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Comment by m3kw9 | Hacker News Reader

Somehow I feel living forever may not be what it cracked up to be unless you have a great working brain and lack of mental issues

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If I put a gun to your head, and give you a choice, with great probability you would choose life. Most people would. Your choice will likely be the same the day after, the day after that, next month, next year.

The only reason to choose death is if you're suffering so much, you don't want to live anymore.

Most people are doing fine. Most people will happily accept 100 or 1000 more years of life, given a choice.

I, personally, will happily accept millions of years. There's so much to learn, so many great books to read, so much of universe to explore.

It seems rational to want to exist to day N+1 if you presume there's any chance that any present-day problems you have will be resolvable. Suffering may be intolerable, of course, but hope that it may one day end while still remaining alive would be a strong force in a world where life can be indefinitely extended.

I wonder how much time you’ve spent with the very old? My 97 year old grandmother passed last year, in the last conversation I had with her she expressed to me just how ready she was to go. I told her that I thought I understood and hoped that when my time came I too would be ready. She assured me I would be.

This was also my experience with my grandparents (died in their 90s and 80s), but they all suffered towards the end and I wonder if they'd say the same thing if they could have had a 20-something year old's body.

I wonder what portion of that being ready is due to physical pain and limitations.

I’d bet a 97 year old with the body of a 25 year old would have a different sentiment.

I've reached an age where I appreciate the sentiment that youth is wasted on the young. The ability to put my current sentience in my 20-something physical body would be incredibly freeing for all of the stereotypical reasons.

The work of curing aging should greatly reduce the pain and suffering of our later years. Reducing age related diseases and struggles. So not only will you live longer, those years will be better , for longer, and remain good closer to the end

Aging cure pretty much has to address health problems. Your grandmother was ready because she was suffering in an old body. If you gave her an option of rejuvenation, she'd likely go for it.

An assumption. It's not hard to imagine becoming exasperated with the way of things and people and the endless cycle of the easily preventable or tired by any other number of the worlds pains. No amount of progress brings that friction to 0. Over time, I have to think it'll wear anyone away.

hah. there is a big difference between 1000 years and immortality. imho we would have to completely rethink how we live and most importantly why we live if immortality was, even remotely, on the table

You must not have read the article mate.

"The giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands show no age-related decline, in some ways seeming as youthful at 170 as at 30. Mr Steele thinks this phenomenon, known as negligible senescence, is within humanity’s grasp, too."

A lot of the developments around slowing down aging aren't just about doing so for the physical body - they also improve the longevity of the brain. Plus if you're living for a very long time, that's a lot of time for science to advance. Unless you believe that things like dementia are totally incurable, it's pretty reasonable to believe that sometime in the next few decades we'll make big advances in curing or at least dealing with them.

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