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The Fight To End Aging Gains Legitimacy, Funding
oddwick11 writes "Aubrey de Grey and other leading scientists and thinkers in stem cell research and regenerative medicine will gather in Los Angeles at UCLA for Aging 2008 to explain how their work can combat human aging, and the sociological implications of developing rejuvenation therapies. From an article today in WIRED Magazine 'Now, though, some scientists are beginning to view his approach — looking at aging as a disease and bringing in more disciplines into gerontology — as worthwhile, even if they still look askance at his claims of permanent reversible aging within a lifespan. The Methuselah Foundation now has an annual research funding budget of several million dollars, de Grey says, and it's beginning to show lab results that he thinks will turn scientists' heads.'" The conference is free, though registration is required; L.A. area readers who can attend are encouraged to post their thoughts. Update: 06/27 05:18 GMT by T : Dr. de Grey notes that you can also simply show up and register on-site. Look forward to a Slashdot interview with de Grey in the near future.
So there is hope for John McCain after all!
500 years from now, just think how out of touch the elderly will be! I can't wait to shake a cane and tell the youth that in my day we had Atari 2600s, not AI-merged universal consciousness!
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Aging is not a disease. Imagine contesting with our own offspring if everybody decides to live forever.
Please, please, no.
The hope that my mother-in-law will someday die is one of the few things that allows me to be around her. PLEASE, don't take that away from me.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
The life-extension movement has been asking for this approach for at LEAST a half-century.
By the way: Watch for the government to try to restrict this research, or use of its results, to "save social security".
Which shouldn't really be an issue: A good set of treatments for aging would lead to people of larger calendar age not just hanging in there in a sickly state consuming large amounts of medical treatment - but retaining (or being restored to) good health and able to return to work and create the resources needed to support them (and in style).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
With 6.5 billion people on the planet, and all of the world's major problems (global warming, wars, famines, extinction of animal and plant life, etc etc) being a direct result of human overpopulation, the fight to end aging seems like the most idiotic endeavor of them all.
I've been in attendance at the last 134 annual conferences and found it to be very rewarding.
LOOK at the current crowd of greyhairs in control. Do we really want them immortal? Yes, perhaps even the majority of old people are nice people, like us only, well, older.
But time allows people to accumulate societal power. Fine if they're nice people. Not so fine if they're psychos. And the evil will rise to the top, it's what they do - people who actively seek power tend not to be good people (though sometimes they might "mean well".). After all, the most telling sign of evil is starting to believe "there is no good or evil, only power".
So is mortality the price we need to pay to avoid permanent rule by utter assholes? We can't assure that only nice people become immortal, really. I guess we still have assassination
(I mean anti-aging is not anti-bullet/polonium/ricin/whatever), but a lucky immortal might consolidate so much power as to be near-immune to that too - it'd already be pretty damn hard for me to e.g. take out GWB.
Heinlein wrote extensively in his novels on the subject of aging, treating it as a syndrome that was inherently cureable, including the anhedonia (loss of the joy of life) that came from that multitude of minor pains that take up so much of your attention as you get older. Pain is terribly distracting, from minor itching all the way up to opiate-resistant terminal conditions. It's a lot of nerve noise. Anything that can solve the complex of symptoms that lead to age-related death will also have to deal with pain and anhedonia as well.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Saying you can stop aging soon could be an easy line on old rich men beginning to fear death.
No difficult questions on progress or specifics; investors that came to you. There's your millions.
(No, not saying anything at all about whether or not this whole thing is a good or bad idea)
What, so we can all die in a horrible accident instead?
What?
Imagine a world where all deaths are either by tragic accident or homicide...
we're going to be heads in a jar after all?
... won't be an issue as long as anyone who opts in for clinical immortality is also stripped of their fertility. In fact, i'd imagine underpopulation would be a significant risk if enough people take it.
I for one would love to live to see the day where we roam freely amongst the stars. With all the advancements in almost every area of existence that we are experiencing today, I don't forsee myself getting bored any time soon.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
'living forever' really seems like it should be possible. Our bodies have a process, and that process can get altered by diseases and malnourishment and improving how we keep clean and what we eat has given us much more time to live.
Why should aging be any different? Nobody really dies of 'natural causes', it's always something specific that breaks homeostasis in the end (sometimes starting from the beginning), natural causes is another name for 'there's no worth in investigating exactly why this person died because they're too damned old, but it's probably heart failure, even though that's a symptom of a mode of death'.
Our bodies aren't designed on a basis of 'right' and 'wrong', it's designed on what worked best to getting the next generation across. Unfortunately, renewing certain kinds of cell tissue was never vital to that goal.
We already know electronics and stuff are prone to getting old and eventually failing themselves, but there's no reason to use our artifice as an analogy, we have yet to create something that is constantly replacing itself on the cellular level, essentially becoming a whole new thing over and over.
I hope this research makes some serious progress, even if it will be only our descendants that enjoy the results.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
If human lifespans are ever extended to a significant degree, there will be significant repercussions as governments attempt to deal with what would inevitably become a very serious overpopulation crisis. Death and suicide are currently viewed as horrible things by the majority of western cultures. Would a practical illustration (catastrophic overpopulation) of why death is a natural and necessary component in the "lifespans" of living things, including human populations, change popular and governmental dispositions towards death and dying?
What kind of effects might this have on policies towards euthanasia? More provocatively, might governments starting offering tax credits or other kinds of awards to families whose eldest members opted to end their lives? Might governments impose penalties on individuals who were older than a certain age?
California man develops cure for aging, commits suicide. And now, on to the international scene...
Sure, death isn't to be feared, but that doesn't mean we need to set an egg timer. I'd rather die when I'm good and ready rather than have my world cut short because of "disease". You don't want to live beyond the arbitrary limit you have set? Fine. Just don't try and ruin other people's lives in some sort of misguided crusade against longevity.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
When my car gets old, it will get rusty. If you happen to have a car with a fiberglass or stainless steel body, the parts under the hood will still fail.
If you're treating aging like a disease, might as well find a cure for death too.
The game.
So you think there's a major gap in lifestyle between yourself and that neighboor 5 blocks away behind the gate? What about between you and the hungry in africa living on $3 a day? Now...Imagine the wealthy who can afford this treatment, and the money they will pay to make sure the lower classes DON'T get it. The idea that we might acually be able to reverse ageing before we can colonize anouther planet makes me shudder. However..such a techinique might be usefull for deep space missons, to bad that is only the pipedreams of good sci-fi.
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
Bad Idea....
Sorry, wasn't attempting to advocate any particular philosophy, just saying that death plays an important role in the maintenance and advancement of a species. I guess the process of natural selection is a good illustration of how death of the individual can ultimately serve a biological population.
Great, just what I need, now I'll never be able to retire.
Extending the lifespan significantly seems to have all kind of benefits for the individual and all kinds of negative consequences for society and the species in general.
You're fucking over your kids and grandkids, who probably won't be allowed to be born for reasons of overpopulation while you selfishly hog the great tit of life.
And to end it all I imagine that within the first few hundred years of having pretty much the exact same population existing on earth bacteria will have advanced so far past us that it'll just wipe us all out in one massive wave of the worst pestilence imaginable unleashing an extremely cruel death on every human alive
...come to think of it I don't see why we deserve any better. I wholeheartedly support this initiative.
When I read articles like this about scientists coming up with ways which can result in the dramatic increase in population, I can't help but think about Thomas Malthus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus#The_Principle_of_Population. He theorizes that while our capacity to provide food increases arithmetically (1,2,3,4...) our population grows at a geometric rate (1,2,4,8...)
"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."
In the first edition of the Essay, Malthus suggested that only natural causes (such as accidents and old age), misery (war, pestilence, plague, and above all famine) [Book I, Ch. 2], and vice (which for Malthus included infanticide, murder, contraception and homosexuality) [Book I, Ch. 5.] could check excessive population-growth. In the second and subsequent editions, Malthus raised the possibility of moral restraint (marrying late or not at all, coupled with sexual abstinence prior to, and outside of, marriage) as a check on the growth of population.
We've seen all of these from China's "One child" law, African warlords using food to control the population and pollution causing reduced lifespans. We've seen famine in Ireland (potato), and recently the tomato scare in the US. What would happen if instead of a few varieties of tomatoes, this was a bacteria that destroyed wheat (ala locusts).
Assume they stop or reverse aging and take it to the next step: never dying. Also assuming that we don't kill ourselves by overpopulation, what does that mean for the humans as an evolving species? We would stay the same while the rest of earth's species continue to develop? Death may be disastrous for the individual, but it allows the species to continue to adapt to changing conditions, no?
So, currently, we know about the following things that are/were regulating overpopulation (an incomplete list):
1. Health, leading to death of illnesses, injuries, etc. Now mostly removed by medicine.
2. Famine, Plague, etc. Used to randomly sweep through communities. Now mostly removed by 1) Globalization (preventing really large famines) and Medicine.
3. Predators. Would kill off the weak and unlucky. Mostly removed by weapons, habitat destruction.
4. Natural Disasters. Becoming more of a problem.
5. Cancer. Only an issue when you live past your biological usefulness (the point where you begin consuming more resources and/or stop producing children), and require additional support from others. Thus, becoming a rather major issue.
6. Death of Old Age. The ultimate regulating factor. The point when the body just gives up and stops working. Pushed back by medicine, but not removed.
