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Comment by shafyy | Hacker News Reader

This guy is super cringe. So are rich people that are so afraid of dying and becoming irrelevant that they invest billions in trying to achieve immortality.

It's a good thing for society and humanity that people die. It ensures change, innovation and the flow of new ideas.

Don't get me wrong: I think we should invest money and resources that help people live healthy lifes. But the idea of stopping aging or wanting to live to hundreds of years just seems that it comes from people who have deep psychological problems with themselves.

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>>It's a good thing for society and humanity that people die.

And once upon a time 40% of children died before the age of 5. That had been the norm throughout the entirety of human history, and indeed throughout the entire history of all animals.

Things will change and we will look back upon the times when people only lived to 70 years as the dark ages, and the justifications given for this brutal mortality as a coping mechanism.

The anti-longevity position doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Just think: we locked down billions of people to prevent the spread of COVID, mostly because of the toll it takes on those over the age of 70, who died at a rate 5 percent upon infection, yet aging is going to kill the vast majority of those over the age of 70 within a decade, and the resources going toward stopping it are infinitismal in comparison to those spent trying to stop COVID.

That sounds like a cope, because we don't have any solution for now so we try to justify it as a "good thing for society"

If we had a way to live forever healthily, essentially no one would chose to die except the people with deep psychological problems with themselves

the thing is: Would it be possible to make sure that no new people will be born if we achieve longlevity? You are right that noone would choose to die. But then the human population would grow even more out of bounds than it's already doing now.

You are probably rational enough to give up getting new kids if that means achieving longlevity/immortality. But most people aren't as rational as HN forum members.

Why do you think that population growth is a bad thing and giving up getting new kids is in any way a rational decision?

Earth could easily carry 100 billion people, we could build cities on venus and mars, and if people could live for thousands of years, 100 year journey to another star on a slow ship would become quite acceptable.

Bedsides, In most places birth rate is already below replacement level, so longer lifespan is necessary to prevent population collapse.

> Bedsides, In most places birth rate is already below replacement level, so longer lifespan is necessary to prevent population collapse.

No, it's not. Current estimates are that population will stabilize around 10bn people, not collapse: https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

Just extrapolate what elderly (90+) contribute to society now. Before even thinking about longevity, we need to eradicate degenerative diseases that make old people useless in society - Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Dementia, Arthritis, ...

There would also be a necessity to allow (and even force) euthanasia for people in persistent vegetative state.

Longevity is not about keeping people with dementia alive indefinitely, it is about repairing damage caused by aging, before that can cause degenerative diseases, cancer, etc.

Most of the diseases you’re describing are associated with ageing, if you can treat ageing their prevalence would likely be vastly reduced; not to mention that there wouldn’t really be a concept of “elderly” anymore, just people who’ve been alive longer.

>Earth could easily carry 100 billion people

Source? Based on what standard of living/level of technology? There was even a time I thought Julian Simon had a point, but in the years since then everything I've witnessed has suggested quite the opposite. The more of us there are it's just as likely a tiny percentage will destroy the planet for the rest of us than it is a few geniuses will help us invent our way out of trouble.

Shared elsewhere, but here's a video about the overpopulation angle, which even if it doesn't persuade you, should be food for thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Ve0fYuZO8

The issue of death is the deepest lying human trait. It defines the human condition. Hardly a "deep psychological problem".

Not dying is a pretty major goal of most life, even.

More generally, the main trait that differentiate humans from any other animal (including apes) is the ability to look into the future, which makes us capable of planning ahead and recognizing the significance of history, but also leads to us knowing that we will one day die, which, combined with the self-preservation instinct that every animal has, leads to a very bad feeling. So we spend our lives either doing our best not to think about it, or making up and (trying to) believe in stories about what happens after death (=religion).

> But the idea of stopping aging or wanting to live to hundreds of years just seems that it comes from people who have deep psychological problems with themselves.

Why? Why should I be content with the years nature has given me? Why should I not seek to have more? Do you not get joy from living? From being with the people you love? From exploring, learning, experiencing?

Why is a 'normal' human lifetime the perfect and most moral amount of years to have?

Your attitude is so full of suppositions. Frankly it seems to me that anyone who doesn't want more life must have deep psychological problems, some deep rooted depression or ennui.

In my case, knowing that I have a limited amount of time to save for retirement makes it difficult to consider a career switch from a high-earning career like tech to something I might find more fulfilling or noble. Curing ageing could eliminate this pseudo-mandatory retirement phase of our lives, which means more freedom to switch career tracks, to find more ways to impact the world.

If not wanting to see people die is an indication of psychological problems then I am okay with being counted in that number.

I aleady had one parent die before their time, and would love to not experience that again.

I don't think we can become immortal within my lifetime, nor will we live for hundreds of years but it would be nice if all our parents could at least live into their 90s.

Beyond that, I don't see what's wrong with immortality as a goal. Yes it's impractical but if you fail to attain it, at least you gain massive health benefits for the already elderly who have poor quality of life.

As long as wealth inequality continues to exist, so too will immortality fail to exist.

Immortality has no tolerance for stagnant dynasties. Intertwined with mortality and death is one chimp tribe believing they are superior to another, biologically identical chimp tribe simply due to differing starting circumstances or chance (right place, right time, right background, “wow I must be a genius!”).

