With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent • Hacker News Board

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#201

Post by magduf » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #154

paideic wrote: post #106

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…

Boy, it sure is convenient that our "natural" longevity (whatever that means) is right at the limits of what humans can reasonably enjoy, huh? I suspect you have not spent much time around eg people with dementia, who are well within their “natural longevity” but for some have not “reasonably enjoyed” anything in many years, sometimes decades. Visit a nursing home, and you may find yourself pondering that perhaps med…

>Visit a nursing home, and you may find yourself pondering that perhaps medicine has by and large given us many more years than we know what to do with already.

Instead of that, try visiting some universities where there's still some elderly people working as academics. Or try going to a classic rock concert where guys in their 70s are still playing on stage, sounding just about as good as they did decades before. Obviously, some people don't just give up when they get older, and keep doing the things they enjoy.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#202

Post by magduf » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #148

paideic wrote: post #106

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…

"I could understand the impulse people would have to not extend their lives if that's truly what they wanted, but the almost _cultural_ belief that seeking immortality is Bad and Wrong, something only pursued by cartoon villains and insane emperors ..." I've spent some time thinking about this. Bear with me ... First, let me agree with you that I am flabbergasted by the notion that one would have nothing but ill-use…

>However, I ask you to consider the most liberal and progressive figures of the 18th century

People change over time. My mother is over 80 now, and happily buys all kinds of stuff on Amazon with her laptop or smartphone, even though she said decades ago she didn't see the need for a computer. Her politics are also quite liberal, a lot more so than a lot of 20-somethings I talk to these days who seem to be a bunch of MAGA fans.

Also, how do you know that progressive people from the 18th century would have a problem talking to a divorced woman or women wearing pants? Just because that was the standard of the day doesn't mean that everyone from those times agreed with that.

>progressive people, and their opinions, turn into reactionary conservatives with nothing but the passage of time.

This simply isn't true at all. Many of today's conservatives are quite young, and lots of liberals are quite old. One of the most liberal SCOTUS justices is on her deathbed now, while the youngest one is a Trump appointee.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#203

Post by magduf » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

gnode wrote: post #34

m4r35n357 wrote: post #19

By living longer you are merely stealing resources from those that follow you. You can have immortality or reproduction - choose.

Is there a need for so many new people? I don't see why the current pool of conscious agents can not live longer and reduce the frequency of ultimate personal tragedy. Few people are trying to make the case for shortening life in the interest of having more children, so is there anything special about the current balance to suggest we should not continue to push it further away from this? If ageing becomes something…

More people, as long as we avoid massive overpopulation and resource depletion, should result in more technology. More technology means better resource usage, which enables more people to exist.

There's plenty of room on the planet for more people, but not if everyone wants to live like a suburban American with 2 big SUVs and a McMansion with a huge lawn. If everyone lived like in Tokyo, we wouldn't be so worried about overpopulation. Better technology will also help us create more food without having to take up more land for it. Finally, technology will allow us to push into space and use that for both resource extraction, manufacturing, farming, and living, giving us space only limited by the amount of building material we can gather there.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#204

Post by magduf » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #55

sicariusnoctis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, why not? Then I could study all of mathematics, physics, computer science, or whatnot at my leisure! Right now, I can only experience the smallest of glimpses into incredibly interesting fields.

Ok, so you are assuming that you would be immortal and free to pursue intellectual endeavors forever. This implies that all of your problems would be solved. You would be forever chasing the dopamine hit of understanding more of the fields that interest you. Or you could just shoot heroin. Without mortality or problems to confront, all meaning would be lost. Math, heroin, sex, all the same. Consider the dissolution o…

It's weird how people like you somehow think that immortal people would somehow be immune to gunshots or speeding buses. In reality, you'd have at most 1000 years before you were the victim of some tragic accident or murder.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#205

Post by GuiA » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #201

GuiA wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boy, it sure is convenient that our "natural" longevity (whatever that means) is right at the limits of what humans can reasonably enjoy, huh? I suspect you have not spent much time around eg people with dementia, who are well within their “natural longevity” but for some have not “reasonably enjoyed” anything in many years, sometimes decades. Visit a nursing home, and you may find yourself pondering that perhaps med…

>Visit a nursing home, and you may find yourself pondering that perhaps medicine has by and large given us many more years than we know what to do with already. Instead of that, try visiting some universities where there's still some elderly people working as academics. Or try going to a classic rock concert where guys in their 70s are still playing on stage, sounding just about as good as they did decades before. Ob…

> Obviously, some people don't just give up when they get older

... you understand that declining mental health is not the result of "giving up", right? And that the celebrity academics/rockstars still active at 85 often are 1) reasonably wealthy and 2) lucky.

I've TA'd for 70+ years old professors with declining health who were still teaching because they didn't have a choice and had bills to pay, and it was just sad. Complete waste of time for the students (and tragic for the professors to find themselves in that situation).

Your messages give the sense that you have a very naive/idealistic view of aging.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#206

Post by Shutaru » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #26

corobo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immortality please

I wonder if you would enjoy it as much as you imagine.

I honestly don't know if I would enjoy living forever, but I'd like to give it a try, just in case.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#207

Post by melling » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #198

melling wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are actually on topic! 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 th…

>We need to cure all the cancers, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, etc. No, we really don't. Heart disease is mostly caused by lifestyle. And cancer and the aging process are two sides of the same coin: solve aging and you'll figure out cancer too. Alzheimer's is now appearing to be caused by a virus, so we'll probably have a vaccine for that before long.

What about the people who seem to inherit Alzheimer’s?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03848-4

Plenty of young people get cancer. We also have childhood cancers.

Maybe you should include some references? We haven’t had one effective treatment for alzheimer’s in the past 20 years

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#208

Post by mcv » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #160

acheron wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally opposite here. Running is much better than biking, and also I much prefer excising at home to a gym. Point is: it's a personal preference. Glad you enjoy biking and going to the gym, but both of those sound terrible to me.

I never enjoyed running until I started focusing on my form. Now it's almost meditative. I always thought the only way I'd run is if I were being chased by a predator (or a fucking wasp), but now I run everyday and am totally addicted.

One problem is that when I run, I feel a stab in my guts due to all the bouncing up and down. I'm now trying to develop a running technique that keeps my torso on the same level, but it feels very unnatural.

The only way I can really run is when there's something with one of my kids who's a couple of hundred meters away.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#209

Post by Shutaru » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

I've seen this sort of argument many times before, most notably from Francis Fukuyama. The common thinking on the subject seems to be a deeply inaccurate decoupling of longevity and health.

Yes, we fear death, but we also fear the image of ourselves spending the final years of our lives bedridden and in pain. What we don't seem to understand is that patients in such poor health don't survive very long (despite the inevitable anecdotes about relatives who survived far too long in feeble condition, more a matter of perception than fact).

In other words, unhealthy people tend to have poor longevity.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#210

Post by maxxxxx » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

Shutaru wrote: post #209

I've seen this sort of argument many times before, most notably from Francis Fukuyama. The common thinking on the subject seems to be a deeply inaccurate decoupling of longevity and health. Yes, we fear death, but we also fear the image of ourselves spending the final years of our lives bedridden and in pain. What we don't seem to understand is that patients in such poor health don't survive very long (despite the in…

Especially with dementia you can live a very long time. I have watched this with my dad now for more than 10 years and he may outlive my mom even though his mental capacity is not there anymore.