27 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

cookie for reference.

 

Anyway. Things seem to be getting serious in the anti-geriatrics business. Or plain old Anti-aging medicing. Google has started their own firm, Calico, for developing it, and a relatively famous biotechnologist by the name Craig Venter(not famous to me, but eh,) who first mapped the human genome and some other revolutionary things I've never heard of,  have started a firm called Human Longevity inc.

 

I've got a few topics that I'd want to broach in here, but I'm still at work so I'll just post this and ask for thoughts and derail the discussion that might have popped up before I reply again. There are many interesting topics here though: Who will get it, how expensive, open source/tightly controlled, population bomb or productivity boost, etc.etc. Also, your personal opinion and will you use it?

[Mathijs]

Ever since I saw the TED talk below, I'm all for anti-aging research.

 

http://www.ted.com/t...can_avoid_aging

 

Yes, there's the matter of population control (though rumours of the earth's overpopulation are greatly exaggerated), and I suppose it will require a paradigm shift in how we view the act of reproduction. Which is fine by me, because I have no intention of having children (if anything, I'd adopt). 

 

I'd like to live for as long as possible because I have this nagging fear that we'll see some major breakthroughs (space exploration, colonialisation of the moon/Mars, cures for major illnesses that still remain, nuclear fusion) right around the time that I'm either dead or too old to know what's going on.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

I agree that living forever might be nice, but someone posted an interesting quote on the article you linked, Mathijs:

 

I think long living humans would stun innovation and development, we have to solve this problem first in that most human beings on reaching "the top" of their game begin to stagnate and even worse I think they start to prevent others from going beyond them. Think of leaders and dynasties, leaders of the all types including scientists that held progress back only death allowed societies to progress. Death as been our best friend our biggest agent of change 
the only time I think it would be good for us to live long life if we become less selfish and self centered and accumulate wisdom over the time that we give to others we live not just for ourselves but for others barring that it would be complete disaster 

 

[Pasidon]

No, no, no... I need people to die faster, not live longer.  We can barely feed what we have now.

[Mathijs]

We can *easily* feed those we have now. We just choose to get rich instead.

[Pasidon]

Well... my point still stands.  

[OmegaBolt]

The reference is surely from the album of my avatar.   Which also obviously a reference.

 

I'd love to see the future of humanity, the universe etc but certainly not really BE the future. The utopian idea of everyone living eternally is a nice one but if only a few have access based on whether they can afford it (more likely the reality) then probably the last deserving would get it. Politicians would likely sell their country to get access to this and then we'd never get rid. Stupid celebrities would do it and never leave the front page. The 'illuminati' like executives of the biggest corporations on Earth that control every resource and all world affairs would become truly invincible. At least evil dies over time.

[Mathijs]

It isn't necessarily about living eternally, just longer.

[OmegaBolt]

I doubt anyone would live forever anyway, you'd still die of disease or we'd end up murdering each other because marriage is until death. Either way bad people in power will live longer and that sucks.

[Gen.Kenobi]

It could be easily done through the biological point of view and I believe we'll see something in the future. Death is a metheod of natural selection. Without death, there's no evolution. Without evolution, life is fragile. Life being fragile we can be easily extinct.

 

If we start to theorizing we can all agree that what Medicine does in a way is to keep people living longer, hence the increase of life expectancy every year.

 

It's only a matter of time.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

It's only a matter of time.

 

 

 

I see what you did there.

 

Personally, I'm still worried about the prospect of eternity because, well, 'when you live forever what do you live for?' What do goals mean when you can do them any day? What can you strive for when you have an infinite amount of time to do them?

[MattTheLegoman]

Do you know how much there is to learn and explore and create? =p

[Pasidon]

What do you live for?  Not dying.  Dying is boring.  Either sit in a chair and stare at your dead friends and children, or be dead and stare at nothing.  Or Jesus.  Whatever you fancy.

[Gen.Kenobi]

Are we humans? Or are we dancers?

[Bart]

I'm all for living, and staying healthy, longer. There's so much to see, visit, do in the world.

[Bart]

Interesting talk. Too bad it was cut short. 

[Pasidon]

Oh.  Was it interesting?  It's sort of predictable what people are thinking with this subject.  "Hope I don't die so I can do / see more stuff."  I'm still looking for a young person who has a nice plan to live until they're about 70-80, then die off.  Nothing special they want in life.  I carry a lantern in the daytime, looking for an honest man.  

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

Really, I think if you can't dream of something special, you don't really get the point. Sure, you can be sceptical of fulfilling that dream, but to have a dream, to aspire to something, is what gives me purpose. I don't think you'll find many who differ.

[Pasidon]

That sounds like an NBC advert.  Dream big dreams then all your dreams will come true. That's decent and all, but young folk don't have to want immortality and the everlasting effects of the Spear of Destiny.  They can hope for a good early death and only have one or less kids.  That's the most noble dream young folks can strive for.  The glow.  The lantern.  The dream.  The big dream.  

[duke_Qa]

Oh hello, forgot about this thread, must be my old age. Cookie to Omegabolt, whom it is only natural got the reference.

Spoiler

 

Ah, there is also a ted-talk called "when I'm 164" from 2011, so this was not a cut & dried question, but the answer was found.

 

I love Iain M Banks Culture novels, a sci-fi series where you follow different people in a super-advanced symbiotic machine/man civilization, where people can in theory live forever but after 3-400 years find life sort of boring and either freeze, digitial-store or auto-euthanize themselves. God-like machines build worlds in weeks with ten times as much living space as earth does and life isn't really challenging, you can do pretty much what you please as long as you don't hurt others, very anarchy-utopian. Anarchy as a system can work once technology gets so advanced there's no lack of resources for anyone.

 

 

On the topic of cultural stagnation if we prolonged life: Would it really stop? It might take a few more years to get something done, but we'd also get brilliant minds that could work for decades on something, finishing lifetime projects instead of having some rambling youths trying to take over a halfway finished project.