Slashdot Mirror
Do You Want to Live Forever?
Jamie McCarthy writes "In 1918, Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Daly inspired his weary men to attack by yelling, 'come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?' But how would the world change if we could? This month's Technology Review introduces us to the computer scientist, and self-taught biologist, Aubrey de Grey, who thinks immortality could be within our grasp by 2030. Thinking like an engineer, he's broken aging down into seven specific problems, like cell atrophy and mitochondrial mutation, which he believes can all, in principle, be solved. And he has good reason to think those seven are the only 'bugs' standing in the way of a thousand-year lifespan. De Grey is clearly both a genius and a little nuts, but I'm not sure in what proportion..."
As he reviewed the possible reasons why so little progress had been made in spite of the remarkable molecular and cellular discoveries of recent decades, he came to the conclusion that the problem might be far less difficult to solve than some thought; it seemed to him related to a factor too often brushed under the table when the motivations of scientists are discussed, namely the small likelihood of achieving promising results within the period required for academic advancement--careerism, in a word. As he puts it, "High-risk fields are not the most conducive to getting promoted quickly."
The world needs more thinkers like him, even if he's a little nuts. Anyone willing to start his own international symposium after teaching himself micro biology is. Too many professional scholars are pinned into doing research that has immediate market viability and too many researchers are more interested in their own career advancement than the science they're supposed to be advancing. So they play it safe.
Daly dreams of being on the cover of Time magazine I'm sure, ego is almost certainly a factor for him as well, and no doubt a huge payday would follow and major advancement on any of his 7 problems. But it's the all-or-nothing mentality, the fact that he's willing to go for it even if it never pans out, that separates him.
I Want To Believe
I believe the proper question at this point isn't "can we" it's "Should we"
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
By the time you are in your 70's so much stuff pisses you off that you can barely deal with it. Things change so much from what it was even when you were growning up.
Who wants to live forever, when love must die?
Arch Obler addressed some of the realities of such a life span in one of the episodes of the old radio show "Lights Out".
There was a revolution. The younger generation was tired of being held down by the generation that was in power when immortality became possible. Bereft of political power for hundreds of years, there was a violent and bloody revolt, resulting in the massacre of the older generation.
Can you imagine the state of civil rights if the people running the country in the 1950s were still alive and well?
To an extent, society just doesn't change unless the older generation dies off.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
If we "fix" this whole aging thing, won't we also need to put a stop to this giving birth thing?
I don't think the Catholics are gonna like this very much.
Yeah, but would you get nailed to a cross to do it?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Duh! Of course!
Just think how well my meager investments will be doing after they've had the chance to grow for 100 years! I'll be loaded!
Seriously, I think the money and class issues are the interesting side of this. If it happened there would be a clear class division between those that could afford it and those that couldn't. And for those that could, their wealth could grow without bounds. Our (in the US and most other western countries) society depends on inheritance and the associated taxes, dividing of estates, etc, to redistribute wealth, and this would immediately negate that effect. Anyone with an estate worth much could afford the technology to extend their life, and therefore not pass on the estate.
While it raises all kinds of social issues, on a personal level it means each of us has to try to accumulate enough wealth to get into the category of people that can afford it before the end of our natural lifespan. It's a race against time.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
I always thought the problem with living that long would be your teeth, they aren't meant to last that long (especially the way we take care of them). Those 900 years with dentures would sure suck...
I want to see what the year 2505 will be like just as much as the next Slashdotter, but it is not meant to be.
And as much as I am seriously a religious person I don't let it stand in the way of the rights of others to choose. Man will play out his destiny and if God has a problem with it I'm sure he can take care of it on his own. I doubt that a group of scientists can stand in the way of God's plan.
Who knows... We of faith may be dead wrong too and that in itself should be reason enough for us to let others "do unto themselves". Instead of bashing people with Bibles (or Korans or Gitas or Necronomicons) we should be tolerant and guide those who desire our guidance.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Nonliving tissue that's part of the body's basic structure. Think:
teeth
bones (especially joints)
tendons and ligaments
lens of the eye
basement membrane (think jowls sagging to your shoulders, breasts sagging to the knees)
These parts of the body are usually laid down prior to adulthood, and last a "normal" life as nonliving tissue. Humans are largely unique in lasting past reproductive years, and most of the effects of wear and tear on nonliving tissue are seen in those people. There's no repair/replacement mechanism for these tissues because none was ever needed during the course of ordinary evolution.
