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Aging Is a Disease; Treat It Like One
theodp writes "In a letter to Sergey Brin, Maria Konovalenko urges the Google founder to pursue his interest in the topics of aging and longevity. 'Defeating or simply slowing down aging,' writes Konovalenko, 'is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet.' Calling for research into longevity gene therapy, extending lifespan pharmacologically, and studying close species that differ significantly in lifespan, Konovalenko says 'it is crucial to make numerous medical organizations recognize aging as a disease. If medical organizations were to recognize aging as a disease, it could significantly accelerate progress in studying its underlying mechanisms and the development of interventions to slow its progress and to reduce age-related pathologies. The prevailing regard for aging as a "natural process" rather than a disease or disease-predisposing condition is a major obstacle to development and testing of legitimate anti-aging treatments. This is the largest market in the world, since 100% of the population in every country suffers from aging.'"
More people living longer by artificial means.
Aging isn't a disease; it's a gift.
I pity the people who can't see this.
How fabulous! If we cure aging, then we'll get to have WAR all of the fucking time because of the population pressure.
Or we can reserve anti-aging treatments for the rich and privileged.
FTFY
Aging is not a bug, it's a feature.
Aging is not a disease, no matter how much you as an individual may fear it. Aging is an essential process in the cycle of life. Whether or not it is a disease, stopping aging would hardly be useful to the people of the planet. You are not going to stop people from reproducing, so if you stopped them from aging, it would be disastrous. If you stopped both reproduction and aging, that would be equally disastrous.
I'm not so sure about that. When you have an indefinite life span you have an awful lot more to lose.
Make sure you ask for eternal youth.
"when Eos asked Zeus to make Tithonus immortal, she forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonus indeed lived forever 'but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs.'" (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithonus
As much as I like the idea of a longer life, there is simply no way our planet will support it. Which means it would be a perk for the wealthy and influential, rather than the unwashed masses. Nothing good could come from that.
You're going to have to "cure" starvation due to crushing population growth first.
The statement "Defeating or simply slowing down aging is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet." is nonsense, if we do not first deal with the issues of , oh, for example, sex slavery (wouldn't it be GREAT to be forced to live 150 years as a sex slave?). How 'bout getting more people to a healthy 70, free of autoimmune diseases and cancer, well nourished, with a decent roof over their heads, and decent care for injury and illness? Could we, somehow, free the millions (if not billions) of women trapped in archaic, abusive societies?
We don't have enough decent-paying employment on the planet to support the population we have now, and you're going to double the number of years someone has to support themselves? Where do we find those jobs?
Maria Konovalenko has a serious case of aerobic encephalitis.
The problem is that there are a lot of idiots out there and they tend to breed A LOT without thought. Anti-aging is essentially what may cause Idiocracy to come true. However, I don't really care, if it ever ends up in a war between those idiots and the more intelligent kind then so be it. I'll keep fighting to stay alive for as long as I can. Hopefully my generation can make it to immortality but we might bankrupt ourselves before we even find that possibility.
I. Agree. With. You.
Furthermore. I. Believe. That. The. Population. Pressure. Will. Not. Come. About. Because. Of. A. Reduced. Birth. Rate.
As. Churchill. Once. Said., "Live. Long. And. Prosper."
You also have a much longer time horizon. People don't much care what's going to happen a century from now since it won't affect them. Immortals very much do care, because they expect to be around at that point.
Don't worry, everyone who has a lot to lose won't get to fight in the war.
Seriously, why do you think that would change?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You must leave earth. You get to live forever, but get on a space ship and go fucking explore the universe. Don't over crowd this tiny planet.
But I'm hoping more of you are dying faster. I needs me some resources.
1. liquor. 2. cheese. 3. and even human *beans*. aren't grandparents mostly wonderful? mostly?
Yes, sure, go tell the people in Angola or the other dozen countries in Africa that have 30 years less to live than you on average that aging is a problem. Or maybe the OP was talking about 100% of the population of every country a typical north american high schooler ever heard about.
Aging is a tradeoff. Cell reproduction and functions build up more errors at higher churn rates (metabolism). The end result is cancer. The alternative is to slow processes down to reduce the error rate, but slowing stuff down means parts start to not work right. Thus, we either die of organ failure or of cancer. There's no free lunch.
The only "fix" would be artificial error correction so that metabolism can be set to normal (30-year-old-like), and that's several decades away, at least.
Table-ized A.I.
You also have a much longer time horizon. People don't much care what's going to happen a century from now since it won't affect them. Immortals very much do care, because they expect to be around at that point.
Yeah, because people are so good at planning for their retirement and old age now. Good joke. LOL
is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet.
Most people won't be able to afford gene therapy or "phamacology". Lots of people can't even find enough to eat and/or can't stay well long enough to die from our current old age.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What does that have to do with anything?
People don't worry about retirement planning because they expect the government to bail them out. People in societies without welfare programs have been worrying about old age and retirement for thousands of years, that's why they used to have so many kids.
"This is the largest market in the world, since 100% of the population in every country suffers from aging."
This is completely false. Aging is only a problem once people are past their prime, and many people die before they get there.
IMO this should be our priority, not aging. There are many people who die or suffer drastically reduced quality-of-life because of problems we know how to fix, and can often fix cheaply and easily. We can get a much better QALY-increase-per-dollar by addressing the problems we know how to fix than we can by researching a cure for aging.
If we cure narcissism, then we don't have to worry anymore about people who believe themselves so valuable as to be needed by the world forever. There is no mathematical reasoning that supports an immortal species, or even one that has extended their lifespan beyond three or four generations. Nature, at least on this planet, will not allow it.
Wow - people have more faith in Google than I thought.
I thought this was a joke story at first. I interpreted it as "mortality is the number one cause of death in the world".
At least put some sort of qualifications in place lest we preserve a planet full of douchebags.
src1138
What ever happened to hunger is a disease, treat it like one? That was too hard I guess:
http://www.goofball.com/photos/thing_Paris_France_vs_Paris_Kentucky
Je me souviens.
Fortunately, the people who believe death is a gift will rapidly die out, and only us aspiring immortals will be left.
Who is this "us"?