7. Ecosystem Collapse. Has not yet happened on a large scale; however, will happen if overpopulation increases without central planning for dealing with the additional resource needs.
8. Death by Old Age, where the vast majority of a population is above child-bearing age. If this is enough of the population, their death may lead to an end of the species. To my knowledge, this has never happened.
The point: the more humans mess around with aging and such, the more unpredictable things will happen, and the more things that were predicted but ignored will happen. For example, people have been talking about climate change and world overpopulation for a long time, but still nothing really major is happening to find a solution.
Everything is subjective.
Some day I'll be able to live healthily and interminably, thus monopolizing your lives and resources for even longer than I had already planned to!
Immortally Yours,
Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
This whole thing is a big waste of money. We already have the perfect cure for aging, and with the Supreme Court's recent decision that Washington D.C. isn't allowed to ban it, we should be able to keep fighting aging for the foreseeable future.
If they develop boosterspice, birthright lottery won't be far behind.
While de Grey and colleagues are very excited about their findings, they warn that repeated exposure to the Lazarus Pits may drive some people quite mad.
I really don't want to live forever. If it were possible, I think eventually everything would become mundane.
However, if the length of youthful vigor could be extended, if the quality of life could be improved into the autumn years, I'm all for it.
I'm already distracted more and more by the general discomfort of my body, and am starting to really notice the slowly increasing limitations of my physical abilities. If that could be reduced, it could make the time people have to live more worth living.
But living forever? Forever is a very long time.
And who's to say that there aren't other intelligent species out there?
That will kick our asses in any case.
bob@Osprey:~>
Just don't start the War on Aging, because in America that would really mean the war on those that are aging.
Will you be the first to volunteer to die then? There are other solutions besides the death of every man, woman, and child on this planet.
What is it about human nature that makes some of us enjoy doom and horror? Why is the dystopia far more prevalent than the utopia? Even when people (read: men and woman) are able to choose their job, live forty years longer than normal, eat themselves to death with plentiful food and enjoy more leisure time than any other period in human history; we still find dark futures lurking in everyone's minds.
Now a group of scientists is saying we can live forever, and what is the immediate reaction? That will never work! It will spell doom for humanity because of x, y and z.
Personally, I think humans will survive if we gain immortality. I also think we'll remain humans. Which will mean that some of us will still take risks to steal eachother's stuff. I think that I would commit suicide out of boredom after the first few hundred years. However, I'd like to find out.
Heh. Boredom as the impetus behind war.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
The reason we have the age we do has nothing to do with health.
It is game theory. The length of time we live relates to the social structure we have.
So if we live forever, we need a dramaticaly different social structure.
The second aspect is that given we are living longer means that alot of deseases that would have been "selected" out now stay in the gene pool. So we are not infact much healthyer at all.
Live forever you say. Next thing you know, neocons will change the laws so they stay in goverment for ever. How will you ever change that ?
If people live forever, why not take a 1,000 year trip to the next star?
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Kurt Vonnegut is a good story to read about the effects of immortality on life on this planet. I guess if we have some form of anti-gerasone, combined with the admonition of the Georgia Guidestones, we should wipe out a little over 6 billion people and let 500 million people live forever, thus halting human evolution completely so all of us can be wiped out eventually.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Has it occured to you that God's message is that if you love one another and treat each other like your best friend, only then will you live forever? Maybe God designed people to learn and explore and eventually colonize the universe with our unaging bodies. Maybe he is sitting out there waiting to meet us *in person* -- but only when we, as a species, are mature enough that people can fly a million years out past the boundaries of the universe to say "hi."
Has anybody realized that people need to die?
Put the "Happy" thoughts aside and realize the DYING AND AGING ARE AN ESSENTIAL PART OF LIFE.
Sometimes people just NEED to die. Get over it.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I plan to live forever. So far, the plan is working perfectly.
and you can take my fertility with it; no interest in children, thank you. On the other hand, I'll take 20 years (or more!) of my life back, thank you very much! It's grossly unfair that you spend half of your life learning to live it properly, then you start to (potentially) decline so that you can't enjoy it as much. I want to train for the Tour de France!
Why the hell are people so afraid of death? Because it's unknown? Or because they believe in hell and aren't confident they're not going to end up there? And even in the event that you simply stop existing, would that be so bad? It's not like you'd be around to experience it.
That said, why could anybody possibly think that this is going to be a good idea? Our population is already skyrocketing with people dying of "natural causes," what do people think is going to happen if they eliminate those deaths? Even if they forced sterilization of the "immortals" you'd still have youth having unplanned pregnancies, and you'd have a constantly increasing population with a much smaller death rate. Plus you have all the people who believe that God decreed that people should "go forth and multiply," and it's doubtful that they're going to stop doing that.
Likely, this will end up being an extremely expensive procedure that's given to the top elites, giving us even more of a gap between the rich and the poor.
Can we please start working on making the quality of life good for everyone rather than concentrating on improving it for the minuscule part of the population that already has amazing opportunities?
Consider for a moment that we do somehow manage to eliminate (or significantly limit) the aging process in humans. Based on trends in our current culture, it's very likely this would lead to sharp declines in child birth for a huge number of personal, social and legal reasons. This poses a serious problem when you start looking at things occurring on the microbiological level.
First off, this leaves us wide open for a plague-like epidemic the further into the future we go. As child birth declines, our genetic diversity will begin to stagnate. This means the human race could face extinction at the hands of a super-virus or antibiotic-resistant infection. (Not unlike what we're already seeing in certain types of food crops, such as bananas.)
Next, it's possible that our collective intelligence could also become stagnant. Humans seem to have a strange knack for ignoring and overlooking new concepts that contradict stuff they've been conditioned into believing is true for significant portions of their lives. (Anyone who's ever gotten themselves wrapped up into an "intelligent design vs evolution" debate, or has tried to convince a senior citizen that they're "too old to drive" knows this all too well.)
Finally, we face the possibility of society and government entering a static state. As the rich and powerful cease to age, the more likely they will retain their positions of power. This means anything about these people that impedes social progress (grudges, stereotypes, general stupidity, etc...) will never go away until something really major forces such a change to occur. (Imagine a world where the current president and his administration would never be replaced until it literally ended up killing everyone...)
8==8 Bones 8==8
Thanks to entropy, there can't be any immortality without a new universe. I believe there's a short story about it called "The Final Question"
Of course, I sincerely doubt that science can or will ever create God. Especially because the story makes explicit the point that the computer operates in spite of the heat death of the universe, which is physically impossible.
Or, more accurately, our bodies are a process.
I have to wonder, if there really is a god, will he/she/it/they be laughing their ass off when we perfect a method to live forever and never get into an afterlife?
Will the world fill up with quadrillionares, as long lived people clean up on low yeild long term investments?
I am pretty sure overpopulation won't be a problem, who wants to try score with a 495 year old chick? (I know, a 697 year old man. December-june relationships will be the big thing in 2150.)
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Given a free market economy, having a society that doesn't age will have some interesting effects. One of the more nasty is dealing with the rapidly diverging economic classes.
See, some people manage their money and assets well, others just don't. In today's world, those that do manage well (the Warren Buffetts of the world, large and small) have only so long to accumulate wealth before they die, leaving their assets to kin who rarely do as well. Within a few generations, that wealth will be gone, and new powerheads raise up.
It's a system of creation and destruction that has no end, and is largely self-stabilizing. But if people can live forever, those who can't manage their wealth will forever live just above their poverty line while those who can manage their wealth become wealthier and wealthier... forever. People of the likes of Trump, Gates, and Ellison will always be rich, and usually will be getting richer.
Further, consider that those most able to AFFORD life extension technology will be the savers and asset managers, and you see very quickly that this is a problem that makes the problems of today's middle-class erosion look like a walk in the park.
Me, I bridge these two categories. I'm pretty good at making substantial amounts of money, but I'm also pretty good at spending it. I'm working on saving a significant amount of my income. It's not easy for me, as I naturally view money as something to spend, not something to save, so I use lots of charts and monthly meetings with my wife to discuss our financial situation and I'm pretty damned insistent that we improve our financial picture significantly every month and every quarter.
But if life extension technology becomes available, I want to be where I need to be to get it!
Of course, there are other problems to be solved. What about overpopulation? Today's death rate in the United States is just shy of 0.9%. But if people "lived forever" the death rate would drop through the floor, so the birth rate would have to similarly drop to avoid a severe population bomb. We can't just tell people to wait until they are 200 years old to reproduce, since a woman ovulates every month, and there are a finite amount of eggs available in a female to give. Therefore, we have to allow for child birth by lottery, by tying births to existing deaths, or some other mechanism to equalize the birth/death rates to fit the resources available.
Otherwise, we'll just crash Mother Earth, something we're on the verge of doing anyway!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
He did a realy interesting TEDtalk in 2005 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html
Actually, I suspect that this will only be an option for the obscenely wealthy for *quite* awhile, so dont worry too much about overpopulation. After it becomes cheap, I expect that the famine riots will resolve much of the overpopulation problems.
Nature, like water, finds its own level.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
It sounds funny, but imagine the implications.
Politics in a democracy is hanging on the sentiments of the majority. Now realize that this majority would be well over 100 years old when you can reach 500 years. Now imagine how slowly any political change can happen when the average voter is so fully entrenched in his stance that you need a major earthquake to move him.
Think back 200 years and ponder what people deemed "good values" and beneficial. Do you think we'd have female suffrage? End of slavery?
