NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan • Hacker News Board

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#71

Post by bachback » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

RichardHeart wrote: post #67

I raised $27M for longevity research (SENS.org). Summary of pro death arguments: Fairness Only rich people will get it. (No tech has ever done this.) Better to give money to the poor than science. (family, city, state, nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.) Bad for society Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.) Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew be…

richard, do you think a DAO would be better for this than traditional non-for profit organisation? notably newlimit is a for-profit. given the aubrey de grey was ousted from sens in suspicious way after the capital injection, its time to rethink traditional legal entities for this kind of work?

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#72

Post by supercon » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #69

supercon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me this statement is a logical conclusion to the thought experiment ”imagine if everyone lived forever”. But I realize maybe for some it isn’t, so lets categorize this as an opinion.

Well there's probably no version of everyone living forever. Societies will still fail. Natural disasters will still happen, not to mention wars and terrorism. Functionally there'll still be an end-date for most "human" lives. But there's plenty of meaning to be found in 10,000 or 100,000 years of life, without disease and death lurking around the corner every day.

Sure. I’m not saying death is the sole provider of meaning, but still a major one, no matter how far we push it. As long as an inevitable end exists, we will adjust our life and actions with it.

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#73

Post by buran77 » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

libertine wrote: post #34

xvector wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people sharing your opinion that stopping aging is selfish/immoral. People share this opinion until they're on their deathbed. If offered a pill to be restored to youthful longevity in that moment, most people would give up everything and endure just about anything for a mere chance at it. People are remarkably shortsighted and don't take the time to comprehend what the horror at the end of the tunnel will really f…

>If offered a pill to be restored to youthful longevity in that moment The only enticing thing of that pill would be if you'd retain all your memories and material possessions, because let's say you had to compromise that: - You get a pill but your memory will be wiped; - The cost of the pill would be so high you'd lose all your material possessions; What would be the difference between that and dying?

People would still take the deal because it gives them the hope that they can somehow avoid the biggest, most unavoidable, irreversible unknown: death.

And for a billionaire the second choice is a no-brainer. They lose all the material possessions but still have all the knowledge, experiences and relationships that would allow them to easily get back in the saddle.

On the other hand for a person living day-to-day trying to make ends meet the idea of "enjoying" some more years of the same may not be as thrilling as it is for a millionaire. Sure, nobody wants to die, leave family and loved ones but at some point they may want an out. Some lives are hard or become unpleasant enough to feel like a never ending punishment, like extending a life sentence in prison.

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#74

Post by hungryforcodes » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

cheschire wrote: post #36

hungryforcodes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No if we lived to a 1000 years, almost all of our problems here would be solved -- as people would finally take responsibility for their futures.

The dystopian take on this being that longevity will always be gated, limiting it to the wealthy. They would continue to externalize the actions as being the result of lesser people. The way the wealthy will take responsibility is by taking up the mantle of human zookeeper, restricting lesser people's locations and movements. Just look at where the toll roads are near you, it's already happening. Then the negative ac…

Ok. But why would mass production of longevity treatment not be affordable. Maybe you live in the US -- this is pretty much the only place where the price of medicine and medical treatment is obscene.

If longevity comes -- it will be affordable for $1000 once a year for as long as you like in some other part of the world. Or if you live in any other Western country, part of your universal medical plan.

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#75

Post by rwmj » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

supercon wrote: post #39

Mixed feelings. On one hand I can imagine situations where longetivity and its development might really be useful, for example when (if ever) we enter the human space travel era, where the human lifespan will eventually start to factor in. On the other, its hard to not consider the deeper meaning of such pursuits. After all, death is what gives life meaning and pushing it further raises lots of possible negatives e.g…

The real problem is that it will even further empower the gerontocracy. Imagine older people accumulating more and more wealth and being an ever larger voting bloc. Now you could imagine a world in which lifespan is extended and these issues are also resolved and we don't get stasis where nothing can be built and huge inequality, but it's unlikely to happen in a democracy.