There can be only one! And it's gonna be me!
And I saved ALL of my Queen albums!
You're doomed Highlander!
Disclaimer: Extending the life span may make sense for certain purposes like conducting deep space missions to other planets and solar systems.
I say sterilize after one. And heavy tax burdens for families with more than one child. Irresponsible breading will be the death of us all.
You would not want to fry the population with mass-produced tasteless breading. To bread the right way, I suggest the following:
1 dozen eggs (per human)
1 lb flour
3 boxes of bread crumbs
herbs and seasonings to taste
1) Mix seasonings in bread crumbs.
2) Coat a damp human in flour.
3) Dunk human in eggs and then roll it around in the bread crumb mixture
Then you can fry and bake the human, but make sure that it's fully-cooked. You can get diseases from undercooked human.
BOOP!
'is the most useful thing that can be done for all the *super rich* people on the planet.'
Dumbass. Should be fucking shot.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Fuck Bloomberg
Necessity fuels invention. The naysayers preach doom and gloom to the ignominious crowds of readers who choose to believe them. I say, let [the cure for aging] happen. I'll give you an if-then. If aging is a disease, and if we cure it, then many new inventions will be necessitated. I say CURE IT. If we cure aging, and the "fix" is available to the masses, we'll have a planet which will need a few extra rules. Specifically, reproduction will be severely limited. Darwinist notions might influence those who doll out the "medicine." But let's argue the unregulated stance. We'll have an extremely overpopulated world. It will force humanity to find a way to travel to other inhabitable worlds seeking the comfort of personal space. I think its the push we need. Maybe my infatuation with the heavens adds bias to my stance.
The position Maria what's her name is describing is, in a word, stupid. People can live longer and longer, but how long? When is enough life, enough? For her, immortality is the only logical end point, and immortality is impossible, as we live in a materially finite universe. So, she's just pulling the Oliver Twist line of "More". The universe built humans to last (x) long. She wants (x+y) long. Tough shit. Learn to live, and you will learn to die. IT's what we're built to do.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Aging isn't a disease it's a way for life to renew and grow. Longer life does not mean a better life and endless life (or vastly increased life) would mean we would soon have a giant population problem on our hands. Not only a population issue, but a social issues. Many of the problems we face, as a society, come from old ideas people won't let go of. Having the older generation age and fade away means fresh people and fresh ideas. Aging and death allow us to move beyond slavery, to open the gates to women in politics, to throw aside the yoke of religion. Do we really want to stop that progress? In a hundred years our ideas will be outdated and stupid to the people who will replace us. Do we really want to crowd the planet and slow the progress of society?
We still are left on a planet with finite resources... to support a theoretical infinite human population. Hugely poor plan. If you look at the productivity of human endeavors, it's not the old and wise who develop who introduce breakthroughs - unfortunately the truth is that the young do it. I believe it's more a function of they're not contaminated by past failure. Virtually all great breakthroughs, with a very few exceptions, are from people under 40. That’s just reality. By increasing lifespan, you're not increasing highest productivity. From a logistical stand point, what's being discussed – immortality – is something that the wealthy will pay for, and pay dearly, thus the poor can't afford.. since it’s a finite resource system, remember. The world isn’t nirvana, and people don’t give valuable shit away for free, and a large percentage of the population lives quite poorly when taken as a whole. By increasing the wealthy population, there’s less for the rest of us. I don't see how the world is better by engineering the Walton family to live to 500 years of age.
It's kind of a science fiction scenario, but if everyone is immortal, the only way the rich and powerful will be able to free up limited resources for themselves is for people to die, and so they'll start horrible meaningless mock-wars, 1984-style, to kill off the poor. Meanwhile they'll live in vast fortresses to protect them and their wealth.
If aging was eliminated we probably never be born or we'd all be babies. Do we really want a growing population of helpless babies? Humans go through different phases while aging with different features coming and going. How well would a brain handle hundreds of years? There's an age limit around 120 (if I'm remembering correctly) where more and more humans are getting closer to it but no one has gone past it. No animals are designed to hit an age then stay there forever. It wouldn't evolve with the rest of the world and would very slowly find staying alive harder and harder. There's no ultimate human because everything keeps changing and if we didn't change we'd die out.Do you really believe our current form is the best it can be?
Most aging related problems are our own fault thought bad habits, poor diets, and environment. Lead a super health life and you'll never feel old.
Aging and death is a feature, not a bug. For any given species it needs to have a sufficiently long lifespan to produce (and possibly raise) offspring. The young then have to compete with the more mature for resources. In the case of humans, we also compete within our social hierarchies for the influence of our principles and ideas. To continue the cycle of adaptation and renewal as a species it is important to balance birth with aging, and ultimately with death.
If people want to live forever, they at least need to clock-out and watch from the sidelines at some point. Perhaps as heads in jars in some museum similar to Futurama (sans robotic Richard Nixon).
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is pain and suffering. Humans will be the last to feel this. Plants and animals will take the brunt for a short while, then they will be gone. And there is always a top with exponential life forms in a system of closed resources. Humanitarianism will dictate that we destroy nature. Imagine factory farmed humans in 3 mile high sky-rises living in 5x5x5 cubes with rationed oxygen and mandatory tranquilizers and antibiotics. Awesome sauce. I'd rather see nuclear war.
Once death occurs, aging ceases permanently.
largest market
Those two words tell you everything you need to know about the motivations of Maria Konovalenko and why she would make such an appeal to a guy with very deep pockets.
Also, I can "recognize", say, unwanted body hair as a disease, but all that means is that I'm delusional; my recognition doesn't make it so.
I noticed that everyone quickly jumped to the population problem. In fact this is not an issue at all.
Everything that grows exponentially has a doubling rate. One could easily argue that the real problem is in the newer generations since they will always represent significantly bigger population than the previous one. So the issue is not people not dying quickly, the problem is people being born. If everyone stopped having kids and would magically become biologically immortal the growth rate would be negative or 0% (due to the fact that people die in accidents).
Oh and by the way the only sustainable growth rate is exactly 0% not more. Anything more would mean it has a doubling rate. It's basic math.
