Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree to an extent, but the matter involved on this planet is finite, the added entropy it can handle is finite. Our power consumption is growing exponentially and that has to stop at some point or we will just cook. We will find new resources like clean fusion energy, but that won't let us sink more heat. We worried about food back in the 70s but then we got better at agriculture, except it isn't sustainable what…
> We worried about food back in the 70s but then we got better at agriculture, except it isn't sustainable what we do to boost the yields, the soil is getting used up. We can do better, but there are simply limits, and with no deaths we will find them much sooner. See but when you're saying this and mention expanding off earth in the next sentence - why do we need soil to produce food ? Or plants even ? Even now ther…
Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
141–146 of 146 posts
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That means no change. This presupposes people cannot change, which you haven't supported sufficiently with your argument.
Let's not forget that one old wanker is presumably responsible for the ongoing bloodshed and travesty in Ukraine
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I was confused as well. I think the argument is that it's a slippery slope to a different thing, and since the different thing is bad, solving for death is bad too. I don't think that runs.
this is a very shallow reading of the point you correctly appreciate the structural way in which the argument works. but you still do not seem to want to see the underlying subltety; that death and life are merely parts of the same larger entity and that our language (our rationalist analytical way of thinking) makes us "miss the forest for the trees", to focus on life and death as opposing rival forces when in fact…
And since I'm on the side of thinking we can appeal to analytic concepts to distinguish between health problems that emerge in old age and "solving" childhood with horrific consequences, and you are on the side of seeing them as the same because those distinctions are trapped in strictures of analytic thinking, I imagine that you give your full blown acceptance a pandora's box of outrageous situations. Genocide? Eugenics? Letting global warming happen? Letting war happen? Nuclear bombs? All just the flip side of life, part of a greater dialectic that unites them, and ultimately all fine and good.
Since you reject separating out good and bad cases according to any reading that would have structure, I trust that you embrace this slippery slope just as much as the one you want to attribute to the project of combating health issues in old age.
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is a very shallow reading of the point you correctly appreciate the structural way in which the argument works. but you still do not seem to want to see the underlying subltety; that death and life are merely parts of the same larger entity and that our language (our rationalist analytical way of thinking) makes us "miss the forest for the trees", to focus on life and death as opposing rival forces when in fact…
There's probably an analogue argument for diseases and I'd still rather live in the universe where poliomyelitis was eradicated than one where it wasn't. Why it being part of a larger phenomenon would stop us from preferring to stay on one side of it?
In most of the universe things are just dead, and stay dead, and aren't part of any process of transformation where death transforms into life. If anything, the "process" of things dying can be part of a downward spiral of more death, and life can be part of an upward spiral that begets more life, and there's all kinds of pertinent details that separate those circumstances.
Life probably started here by underwater volcanoes, and started feedback loops that bloomed more life, and on and on. Meanwhile, most places stay dead and don't become anything.
It's just so frustrating to step into conversations about saving someone's life so they can live to see their great granddaughter's birthday and have someone say we shouldn't because they'd rather play games with metaphysics.
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's probably an analogue argument for diseases and I'd still rather live in the universe where poliomyelitis was eradicated than one where it wasn't. Why it being part of a larger phenomenon would stop us from preferring to stay on one side of it?
I would also say that we probably should reject the idea that there's a yin-yang give and take where one is the flip side of the other. So far as we can tell, most of the universe, heck most of earth just isn't alive; most things just live on the surface. In most of the universe things are just dead, and stay dead, and aren't part of any process of transformation where death transforms into life. If anything, the "pr…
IMO it's rather annoying how the argument usually goes "well, there might be some bigger quasi-mythical reason for things being like that" but they just don't provide any good reason for betting on that metaphysics.
They've decided it's how things should be and often will pull unknowable arguments for it.
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The investing strategy for longevity companies is probably 49/50 have -90% returns but the you can't miss the one that actually achieves something.
If you have 50 stocks equally weighted: - 49 stock -90% - 1 stock 10x Final portofolio is (0.1 * 49 + 10 * 1)/50 = 0.29 or -71%