Comment by hashnsalt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hashnsalt | Hacker News Reader

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Unlocking immortality would be a fantastic scientific achievement, but I see the pursuit of immorality as being very self-centered. As Richard Muller implies in his response to this question [1], we need death to ensure a consistent advancement of civilization. As we age, we get more and more set in our ways. So we need the older generation to eventually die off so new ideas and ways of thinking can take hold and push humanity an inch forward. And the cycle goes on.

Other than the social/resource implications (eg: there not being enough food/water/etc to feed everyone) of everybody living forever, I also think chasing immortality is a way of dealing with the anxiety that the looming nature of death induces. Maybe it is the anxiety of not existing someday that drives people to make the most of their 75 years. If everyone had an infinite amount of time, would our society advance just as rapidly? I don't know. But it's a point worth thinking about.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Given-5-000-years-and-plenty-of-resour...

Reversal test: In a world where people didn't get old, would they decide to invent aging? I'm certain they wouldn't.

I totally agree that there are disadvantages to indefinite lifespans. It's just that those disadvantages are overwhelmed by the fact that aging kills 100,000 people every day. And it's not just that people die, it's that they spend decades becoming frail and less capable. They can't enjoy as many things as they used to. Their vision, hearing, and even their minds fail them.

If we lived in a world without aging, only a sadistic monster would want to inflict such suffering on others.

I agree with your point. Part of aging research is to reduce the rate of deterioration and maybe avoid it altogether. I just have a problem with the idea of living forever. Maybe add a cap on human lifespan?

Let's say we live in a world where human bodies don't age. How do you suggest enforcing that cap? Gas chambers?

I don't have an answer to your loaded question (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question).

Edit: link

The problem is that it's not really a loaded question, but a valid response to the idea of an age cap amidst indefinite life spans. How do you propose capping the life span of an adult without the use of a termination agent?

I am not proposing anything. I don't know how we can cap the lifespan of an adult. But I do know that if we have a cure for aging today, i.e. people stop dying from this day onwards, the population is only going to keep growing and that doesn't seem very sustainable. This is, of course, given that people continue to have children. Halting the production of new offspring could be interesting to witness from an evolutionary standpoint.

As far as the loaded question is concerned, I did sense an inflammatory tone in kobeya's response with the gas chambers question. Your response, on the other hand, is more discussion-oriented and open-minded.

Except it's not a loaded question at all -- administrative murder seems to be exactly what you are proposing.

Plain old accidents? No cap required.

Jeez, no, not a cap on lifespan please haha. No one can still wrap in their heads what indefinite lifespans will mean, but I'm sure adding a cap on lifespan is not something we want to do.

I would imagine that an immortal society would value individual lives less, since endless population growth eventually becomes a nuisance, and people would implement some kind of population culling. Whether old or young lives would be valued more is anyone's guess but probably the old and powerful would keep the amount of young at a manageable level. It could take the form of endless wars, blood sports, or a Logan's Run-esque age limit.

Halting aging to me is science fiction, mostly of the dystopian kind.

A few points:

First, eliminating aging won't make people immortal. People will still die from accidents, violence, disease, and suicide. I vaguely remember doing the math, and without aging, life expectancy would be around 300 years. (The variance in LE would be huge though, since one's age would have no effect on mortality.)

Second, arguments about overpopulation prove too much. If you're against anti-aging because of overpopulation, you should also be against reproductive freedom. After all, any couple that has more than two children is contributing to overpopulation. Anyways, there's a simple solution to overpopulation: A one child policy. Even if everyone's immortal, you'll only end up with 2x the original population. (8 billion people have 4 billion children, who have 2 billion children, who have 1 billion children...) I submit that such a policy is more humane than forcing everyone to spend decades becoming senescent before dying.

And finally: Who are we to decide for our descendants that anti-aging technologies are bad? Assuming no civilizational collapse, future generations will be smarter, wiser, and more knowledgable than we are. It's better to invent these technologies sooner so that they can choose for themselves whether or not to use them. If they agree with us, we'll have wasted some research money. But if we're wrong, we'll have condemned millions to die. Unless we're damn sure it's bad, the cost-benefit analysis favors inventing anti-aging tech.

I can present two counterpoints:

1. Advancement: Having immortality would reduce the need to re-learn and re-experience everything over and over again. While the learning and experiencing process in itself is innovative (because just like life itself, it evolves through mutation between one specimen to the other), you could argue that having a 200 years old Einstein around wouldn't be bad for science.

2. Resources: with immortality, the issue of family will be very different. Being young forever, you probably wouldn't feel as great of a need to raise children (which serve, among other purposes, the assure your genetic continuity after death). A rich, self centered, immortal population would probably see a decline in its numbers.

The idea of immortality is appealing and frightening all at once. It would create a completely new society and world order, and I'm not sure it's a world I'd (forever) like to live in.

To play devil's advocate, Einstein did a lot of work after his major breakthroughs that didn't amount to much. To steal a line from Roger Waters, he was a "spent force." To quote Einstein, "You cannot solve a problem at the level of thought that created it." This suggests that in order to smooth the wrinkles between general relativity and quantum theory, someone would have to come along with a new way of thinking.

With that being said, I think wisdom is one area that (assuming the right mind-set) can continue to grow richer with age. I think it would result in much better politicians, judges, teachers and similar roles that involve application or imparting of wisdom.

Beethoven wrote Ode to Joy long after he was dismissed as an irrelevant, deaf old man.

This suggests that in order to smooth the wrinkles between general relativity and quantum theory, someone would have to come along with a new way of thinking.

There's string theory but it's still unproven stuff. I failed to see how new scientists will actually solve the problem beyond having fresh new minds to look at it from a different direction.

Perhaps we don't need old scientists to die, but just new scientists.

"As we age, we get more and more set in our ways"

I think that is caused by we know the end of life is closer. We do not want to take the effort to change. If we know we will live forever or much longer, I think we are more apt to be flexible and change.

I will be very interesting to see what theses companies claim they expect to achieve in terms of the maximum human life span, instead of the mean. I for one don't think that we have made very much progress at all in that area, and I would be very (pleasantly) surprised if I lived to see anyone reach the age of say, 150 in my lifetime. On the other hand her prediction of being able to extend many peoples life span from say 80 to 100 doesn't strike me as too far fetched because it's basically moving the mean life span up, but not really moving the maximum up.

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