which is almost certainly going to be the case).
TedDoesntTalk 7 hours ago [-]
> if there exist a scientific principle which would prevent modulating them successfully, you didn't name it.
Why does such a “ scientific principle “ need to exist? So that you could finally point to a clear reason that it’s impossible?
Did Newton’s laws of motion exist before they were described by Newton?
ryuuseijin 16 hours ago [-]
Great list. Also, Anne Rice's Vampire stories.
I like Alan Watt's view on death: "it's absurd to worry about death because when you're dead, you've got nothing to worry about, so you'll be alright".
And Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think in reference to life after death: "it's the same as before you were born". Kind of mindblowing perspective - you've already experienced the state of not existing, it's the same as before you were born.
This brings it home that really it's the now you should learn to live and appreciate to the fullest instead, not some future you have no control over. Still struggling how that translates into worrying about my future health, but I suppose there is still the now of the future to worry about.
compton 6 hours ago [-]
> Kind of mindblowing perspective - you've already experienced the state of not existing, it's the same as before you were born.
Your consciousness might have existed before, in another body, and it might do so again after your death.
The fact is you don't know what happens after you die. Maybe you'll cease to exist and will never again come into existence, even over all the hundreds of trillions of years yet to come in this universe, and even in any of the who-knows-how-many other universes that will ever exist.
Or maybe the physical requirements to create your specific consciousness will reoccur again and again and again.
You just don't know. Nor does Neil deGrass Tyson. Nor does, for that matter, the pope or the Dalai Lama.
You may want certainty. You may crave it, even need it. But that's too bad, as you'll never have it.
rootusrootus 15 hours ago [-]
> it's the same as before you were born.
That's how I've long viewed it. As a practical matter we live "forever." Still makes me a tad nervous if I find myself thinking about it in the dark at 2am, but during the day it is a satisfactory explanation.
RuslanL 15 hours ago [-]
Or perhaps these authors could not imagine what being 100+ years of healthspan person would actually be like.
Imagine a civilization where death from biological aging would've happened at the age of 12. Would authors from such civilization be able to predict how a 45 year old would function? Or just extrapolate their (maximum 12) years old experience and come to the conclusion that being past 40 is so psychologically damaging that it would've been better to keep things the default way?
Note that I have just used my imagination, and came to different conclusions, so we are on the equal terms with said authors.
TedDoesntTalk 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, you used your imagination. But only 45/12 =3.75 times. That puts our projectiok at approximately 100*3.75=375 years. That’s quite different than living several million years or indefinitely.
snk 17 hours ago [-]
Not everything; only 93% of humans have died, for example. Past != future.
pestatije 10 hours ago [-]
...existing...
Nursie 17 hours ago [-]
Because one lifetime is not enough to experience everything the world has to offer.
If one doesn't have to watch ones spouse, friends and family grow old and die, because it is available widely, that removes some of your objections.
Personally I don't subscribe to the idea that things lose meaning in a longer life, I find it a 'just so' story of self comfort in the face of the inevitable.
orangecat 15 hours ago [-]
I feel it’s the ultimate hubris to think we can cheat death.
And if we were meant to fly we'd have wings, and diseases are the gods punishing us for our sins.
Moreover, why would you want immortality?
I don't know about immortality, but I'd definitely like more than 80 years, and I'd like to be in good health for as long as I am alive.
Many books of fiction and poetry discuss the curse of immortality.
Yes, and those are almost entirely cope.
TedDoesntTalk 7 hours ago [-]
> don't know about immortality, but I'd definitely like more than 80 years
You’re changing the subject; this is about immortality. I’d also like to live more than 80 years, and no book can convince me otherwise. But forever? No thanks.
ribosometronome 17 hours ago [-]
Why would someone want to live 100 years? 80? 60? 40? 20? Were ultimately just saying we like living and would like to keep living until we decide we don’t want to anymore. The thought that people might like living longer than they get is pretty well supported by every dying person who doesn’t want to die rather than just some speculative fiction.
jojobas 17 hours ago [-]
Well if one can live to the heat death of the universe I'll count it as prevented, not postponed, death.
card_zero 17 hours ago [-]
That is a really wanky, lazy, cliched, annoying trope - to a longevity advocate, of course. For the many people who inexplicably think death is friendly and wonderful, these tired old storylines are utterly insightful. (see also: Doctor Who, they did stories about immortality-seeking villains a few times.)
