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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.'"
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.
That's actually exactly what the world needs the more our society becomes knowledge-oriented. If you could double the active lifespan of a (sane, healthy) individual, you'd get twice the amount of wotk for the same amount of high-school and college man-years. It's simple economy of scale.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
at the same time we're resource bound if people's life spans increased significantly and suddenly and our rate of growth stayed the same we'd starve ourselves in no time.
So much for the theory. And now look around you.
Essentially, it would give 90% of the population more time to waste, nothing else.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And far more people exploiting our natural resources. We're way beyond capacity as it is.
No, we're not.
The doomsayers have been doomsaying for thousands of years, and we've always figured out ways to avoid the doom they're saying. But, hey, if fantasizing about doom makes you feel good, keep on doing it.
This. Imagine the absolutely huge amounts of crappy, useless posts now on ./, and then scale it infinitely. A veritable Ghraham's Number of useless, meaningless ./ posts.
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.
German is a funny language.
In the card game Magic the Gathering, there are cards that do points of damage to players.
In German, the word used translates not to damage, but to "suffering."
As in, "I play a lightning bolt against you. Take three points of SUFFERING!!!!"
Right. Whenever you ponder the advantages of longevity, read my posts and realize that given infinite life, I'll make them forever!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Why is this comment modded up? Suffering from disease, disability and decrepitude on both physical and mental levels is a gift?? Then even being in disease and disability at any age is a gift. Why bother treating them at any age?
Parent comment is so bad it's not even wrong (to word it like Wolfgang Pauli)
That sounds like a good reason to limit reproduction, not a good reason to make me die. I don't recall ever having made you die. What's your beef?
Fortunately, the people who believe death is a gift will rapidly die out, and only us aspiring immortals will be left.
Any couple that has four children is already doing more harm to the population than one person living forever. Should we force-sterilize people at two or three kids per couple?
Yes, it will. The only thing that will 'end our species' is listening to the doomsayers.
But, as I said, if dreaming of global doom gets you off, keep at it.
The opposite is likely more true. For example, Einstein wrote all is great papers in his 20's. It is often said that the only way for science to move forward is for the old scientists to die. If we old farts stick around too long, we'll crush the crazy out-there creativity of the young. There's a reason we age and die: because it is better for the species. We here on slashdot have mostly become experts at something. I'm considered something of a "place and route" guru. Now I'm doing web programming instead! I love doing new stuff, but holy cow! The next generation of programmers need to grow up with this rat-bastard twisted way of accomplishing very little each day. I can hardly stand it. If geeks like us refuse to die, we'll stall this age of incredible progress.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Any couple that has four children is already doing more harm to the population than one person living forever. Should we force-sterilize people at two or three kids per couple?
If only my modpoints would not have expired yesterday.
You, sir, are 100% spot on. I have 1 child, exactly for this reason. We can slice the world population in half within a generation and save the earth, rather than this energy conservation bullshit. There is enough to support 3 billion people.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Actually, if people continue to have the same number of children they do now, and our lifespan doubled (or tripled), we'd have a brief period of doubling or tripling the population, and then the rate of growth would fall back to original levels as people started dying again.
For most longer-living and/or higher educated cultures, the birth rate is already closely tracking the death rate. For those with a shorter lifespan, women are already limited to the number of children they can have in their lifetime, and the number wouldn't change.
Short story: the sooner we expand our lives, the better, as we can sustain doubling the population _now_, but that might not be the case after we travel further along the growth curve.
The opposite is likely more true. For example, Einstein wrote all is great papers in his 20's.
Maybe if Einsteins 20's lasted 100+ years he would have accomplished more.
No, they are parasites. For the term of gestation and for 20 or so years after birth at least.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Population size has always been one of the strongest catalysts for economical and technological progress. Having said that, why do you assume that keeping the population in check while prolonging the active phase of life would be impossible?
