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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

#161

Post by chongli »

jjoe wrote: post #147
sho wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even increase by dozen of years may result in wars and chaos Care to explain? I don't see why humans living on average a dozen years longer would inevitably lead to "wars and chaos" and a breakdown of social order. Indeed, we saw lifespans increase by two dozen in the last 80 or so years and nothing happened at all. The usual arguments about overpopulation don't seem to apply to developed countries; if anything it'…

I can think of a few pertinent cases. With every new generation you get fresh perspectives. Old practices die because generations die with them. Can you imagine slavery practices getting a "lifespan increase." I bet the "cold war" mind set works the same way. You rarely see cold war brought up by much younger folks. It's always an old gen rehash. What about a ruthless dictator like Kim Jong Un getting 12 extra years…

With every new generation you get fresh perspectives.

Who says we can't solve that problem as well? We've already had a bunch of research into psychedelics and countless anecdotes about people who claim drugs like LSD completely changed their outlook on life. I could envision a future where people effectively live forever and continually renew their interest in life with drugs. Selective amnesia, personality-altering drugs -- a new person from the same body!

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

#162

Post by Chestofdraw »

sho wrote: post #140
dandare wrote: post #126

The consequences of longer lifespan to social order are unimaginable. Even increase by dozen of years may result in wars and chaos, especially if the treatment will not be available to everyone. From where I stand it seems that relatively little resources are spent on the research of consequences of longer lifespan compared with the discussions we have about friendly/enemy AI, machines replacing jobs, universal incom…

> Even increase by dozen of years may result in wars and chaos Care to explain? I don't see why humans living on average a dozen years longer would inevitably lead to "wars and chaos" and a breakdown of social order. Indeed, we saw lifespans increase by two dozen in the last 80 or so years and nothing happened at all. The usual arguments about overpopulation don't seem to apply to developed countries; if anything it'…

I don't think it's fair to say nothing happened at all.

Aging populations, coupled with low birth rates, are causing difficult political problems. In my country (UK) pensions are the biggest government expenditure next is healthcare, which the elderly use the most. This obviously has to be paid for so you have two options, raise taxes or increase immigration. Our government chose to increase immigration and a lot of people didn't like that so the government blamed the EU, this went on for a while and brexit was the eventual response.

So the chaos is already here, war might be hyperbole but a war caused by something is not unimaginable and ageing populations would be a contributing factor.

I feel there is an increasing level of bitterness directed towards the old. The government panders to them for easy votes which takes public spending from the young and my gut feeling is having policies that cater for the old is not healthy for the long term success of of a society.

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

#164

Post by Qwertious »

4818 wrote: post #61
pixelbash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given technological progress and human nature I think that might be a temporary or worst case scenario but unlikely to be a long term status quo. What about exploration or just plain old boredom? There might be more radical escapes (VR, brain upload), more extreme sports or more people leaving this planet in search of something else. 1000 years is a long time. Forever is a lot longer than that..

Nobody lives forever even with "anti-aging technology". This universe does not allow for that (black holes, galaxy collisions, stars burn out, meteorite collisions, accidents, war, crime) If you stay on earth you have 4 or 5 billion years. Nevermind the human aspects: 1) having to eat soup forever (teeth won't last that long) 2) marriage is forever (no, not even until death anymore)

I think immortality and living for a few million/billion/trillion years are essentially interchangeable, for all we can appreciate it - I mean, yes we'll die eventually, but nobody thinks a million years ahead. Hell, Most people don't even think 3 years ahead, from what I've seen of elections.

Risk of violent death is mainly an issue because it's not worth investing in - you're going to be die for sure before age 130 currently, why bother with the smidgen of a chance of death by comet when AGING is around? Remove aging-related death and people will put a whole lot more effort into preventing other things.

As for the human aspects:

Replacing teeth should be easy, since we can already do full implants (we just don't bother much, since most people die before their teeth fall out, if they brush/floss properly) and we'll have a long time to figure it out if we really want the normal type.

Marriage isn't forever currently, and I don't see how immortality would change that.

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

#165

Post by conjectures »

chimprich wrote: post #157
caio1982 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed, we saw lifespans increase by two dozen in the last > 80 or so years and nothing happened at all. Please define "nothing" in your sentence. Lots of countries have been dealing with welfare spending recently due to general aging in their population. If we live two dozen more years that means someone will have to pay for those retirements. I don't know where you live but most developed or developing nations ha…

> If we live two dozen more years that means someone will have to pay for those retirements. You're assuming that we'd just extend life rather than slow or partially reverse ageing as the article describes. You would assume that people would work for longer if this was the case. You may even get a "better" (from an economics point of view) ratio of working life to retirement time.

