Your Body Wasn’t Built To Last: A Lesson From Human Mortality Rates (2012)
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I'm pretty sure there ain't nothing you can do about this. Why not? Because evolution built it pretty strongly into our genes. Here's how I see it: if an organism arose which had this "death gene" turned off, it would not adapt to sudden changes in the environment. It might be susceptible to a novel infectious agent which wipes out the whole species. Thus evolution tends to weed out immortal or very long-lived organisms.
Don't forget how natural selection works. It's not single creatures that adapt; it's about whole species. The only way for a species to adapt is for some of its individuals to die and be replaced by their offspring which differ genetically from their parents.
Evolution needs death to work. Hence death is built-in.
Look at this scary graph (with a logarithmic y axis!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_o...
and then tell me that medical advances will do anything to make you live to 200. Go on, I dare ya.
The interesting thing is that apples don't "spring true" from seed. In other words, an tree that bears sweet apples will almost certainly have seeds that lack the gene for sweetness. Apple trees grown from seed will certainly bear crab apples. They are sour, and are only good for fermenting and making alcoholic apple cider. Settlers were certainly happy to have crab apples, because cider is fun and easy to make. But they certainly didn't eat those apples.
If you want sweet apples, you have to use grafting: if you are lucky enough to get a tree with sweet apples, you will probably immortalize it, but taking cuttings from its branches, and grafting them onto ordinary crab-apple root stock. The part of the tree above ground will be genetically different from the part below. If the root stock nears death, you'll take cuttings from the part above ground and graft them onto new roots.
This is all very nice, but it sidesteps evolution: you've created an immortal organism, which won't be able to fight off insects, fungus, and bacteria that attack apples, and which are constantly evolving to overcome a plant's defenses. Since the tree can't generate new chemicals that kill or repel these attackers, humans have to invent fungicides and insecticides to do it for them. That's why apple farming relies so heavily on spraying scary chemicals on the trees.
Any war you declare on time and change is a war you will lose.
Evolution doesn't work on whole species. Or even individuals. It works on genes. If there is a gene that prolongs the life of an animal by 10 years, and it has 1.5x more babies in that time, then that gene will spread itself 1.5x more than the alternative genes. It doesn't matter if it's detrimental to the species in the long run. Lots of genes are.
Sure evolution needs death to work, but that's a very different claim than saying it selects for death.
It's certainly possible to defeat aging. There are a number of animals that don't age at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligible_senescence
Medical advances could definitely make you live to 200. We are very close to the ability to grow organs, and eventually entire bodies. Even if your body ages, you could just replace it. That would extend your life a ton on it's own. Add new brain tissue over time as the old stuff dies, and rejuvenate it a bunch with young blood (which has been shown to improve old brains a lot.)
Or you could get cryopreserved and wait until the really distant future, when have nanotechnology and gene editing and who knows what.
1) Negligible senescence occurs mostly in organisms radically-different from humans and we have no idea how to edit those pathways into humans or if those pathways actually hold any value to humans. Hydra cells still die but the organism itself doesn't age. If you want to apply a gene-level anti-senescence therapy to an organism, you have to transfect the traits correctly into every cell of the organism--trillions of opportunities for catastrophic failure.
2) Gene editing probably has downstream cascades that we can't foresee.
3) Organ transplants become more risky with age, and the mortality risk from anesthesia does as well. If you were to replace your body, your brain would necessarily be the same age--and since we can't fix the (conjectured) senescence pathways in a living organism, you'd eventually be a senile individual in a young body. There's some neuroregenerative therapies that hold promise, but any "regenerative cell therapy" could also be read as "may create proliferative tumors"
4) Cryopreservation of a living organism is assumed to kill it, or at least alter it radically enough that its original functions will never be restored. Reconstructive nanotechnology is probably impossible due to heat dissipation and brownian motion--you'd have to hope that somehow a human scientist figures out how to engineer a new class of cell that is capable of navigating and repairing all extant human cells, which is more-or-less Clarke's Law.
We are not here forever. Oxygen metabolism literally rusts our bodies over time, disrupting and destroying countless pathways. Aging and death was part of the mitochondrial bargain. Tortoises have been evolving against the bargain's drawbacks for longer than humans have been around, and they still aren't immortal.
If we get to the point where we can edit genes, we could do it intelligently. Certainly better than random mutations and selection over tens of thousands of years.
Organ transplants are not trivial, but it's possible we could improve surgery and anesthesia, as opposed to curing aging directly.
a) I did mention that this wasn't a cure for aging, just a life extension. You've eliminated basically all the diseases that occur below the head and this would extend your life a ton.
b) It's been shown that younger blood rejuvenates brain tissue a lot: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2014/05/infusion-of-y... And cancer from regenerative therapies wouldn't be as much of an issue if you are in a younger body with a fully functioning immune system. It's also possible we will eventually be able to tweak the parameters of the immune system to help with that cause.
c) You can slowly add in younger brain tissue as older stuff dies. There was a study where they replaced all of the glial cells in living mice with human glial cells, just by injecting them with stem cells: http://www.medicaldaily.com/bringing-human-brain-mice-glial-... But you can also add new neurons over time too as the old ones die. This isn't as bad as it sounds. The new neurons would learn the patterns in the old neurons. Memories are highly distributed in the brain - you can cut out half of your brain and still function normally and remember everything. Most of your memories and personality would persist even as you replace your entire brain.
