91–100 of 167 posts
Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” -Genesis 6:3
How is this relevant?
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We are fundamentally adapted to the African savanna. Expanding beyond that lush environment needed technology. Even flintstone and animal hides are a technology. Expanding to space needs better technology, but the first step was done when some of our ape-like ancestors bashed an antelope's skull with a rock.
The difference between African Savanna and other places on Earth is minuscule compared to the difference between Earth and Space. Oxygen, Temperature where water is liquid or barely frozen (water is basically rock at -200), Pressurized Environment, abundance of organic material for ingestion. That's true for most of inhabited locations on Earth. I'm not strongly attached to my meat vessel, I think my consciousness de…
But the possibility of terraforming planets or moons cannot be ruled out in the future. We are quite capable of altering environment, actually, even to our detriment (climate change). Maybe we can do it better on Mars or Titan.
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Sorry, but I dont base my worldview on what a bunch of bronze-age people said. It's a good mythological story, though. We have science. -------------------------------- Edit: I really don't understand the downvoters. This specific passage was written 6000 years ago, give or take. It's from a religious holybook that has no bearing on technology, medicine, or science. Germ theory was nonexistent, most forms of medicine…
I get you, HN has a general anti-religious view on things. However, as with any information, bias hurts any analysis (in any form data is presented). A quote is just that, a quote. No matter your beliefs, information is neutral and should be inquired for curiosity purposes in HN, not personal opinion.
In our world, it's trivially easy to get hold of any major religion's works, and only moderately difficult to get hold of smaller religion's works, primarily due to translation issues.
And in light of context, you weren't comparing the writings or showing different religions' thoughts on human longevity - you were implicitly stating that your choice of religion was the right one, by stating it matter-of-factly.
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Median scenario: so you grow up in that world, then go through 2 world wars, a few pandemics, the loss or death of most of your friends and family, gradually disconnect from the rest of society, just so you can see what amazing thing humanity will invent next (spoiler alert: it's more phones and huge cars and maybe a dozen folks living in tunnels on mars), while the forests are ripped out and the oceans boil and natu…
Agreed 100%. I hope that medically assisted suicide becomes more widely legal and acceptable by the time I get towards my end. I didn't ask to be brought into this world and when my body and mind start to really deteriorate, and I can no longer enjoy life the way I want then I'd like to check out on my own terms.
it’s not living 120 or 150 or 200 that matters. it’s the quality of your life. i think working to improve that vs some arbitrary number (that by the time you hit you see death as a release) is what we should target. the term for this is healthspan vs lifespan.
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This is dismissive of gained wisdom over time, and probably the most unapologetic generalization about a group I’ve read recently. My guess is having lots of older voters would make it so people stop falling for the same scams over and over, and are less prone to hysteria. If that were the case, governance should improve dramatically.
Have you heard the phrase “science advances one death at a time”? Older people — not all of them, there are many exceptions, but as a group — are more rigid in their thinking and less open to new ideas. Some of this is due to acquired wisdom, but it is also due to decreased ability to imagine the world any other way.
The referent as it relates to science probably has to do more with corruption, incentives, and careers being built on certain ideas and having pre-existing knowledge rather than anything specifically age-related.
In any case, whatever longevity treatment is applied may actually reverse or reduce whatever part of your claims have some physiological truth. It could mean more wisdom and less curmudgeonry.
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120 years would be a great start. Imagine the world 120 years ago in 1900. The airplane hadn’t been invented. Cars were still a novelty. Special Relativity hadn’t been discovered.
I seriously feel pissed about all the wonders of the future I'll never get to witness. All the things the human race is going to do. All the places it will go. Of course, that's assuming our species doesn't suffer a biotech apocalypse before then.
space and space colonization? really hard with the current tech and even if the tech was there only a few people will get to do that. the costs will be absurdly high and we also have physical constraints that we cannot bypass.
biotech? in the first few waves it’s gonna be a rich person game. money is literally going to buy you more years.
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Sure, it’s just a number. The point is that if we made the effort, there’s likely easy things we can do to extend life beyond 100. Studying Blue Zones, for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone We really haven’t made an effort to study aging. Why do some people live well into their 90’s and appear to be in good health? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Van_Dyke
One thing to be careful with “Blue Zones” is that a lot of blue zones didn’t have that great record keeping, especially 50-100 years ago. Unlike modern developed countries where we have pretty good records of the exact moment of birth for people, in a lot of areas in the past, there could be a lot of guesstimating about the actual age of someone.
To me, that looks pretty damning to the theory that blue zones somehow are good for longevity.
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But most people's account of any national, state, or city history for any event whatsoever cannot beat a quick search on Wikipedia. I'm not sure how much value there is in informal recollections of past events. Have you ever heard a great retelling of history? It always seems to come from those who have invested Serious Effort to master a historical narrative, especially when they work with a community of fellow peer…
Surely the whole of the human experience is, in the end, “informal recollections of past events”? What tells you more about poverty — learning that an individual lives on less than a dollar a day or, say, spending 24 hours without food and shelter? I would argue that the experience of lived history and the “facts” of history cannot be separated, and both must be equally valued.
There are those who do nothing more than collect information on homeless people, documenting them for various organizations or gov't agencies, sometimes paid. They are doing the fundamental work of demonstrating a phenomena whose scale would otherwise be belittled or denied. Some would say SF is actually pretty nice, with only a small homeless population.
When experiences disagree with each other, how should we move forward with discussion? With personal experience or with data?
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I get you, HN has a general anti-religious view on things. However, as with any information, bias hurts any analysis (in any form data is presented). A quote is just that, a quote. No matter your beliefs, information is neutral and should be inquired for curiosity purposes in HN, not personal opinion.
No. That's called bible-thumping. In our world, it's trivially easy to get hold of any major religion's works, and only moderately difficult to get hold of smaller religion's works, primarily due to translation issues. And in light of context, you weren't comparing the writings or showing different religions' thoughts on human longevity - you were implicitly stating that your choice of religion was the right one, by…