If you think politics move slowly today, just imagine what it would be like if not only politicians are old, but also the majority of their voters.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
God is the only one who holds the promise for an eternity better than anyone can conceive. God also loves us so he wants to see us happy.
I think that the 'offtopic' mod is unwarranted, the thread is about science eliminating ageing and you are offering an alternative —albeit unpopular POV. One problem I have with your proposition, though, is that science is something that any random human that cares enough can verify for themselves. Not so with the God 'promise'.
To begin with, it's not God whom holds the promise. It's random humans that do. They claim that God speaks to them, and maybe he does but it's not falsifiable.
If I'm not a geneticist, or a scientist, science is still open to me and I can go out and study and learn what we humans know so far about how things work. The possibility is open for me, personally, to work in this or any other scientific research and continue it and add to it. Not so with this promises that supposedly come from God. There is no verifiable, replicable mean for Virtual Raider to acquire the knowledge that the people that spoke to God claim to have.
I can go to some university and verify the scientific theories; but I can't go to the mosque or the synagogue, read The Word, try to reproduce those claims and ask to please talk with God to ask Him about some inconsistencies on His word on chapter whatever. Granted, I can't ask to talk to Einstein either, but if I so choose I can replicate all of his work and verify or disprove it (LHC anyone?). There is simply no way to verify any claims made by any religion.
That doesn't mean that they are false, mind you. But for all we know God does exist and doesn't give a hoot about us. Or really, really hates us and enjoys making us suffer and it was Him who purposefully introduced pain and evil in the world for us to have a hard time. Maybe He exists but is so Vast, Magnificent, Unhumanlike and Incomprehensible that we have no hope of ever extracting any meaning from His actions. Or maybe He does love us and wants to see us happy. The point is, we have no way to know so that offers little comfort for certain type of order-and-answers-craving kind of minds.
Why, even if He's waiting for me with arms wide open, isn't He Eternal and Everlasting and can wait a few more hundred or thousand years for me to go to Him? If He does exist, wouldn't you like to show up before Him with some achievements under your arm like a kid that comes home from kindergarten to show daddy his drawings? "Hey, look, I made people live 20 times longer than before!" or even "Look how many people I made happy by building bridges, cooking pizza, teaching to use Ubuntu during my 754 years alive!" ;)
In sum, while IMHO you're not off-topic it's kinda pointless to say "yeah this is cool but I have something completely unverifiable that is way better, you just have to believe it is better without any proof whatsoever". Makes the case hard to argue.
+Raider of the lost BBS
to Gandalf de Grey? He was pretty old.
That's not Picasso, that's Kandinsky!
Right or wrong aside, I can't help but ponder at the effect it would have on science and scientists if a lifetime of science meant, say, 500 years of accumulating knowledge from perhaps several research fields. I don't think I would have stopped with one master's degree if time was not the issue it currently is.
Is that Religion of Singularity-talk for "unable to get papers published in peer reviewed journals"?
Why troll? Parent got a good point. How accomplished are these scientists? Is what they are proposing at all plausible, do they perform experiments and get them peer reviewed and published in respected journals?
that some people don't want to age and die, shut up an die silently.
But don't hinder others' efforts.
Want to stop aging? Do what I did: Just pay an artist to paint a very good likeness of you and make a pact with the devil.
In all seriousness, people are frequently shocked to find out just how old I really am. In the midst of an outdoor gathering, someone recently asked me when I started smoking. With my candid reply of "1979", there was a very sudden and awkward silence that fell around me. I had been smoking longer than most of them had been alive, and yet many of them thought they were older than me.
For now I seem to have stumbled into what science has sought. I would love for science to find a way to slow, stop, and reverse aging for the masses. I have trouble relating to people in my chronological age group since they frequently assume I am too young to have a veteran understanding. When I'm around people who appear to be my own age, I have to deal with their tedious lack of maturity. With the current dearth of immortal humans, it can get a little lonely sometimes.
But for now, the loneliness is worth it...
So get off my lawn!
Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
This is just silly. Last thing I want is Britney Spears to live forever. You'd get so world weary you'd probably kill yourself after 200 years anyway,,,
Have you considered that mortality itself serves an evolutionarily important purpose? Given the long history of life on Earth it seems likely that a lifeform that lived forever (like amoebae) has been tried and failed to dominate for some reason. Otherwise we would reproduce by fission.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Births, mutation, and death are all critical to a species survival. If people don't die & get replaced by offspring, the human-species will be endangering its ability to adapt.
A species which has become static and forgoes any new genetic variation is somehow not going to get wiped out by a pandemic at some point? Yeah right.
Even with good genetic variation, viruses have managed to kill significant portions of human populations. You're not going to exterminate these viruses, ever. Even if you did, nature would cook up more at some point.
And I've seen concerns over the idea of overpopulation poo-poo'd by people saying "we'll take-away/limit their ability to reproduce". What happens if for some reason the whole immortality thing stops working? Maybe an oversight, but maybe some anti-immortality jerks genetically engineer a retrovirus that makes everyone mortal again (contagious disease that kills over a period of about 70 years). Without the baby-making option, guess who gets to determine what traits make the species?
And all the talk here about how the body is just machine, and we can repair it to perfection seem to have forgotten that there are plenty of toxins out there, natural & anthropogenic, which don't leave the body once they get in. This is the entire basis behind biomagnification/bioaccumulation. How would "immortal" people avoid the accumulation of heavy-metals over long periods of time? How many years of trace-amounts of mercury do you think it takes to damage your brain?
It's also worth noting that the human societies have evolved in a sense as well, and would likely be much slower without replacing people with those able to offer fresh ideas & let go of the old without resistance. I can tell you that ethnic/national/political grudges would probably endure for much longer in the event that everyone can recall the reasons for their conflicts in a very personal way. If you think the middle east is a mess now, just wait until they're all immortal.
From my humble point of view, the desire for immortality comes off as an amazingly selfish quest which would certainly enhance the risks for the survival of the species. It can be argued that by the act of dying, humans behave as team players and increase the speed of progress (biological & intellectual).
Somehow I find this sort of research will lead to the founding of the biological weapons wing of the Umbrella Corporation.
Live forever... as a zombie!
I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.
CEO Nwabudike Morgan
MorganLink 3DVision Interview
Have we not been extending lifespans for decades now? I thought science was already pretty firmly on board with combating the effects (and causes) of aging. One of my quantum mechanics professors was part of a study on aging and caloric restriction in humans several years ago. I think it's the people outside of science (like the people who run the funding agencies) who need to go to this conference.
It's not that there should be a master race. Hitler did not take merit into account.
How about we simply let people buy their immortality like everything else?
That way we can sell immortality to the richest people and get rich ourselves.
This is part of a disturbing trend for people to try to reframe an issue and take credit for it.
Anti-aging research has been going for decades and lots of money has been invested in it. People have looked at DNA, chromosomal changes, radicals, changes to proteins, etc. There is plenty of good and solid science there.
de Grey, however, has contributed nothing to it.
And through the death industry, people will die.
I'm not sure I'm up for supporting research that would make Rupert Murdoch or Fred Phelps live forever.
In all seriousness, if humanity lived forever we'd be screwed. We're not built, physically or mentally, to be able to survive more than a hundred years of changes, and we're terribly poor at letting go of things that don't match the facts unless they physically hurt us. Bad ideas would never die. Bigotry would never fade. Bad people would never go away unless they crossed the line and had an 'accident'. How many people who undergo this procedure would end up trying to change the world to reflect the way it was when they were kids, being too unwilling to accept the world changing underfoot?
Besides, if Einstein could have lived longer, even if Hitler could have paid for medicine to make him healthy it wouldn't have saved him from all his enemies.
Quote: "I live in LA. I was a little surprised when I moved here five years ago to discover that the normals outnumber the weirdos by a dramatic margin."
It's just that the weirdos and shysters get more publicity than normal people.
After about 18 months in L.A., you begin to understand the more serious problems. The L.A. culture is even more disfunctional than the culture where you lived before. It gets seriously lonely, living in Los Angeles, even though there are people all around you.
Fraud Alert! In my opinion, this Slashdot story is about an almost purely fraudulent subject, with insignificant truth. Many people want to believe, and my guess is that the leaders of "anti-aging" efforts want to take the money of the believers. Here's where they ask for money: At present, a $100 donation (enough for a free signed copy of "Ending Aging") is leveraged to $150!.
The real science in this is in the VERY early stages. It's a wild guess, but a somewhat educated wild guess, that perhaps one one-thousandth is known about body chemistry that would need to be known to "cure" aging.
There have been some successes, if you can call them that. This paper talks about extending the life span of fruit flies by 7%: Extension of Drosophila Lifespan by Rhodiola rosea Through an Anti-oxidant Independent Mechanism. This sentence is interesting: "We evaluated a new formulation of R. rosea (SHR-5) which contains elevated levels of the putative active compounds (rosin, rosarin, and rosavin), and found that it could extend mean life span by 43%." The interesting word, in that sentence, in my opinion, is "could". Not "extended the life span by 43%", but "could". And the active compounds are "putative"; that means "commonly regarded as such; reputed; supposed". How "commonly regarded" can it be when it is a "new formulation"?
If you follow experiments like this, you already know that "extending the life span of fruit flies" is rather common. If I were to try to extend the life of fruit flies myself, I would start by taking them out of their tiny cages in the laboratory and letting them fly more freely. Maybe now they just get depressed and commit suicide. (I find it difficult to be serious about that "research" paper.)
