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Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

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Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#11

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

raugustinus wrote: post #10

What makes people think we want to have them around any longer? To extend life is to decrease it's value. Simple economics tells us it's inflation. edit: I think Neil deGrasse Tyson says it a lot better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM

This makes no sense. Longer productive lifespan means that people can acquire more expert skills and become more proficient at what they do. Or for example switch professions if the economic climate has changed - which will be still much faster than teaching a completely new individual to learn that profession, if there is even a little overlap between them.

I'm not saying that economics should even have any say in making people live longer (I don't think the purpose of life is to make the economy work well, it's the other way around), but even from the point of view of economics, we would want to make everyone live longer.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#12

Post by lxmorj »

raugustinus wrote: post #10

What makes people think we want to have them around any longer? To extend life is to decrease it's value. Simple economics tells us it's inflation. edit: I think Neil deGrasse Tyson says it a lot better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM

The hell are you on about? That’s like trying to minimize healthcare costs by killing all humans.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#13

Post by lm28469 »

guzik wrote: post #5
sanxiyn wrote: post #2

This is a great news. Fighting aging is one of the most important challenge of our time. This is also encouraging: "Gazette: Are there regulatory hurdles? When we've spoken in the past, you've mentioned that the FDA considers aging a natural process and therefore won't approve drugs to treat it. Sinclair: I've been part of a group that talked with the FDA, and they are willing and also quite enthusiastic about consid…

Aging is a disease, there should be no doubt in that. What makes aging unique is that it affects 100% of the population.

That's also the only thing that keeps our population in check.

Let's see how we handle the incoming retirement issues, that'll give us a good indication (less workers, more retired people pretty much everywhere in the west, peaking in the next few decades).

Living long won't help much if it just means more people consuming our limited natural resources and weighting on our social infrastructure. At any rate most country would shift their retirement age accordingly and life would be the same but longer, I fail to see the appeal of that (albeit it's the ultimate realization of our "us vs nature" western mentality)

We should figure how to live well before we try to live longer, and we still have some things we're nowhere close to figure out (energy, pollution, retirement, increasing pop, &c.)

But all of that only applies if everyone has access to this tech, which I doubt. Most likely it will be a "cure" for the rich.

Seems to me that scientists are working toward goals that kind of look nice on paper (curing aging, genetic modifications, &c.) without stopping even one second and thinking about the moral/social/economical consequences down the line.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#14

Post by raugustinus »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #11
raugustinus wrote: post #10

What makes people think we want to have them around any longer? To extend life is to decrease it's value. Simple economics tells us it's inflation. edit: I think Neil deGrasse Tyson says it a lot better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM

This makes no sense. Longer productive lifespan means that people can acquire more expert skills and become more proficient at what they do. Or for example switch professions if the economic climate has changed - which will be still much faster than teaching a completely new individual to learn that profession, if there is even a little overlap between them. I'm not saying that economics should even have any say in m…

From the point of view of economics maybe. Switching professions can be done in a current lifespan and is not done very often. I don't see people changing just because their life is extended. I just don't understand people's fixation on having a longer life. Seems to me people just keep looking at the horizon to bring them what they want and they forget what's right in front of them.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#15

Post by raugustinus »

lxmorj wrote: post #12
raugustinus wrote: post #10

What makes people think we want to have them around any longer? To extend life is to decrease it's value. Simple economics tells us it's inflation. edit: I think Neil deGrasse Tyson says it a lot better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM

The hell are you on about? That’s like trying to minimize healthcare costs by killing all humans.

Hah good one. On the other hand, medical possibilities will be increasing way beyond what we'll be able to afford.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#16

Post by buboard »

raugustinus wrote: post #10

What makes people think we want to have them around any longer? To extend life is to decrease it's value. Simple economics tells us it's inflation. edit: I think Neil deGrasse Tyson says it a lot better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM

"Solving" life is the key if we want to go to the stars.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#17

Post by _iyig »

buboard wrote: post #16
raugustinus wrote: post #10

What makes people think we want to have them around any longer? To extend life is to decrease it's value. Simple economics tells us it's inflation. edit: I think Neil deGrasse Tyson says it a lot better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM

"Solving" life is the key if we want to go to the stars.

Wouldn’t it be easier to send an artificial womb and the necessary freeze-dried ingredients on a thousand-year journey to the stars, instead of grown humans who you’d need to keep fed, watered, and happy?

The real trick then becomes raising babies entirely through automation. Of course, any automatic system up to the task may be smart enough to just colonize the planet itself.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#18

Post by tomp »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #9
netsharc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not climate change? In my mind's model of the future we're going to die within 50 years, this research is useless when the infinitely aged doesn't have clean water to drink.

One of the main connections to longevity people usually miss in this whole "climate change" discussion is one of the main psychological reasons people don't take care of the environment in the first place: and it's arguably their lifespan. Everyone in the west knows that they will die at most ~100 years of age, and if you are basically not in some top percentile morality-wise (and also at that point in your life wher…

No the main psychological reason is that people are bad at rationally assessing risks. E.g. most fear flying more than driving.

Then there's also other (more economical, but you could say that's caused by psychology as well) reasons, such as tragedy of the commons.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#19

Post by winchling »

raugustinus wrote: post #15
lxmorj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hell are you on about? That’s like trying to minimize healthcare costs by killing all humans.

Hah good one. On the other hand, medical possibilities will be increasing way beyond what we'll be able to afford.

Yet it may turn out that performing regular maintenance on the human body is the cheapest way to keep it healthy.

Re: Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

#20

Post by lm28469 »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #9
netsharc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not climate change? In my mind's model of the future we're going to die within 50 years, this research is useless when the infinitely aged doesn't have clean water to drink.

One of the main connections to longevity people usually miss in this whole "climate change" discussion is one of the main psychological reasons people don't take care of the environment in the first place: and it's arguably their lifespan. Everyone in the west knows that they will die at most ~100 years of age, and if you are basically not in some top percentile morality-wise (and also at that point in your life wher…

But that's two sides of the same coin, individualism.

Even if we lived 120 years in average, do you think the game would change a lot, I don't. I don't see drastic changes in young people today, yet they'll most likely be alive in 60-70 years. And for argument's sake, even if it does we still end up with much more people living on the same resource limited planet at the same time.

You can already bump your life expectancy (and end life quality) quite a lot by eating health, exercising, quitting drinking/smoking. Most people don't do it because it's too much effort and "that's not life", again individualism/short sightedness.

We need a cure for laziness / individualism, then, maybe, we can start talking considering longevity.

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