Speaking of evolution, some might make the argument that dying not too long after reproductive years is good for the race.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Even if you replace every damaged cell, there are still supercellular structures (tissues, organs) that have to be maintained. You are probably going to need a lot of wholesale organ replacement. Living things have elvolved to grow their organs from small or large by multiplying cells in a certain pattern. I'm not sure that cell replacement can adequately maintain that pattern. If you have an old house and you replace each piece of wood as it rots out, small inacuracies will build up over time, and the whole structure will become misshapen, and you will have to replace the whole wall.
I guess the point is that living things were designed to grow, and by that I mean go from small to large, into adult form, and then die. Can maintenance really work? If you look at, say, the spiral pattern on a flower, I think it's fairly easy to get one cell to multiply into that pattern, but then to replace a single petal? A lot of our organs have that branching tree structure. I think it's easier to grow that than to maintain. I don't know if our DNA has a program to replace a section of artery, but it certainly has a program to grow it.
I remember from a radio interview a museum curator said "It's easier to destroy than to create, and it's easier to create than to maintain". I think it will be cheaper to make new people and let the old ones die than it will be to maintain everyone.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I love my (step) children, and the last thing my generation will do for them is to die and get out of the way so they can fill our shoes.
If my generation stays as productive adults forever (or close to it) they my kids must remain teen-agers for ever. The greats of any given generation only become great when those before them have exited the stage.
Elizabeth Moon touches on this in some of her books.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Just like the much hyped social security collapse of the early 1980s?
The level of "fix" needed to make social security solvent past 2031 is tiny. Besides, the reason we had (past tense, unfortunately) a social security "surplus" was due to the fact that lifespans *weren't* increasing as expected (among other things). Should they start to change, social security will clearly change to adapt - most likely with a later retirement age. A mere 2 year age boost in the retirement age made most of the difference in the 1980s - if you're living 50, or even 500 years longer, a longer work period should be a given.
Much of the SS calculations, by the way, is rather pessimistic. They assume pretty poor economic growth and population figures.
Jesus: "Son of a
I bet the divorce rate would reach 100% too.
Marriage would probably become contractual arrangements to stay together for, say, 20 years, with options after that for a specified amount of time (5, 10, or 20 years). Romantics would probably still try for "til death do you part" but I suspect a major change would come around in how it's viewed by society.
Reproduction would almost certainly be done by permit only if one subjected oneself to these kind of treatments. If one did not, and the normal lifespan of ~75 years were expected, then perhaps they wouldn't be blocked, but those living for hundreds of years would probably have to restrict themselves, getting on a waiting list to be allowed to have children.
Another thought... How would people react to dangers if they could live for centuries? Suddenly, you're not risking the experiences of 10 or 20 or 50 years of life. You're risking the experiences of 100 or 200 or 500 years of life. Ouch. One might well think twice before pushing some of the boundaries in those cases.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
If we do become immortal, imagine how that will change people's tendency to take risks. We all take small risks all the time. We take risks driving cars, flying, etc. because the odds of it killing us before we die naturally is small. But if we live 10x longer then we end up in the situation where the risks are likely to kill us before we die of natural causes.
Also imagine the wrongful death suites if someone would be expected to live another 500 years. Who will want to take any risks if it might cause them to die when they don't expect to die ever?
Welfare is for lazy trailer trash who can't get off their fat ass to find a job.
Trailer trash such as my mother, who after the divorce was a single mother of five. Trailer trash that worked her ass off, lived in a "house" in the "city." Eventually she got off Welfare, but thank God it was there for us when we needed it. It was not for lack of work ethic that we were on it, it was poor planning on my mother's part.
Social Security is for old people who worked hard and want to retire.
Socialist Security is not for people who want to retire, the benefits are so tiny that all it does is supplement the typically small income our elderly are able to procure. Think about it -- who wants to hire a 70 year old to a six figure job when that person is bordering on senility and has very few productive years left? Age discrimination may be illegal, but it happens. I see a lot of old people working at Wal-Mart and McDonald's. Social Insecurity will barely pay their rent or house insurance, whichever is applicable.
Lots of people are in favor of cutting welfare benefits in the name of forcing these people to get a job and quit being leeches, while very few people want to be seen as "cutting" SS in the eyes of the older voters.