Right now, 2008-06-27, 01:13 AM PDT, Slashdot is second on the list of Blog Coverage (bottom of the left-hand column):
* Digg
* Slashdot
* Center for Society and Genetics
* Depressed Metabolism
I wonder if they will eliminate the link to this Slashdot story when they discover that not all Slashdot readers are ignorant about science?
Remember all the publicity about sequencing the human genome? A lot of taxpayers paid a lot of money for that. Then, it was revealed, that, so sorry, the epigenome is a lot more complex, very influential, and almost completely unknown.
I would like Slashdot editors to provide an assurance at the end of every story they run that no one they know got money or any other benefit because of running the story.
Every time you play a video game, you are spending time learning about a fantasy world, when you could be learning about the real world. If you study the real world, you can discover that "anti-aging" is a HUGE business, funded largely by people who have more money than scientific knowledge, and hope not to die.
Yes, I know how to spell disfunctional. I just don't like that spelling, and I made my own.
Wish I had modpoints. You have some very interesting ideas there.
The user name is appropriate, too...
Not to be snippy or anything, but going by Dr. de Grey's photo on Wikipedia, I'm not so sure he's much of an expert on aging.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey
The guy is only 45, and looks like he's in his 60s. You'd think if he had made any real success by this point, he'd look a lot healthier and younger.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I'm all for this, as long as you drive down fertility at the same time. All of the really serious problems we face right now (peak oil, peak copper, peak phosphorous, unstable food supply, global warming, international terrorism, imperial foreign wars) are either directly caused or directly exacerbated by having ~6 billion people on this planet.
If, right now, the human population fell to 1 billion many of the aforementioned problems would be eliminated and those that remain would become much more manageable. Even if the "window" of fertility remains the same (the age of menopause), a dramatic increase in lifespan still means a dramatic increase in population.
Let's get the whole world on board with birth control before we go after longer life. I'd love to live in a world with a stable human population of about 1 billion people who live for 500 years.
Except you're kind of over looking the fact that one of the main ways of extending life will be actual modification of DNA. Theoretically, once we know everything about our genetic code, those who can afford it will just pick out genetic variations they like and say "I'll have 2 of those, oh and that one seems popular with that one country, let me have that one too." The beginning should be fun at least to watch those rich who have no idea how it all works and just insist on getting genetic variations that won't work properly for them. I look forward to famous people with toes growing out of foreheads and such.
The french animated film Renaissance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_(film) deals with some of these issues.
IIRC one of the lines in the film is "without death, life means nothing"
Death and aging shouldn't be treated as a disease, but as a vital part of life.
Some disturbing issues with this:
1 - the current generation which is in power will never pass on. they will continue to subsist, cling to their power, impede progress, and, freed from the inevitable struggle against disease, will be able to dedicate more energy toward bringing about a police state.. (MAFIAA, ACTA, "we dont need no stinking new business model, we have a RIGHT to profit how we always have")
2 - the propensity for "turds to float" will mean legions of GW's maintaining the capacity to have yet more stupid children, contributing to the DEvolution of our species by bombing our genetic pool with yet more "stupid".
3 - the continued reproduction of all subsequent generations exceeding the already artificially elevated carrying capacity of our planet, causing all manner of maladies associated with extreme overpopulation... Bacteria in a dish will reproduce.. and reproduce.. until they use up all resources, then they ALL die.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
CompSci PhD aiming to crack the fountain of youth? Bollocks. As someone who actually HAS a molecular biology degree I can tell you that anyone with the faintest idea of biochemistry could drive a coach and horses through this crackpot's "theories" within about 10 microseconds. How he gets all this attention completely baffles me.
Here are the answers to most of the uninformed nonsense that has been written in this Slashdot discussion so far:
http://mfoundation.org/why_end_aging.html
First of all: what, exactly, do I owe to "the species"? Can the species enjoy a sunset, laugh at a joke, feel love or weep? Only individuals have those capacities, no matter whether we label them Homo Sap. I care whether what is good for me is also good for my neighbour, but I don't give a rodent's posterior whether it is bad for "Americans", "Europeans", "males", "females" or indeed "humans". I care a great deal about what is good for any individuals in there, though, even Americans! :-). Thus, I'm cautiously enthusiastic(!) about greater lifespans.
Second, the genetic variation we have today would remain in place given universal immortality (given that immortality treatments also reverse somatic DNA mutations). However, with environments changing, we'd have to introduce new variations ourselves, sure. Which we will.
Which brings me to my third point: whatever we do, Homo Sap as it is today will not be around indefinitely. We will die (of violence or accidents if not of disease or old age) eventually; our descendants will die; but nearly no species stay the same over megayear timespans. What is more: unless technological civilization is wiped out (and remains wiped out), our descendants are likely to diverge very quickly from the current Homo Sap norm. Mind children, anyone? Increased lifespans may be the only way of extending the existence of Homo Sapiens for at least a little while, if you're into that particular variety of primate.
Finally, minor quibbles aside (yeah, right, mercury may accumulate, and memories get full, but those are physical problems with potential remedies), longer lifespans will likely have effects on our outlook. Increased conservatism might be one effect -- but is that all bad? Do you consider environmentalism inherently evil? Sometimes, people even seem to acquire something eerily similar to wisdom as they age, overcoming the prejudices of their youth and middle years -- what if that trait became not the exception but the norm? I'd like to find out! What about you?
Whose need? You say people need to die, but according to who?
If you think the middle east is a mess now, just wait until they're all immortal.
True that. Immortal suicide bombers do cause a lot of left-overs. :)
I'm pretty comfortable with being selfish.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
but speaking as one of the 15% who aren't, I'm less keen.
How many more years of this crap would I have to endure?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"You're basically right, but there is a discipline which IMO is worthwhile, and that is trying to promote successful ageing."
That's definitely worthwhile. However, I haven't seen much good biochemical work in that area. The good work I have seen has not been biochemical, it has been in helping people change the way they live.
The Slashdot story is about finding a magic potion that will end aging. In my opinion, that is fraud.
I, for one, hope the reform social security before ANY OF THIS HAPPENS. No way I'm working when I'm 174.
I've always been confused by this loyalty to "the species." I care about people. I don't really care about our long-term prospects. I don't want billions of descendants wiped out in some great cataclysm, but that's because I care about people, not about the species. If everybody just decided to sterilize themselves (not under duress), I wouldn't shed a tear. That won't happen, of course.
Hey, I'm not saying EVERYONE should live forever. I think we should have a lottery system, and I think I should be preapproved for coming up with the idea.
Just to clarify my point.
Virus scenarios from most to least tragic:
1) Virus wipes out every human on earth.
2) Virus spares 9,999 survivors who can repopulate the species.
3) Virus spares 10,000 survivors, but they're all sterile.
4) Virus results in cuter kittens.
If you live forever in your mom's basement and never get up except to have bed sores massaged, then things might work out. People that actually go outside and experience life will still die because of the risks they take while living. Even without aging there are other diseases and the science of accidents strongly suggests that falls and road collisions and other such will always bring some level of risk to people even with many precautions.
Just as conservative side does not die off, neither does the liberal. Debates would just take longer - and perhaps be more fruitful in the end.
And politics are easily managed - you have mandates. That is why there are also presidents and not just kings around.
And besides, politics is not progress. Politics is maintaining the status quo.
Now, imagine a society that plans ahead for the next 500 years?
A society where you could have 100 years of experience in your particular field of work?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
>>A species which has become static and forgoes any new genetic variation is somehow not going to get wiped
>>out by a pandemic at some point? Yeah right.
I'v heard this and similar arguments a few times already in this discussion. Your argument makes sense at first glance, but the evidence tells a different story.
There are plenty of organisms that have changed little (or not at all) for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Look at alligators and kin; cockroaches; coelocanths (sp?); many insects; and the list goes on.
The rest of your post has its merits, but it's wrong to say that we need genetic diversity just for the sake of having it. We as biochemists and pharmacologists are no longer entirely at the whims of the gradual mutations of e. coli, staph, and friends. We will always have ways to die, but I don't think we face extinction.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
The first consequence is that it will slowly increase the average lifespan by simple genetic selection: those stupid enough or too sick to die young won't have the time to transfer those genes to the next generation.
But it also has a more profound consequence: older women will also chose (on average) better mates than the average stupid teenager banging the local football team (who will end up as used car salesmen 15 years hence).
Enforcement is left as an exercise to the reader.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Living forever does really seem possible...but why is everyone so hung up on preserving their bodies?
Its what comes AFTER the life.
But bullets can still be a part of death.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It can be argued that by the act of dying, humans behave as team players and increase the speed of progress (biological & intellectual). - it's not a real team play because you don't have a choice not to be one.
Should there be a way to extend life indefinitely I would and screw the still unborn team. I don't care about the species after I am dead.
You can't handle the truth.
the human-species will be endangering its ability to adapt.
We have stopped adapting a long time ago.
Somewhere around the time we invented fire, hunting, farming...
Since then we adapt everything AROUND US to ourselves.
And for fuck's sake... stop talking about "immortality".
What are you people expecting? To become immortal supermen, unhurtable by bullets or anything else - in your lifetime?
Get real.
At best, we are talking about 5-10 years more here.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Any chance we could get video of the event?
Zombies don't live forever.
1. They are already dead. Or "undead" if you prefer. They are just "mobile".
2. They stop being mobile when they encounter me and my shotgun and crowbar.
Oh.. and...
