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

141–150 of 151 posts

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

#141

Post by spopejoy »

Retra wrote: post #140
spopejoy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a difference between "lost" and "wasted".

Yes, those who pass are lost, and all their precious thoughts and unwritten masterpieces are gone forever. But "wasted"? The definition above says "carelessly, extravagantly, to no purpose". Death is neither "careless" or "extravagant" but simply the inescapable truth that all things must pass. Whether it has a "purpose" is a religious question.

Just because death is terrifying and a total drag, doesn't mean it doesn't have an important role in the totality of our existence. It's part of the picture, reminding us that we're just animals, no matter how bright our shiny toys are.

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

#142

Post by cafebeen »

modeless wrote: post #62
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…

I don't think anyone needs to worry about a hypothetical future where medical science has cured cancer, Alzheimer's, and every other disease, but somehow has failed to restore neuroplasticity. Restoring neuroplasticity is a tiny, easy task compared to all the other breakthroughs needed to reverse or stop aging.

Any evidence to qualify the "tiny, easy task" claim? IIRC, plasticity likely involves interactions of many neurons and is not well understood...

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

#143

Post by jmartinpetersen »

zaphoyd wrote: post #49
jmartinpetersen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where you consider buying a life annuity from a life insurance company if this really concerns you.

How would a dramatic breakthrough in longevity affect the solvency of life insurance/annuity companies?

Generally speaking, there's a decent chance that they wouldn't be able to afford honoring the agreements. I would speculate that what would happen would be up to whatever regulatory body that oversees this. Most actuaries I've met consider life to stop no later than 120, and products reflects this.

You can compare the price of insuring against invalidity as e.g. a 30 year old with the price of a life annuity to see just how expensive it could be.

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

#144

Post by Brakenshire »

ChrisGranger wrote: post #103
biomimic wrote: post #84

If we extend life to 120 it buys us more time to go for 150, then that buys us more time to go for 300 etc.

Yes, this, exactly. I was trying to explain this to a friend the other day. We don't need to "cure death" all at once in order for humanity to achieve practical immortality. It will take significant effort, obviously, but I have no doubt we'll attain it as our understanding of biology gets ever more sophisticated. Whether or not we'll personally be around to see it is another matter.

A good parallel is an escape velocity.

But in practical terms in the here and now it is a nonsense. Life expectancy has been going up 1 year in every ten for a hundred years, and the pace of that increase has not increased.

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

#145

Post by zo1 »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #123
zo1 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Or how about "No ownership of materials = no need for jobs", or at least no need for jobs in the usual sense. It's worth questioning whether possessions like money help us live rewarding lives or whether they hold us back (or both).

I'd say that it would be quite against what most would individuals would want. And if ownership/possession is indeed a natural concept that we as a species have, then you'd probably have to resort to some sort of pervasive government clamp down on instances of it occurring. And that would hardly be a utopia that most proponents of such a concept would make it out to be.

Whether it hold us back in general is not something we could easily answer. You could look at the communist (or any communal ownership concept for that matter) communes and mini-experiments that have been attempted in isolation over the years. As far as I know, they were all failures.

And these communal-ownership ideas can only operate and possibly chug along if they were to operate in complete isolation. Otherwise, free trade (as a black-market if it were banned) would quickly ruin the entire thing. You could argue that free-trade isn't even possible under a system of communal ownership, as there is no private property to trade with.

Back to your initial point about no possessions requiring no jobs. I'm not entirely sure what you're proposing there.

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

#146

Post by zo1 »

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.

You mean that's why we invented many means to persist information past our inevitable fading? Of course, not everyone writes, and not all knowledge can be transferred with books or other tangible media.

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

#147

Post by mikeash »

Gatsky wrote: post #127
mikeash wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the desire to conquer aging couldn't possibly be a simple preference for living over dying.

What kirse is talking about is a real thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

Given his emphasis on religion, and especially the use of the phrase "religion of science," I don't think that's what he was referring to.

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

#148

Post by biomimic »

Brakenshire wrote: post #144
ChrisGranger wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this, exactly. I was trying to explain this to a friend the other day. We don't need to "cure death" all at once in order for humanity to achieve practical immortality. It will take significant effort, obviously, but I have no doubt we'll attain it as our understanding of biology gets ever more sophisticated. Whether or not we'll personally be around to see it is another matter.

A good parallel is an escape velocity. But in practical terms in the here and now it is a nonsense. Life expectancy has been going up 1 year in every ten for a hundred years, and the pace of that increase has not increased.

So were stuck at IQ/EQ too. Not so. We will adapt and thrive throughout the Multiverse as we have done throughout history. We will discover intellect that is greater than ours. Any other thought is a fastrack to suicide in terms of Time/Energy/Light.

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

#149

Post by Retra »

spopejoy wrote: post #141
Retra wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

There's a difference between "lost" and "wasted". Yes, those who pass are lost, and all their precious thoughts and unwritten masterpieces are gone forever. But "wasted"? The definition above says "carelessly, extravagantly, to no purpose". Death is neither "careless" or "extravagant" but simply the inescapable truth that all things must pass. Whether it has a "purpose" is a religious question. Just because death is…

Importance doesn't imply goodness. WW2 was important, but it was still a waste; we didn't learn anything from it that our best people didn't already know.

So what is the point of letting people die? What _reason_ do you have to do it? Some vague appeal to nature/tradition isn't going to cut it.

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

#150

Post by mattmanser »

oAlbe wrote: post #111
xefer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Why would political terms suddenly change because people are living longer?
Post reply on HN