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We will be able to live to 1,000

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Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#121

Post by ugh »

danielford wrote: post #102
jules wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before donating you should ask yourself whether Aubrey de Grey is a crackpot or not. I'm not sure myself. Can somebody shed some light on this?

That's complicated. My criticism of Aubrey de Grey is one I have of transhumanism in general, which is that it's mostly CS people taking Moore's law and applying it to biological problems without having any experience in biology. Aubrey de Grey's degrees are not in the life sciences, and to my knowledge he's never been directly engaged in a biological research project. Those of us who have done aging research underst…

Aging certainly is a natural process. So is Aids. I always assumed that a disease can be both and most of time is both. I don’t even know whether it makes sense to define disease with the help of a term like “natural”.

I would define a disease as something which harms people (i.e. curtailing their cognitive or physical abilities) or kills them. Then I exclude a bunch of stuff which has traditionally not been called disease (like accidents, murder, suicide, etc.). Using that definition aging is most definitely a disease.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#122

Post by jacquesm »

sketerpot wrote: post #83
rauljara wrote: post #18

When my intro to genetics teacher in college explained to us how aging in cells worked, he told us that one of his professors had explained to him that a "cure" for aging was about 10 years away. But that had been more than ten years earlier. My professor said that he had recently talked to that same professor again. The new ETA: about 10 years. This is one of those problems that seems easy to solve in principle, but…

And there's the beauty of Aubrey de Gray's plan: it's not about finding a Cure for Aging. It's about finding a number of techniques that will allow us to extend people's life-spans long enough to find out how to extend their life-spans more, which will give more time for research, and so on. It's a much more realistic approach than "finding a way around aging," which is how the problem is usually miscast.

And Achilles never really overtook the hare right ?

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#123

Post by jacquesm »

tyree731 wrote: post #51
gte910h wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of life expectancy gains though are for the area south of 70. Much of SENS research hold's promise for the area north of 70. That's what's exciting. Especially if that we can live a healthy older age, even if it's not any longer. (Truthfully, some cancer research benefits older people, as cancer has a much higher incidence as you age, however, much research out there is for middle of life diseases). If my grandm…

That is sort of what I'm getting at I guess. We haven't progressed much further than what was possible thousands of years ago.

What has happened is that the bell curve has shifted (a little bit) to the right.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#124

Post by crystalis »

joubert wrote: post #119
crystalis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've simply asserted that, though. I own my own body, does that mean nobody should be able to say I'm not allowed to, say, defecate? What if I'm positioned directly above them? Simply being able to do something doesn't make it a right. (I, and nobody else, own my car. I.e., nobody should be able to say I'm not allowed to max out the speedometer?)

You're not allowed to think that way. The committee decided.

So are you saying you're just trolling...?

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#125

Post by smallblacksun »

tansey wrote: post #81
mechanical_fish wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

prolonging the useful life of the workforce is a big worry Not in my world. The world where we are at the tail end of the largest recession in two or three generations, with danger of double-dip; we have lots and lots of surplus productive capacity, productivity just keeps going up, and unemployment is between 10% and 25% in the US depending on how you count it.

Think about how much more efficient and productive an economy could be if the oldest members didn't have to retire due to old age? More poignant to the current recession-- imagine how much better things would be now if people who lived through the great depression were still around (in large numbers) and running for office.

Think about how impossible it would be for the young to get a job if they had to compete against people who had been doing a job for 50, 100, 500 years.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#126

Post by smallblacksun »

sgk284 wrote: post #19
rmorrison wrote: post #4

I don't see how humanity could handle something like mass distribution of a magic treatment that allowed people to live to 1,000. The world would quickly get over crowded, resources would dry up, world wars would follow, and who knows what else.

Eh... humanity will always find a way. We've done pretty good so far. If nothing else, spending a few years flying to mars seems a lot more reasonable when you've got 1,000 to spare. Space colonization is one solution to overpopulation.

The problem is that we have no evidence that any planet/moon/etc. that we have discovered can support the level of ecosystem required for humans on that planet to be self-sufficient.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#127

Post by tome »

jules wrote: post #11
MikeCapone wrote: post #2

We might or might not defeat the diseases of aging anytime soon, but if you want to help the people who are trying to make it happen, consider donating to the SENS Foundation (money goes directly to research): http://www.sens.org/ Sadly, because aging isn't considered a disease by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, there is actually very little research being done on it if you take into consideration the fact that…

Before donating you should ask yourself whether Aubrey de Grey is a crackpot or not. I'm not sure myself. Can somebody shed some light on this?

You should also carefully consider the ethical implications of extending human life indefinitely.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#128

Post by smallblacksun »

crystalis wrote: post #91
JustinSeriously wrote: post #49

Someone smarter than me noted that all predictions of living forever always have one thing in common: it places the time when people start living forever within the lifetime of the predictor. Aubrey de Grey is 43, and he's predicting that this might be in place in 20 years.

Could you care to point out the number of correct predictions that take place well after the point of time they were made?

A number of Da Vinci's "inventions" were really just predictions of things that were invented much later (like his helicopter).

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#129

Post by crystalis »

smallblacksun wrote: post #128
crystalis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you care to point out the number of correct predictions that take place well after the point of time they were made?

A number of Da Vinci's "inventions" were really just predictions of things that were invented much later (like his helicopter).

I think that's setting a low bar for "prediction" next to dated predictions like "In the next x years, we will be able to extend human lifespan by y years every z years."

I don't know that anyone can reasonably object to the theoretical possibility that an individual human life could be sustained indefinitely.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#130

Post by asdflkj »

tome wrote: post #127
jules wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before donating you should ask yourself whether Aubrey de Grey is a crackpot or not. I'm not sure myself. Can somebody shed some light on this?

You should also carefully consider the ethical implications of extending human life indefinitely.

You should first consider ethical implications of being able to cure aging-caused diseases, and choosing not to do so.
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