Ezekiel 23:20
This comment is modded up by young people who have almost zero exposure to death and disease.
damaged by dogma
If the suddenly lifespan tripled, and people died at the same rate as born, then the population would triple before it would stabilize. If lifespan tripling was also accompanied by our current population growth, then it would much more than triple. And if lifespan tripling also meant reproductive years tripled, then woah, we really have a huge population crisis on hand.
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?
Aging isn't a disease; it's a gift.
I pity the people who can't see this.
While I'm sure there's a lot to mental maturity, what is happening to the body I can't call anything but decay. Loss of sight, loss of hearing, loss of smell, loss of motor function, all sorts of aches and pains, wrinkles, sagging and hair loss there's absolutely nothing there I'd consider physically or aesthetically positive. Some age gracefully but that's just saying they look less shitty than the rest, if I could keep/regain the body of a 20yo I'd take that in a heartbeat. And judging by all the people who desperately try to cling to their youth, I'd wager 99%+ of the population would gladly avoid this "gift".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There is an enormously strong anticorrelation between lifespan and reproduction. Where are birthrates highest? Places like Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, and other such places. Where are they lowest? Places like Japan and Germany, where women both have access to roles in society other than babymakers and where they can expect to live long, healthy lives.
I bet if the average Somali woman could look forward to a century of fulfilling life she'd have fewer kids.
Except people might care a little more if they planned to live that long. We're going to run out of oil in 100 years? In 100 years we'll fry from global warming? Almost everybody alive today will be dead and buried by then, so nobody cares much. Sure a few nice speeches about what we leave our children and grandchildren but if people realistically could live 200 years they'd care a lot more.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, not quite. If we could bring all the nations on the planet down to zero population growth *today*, we'd still be looking at somewhere around a 9 billion person peak mid-century just because of generational lag. If we managed to cut that in half to one child/woman we'd still keep growing for a fair bit - we keep adding new people, and the elders keep living longer.
Current Birth rate: 19 /1000/year = 1.9%
Current Death Rate 8.4/1000/year = 0.84%
Current Net population growth rate = 1.06%
Even if we sterilized everyone tomorrow the death rate is still only .84% - that is a survival rate of 99.16%/year so in fifty years (2+ generations?) the cumulative survival rate would be 0.9916^50 = 0.5, or 3.5 billion people.
If we instead aimed for half of steady-state - a birth rate of 0.84%/2 = 0.42% then the "net survival rate" = 99.58%, for a cumulative 50-year rate of 0.9958^50 = 81%, or 5.7 billion
And just for sanity-checking sake, if we do nothing we get 1.0106^50 = 1.69%, or 11.9 billion people, which is about in line with the worst-case forecasts.
Of course that's just a very rough "back of the napkin" calculation, but I think it illustrates the challenges we face on this front.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
There *is* that axiom:
But the person I'm quoting here is almost a counterexample. Leon Lederman, Nobel laureate and former director of Fermilab, wrote this in his book on particle physics, The God Particle. In his younger years, Lederman discovered some crucial elements of the Standard Model. What's he doing now? Writing books and teaching (even into his nineties), something that to my way of thinking is even more invaluable than his work in the lab. Feynman continued to do good work very late in his career (like figuring out why Challenger blew up). Looking beyond physics, Mozart's best work (the Requiem and the C Minor Mass) was done late in his career, as was (according to one musicologist I know) Brahms'. Rachmaninov was known as a brilliant teacher of piano later in life: I've heard one of his students play, and she is incredible.
There seems to be a pattern of people revolutionizing something or another early in their lives, and teaching and consolidating that revolution later on. I think our world would be more improved if we put more emphasis on the latter, as the dissemination of knowledge is as important for human wellbeing than "having a nonzero count of people who understand concept XYZ". Science needs more Carl Sagans and fewer Isaac Newtons these days, I think (and I say that as someone paid to do fundamental physics research).
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.