As long as our economy plays out via genetic and social lottery instead of true merit, rewards the unrewarding, and allows small groups to profit while large groups toil and suffer, immortality will be out of reach.

Might also want to be in space, too, since Earth has limited capacity. May also want to have more reliable energy that can come with us into the depths of space.

What do I know though, just some nobody.

We could just stop having babies except deliberately to replace accidental deaths.

I’d you are immortal then why worry about not having children, over a long enough timeline eventually your turn in the queue will come.

But that’s just philosophical thought. In reality, we are too far away from even living to 200 years old to start worrying about what comes after that.

If you had the option to extend your life by a hundred healthy years, can you in good faith say that you would't take it?

I would probably take it, but that doesn't mean it's not harmful. I drink coca cola, doesn't mean I have to think it's healthy or the the coca cola company is fantastic.

Isn't the derision in your original comment about people trying to pursue this a little hypocritical in that case? Sounds a bit like "This guy and rich dudes wanting to live forever are so cringe. Sign me up though."

(Edit: Just saw that you aren't the person who left the original comment, so I guess the above is moot unless the original commenter feels the same way.)

As I've commented above, I do feel the same way. But two things can be true at the same time: 1) The technology to make humans immortal shouldn't exist, and 2) if it existed, I'd probably still use it.

This is not hypocritical in my mind. It would be hypocritical if I myself would work on or invest money into longevity tech and make a statement like this.

Of course I would take, and so would most people. And this is exactly the problem. This will mean that it will be harder than ever to get rid of old, entrenched ideas. It's already hard now: Most decisions are taken by old white men, who are out of touch with today's world and don't have any real incentive to care about the long-term.

Where death is concerned, you and yours first. I'm not that afraid of dying but I'd much rather not go through the experience. Or have my mom and dad die. Is that so bad?

By this logic you should be euthanized once you stop being able to contribute to society - you'll reduce social burden and speed up social change.

I’ve seen this type of an argument before and it seems not just skeptical for the sake of it but super lazy. The main reason for progress is that people with outdated ideas die and if they don’t, the progress will end - that’s the best we can do? A bastardization of Max Plank’s idea, ad hominem, (justifiable) criticism of western approach to death, and anti-capitalist motives all blended into some kind of pro-death philosophy? Maybe let’s reform how science operates to promote innovation in hundreds of possible ways instead of telling billions to die because of an idea if we don’t have to? And is the quickest innovation necessarily even a good goal? AGI presents serious dangers.

I don't know how uncharitable I'm being, but sometimes the argument that death is the great idea palate cleanser, just comes across as a way people attempt to come to terms with mortality. Maybe it is a valid argument, but as you've pointed out, there's plenty to suggest the opposite might also be true -- death/ageing cuts down brilliant minds before they have a chance to do their best work.

If you don't find organ transplants (which include bone marrow transplants) to be cringe, or believe the people who wish to receive them to have deep psychological problems with themselves, then you might want to consider why many folks would believe your stance on the matter of human longevity to be fundamentally inconsistent.

Not sure if you read my comment in its entirety. I said that I think it's important that we do things that improve the qualiy of life for people, which includes organ transplants. Which is different from investing into resources which will make the old and rich live hundreds of years.

I did read your comment in its entirety.

> [Y]ou might want to consider why many folks would believe your stance on the matter of human longevity to be fundamentally inconsistent.

Imagine Trump and Biden living forever holding outsized political power in perpetuity.

Without the cycle of life there's no evolution, with no evolution there's no progress. That goes for biology, but certainly also for ideas.

Imagine that when lifespans change and mortality drops, society adapts and changes too. Imagine.

Actually we don't have to imagine, for instance we can see that in general birth rates drop when infant mortality falls.

The idea that stagnation is the only possible outcome of longer lifespans seems ... reductivist.

How do you see that happening? Would you just exclude people that are older than, say, 100 years, of doing anything that affects the world? They will still try to influence the world according to their old, outdated ideas.

No, I think that’s more of the same flawed thinking.

The answer is I don’t know, and further, that trying to predict the outcome of societal change like that is probably a fool’s game. Pre-emptive, discriminatory rules seem like the absolute worst way to start out. Well, perhaps second worst compared to an outright ban on the technology, which is unfortunately where I think we’ll probably go first due to societal fear of change. Which is ironic given how much you and the OP think it would cause stagnation…

You've started by assuming the same as the OP, that having older people will necessarily cause societal stasis. But you're basing that both on a preconception of what you think older people are like now (personally I dispute this, and I'm not that old), and on a supposition that whatever longevity treatment we come up with won't change that. How do we know? How do we know that a particular treatment to, say, keep people younger for longer, wouldn't result in more youthful and dynamic society?

We don't know. And any supposition is based on flawed ideas.

We do know that new and better ideas usually come from younger people, not older people who have been doing the same thing for 50 years. We also know that in general, once people have status and power, they do a lot to not give it up.

I do think that we as a humans need to become more responsible with developing new technologies. There are technologies that do more bad than good, and we should develop techniques to better asses this before we just yolo a technology and then try to damage control later.

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