This is important. The demographics issue isn't so much people being old, it's being old and infirm.

If advances give us a healthier old age rather than merely a longer one, then they would alleviate rather than exacerbate the problem.

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

#166

Post by kahoon »

dandare wrote: post #126

The consequences of longer lifespan to social order are unimaginable. Even increase by dozen of years may result in wars and chaos, especially if the treatment will not be available to everyone. From where I stand it seems that relatively little resources are spent on the research of consequences of longer lifespan compared with the discussions we have about friendly/enemy AI, machines replacing jobs, universal incom…

If you get longer lifespan wrong you might get the problems you mentioned.

If you get AI wrong you get the end of the world, possibly not just for humans.

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

#167

Post by mattmanser »

Chestofdraw wrote: post #162
sho wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even increase by dozen of years may result in wars and chaos Care to explain? I don't see why humans living on average a dozen years longer would inevitably lead to "wars and chaos" and a breakdown of social order. Indeed, we saw lifespans increase by two dozen in the last 80 or so years and nothing happened at all. The usual arguments about overpopulation don't seem to apply to developed countries; if anything it'…

I don't think it's fair to say nothing happened at all. Aging populations, coupled with low birth rates, are causing difficult political problems. In my country (UK) pensions are the biggest government expenditure next is healthcare, which the elderly use the most. This obviously has to be paid for so you have two options, raise taxes or increase immigration. Our government chose to increase immigration and a lot of…

The solution is to raise the pension age. Just politically difficult.

Raised pension age vs longer life, fairly obvious choice.

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

#168

Post by Lewton »

knuffelbert wrote: post #149
sho wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even increase by dozen of years may result in wars and chaos Care to explain? I don't see why humans living on average a dozen years longer would inevitably lead to "wars and chaos" and a breakdown of social order. Indeed, we saw lifespans increase by two dozen in the last 80 or so years and nothing happened at all. The usual arguments about overpopulation don't seem to apply to developed countries; if anything it'…

It's worth noting that people getting much older (what the OP is saying) and the increase in life expectancy in the last century (what you mentioned) is quite different as the increase of life expectancy is due to a drastic decrease in child mortality not longer life for those who made it to adulthood. Once you make it to 20 or so, chances are you'll stick around for another 50-60 years even a century ago.

According to this random table[0] I found on the intergoogles, you're technically correct but misrepresenting it with your 50-60 figure.. 100 years ago it was around 50, and now it's around 60.

But finding trustworthy data about life expectancy at age X have been really hard every time I've tried to actually investigate claims regarding longer life expectancy, especially because ideally you'd want to exclude deaths by accidents and certain kinds of diseases (but not all!) to figure out at what rate actual longevity has been improved over the years. So I'm still a little agnostic about the whole thing.

[0] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

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

#169

Post by eranation »

sho wrote: post #140
dandare wrote: post #126

The consequences of longer lifespan to social order are unimaginable. Even increase by dozen of years may result in wars and chaos, especially if the treatment will not be available to everyone. From where I stand it seems that relatively little resources are spent on the research of consequences of longer lifespan compared with the discussions we have about friendly/enemy AI, machines replacing jobs, universal incom…

> Even increase by dozen of years may result in wars and chaos Care to explain? I don't see why humans living on average a dozen years longer would inevitably lead to "wars and chaos" and a breakdown of social order. Indeed, we saw lifespans increase by two dozen in the last 80 or so years and nothing happened at all. The usual arguments about overpopulation don't seem to apply to developed countries; if anything it'…

Increase in lifespan plus decrease in birth rate is the problem. If both grow, you just scale up. But if not, eventually you'll end up with a problem.

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

#170

Post by IanCal »

mattmanser wrote: post #167
Chestofdraw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to say nothing happened at all. Aging populations, coupled with low birth rates, are causing difficult political problems. In my country (UK) pensions are the biggest government expenditure next is healthcare, which the elderly use the most. This obviously has to be paid for so you have two options, raise taxes or increase immigration. Our government chose to increase immigration and a lot of…

The solution is to raise the pension age. Just politically difficult. Raised pension age vs longer life, fairly obvious choice.

This is already a potential social problem with there being a link between deprivation and life expectancy. Increasing the retirement age may result in the poorest likely receiving no pension.
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