We've always had a significant percentage of arable land undeveloped and ways to significantly increase production ... the way out has always been abundantly clear, grow more crops. We still have significant amounts of undeveloped land, but the percentage is much smaller than in Malthus his time and production increases are stalling. They are both going to hit zero at some point.
Also there are additional novel problems like peak water, peak oil, peak fossil fertilizer and peak charity (a lot of countries procreating themselves into the abyss can't feed themselves). In the past feeding the additional masses never really relied on better technology, just better organization and use of existing and already recognized resources ... which might be also still for fertilizer (ie. better recycling of shit) but not so much for oil and water. We absolute need to invent new sources of extremely cheap energy in the future just to replace oil and to power desalination plants ... or we're fucked.
Basically a single solution has always kept the doomsayers at bay ... and that solution is running out of steam.
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.
oh yes! Alzheimers, cancer, osteoporosis, parkinsons, arthritis, macular degeneration, strokes, diabetes are a wonderful gift!
I believe you're making a few unfortunate assumptions here, the biggest one being that people would stay old and frail and "stuck in their ways" if we didn't die of old age, thus preventing further human progress. When we finally solve aging, so that your likelihood of dying no longer correlates to how long you have been alive (and I think it's only a question of time before we do), we will likely be able to rejuvenate ourselves too. That way we can return to a state where people more readily absorb new ideas and information.
Aging is just another thing that kills people, and I'd prefer if there was less dying in the world, regardless of cause. There are legitimate issues with people living until they die in freak accidents (possible overpopulation being the obvious one, if we keep having children), but the "if no one died we'd never get rid of the old bad people" argument always seemed like a case of lack of imagination to me.
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.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
This argument (^) is a strawman created by an idiot.
I have many genetically heritable issues, and I strongly advicate normal, natural death. I am not a 20 something, and I do have health issues.
Death is required. Making death clean and without suffering would be humane and beneficial, but killing death itself is foolish in its most extreme.
Creating strawmen to shove in other people's mouths because you don't like what they are actually saying is delusional and stupid.
(For the record, since I am sure you will ask, despite having no business asking, I have a congenital heart defect, genetically linked soft tissue tumors, blood sugar regulation trouble associated with early type 1 diabetes risk factors, and several other noteworthy things. I consider death essential, and I am glad it exists. Take your strawman and shove it up your ass.)
This is not treehugging or New Age; this is hard science (and if you don't classify evolution as hard science, that's your problem). Not reproducing leaves humanity in a vulnerable state. If a mass extinction event or nuclear war occurs, we'll be left with a demographic that is not very fit for repopulating the earth (even more so if you have their tubes cut, as you put it). Also, if we stop reproducing, we stop evolving. We won't adapt to a slow buildup of toxic gases in the atmosphere in case of a mass extinction event. We won't develop radiation resilience in case of a nuclear war. If an infectious disease evolves that has the potential of wiping out a large percentage of the population, we won't evolve resistance. And even if nothing goes wrong (which I don't think is a realistic assumption in light of history) we won't be getting any smarter. If we ever meet alien civilization, we'll be the dumbasses.
Moving to a slightly more philosophical level, the cycle of life and death, as GP put it, is a necessity. Nature^H^H^H^H^H^HThe universe is not kind on organized matter; everything that comes into existence eventually gets destroyed, whether by attrition or by unfortunate accident. Life has found a clever loophole around this rule: renewal. Kill me all you want, cruel universe, there will always be my wailing offspring staring you in the face.
The sheer, inexpressible horror of the world and destiny left to us by "nature" has stripped it of any say in the matter.
Wow, you really have the spiritual depth of a teaspoon, don't you? Learn to accept the fact that you and everyone around you has to die, learn to enjoy the moments in-between, and to keep things enjoyable for everyone else as well, and maybe you'll feel less unhappy.
They'll just have to compete with me, and my vast experience.
