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Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

theguardian.com

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Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#111

Post by oAlbe »

xefer wrote: post #73
chubot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be pretty interesting if you had more than 3-4 generations at a time (say a generation is 30 years, then 3 x 30 = 90). I think the significance of a generation is as you say: in human terms, it seems the vast majority of your personality and outlook is formed by age 30. If people lived to be 1000 years old, then you would have 33 different generations at once. At the very least, those 33 different generation…

I've always wondered if the average human lifespan is somehow implicitly factored into interest rates. If people lived to 1000+ years old, a small investment made early in life could potentially balloon into incredible wealth given even relatively conservative investments. Obviously political and financial stability could have huge impacts too. I have to imagine multi-century-long held accounts would have an impact

I think the markets will regulate themself as they always do. If (actually, in such scenario it's best to say when) the accounts held for a vastly longer amount of time start to spread, there would be at most an initial impact, but then the markets will stabilize automatically and nothing will by disrupted unrepairably. What now we call "short term investments" will become very very short terms, and so on. There's nothing that will be distructed on this side in my opinion.

What could lead to problems (that is: a not changing social and political situation) would be the adaption of political mechanism for the longer lifespans. For example, now politicians have mandate that last from 3 to 5 years, then there are elections (talking about not totalitary states). Putting this in prospective, with humans having a 1000+ years lifespan, politicians mandate would grow to 50+ years. That's bad, and in my opinion will only lead to deadlocks.

Imagine a nation guided for 50+ years by the same persons. They will start demanding always more power, leading to mostly only totalitary scenarios. Everything will fall apart.

Instead, keeping the actual model could lead to even more variety (that's not the right word in this case, my apologize for it) than what we have now, and there's a reasonable chance that humanity will benefit from this.

Of course, the one described is just one of the worst case scenarios (altought not the worst at all), maybe our brain will change drastically and we will become a complete different thing.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#112

Post by mindcrime »

kirse wrote: post #33
mikeash wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instinct, caused by the fact that our ancestors with such a preference had a better chance of surviving and procreating than other animals without it.

My mistake on deleting my reply. Humans acting on this instinct for survival seems irrational in view of the scientific big picture, does it not? A longer survival nets nothing if the fate of all things (including the memory of those things) is nothingness. What is the payoff if one creature lives 10,000 years instead of 100?

Humans acting on this instinct for survival seems irrational in view of the scientific big picture, does it not?

The fate of everything is nothingness on large enough time scales, at least based on what we currently know. Either the universe as a whole collapses into a singularity and crushes any living beings to death, or it expands forever and dies a cold, barren heat death.

Intelligent life in this universe has a finite shelf life either way, unless we find something badly broken in our current understanding of physics and cosmology.

Life is irrational, there's no real objective basis for anything but nihilism. But I like to go with the philosophy of "the meaning of life is a life of meaning". IOW, as I interpret it, we get to choose what meaning to apply to our own lives. Rationality be damned, we decide what we value and what we live for.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#113

Post by zo1 »

andyrj wrote: post #18
zw123456 wrote: post #8

I too would like to live forever, but one problem I see is that if you just extend peoples physical age but their minds become frozen in time, then all progress stops. It is well known that as people age their neural plasticity degrades and they loose the ability to learn anything new. I have observed this with my Dad who is 84. If people lived to be 1000 but their neural plasticity was gone by 120, we would still ha…

Anything other than your speculation to back up your belief in individuals neural plasticity having anything to do with the social advances you mention? Young people have not had a great record of voting. So those changes you are attributing to neural plasticity are likely brought about by those old frozen minds you mention, and less so the young plyable ones if you ask me. But everyone has a right to an opinion I su…

Just like to add that voting isn't the only means to affecting change in this world.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#114

Post by zo1 »

spopejoy wrote: post #110

Larry Ellison, co-founder of computer company Oracle, told his biographer Mark Wilson. “How can a person be there and then just vanish, just not be there?” Succinct summary of the vapid naivete of zillionaires who can't incorporate death into their "but I've gotten everything else I want" mindset. I applaud the research. But I don't mind a finite life. Death is part of the cycle that has nourished our planet from the…

The world loses something when the sum of all a human's experiences are lost, forever. All that knowledge, experience, comprehension and interpretation of so many events and facts... Gone, in usually an instant.

It seems awfully wasteful, and I sincerely hope some day we overcome it. I believe we will all be better for it.

But sure, let's excuse the topic/problem by blaming it on the "naivete of zillionaires".

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#115

Post by zo1 »

slashnull wrote: post #48
slashnull wrote: post #3

Fortunately, their approach seems to take into account the fact that most people's quality of life degrade very steeply after hitting, say, 70, and aim to augment this "quality" lifespan at the same time as the "total" lifespan. Just ask Scott Adams if he would have wanted his father to live "well beyond 120".

Another important point is that the relation between children, their parents and the society they live in would be changed in ways that are hard to predict. See, the current assumption (or rather, the assumption that socially still stands but that is already shaken by the current lifespan augmentation) is that once a child is an adult, it won't be long before they will eventually see their parents either die (before…

Jobs are not a finite resource. More people = more jobs, and vice-versa. You make it seem like "jobs" just pop into existence, and then the labor force consumes however much of it it finds.