Better thought:
If people can live for a thousand years, interstellar travel becomes easier. You can set off for Gliese 667 (believed to have a habitable exoplanet) at 10% of lightspeed and be there in only a quarter of your lifespan.
And if we start expanding into space, resource contention ceases to be an issue, at least for a few million years.
Yeah, it's going to be hilarious watching those old people dying in the streets when we finally get rid of that bothersome social security and medicare! Fools. That'll teach them to have so few kids.
Only if people keep getting multiple children. If the average couple got just one child, the population would level off at twice the initial population even if everyone were immortal.
Alternatively, a similar effect could be achieved by having two children but letting each generation have them at a higher age than the previous one.
Or, if we manage to travel to other stars, the total size of our habitats would increase first cubically and then quadratically over time, as we spread across the galaxy, allowing every couple to have two children (since that would imply only linear growth in population). At least until we have filled the galaxy.
Actually, if you look at the societies that have a lot of kids one of two things tend to be true - they have high childhood mortality (i.e. have lots of kids so at least a couple make it), or children provide a lot of "free" low-skill labor such as in traditional farming communities. Both are relatively short-term considerations compared to retirement.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Death is a necessity. If we look at aging from the point of view of evolutionary adaptation, it is clear that it serves a telenomic "purpose". The lifespan of each species is optimized for environmental conditions. Humans have programmed cell death that limits their lifespan to ~100. Other species have other lifespans according to their evolutionary niches, and some species are effectively immortal. It is within our own individual short-term self-interests to prolong life indefinitely. However, it is very clearly NOT in the best interests of society, nor the global ecology, for humans to be immortal. Humans consume vast resources, in great disproportion to their contributions to the greater environmental milieu. Someday, if and when humans (or some form of cybernetic organisms) become vastly more efficient, intelligent, and compassionate, it may be viable to consider immortality. But clearly, technological progress has far outstripped our understanding of its implications. Do we really want a world filled with creaky, old, rich people who never relinquish power? Because it's self-evident that, under the current societal conventions, immortality will not be available to the underclasses. This path eventually leads to a bifurcation of the species reminiscent of H.G. Wells.
According to some commentators here. If you consider aging a gift and not a disease, then you must consider a gift the suffering imposed on the elderly and the trillions of dollars that are spent in treating all these "natural" diseases. People who want to grow senile and dependent on help of strangers to eat their soup, can go f*ck themselves! I rather be strong and productive when I'm in my nineties.
Hearts fail at around 4-4.5 billion beats, period. (natural maximums that is)
This is just how they work. They'd likely need to be replaced outright since repairing it would not work with a standard heart due to the way they are created in the first place.
Damage is permanent and not repaired in the places it matters and wouldn't be possible to repair without serious work.
And because of the beating, considerably harder work at that. There'd be a struggle to repair the muscle while it is pulsing. One mistake and heart attack. #
Hearts are horribly fragile things. A hard enough punch (which isn't that hard at all) is enough to knock a beat erratic or out of sync in areas. An accidental sneeze at the wrong time can even do damage, or waking too quickly, or exercising too early, or being too cold or hot, or being too active or inactive.
Hearts are better off grown and replaced outright. It seriously isn't worth the effort in research to figure out how to make hearts repair themselves.
Stopping clogged arteries is a different story, that should be researched still. But just repairing the muscle is a pointless effort.
Hell, you'd honestly be better off with artificial hearts these days. They have improved considerably.
The brain is another tough cookie.
Plaque build-up is the biggest killer of brain operation next to the major diseases.
Repair and cleanup mechanisms already exist for these plaques, but for some reason that feature fails with time for no currently known reason.
There was actually some research done on this recently that showed some good signs of figuring out the process, but still needs some work.
Damaged brain cells and neural structures are also very hard to repair. Especially when we mapped the brain with even more accuracy and found out how stupidly compact and ordered it actually is and not a mess of wiring in the slightest. That scan rewrote everything, the entire basis of the science changed in an instant.
Those 2 alone are the biggest longevity killers.
We aren't even considering other organs yet.
As the saying goes, with a slight change, "You were born too early to become genetically immortal, and born to late to become an immortal Wizard."
Thanks, Merlin, you dick.
..that mankind will be robbed of the ritual of the mid-life crisis?
All this talk of extending life makes me wonder how it would be a good thing. The brain as miraculous as it is can only handle a single lifetime of information. We would all go mad if we 'had to live longer'. Just another example of wishful thinking. If we were supposed to live longer we would have different brains altogether. Just sayin'. ;)
Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Change it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is approaching. Fight it.
'Old age is a disease, with a 100% mortality rate'
Well, from your earlier comment you seem to assume that people generally behave rationally. Based on how paltry government retirement benefits already are, and how many speculate that such benefits will only get worse, even with current expected lifespans it would not be rational to assume that the government will be there to cover retirement benefits.
Forget retirement, think of how many people barely plan for how they are going to cover their expenses for even a month while at the same time making purchases beyond their means. Unless becoming immortal comes with a rationality and willpower upgrade, I highly doubt immortals will plan any better than mortals do now.
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Is she the UN chief, God's right hand, GW Bush or what and why does /. waste Internet bandwidth on one zombie's letter to another vulture.
And when was Brin promoted to Almighty Brin? I don't want to see Google adds for eternity (with a piece of glass stuck in every orifice).
I am writing a letter to God to take this Maria (and her kind) back ASAP.
By that, I mean: for every year of guaranteed life extension reduce the probability to reproduce by 20% or something (or exponentially). I'm sure someone could work out the math for a balance when we can extend our lives by, say, 2x, or 3x, or ... Sure we'd all love to live 'forever' (that is, until/unless we tire of existence) but there is an obligation not to destroy the ecosystem with our progeny.
How many people must die a horrible premature death because people (like the naysayers here) aren't willing to address the challenges that would go with fixing it?
I don't mean to speak completely against the Kovalenko's point. We will certainly lengthen life spans as the pressure to do so will be irresistable (not to mention the market opportunities).
Having said that, the way she speaks implies that senescence is bad and a cure for it would be optimal. In other words, bring on immortality!
