Chinese scientists develop gene therapy which could delay ageing | Hacker News Reader

Chinese scientists develop gene therapy which could delay ageing

reuters.com

38 pointspseudolus21 comments

Some things, like duration of an authoritarian leader’s regime (think North Korea), are currently capped by a limited duration of a human life.

No one expects Putin to retire from being president of Russia before his health declines or he dies. Without aging, there’s almost no hope of change for people and no reason for him to step down.

Overpopulation and planet resource exhaustion also would be much worse if any significant quantity of people cease to age and die.

The possibility of having to put up with a long-lived dictator doesn't come close to outweighing the terrible humanitarian and economic effects of aging.

Suppose we didn't naturally age, and we did have the problems you mention. Would your solution be to release a virus that crippled everyone's bodies and minds over several decades, which would both severely reduce their quality of life and require them to consume much more medical resources?

The only logical solution is population control where unlimited population growth is not allowed.

See the movie “In time”.

Even if people were medically immortal that doesn't mean they'd be functionally immortal.

There are always accidents, and I expect "accidents" would tend to befall terrible dictators at a greater rate than the general population, especially among people whos will isn't already being crushed by their inevitable death.

This is how real change happens as well. When Gallileo claimed the earth spins, people didn't look at the facts, thought about it, then came back and congratulated him on his discovery! They accused him of heresy, imprisoned him and would burn him at the stake if he didn't "repent".

Only by those generations fading away, paving way for new less-biased and more open minded people, ideas/trends/facts finally got recognized. (Galileo died in house arrest, and only 300 years later his teachings got accepted).

Dying and letting go is crucial. Nature choosing to make new creatures rather than repairing and keeping the existing ones is how things evolve and move forward. It's so simple and elegant. What terrible backward ideas and status quo would aeon-old minds strive to keep-alive on this world otherwise.

Just curious why you think new is always better then old? I firmly believe this is not always the case. The only reason we have been able to drive improvement the last centuries has been because of the rapid evolution of tech and the economy.

I don't feel this has much to do with the fact that we replenish people.

Depends how you define improvement. Technology would still boom maybe even more so, but society and culture would remain mostly stagnant.

People's beliefs rarely change. It's the younger generations that further define culture and bring change. The older generations strive to maintain status quo. Thought experiment: In the past people openly discriminated against lgbt people. Today LGBT rights and acceptance have won (and will keep winning)! It's not the racist old uncle that thinks it's a disease, that incited that change. It is the newer generations that first learn everything their parents know, and then they learn from their parents mistakes.

As time passes the balance of acceptance shifts and a societal shift has occurred!

Now of course, this doesn't mean that old people are evil, or incapable of change, or that everything will be perfect because each generation is always better. This only means that this is one of the ways change can happen.

In a world of immortals, only violent uprisings could challenge the status quo. The world would have no incentive to change. If 100 years ago everybody suddenly became immortal and sterile (no deaths/no births), would the world of today have still invented punk rock? Answer's no (not without youthful rebellion)

> People's beliefs rarely change

Do you have a source for this? I feel like peoples beliefs change all the time.

> Today LGBT rights and acceptance have won (and will keep winning)!

This is true. But in contrast racism and sexism is increasing, in the western world at least.

> In a world of immortals, only violent uprisings could challenge the status quo. The world would have no incentive to change.

I don't buy this at all. The world has even more incentive to change. You are not making the world better for anyone else in the future. You are doing it for YOURSELF. Because you will most likely still be around in 200 years.

> Would the world of today have still invented punk rock?

Maybe, Maybe not. Hard to say. But the world would have invented something new.

A good counter-argument to commonly cited objections to biological immortality:

https://youtu.be/GoJsr4IwCm4

Also, there are a myriad of ways to circumvent and/or dislodge the power of entrenched political leaders, like physical emigration, virtual emigration (cyberspace, cryptocurrency), and disruption (new technologies enabling commercial leaprogging, or political revolution).

25% longevity improvement in mice doesn't usually translate to the same in humans (calory restriction is an example).

As far as I know we already know of genes like this, so the question here is what makes this gene different?

Not commenting on the article, but on the concept of delaying aging. A lot of philosophers worked on the idea of immortality, many of them coming to the conclusion that death was what gave life a meaning. Some theorized that an immortal human simply would not do anything as our seconds would be their days and being alive would end up being synonymous with existing and nothing more.

But this is certainly a choice individuals should make for themselves. Philosophers take the liberty of deciding lots of things for and about "people" without ever asking them.

Not that philosophers aren't interested in decisions being correct.

People have also written about the nobility of the life of slaves. People write a lot of things. But when their arguments are used that people should be forced to die, we shouldn't look them with reverence.

https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

I don't buy into that. It sounds like rationalizing contentness with the status quo. We embrace life over death all the time, we fight disease, famine, and other causes of death all over the world. I'm not going to go against that instinct for promoting life because of some theoretical arguments of sein-zum-tode. The existence of such arguments in itself proves nothing: enough opposing arguments have been brought forth as well (like the fable of the dragon, linked in the other reply).

But again, to me the proper response is akin to Moore: I love living. We fight for life everywhere. That has more swaying power than the theoretical arguments of some philosopher concluding immortality leads to meaninglessness.

This. I don't understand the people that claim biological immortality would be boring are useless at all. It actually sounds extremely arrogant to me. Assuming something completely left field for no tangible reason.

yeah, most people never comment on the article but on the philosophy.

That’s why 4 years ago I wrote this blog

Stories That Should be Banned from Hacker News: Immortality

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/stories-that-should-...

“Death gives life meaning” is first on the list.

If you want to discuss immortality one place is https://immortalityforum.com/

I'd argue that most people never comment on the actual article because it is as generic as "new battery technology could double electric cars autonomy". Claims are very cheap these days and these articles have very little substance to them.

Wonder if this would increase the risk of cancer in the process.

So.. the China haters are going to scream about some supposed genocide, and want for the destruction of the Chinese government, but yet, they’ll willingly take this gene therapy to extend their own lives, that was invented by the Chinese government.

And let me guess. The super rich 1%ers of the extreme right wing, that hates all things China, will be the first in line for such a therapy.

Life is not without a sense of irony.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com