81–90 of 146 posts
As someone who follows life extension research closely: all the lifestyle stuff like "eating less" is useless. You can't rejuvenate an organism by changing the external inputs to its natural processes. It's half-measures at best.
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you'd say I'm rationalizing it, but I do not believe that death is a problem to be solved As I take it, that line of thought (that death is just a problem to be solved and that immortality is something to strive for) leads to solving death just before going on to "solve" childhood. Why do we have to be born ignorant of the world and must "waste" some 20 years learning about it (possibly more) before we can go on to b…
Ok, how about if all efforts are aimed only at eliminating sickness and suffering? If somehow that were possible for all ages would you be for that? Then, since death is not a problem we could just “schedule” it for some reasonable date in the future to retain all the philosophical benefits it brings? You first?
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Lets say as a thought exercise that: it is proved beyond doubt that there is nothing after death. And all life human beings included are just self perpetuating complex biological loops no different than a toy with electricity. Lets also assume immortality is found by some kind of fixing of this biological machine and so defeating death. Is such an existence worth living? You would be no different than a straw on wind…
I already live my life under this understanding. Regardless, I wish to continue experiencing the world for as long as is possible. Could it be that an idea of self-worth tied to a metaphysical immortal soul stems from an attempt towards acceptance of death? What happens if that death is removed from the equation?
Wishing to continue to experience the world is good but lets say if every activity we do, every desire we have, every thought, inhibition, fear, perception can be debugged external and be shown to be deterministic. That would effectively make us code and probably able to run on machines/simulation. In which case, the whole thing at least for me would seem really to be pointless existence. I mean if all our thoughts, desires, perceptions are just code being run by some giant cpu, then well I'm not going to look forward for the execution of more such instructions (:
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Lets say as a thought exercise that: it is proved beyond doubt that there is nothing after death. And all life human beings included are just self perpetuating complex biological loops no different than a toy with electricity. Lets also assume immortality is found by some kind of fixing of this biological machine and so defeating death. Is such an existence worth living? You would be no different than a straw on wind…
You should read Exhalation by Ted Chiang mild spoiler, but it is almost exactly what you're talking about, and a beautiful piece of writing.
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fasting does have something to do with longevity (in mice and other animals). Maybe not in humans but it's certainly a valid line of research
What I'm saying is that it doesn't reverse aging, it merely slows it down , and not by much.
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Overpopulation can be solved while increasing the human population, by eliminating people's environmental footprint. This is a much better way of solving the issue of overpopulation than consciously avoiding solving the problem of aging. A larger population, that sees an acceleration in the rate of per capita human capital accumulation, as a consequence of aging being solved, could also be a huge boon for other lifef…
Why not just conserve nature instead of putting it in a museum? "Solutions" like that make me feel doomed.
It also is not mutually exclusive with preserving Earth's natural habitats. In fact, expanding beyond Earth makes it possible to outsource industry and agriculture off-Earth, to allow more of the Earth's surface to be returned to its pre-human state.
Finally, in terms of human-engineered expansion of habitats for other lifeforms, there is the far more durable possibility of terraformed planets. These would require no active intervention to maintain once the terraforming has been completed.
In short, the ascent of human civilization can be, and I would bet would likely to be, a massively positive development for all forms of Earth-based life.
use verteporfin in combination with wounding. it works, even for hair loss. thank me later.
Peter Thiel once said something along the lines that nobody is against aging research, because in practice what you’re solving for are problems everybody wants cures for, like Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s, etc. I often think about that quote because aging is such an intractably hard problem, we’ve sort of collectively rationalized it as something “good”. You see it in many religious traditions. In the zeitgeist.…
> Peter Thiel once said something along the lines that nobody is against aging research, because in practice what you’re solving for are problems everybody wants cures for, like Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s, etc. > I often think about that quote because aging is such an intractably hard problem, we’ve sort of collectively rationalized it as something “good”. You see it in many religious traditions. In the zeitgei…
The quality of the science has nothing to do with it. Being against aging has the same emotional reaction from people in general as pissing in public. That's not how people would react if their issue was with the science.
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Yeah, I was confused as well. I think the argument is that it's a slippery slope to a different thing, and since the different thing is bad, solving for death is bad too. I don't think that runs.
this is a very shallow reading of the point you correctly appreciate the structural way in which the argument works. but you still do not seem to want to see the underlying subltety; that death and life are merely parts of the same larger entity and that our language (our rationalist analytical way of thinking) makes us "miss the forest for the trees", to focus on life and death as opposing rival forces when in fact…
Why it being part of a larger phenomenon would stop us from preferring to stay on one side of it?
Peter Thiel once said something along the lines that nobody is against aging research, because in practice what you’re solving for are problems everybody wants cures for, like Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s, etc. I often think about that quote because aging is such an intractably hard problem, we’ve sort of collectively rationalized it as something “good”. You see it in many religious traditions. In the zeitgeist.…
Whether you live for a year or a million, our fates are sealed.
There are different theories about the end of the universe such as a heat death or a big collapse. We'll never know with certainty what that end state will be, but that is not something we can escape. (Also, the time frame of these types of cosmic events is incomprehensible to the human mind)
We can and should try to cure all diseases and ailments to ensure everyone has the chance to live as long and healthy as possible. But death is inevitable.