3. ???
4. Profit.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
As we age in our undying hardware, the software will start to fragment, become obsolete, crumble. At some point it's easier just to reformat rather than try to clean out all the shit.
Body-based immortality is only the first, tentative step.
Our best bet seems to me to be the development of a complete simulation of a human and his/her environment down to the molecular, possibly atomic level. Uploaded as distributed data, with latent real-time backups, error-correction, and enough flexibility to instantly replace the loss of any discrete portion.
Hmmm...maybe I'm reading too much Charles Stross and Greg Egan ...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." Darwin
This research could actually be useful if it increased function at the end of life. Imagine being able to hike, swim, garden, travel into your 80's. No being incapacitated for 10 years before you finally die. No huge bills for nursing homes. Imagine being 80 or 90 and being autonomous, living independently in your own home, until you finally die in your sleep. Such treatments could conceivably pay for themselves through decreased use of the health care system in old age. Win-win.
Having true power to reverse aging means possessing the ability to regenerate tissue (don't forget the human body replaces all its cells every 7 or so years). It's a small step from there to generating slightly mutated tissue (given a desired mutation).
Instead of allowing nature to provide for us genetically as it has done so well for millenia, we would become our own cellular stewards. It would be our responsibility to respond to new viruses and diseases in the human body just as we do in a computer.
Think of perfected age-reversal procedures as just an update to the body's OS that doesn't require a reboot.
So aging is a "disease" now. Let me age gracefully and die when its my time. I'll ask the N.I.C.E. to kindly leave, thank you.
Wow, you are a naive and hopeful little one. Poor little narcissist. Things aren't going to work out the way you want. Sorry. Get used to it...you'll be a rotting meat lump within 100 years. We all will. This research aint gonna save us, hornball.
Humans stopped letting natural selection rule the species the first time a stillbirth was averted through intervention. Why go back to it now?
So, I could theoretically get partial retirement at say 300 years, and not be considered a complete slacker?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
This research could actually be useful if it increased function at the end of life. Imagine being able to hike, swim, garden, travel into your 80's. No being incapacitated for 10 years before you finally die. No huge bills for nursing homes. Imagine being 80 or 90 and being autonomous, living independently in your own home, until you finally die in your sleep. Such treatments could conceivably pay for themselves through decreased use of the health care system in old age. Win-win.
* Who or what is going to feed all these never aging people?
* Whats going to happen if humanity never gets it's collective backside off Earth when the Sun decides to heat things up more the usual and actually starts going to it's Red Giant phase?
* Remember that 1960's Star Trek episode where Kirk was on a planet that was so over populated because nobody really died unless they were very old? Do we want that for Earth?
* With old age not being a factor anymore, what about people who are in or near vegitative states? Are we going to let them live forever too or starve to death? Will we euthanize them? Lots of ethical issues here.
* What about mental retardation? Some of those people are amazing and have been in films and other things. Will they live forever too or do we exclude these people to keep the gene pool clean so to speak?
I guess I should read the article now. I just had some questions that popped in my mind from the summary I had to ask.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Do you think evolution won't wipe us out? Insofar as I'm aware, it's estimated that more than 99% of all the species that ever existed are extinct. Evolution is of little benefit to a species capable of adapting the enviroment to suit their needs.
Just consider that your physical maturation may continue to a point of hideous existence. See After Many a Summer. Would it be worth it to live that long if you ended up being an abomination?
Two words: Resident Evil
For those of us with severe chronic illnesses who do not wish to but feel obligated to stay alive for our loved ones since the current societal view is that quantity of life is more important than quality of life, this is very disheartening to read.
Doubly so for those of us concerned with overpopulation.
I am sure no one will read this but you, seeing as how I'm just some dude posting AC, but you may find it interesting, who knows. I usually ignore slashdot comments lamenting the irrationality of faith, but I think your line of questioning deserves consideration. ... please don't feel like I'm trying to 'cut it up' or anything, it's just that I see a lot of different statements that are kind of bunched together. I'd like to give each one due consideration, so this post may be long and I may not even be able to post it until you are long gone, heh, well, here goes.
I am going to quote your post and make comments throughout
I think that the 'offtopic' mod is unwarranted, the thread is about science eliminating ageing and you are offering an alternative --albeit unpopular POV. One problem I have with your proposition, though, is that science is something that any random human that cares enough can verify for themselves. Not so with the God 'promise'.
(emph mine)
Yes, that is the rub, isn't it? How can we verify truth claims about God?
Before I try to answer this, I think it would be beneficial to define our terms. What are we looking for when we try to verify? I think that we are looking for a kind of psychological certainty. We want evidence that will allow us to make rational decisions. We are bombarded each day with ideas, and if we don't test these ideas, we will tend to adopt the ones we hear the most, even if they are false. In an attempt to avoid this, we implement tests against our set of assumptions.
One of the tests to verify claims is what we can call 'empirical adequacy.' To verify claims about the physical world, we use the scientific method. I think this is very beneficial, and even if some angry and ignorant religious people disagree initially, they will prove us right by using their car or computer or hospital or whatever else science has done for them. However, we cannot use the scientific method to verify the scientific method, am I right? The scientific method is not empirical, so we cannot test it using the test for empirical adequacy. Said in a different way: we have both adopted the scientific method as a very useful tool in determining if a theory about our physical world has some merit, however it is not very useful in determining the merit of that which is outside the physical world.
I think there are at least two more tests:
2) logical consistency
3) relevance to our experience
We adopt the scientific method because it has 2 and 3. If it were illogical and didn't correlate with our experience, we wouldn't use it.
We can, I think, use these three tests to determine if a worldview (a system of belief) is rational. Now, I'm thinking we should apply it to a worldview and not to "God" in a vacuum. Ask Muslims what God is and they'll tell you something different than the Christians, who in turn can't really agree amongst themselves what God is exactly like.
To begin with, it's not God whom holds the promise. It's random humans that do. They claim that God speaks to them, and maybe he does but it's not falsifiable.
This is true of many religions; however some do depend on historical events in order for them to be considered valid. I'm thinking mainly of Christianity (depends on Jesus living, dying, and being resurrected in this physical world), but there are others. If you can, for example, show through archeology or the study of ancient texts that Jesus' body stayed in the tomb, this would sink the boat on the 'main flavor' of Christianity, which relies on a resurrected Jesus (empty tomb).
If I'm not a geneticist, or a scientist, science is still open to me and I can go out and study and learn what we humans know so far about how things work. The possibility is open for me, personally, to work in this or any other scientific research and continue it and add to it. Not so with this promises that supposedly come from God. There is no verifiable, replicable mean for Virtual Raider to acquire the knowledge that the people that spoke to God cl
If God loves everyone, why do amputees exist?
Now that immortality is in our reach, an alien species will shut down our reproductive systems, and a random, silent scientist will save us!
The Social Security fund is in serious trouble now.
Regarding the roaches, sharks, certain bugs, etc I would contest the part where you say:
but the evidence tells a different story.
The rest of your post has its merits, but it's wrong to say that we need genetic diversity just for the sake of having it.
I didn't actually intend to convey we need genetic diversity for the sake of having it (I could have been clearer I suppose). A better way to say it could be "We need genetic diversity as insurance.
Well, it turns out that they also have a small GDP. They'll likely have a large ecological footprint per GDP.
I really, really hope that the first human to live to be 1,000 will be named 'Aubrey de Grey.' How cool would that be?
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
We have stopped adapting a long time ago. âSomewhere around the time we invented fire, hunting, farming...âSince then we adapt everything AROUND US to ourselves.
Evidence of human evolution after having developed fire, hunting, farming evolution:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=african-adaptation-to-dig
And here's an BBC-news article that looks at evidence for the rate of evolution actually increasing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7132794.stm
I could also speculate that by our modern societies putting more worth on technical & scientific expertise, we could have a selection pressure that selects for smarter people, which would be evolution as well. Yes, we force our environment to adapt to us to a massive degree, but that still doesn't exclude us adapting to it. We can do both at the same time.
Google "recent human evolution"
I doubt evolution ever really can stop unless extremely advanced aliens catpure & domesticate us into a line of pure-breed pets...
The odds that anyone will discover a cure-all to cheat death in the next hundred years, is very slim. How many organisms live forever? None that I've ever dissected.
But seriously, nature tends to do everything possible, and then let the mess sort itself out. If immortality could be achieved, then it should have already happened somewhere naturally, at some time in history. I've heard of ancient trees and cacti, but it seems anything with organs, hair or a tendency to be eaten has a lifespan of at most a century. Though, I suppose somebody might say the ice age killed or thinned out the evidence, or predators eventually got them, etc.
It might be that everlasting single celled organisms couldn't become multicelled, if its kind never died and/or reproduced. So those that became complex organisms wouldn't be likely to develop that trait by mutation, and survive the process. There'd be no vestigial trait that simply gets switched on, and it's pretty farfetched that a single addition/removal of DNA or an enzyme could halt aging. Aging itself varys between members of a species and most likely is not controlled by a single biological process, IMHO.
On a different note, cell death is crucial for multicelled organisms. Skin is a nice example; the outer layer of skin is dead cells. That outer layer is also constantly being replaced, which is why injures can heal. If a person could live forever, how could their cells perpetually divide without degrading or changing in some bad way? Without programmed cell death complex creatures would probably turn into blobs that eventually starve or they'd have to "shed" copies of themselves to survive.