Cryopreservation is believed to preserve most of the information in the brain. The connectome is definitely preserved. Information contained within the cells is probably preserved at such cold temperatures, if it's even necessary. In the future it's very likely they will have the technology necessary to reconstruct a brain from this information. Reviving the brain tissue itself might even be possible because of how much is preserved, and how advanced technology might be.
You could replace small parts of the brain with new parts piece by piece over time and maintain a continuous consciousness so a sense of self is kept. Whether it'd be really _you_ at the end of full replacement is up for debate.
Are you Nick Lane ? Or were you just reading Nick Lane ?
Please say you're Nick Lane ...
There are very good ways to model how that works, see for example reliability theory [1].
There is little difference at this level of modeling between a human and a car. It is just a complex system of redundant components subject to breakage. If you repair it well it enough it has an indefinite mean time to failure.
The important thing to appreciate about medicine is that no present medicine does anything to repair damage. All advances in medicine and related technologies relevant to control over disease that have led to longer lives across the board have only modestly slowed accumulation of damage. Slowing damage accumulation more deliberately or via engineering metabolism is very hard and the best of approaches can't beat the outcomes of exercise or calorie restriction, they aren't moving the needle any further. I don't expect them to, either.
Fortunately, there is the alternative approach of repair, with the outcome of indefinite healthy life spans for sufficiently comprehensive repair.
The future is one in which the root cause damage is periodically repaired. Lines of research related to SENS for example, such as senescent cell clearance. Other than some forms of stem cell replacement, there are no implementations of damage repair today, but that will change very rapidly once things get going.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_theory_of_aging_an...
Also technology allows us to do many things that aren't allowed for by our evolution, like flying to the Moon. Evolution isn't an all-powerful force but something that works strictly through variation and selection. If we find the physical process that cause aging and how to stop them then there's nothing evolution can do to stop us.
Suppose you've overcome infant mortality, and have also solved the problem of adult mortality, so all subsequent people are immortal. Suppose moreover that young adults insist on having more than zero children (that's likely to continue, you'll agree). Now you've got a population that won't stop growing. Resources are finite, and there will be mass starvation.
What are your options in such a scenario? Should you kill off old people, kill off young people, or prevent all future babies?
Suppose you prevent all future babies. Then you end up with no more sex, no more genetic variability, and now the whole species might be susceptible to a sudden environmental change.
So my argument is that old people must die to make room for genetically-different young people. Without natural death, there will be less room for evolutionary adaptation.
Essentially, the problem is already here, and the solution is more people working on it, which preventing people from losing their ability to function would significantly contribute to.
So here's a last and final argument for such a countdown timer: there are no immortal species in nature. That's more of an "existence proof" than a "constructive proof", but it does strongly argue that there is a reason why death is necessary (without providing the reason, for I can't think of one that will persuade you).
There are actually a few immortal or extremely long-lived species in nature. Evolution still acts upon them because there are other selection forces at work, like not being eaten by predators.
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Someone once asked Freud, "what stands between fear and sex?"
Freud replied, "ah... yes, that's a very interesting question: between vier and sechs stands funf!"
In that example, if your individuals live for 100 years and you have a 1-year reproduction cycle, each year only 1% of your population is new.
Consider the possibility that creatures with longer avg. lifespans must have longer development time until reproduction. This will affect the average lifetime of reproducing individuals -- so it's an example of longer lifetimes implying slower evolution. In other words, I'm thinking it might be a sort of necessary correlation.
Yes, but life duration is an equation. The main component of that equation is parasite load.
> Here's how I see it: if an organism arose which had this "death gene" turned off, it would not adapt to sudden changes in the environment.
It's not about sudden changes. Those almost never happen. It's about the Red Queen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis
Parasites are constantly shuffling their genes, so we must as well, to resist them.
So going back to our equation ... life duration is directly correlated to parasite load. Tons of viruses/bacteria/etc. trying to kill you, death gene tweaks the lifespan into the low numbers to decrease the duration between variation to adapt to the parasites. Almost no parasites? You live for thousands of years. And there are creatures on this planet that do. They have few/no predators or parasites that ail them.
Want to increase humanity's life span? Kill off all the parasites. Your death gene will adapt over time and increase the lifespan.
I don't think the death gene works that way. It doesn't just turn on and poof! you're dead at the exact time specified.
More like a factor that controls average life span, which would result in an exponentially rising death rate.
Recent research suggests it's something in the blood.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/04/can-we-revers...
> If you have bacteria in your bloodstream you're already in septic shock, infections can't explain, say, heart disease or most types of cancer.
Those disorders may be caused by parasites, we simply don't know.
But even if they aren't ... they simply wouldn't be a part of the equation.
I'm not saying this "death gene" determines lifespan absolutely. It determines it on average. Other shit can still go wrong. Like a lion might eat you.
Why do chimps (and many other species) keep on reproducing in old age? Why are human women different?
Some mutation in early histroy maybe? Evolution never cared to fix it, because it happens later in life and most woman are done with reproducing at this point in life.
>"nature just wants you to reproduce and then die"
No. Nature just wants you to reproduce. Wheter you die afterward doesnt matter.
Instead, life length is a tradeoff that is made at the individual level. A longer life means more opportunities to reproduce (or help your offspring), but it also means that you have to set a higher limit for the number of divisions each cell can make, which can decrease cancer resistance. A slower metabolism will produce fewer harmful byproducts, but give you less energy than a fast-burning metabolism. And so on.