Hahaha you must be a comedian! Good luck getting an IT job if you're 200, oh wait, 50 years old. My wailing offspring will laugh at your inability to cram the popular programming paradigm du jour into your overcrowded brain. Or did you believe your capacity to learn things is limitless? Think of it, there are only so many neurons there...
I think it's more that long life isn't necessary, rather than death being necessary. If you reproduce and raise individuals capable of doing the same, job done. The universe doesn't care. As long as the process sustains itself, it wins evolution.
But we can focus on what is best for the living individuals, rather than just the genes.
We are all God's parents.
You are making an equally dangerous one.
Age related mental decline has been directly associated with increased stresses on ogliodendrocites, which comes about as the number of axonal connections needing care increase.
Using the existing data from these kinds of studies, you can derive a maximum theoretical upper bound on the complexity to longevity coefficient.
The prognosis is not good. You can probably boost the numbers somewhat by introducing genetic modifications to improve cellular health of these vital support cells, and to improve the number of divisions from progenitor cells they can be reasonably derived from, but that intoduces yet more complex problems.
The human brain is simply not constructed in a fashion that is infinitely durable. Even if you solve the hygiene issues with the ogliodendrocytes, you will still run into issues with axonal branching reaching critical capacity, and the individual neurons being unable to cope with new information.
So, either you fix this by making people suffer dementia, and forget things in order to avoid this "post death" era overload, or you end up with vegetables who have siezures. Again, if you go through the trouble of solving the dendrocyte problem.
This is a problem that cannot be solved, while retaining physical humanity.
Sure, you could possibly find a way to liberate a brain from its bony prison, and gently loosen the neural fibers in a nutrient bath, to allow nueronal and axonal migration to continue, but then the patient isn't really human anymore, are they? Congratulations, your immortal person is a giant, energy hungry brain in a tank.
Even then, there are mechanical stress limits from the raw weight related mass of the liberated organ to contend with. Eventually, being displaced in a fluid won't be enough, and the young modulous of the axons inside the bloated mass of tissue will be exceeded, just from the collections own rest weight, resulting in systemic brain damage. You'll have to go into orbit.
And then, you run out of resources, because neural tissue is absurdly energy hungry, (your existing brain consumes a full third of all calories consumed!) And space doesn't exactly have raw material in infinite abundance.
Immortality simply can't work.
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.
It's better for our genes that we reproduce and die, so that they can mix, and so that we can clean out damaged and worn bodies and start from a "fresh" cell once in a while. Scientific progress has nothing to do with it.
A relevant question with regard to science is why it is that breakthroughs often comes from young scientists. What if Einstein would have been able to discover revolutionary things at a higher age if his cells and body hadn't aged? Or perhaps it would just take longer than for a younger person, which wouldn't really matter if we had an eternity to live. As far as I'm concerned, the only science we should really hurry up with is solving the ageing problem and cancer. After that, we might as well step it down a few notches, 'cause then we have all the time in the world.
There's something missing in this discussion - in the event people manage to double/triple human lifetime, this would affect first and foremost developed countries, and those don't have an overpopulation problem.
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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.
There's a reason we age and die: because it is better for the species.
There may be a reason that we age and die, but this certainly isn't it. Evolution just doesn't work that way. Individuals don't die for "the good of the species", they die for "the good of the gene."
I think neural network algorithms give some insight here - they start off very flexible and prone to "leaping to conclusions", but gradually grow more stable, then become so fixed in their ways that they almost completely ignore inputs. If people didn't grow old and die, we'd turn into a society of stodgy, inflexible people lacking dreams and unwilling to compromise over anything. We'd probably end up killing each other over stupid things like Coke vs Pepsi. Aging and dying is the way the species keeps its innovative edge - by systematically eliminating individuals whose neural nets have become too inflexible, so make way for younger people who are willing to try and risk new things.
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.
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.
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.