Biological adaptation relies upon death and rebirth in the population. We could substitute technology for that, at least in principle. However attitudes and perspectives are difficult to change. I believe that society has the advantage of a continual supply of the young to provide new ideas and societal adaptation. Eliminate death and you could see a major atrophying of society, due to the inability of it's members to change their thinking quickly enough.
Several science fiction writers have dealt perceptively, or at least provocatively, with this subject.
One one side, we want to treat aging as a disease and prolong human life, so, YEA for team "already a member of the human race".
On the other side, we still have no real global policy on control our very own human population.
We can't keep having 'more' people and having people who live longer.
Something has to give.
On the bright side, if we could double our life expectancy, we can add many more years of usefulness to the human race and that's a plus, the years of experience accumulated and the wisdom to pass along to others, certain a plus too. If our human bodies don't wear and tear as far, then it gives us more time to enjoy life, all o this is good.
But, we should also understand the nature of 'finite' resources.
So it would be nice to see some balance on a global scale.
Jeez, just die like you are supposed to die. We already have to large a population growth as it is. Just die.
That, and greedy corporations stealing their pensions. And no, they used to have so many kids because 1) Insane infant mortality rates 2) No birth control Seeing as we've fixed those problems* we now have less kids. * Assuming the Republicans don't ban contraceptive pills.
If you could double the active lifespan of a (sane, healthy) individual, you'd get twice the amount of work for the same amount of high-school and college man-years. It's simple economy of scale.
New ideas are usually adopted once the old people with the old ideas dies . Classic example is the theory of relativity. There were brilliant physicist of their time who went to their graves refuting Einstein's theory because they had invested too much of their time and effort in the status quo. Furthermore, acceptance of the theory of relativity would have meant their work was invalid.
Your position and many other frequently misguided positions are counter argued here: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
We seem to have quite a few people on /. who think dying is a good thing. Makes me wonder why they are spending time posting rather than just ending their lives. Oh, it's other people dying that they think is good (or themselves far enough in the future it doesn't seem real). Well, I could try to change their minds but they are entitled to their opinion. It is also one way to avoid any dramatic population increases as all the death fans check out at the age they feel is 'right'. Is that the average lifespan for Africa, North America, the current lifespan or that of just 100 years ago? Everyone picks their own?
Nobody wants increased years of pain and suffering at the end of their lives. Unfortunately, that is what our medical system offers now with intrusive and expensive last ditch interventions in diseases caused by aging. In contrast, all the anti-aging research (whether slowing damage or repairing damage) would, if successful, extend the healthy years, not the unhealthy ones. Any increases in longevity are almost a side effect of that extension of healthy years.
So, death fans, you check out on your schedule. Over time what should be left is a world of healthy, happy, wise, experienced people who are interested in the world and grateful to be alive.
Many diseases are just aging. The human body is evolved to operate at peak performance up to about 35, to be reliable to 40 and after that nearly every part of the body begins to decay. This is natural and designed to make room for the next generation.
There are 30,000 genes plus a lot of DNA regulation and RNA and protein modification involved in the human body and pretty much all of them will be involved in aging in some way. It was recently estimated that 20% of the active genes in a fat cell are involved with the insulin system which explains why we are no closer to a cure for Type II diabetes and the most effective treatment is still metformin, which was discovered in the 1930s.
Along with back problems, knee problems, feet problems, arthritis, parkinson's disease, alzheimer's, dementia they are all design flaws produced by evolutions limitations. There are no miracle gene fixes or drugs despite billions of dollars of research. Surgery can treat some physical problems but often it doesn't achieve anything, or creates worse problems, and infrequently kills the patient.
Human's actually have a surprising long life span and is one of the few species to live past reproductive fitness. This is because it is useful for some people to survive into old age and provide leadership, knowledge and help with the large effort of raising human children.
The argument that older workers are all more productive and knowledgeable is nonsense some of them are. But as Western economies become service focused with over 80% jobs in those industries the number of older workers has increased. But workers over 60 are still the minority. 20% of the population over 50 is on SSRIs at any one point in time. Around 40% have type II diabetes, half have back problems and half have arthritis. The good news is that by managing cardiovascular disease and diabetes better it looks like dementia rates are going down slightly.
People over 50 who are looking for work will be unemployed for 2-3 times as long as someone in their 20s or 30s. Society and jobs change so quickly that even 10 year-old knowledge is worthless. And we are short of jobs so that most developed economies have youth unemployment rates of 20-25% because fit older workers aren't retiring. And that was during the economic boom, at the moment many countries have youth unemployment over 50% and are going to massive social problems and costs from a lost generation.
Rather than a pointless quest to make life longer, we would be much better off targeting preventable real diseases and improving quality of life for people.
Life is a disease and death is the cure, depending on how you see it.
but only for a little while
Population growth due to lack of death is linear and not nearly as consequential as growth due to having offspring, which is exponential.
We are in fact increasing longevity and slowing down the aging process, but that only means an ever-longer period of helplessness preceding death. The most frightening statistic I've heard is that for every year of increased longevity that modern medicine has provided, only seven months is an increase in the time one is in good health. The other five months is an increase in the time during which you're still alive but have lost the ability to care for yourself. What's really needed is to minimize that period of dependence, in other words, delay the aging process while at the same time making it more sudden. Slowing it down is the worst thing you can do.
Subject says it all.
Humans are territorial mammals, they were fighting and killing each other over access to resources long before Homo Sapiens arrived ~200ky ago, I see no signs of that behaviour changing but I do see signs of dwindling resources, in particular the most essential resource of all - water. Princes and priests don't normally cause' wars they simply rationalise them for the rest of their tribe. The instinctive 'mob' behaviour is obvious and easy to spot from a safe distance, but knowing the cause won't help you much when you're standing in a bread line.
But, as I said, if dreaming of global doom gets you off, keep at it
If pretending the likelihood of a self-induced population crash is zero makes you comfortable, keep at it. Fortunately for the rest of us, the pentagon considers climate related mass migration as the #1 long term threat to global security, and has held that opinion since the mid-naughties.