Longer life makes more sense for more intelligent organisms, since they can be more effective when they're older due to what they have learned. Often, they need teach the young, which can have relatively long gestation times. But an organism's lifespan is always going to be oriented around its reproductive cycle.
With all that being said, humans are very clever and I wouldn't be surprised if ways were found around human mortality eventually. I can't help thinking of all the "humans were never meant to fly" arguments that people used to pooh-pooh heavier than air flight in the old days. There's no fundamental reason why life extension couldn't be done except time and effort. But I am not as optimistic as Kurzweil about the timeframe (who is?)
I would argue that is not the case, as in the long run there will be some event that puts humanity at existential risk.
Better then to self direct our own evolution to something that is more robust.
I find these discussions funny because so many of the tech crowd are big advocates of terraforming mars or some other such "insurance" for humanity's survival - yet very few say, instead of keeping the fragile human as the future model, lets change the model and transform what was human biology into something more durable. That's not to say we have the answer as to how to do that, but it's at least a better eon level goal.
Modeling past behavior is not going to accurately predict future behavior. The model suggests that older people are steadily losing some quantity of a finite resource that acts as a protectant against otherwise fatal conditions. Replenishing that resource would therefore allow some people to move backwards on the age-mortality curve, effectively transforming the super-exponential curve into an exponential curve. That would make your probability of living to 160 years after your treatments begin around 90%, rather than an iota more than 0% (assuming average 1/1500 annual mortality rate).
That gives you a lot more time to find and eliminate the individual risk factors which contribute to various causes of mortality.
Recent research has found very old individuals whose entire red blood supply is likely to be derived from a single hematopoietic stem cell. Other research has demonstrated regular transfusions of whole blood from younger donors into older recipients as improving specific age-related health conditions. (See also [0],[1].)
That old sci-fi trope about people cloning themselves for the spare parts will eventually become reality, except the clones will be harvested at 18 days old from an artificial growth medium instead of after 16 years in a secret island facility. Some nations will ban the practice under political pressure from religions, and it will just move to the black market.
What's really going to close the door on clinical immortality is economics and politics, not medical science.
[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4021776/
[1] http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v13/n5/full/nri3433.html
Your prediction is right, but you've expressed the conclusion wrong: thus long-lived organisms are unlikely to persist, i.e. removing a single "death gene" only allows you to experience one of the many other forms of death. The species is never at risk because any potential cause of death is always present.
I believe that the current hypothesis is essentially that evolution does not need you around longer than it takes to produce and raise healthy offspring, and furthermore, it does not need you to reproduce beyond prime years when your offspring are likely to be healthiest. So genes having these effects are not selected for; furthermore because most genes have side-effects (e.g. sickle-cell anemia), they are likely selected against.
>Look at this scary graph (with a logarithmic y axis!):
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_o....
>and then tell me that medical advances will do anything to make you live to 200
I wouldn't be surprised if we reach 150. "Medical advances" is a broadly-defined category. Indefinite extension is rather unlikely in the foreseeable future, though.
I see your point. On the other hand, why are there so many ways to die when you grow old? If one form of death doesn't get you, whey are there so many built-in mechanisms for death, in each of us? Why does your body betray you without fail, eventually?
Why do mayflies die so young, just after they reproduce? Perhaps evolution has no need of them after they reproduce, but that's not how it looks like to me, in the case of mayflies. It is one thing to say that there is no advantage to living after reproduction, and another to say that you MUST die after reproduction. It is perfectly conceivable to imagine post-reproductive mayflies surviving for many years.
Heck, post-reproductive humans survive again as long after the end of fertility.
> Indefinite extension is rather unlikely in the foreseeable future, though
I agree with you there. That was pretty much my point all along. And I was trying to put forth a rational argument for WHY I think that, but I can't come up with a totally convincing explanation.
Maybe one day, we will be able to turn this "death gene" off. What happens then?
If a novel infectious disease pops up, sure it will cause widespread death, but it's highly unlikely it will cause the death of the species. We'll either save a few of us in some deep underground bunker, or we'll figure out how to beat it. That's really the only Earth-based threat that can still threaten the species as a whole.
Evolution operates on a scale of decades and centuries. Human ingenuity operates on much shorter time scales. We don't fall under natural selection anymore. We are the ones who select now. We don't need some of us to die for us to adapt. We can adapt to every single biome and environmental condition on Earth without waiting for genetic variation to produce individuals who can. Evolution may need death to work, but we no longer need evolution for us to work.
I think our most serious earth based threat is us. Nuclear war, engineered diseases, or (imho most likely) destruction of the environment.
The description of a process in the past that we refer to as evolution could be argued to have benefited from death.
Mutation happens anyway. Offspring happens anyway. It does not require death. You could say that death is good because it frees resources for the younger generations—but there is a hidden assumption there: that at some point, there has been some preceding form that did have a vastly longer lifespan and it was less viable because of that.
In reality, we have evolved from very, very short-lived organisms, and the trend has been upwards as benefits of those long-surviving members (wisdom, experience, etc. beyond merely bearing offspring) have given an advantage to the survival of species.
…
However, none of that is actually necessary for the evolution of a species in the sense of a mechanism that reacts or proacts to environmental changes—it can just as well be artificial.
> "People declared the Human Genome Project a failure halfway through, when one percent had been decoded -- they said it'd take 700 years. My reaction was, no, we're almost done. It was finished seven years later."