It's as if you can't conceive of the possibility that the two are intertwined and feed off one another in a constant feedback cycle. One method is "no job = no money = not a good idea to have kids = less workers". Another perhaps: "have job = have money = spend money = buy product = job needed to make said product". Or how about: "No job = try open a business"

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#116

Post by spopejoy »

zo1 wrote: post #114
spopejoy wrote: post #110

Larry Ellison, co-founder of computer company Oracle, told his biographer Mark Wilson. “How can a person be there and then just vanish, just not be there?” Succinct summary of the vapid naivete of zillionaires who can't incorporate death into their "but I've gotten everything else I want" mindset. I applaud the research. But I don't mind a finite life. Death is part of the cycle that has nourished our planet from the…

The world loses something when the sum of all a human's experiences are lost, forever. All that knowledge, experience, comprehension and interpretation of so many events and facts... Gone, in usually an instant. It seems awfully wasteful, and I sincerely hope some day we overcome it. I believe we will all be better for it. But sure, let's excuse the topic/problem by blaming it on the "naivete of zillionaires".

I don't see the logic in this.

We exist because other creatures pass away. They must so that we can eat them. Why is it a tragedy when the top predator dies, but not its prey?

It certainly isn't "wasteful". The earth's ecosystems are perfectly efficient in reusing every atom of a perished being.

Otherwise, it's just a fetish for the thoughts in our head, egocentricity. Yes, rich dummies are an easy target, it's likely everybody would sign on if it's available. That doesn't make it noble.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#117

Post by _greim_ »

zw123456 wrote: post #8

I too would like to live forever, but one problem I see is that if you just extend peoples physical age but their minds become frozen in time, then all progress stops. It is well known that as people age their neural plasticity degrades and they loose the ability to learn anything new. I have observed this with my Dad who is 84. If people lived to be 1000 but their neural plasticity was gone by 120, we would still ha…

Let's assume that we did in fact solve every aspect of aging except somehow for neural plasticity, and that this did in fact cause social progress to freeze.

Would you be okay with killing fifty million people per year, perpetually, in order to achieve some ideal vision of social progress? Wouldn't that make you worse than all the evil dictators in history, combined?

I'd argue that this isn't a position we can seriously consider while maintaining our essential humanity.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#118

Post by zo1 »

spopejoy wrote: post #116
zo1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world loses something when the sum of all a human's experiences are lost, forever. All that knowledge, experience, comprehension and interpretation of so many events and facts... Gone, in usually an instant. It seems awfully wasteful, and I sincerely hope some day we overcome it. I believe we will all be better for it. But sure, let's excuse the topic/problem by blaming it on the "naivete of zillionaires".

I don't see the logic in this. We exist because other creatures pass away. They must so that we can eat them. Why is it a tragedy when the top predator dies, but not its prey? It certainly isn't "wasteful". The earth's ecosystems are perfectly efficient in reusing every atom of a perished being. Otherwise, it's just a fetish for the thoughts in our head, egocentricity. Yes, rich dummies are an easy target, it's likel…

>"We exist because other creatures pass away. They must so that we can eat them."

Irrelevant.

>"Why is it a tragedy when the top predator dies, but not its prey?"

Because you're rephrasing to include irrelevancies. It has nothing to do with prey/predator. A life-form spends countless years perfecting knowledge-processing and then has to die.

>"It certainly isn't wasteful"

Information / knowledge gets lost and gets wasted into oblivion. Dictionary definition of wasteful, bud: (of a person, action, or process) using or expending something of value carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.

>"The earth's ecosystems are perfectly efficient in reusing every atom of a perished being."

Let me know when the earth's ecosystems can magically recycle the bits stored on a hard drive that gets thrown out because a component failed. In fact, that is a perfect analogy to what we're discussing. Knowledge is inherently intangible.

>"Otherwise, it's just a fetish for the thoughts in our head, egocentricity."

It's not egocentricity or fetishism to value the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge that could save the world, solve problems.

>"Yes, rich dummies are an easy target, it's likely everybody would sign on if it's available. That doesn't make it noble."

There is nothing noble about waste.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#119

Post by MrQuincle »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #78

And if you thought it was hard to get hired in tech at the age of 50, wait until you try at 100 :-) On a more serious note, it is going to be a huge financial disaster if folks "suddenly" start living to 120. There are many many things which have nominal lifespans "baked in" and if that changes gradually the algorithm can be adjusted gradually but if it changes suddenly, that results in insufficient money collected t…

At some day it will be the case that we start living to 120. The retirement systems around the world, excuse me, the western world, already seem very brittle. I think the only lesson we can take from there is to improve the retirement system starting today. If we have to rely on managers at pension funds w.r.t. changes that are gonna happen, we won't be in a happy place when changes, inevitably, gonna happen. I think that many of the younger people already nowadays start to realize that much of these "promises" are void. If you are saving for yourself, but you trust "retirement advisors", you can just as well put it all in the big pot and cross your fingers.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#120

Post by spopejoy »

zo1 wrote: post #118
spopejoy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the logic in this. We exist because other creatures pass away. They must so that we can eat them. Why is it a tragedy when the top predator dies, but not its prey? It certainly isn't "wasteful". The earth's ecosystems are perfectly efficient in reusing every atom of a perished being. Otherwise, it's just a fetish for the thoughts in our head, egocentricity. Yes, rich dummies are an easy target, it's likel…

>" We exist because other creatures pass away. They must so that we can eat them. " Irrelevant. >" Why is it a tragedy when the top predator dies, but not its prey? " Because you're rephrasing to include irrelevancies. It has nothing to do with prey/predator. A life-form spends countless years perfecting knowledge-processing and then has to die. >" It certainly isn't wasteful " Information / knowledge gets lost and g…

The conclusion of your argument is that nothing less than immortality is acceptable. What's the difference between 70 and 700 years? If anything, the loss should be all the greater at 700 -- losing 700GB hurts way more than 70.

Check it out: I would have loved Charlie Parker to have lived into my lifetime so I could hear him play. Same for Brahms, or even Bach. That doesn't mean that their passing was "wasteful" -- instead it encourages us to celebrate that they ever existed in the first place.

The uniqueness of a human's achievement is not invalidated or "wasted" by their passing.

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