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Comment by maratd | Hacker News Reader

> It's a strange disconnect. I know everyone is thinking what I'm thinking, but you never see this in the articles. Is it some kind of taboo?

Sure. It's ridiculously selfish.

As you age, you realize your success in all things eventually boils down to experience and ability to execute. Ability to execute wanes with age, as experience is accumulated, so it balances out. Now imagine a spry 20 year old with 60 years of experience? Not exactly fair to those actually 20 years old.

EDIT: To the old farts responding below me, regardless of how well you take care of yourself, you wither with age. By removing that, you are messing with the balance that has existed for millions of years. It has nothing to do with fair competition, it has everything to do with using technology to get ahead of the competition, in the same way that some athletes use performance enhancing drugs, and we as a society frown on that too.

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This is a good opportunity to apply the "reversal test": you say the status quo is better than an envisaged alternative, so let's see how it looks if that alternative is the status quo and someone proposes to switch to what we have now.

So: Imagine a world in which people (let's say) stay at 25-year-old health until the age of about 90, and then die quickly. And suppose, in this world, that someone comes along and says: "Hey, I've had this great idea. You know how sometimes it can be difficult for young people to be successful because older people are more effective? Well, I know what we can do about it. I've got this stuff we can put in the water, and what it'll do is make everyone degenerate with age, so that they lose energy and brain function and strength and so on. Most people will have stopped paid work entirely by the time they're 70. A lot of people will find themselves practically unemployable before they're even 60. What's not to like?"

I can't imagine that the response would be very positive.

This is silly. You have absolutely no clue what a future with a "25-year-old health until the age of about 90" would look like. Not even close. There are literally millions of things, from the economy to social structure, that would be impacted. It's not possible to even remotely predict.

Neither do you! So stop trying to predict that it's necessarily a bad or "selfish" thing.

Boom. This was a great rebuttal, I just needed to say that.

> It's not possible to even remotely predict.

What? He's responding to your prediction.

We already have that substance its called HFCS. That and ethanol.

I'm 54, so I suppose I'm one of the people you have never met but still choose to label as an "old fart." Whatever.

For what it's worth, I don't care about any "balance that has existed for millions of years." I care about my life and the many people in it, whom I choose to love and respect.

As I write this, I'm recovering from a sleeve gastrectomy, where about 75% of my stomach was removed. This was voluntary on my part, to help me lose weight. I paid for it myself, out of my own pocket. My BMI last week was 36, and I've lost 12.5 pounds in the last two weeks. This morning, I walked four miles in the Seattle rain.

I did this because I love my life. It's my property, not yours. My only agreement is to respect individual rights as best I can. Don't expect me to die any sooner than I must out of some self-less concern for others.

I'm 54 and am an old fart.

> This morning, I walked four miles in the Seattle rain.

Ya got me beat. I was waiting for things to dry up a bit before going running.

Hi Walter. We've never met, but I recognize your name from things you've done in the Seattle area over the last 20 - 30 years. Good to hear from you.

thanks for the kind words

Hazel thinks George looks exhausted and urges him to lie down and rest his "handicap bag", 47 pounds (21 kg) of weight placed in a bag and locked around George's neck. He says he hardly notices the weight any more. Hazel suggests taking a few of the weights out of the bag, but he says if everyone broke the law, society would return to its old competitive ways. Hazel says she would hate that. A noise interrupts the conversation, and George cannot remember what they were talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

Harrison Bergeron was a parody of what social darwinists think socialists think.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_co...

Thanks for the high school reading list flashback :D

> Now imagine a spry 20 year old with 60 years of experience? Not exactly fair to those actually 20 years old.

How is that "unfair"? You might as well criticize an old person who looks and acts young for taking good care of themselves.

Your thought process is linear. Try to model the consequences. 20 yeas old people will be considered kids and that's it. Otherwise you should opt for euthanasia because 10 year olds have a hard time competing with you today.

This is a valid point, but if 20 year olds are now treated like children and the fertility window doesn't change, procreating becomes somewhat difficult.

In fact, isn't that what's happening in all the countries where longevity has shot up and the fertility rate plummeted?

Sounds like a good deal to me. I'll take longer life over more children any day of the year.

So you're ok with living in a society where most of the children are made by religious fanatics of the "Quiverfull" style? Because this is what tends to be the consequence when educated, wealthier, secular people can't found families in their 20s.

No, I'd want to live in a world where said religious fanatics are not allowed to do that, otherwise you get evolution.

I don't like evolution.

I do tend to agree that we're pretty much screwed, though.

Employment, the economy, and success are not zero-sum. Someone getting a job doesn't mean someone loses a job. Someone succeeding doesn't mean someone else is failing.

It's perfectly fair for the 20 year old, because they won't compete. It's not fair to the 50 or 60 year old, who has to compete with someone who has equal experience but is younger.

As a man in my 20s, I welcome the challenge. What's fair or not fair about it? I'd be thrilled to work in a world with more competent people around.

Isn't the 60 year old more likely to have a senior (note the word) position, more pay and more assets than the 20 year old? It's not like things are totally "balanced" today.

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