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#76

Post by LNSY » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

I'll take any opportunity to post this William S. Burroughs essay: https://introcritsfai.blogspot.com/2015/03/immortality-by-wi...

Only Burroughs could truly capture the ghastly consequences.

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#77

Post by justsomeuser » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

shafyy wrote: post #3

There is something dystopian, childish, naive, desperate, arrogant, sad and tragic about billionaires founding and funding longevity companies and projects. They think that they've got it all, but deep down there's still this gaping hole of meaninglessness. They can control evertything. Everything but death. If only they can find a way to live longer, maybe even a way to never die of natural causes, everything will b…

How do you know what their inner thoughts and motives are?

Unless they explicitly communicate this, you are just guessing.

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#78

Post by cheschire » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

hungryforcodes wrote: post #74

cheschire wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dystopian take on this being that longevity will always be gated, limiting it to the wealthy. They would continue to externalize the actions as being the result of lesser people. The way the wealthy will take responsibility is by taking up the mantle of human zookeeper, restricting lesser people's locations and movements. Just look at where the toll roads are near you, it's already happening. Then the negative ac…

Ok. But why would mass production of longevity treatment not be affordable. Maybe you live in the US -- this is pretty much the only place where the price of medicine and medical treatment is obscene. If longevity comes -- it will be affordable for $1000 once a year for as long as you like in some other part of the world. Or if you live in any other Western country, part of your universal medical plan.

Thanks, I updated my post. Gatekeeping comes in many forms, not just price.

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#79

Post by RichardHeart » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

bachback wrote: post #71

RichardHeart wrote: post #67

I raised $27M for longevity research (SENS.org). Summary of pro death arguments: Fairness Only rich people will get it. (No tech has ever done this.) Better to give money to the poor than science. (family, city, state, nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.) Bad for society Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.) Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew be…

richard, do you think a DAO would be better for this than traditional non-for profit organisation? notably newlimit is a for-profit. given the aubrey de grey was ousted from sens in suspicious way after the capital injection, its time to rethink traditional legal entities for this kind of work?

Registered charities get special tax treatment. Tangentially, profit is sustainability.

Re: NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan

#80

Post by dav_Oz » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

If I look around me - and I'm more at the bottom, at grassheight relative to billionaires and UHNWI in general on skyscrapers - I see a host of other immediate "longevity issues".

For one there is a substantial amount of people just trying get by and being like 50/50 on the choice of rather being dead already or trying to get through somehow 'till the next day, ad infinitum: from depressives who are stuck in a loop of ever growing void of meaningless in "wealthy" countries to factory workers serving as means to an end kept away from "jumping to termination" by saftey nets. And of course those infamous 10% in absolute poverty which nowadays is more like a definition game by statisticians sponsored by the World Bank showing steady progress since the 1800s.

From a psychological point of view it becomes exponentially difficult to not have an inflated ego with more and more wealth. If I would win the lottery today my ordinary psyche would not be able to process it adequately, I would inevitably grossly overestimate my contribution to it, we are simply not finetuned to handle gigantic orders of probabilites. So it comes off as a childish thing for most of us mere mortals trying to overcome your "lifetime" limitations without taking into account your environment the "soil of decaying and growing matter" in a biosphere going around an unimaginable ball of pure "fuel" in its dimension and age seperated by a vastness of nothingness in between.

At some point in the "success-intoxicated" linear chase of an ever increasing personal "lifetime" I would speculate that one would reach a critical point, a no point of return in which the sense of the self would ultimatley shatter, your (biographical) memories become obliterated beyond "recognition", so just another death-life cycle we are seeing and studying already in all life around us.

So, I would appreciate the more sober tone of just improving life in general like addressing immediate, mundane and unspectcular things like e.g. the wealth gap instead of playing on the reptilians chords of our brains by searching the "cure of aging" which kind of gives off a vibe of an coke head.