In shorter words, the life support system on this spaceship is broken but operable, we need a major upgrade just to keep the population we have. Taking on extra crew is not advisable at this time, we should be encouraging (as opposed to demanding) an overall reduction in numbers through natural attrition.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yeah, but when you think about it, you can only own so much stuff. Most people spend most of their working lives paying off a house. If you could pay off your house and still how 50 years to save without paying for a mortgage you would probably be able to stockpile quite a bit of cash. After 100 years of working, you'd basically be able to live off the interest from the money you had saved up. That is assuming the prices of things didn't skyrocket from too many people trying to take advantage of this kind of situation.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
And if we start expanding into space, resource contention ceases to be an issue, at least for a few million years.
Only if you're able to send people out at the rate that people are being added to the population.
At current birth/death rates, that's in the neighborhood of 200,000 people per day. Given that it's very difficult to imagine a technological leap anytime in the foreseeable future that would allow a migration on that scale, we're going to have to get a handle on our population growth -- one way or another -- long before mass migration will be an option.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Likewise, we don't send the old to fight the war.
More research is needed for this horrible disease.
It is progressive with symptoms of irritability as well as illusions of grandeur.
Unfortunately (or luckily for the pre-onset non-symptomatic) it has a 100% mortality rate.
We thought this Methuselah guy almost had it beat, but no such luck.
I think money would be better spent searching for this fountain of youth, why stop aging when you can reset your age and then re-age over again in perpetuity?
I viewed the initial comment as relatively insightful. No, I don't think anyone's calling disease or disability a gift. But since the human body is a biochemical machine, it seems to generally cease functioning via those processes. (Not everyone is going to die cleanly and painlessly in their sleep.)
The "gift" refers to the beauty inherently designed into the process as a whole. IMO, medicine should be focused on giving the best quality of life possible, within the parameters nature has set up -- NOT trying to "cheat" the natural course of things.
I recall reading a piece of sci-fi a while ago where the characters had supposedly achieved very long life-spans (thousands of years, typically). Eventually, many just opted to "check out" after a while, voluntarily putting themselves into a coma. The idea was, after you've been around that long, you reach a point where you feel like you've "seen everything, done everything". The things you still haven't learned yet are pretty much the things you already concluded you simply have no interest in, or get no enjoyment from -- and you're bored with the rest.
It's just a fiction story, but I think it would be pretty accurate.... Most of the people who fear death or even aging just fear the unknown. If you can't say that you lived a "full, rewarding" life in the window of time most of us naturally get, you were doing something wrong. Plus, there's just something that motivates us, knowing that our time is limited on this planet. If you had essentially unlimited time to accomplish things, would you really get more done -- or would you just keep putting things off?
I'm not old enough to say for certain yet, but I sure hope there are some great, valuable and rewarding experiences to be had when I'm in those older, retirement years. When society (and your own health situation) deem you incapable of working a job each day for a paycheck and you've reached "old age", it's a little bit like a second shot at childhood, except with all the wisdom you gathered along the way as an adult. Surveys have been taken, asking people how happy they were in their 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's ... and overall, people were increasingly happy with each decade. So "youth" clearly isn't everything.
You want your anti-age shots? They come with a free sterilization treatment.
You still get to have one kid per parent to continue the line if you don't already have one or two.
Three kids? Sorry... should have thought about it earlier.
Hey! Your genes get to live for you.
Couple of generations down the road and there may be millions of your offspring roaming the Earth and the Universe.
Which is why all boys will be made to deposit their sperm in the Arctic sperm banks when they reach puberty during the festival of The Great Northern Wanking (that's The Great Southern Wanking for those living in the southern hemisphere), upon which they will be sterilized.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Well, there's the simple fact that birth rates tend to decrease with increased living standards and population density. Most "developed" countries are now only gaining population through immigration - once the whole world is "developed", populations are actually expected to fall. A significant decrease in death rates will probably lead to a proportional decrease in birth rates.
Besides, we have time. I highly doubt we're going to go from a life expectancy of 70 years or so to 1000 in even several generations. More likely, we'll gain maybe a few more years with each successive generation, more than enough time for both society and science to keep up. But once we do hit a point where you can travel to another planet in your lifetime, I expect we'll start doing so in great number.
I already can't afford to retire. How am I supposed to afford living forever? Do you expect me to work forever? The hell with that.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Curse, not gift.
Don't pity me though. Instead, can I have your UID once you accept your 'gift' in all its fulness?
All you have to do is send us your money.
That's all this is about. Someone is trying to con people into spending money on something that is pure fantasy.
We are all going to age and die, unless we are killed by disease, accident or war.
I don't want to see the horrible suffering that is to come in the near future. The rich will be the only ones to benifit from stopping aging. The Rich will be imortal and the rest of the world will die off. To them we have no use anymore, robots will take over for the working class.
You accept death? Yeah right. Let's see how these people who claim to accept death react when someone puts the barrel of a loaded gun against the side of their heads. A large number of these supposed acceptors of death would suffer post traumatic stress dusorder for years afterwards.
The brain as miraculous as it is can only handle a single lifetime of information.
And you have how many multi-lifetime old samples in your research to support this claim.
Come up with a way to give me multiple lifetimes, healthy as I was in my late teens, to see if my brain crashes due to "filling up", and I'm willing to be an experimental subject.
I'm already in my late '60s. I'm also studying for a college degree and getting 4.0 (much better than when I was trying to work my way through college and avoid the draft during the Vietnam era.)
Psych research has shown that intelligence, as measured by I.Q. tests, increases with age. ("Senile dementia" is a handfull of specific diseases, which only a fraction of people get, and eliminating THOSE would obviously be part of "curing" aging.) Meanwhile, the brain's capacity for both memory and processing is very large (as shown by the amount of info people with eidetic memory accumulate, and are able to index and retrieve without apparent problems, over normal life spans.)
So you think there's a limit to how much the brain can handle, a wall we might hit if we cured aging? Let's find out. Bring it on!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Really, I honestly don't care if I live to be 70, 80 or 90 but what I do care about is quality of life. I'd take perfect health, no bad knee, no bad back, no arthritis, no shoulder problems and if that meant I dropped dead by the time I was 75 then so be it and at least I'd be better able to enjoy my life rather than being in endless pain in one way or another.