That said, finding a means of extending peoples lifespans is a great persuit, and I'm all for it. If saying aging is a disease, to get funding, then so be it regardless of whether there's any basis. The end result promotes science, nonetheless. It's only a sinkhole if the research never yields anything. And concerning biology, I think it'd be hard for it not to produce something.
In future-retrospect, if immortality was figured out, people would see things in nature with similarities and it'd have an impact on things like the theory of evolution. Whether or not any relationship to natural observations is real or imagined, people always try to connect the dots. Following that, I thought about how people might think about evolution if immortality was possible.
Once reproduction occurs, what does continuing to exist forever accomplish? The answer would be nothing according to my understanding of the theory of evolution, as the rest of this paragraph is intended to show. If all participants of a species can reproduce indefinitely, then there's no clear benefit for any member reproducing more than once (having greater than a dozen offspring). Because there'd presumably be the same genetic result no matter how many googles of offspring each generation has, aside from the limits to how much the population could continue growing. Think about it this way, if the parents had a thousand offspring and each of those thousand had a thousand, the chance for genetic diversity would still be the same (or at least very close) as it would if the parents had only two offspring and the offspring only had two. The offspring only have combinations of the parent's traits, plus mutation. Mutation is more dependent on time (because of the nature of exponents with generations), than the quantity (birth rate of any single generation). How many expressions of the same set of traits there are wouldn't be as significant as how many generations there eventually could be (for mutations and new traits). I guess it'd make more sense if time intervals were used in the example, or maybe I'm just grasping at straws.
Alternately, if something reproduced but continued to exist perpetually as a sterile adult, wouldn't that turn the survival of the fittest concept upside down? The unfit (unable to reproduce) would be competing with the fit (able to reproduce) until crowding eventually caus
This oft-quoted sentiment is bullshit.
Six years ago, had you even heard of Gay Marriage as an issue? No? Today it's already happening in at least one state. Do you think this change in voting trends happened entirely because of old people dying off and new ones being born ... in just six years? Didn't think so.
Women's Suffrage became an issue and then a reality within just a few years. Similarly the end of slavery. Every major change happened in less than a generation - typically within five to fifteen years. The birth/death cycle is not a major part of it.
Cultural trends do in fact affect the people who are already alive, and human beings are not born with their political beliefs graven in stone.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
(oops, formatting error ... hopefully this is more readable)
I am sure no one will read this but you, seeing as how I'm just some dude posting AC, but you may find it interesting, who knows. I usually ignore slashdot comments lamenting the irrationality of faith, but I think your line of questioning deserves consideration.
I am going to quote your post and make comments throughout ... please don't feel like I'm trying to 'cut it up' or anything, it's just that I see a lot of different statements that are kind of bunched together. I'd like to give each one due consideration, so this post may be long and I may not even be able to post it until you are long gone, heh, well, here goes.
I think that the 'offtopic' mod is unwarranted, the thread is about science eliminating ageing and you are offering an alternative --albeit unpopular POV. One problem I have with your proposition, though, is that science is something that any random human that cares enough can verify for themselves. Not so with the God 'promise'.
(emph mine)
Yes, that is the rub, isn't it? How can we verify truth claims about God?
Before I try to answer this, I think it would be beneficial to define our terms. What are we looking for when we try to verify? I think that we are looking for a kind of psychological certainty. We want evidence that will allow us to make rational decisions. We are bombarded each day with ideas, and if we don't test these ideas, we will tend to adopt the ones we hear the most, even if they are false. In an attempt to avoid this, we implement tests against our set of assumptions.
One of the tests to verify claims is what we can call 'empirical adequacy.' To verify claims about the physical world, we use the scientific method. I think this is very beneficial, and even if some angry and ignorant religious people disagree initially, they will prove us right by using their car or computer or hospital or whatever else science has done for them. However, we cannot use the scientific method to verify the scientific method, am I right? The scientific method is not empirical, so we cannot test it using the test for empirical adequacy. Said in a different way: we have both adopted the scientific method as a very useful tool in determining if a theory about our physical world has some merit, however it is not very useful in determining the merit of that which is outside the physical world.
I think there are at least two more tests:
2) logical consistency
3) relevance to our experience
We adopt the scientific method because it has 2 and 3. If it were illogical and didn't correlate with our experience, we wouldn't use it.
We can, I think, use these three tests to determine if a worldview (a system of belief) is rational. Now, I'm thinking we should apply it to a worldview and not to "God" in a vacuum. Ask Muslims what God is and they'll tell you something different than the Christians, who in turn can't really agree amongst themselves what God is exactly like.
To begin with, it's not God whom holds the promise. It's random humans that do. They claim that God speaks to them, and maybe he does but it's not falsifiable.
This is true of many religions; however some do depend on historical events in order for them to be considered valid. I'm thinking mainly of Christianity (depends on Jesus living, dying, and being resurrected in this physical world), but there are others. If you can, for example, show through archeology or the study of ancient texts that Jesus' body stayed in the tomb, this would sink the boat on the 'main flavor' of Christianity, which relies on a resurrected Jesus (empty tomb).
If I'm not a geneticist, or a scientist, science is still open to me and I can go out and study and learn what we humans know so far about how things work. The possibility is open for me, personally, to work in this or any other scientific research and continue it
Fuck you...
You've just heard from a true believer.
Living forever (barring non-age related death) probably has lots of icky side effects. Some of them mentioned here are:
1) Women have a finite number of eggs, meaning they won't be able to have kids after a couple hundred years.
Not a problem, we already can stop ovulation with a pill. And we can already take stem cells and put them in eggs. This technology will only get better.
2) People become hidebound (reactionary) as they get older, which in turn will probably slow or disrupt our growth as a society.
An inevitable part of giving people the ability to live forever will be restoring the mental attributes of youth. This is an issue we'll HAVE to solve, or we'll end up with a bunch of undying people with Alzheimer's, which might kinda suck. Instead, we'll have people living for a very long time, with their brains at the peak potential for learning language, music, and anything else they put their minds to.
3) Your mother in law will be yours forever (ouch)
Ok, so does anyone believe monogamy will survive people living forever? Especially when people have youthful (read: horny) bodies and minds (read energetic, ambitious). Many marriages that survive past 20 years are just going on inertia. When people don't feel like they're over the hill any more, only very unique relationships are going to survive past the first set of children.
Furthermore, if your mother in law comes and lives with you... remember, she'll be just as hot as your wife, and more experienced to boot!
4) We'll cease to evolve.
Ok, so evolution has been a genetic process so far. But who's to say that future evolution won't be based on man-machine interfaces, improved learning techniques, etc? If we're on the edge of living forever, what does that say for our ability to surpass evolution and begin to grow and change based more on technology than chance?
And hey, no one is talking about what really scares me. What about eternal sequels? Anyone up for the 23rd version of the Matrix?
If you understand the science, you will see that there is a lot of hype, and very little reason for the hype. The science is not nearly as advanced as they imply it is.
There is a lot of what appears to be deliberately taking advantage of the ignorance of science of most people, especially those who feel desperate. It's far, far more tricky than it appears in the beginning.
Two years ago, I did some research of the literature when I was helping a medical doctor write a talk she gave. After many, many hours of work, over two months, I was unable to find anyone talking about anti-aging who was honest, except for web pages of two universities that did not have profit-making organizations in the field. There is a huge amount of money to be made, and those for whom making money is the most important thing dominate the field.
A typical tactic is asking for donations from a wife or husband who has just had a spouse die of cancer or heart disease. In cases I've investigated, the money goes into the pockets of doctors, only that.
The fraud is much, much worse than I am saying here. But this is all my opinions. Do your own research.
Are we talking about stretching out the aging process ad infinitum or improving the quality of life over a longer period? Honestly, if I were given the choice of living for 500 years, but with a congruent rate of decline as a normal lifespan, then no way. I would much rather live a meager 75 years with the vitality of a 27 year old and the kick the bucket at the end. Sort of like a replicant ala Blade Runner, but no Deckard chasing after me.
"Survival of the Sickest" by Dr. Sharon Moalem covered a bit of why we need disease and why we need to die. I thought it interesting.
I suggest to anyone interested in immortality read Michael Morecock's "Dancers At The End Of Time" series (this includes an Elric short story) about the affects of immortality on society.
More appropriately, the affects of immortality on morality and ethics, or the lack there of...
Trust me, it isn't a pretty or pleasant future...
As always, just my $0.02 worth.
Molecular biology is now expanding at an explosive pace. What would happen if we were to push the rate of progress just that little bit more? Meet the real life alliance of engineers, scientists, philanthropists and volunteer fund raisers all of whom have but one thing in common. None of whom want to have an appointment with the grave or the furnace several decades from as of today. De Grey is a man with a mission. Consider this improbable scenario: a hitherto unknown Cambridge scientist realises he holds the key to saving the lives of countless millions. What is he to do? In that situation what would YOU do? This is not some improbable science-fiction scenario. This is here and right now. I for one do not want to die. The Race is ON "What's likely to happen within the next 20 to 25, 30 years, we will develop technology that will buy a bit of time. We will develop rejuvenation technology that can be applied to people that are already middle-age and keep them middle-age, or less so to speak, for another 20 or 30 years. During that 20 or 30 years, the technology will be further advanced to give them another, let's say, 15 years, and so on." -Aubrey de Grey: Chief Science Officer. Methuselah Foundation www.mfoundation.org Let's Roll !
work. I keep reading comments about how great living forever would be but everyone seems to be making the assumption you do so with unlimited resources. Money makes the world go round now, why are we waving our hands imagining that won't be the case in this sort of future?