RuslanL 15 hours ago [-]
> Doctor Who
This is a bit ironic, considering the lifespan of Time Lords in that universe.
card_zero 18 hours ago [-]
Well, accidents. Inconveniently close supernovas. Something is likely to get you eventually, some few millennia later.
robwwilliams 17 hours ago [-]
Definitely a feature: Disposable soma theory of Kirkwood. Your germline is the real “you”.
bloqs 17 hours ago [-]
Neurogenesis slows for a similar reason
19 hours ago [-]
lilycarranza999 19 hours ago [-]
[dead]
dyauspitr 19 hours ago [-]
That’s a coping mechanism because we can’t change it.
hootz 18 hours ago [-]
Wasn't death a requirement for us to reach this current stage of human evolution? I don't think it is a good idea to stop it entirely.
jeremyjh 18 hours ago [-]
Evolution of humans by natural selection is already over with - or at least proceeding at time scales irrelevant to our civilization.
If it doesn't matter then it is not evolution, right?
card_zero 17 hours ago [-]
So it's things like: some people died because there was a famine and they didn't have lactose tolerance (and thus didn't have any cows, or they'd just eat the cows, a detail). Some people died due to having unnecessarily large and sturdy jaws in the era of cooked food. (Not sure how this would cause death, perhaps due to greater surface area for tooth trouble? It's always the teeth.) Then, their offspring - wait, I mean other people's offspring - are more adapted and less vulnerable.
Well sure, we should become less vulnerable, including biologically. But there are better ways to accomplish this than having people killed.
18 hours ago [-]
pestatije 10 hours ago [-]
that's plain wrong... selection continues to this day through ability to reproduce, not longevity
bravoetch 18 hours ago [-]
Not sure about death being required. It's more that life after reproductive success is not required.
robwwilliams 17 hours ago [-]
…that longer life after reproductive exhaustion is not under selection.”
idle_zealot 18 hours ago [-]
Curing aging doesn't stop death entirely. There's still the attrition of living in the physical world. Some portion of the population will trip and break their necks every year.
shrubble 18 hours ago [-]
All it would take would be one billionaire who invested in long term bonds, à la Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy…
LoganDark 19 hours ago [-]
Indeed; the biggest reason is surely cancer.
lilycarranza999 19 hours ago [-]
[dead]
robwwilliams 17 hours ago [-]
Not to mention the two leading septuagenarian dictators: Putin and Xi.
lilycarranza999 19 hours ago [-]
[dead]
yieldcrv 19 hours ago [-]
and the bourgeoisie, a temporary regulation would be needed in those areas of the world to separate the upper class from the capability of the rulers
in western nations where that’s not possible, I could see national bans, but one weak link globally and everyone wealthy will get their treatment there
SOLAR_FIELDS 19 hours ago [-]
The world of Altered Carbon seems more and more possible every day.
Bluestein 19 hours ago [-]
My goodness, what a show that was.-
clem 17 hours ago [-]
I heard they based a book on it.
walterbell 18 hours ago [-]
Co-produced by David Ellison and James Vanderbilt.
Loughla 19 hours ago [-]
An undying trillionaire class definitely sounds like a possible future. Not an ideal one, mind you, but definitely in the realm of possibilities.
I'm calling it now, Qatar will be the place that allows these treatments once they're a real thing.
I have to imagine the Uber wealthy are pouring money into youthful longevity science.