Personally, I think Kurzweil is an optimist and I suspect it'll be too late for most of us, but we are just beginning to learn to rewire our genes. Take a look at this link, and notice how many significant events happened in the last fifteen years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy#History
Now, imagine that level of change accelerating, because we're still in the early days.
In my opinion this not just applies to the species as whole but to individuals, too: Old people tend to become set in their ways.
It's not overpopulation but this very issue that's the most evident problem with extreme longevity or immortality: As soon as a significant amount of people will be able to live forever, change and human development will likely cease to exist in the long run. Perhaps this can be delayed by not just rejuvenating the body but at the same time also preventing the biochemical processes that lead to fossilization of thinking but in the end this might be unavoidable and ultimately lead to the extinction of the human race due to sheer boredom.
We have opposing problems approaching though. As our fields of knowledge grow ever deeper, our investment in education in each individual grows and their productive years grow fewer.
With a fixed lifespan, there is a fixed amount of education you can invest in a person. That will either limit our development of science, math, etc or it will force us ever further down the road of abstraction piled on top of abstraction.
Also, can it be said that the older Steve was more set in his ways than when he was younger? His example argues against characterizing old people in that way. Mind you, he's just one data point.
Besides, 56 certainly isn't old age, especially nowadays and even more so when your daily activity involves thinking about new product ideas that have the potential to change the world.
Wouldn't it be, "evolution needs birth to work"? Death only helps evolution insomuch as it helps birth. Death often does help birth because old genes aren't hanging around using up all the resources and preventing the birth of new genes.
This will probably be solved eventually, although it may only work for new organisms created from genetically engineered DNA.
Bear in mind how new our understanding of how life works really is. The role of DNA wasn't understood at all until 1953. DNA manipulation is still at the "hack and see what works" level; designing and editing DNA from first principles is not yet here.
The only way this statement has basis in fact is if you're talking about lifespans that are less than 80-100 years. Clearly there are large technological and social influences on early termination of life.
But there's pretty much no basis for asserting technological influence on the other end of the spectrum.
If this hasn't been the result of social and technological factors, what has caused it?
[0] http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2013/01/07...
You say that as if we have anything aside from the past that we can use to make predictions.
Like if you were watching the development of the space program you could make a prediction about when we'd get to the moon, without just looking at the historical top speed of airplanes we'd built before.
Of course, some correlations and patterns are much stronger than others, and we can be more confident in the predictions they yield.
So really the fallacy is about using too weak a model to predict the future.
Exponential decay is sharp, but an exponential within an exponential is so sharp that I can say with 99.999999% certainty that no human will ever live to the age of 130. (Ignoring, of course, the upward shift in the lifetime distribution that will result from future medical advances)
"... they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years." https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Genesis%206%3A3
... with the longest living person in modern times documented as being 122 yrs, 164 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
Seth lives to be 912 years of age. (Gensis 5:8 )
Enosh lived to be 905 years of age. (Gensis 5:11)
Reu had a son at 32 then lived another 207 years living to be 239 years of age. (Gensis 11:20-21)
Abraham lived to be 175 years of age (Gensis 25:7)
I did always find it interesting that it happens to be about right though. But of course it's easy to just record who lived to be the oldest.
We've made lots of progress on stuff that kills us early, but I can't think of anything that makes our bodies actually last longer.
I think a lot of actual real-life wheelchair-bound humans would object to your presumption of what they want to do.
I presumed nothing. Have you ever experienced sciatica or back pain from herniated discs so intense you piss yourself? When even breathing hurts?
If you are able to zing happily along in your Rascal Scooter and ignore the pain, my hat is off to you.
There's a lot of chicken counting going on when the future is discussed. We have very effective pain medicines right now that many people can't have because of their potential for abuse.
I wouldn't count on anything until you see actual meds on the market that some group of "We Know What's Best For You" people hasn't declared evil.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150831001112.ht...
Specifically, I don't think "aging", which is really a root cause of other things which cause us to die counts. If the problems aging causes could be reversed or cured, then aging no longer would cause death.
That's why I said "some evidence" not "strong evidence", we haven't proven that there is an unavoidable hard limit, but a) we have no evidence that there isn't and b) we know of several mechanisms that look like they may be hard limits.
Note: I may have come across a bit sharply in my prior comment, but my intent was literally to just ask for the evidence you were referring to and supply criteria I thought needed to apply.
It's not the same as curing something that kills people early.
http://seniorhealth.about.com/od/deathanddying/tp/cause_deat...
Exactly. We need to do the latter, rather than just treating the symptoms. Aging is not untreatable, it's just hard. But it's by far the most worthwhile, because fixing it would fix so many other problems at once.
"Last longer" is a fairly equivalent way of saying "wasn't killed early".
Background
The ongoing increase in life expectancy in developed countries is associated with changes in the shape of the survival curve. These changes can be characterized by two main, distinct components: (i) the decline in premature mortality, i.e., the concentration of deaths around some high value of the mean age at death, also termed rectangularization of the survival curve; and (ii) the increase of this mean age at death, i.e., longevity, which directly reflects the reduction of mortality at advanced ages. Several recent observations suggest that both mechanisms are simultaneously taking place.
Methods
We propose a set of indicators aiming to quantify, disentangle, and compare the respective contribution of rectangularization and longevity increase to the secular increase of life expectancy. These indicators, based on a nonparametric approach, are easy to implement.
