131–140 of 245 posts
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Try eating dark chocolate with minimal added sugar. It contains fewer calories and if you buy the good stuff it's quite tasty.
Darker chocolate should trend towards being higher in calories, containing proportionally more fat.
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I think the rapid mental and physical decline in your twilight years dissuades most people from wanting to live much longer than that, not some inane moral compulsion to live within our "rightful" lifespan.
That decline is what kills you. If you live longer, it is necessary that this decline be inhibited. Saying you don't want to live longer is basically the same as saying you want to be less healthy.
The experience of helping taking care someone in hospice care makes it very clear that at some point they can't do much of anything, or enjoy much of anything, and prolonging the suffering is not on the agenda of anyone with a heart.
More: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay...
Somewhat off-topic, but I always thought the most prominent real-life reenactment of The Fox and the Grapes was all of the media and thinkpieces that people have written about how living for an extended period of time would be just _awful_. You wouldn't find many people who think that 40 years would be an acceptable lifespan, and most people would probably like to live to 100 if they got there in good health, but as…
Well, the bikeshedding part of the topic.
For some reason, any time we discuss extending human life, it quickly degenerates into an ethical question.
First, I wouldn’t worry about it because we spend more effort discussing ethics than actually trying to solve the problem. Basically, because the problem is so hard we bikeshed on ethics.
Second, it’s a very hard problem. It’s unlikely with the actual amount of effort, that we’ll be able to do much to extend life in the foreseeable future. We need to cure all the cancers, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, etc.
Somewhat off-topic, but I always thought the most prominent real-life reenactment of The Fox and the Grapes was all of the media and thinkpieces that people have written about how living for an extended period of time would be just _awful_. You wouldn't find many people who think that 40 years would be an acceptable lifespan, and most people would probably like to live to 100 if they got there in good health, but as…
Of course, there’s a difference between a few lifetimes and thousands of years or immortality.
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I swear most HN users have some form of orthorexia.
What? I guess you haven't seen normal people then. Compared to HN, normies seem to have "orthorexia" up to ridiculous levels. Hardly a day goes by without hearing a genpop opinion on what I or someone else should eat, or why $whatever-I-just-looked-at will give me cancer - all of it being regurgitated garbage from the magazines and news sites they read, without them realizing that those sources are not science, but e…
Somewhat off-topic, but I always thought the most prominent real-life reenactment of The Fox and the Grapes was all of the media and thinkpieces that people have written about how living for an extended period of time would be just _awful_. You wouldn't find many people who think that 40 years would be an acceptable lifespan, and most people would probably like to live to 100 if they got there in good health, but as…
These are the same people who complain that they would be bored if out of work for too long. I personally have so many personal or passion projects that I would like to undertake, but don’t have the time for, that I’d happily fill a few lifetimes with interesting things to do. Of course, there’s a difference between a few lifetimes and thousands of years or immortality.
That said, people who get bored are difficult to be with in my opinion. Cannot remember that last time being bored. You always have the option to spam your unqualified opinion on HN or something, there is so much potential stuff to do that a lifetime probably wouldn't be enough.
By living longer you are merely stealing resources from those that follow you. You can have immortality or reproduction - choose.
Anyone interested in the idea of living longer (without the detrimental effects of aging) should check out any Aubrey De Grey talk/video/interview.
I'm extremely interested in the topic (as I get older but happen to like living). However some people seem to think De Grey is a bit of a crackpot?
He is the leader who put himself out there and made it possible for all of these mainstream scientists to pursue anti-aging research seriously in the open.
By the way,his theory is still better than a what many of the mainstream scientists propose because he attributes aging to a more comprehensive (and therefore more realistic) set of problems.
Take a look at http://sens.org
Its actually similar to how people claimed Ben Goertzel was a crackpot, just because he was willing to promote AGI research when it wasn't cool. It always takes some 'crackpots' (i.e. leaders) to do something unfashionable before it can become fashionable and accepted.
Notice how this article doesn't mention de Grey. That is another unfortunate social aspect. The true leaders in science often go unacknowledged. Because society operates as a popularity contest, not a meritocracy.
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Or get a gym membership, actually use it and eat less crap. This may only give you a few years, but chances that it'll actually work are much higher.
That's my plan. I've got the gym membership and use it often. I struggle mightily with eating less crap, though. (Especially chocolate.) Food is one of the great pleasures in life, and I haven't found really healthy food to be a good replacement for tasty junk. Maybe advances in food production will bring hope?
It helps a lot to separate preparation from the moment I want to eat something, like cutting and packing an apple in the morning or washing a bunch of berries and carrying them in a jar.