PowerElectronix 11 hours ago [-]
The democratization of drones capable of carrying a spicy payload would put a check to that, I imagine.
selimthegrim 18 hours ago [-]
The Island of Dr. Ellison
lilycarranza999 19 hours ago [-]
[dead]
hulitu 9 hours ago [-]
Is his name Dracula ?
It fits the description. /s
sgnelson 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dang 17 hours ago [-]
Please keep generational flamewar off HN.
plutomeetsyou 17 hours ago [-]
not if every other generation also lives long enough to become the baby boomers.
17 hours ago [-]
black_13 18 hours ago [-]
[dead]
m463 19 hours ago [-]
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The thinking is, if we find a way to massively extend the human lifespan/reverse aging I want to live long enough for that.
I'd be pissed if we as humanity solved aging and I die just before that, not taking any chances.
There could, however, be some promising signs down the road, like more capable in-silico methods, which will make it possible to bypass some/more of the brick and mortar labs. Another sign to watch for are orders of magnitude more companies and cartels of individuals doing advanced bioengineering outside of USA.
One big thing with aging research is though that it just needs time. No shortcuts really. You don't know it works until the first people love another few years.
A healthy mind and body leads an organism to want/be able to survive and thrive. Glad to hear you're there now.
> I'd be pissed if we as humanity solved aging and I die just before that
No, you wouldn't :)
I cannot tell you how many conversations I've had about all the crazy, albeit possible, futures that may come. But there is such a definitive hard stop when trying to discuss a shift from capitalism. It must bind alongside their religious adherence receptors. Because it I SO damn entrenched. Like a neural block of sorts.
You are the one who seemingly can't tolerate a conversation that isn't centered on your preferred worldview.
The economy is imploding because a tiny fraction of population is living on "compound interest" even now.
The first version of this technology will only be available to billionaires. So if you reach 70 when it’s invented and are not a billionaire, you’ll never get to try the 500 years of compounding trick
We’re likely to see this stuff get invented in our lifetimes (I’m 38), maybe practical, but we’re def all too old to see it become widely available.
Then again, life extension will not be a singular technology. You could argue antibiotics and vaccines were the first big step and those became affordable within a few decades of invention
You wouldn't be pissed. You'd be dead.
There was a really shitty movie starring Jared Leto I think about the same problem. Being the last guy to miss out on being immortal
Only something I have seen online, I cannot vouch for its validity
Edit: And wow, that abstract appears to have eaten an entire thesaurus.
What if living 300 years meant the entire tempo of human living changes. That we all just slow right down because having control over our aging and when it happens. To be able to decide to extend your 20s… or not. To spend decades in your 30s. How would that change what’s important to us?
https://fixvx.com/Kalshi/status/2109791302674235656?s=20
Save us all from people like this.
No, I cannot endorse this.
So at least two systems run better with the implicit time limit.
Besides, maybe it's the young people who are the most dogmatic. Studies are inconclusive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle#Rebuttal If we're going to go around killing people for having rigid ideas, perhaps concentrate on the young ones, for statistical reasons.
* Undoubtedly sometimes the spark of malevolence develops into more coherent and sophisticated badness, I have to admit, so an old person has had more time to mature into being truly terrible. But this is against the pressure of rationality.
I feel it’s the ultimate hubris to think we can cheat death.
Moreover, why would you want immortality?
Many books of fiction and poetry discuss the curse of immortality.
Here are a few:
The Immortal, Jorge Luis Borges (1947)
A man discovers a source of immortality, but eternity eventually destroys the significance of individual experiences. When everything can happen infinitely, nothing feels particularly important.
The Mortal Immortal — Mary Shelley (1833) - also wrote Frankenstein
A man drinks an elixir and lives for centuries without substantially aging. He watches his wife grow old and die, and becomes increasingly alienated from humanity. Shelley focuses on loneliness and the psychological weight of endless time.
All Men Are Mortal — Simone de Beauvoir (1946)
An immortal man lives through centuries of history, relationships, and political upheaval. Gradually he discovers that even extraordinary achievements seem meaningless when time is unlimited.