Results
We illustrate the method with the evolution of the Swiss mortality data between 1876 and 2006. Using our approach, we are able to say that the increase in longevity and rectangularization explain each about 50% of the secular increase of life expectancy.
Let's also not forget future dietary advances.
I just want a good and working migration plan.
... but I think it was (if you assume the unlimited validity of that law as ages increase, and its validity to everyone in the population), because I tried to use that formula and my bc crashed (!), the first time I've ever seen that. It was trying to compute e to the power of
-1196855871164164755229127183619028619603176.29243358214210581124
which was the probability of a particular individual surviving to 130 according to the formula. That is a super-small number, which dwarfs the human population of 7 billion, so probably the original author did mean to say the thing about anyone-ever, and was probably correct within these assumptions about exponentials and their applicability.
But the probability of living to age 130 under this formula is already so low as to be hard to visualize.
I think this formula is a bit off at the high end because I evaluated it for 120 -- an age that at least one person has lived to -- and also got a probability suggesting that this would never have happened in human history. But it seems like the formula is still pretty close for almost all of the population.
"99.999999% certainty that no human will ever live to the age of 130" is not the same as "99.999999% chance of an individual reaching 130".
Sorry, just my statistics pedantry for the day.
Ah, here's the graph, possibly not from the most reputable source, but it's what the googles found me first http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/how-many-heart-bea...
I do sometimes wonder if the delaying of child-rearing has some effect on lifespan. Historically, it's not uncommon to find mothers and fathers in their mid teens, and adulthood was commonly understood to start at something like 16 or 18. In western countries, we're deferring child-rearing into the late twenties, early thirties, and full adulthood keeps creeping upwards as well.
Death is incredibly terrifying. I don't understand it and I don't want to, I just want to live. Forever preferably.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Rather heavily, yes. For the sake of argument, to put yourself into someone else's position and understand it, consider how differently you might feel about death if it simply meant a permanent cessation of consciousness. No more thinking, ever; you're permanently and irrecoverably gone. Not "floating in a black void" nothingness, but "there is no you anymore" nothingness.
Alternatively, if your faith includes the concept of a soul, imagine a soul being irrevocably destroyed; it didn't go anywhere, it was just lost.
That might make it clearer why many people find death both terrifying and horrific, no matter whether it occurs at 20 or 120.
> I am very curious why people would want to live forever on this earth. It seems like it'd become quite dreary and boring,
I find it easy enough to imagine a few billion years worth of possibilities. There's always more to learn, to see, and to think. Even if you'd seen the entire universe, other people are a literally endless supply of novelty.
And if you can't imagine an eternity of life interacting with other people in happiness, how exactly do you envision an afterlife?
> especially if I gradually lose control over all my normal physical and mental functions.
Living forever doesn't mean becoming increasingly decrepit. The same processes that create a hard stop at 120 are what make a 100-year-old systematically less healthy than a 25-year-old, and they require the same fixes. Anything that would successfully keep you alive forever must necessarily keep you free of age-related health complications forever.
Yes, I'm trying to imagine that, and I don't see why it's such a big issue. This seems so contradictory to what people claim their philosophies to be. It's like the environment. People cry about how we're destroying the earth, but they're not actually worried about the earth. They're worried about themselves. It's like how Ian Malcolm comments derisively in The Lost World that humans may not survive, but the earth would be just find. Somewhere some microbes would survive underneath all the dirt blasted everywhere in the apocalypse, and life would start again. I can understand the concept of ceasing to exist. I have not had anyone be able to explain to me why that makes that person so afraid, other than the fact that it just does.
And if you can't imagine an eternity of life interacting with other people in happiness, how exactly do you envision an afterlife?
Hehe, well, I think that's the key point, isn't it? You're talking about interacting with other people in happiness for eternity. I specifically said "forever on this earth", not "forever, period". I don't think you can achieve what you're talking about on this earth. We've had centuries of modern civilization to figure out how to stop both large-scale wars and petty relationship spats, and it's debatable whether we'll reach a level that has no pain. Yes, we've gotten better, especially if you read some of the literature on the topic, but age-old problems remain and I find no reason to think that they'll one day disappear.
Living forever doesn't mean becoming increasingly decrepit. The same processes that create a hard stop at 120 are what make a 100-year-old systematically less healthy than a 25-year-old, and they require the same fixes. Anything that would successfully keep you alive forever must necessarily keep you free of age-related health complications forever.
I actually deal with my worries about this issue in a comment below. I think people go about this subject very selfishly without thinking of the greater consequences.
Hard to explain (surprising to even have to explain), but it seems worth a shot. Consider a degenerative mental disease like Alzheimer's; does the idea of suffering from that, or someone in your family suffering from that, bother you? Why? If the disease robbed you/them of all sense of self, including any part of you/them that would be bothered by it, does that mean there's no harm done because you/they are no longer aware of it? Assuming you find that concept as horrific as I do, then a more permanent loss of any "sense of self" should be quite analogous.
Both are horrifying atrocities. Both need to stop. And I don't understand how the latter can seem any less horrific than the former. Yet far more attention is paid to the former, while a hundred and fifty thousand people die every day.
> You're talking about interacting with other people in happiness for eternity. I specifically said "forever on this earth", not "forever, period". I don't think you can achieve what you're talking about on this earth. We've had centuries of modern civilization to figure out how to stop both large-scale wars and petty relationship spats, and it's debatable whether we'll reach a level that has no pain. Yes, we've gotten better, especially if you read some of the literature on the topic, but age-old problems remain and I find no reason to think that they'll one day disappear.