The first thing we need to do is find a cause for why people are such assholes and cure that.
Don't worry. We have war all of the fucking time anyways, irregardless of population pressure. The only big change is that baby-faced 90 year olds will be shooting and blowing up each other along with the 18 year olds..
To me the fact that we all eventually drop dead is not a bug, it's a feature. It's the only way we rid our society of old assholes! -- Lewis Black
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Everyone wants to live forever, but death is the natural way of selection within the species. If death was "cured" then the species would stagnate. Leadership would not change. Younger generations would continuously be stuck at the bottom of the heap (or, at least, in their place within the heap). Imagine working at the same job forever, never getting promoted or increased in pay. Now that wouldn't be eternal life. It'd be Hell.
The only species on this planet being concerned about this aging issue, all other's age, die and evolve.
Maybe another sign of de-volving???
people with prolonged lifespans would probably concern themselves with decisions that currently would have no consequence within their lifetimes. Don't care about (fill in your thing here) because it won't hurt anybody for 150 years? You might think differently if the average lifespan were 450 years. A longer perspective wouldn't hurt us at all.
I will fight those rich and privileged to their death so that I can live.
Or you could just enter cryogenic stasis for the trip. You'd consume a lot fewer resources along the way if you were a meat popsicle, and you wouldn't get bored.
Having everyone as a healthy adult in their prime will change a lot of things. It won't be better or worse, just different.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
First those who want to die need to die off, then those who wish to decay. Then we'll have us a game of high-lander.
Don't you wanna die and go to heaven?
It's common is poor areas to be aged at 40 years, to be worn out from hard labor and disease. Improved resistance to aging helps them also.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Interstellar travel accelerates aging, and thus it must be regarded as a disease not a cure. Besides, you'll be among the five billion people employed in sequestering all radiological sources in the earth's mantle into some deep pit in Nevada. If you survive your 10,000 years term of service at this biologically hazardous occupation, with luck and good behaviour you'll be eligible to take out the one billion dollar mortgage on a 400 sq ft condominium of your very own somewhere in free-wheeling Singapore a full fifty floors above the prison levels exposed to god-knows-what in the lower atmosphere.
I have a cronical disease!!!
OMG
At first I thought your 10^-30 was way too many 9's, and I was going to go all hyperbole-nazi on you, but then I looked it up: Earth has approx. 10^50 atoms, and the Universe has approx. 10^80 atoms (somewhere in the 10^78 to 10^82 range), so 10^-30 is spot on.
Well played, 0123456. Well played.
to extend your life - when you die they can't advertise at you
In a lot of developed nations, (precisely the places where anti-ageing medicine will be most widely available) the birthrate is already low and dropping over time. Without the pressures of ageing, many people will postpone having children until later in life. Think about it, if everyone expected to live until they were 1000, people's life plans would evolve a lot slower. I suspect this will offset the reduced number of deaths to produce a much more reasonable population growth.
Bear in mind that a perpetually physically young population will be a lot more productive than our current mixture of ages. People won't need to retire. They'll have the mental fitness and physical energy to retrain and adapt to new things. The vast majority of workers will be very experienced and we will be able to train and educate people for much longer.
Guys, dealing aging as a decease, we are going to deal everything negative it encompasses.
So everything from arthritis to dementia will be dealt with, basically all should be living as healthy as a 24 year old. Even unwanted and useless memories will be wiped off. Brain power and memory should be supported externally from hitech computing devices. Enthusiasm switch will be on, boredom will come when invited.
Should create new earths by manipulating planets like mars. Or what is the use of so many rocks hauling around.
Those who do not want to live can opt for euthanasia or avoid getting into project.
Hmmm... I just started thinking. Why not ?
People don't worry about retirement planning because they expect the government to bail them out.
Why not?
I'm 32 and my retirement would be taken care of already if I wasn't taxed absurdly heavily to pay for everyone's social security.
We're forced to play the system at gunpoint, so, fuck it - yes, bail my ass out.
Brave New World
After 100 years of working, you'd basically be able to live off the interest from the money you had saved up.
interest rates wouldn't stay the same.
It's common is poor areas to be aged at 40 years, to be worn out from hard labor and disease. Improved resistance to aging helps them also.
it's common for the average lifespan to be 40 years - most of which is due to infant mortality and young people doing stupid things (aka war). Once you are 40 your odds of further survival become pretty good.
and earth should treat you as such.
I am the luckiest man still alive. I have a family whose members do interesting things. There are young ones growing up some well, others not doing so good. However long I live I expect and hope it will stay like this. I am not a burden yet (except occasionally) and at whatever point I die there will still be developments I would like to see how they turn out. Others will need my house, my space to live. On the other hand if I go to a shopping center and see the seniors walking slowly around not having nearly as much fun as the frazzled mother with two toddlers. I heard of a senior the other day who was an expert at Solitaire. I do not want to be like that.
This is exactly why the human race has to expand into space and get off of one planet (earth). If we don't, the current civilization will collapse, maybe entirely due to some catastrophic event either manmade (nuclear war) or natural (metor impact). This has probably already happened a couple of times. Just look at the moon for examples.. The only reason the earth doesn't look like that is because it has an atmosphere and weather and erosion removes the evidence (for the most part).
As we age, the myriad systems that regulate blood and tissue function seem to be slowly degrading in a ...well... death spiral. Metabolic syndrome is such a process. Blood sugar levels pitch up/down like the deck on s ship in a storm, dragging the body along for a unsettling ride towards diabetes, hypertension and overall degradation. This would be a great collection of symptoms to start with. Telomeres seem like another good place to start looking as cells can lose ability to self repair their DNA.... Nothing good can come from these!
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
Your brain uses about 1/5 your resting metabolic rate according to this:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=thinking-hard-calories
But aging is a natural process. And most importantly, cells do not and cannot live indefinitely. The telomere on the ends of genes, that protect the genes, lose a little bit of structure every time a cell multiplies, so regardles of gene therepy or whatever, that cell will die. Nothing can prevent that natural process, which is why aging is not a disease, but a natural process.
If you want to spend billions of dollars on research, it might be better served on finding "cures" for the causes why many people have shortened lifes, such as malnutrition, lack of sanitation, poverty and of course violence and war.