The Makropulos Affair — Karel Čapek (1922)
A woman lives more than 300 years through an elixir. She retains her youth but becomes emotionally exhausted, cynical, and incapable of finding pleasure.
—
There are more. Sure, these are fiction. But use your imagination. Why would you want immortality, even if you could retain perfect health indefinitely?
The context was if biological aging and age-related death can be stopped / prevented / reversed, and I don't see in what you wrote an argument against that. Those are a set of biochemical processes, and if there exist a scientific principle which would prevent modulating them successfully, you didn't name it.
> Moreover, why would you want immortality?
First, this is an orthogonal question. Whether I don't want something to happen, doesn't mean it can't, or won't: I never wanted to be replaced by LLMs, but those got invented anyway. Anyhow, the immortality we're talking about isn't of the kind where you are unable to die no matter what, it's just you don't age. You are permanently 22 - but so is everyone around you. I don't know, maybe it gets boring after 300 years, maybe after 300.000 - but I'd rather try and take myself out when I feel like it than die feeling there's so much more to experience (which is almost certainly going to be the case).
Why does such a “ scientific principle “ need to exist? So that you could finally point to a clear reason that it’s impossible?
Did Newton’s laws of motion exist before they were described by Newton?
I like Alan Watt's view on death: "it's absurd to worry about death because when you're dead, you've got nothing to worry about, so you'll be alright".
And Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think in reference to life after death: "it's the same as before you were born". Kind of mindblowing perspective - you've already experienced the state of not existing, it's the same as before you were born.
This brings it home that really it's the now you should learn to live and appreciate to the fullest instead, not some future you have no control over. Still struggling how that translates into worrying about my future health, but I suppose there is still the now of the future to worry about.
Your consciousness might have existed before, in another body, and it might do so again after your death.
The fact is you don't know what happens after you die. Maybe you'll cease to exist and will never again come into existence, even over all the hundreds of trillions of years yet to come in this universe, and even in any of the who-knows-how-many other universes that will ever exist.
Or maybe the physical requirements to create your specific consciousness will reoccur again and again and again.
You just don't know. Nor does Neil deGrass Tyson. Nor does, for that matter, the pope or the Dalai Lama.
You may want certainty. You may crave it, even need it. But that's too bad, as you'll never have it.
That's how I've long viewed it. As a practical matter we live "forever." Still makes me a tad nervous if I find myself thinking about it in the dark at 2am, but during the day it is a satisfactory explanation.
Imagine a civilization where death from biological aging would've happened at the age of 12. Would authors from such civilization be able to predict how a 45 year old would function? Or just extrapolate their (maximum 12) years old experience and come to the conclusion that being past 40 is so psychologically damaging that it would've been better to keep things the default way?
Note that I have just used my imagination, and came to different conclusions, so we are on the equal terms with said authors.
If one doesn't have to watch ones spouse, friends and family grow old and die, because it is available widely, that removes some of your objections.
Personally I don't subscribe to the idea that things lose meaning in a longer life, I find it a 'just so' story of self comfort in the face of the inevitable.
And if we were meant to fly we'd have wings, and diseases are the gods punishing us for our sins.
Moreover, why would you want immortality?
I don't know about immortality, but I'd definitely like more than 80 years, and I'd like to be in good health for as long as I am alive.
Many books of fiction and poetry discuss the curse of immortality.
Yes, and those are almost entirely cope.
You’re changing the subject; this is about immortality. I’d also like to live more than 80 years, and no book can convince me otherwise. But forever? No thanks.
This is a bit ironic, considering the lifespan of Time Lords in that universe.
I don't think it matters, mind you.
Well sure, we should become less vulnerable, including biologically. But there are better ways to accomplish this than having people killed.
in western nations where that’s not possible, I could see national bans, but one weak link globally and everyone wealthy will get their treatment there
I'm calling it now, Qatar will be the place that allows these treatments once they're a real thing.
I have to imagine the Uber wealthy are pouring money into youthful longevity science.