Huh, I think I'm going with unacceptable ways then, primarily because this approach won't extend my lifespan.
Births, mutation, and death are all critical to a species survival. If people don't die & get replaced by offspring, the human-species will be endangering its ability to adapt.
A species which has become static and forgoes any new genetic variation is somehow not going to get wiped out by a pandemic at some point? Yeah right.
If we can modify our bodies enough to end aging, what makes you think we can't and won't modify our bodies in a variety of other ways? Instead of random mutations tested and mostly discarded over immense periods of time, human beings will be able to design and implement the changes most beneficial to them.
And all the talk here about how the body is just machine, and we can repair it to perfection seem to have forgotten that there are plenty of toxins out there, natural & anthropogenic, which don't leave the body once they get in. This is the entire basis behind biomagnification/bioaccumulation. How would "immortal" people avoid the accumulation of heavy-metals over long periods of time? How many years of trace-amounts of mercury do you think it takes to damage your brain?
These are technical problems to be solved, not arguments against ending aging.
From my humble point of view, the desire for immortality comes off as an amazingly selfish quest which would certainly enhance the risks for the survival of the species. It can be argued that by the act of dying, humans behave as team players and increase the speed of progress (biological & intellectual).
Value judgements and moralisms like "amazingly selfish" are going to be the major impediments to considering and treating aging as the disease it is. The ability to adapt our own bodies as we choose and as the need arises will give us far more power to avoid extinction, if that's your concern. As for the "selfishness" you mention, most people call it the will to live.
Okay... what I'm really wondering is...
Let's say "theoretically" it doesn't cure everything, like remove newly adapted things. So let's just say theoretically I grow extra length on *ahem* something, and lets say that this thing happens to keep growing and I never die (which I know it keeps growing, either that or I'm apparently still going through puberty long after it supposedly stopped). What I wonder is, will I hit a point, at like 500 years of age, where it gets too long that I need a wheelbarrow or would it become commonplace to have *appendage* reductions (seeing how I have never heard of this)?
And a followup question is, will I be proud of getting this operation done?
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
Births, mutation, and death are all critical to a species survival. If people don't die & get replaced by offspring, the human-species will be endangering its ability to adapt.
And what's the problem with that? I see no reason I should stay human. We long ago passed the point where DNA carried most of the information contained in our bodies. There's a huge body of knowledge and culture that could survive even if humans didn't.
And I've seen concerns over the idea of overpopulation poo-poo'd by people saying "we'll take-away/limit their ability to reproduce". What happens if for some reason the whole immortality thing stops working? Maybe an oversight, but maybe some anti-immortality jerks genetically engineer a retrovirus that makes everyone mortal again (contagious disease that kills over a period of about 70 years). Without the baby-making option, guess who gets to determine what traits make the species?
Well, how does that change from now? Some jerk could engineer a retrovirus that makes everyone sterile. At least, everyone had some good living in there.
And all the talk here about how the body is just machine, and we can repair it to perfection seem to have forgotten that there are plenty of toxins out there, natural & anthropogenic, which don't leave the body once they get in. This is the entire basis behind biomagnification/bioaccumulation. How would "immortal" people avoid the accumulation of heavy-metals over long periods of time? How many years of trace-amounts of mercury do you think it takes to damage your brain?
Golly, I guess we'll just have to remove those nasty things rather than let them sit there. Oh and repairing the human brain is going to be a key requirement of any immortality program. Because the brain will get damaged anyway, even in the absence of mercury.
It's also worth noting that the human societies have evolved in a sense as well, and would likely be much slower without replacing people with those able to offer fresh ideas & let go of the old without resistance. I can tell you that ethnic/national/political grudges would probably endure for much longer in the event that everyone can recall the reasons for their conflicts in a very personal way. If you think the middle east is a mess now, just wait until they're all immortal.
I have no problems with this. Some societies will stagnate and some won't. The ones that thrive will replace the others. And holding a grudge for a few milenia or more? It's not going to be my problem.
From my humble point of view, the desire for immortality comes off as an amazingly selfish quest which would certainly enhance the risks for the survival of the species. It can be argued that by the act of dying, humans behave as team players and increase the speed of progress (biological & intellectual).
From my humble point of view, desire for immortality is moderately selfish, but saying it's amazingly selfish is just wrong. Dying is one of the worst things that can happen to a being and the ones that love or depend on them. It's so bad, that we come up with all sorts of rationalizations for the fear and pain which we must endure. If we can come up with a form of immortality that eases this burden for a while, then I say we do it, even if the survival of the species is at stake. You can claim that the survival of an intelligent species is more important than all the lives of the members of that species, but you can't make it so.
Second, your rationalization that immortality will result in a higher risk of species extinction is highly dubious. In order for immortality to work, we will have the power to modify human bodies to an extent that would allow us to adapt humans in near real time to changing environments and new dangers. That and the extended perception of the future can allow us to see and avoid fates that short lived humans would miss.
This means that the Axiom will be populated with hopelessly fat, sessile, immortal vaguely humanoid slugs...
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
There's mounting evidence that gene expression is incredibly plastic. As our environments change, so do we. The brain is plastic too in ways denied but a few years ago, forever growing new circuits.
Back in the 60s there were full-page advertisements in major newspapers about how LSD, it was claimed, can mutate you. Maybe that wasn't true? But if you're going to place a positive value on mutation, given the right drugs, who's to say we can't do that?
Didn't someone say that becoming like little children was the pathway to eternal life? What children's brains have over adults is twice the neural connections, twice the blood supply, and a lot more plasticity. There are bound to be means to achieve that as adults. The resulting state may not be compatible with standard careers and so on, but by the miracle of compound interest an eternal life should afford us plenty of extended vacations where we can play like little children again, but with far cooler toys.
Trippin out among the stars, man.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
What makes you think we aren't capable of self-evolution? As a natural process, evolution is ineficient and lengthy. If we need adaptation in the future, I'd rather see that change controlled by us.
Tom Caudron
-Tom
There is no such a thing as immortality
as time passes a person change,a seventy year old something person has different motivations, goals, and general views than when he was twenty (no mater how young he may look), it can be argued that this is due to the ageing process but the evidence today shows that elder being more healthier than ever, may change to a different job, start studies after retirement or have different ideologies, political and religious interest, also there is a limit of the amount of fact that can be retained, some memories stay, many get discarded.
the differences between a long live person and his past younger version looks analogue to the differences between a father and a son,there are similarities between them but they are different persons.
Basically having children is a way to extend yourself in to the future, but not quiet, life extension will equal to the same but in a perhaps more gradual manner .
My two cents
Not to rain on your parade but, how many immortal people do you know of to be able to claim that it is an essential part of life? What were the side effects of not ever dying? How did not dying affect their environment?
"Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love is eternal. You should embrace that remarkable illusion. It may be the greatest gift your race has ever received." - Lorien
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Well, not exactly, but Peter Hamilton had som pretty interesting ideas in his Commonwealth Universe.
Living indefinately is "solved" through a mix of cloning and computer implants. Basically you have a cell culture backup performed at some point (probably best at birth), and a computer implanted in your brain, which amongst other things is able to make copies of your memories, including the ones formed before the implant.
Backups of the computer stored memories can be performed whenever you want, which solves not only violent deaths where your body is pulp but your computer is okay, but ones where your computer is completely fucked up (i.e. your space ship gets nudged into a star or something similarly violent).
It doesn't prevent your body from growing old, so you still go through an aging with every cycle, starting out young and very hormonal, thus making you question the status quo, pushing culture forward.
Obviously the downside is the lack of natural dying, but cultures would quite likely adapt towards having very few children. Dynasties could form more easily (quite a few dynasties in the books), making family owned and controlled companies the thing again. Space exploration will be a lot more interesting, as you'll "only" lose the time between launch (backup just before lunch) and the time it takes to regrow you a new body.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Which shouldn't really be an issue: A good set of treatments for aging would lead to people of larger calendar age not just hanging in there in a sickly state consuming large amounts of medical treatment - but retaining (or being restored to) good health and able to return to work and create the resources needed to support them (and in style).
In you dreams buddy. AARP will lobby for 45 years of work, and 465 years of country-club livin'!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
At least pay attention when picking articles...
BBC:
"The general picture that evolution has speeded up in the last 10,000 years as we change from, to put it bluntly, being animals to being humans is clearly true," he explained. "To suggest it is happening at this instant, I would suggest, is probably wrong."
In addition, Tishkoff's team determined the date range when the mutation likely occurred: 3,000 to 7,000 years ago, which matches up well with the archaeological record that places pastoralization coming to East Africa about 5,000 years ago. The European trait dates back about 9,000 years.
Notice that all mutations date at about either before, or at the latest, at the time of the most ancient civilizations forming.
Also, try not to take my comments to literally - I often use metaphors.
I could also speculate that by our modern societies putting more worth on technical & scientific expertise, we could have a selection pressure that selects for smarter people, which would be evolution as well.
Quite the opposite.
First of all modern society does not put more worth on "technical & scientific expertise".
Turn on your TV and flip through the channels. Count commercials for things that make you younger, stronger, better looking, better smelling etc.
Count any and all technical and/or scientific news or information.
Or even simpler... Compare the salary and benefits of a average scientist or techie to that of a average athlete or actor/singer/model.
