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Comment by lawl | Hacker News Reader

This is REALLY scary if you have recently read the following article:

Could we condemn criminals to suffer for hundreds of years? Biotechnology could let us extend convicts' lives 'indefinitely'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2580828/Could...

Edit: Since people have some issues with the dailymail, feel free to pick any other article on this topic:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=prison+life+prolonging

I just googled and dailymail appeared at the top. Not sure if that was the article i read a few weeks ago.

Also please note that I don't want to stiffle innovation in this area in any way. I think it's awesome research. But I also find it interesting to explore other "applications" of this technology.

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I suspect that given the technology to halt aging, the technology to alter personality and behavior (rehabilitation) won't be far behind (and may even arrive first). The interesting questions to me are whether personalities will be criminalized along with behaviors and to what precision or degree of subtlety personality/behavior changes can be made. Too big a change and it's effectively the same as killing the person.

I would say the political/inequality ramifications are going to be foremost terryfying, unfortunately it's hard to research that beforehand.

Quoting the Daily Fail? Seems unwise. Not even going to read it and neither should anyone else.

I'm not sure why that would be?

The idea is out there... Speculating if it will happen is pointless anyways, as it will probably take a long time before reversing aging could be done on scale.

So I really don't understand the downvote(s).

Your original post is a huge tangent from the topic of discussion. That article is pure fearmongering and is exactly the type of propagandized information that stifles innovation.

Obviously it makes sense to talk about the ramifications of new technology, but the article you linked is doing this in a heavy-handed way to get people to read the article. The result is disproportionate value being placed on that idea for the average reader of dailymail, which necessarily detracts from the discussion of balance surrounding this research.

No article stifles innovation unless some idiot reads it as scripture!

Meanwhile what do you know about the average Daily Mail reader? Presumably you've researched the around 70 million readers (an exaggeration to be sure but it's a lot of people) who take a daily look at this popular newspaper. I rather think not. But that doesn't stop people like you making predictable and patronizing observations of this kind at every opportunity. No need to comment. We can all 'read' and draw our own conclusions.

I'm lumping "average daily mail reader" with average person. Surely you are not ignorant to the effects that propaganda can have on the population. The linked article does nothing but narrowly discuss one possible consequence of this type of technology in a manner meant to illicit fear or general negative association. This is by definition propaganda and it detracts from a thoughtful analysis of the larger topic of discussion. I'm not patronizing anyone by drawing attention to the idea that plenty of people use news articles as end points for information; I'm simply drawing the connection between that phenomenon and the type of biased reporting seen in the article above.

The Daily Mail is like Fox News. They both carry so much stupidity and lies that it's best and much faster to just assume that they don't carry any truthful or interesting information at all. Just skip them. Not valid newssources. I'll treat anything coming from them as both lies and stupidity until proven otherwise.

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