If you alter and manipulate genes so humans could live forever, they won't be humans anymore. They would be something else. So, sure go out and destroy the human race and create a new species, but please, don't pretend that we would be talking about humans. Maybe this new species will even be so kind as to have wax figures of homosapiens along side Neanderthals in their museums. Or, maybe they will even keep a few homosapiens around to work in their factories and farms. Who knows, It will be a brave new world.
Lets see your tough talk when you are faced with a terminal disease such as ALS, MS, or cancer. Enjoy your denial of death.
There you were, one with the universe, without a single feeling, thought or complaint, and the disease of life infested your region, pulled you into this world and subjected you to the demands, thrills and horrors of life. Then when the game is done with you you finally get to be disassociated, disassembled, and return to the glorious restful state you were in before life disrupted your rest. So what is the point?
Well said. It should be about quality of life.
2 mechanics see an old car. The first mechanic throws his hands up in the air: "It's impossible, just throw it away and get a new one". The 2nd mechanic already has a spare car he's kept working, oiling the parts, sealing out rust, maintaining it. While it's a lot of work this car is easier to work on, from a time when things were built to last. He does what's needed to get it right.
You can fix these things but yes it's work. And that's why it's awkward and the truth is very hard. It's easier to have babies and start again with death than to fix it all.
That said...
how very, very lazy!
The technology to me to fix the many of humanities problems doesn't seem like a big ask in the very big picture of looking at things. If we had the tech for our bodies as we have for computing we'd be there right now.
Taking a perspective here by looking back in history. Chinese tradition views the average life expectancy as ~120 years. That's from 2,000-4,000 years ago. It then has the viewpoint that anything shorter than this is due to stress on the body, not that dying early is something to worry about (actually) and that if you live a healthy lifestyle you will get to 120 years. I don't expect to live that long. I don't mind a whole bunch at the moment... But I would like to have the quality of life that such a long life can provide. I know in any event I'll probably do better than the ~40 years for the stereotypical savanna African plains we had for most of human history.
All of my parents, my grandparents have gone to a doctor recently and the doctor has dismissed their (very pressing) problems with age. This is disgusting. Is it worth changing a hip on a grandma only to have it last a year before she dies? Is it worth doing dental surgery if you only have a few years left?
My grandpa has been ignoring his tooth problems, ignoring his leg problem, digestion problem etc etc because he doesn't want to put a burden on anyone. So he goes round limping everywhere. And then these 70 year old people go on to live another 30-40 years - longer than I've been around!
Meanwhile, I fixed my digestion problems, I see a private dentist. I am planning for the long haul. I look after myself. The thing is, I will continue to do so long while I get into old age. Only when I'm older will I know if my maintenance schedule will ave paid dividends or not.
It's time people stopped looking at their bodies as something holy to a simple engineering subject of high stakes.
A blog I run for the wealth
There has been some good research on intermittent fasting for weight loss and longevity. http://www.ahs.uic.edu/news/title,10771,en.html http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/1/69.full
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People in societies without welfare programs have been worrying about old age and retirement for thousands of years, that's why they used to have so many kids.
Don't forget that a good chunk of them died before adulthood. My great-great grandma had 14 kids, and only two of them survived.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
... it is not a disease, it is instead a development, where one needs to evolve too by the times !
I'm not saying you're wrong; there is some valuable perspective to your observation.
However, you're necessarily taking a short-term view.
Consider this:
The largest problem facing Planet Earth is foolish shortsighted decisions by power holders (e.g. governments, corporations).
By the time many decision makers achieve power, their lives are half over (e.g. ages 50+, which is what most group photos of congress, legislative bodies and various boards-of-directors look like). So why do they care if the environment gets messed up, or energy costs increase a few %ge points. They won't be around in 100 years, so it is easy to think "NOT MY PROBLEM. ALSO, WONT GET ME REELECTED."
But what if they were around in 100 years, or 200 years? And what if their constituents had a Lonnggg memory?
*shrug* Gift or not, all I'm saying is longer-term enlightened self interest could be a force for helping our species make better decisions. In oh so many ways it seems like humans are short sighted fools.
What would life be like if people lived for 200 years on average, maybe some to 300 years.
Would many humans be in such a hurry to make Allah or Jehova or whatever $DEITY happy so they can hang out with the other cool kids afterlife? Or would they have an enlightened self-interest to take more of an interest in what happens here?
Perhaps if people lived longer they might say:
"Hmm... if global warming is a problem in 100 years maybe we should plan for it?"
"Hmmm... maybe we don't want to flush our water supply / aquifers away for some temporary fracking oil profit?"
"Hmm... maybe increasing education funding to help new people make the world a better place is a good idea?"
Hmm... maybe there is long-term benefit to developing human capital? (Instead of freaking out about next quarter's profits - oh noes teh stoks dropping!)
"Hmm... maybe that 20 year mission to pluto, or a 100 year mission to alpha centauri aren't so crazy after all?"
"Hmm... 100 years to colonize mars? What the hell, let's try it."
"Hmm... maybe I do have time to learn Chinese (or insert $LANGAUGE here) and go visit that land, just because it would be fun."
(Economically, opportunity costs decrease as available time (a resource) increases. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to consider other short-term/long-term decisions that might be better made from a long-term perspective).
If my lifespan was 300 years instead of maybe 80ish, I like to think I'd be taking a longer term view about what I do today and what I plan for in the future.
At any rate, I don't want to distract you from savoring the gift of your mortality.
I'm just pondering other options...
Death is ingrained in the evolution of the genes of all species to help promote change in an environment of limited resources. Death helps to assures that the next generation of genetic experimentation is NOT born into an environment of depleted resources. Yes, most of us would like to slow or completely eliminate aging. However, before we do, we better solve other problems related to resources (food, housing, etc.); otherwise, we'd eventually get to the point of massive genocides and cannibalism.
I live in such a society, and your considerations are true. But retirement is equally valid and it is definitely considered. Hell, there are LAWS against not caring for your parents in old age.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
If you assume that everyone has equal opportunity, this is true. It is extremely difficult to save for your retirement when you earn very little with no yearly increases (in the same manner as myself), but living costs increase significantly each and every year.
