So will my new born become immortal or not? Do I have a chance?
[1] As in no inherent old age, rather than un-killable.
Just give it to Bill Gates and he can hook you up with enough cash?
Of course, with some effort we might simply figure out how to double our lifespans to 160-200 years.
Albert Einstein, for example, could still be alive discussing physics with Stephen Hawking.
If Hawking and Einstein lived longer so would everybody else. And that would mean that a younger generation of scientists would have to wait much longer before their ideas could be discussed without opposition from the established elders who see their pet theories attacked by these uppity youngsters.
The quote is a riff on what Max Planck, himself an eminent scientist said on the subject:
"Science advances one funeral at a time."
Munger’s Psychology of human misjudgment, for instance, is enlightening: https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws
Okay I will accept that premise for the sake of the argument even though I don't actually believe it's true.
Based on that you go on to conclude it's a good thing that scientists die, so that science can keep advancing.
You're essentially faced with a trolley problem, where pulling the lever one way will make everyone immortal at the cost of slowing down scientific progress, but pulling it the other way will euthanize everyone in the world, and euthanize the countless billions that might live in the future. Somehow your morals (or whatever you call it) tell you that euthanizing everyone is better than slowing down scientific progress. I disagree with you there.
Why not even try to solve the problem some other way than killing everyone? I don't know, why not, say, create an off-world colony outside the reach of those evil progress-impeding elders. Just throwing ideas out there.
Taking your logic to its limit, why not just kill every scientist after their first paper is published? But I don't think you actually want that, so lets hear your argument against my strawman.
If he were talking about politics, he'd have a point, since there's a lot of irrational dogma in that field.
Also, don't forget, if we can figure out how to eliminate aging, that also means we'll eliminate many (maybe all) things that go along with biological aging, such as the changes to the brain that cause older people to tend to be less adaptable (which really is a bit of a stereotype and not all that true; my 80 year old mother happily uses a laptop computer, smartphone, and tablet, while 30 years ago she wouldn't have dreamed of being like this).
You seem to be operating under the assumption that science is apolitical. As someone who's worked in science, I can assure you that it is not. Many non-scientists listen to popularizers like Neil deGrasse-Tyson and come to believe in a very idealized model of how science operates when the de facto "nature of science" is more akin to what Thomas Kuhn describes in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". I really wish that NDT were a bit more forthcoming about his own experiences in science, seeing as how he barely made it through the grad school gauntlet himself. Ditto for Carl Sagan, who made a powerful enemy in Harold Urey (I can't find a link right now, but iirc Urey basically gave Carl a bomb of a recommendation letter that cost him a tenured position Harvard and compelled him to "settle" for Cornell).
In my personal experience (as well as the experience of many, many others if you dig deep enough into this), some scientists can be very egotistical to a point where they take a challenge to their theories as a personal affront, and will employ insanely Machiavellian tactics to suppress dissenting opinions (i.e., senior researchers are the ones who hold the purse when the NIH makes funding decisions).
Yes I'm familiar with the quote and of course it was obvious that you were referencing it. What's funny is that you seem to believe the only reason I'd disagree with something you said is that I'm unaware that Planck said something similar. I'm unable to get a hold of Planck to discuss it with him, and thought I'd ask you about it since you're here promoting his ideas, but I realize that I should have made that clear to you.
Pick two, or more, of your favorite scientists. Richard Feynman?
Immortality will create a lot more problems than it will solve.
No reasonable person is talking about immortality. The issue here is defeating the diseases of old age.
> will create a lot more problems than it will solve.
That's a massive unfounded claim you're holding up against saving the lives of a hundred thousand people per day.