Fixing mortality is one of many things that needs to happen. Given all the time in the world, I'm quite confident we can fix the various lesser problems (and next to mortality, everything is a lesser problem). Fixing scarcity would go a long way. AI (or something very much like it) seems like the surest path, though it requires a great deal of care to get right.
And I don't see why we should be limited to "this earth", or "this universe" if it turns out there are others. Forever is a very long time.
I have hope. And more importantly, I'm working towards those goals.
> I actually deal with my worries about this issue in a comment below. I think people go about this subject very selfishly without thinking of the greater consequences.
If you're referring to your comment about economic disparity making longevity a privilege: probably, but not for long. It's too important not to make universally available. And to be explicitly clear: I don't think anyone should die; I'm not just worried about myself or those I care about (though I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about them more). But I think it's entirely possible to build a world in which nobody dies.
That itself may lead to problems, but they'll be problems worth having and worth solving, and we'll have plenty of time to solve them.
I like that you're actually trying to answer my question instead of being dismissive about it. Unfortunately, I'd say it's difficult to compare Alzheimer's with cessation of existence in this manner. One is the process of losing your sense of self. I agree that must be extremely frightening. Losing control of yourself is no doubt hard.
However, in discussing death, I am referring to the result, not the process. The process of suffering leading to death can horrific, especially if disease is the cause. The end result of not existing, I am not able to put in the same sentence like you do. Even after carefully reading your explanation, it seems to me that you've done a masterful job explaining why the process is horrifying. But I already agree with that. You haven't been able to explain to me why the result after the process is over is so scary.
It may be possible we'd just end up going in circles about this, which would be too bad. I am seriously waiting for someone to explain to me in a manner that I can understand why cessation of existence is so terrifying to them.
edit addendum: Questions regarding scarcity and whether it can be resolved even with new technology and expansion to other galaxies unfortunately cannot be easily resolved until it happens. That being said, I have little faith that humanity can have that Star Trek epiphany. We have enough food to end world hunger today. The problem is distribution and individuals willing to sacrifice for the greater good. This is true for both third world nations that experience famine and inner city slums in the first world. The political will simply isn't there. Don't get me wrong, I really do wish I could think better of humanity.
And I appreciate that you're attempting to understand another point of view. Thank you.
> One is the process of losing your sense of self. I agree that must be extremely frightening. Losing control of yourself is no doubt hard.
There's a difference here between what I'm talking about and what you're talking about, and it's a critically important one: there's a big difference between "losing control of yourself" and "losing yourself". I mentioned degenerative mental disorders specifically because that's a case where you're not still "in there" somewhere. I'm talking about the case where there's no "you" left. You are your mind; if your mind is gone, there's no "you" anymore.
The distinction is important for people who would equate that entirely with death. You thought I was talking about the process, but I'm very much talking about the end result.
It would be as if you'd said "well, the part of a degenerative mental disease where you're forgetting everything you are is horrible, but once you're done forgetting everything you are, and forgetting that there was even something to forget, what's wrong with that?".
> However, in discussing death, I am referring to the result, not the process.
So am I. The process varies depending on how you die. The result is always the same: no more you. The suffering is nothing compared to the non-existence at the end; suffering can be lived through and gotten past, but death cannot. (This point of view is rather diametrically opposed to the one that views death as a potential "end to suffering".)
> You haven't been able to explain to me why the result after the process is over is so scary.
Fear isn't a required component, though it's certainly a healthy reaction (same as if something large and hungry is running at you: danger, thing to avoid, fight against it or flee from it). The key point is that it's a horrible atrocity for anyone to die. One less mind in the world; one less light in the darkness; one less set of unique experiences; one sentient being annihilated forever.
For what it's worth, part of the reason I find this question hard to answer is not because I find it complicated, but because I find it very simple; it's as if you asked "why is 1 > 0?". To which the answer is "because that's how we define 1 and 0". Why is life better than death? Because life is, and death isn't. But if you found that answer convincing, you'd already be convinced; there's a difference in fundamental value systems here.
> Questions regarding scarcity and whether it can be resolved even with new technology and expansion to other galaxies unfortunately cannot be easily resolved until it happens. That being said, I have little faith that humanity can have that Star Trek epiphany.
I very much doubt the future will look like Star Trek; I think we can do much better, though fiction certainly provides some useful inspiration. How soon we can get there is another question entirely.
I want to make this world better, because 1) wanting to do so is a required first step to make it happen, and 2) if you start from the premise that it's the only one we've got, then we have to make the most of it. I personally feel that mortality and death is the biggest evil in the world, and the one worth spending the most effort to fight first, but it certainly isn't the last one, and when we're done with it we shouldn't hang up our tools and rest.
For a bit of writing I find particularly inspiring on this topic, see http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html ; it's a transparent allegory, but one I find quite compelling.
> I really do wish I could think better of humanity.
You're part of humanity. What are you, personally, doing to solve the problem? Blaming "political will" is one thing, but large-scale apathy is at least as big a roadblock to solving issues on that scale.
The first step to solving a problem is to decide it needs solving. And deciding that it can't be solved makes it harder to solve.
You do a very good job of making me see that it's coming down to a difference in axiomatic statements of belief; there's not much deeper to go in splitting the atom. Once we get to that point, I guess there's not much else to say except make your choice and live with it.
