Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare? I don't understand people who want to live forever.
When the supply of something is unlimited, it's value tends to approach zero.
In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
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Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#42What does it really mean to rewind a persons age? Does hair get less gray, does skin get less wrinkly, does cartilage regrow?
This is a good question: > Horvath used four different epigenetic clocks to assess each patient’s biological age, and he found significant reversal for each trial participant in all of the tests. Presumably the "epigenetic clocks" are correlated with age, but it's not clear if changes to the epigenetic clocks causes aging, or aging causes changes to the epigenetic clocks. (Maybe it's both?) Is this like overhauling t…
Exactly. And this is why the FDA won't approve drugs based on changes to biomarker (which is what these "epigenetic clocks" are) unless a direct link between that biomarker and a beneficial outcomes has been proven.
Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#43Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare? I don't understand people who want to live forever.
Since there are people who end their own lives early, i.e. suicides, that position is clearly not unique.
But I think it boils down to where you are in life. No-one would like endless suffering.
As for my own stance on this, i wouldn't want this to happen simply because it will greatly exacerbate the gap between the haves and have-nots, the poor and the well-off. It will completely throw the current social equilibrium out of the window.
And I'm mainly talking about life extension, since i find immortality a foolish/impossible goal.
Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#44Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare? I don't understand people who want to live forever.
HN is the only place where I’ve seen people purpose immortality as a legit goal. I think it’s because of lack of religion. If you are existentially scared of death and you are a techie, it makes sense
Why do you think fear of death is the only thing that motivates them?
Have you considered other motives, like joy of live?
Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#45Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare? I don't understand people who want to live forever.
One thing I rarely see mentioned in regards to living forever is that during a life you will accumulate mental scars.
My wife has lost a sister, and she's witnessed a murder. Neither she nor I are the same after those experiences. I don't think we will ever be.
If we lived forever I think we would all become more and more anxious and excentric as time progressed and our souls inevitably became more "scarred".
Maybe it's a "challenge" that will also be solved - with memory erasure or what not - but it seems like an overlooked issue to me.
Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#46Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare? I don't understand people who want to live forever.
This is at best eternal youth, not resistance to all injuries and illnesses.
We’d all still die at some point — at current rates, even without ageing, 0.1% would die in any given year, though it isn’t clear how that would change long term — we just wouldn’t get age-associated degeneration such as Alzheimer’s and forget the concept of left and how to count past four like my mum did: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/alzheimers/
I don’t know what you’re imagining that makes you see a nightmare.
Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#47Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare? I don't understand people who want to live forever.
> Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare?
Who's talking about immortality anywhere? It would be already great if you could die in great shape, not stuck on a wheelchair for years.
Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#48Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare? I don't understand people who want to live forever.
One thing I rarely see mentioned in regards to living forever is that during a life you will accumulate mental scars. My wife has lost a sister, and she's witnessed a murder. Neither she nor I are the same after those experiences. I don't think we will ever be. If we lived forever I think we would all become more and more anxious and excentric as time progressed and our souls inevitably became more "scarred". Maybe i…
> If we lived forever I think we would all become more and more anxious and excentric as time progressed and our souls inevitably became more "scarred".
Not sure, you could apply the same reasoning to people who go thru active wars: the first time they see someone die, they care, but by the time they see hundreds of people dead it does not matter to them anymore.
Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN is the only place where I’ve seen people purpose immortality as a legit goal. I think it’s because of lack of religion. If you are existentially scared of death and you are a techie, it makes sense
Why do you think fear of death is the only thing that motivates them? Have you considered other motives, like joy of live?
Isn't the joy of life what makes its end scary?
Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’ (2019)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to self-own or anything but I'm religious and lots of religions have a message of immortality for the virtuous, e.g. Christianity, Islam. But our method of achieving it is spiritual, not technical. I think pretty much every normal person fears death right up to the end, unless they're seriously suffering in their body.
I’m a Buddhist and fear of death is one of the first things we work to get rid of
I'm just not interesting in brainwashing myself to be suicidal