What? I should get a degree and all of my troubles will be over? Done! I just got my degree.... 6 years ago. Science degree, with 15 years experience before it, and two years experience after getting it. Nobody's interested in hiring me - I have a learning disability that nobody bothered investigating until I was in my 20s. I was even beaten up by my parents over low school grades.
So no, we don't all have equal opportunity. Sometimes, just getting by is the best one can do.
If that's the case, it's a disease shared by every single solitary thing that exists. Not just living things, but *EVERYTHING*. Stars get old and die too. you know. And even protons have a half-life, and eventually will each decay into a pion and positron.
Here's another name for it: entropy. Somehow I don't think that any ingenuity is going to overcome that.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Eternal existence seems as daunting as finite existence. "Forever" is an indefinitely long time, and requires out existing a finite universe let alone this planet, solar system, galaxy. Whether we live 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years, ..., billions of years, we will all most likely still have to face the reality of finiteness. Unless of course our self-perception is somehow linked to an infinite existence with an aleph number less than that of the reality we can ever perceive. Then I suppose we could exist "forever" without getting bored (and by bored, I mean experiencing *everything* an infinite number of times over the course of an infinity number of years).
"ooo, I've got this really kewl idea and you're such a hero" - jeez, when are we going to get over the fallacy that just because a geek makes some cool code and makes a hefty stash from it, does not mean the guy has an ounce of fucking intelligence or good sense in any other department? Brin, Bezos, Musk - they all have the same trait of celebrity meddler - and do nothing to help anyone with their 'technology solutionist" mindset.
Maybe we need to remove the words young and old which seem to be distracting and replace them with mature - experienced and immature - inexperienced,
What we need in the world are more emotionally mature experienced people. Because it is the lack of these people which generally make the world a mess.
Unfortunately many people do not mature as they get older, however there is still, on average, a big difference between older and younger folk
Making our society a more emotionally mature, rational, educated, equal and more tolerant society, should be a key aim. This is not helped by people constantly repeating the mistakes of the past through lack of experience .
There are some hard decisions to be made,but really we have to make those decisions anyway, regardless of how long we live.
Arguments about population are pretty much irrelevant as population is already a problem
Arguments about what is natural are pretty much irrelevant, we ceased being in balance with nature when we started widespread agriculture. Now few people leave a natural existence, and even our current population would not support everyone doing that.
Sustainability is as much of an issues no matter how long we live and is tied back to population
So what I am suggesting is that regardless of what we do we have to make all the same tough decisions. The big question is what sort of society do we want to come out of the end of it.
An educationally advanced, emotionally mature, highly experience society, in which we learnt to overcome our differences,would be close to the top of my list. This gives us the best chance to achieve equality, reduce corruption, reduce the race to achieve status within a short life?
Moderators, the parent has the single most insightful and well-written comment in this whole discussion. It summarises the entire case for longevity.
I see this kind of "reasoning" all the time, it's really a hallmark of propaganda.
Drug companies want to make expensive products that they can make enormous profits from. They don't CARE about quality of life issues or longevity AT ALL, and neither does most of the "medical" establishment, which is essentially owned by the drug companies. Throw in the parasitic US insurance industry, and all delusions of anything that resembles efficiency goes out the window.
Look, how many people on the planet is too much/enough ? It's insane to keep up the crazy pace of explosive population growth and at the same time not expect some sort of global catastrophe.
There ARE drugs, nutritional options, and lifestyle choices that indisputably slow/reverse ageing - to an extent. The drugs, for the most part, you are NOT going to have access to within the US medical care system, since by far most of them are not huge profit-makers, and to be frank, most American physicians are so incompetent that they don't even KNOW about them. There are a dozen safe, inexpensive drugs which slow/reverse ageing I can name off the top of my head that you can't get through the US medical system. With some rudimentary digging I could probably list over 50. Your doctor is NEVER going to talk about them with you, much less prescribe them, and I have zero interest in talking about them because it's essentially a crime to do so.
We put doctors on a bullshit pedestal in this country. They are NOT, for the most part, brilliant or "humanitarian" in ANY way; they've gone to an overpriced trade school, for Christ's sakes. They get the bulk of their information from industry. They make most of their money not from offering competent services, but from peddling crap you do not need.
The FDA is NOT your friend, has not done their job for DECADES, and is hopelessly corrupt.
Industry and the media do NOT encourage you to make lifestyle choices that are healthy, because it cuts into their advertisers bottom line.
The dream of a world with a massive population of healthy, productive elderly people is pure fantasy, and a deadly fantasy at that.
This would work for the smarter, more savvy longer lifers but what of the simpleton? Assuming they aren't excluded from this treatment then I would make my guess that they would spend this money on other things. Yes, you can only have so much 'stuff' but what's to stop the average worker bee from needing that hot new electronic every couple years, nice new car, etc etc.
Plus you may have paid off that mortgage at year 50, but now the foundation's cracked, the roof is leaking and you have termites. (As my father used to say - You have two choices, every month you can pay the car dealer or the mechanic.) I know there are numerous, numerous classic homes that are still in great shape, but average Joe doesn't tend to keep good maintenance tabs on his cars and home so I doubt his will be that way. And why should he? It's not leaking on his new 75" TV, so it's fine.
Not to mention that was sort of the woman's 'job' back then. She was expected to 'be fruitful and multiply'. There's more choice now and much less incentive to be a walking uterus in modern society, although it's still slanted towards the ideology that women are damaged in some way if they haven't settled down and popped out a few by their 40s.
Exponential population growth is still happening regardless of lifespans, and genetic evolution will continue as soon as someone figures out how to use something like a retrovirus to make changes to an adult's DNA. I suspect that one of the main psychological reasons for resistance to life extension technology is the fear that you will be expected to stay alive after you are bored with life. Dustin p.s. and there is always the attachment to traditional personality traits/programs which are generally optimized to give short-term competitive advantage at the expense of safety and long term physical and mental health.
Much like the green farming revolution and antibiotics resulted in WAR all of the fucking time!
You say "OR" as if it isn't the rich and privileged getting us into these wars.