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Comment by TheUndead96 | Hacker News Reader

I think longevity is vastly underestimated. Besides the natural innate desire to live longer, every extra year of healthspan is an opportunity to reap benefits on long term investment in friends, family and financial instruments. Knowing that you may live to 150 changes how you might approach investing and spending your time in money and skills development. People with the conscientiousness and forethought to apply themselves to important but not urgent tasks might experience compound interest the likes of which we have never seen before. Imagine if Warren Buffet was only half way through his healthspan.

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> I think longevity is vastly underestimated.

Many people would give up their entire life fortune, any inheritance to their children, just to live for a few more years. People have been killing and dying searching for the fountain of youth for centuries.

Everyone is going to die eventually, yet the extremes people go to extend life is unlike any normal supply and demand curve.

I'm not sure there's anything more overestimated and over-hyped than longevity.

There is not enough funding or investment in longevity to consider it over-hyped. Compare it to, say, AI and VR. Or even meat substitutes.

> There is not enough funding or investment in longevity to consider it over-hyped. Compare it to, say, AI and VR. Or even meat substitutes.

You're very much mistaken.

The National Institute of Health gets $31B of government funds every year for research. The NSF gets $8B, NASA gets $20B, and DARPA gets around $3B. So healthcare research gets roughly 50% of the entire U.S. public research budget, and that's not including private investment.

It's difficult to pull accurate numbers, but meat substitutes, VR, and even super-hot AI get far less every year, it's nowhere near healthcare research.

Extending life has been a priority of the US government for many years, largely because it's politically popular. Everyone rich or poor wants to live longer.

That is "traditonal" healthcare, where the target age is 70-80ish, with basically no means to get past that.

This is very different from what longevity research (like in the article) is tackling, and almost non of that money (public or private) is invested there.

> That is "traditonal" healthcare, where the target age is 70-80ish, with basically no means to get past that. This is very different from what longevity research (like in the article) is tackling...

If you're searching for a cure for cancer, heart failure, or any of fatal health ailment, you are by definition trying to extend people's lives. The entire purpose of healthcare is to extend both the length and quality of people's lives.

A few people, mostly in fairy tails, maybe.

Many people, however, won't even do something simple and enjoyably like frequent moderate exercise to improve their longevity.

That's being ungenerous, most people that don't exercise don't perceive it as something enjoyable. Imagining people that behave differently than you as idiotic is both unkind, and strategically foolish, as it will lead you to underestimate your enemies.

Check your presumptions and maybe consider taking your own advice. I'm among the people who don't, and I don't think that I'm idiotic. (but maybe I'm mistaken on that point, because after rereading my post several times I still can't figure out how I inspired this response from you)

The poster I was responding to claimed "yet the extremes people go to extend life is unlike any normal supply and demand curve. I'm not sure there's anything more overestimated and over-hyped than longevity." -- and I think the is transparently untrue because a great many people do not act as though it is incredibly important to them.

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