You're part of humanity. What are you, personally, doing to solve the problem? Blaming "political will" is one thing, but large-scale apathy is at least as big a roadblock to solving issues on that scale.
The first step to solving a problem is to decide it needs solving. And deciding that it can't be solved makes it harder to solve.
I don't agree that I have this perspective. However, the method I have in solving these problems are very integrated with my faith. I've personally concluded that we live in a broken and fallen world and are incapable of fixing it, but a higher power exists who can fix us. However, I won't try to have that discussion here. Certainly, I do things within my power to make things better. While I'm not a gamechanger like Elon Musk, I personally volunteer however I can in areas of poverty around the world, broken families, etc.
But thank you for the discussion. It was enlightening.
It would be as if you'd said "well, the part of a degenerative mental disease where you're forgetting everything you are is horrible, but once you're done forgetting everything you are, and forgetting that there was even something to forget, what's wrong with that?".
That's the part I'm most curious about. I realize that you don't personally believe death is a transition to non-existence, but you also acknowledged that others did feel that way, and you wondered how even given that basis one might feel horrified by that non-existence (rather than the process leading to it). Given that, if the above doesn't explain it, I don't think I understand where you're coming from.
Or are you saying that that now makes sense, and the remaining axiomatic disagreement is about non-existence itself?
> However, the method I have in solving these problems are very integrated with my faith. I've personally concluded that we live in a broken and fallen world and are incapable of fixing it, but a higher power exists who can fix us. However, I won't try to have that discussion here.
Neither will I, and I appreciate you separating the discussion from that. However, I would ask that you consider the possibility of the two not being incompatible: believing in an afterlife is not incompatible with trying to make this life as good as possible, and even if you believe it can't be made perfect, that doesn't stop it from getting asymptotically better. The phrase "pray to God but keep rowing to shore" comes to mind, as well as "God helps those who help themselves". I'm not bothered when others have faith; it does bother me, though, when faith in a higher power causes people to give up on humanity. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
In any case, I do very much appreciate the opportunity for a discussion with someone who, despite having a very different point of view, was willing to discuss things in reasonable terms and make an effort to understand a differing point of view.
I'm sorry to say that I have no idea what you're talking about up to this point. But it doesn't seem to matter, as I think we agree that the axiomatic disagreement is about whether non-existence itself is something to fear (at least, I think we agree on what we're disagreeing about).
However, I would ask that you consider the possibility of the two not being incompatible: believing in an afterlife is not incompatible with trying to make this life as good as possible, and even if you believe it can't be made perfect, that doesn't stop it from getting asymptotically better. .... I'm not bothered when others have faith; it does bother me, though, when faith in a higher power causes people to give up on humanity. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I think you're misunderstanding me still on where I stand on this. I think it's my responsibility to do what I can to improve things here where I am, both in my community and on my entire planet. Admittedly, that's also integrated with my faith, and it's certainly not an ideal I wish to discard (which in turn makes the idea that my faith makes me wish to discard that ideal all the more ludicrous).
Let me be clear. I have given up on humanity's ability to fix itself. I have not given up on a higher power's ability to change individual humans into people who can make this world a better place. And that includes everything from being more charitable, empathetic, and forgiving every day to having motive and drive to throw away personal riches and futures for a lifetime of thankless service in the trenches of fighting poverty, corruption, unjust war, and more. Not all of us can be Bill Gates and set up a foundation that can really make a difference. But I do believe that everything starts in the hearts of individual people. Unfortunately many people are too petty, selfish, or jaded to care, despite the rare amazing stories of real selflessness. The higher power I believe gives me back hope for people to change.
Sorry for the late reply. :)
> I think we agree that the axiomatic disagreement is about whether non-existence itself is something to fear (at least, I think we agree on what we're disagreeing about).
While that's something we disagree on, I don't think that's the root of the axiomatic difference; that's why I'm curious. Earlier in the thread, you said:
> I can understand the concept of ceasing to exist. I have not had anyone be able to explain to me why that makes that person so afraid, other than the fact that it just does.
That's one step removed from any underlying difference in values or axioms. Axiomatically, we clearly disagree on whether death equates to non-existence, but your statement above seems to suggest you're interested in understanding where other people are coming from despite that: why, assuming that premise, someone might find such non-existence horrifying. To which I'd provided an answer in the form of an analogy to degenerative mental diseases, and never got a response to that.
That's the part I'm curious about: I don't understand a mindset that can find a degenerative mental disorder horrifying (which I'm assuming you agree with) without finding the end result horrifying as well. I'm genuinely curious to understand that.
> Let me be clear. I have given up on humanity's ability to fix itself. I have not given up on a higher power's ability to change individual humans into people who can make this world a better place. [...]
Sounds like we're talking about similar things but fundamentally disagreeing over attribution, then. Or possibly definition of terms, because I have no idea what you mean by "humanity" if you don't mean "humans", since you're subsequently talking about "individual humans" / "individual people" making the world a better place.
That's the part I'm curious about: I don't understand a mindset that can find a degenerative mental disorder horrifying (which I'm assuming you agree with) without finding the end result horrifying as well. I'm genuinely curious to understand that.
