Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 151 posts

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

#131

Post by jqm »

Encosia wrote: post #121
jqm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to hire you? Try getting a job at 62 right now.

A big part of that is employers not wanting to invest in someone who is about to permanently leave the workforce. If the retirement age scaled with lifespan, or adapted along the lines of what landryraccoon suggested, that would probably change. If you went back 200 years from today, most people would probably think it's not even possible that 63% of my generation would be unmarried by age 30.

Part of it might also be that employers may not feel a 62 year old can do what a 32 year old can. (Unmarried at 30 is an unrelated issue.) Are they wrong?

Where are 95 years olds going to work? What are the going to be capable of doing? Uber drivers? They are going to have to fix a bunch of stuff rather than just extend life for this to be feasible. I hope they do that first, and worry about extending life after they have fixed degeneration.

Or we, are going to have to re-arrange our social/economic systems considerably so work isn't such necessity.

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

#132

Post by kaybe »

EGreg wrote: post #41

Well with the plunging birth rates in developed countries, I think this would be feasible. Robots and automation would solve the economic issues of having an inverted pyramid entering the workforce. We would in a sense become long-lived rich eloi. However in pockets of the world which won't use contraception - such as religious states, or poor areas, there will be age-old issue of producing a lot of babies who go and…

I guess there could be religious arguments for not using the life extending medicine, since god didn't make humans with that longer life-span. So if there are arguments against contraception, they could also be used against long life.

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

#133

Post by jqm »

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".

"Gone in an instant".

That's why we have books.

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

#134

Post by adaml_623 »

gus_massa wrote: post #63
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #43

Blood transfusions are old and safe tech. I don't see any reason why you couldn't right now go into a nursing home and begin intensive transfusion therapy and see what happened. in fact, the weird thing here is that only Stanford is doing something like this. Which leads me to believe that one of the real obstacles here is going to be the legalities and logistics of actually testing something and bringing it to marke…

[Ignoring the moral/legal problem ...] One problem is the unknown blood transmitted illness (something like AIDS, or Hepatitis C, some years ago before the blood tests were common). In the normal case, you are in an ER and your options are dying now or a blood transfusion with a low probability of an unknown illness. In this case, you are trying to live for a looong time, and receive a lot of transfusions. Each trans…

[Ignoring the increasing moral problem ...]

If you know the source of your blood transfusions because you're paying someone for it then that problem can be removed

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

#135

Post by crdoconnor »

marincounty wrote: post #92
crdoconnor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People already say that baby boomers have hogged wealth at the expense of their children and younger generations. I haven't investigated those claims in detail but it seems plausible. This generational warfare meme is pushed by, among others, Stan Druckenmiller: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/three-card-monte-gene... You'll note that they push both sides at once. Boomers are told that millenials are feckless…

I'm a boomer, and I just want to state I don't feel 'millennials are feckless and lazy'! I get so tired of every generation looking for fault in the new generation. As a kid--my father never stopped complaining about the Hippies, even though deep down inside he had the same values, but did what society dictated. I always knew he wanted more out of life than going to a job he really didn't like, and putting up with a…

>I get so tired of every generation looking for fault in the new generation.

Well then, inform the ones you know of the how and why they are being manipulated into doing that. Mr Druckenmiller would hate it if everybody turned on him instead of each other.

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

#137

Post by Encosia »

jqm wrote: post #131
Encosia wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of that is employers not wanting to invest in someone who is about to permanently leave the workforce. If the retirement age scaled with lifespan, or adapted along the lines of what landryraccoon suggested, that would probably change. If you went back 200 years from today, most people would probably think it's not even possible that 63% of my generation would be unmarried by age 30.

Part of it might also be that employers may not feel a 62 year old can do what a 32 year old can. (Unmarried at 30 is an unrelated issue.) Are they wrong? Where are 95 years olds going to work? What are the going to be capable of doing? Uber drivers? They are going to have to fix a bunch of stuff rather than just extend life for this to be feasible. I hope they do that first, and worry about extending life after they…

If I understand correctly, the implication is that if science can make us live a thousand years, a 62 year old would be almost every bit as vital as a 32 year old. The life extension would be at a fundamental level, not just keeping older folks on life support for longer.

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

#138

Post by Retra »

ludo150 wrote: post #136

120 but to do what? Sometimes I think it's better to have a short but intense life than a long one and do nothing because you know your life will be long.

You don't know your life will be long. You can die at any time for any stupid reason, no matter what your life expectancy is.

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

#139

Post by Retra »

jqm wrote: post #133
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".

"Gone in an instant". That's why we have books.

And infinite time to write them?

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

#140

Post by Retra »

spopejoy wrote: post #120
zo1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>" 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" -- i…

>it encourages us to celebrate that they ever existed in the first place.

Their existence was already being celebrated while they were alive. You've probably celebrated your own existence several times already.

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

The stuff that is wasted no longer exists for you to measure. You don't know what you've lost because you've never seen it.

Post reply on HN