Not everyone on Welfare, Food Stamps, or whatever other public assistance programs are out there are leeches. Some are just in a shitty part of life and need a boost. I have no problem cutting Social Security as long as everyone gets their dues if they want. I plan on denying my Social Security benefits even after paying into the system all my life. Hopefully I won't need them, because I will plan better than my parents did. It may be a drop in the bucket, and more symbolic than anything, but that is doing my part to keep the system from fucking some poor Joe who gets the short end of the stick in 40-60 years.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Human evolution is already at a halt, or worse, it might even be going backwards. People are allowed to breed no matter what kind of genetic problems they have. Stupid people seem to breed a lot more frequently than smart people.
As long as society exists, you can rule out any kind of human evolution. The only solution for all this is improved medicine.
All of Europe faces a big problem, namely, that the entitlement programs are so massive that they are becoming a massive burden as the population ages. France, in particular, is near the breaking point due to a lovely pension system.
A rapidly aging population, long life spans, and a low-growth economy are disasters waiting to happen all over Europe...
I would like to expound upon your excellent point.
Social Security exists for one reason, and that reason has been verified by scientific study, people don't save their own money. Thats not to say YOU don't save your money, or educated wealthy people don't save their money. No. The average joe schmoe, the normal guy, doesn't save money for retirement, and if
he does, doesn't save nearly enough.
You can say what you want about how the world should work and how people shoul act. The fact is not only do they not, they did not before the safety-net was there to help them.
So we have a mandatory retirement fund, you pay into it when you work, in the hope that it will pay you when you retire. This has the effect of allowing people to retire before they become physically incapacitated, opening up more jobs for younger people, increasing the standard of living among older people, and taking some of the worry of saving for retirement away (it is still quite advisable to save more, but again, most people wont save enough on their own anyway)
Now that fund works in odd ways, the current working gen pays the current retired gen and it doesn't bank the money so much for us. This is a detail of how its implimented of course, and is subject to change.
Of course if we move to an ageless society, then we remove the need for retirement and retirement savings, and we will all have time to work and play and persue our own interests. Then we wont need social security.
We can then also gut our education system as we will only need offspring enough to cover those who choose not to live forever and those who die of other causes (disasters, accidents and the like) so we should be able to educate what few children there are at a fraction of the cost of the current system
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
While some of us might be like that, I disagree that for many of us, the reason that we work is to accumulate "stuff".
We don't seem to be given much choice in the matter. I would gladly work at a part-time job if I was given the choice: I would much prefer to make enough to pay for rent, bills, and groceries. Unfortunately, because of the model that society has adopted, I'm forced into a work-world where eight hours a day is the standard, and I'm paid to a level where I have quite a bit of disposable income. Given how unhappy I am spending a huge chunk of my week either thinking about work, preparing for work, or working, I have little time to myself and feel that I should compensate myself; additionally, it seems silly to just save the money I've earned, since I wouldn't know what to do with it all. Hence, I buy stupid things that I don't really need and that bring me a small but very transient amount of happiness.
I notice this pattern in pretty much everyone around me who isn't up to their ears in debt. They accumulate random garbage that they don't really need or particularly want much.
This model really sucks, because I think it leaves many of us largely dissatisfied. I don't know what would make you happier, but personally, I can say without hesitation that I'd prefer more free time to spend with my family and pursue my hobbies rather than more possessions. As well, it's environmentally destructive: we gather and gather useless crap, wasting our natural resources which could be put to much better use.
Except for the obvious difference that the people who receive welfare have not paid a bloody dime into the system. It is those of us who pay income tax that provide the benefits to welfare recipients, on the basis that it is better for all of us to be forced to support them, than for us to see them starving beside the street.
On the other hand, Social Security is sold to the people as a system where they pay money in over their working career so that they can then have it back after they retire.
Which would be great except for the problem of it not working that way.
Instead people working now are paying for the people getting social security today. Private accounts would move it in the direction of acting as you outlined, but currently it is nothing like that apart from a notation about how much you've paid in so far to taunt you.
I pay social security, other people get that money. I pay taxes, other people get that money. To me there is no difference. I should just pay some level of taxes and expect that if I fall on hard times in the future there is some way of helping me out. I don't like paying into a system that has such a low rate of return that I am required to independantly contribute to many other forms of savings (like Roth and 401k) so that I'll have actual money when I retire instead of hypothetical money that I cannot count on and is hardly enough to live on anyway.