This is a fundamental thing we can't seem to make each other understand in terms of why we differ. The process is horrifying to me, but the result is a conclusion that does not horrify me. The phrase "rest in peace" comes to mind here, which I posit many people are willing to say about those who have passed away, whether or not the speaker believes in an afterlife or higher power. Yet they cannot think this way for themselves. I have no theory for this except that perhaps those people are unable to make peace with their end and/or themselves, which is unfortunately a circular argument. I'm not saying that's the case for you. I'm simply saying I can't come up with a better answer, and nobody's been able to explain it to me except that they're afraid because they're afraid.
So to recap, I am saying yes, the process is horrifying, but the end result (death and actual non-existence, not just senility) is what it is and doesn't have to be horrifying. And I believe you are saying that since the process is horrifying, the end result is also necessarily horrifying. I do not see the If A Then B logical path that necessity necessitates for your statements to become acceptable to me.
But if you believe there's a way to break the circle of our discussion, you of course are welcome to email me also. :)
If you look forward to death, I interpret that as looking forward to a cessation of your personal responsibilities and increasing boredom with life in general.
As for myself, I know that my death would permanently damage my kids, and it will still be about 16 more years before that cloud over my head dissipates. And I also want to play Elder Scrolls VI, and have a few more vacations, so there's also that.
I don't actually want to live forever on this Earth. It may only last another couple billion years or so. In the long term, I'd like to depart for another planet, and possibly even reach it, to build a new world, then eventually move on to the next. I might just write books until I forget what I wrote, then read them all. Perhaps I will attempt to invent a new type of prurient entertainment never seen previously on any part of the Internet. I might move an entire planet by growing my entire food supply on its surface, and dumping my waste in a semi-stable orbit elsewhere.
No description of any afterlife has ever sounded better to me than getting more out of real life. I never lacked in imagination enough to yearn for someone else's ideal fantasy.
Nonetheless, I don't feel like I'm ever going to want to die. The world still has many bright and wonderful things and people, and I've not noticed the charm of existence wearing with time. The company of my loved ones, for example, is as fulfilling this year as it was last. If some day, hopefully in a far distant future, I should find existence has become unbearably dull, then I imagine it taking place while sitting upon the observation deck of a castle built on the face of a sun.
Maybe that day would come, maybe it wouldn't. But to end after less than even a scant few millennia; to never get the chance to find out? It feels like rather a shame.
What I can imagine is finding death preferable to a life of pain or tiredness. (Which is really no more than to say that I can see why people wouldn't want to age too much past their early twenties or suffer lasting injury.) But even then, I'd not want death any more than someone offered the choice between being shot in the leg or the head wants to be shot in the leg. Preferred is not the same as desired.
Right, this. I suppose I am saying that old age makes pain and tiredness inevitable without significant genetic engineering and other mechanisms. And then I imagine that only the rich would be able to get those treatments, much like only the rich can afford difficult heart transplants, cancer treatments, etc.
We already live in an unequal world where less fortunate people can't get medical treatment they need. To take it one step further and have only the less fortunate people die while the rich can continue living indefinitely through the ages is a world that scares me. Death is the great humbling equalizer until one day some geniuses make it not so.
It's quite difficult for me to imagine that health care will become universal and free so that everyone can access this biotech no matter what status or class they are. Never say never, but the fairy tale land of Star Trek seems nigh impossible to achieve.
Maybe it comes from been atheist (I'd find proof of life after death a lot more scary), the universe was around 14 odd billion years before I was and it'll be around long after I'm gone.
The annoying thing is that prior to that at 34 I was physically better than I'd been in my entire life (even when I was a gym rat) so having to give up many of the physical activities I really love was a shock.
Even that doesn't scare me as much as losing my mental agility though, that worries me, the medication I'm taking has a marked effect on cognitive function.
Just tea, some meditation, then dust.
I.e, you won't live a long life if you aren't healthy. So you are basically asking for an unhealthy life.
I can absolutely understand someone that says they would rather have a healthy <130 years life.
- Benjamin Franklin
- Abraham Lincoln
I just think it's odd that there's a great many essays on the matter of death where people argue it's preferable to accept it than to fight it even if it's futile. I'd rather go out with a bang than a whimper. At least then I know I tried and I didn't let death off too easy.
If those people had lived with today's medical technology and knowledge available to them for their whole lives, that list of people living to 110 would be much longer and undoubtedly you'd see an increase in the number of people giving to 120 and probably to 130.
That doesn't seem like a particularly interesting question. It wouldn't change the conclusion that humans can't naturally live past 120. And that conclusion itself becomes unimportant if we can reliably work around it.
We don't know that. Nobody has lived an entire life with modern medicine. So many things such as organ transplants, vaccines, antibiotics, discouragement of smoking, awareness of carcinogens, etc, have been developed since many of the people aged 100 or above were born, or in many cases, were middle aged.
> The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a human subspecies?
That's mostly irrelevant - there is plenty of longevity-related DNA variance within Homo sapiens as it is.
Most animals that live well over 100 years have a very low metabolism. For example turtles and tortoises. Other living organisms that have biological immortality are generally simple creatures. As in all the components of the creature can be replaced and the creature doesn't change in function. Fish, for example can live hundreds of years, but their biology is considerably different than a mammals. That said, whales and alligators can have extremely long lives. It may be that water acts as sunblock and reduces the amount of UV damage allowing life to continue much longer than most land animals.
The reality is that for just about every aging related failure mode, there is an example of some animal somewhere that is able to fix or otherwise defend against that very form of damage, a proof by example that such damage is not inevitable or irreversible.