"we can sustain doubling the population _now_,"
Wrong. We don't even have the logistics in place to feed half of this planet. You think doubling or tripling the lifespan is going to fix that problem? You're sorely mistaken.
Source: I'm a horticultural research director, and I do this globally. You're so off base it's not even funny.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Death is required. Making death clean and without suffering would be humane and beneficial, but killing death itself is foolish in its most extreme.
Personally, I believe that anyone who does not want to live forever is either insane or a liar. The solution is to have something to live for. I don't remember who said it, but to paraphrase, I plan to live forever, and I believe I'm off to a good start.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Yep, you've enumerated another symptom from the disease of aging, but soon we'll be able to make you stupid as 20year old with only a few injections!
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
Typical Pepsi-loving pussy argument.
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.
Aging isn't a disease; it's a gift.
There's two observations to make here. First, a gift is not forced onto another but voluntarily accepted. If aging were a true gift, I'd have taken it back to the store by now.
Second, aging is a pretty horrible thing and I find it odd that someone can't even conceive of the benefits of living even a few more decades in a healthy body. So a horrible burden which is forced onto all of us who live long enough is a "gift". I think it more an abuse of the English language.
I pity the people who can't see this.
I don't. I agree with those people.
I think neural network algorithms give some insight here - they start off very flexible and prone to "leaping to conclusions", but gradually grow more stable, then become so fixed in their ways that they almost completely ignore inputs.
So what do you think is better? Fixing this relatively minor problem? Or letting billions of people die like clockwork.
If people didn't grow old and die, we'd turn into a society of stodgy, inflexible people lacking dreams and unwilling to compromise over anything.
That is a remarkably pessimistic view of yourself and others. Do you really think that you have become inflexible, lost your dreams, and are less willing to compromise as you have grown?
I speak for myself, but as I have grown to better understand myself and the world around me, I have become far more confident and flexible. I have figured out how to steadily improve my condition and that includes improvements to the speed and efficacy with which I learn new subject matter.
I mean to never stop trying new things and taking on new risky endeavors. It's just that with advancing age and knowledge, I can do so with a better chance of success.
The linked abstract clearly states that this is a hypothesised model, and that this may lead to new insights into how to treat the onset of Alzheimers.
Based on this abstract, I doubt that the author of this paper would concur with your wide sweeping conjectures with regards to longevity.
I am a native German speaker and I am quite sure you got that right. Post the actual card text and I will elaborate. Without knowing it, my best guess is that the word is "erleiden" which would be the equivalent of "take" not "damage", the the re-translation would be "suffer three points of damage".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Making an evolutionary argument and invoking mankind's heavy use of resources is a non sequitur. Man has not significantly evolved during the brief period of heavy resource use.
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You are welcome to such a belief, but I hold a different one.
The second law of thermodynamics is just that-- a law. Current observations predict that the universe will die from entropy stemming from unrestrained expansion, and that eventually all protons in the universe will decay.
This means that immortality is fundementally inachievable. The best you can do is fight to stave it off. Much like the carnot equasion showing the maximum possible efficiency for a heat engine, the laws of thermodynamics state the maximum theoretically possible degree of resistance against entropy in the universe you hace put up. If you are truely serious about the effort, you will consume 100% of the non-entropic portion of the energy of the universe to satisfy the attempt. Eternity is a VERY long time.,
Long before then, you will have set about on a genocidal campaign to secure energy sources to sustain your existence at the deficit of other intelligent life. The universe is a big place. We statistically are not alone. Even if we are, another immortal being's existence will radically reduce your own ability to resist the entropic decay of the universe. Eventually, you will fight each other to have the resources and energy the other represents.
The ultimate conclusion of attempting to attain immortality is complete sociopathy.
If you instead say that you only want to extend your life some degree, you still ultimately must accept the inevitability of death. If you are going to do that, why not accept the lifespan you are allready afforded?
Voila-- We have reached my position.
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...