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We will be able to live to 1,000

news.bbc.co.uk

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Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#141

Post by ubernostrum »

FlorinAndrei wrote: post #104
ubernostrum wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always preferred the idea of immortality on the installment plan -- get frozen/stored/whatever, then woken up every couple hundred or couple thousand years, do stuff, go back into freeze/storage/whatever. Which, at least for me, is less about avoiding death (which doesn't actually scare me all that much) and more about just getting to see what sort of cool stuff the future holds.

You will live in a perpetual state of cultural shock. You can't possibly be useful to the society in that situation.

Meh. If the technology existed to do that, society would have to find ways to cope with it anyway.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#142

Post by sliverstorm »

The article claims that to suggest we should NOT defeat aging is ageism and denying people the right to live.

I disagree. Until we find a way to support a population that grows at a rate like that, we would be forced into one of several possible situations, none of which are pleasant:

1: starvation

2: endless war

3: iron-fisted birth regulation, only allowing one new child per legally documented death

3.5: The implications of couples who really want children + a rule saying they can have one, if someone has died

Until the question of resources is answered, granting people the right to live (longer) equates to denying other people either quality of life (starvation/war) or the chance to live at all (birth regulation). Which brings up another interesting question; if everyone alive has a right to life, do those who have not yet been born have a right to live as well?

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#143

Post by mitjak »

crystalis wrote: post #116
mitjak wrote: post #115

Where do I donate to ensure I don't live till 1,000? Nuclear weapon research?

I understand you might not want to live that long, but why would you want to take that away from others?

Because the world is already overpopulated and we don't currently have any means to spread our virus to a different planet.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#144

Post by sliverstorm »

sliverstorm wrote: post #142

The article claims that to suggest we should NOT defeat aging is ageism and denying people the right to live. I disagree. Until we find a way to support a population that grows at a rate like that, we would be forced into one of several possible situations, none of which are pleasant: 1: starvation 2: endless war 3: iron-fisted birth regulation, only allowing one new child per legally documented death 3.5: The implic…

I'm not saying we shouldn't extend our lifespans- I would love to live to see a lot of things come to pass, like leaving our own galaxy- but to blindly proclaim anyone who opposes the goal is ageist is to ignore that the benefits have costs, especially considering we already have population issues looming on the horizon.

Call me utilitarian and get pissed that I might stand in your way of living forever, but we have to consider the bigger picture.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#145

Post by electromagnetic »

philwelch wrote: post #135
JulianMorrison wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sounds like a crackpot when his theories are misrepresented. He's not saying "here's how I'll make you live to 1000". He's saying "If we solve this list of things, medical science will be able to give you on maybe another 30 healthy years of lifespan - and by doing this I can convince the world that ageing is so important, we will use those 30 years figuring out how to give you the next 30, and so on". Edit: for w…

As it is, your expected lifespan is based largely on a finite clock, so any fatal risk factors are of limited value--if your odds of dying in a car crash are 1/1000/yr that barely affects your life expectancy, and if your odds of birth control failing are 1/100 you can go your entire fertile lifespan (30-40 years) without expecting to conceive. If you get rid of aging (and other time-clock issues like menopause, thou…

Perfect use of the COCP lands your odd of getting pregnant at 0.3% in a year. However typical use lands you at about 8% (condom is 10-18% of typical use) risk, meaning you're doing good if you get a decade without getting pregnant (on average).

An indefinite lifespan will change the world ridiculously, however you're completely ignoring human nature. Those who take risks tend to be the ones who reproduce the most, and assuming fertility remains sustainable throughout life, those risk-averse will be quickly out bred. However, even considering the considered longevity of frozen sperm and embryos (women can still carry a child post-menopausal through egg donation - incidentally same odds as a younger woman).

You're considering risk aversion as the winner, when in reality it will be those who procreate frequently. If a couple produces 2 kids roughly every 20 years, that's 100 children they will produce meaning the risk averse will have to last 100,000 years just to match the genes of those who reproduce if their offspring never reproduce. Assuming a predisposition to reproducing at 20 (I've known all too many people with 4-generations of teenage mothers in their family, so it's certainly not an absurd prospect) and each two children produce two children in 20 years, you'd hit 1 peta-offspring by the 1000 year mark.

Your risk-averse would be marginally existent, similar to a dust mite next to an elephant. Their effect on society would be negligible to none existent. Compound interest has got nothing on exponential birthrates vs death rates.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#146

Post by tansey »

smallblacksun wrote: post #125
tansey wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about how much more efficient and productive an economy could be if the oldest members didn't have to retire due to old age? More poignant to the current recession-- imagine how much better things would be now if people who lived through the great depression were still around (in large numbers) and running for office.

