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Comment by feoren | Hacker News Reader

Before the comments come in talking about whether we actually want to cure aging, let me present my favorite argument I've seen on the topic:

Imagine the situation were reversed: nobody is aging, and we're worried about Earth's limited resources. Your proposed to solution is to kill everyone over a certain age!?

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I think this argument presupposes that biological life had found some healthy, deathless equilibrium; it's hard to imagine what that would look like, since we what we have is a system where death is a vital part of all that we see--it is required, in a most basic sense, to rejuvenate the greater system.

This isn't to say that "therefore we should all accept the inevitability of death"--just that we should consider carefully whether, in ending (or forestalling) death, we might improve the lot of the individual at the expense of the greater whole (society, other life on the planet, etc.).

Another thought--what if avoiding death ends up taking exponentially more resources as one gets older, and society becomes a superorganism oriented around keeping a small number of egos alive for as long as possible, where capacity to age becomes the ultimate expression of power?

>what if avoiding death ends up taking exponentially more resources as one gets older, and society becomes a superorganism oriented around keeping a small number of egos alive for as long as possible

What is society oriented around now? While the idea of living under an immortal human god doesn't sound particularly appealing to me, it would probably be better than the present situation (i.e. living under mortal, short-lived human gods with nukes)

Not everyone, only the folks that paid less

My opinion on the topic changed significantly after watching these great videos:

- Why Age? Should We End Aging Forever? - Kurzgesagt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoJsr4IwCm4

- How to Cure Aging – Kurzgesagt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjdpR-TY6QU

- Why Die? - CGP Grey - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C25qzDhGLx8

This comment perfectly hits upon something I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on for some time. Thanks.

In either universe, the earth can only serve so many people. Since we're proposing hypotheticals, here's another one: suppose all the babies that would be born in either universe were born already, then we had to decide whether to keep the babies and kill off the old folks, or to kill the babies and keep the eldery. I don't think anyone would propose we let the older generation live. This hypothetical is in fact much closer to the situation we are in...

You get 200 years but then you're contact bound to hop on the first colony ship to Mars...

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