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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

The thing to keep in mind is that, essentially, preventing aging is the endgame of medicine as a science. Right now, enormous amounts of resources are used by healthcare systems everywhere in the world to care for the elderly. And even then, all this effort eventually fails.

What I'm trying to say is that just from an economic point of view, it's more beneficial to rejuvenate people enough that they don't have any age-related conditions than to treat those conditions. Even if the cost of whatever the rejuvenation intervention is is high. So, IMO, it's very unlikely that we'll see a class division, especially in countries with universal healthcare.

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Medicine is already a class issue. We already see class divisions, at least here in the US, over who gets healthcare and who does not.

Even countries with universal healthcare have it to a lesser extent when, depending on the country, the wealthy can still pay out of pocket for the highest quality private doctors. Or travel to another country like the US that will give you the highest level of care that you're willing to pay for.

As for rejuvenation vs elderly care, that only gets around the problems I mention if rejuvenated people still love about the same amount of time, just with a higher quality of life. Any treatment that increases life span will either cause a a massive population boom, or class-differentiated civil unrest.

It's not just in the US. When our healthcare system basically shutdown here in Canada for everything but very arbitrarily defined "essential treatments" that may or may not exclude treating things that can kill you but just not imminently, a lot of richer Canadians crossed the borders to get treated at full price (because that's sometimes still better than no treatment if you have even just enough to pay). The rest were stuck with almost no medical care for a full year and a half with no alternative or way to get around it if your treatment didn't make it on the list. So yeah you are right, it's always a matter of class even in places with universal single payer healthcare

Does anyone think this would make you ageless until one day you drop dead? I certainly don't. If we all require the elderly care at 150 as we do at 75, all those problems GP mentioned will still exist and all the problems you mention will still be around.

The term you're looking for is longevity escape velocity. It's when lifespan is extended faster than real time.

> this would make you ageless until one day you drop dead

No, that's not how this works. How would a person die of an old chronological age if their biological age is, as far as their body is concerned, still 25 years? It's not like there's a time bomb that goes boom after a certain number of years regardless of what you do.

I meant that to be an absurd prediction. Editted to be clear. But if that's not true I don't get the "but all will be good because no elderly care" argument.

Because in the process of extending life, you will also forestall the other effects of aging besides just death by old age. And if you cure aging entirely, then people won't just live indefinite lifespans, they also wouldn't become elderly.

Could make you ageless until you die in a transportation accident.

Even without aging, humans aren't immortal. There's a probability of dying from something other than medical issues. Eventually that adds up.

I think the people willing to give up travel at greater-than-walking-speed, sports, hiking, etc in order to live longer is small enough that they won't be a burden. I'm not sure I would really call that "living" myself, but it's their choice.

ageless until you die in a transportation accident.

Totally not reliable, but I once heard an estimate that if aging was cured, the average lifespan would be about 600 years due to various forms of non age related death-- accidents etc.

I wonder if people would be more careful knowing the only way they're likely to die is in an accident. The closest parallel we have is younger vs older people, and younger people are on average less cautious. But is that a developmental thing, or because death seems less real being further away? Maybe people would be more reckless!

> But is that a developmental thing...

It’s a group survival thing. It’s helpful to have some reckless members because they discover solutions that others would never explore. In particular, young males have been prewired by evolution to generally be the most reckless members of a group because they are the most expendable. The number of young females determines a group’s reproductive rate and older members tend to have critical skills, knowledge, and wisdom. I speak as a former young male who explored more than his share of possible solutions for the group.

Mm, that makes sense. Which also means that on the individual level it's developmental. (Since it's intrinsic to young males, and they (we) tend to grow out of it.)

Presumably though even if biological aging were somehow paused at the level of young adulthood, I would think cognitive development would still proceed, so young males would still outgrow that reckless period.

We do not really know what kind of unknown health problems lurk beyond the 115 limit. Supercentenarians live and die in a slightly different way from usual people.

If we can possibly keep the immune and cardiovascular system young indefinitely, thus staving off heart disase and cancers, what is going to break down next? Possibly something within the brain.

If the proportion of healthy/working years in one's total lifespan increases, then we should be more easily able to pay for elder care. This is assuming there are no significant political hurdles in terms of increasing the retirement age, etc.

I would think if people age slower they will be infirm longer? Maybe the proportion would stay the same. Only the "longevity escape velocity" the other person mentions would do the trick.

I think every decade of work will be exponentially more productive as the person grows in experience without physically aging.

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