There should be some middle ground between social security and welfare such that I could pay less into the system, keep more for investment, but also provide better support for those that really need it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
meh, like any of us are going to die from old age anyway. More like heart attacks and liver failure...
I whole-heartedly agree with you!
Most of us are forced into a binary scenario of either working a 40+ hour week or not having a job at all. How many of us wouldn't choose to work part-time if we could convince our employers to let us do that? Even if it meant half the pay?
When you have more free time you definitely don't feel a need to spend so much of your money on useless crap.
Just who is this full week serving? Whose needs?
I don't think we were born to do this -- to work 40 years for 40 hours per week getting 2-4 weeks per year of time to ourselves. It's insanity! It feels like a prison-sentence really!!
Even if one gets to the top of their profession, it still gets really boring after a while.
Our minds are too interesting for this type of mundanity. I would like to believe that our spirits are more beautiful than that -- that we aren't just some lowly cogs designed to perform one specific and uninteresting task or series of tasks each day.
It's chillingly sad if I am wrong.
However, this is the trend in society. Our economic system is going towards greater and greater division of labor -- so look to jobs getting more and more mundane as technology advances and as populations grow.
This immortality thing will only compound the problem, I think.
The answer is quite simple, really. Everyone is really better off when one person is in charge. In anarchy the wealth is evenly distributed, but the total wealth is far less because no one is willing to do anything. In a structured environment, wealth is created so even if the wealth is distributed unevenly everyone is better off. That is why the system works and is stable - everyone is better off, even the lowest members of society. (If you don't believe that, ask yourself why people don't just quit society and go live in the mountains - it is possible, at least in the US)
As for why the people at the top get more than an even distribution - its because it is hard to get to the top, and society is better off if it motivates people to reach the top. I know everyone says that CEOs are overpaid, etc. but good CEOs are extremely rare - and are therefore workth their weight in gold to society. If, as you seem to believe, it was an easy job then others would compete for the job and the board would tell the CEO "Hey, Joe here can do just as well as you, and he will work for peanuts!" The fact is, once you find a good CEO you don't let him go!
Of course, whining is much easier than studying the game theory that explains all this...
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
> When you are born, your parents invest $10 at 3%
> insterest. When you are ready to retire in 1000
> years you will be worth $100,000,000,000,000
>
> Sign me up!!!
Except that in a thousand years, that will buy you a Mars bar with enough change to use a payphone.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you could live for ever it woudl atleast solve the problems with space travel ok it may take 6 years to get to mars but when you live for ever what is 6 years mabye this is the way we get aroundt he vast distancis of space. If you build a box big enuth it could hold enuth food to last the trip we could move peopel off to over worlds a lot easyer than now.
Social Security was conceived as, and still is, a welfare program. It takes money from working people and gives it to retired people. The working people accept it because they too will get money when they retire. But they're not going to get the money they "saved." They're going to get the money from people who aren't yet working today.
I'm against Social Security and forcing people to save, but I think this nonsense over "privatizing" anything is just that. Private groups that coercively redistribute wealth already exist--they're called the mafia.
English is easier said than done.
It is a cool technology, but it seems to be limited to things like skin and bone, where the detailed arrangement of different cell types in the organ is not important to the function of the overall organ. It might be very useful for growing a person a new liver, but it would take a lot of work to get this going for the heart, kidneys, or brain. And when it all comes down to it, the brain is the only organ that matters. Every other part of a person's body could be replaced.
When coming up with the program not many people thought the birthrate would decline so dramatically, leaving the program in the hole when there are not enough people actually working to support the ones taking in social security.
Thus the projected problems starting in 2018 (the year the program has more money going out in payments than comes in from workers) instead of 2042.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A third year molecular biology undergraduate could shoot down all seven theories without even breaking into a canter.
De Grey has broken the golden, unwritten rule of life sciences:
Have Humility in the Face of Nature
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
You clearly don't understand even the very basics of economics. Take a course and learn a little, then come back here and make some kind of intelligent statement.
The idea behind saving and investing for your retirement is that by the time you retire, your biggest purchase (your home) will be paid off, and all you'll need is the money your savings and investments make each year, without ever touching the principal. I could live very well off the earnings from one million dollars invested properly.
assuming one is able to live healthily for a millennium, it makes no sense that they would only work to age 65. comparing retirement age to average life expectancy, we currently work til about 90% of life expectancy. by this logic, we would work to about 900 years old. giving us plenty of time to contribute more to ss as well as have enough money saved so as not to depend on ss.