Are we clear about the values that our society values?
Second... Tech is designed in such a way to be first and foremost EASY TO USE and MARKETABLE.
In other words - it is designed to be used by a fuckin' idiot.
I've seen complete morons who can't grasp the concept of a e-mail or attachment to the said e-mail, SMS-ing and MMS-ing people from their mobile's address book.
They just hit a wall when it comes to e-mail via computer.
Same fuckin' thing - only not dumb enough.
Just as everything else, we are making tech easier to use by us. We don't adapt ourselves to it.
Remember installing a piece of hardware in early '90s? Compared to now? Or mechanical locks on cars?
Remember rotary phones? Or even first cellphones?
You need generations for a mutation that might solve the problem society faces to "fly or fail".
We don't adapt. We create several technologies to go fix the problem or go around it during a single generation.
We have been killing each other with blades and sharp pointy things for thousands of years now.
Did we develop natural armor or thicker skin?
No.
We skinned animals and made armor out of their skin. We dug up metal and crafted armor out of it.
We have created genetically modified goats that lactate spider silk so that we could use it to make even better armor.
We don't have time to wait for 2-3 or 20 generations to pass so we adapt to a disease. We invent cures.
Evolution is fine and all... its just we can't wait any more and we happen to have a better tool at hand.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Boy, the food at this place is really terrible."
"Yeah, I know; and such small portions."
What?
You gave this link:
http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=reversal
In my opinion, no scientist would attach any importance to what they say there. It is advertising directed toward those who are ignorant about science, and it is meaningless otherwise, in my opinion.
Revlon Age Defying Precise Wrinkle Eraser with Botafirm®
The Island
The future seems dangerously close.
They have seriously got to be kidding. We are mucking around with nature, and it is the whole reason why we are in the current ecological mess that we are in. 7 billion people on this planet, far too many people as is. You brainless idiots want people to live even longer? Straining employment issues, health issues and all things economical? We are already an aging species, with most developed nations having very low birth rates, meaning that more and more of the population is getting older, with little ability for the working "youth" to financially support their elders. The cost of living is going through the roof, simply because there are too many humans combining for the same resources. And that's not even looking at the damage that we are doing to nearly EVERY other species on the planet.
And some of you really want to live longer? For fucks sake, you have to be kidding. You really do. Nature intended us to live for a certain time, we should be happy with that. We already interfere with nature by saving people who should *never* have lived, mainly due to scientific and medicinal advances in the 20th century. Things like cancer and so forth are natures way of controlling populations, and we are doing everything in our power to interfere with this. The balance of our whole ecological system for this planet is being screwed by people who just want everything there way.
We really need to stop, think, and stop interfering with nature. Accept things as they are, and leave well enough alone.
Crikey...
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
You forgot an obvious one for Slashdot...
4 - With copyright being "life plus 70", this would mean an effective end to public domain works, except where someone died due to causes other than old age (how many people die due to old age, anyway?).
Given that, if I like the works of that person, he will still be around to make more, and if I don't like the works.. well he'll keep it from POLLUTING the public domain, I don't think that's so bad : )
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"Can you imagine having to get up every night for the next thousand years just to piss?" --Larzuk, D2LOD
Death is certain, but it's aging badly that s*cks and might not be a necessity.
If I wanted that kind of delay in reading about a new topic, I can read about it in a newspaper, not /.
I believe what God tells us in the Bible about reality...
Most (probably all) religions claim that their take on reality is "the one true version" and that all others must by necessity be wrong. The bible of Christianity is not more compelling than any other religion because like all others, it depends on superstitious thinking. There are Muslims who think their book is the one true way, and that the Christians, along with everyone else, are wrong. What reason do they give for this? The same reasons Christians do: "MY holy book says so!", which is obviously a worthless argument, whether made by Christians, Muslims, or anybody else. The argument is that if their religion is right, then their religion is right; which is utterly worthless. In order to believe in Christianity or Islam, you have to believe in it! There's no way on board other than to jump.
Their holy book may be full of improbable stories and outright flaws, but they overlook *every* such flaw systematically, making it obvious to any outside observer that they are blinded by their belief. But the Christian holy book is also full of such flaws, which Christians overlook with exactly the same theological arguments, and it is still obvious to any outside observer that they are blinded by their beliefs. There is no reason to believe any such holy book over another, which is to say that you have no reason to believe the Christian bible is true; you have only your superstitious belief. All Christians share this belief among themselves, but Muslims share their beliefs among their number, and Hindus share theirs, and so on.
...that is how things really are not as they appear to be.
This raises an important epistemological issue: you have no way of knowing that "things really are" other than by inspecting them. That is, you don't have any way to conclude that a creator god spelled things out and put them in *any* book. Believing, even "deeply" or "truly" and in earnest, in something without evidence is superstition; it could be anything from rebooting your computer once a day to "freshen it up" to belief in a deity.
Science in particular and we humans in general are limited to what we can perceive with our senses and the technological extensions thereof.
You illustrate this very point quite elegantly; perhaps you have not reflected on how profound the statement is.
If there is an effect, it has to have a cause, unless the cause is eternal, that is uncaused.
That is a variation on the cosmological argument; it is very old and its flaw has been easy to demonstrate since antiquity. If everything must have a cause, then the creator god must have a cause, and that cause must have a cause, and so on all the way down. Perhaps you realize that, and think "well, I suppose something has to be uncaused, and I'll call call it 'God'." But it is easier to say simply that the universe itself is uncaused, and that the universe itself just exists; it is no more and no less amazing.
The fact that there is a universe and that we are here, must mean that something or someone eternal must be its cause.
If you are personally uncomfortable with a physical thing existing uncaused, and must therefore invent a metaphysical thing and ignore the fact that you are simply passing the buck (the fallacy of begging the question), that's your own conceit. One cannot prove the existence or non-existence of a creator deity by reasoning. Theologens have failed to recognize this for centuries, and that is why not only every argument they have tried has failed, but every argument anyone could ever try, even in principle, will fail.
Scientists and philosophers have long realized this and therefore postulated that the universe itself is eternal, that is it has no beginning and
This becomes a null question once we can rewrite our own DNA however we please. At that point, biological evolution is obsoleted by simulation in the lab - there really is no inherent advantage to biologically accrued genes, except to know that they were successful survival strategies (or at least, not overwhelmingly deleterious ones) at some point in the past.
We're very nearly there.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Seriously, there are a number of impacts that occur with aging:
1. shorter telomeres - in more primitive organisms, a period of fasting can reset these to the longer DNA/RNA replication lengths in youth, but in higher organisms, it's difficult. However, periodic fasting every 10 years or so for less than 30 days with water and vitamins might be useful.
2. age impacts on the brain - partially the filters for the blood/brain barrier, partially the internal mechanisms that provide ATP power to neurons (brain cells), spotting becomes more and more pronounced as you age, as well as shrinkage, etc.
3. mitochondrial RNA degradation - mostly found in Parkinsons and other diseases, this is also partially the result of some mitochondrial ATP power factories in your cells dying out and not being fully replaced.
4. lack of stem-cell features - as we age we use up the stem cells that exist in our bodies making new cells, which we inherit from our mom and our preceding siblings (including those that did not survive to birth). We use these in many locations.
In general, there are other effects, like calcification of heart and other tissues, and plaque buildup in arteries and brains, as well as decalcification of bones and failure/compromise of bone marrow and key organs, but not all impacts of aging can be "fixed".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What most people don't realize is that humans tend to start having brain-impacting disease to a large extent from the ages of 70 to 100, in increasing proportions, and even if we could keep you alive to 1000, you'd probably spend at least 800 years of that time with dementia, hallucinations, visions, diabetes, talking to imaginary insect kids on roller skates, and generally not fully functional.
Be careful for what you ask for - you might get it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fuck the species. When I'm gone, I don't give a good goddamn what happens to humanity. If everyone gets wiped out after I've shuffled off the mortal coil, what the fuck do I care? I'm dead. I've got bigger problems to worry about.
Selfish? Fuck yeah. In the same way fighting off Jeffrey Dahmer is selfish. My instinct for self-preservation trumps other concerns. For good reason.
You know? I do believe that there is a god, and moreover, I believe that it's a benevolent one. I have no proof, however. It just "feels true".
The problem comes when some people that feels as I do try to define what this god entity is like, they do so from a human perspective. Can't do it any differently, I would assume :P
Many of the historical claims in all three big religions and many of the hindu and oriental ones of which I've had notice don't hold water so far. How old is the Earth, for instance? BUT that can only be used to cast doubt upon the veracity of those religions and upon their description of what god is like and how does human-god relationship work. One can't use that as a proof that god doesn't exist at all, at most we can say: it is unlikely that god is how you claim because other things you claim have been disproved or make no sense and you are using them to prove your point. Of course just because something is the conclusion of a false reasoning doesn't make it false, it only invalidates the reasoning itself.
So I all I can offer is: in my own personal experience, there has been enough empirical evidence to believe in the existence of a benevolent god. Can't be disproved either,eh? But because this is not verifiable, what I see as the acts of a nice guy upstairs may also be explained as a string of random acts that happened to have a positive enough outcome for me to notice them as opposed to al the other random acts I take no notice of.
I personally like the idea of god helping me out on a tight spot because it seems to have worked that way, but haven't figured out a way prove it so you can try it out too. Or maybe that's what people mean when they say 'You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.'
Yeah, I'm the GP but didn't wanna come across as karma-whoring or anything.