Think about how impossible it would be for the young to get a job if they had to compete against people who had been doing a job for 50, 100, 500 years.

How many jobs actually exist for more than 100 years?

Also, just like we've seen in the last 200 years, people's education requirements would continue to grow. If you live to 1000, maybe the first 50 years of your life are spent as a student.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#147

Post by electromagnetic »

MikeCapone wrote: post #109
s3graham wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If my parent stays around and eats all my food, I'm carrying bad genes that cause me to die pre-reproduction.

That would be the case, and what I said up-thread was badly formulated. But it still remains that in the way things happened, aging is evolutionary neglect. We've evolved repair mechanisms that help us pass our genes, and also parents who take care of their children (since it takes quite a while for a human child to become self-sufficient), but through most of history, humans died pretty young and so we never had tim…

I'm sorry, cite your evidence please. Humans have never 'died young', it's complete bullshit, our life expectancy has changed not our longevity. Genghis Khan died at 65 in 1227. Julius Caesar was murdered at 56 years old in perfect health in 44BC. Augustus died at 77 in 14AD. Ramesses The Great is believed to have died between 90-93 years old, in 1213BC.

I'm sorry, that's 3000+ years where we know our longevity hasn't changed, especially considering all of these men entered warfare. People living to 100 with all their mental and physical strength is rare, however people living to their 60's is not and has never been.

Our genes evolved to fight childhood diseases and injuries, so that those who make it through have the potential to live well into their 60's without a problem. Incidentally, those who get sick less frequently in childhood tend to have a longer lifespan as is. However the whole notion that humans only lived till 30 is absurd, because it's simply not true for any of recorded history. Yes it was the average, however that was under a very different culture.

Ramesses II successor was his 13th son, who lived to his early 80's. Many of his other children either died very early or died through injury or mid-life disease. His first born for instance died from a blow to the head in his 40's.

Please, don't confuse life expectancy and longevity, the two are vastly different. The former has changed drastically, the latter hasn't. Regardless of whether we avoid disease today or 3000 years ago, we'll likely hit 90 years before dying of old age 'naturally' (IE from a lack of longevity).

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#148

Post by philwelch »

electromagnetic wrote: post #145
philwelch wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it is, your expected lifespan is based largely on a finite clock, so any fatal risk factors are of limited value--if your odds of dying in a car crash are 1/1000/yr that barely affects your life expectancy, and if your odds of birth control failing are 1/100 you can go your entire fertile lifespan (30-40 years) without expecting to conceive. If you get rid of aging (and other time-clock issues like menopause, thou…

Perfect use of the COCP lands your odd of getting pregnant at 0.3% in a year. However typical use lands you at about 8% (condom is 10-18% of typical use) risk, meaning you're doing good if you get a decade without getting pregnant (on average). An indefinite lifespan will change the world ridiculously, however you're completely ignoring human nature. Those who take risks tend to be the ones who reproduce the most, an…

I think you're making a lot of big assumptions. First, the combination of indefinite lifespan, indefinite fertility, and high reproduction rates (which is necessary for your scenario) would cause rapid overpopulation. You have to give up at least one of those.

Second, there's no necessary reason fecundity should be related to risk aversity.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#149

Post by sesqu »

ugh wrote: post #121
danielford wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's complicated. My criticism of Aubrey de Grey is one I have of transhumanism in general, which is that it's mostly CS people taking Moore's law and applying it to biological problems without having any experience in biology. Aubrey de Grey's degrees are not in the life sciences, and to my knowledge he's never been directly engaged in a biological research project. Those of us who have done aging research underst…

Aging certainly is a natural process. So is Aids. I always assumed that a disease can be both and most of time is both. I don’t even know whether it makes sense to define disease with the help of a term like “natural”. I would define a disease as something which harms people (i.e. curtailing their cognitive or physical abilities) or kills them. Then I exclude a bunch of stuff which has traditionally not been called d…

Well, unless you exclude it, and it's pretty biased not to. I think you need a better definition.

1913 Webster has: 1. Lack of ease 2. An alteration in the state of the body or of some of its organs, interrupting or disturbing the performance of the vital functions, and causing or threatening pain and weakness

Now that does fit aging.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#150

Post by borisk »

reasonattlm wrote: post #99
jules wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the results of his research or related research? How much money does he think he'll need to meet his goal?

You might look at the mitochondrial work which recently focused on Corral-Debrinski's lab as the most likely prospect for getting the job done. A brief outline is at the end of this page: http://www.sens.org/sens-research/research-themes/mitosens and you can look at Corral-Debrinski's breakthrough here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18771762 Basically it's now shown possible to move a mitochondrial gene into the…

In humans, mitochondria have at least 615 distinct genes. Interestingly how these guys decided only 13 of them are important.
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