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Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

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Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#81

Post by naasking »

HaveCourage wrote: post #51

Summary of pro death arguments re: longevity progress Fairness Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.) Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.) Bad for society Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.) Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant)…

> Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.) [...] Stop having kids

This already happens. The more affluent a country becomes, with its better healthcare, better education, and greater career opportunity, the lower its birthrate. The big crisis in 50 years will be population decline.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#82

Post by copperx »

HaveCourage wrote: post #51

Summary of pro death arguments re: longevity progress Fairness Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.) Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.) Bad for society Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.) Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant)…

So in a few decades there will be two camps: Pro-Death and Pro-Lifers?

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#83

Post by naasking »

ceejayoz wrote: post #55
HaveCourage wrote: post #51

Summary of pro death arguments re: longevity progress Fairness Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.) Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.) Bad for society Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.) Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant)…

> Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.) Virtually every tech starts that way, though. The societal upheaval of rich people getting smartphones a few years earlier is probably not something you can extrapolate to the societal upheaval from "you could live forever but you don't have enough money right now".

> The societal upheaval of rich people getting smartphones a few years earlier is probably not something you can extrapolate to the societal upheaval from "you could live forever but you don't have enough money right now".

I'm not sure that would happen. Consider that they have an eternity to pay it back -- or really, a few hundred years given everyone will likely experience at a fatal accident on such a long timeline. What person couldn't pay back an exceedingly high price on an installment plan lasting a few hundred years?

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#84

Post by naasking »

lisper wrote: post #15
photoJ wrote: post #5

Lets hope so!

Careful what you wish for. Aging and death are woven deeply into the fabric of society, indeed, into the fabric of life itself. Old growth needs to be periodically swept away to make room for new growth. The only logically possible outcome of immortality is that sooner or later the entire biomass of the planet is consumed by immortals, at which point all growth must stop. Imagine being the last person born into such…

> The only logically possible outcome of immortality is that sooner or later the entire biomass of the planet is consumed by immortals, at which point all growth must stop.

Growth is not a discontinuous function, it's continuous. Resources will become scarce, wars will be fought over them thus further slowing the decline, unless of course biomass growth is encouraged. Fortunately, this is quite simple.

We're already growing meat in labs far more efficiently than the natural process, and without the harmful environmental emissions that accompany raising cows.

Your scenario is fear-mongering, and not at all realistic IMO.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#85

Post by naasking »

andrewfelix wrote: post #75
HaveCourage wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A straw man would be more something like "since no one has ever seen how badly immortal societies have gone, no one can say they're bad."

From Wikipedia: "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent." I'm probably what you would describe as 'pro-death'. But I would never have made any of the arguments you listed. I could just as easily frame your positions to suit my argument. For example;…

> For example; 'More people make more progress faster.' (India has not made as large a contribution to modern technology as the USA)

Only if you take the statement as some immutable law and not the intended meaning as a description of a general trend.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#86

Post by naasking »

abakker wrote: post #19
sqeaky wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Any other thing we have invented has generally reduced war by increasing resources available to all, at least since industrialization. There are a few exception, but they were generally intended to be weapons, it seems hard to imagine an aging based weapon.

Reducing aging will likely reduce the resources available to all, by reducing the rate of population decline relative to the growth.

> Reducing aging will likely reduce the resources available to all, by reducing the rate of population decline relative to the growth.

Doubtful. It will also dramatically reduce the birthrate. After all, what's the rush to have kids when you have hundreds of fertile years ahead of you?

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#87

Post by RushAndAPush »

lvs wrote: post #62
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did they use the mice with the progeria gene? Wouldn't the results be more impressive in wild-type mice? Were they just trying to get around the 2-3 year lifespan of a lab mouse faster?

Oh they did, in fact, but the results in WT mice were not as easy to overhype. The effects were extremely minor to nonexistent in aged wild-type animals (Fig S7 from the paper). Unfortunately, press releases and the subsequent news articles -- as usual -- have totally oversold what this paper means.

So what you're saying is that the mice that didn't have their genome edited didn't have a drastic life extension? I assume the improvements only occurred in the mice that had their genomes edited to reduce Yamanaka factors because they then artificially replaced the Yamanaka factors?

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#88

Post by taneq »

lisper wrote: post #15
photoJ wrote: post #5

Lets hope so!

Careful what you wish for. Aging and death are woven deeply into the fabric of society, indeed, into the fabric of life itself. Old growth needs to be periodically swept away to make room for new growth. The only logically possible outcome of immortality is that sooner or later the entire biomass of the planet is consumed by immortals, at which point all growth must stop. Imagine being the last person born into such…

It seems to work alright for lobsters.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#89

Post by developer2 »

Splines wrote: post #73
anigbrowl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fear is motivating me to ask other people to die, as you put it? Eternal life would be sort of cool but I dispute your proposition that more people automatically make more progress faster. More people increases competition which incentivizes some kinds of progress but arguably retards others - consider our lamentable record of environmental destruction. I don't think your aspirations are morally wrong in any way…

> Would you enjoy a book or a movie that never ended? Obviously there's a market for such things based on the continued existence of daytime TV soap operas, but nobody seems to think those shows have much cultural value. There are thousands of things I know I have never done, and likely never will. There are millions of things I don't know I have never done. Don't you have even the tiniest bit of regret of where your…

What makes you think that someone who "can't find the time" to do anything interesting in an 80 year lifespan would accomplish anything with another 100+ years? The majority of the population would still be stuck slaving away for minimum wage for their entire life, regardless of the length of that life. If the key to immortality were to be found as part of a universal enlightenment that completely abolishes the concept of money and power, then maybe something could change. If it's business as usual, with individuals having an incentive to claw their way "above" others, then the concept of immortality is entirely depressing to me.

I'm also not interested in the eventuality of the "treatment" being cheap and available to all. What, are we going to label people as suicidal and mentally ill if they refuse to take the treatment? The "pro-life" agenda would spiral out of control.

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