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Comment by btbuildem | Hacker News Reader

This is one of these scientific endeavours I cannot get behind. Sure, in theory, it would be amazing to live a thousand years -- but it reeks so strongly of the genie's bottle, I don't think we should pursue it.

It would likely only be the uber-wealthy and powerful who would have access to this technology. Picture a world where a slew of today's despots (including the current American president) get to live for two, or three human lifespans.

If that doesn't cool your jets, let's say the treatment is so cheap it can be widely available to everyone. Now you have prisoners, slaves, exploited labourers who live for centuries. It's madness. I don't think we've evolved enough, ethically speaking, as a species to wrestle with such long lifespans.

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>Picture a world where a slew of today's despots (including the current American president) get to live for two, or three human lifespans.

What makes the current lifespan any more correct than 2x or 3x, or 0.5x of a century or two ago? Given that life expectancy was much shorter a century ago, should we start randomly executing people to keep "the uber-wealthy and powerful" from living too long? That would probably have kept "the current American president" from being in power.

Iiuc it wasn’t a comment about what the perfect lifespan is. It’s expressing a concern about how people in power might apply life extending technologies, like they do many other technologies, to exercise and entrench that power.

Or put differently: it’s a request, given limited resources let’s expend effort on a fairer society, not one with longer lived people.

> people in power might apply life extending technologies, like they do many other technologies, to exercise and entrench that power

Sure. One of which would be broadly granting access to it.

Like, if a country tried to restrict such technology to its leaders, you could probably trigger regime change by simply promising to share the technology in the event of deposement. Every party member who barely missed the cut would become your revolutionary.

That’s possible, I suppose. I think @btbuildem was expressing a personal distaste for other uses of power, and an avulsion to the technology because of that. For example: labor camps.

> @btbuildem was expressing a personal distaste for other uses of power, and an avulsion to the technology because of that

Nihilistic Luddism. It works against any argument for making the world a better place.

> For example: labor camps

...what's the connection between longevity and labor camps? Empirically, as life expectancies (at birth and in adulthood) have risen, the prevalence of labor camps has gone down. We can see this both longitudinally and between countries.

Uber rich have means of extending their power to the next generation anyway. Look at North Korea. It's stagnant and hardly changed despite changing hand 3 times.

Whereas if you live a super long life, you can't afford to be risk averse and hope for a dictator to die of old age and hope that will somehow magically change thing.

Life expectancy was shorter a century ago because infant mortality, disease and injury pull the average down. We've done an amazing job of a society pulling up that lower end, but lifespan associated with normal aging is actually fairly stable. For example, Plato lived to be roughly 80 years old.

Anti aging is not just about living long. Having a good quality of life as long as you live is essential. The world population is ageing and costs of caring for them will be huge cost for humanity.

That's why they analyze factors such as memory improvements and bone density.

Do you still want this longevity to be real?

I want this longevity to be real. I have to stick around long enough to see if people respond differently to me when they are older.

'If You Are Not a Liberal When You Are Young, You Have No Heart, and If You Are Not a Conservative When Old, You Have No Brain' Nobody seems to agree on who actually said that.

The author of that quote only proved that those two qualities aren’t mutually exclusive.

Picture the inverse of what you are saying.

“Everyone can live 500 years but I think we should set up a program to randomly murder them at around 60-90 years old.”

Your comment appears to be based in fear, without presenting any reasonable argument against extended lifespans. The idea that a naughty president, or a prisoner, would live hundreds of years is not a longevity problem, its a politics problem.

I feel like the point mostly comes down to “our current society sucks so we shouldn’t want to live longer in it,” but that could be improved and you can always just, ya know, dip out.

> would likely only be the uber-wealthy and powerful who would have access to this technology

If by uber-wealthy you mean most people in rich countries, sure. Otherwise, I don't see why this would progress in a way all other medicine has not.

Where are the stem cells coming from?

> Where are the stem cells coming from?

This study appears to have used "human embryonic stem cells (hESCs)" [1]. We haven't tested this with iPSCs [2].

Even if it only works with hESCs, if the part of the population that thinks blastocysts are people wants to live a third or a quarter as long as the part that doesn't, I don't see a problem with that. We're basically going in that direction with vaccination anyway.

[1] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00571-9?_re...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_pluripotent_stem_cell

Thank you for the details about this article but that's not quite what I meant.

I meant where do you get enough stem cells to make the procedure widely available to the developed world? Stem cells are kinda scarce, as far as I know, so it may gate such a thing.

> Stem cells are kinda scarce, as far as I know

Embryonic stem cells are rare in America because of religious types. They're not particularly difficult to manufacture or extract--the limit is really human eggs, and we can make those in the lab [1]. (Human sperm are not, for many reasons, difficult to secure.)

I'd actually guess hESCs would be the cheapest route. If we insist on iPSCs, then this turns into a personalised medicine treatment. But in that, it's no different from e.g. oncology.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/09/30/nx-s1-5553322/ivg-human-eggs-...

I would expect it to shift power dynamics quite dramatically, and probably in ways that can't be accurately predicted. What happens when raising a family no longer occupies the bulk of adults' healthy lives and lived experience and wisdom is no longer dragged down by the gradual descent into senility? What if age didn't inversely correlate to neuroplasticity? What if as a young person, your runway to get where you want to go is 80+ years after graduating high school instead of 30-40? All sorts of assumptions and social structures would be upended.

The odds of this actually happening are about about zero anyway, so this is not something to be concerned about. I am more optimistic, if it were to happen ,in unlocking economic potential. Why would we not want some of society's most productive people to live longer. Think of all the careers derailed by illness, lives separated by death.

In today's regulatory environment, I don't even think the CEO of the immortality service provider would know if their service were safe. But you can guarantee it will have personalized pricing calculated right at the edge of the immense wealth required to have that service. And it's a high priced subscription too, you betcha.

The next problem would be overpopulation - OTOH, if people could live naturally for 1000 years or so, manned space travel to habitable planets would be a lot more feasible.

I'll just grant you that most societies are wholly unequipped to deal with long lifespans, and there will be tons of murder, exploitation, and suffering if we fixed our biology. First, how is that any different than the current situation? Second, do you expect societies to quickly evolve to fix all of these problems (or at least tame them), much like societies had to do after the invention of fire, agriculture, steel, gunpowder, or steam?

You're welcome to die if you'd like, but I'll take my chances on living longer with any unknown repercussions.

The technology would have to be accessible to everyone, otherwise "the wealthy" would be murdered. And no, some futuristic sci-fi bullshit isn't going to save them.

> Now you have prisoners, slaves, exploited labourers who live for centuries.

I don't really understand this line of reasoning at all. Slaves exist, and slavery is miserable, therefore nobody on the planet should live beyond current human lifetimes? If a slave or exploited person is going to get healthcare for something that might otherwise cause them to die, are you arguing healthcare should be withheld?

So the argument is essentially "8 billion people dying is a problem, that is worse than whatever the result of longevity is". I'm not sure that it is.

You just need a Prime Radiant

> Picture a world where a slew of today's despots get to live for two, or three human lifespans

Uprisings or outright assassinations would become much more common.

Seriously. Every senior government official or sniper in Russia who isn't happy with Putin is placated by telling themselves "everybody dies sooner or later". Take that away and you'll force people to do something instead of just waiting out the clock.

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