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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5577641 No.5577641 [Reply] [Original]

Why is our top priority not life extension?

Self-preservation is built into almost every organism.

>> No.5577650

The problem is that it doesn't have high returns for each egoist to invest in this research, compared to making life more interesting before death. (possible exception:billionairs)

And for altruists, life extension isn't optimal either because the same money could be used to improve the quality of many lives.

>> No.5577653

It is one of our top priorities.

Look how far we've come with heart surgery, brain surgery, cancer treatment, aids treatment, alzheimer's, etc, etc. People are living longer now than ever before

>> No.5577654

I would also like to know this.

And why we insist on spending money and time on really
useless things that doesn't benefit us in the long run e.g
we spend time and money on shows about who can be the best
model.

We are not a very smart species and i keep telling myself this
because of the reason above. I'm done now.

>> No.5577661

Why would you want to live longer?

>> No.5577665

>>5577653
Those are more of after the fact things.

I was thinking more along the lines of aging prevention.

>> No.5577664

>>5577654
>tries to objectively define benefit
>calls anyone else not very smart

>> No.5577672

>>5577661
I love life.

If you had the choice right now between life and death, which would you chose?

>> No.5577669

>>5577641
we sort of need people to die. Our entire society and economy depends on it
First, it will cost money to keep these people going (it already costs far, far more to care for the elderly than it does for young people). Only the population of elderly will have exploded, because they won't be dying off.
Also, the vast majority of you have the job you have now because at some point in the past the last guy who had it quit, or retired, or died. Picture a future where every high-paying position in your department or company is held by somebody who's been there for 200 years.
It's also worth keeping in mind that big, positive social changes tend to take generational changes--some attitudes die so hard that they don't go away until the people holding them are in the ground. For instance, Thomas Jefferson didn't think slavery would go away until there was some future generation that wouldn't tolerate it, and he was right. And then the civil rights movement didn't happen until the last of the slaveholders--and many of their children--had died off.

>> No.5577679

>>5577669
The part about social change is realistic but the economics part is shaky. Raising children and caring for the elderly is both expensive, but if you could have smart never-aging people with ever-agile minds, that would be far more efficient.

>> No.5577683

>>5577672
If you love life, why do you want to change the way it is?

>> No.5577684

>Implying life extension is not my top priority.
>Implying I haven't pursued a career in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology to serve this end.

>> No.5577686
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5577686

>>5577672
I'm inclined to choose life because it feels nice but would be all right with death.

>> No.5577685

>>5577683
He doesn't. He wants to prolong it.

>> No.5577690

>>5577664
No i mean that we are smart but not as smart
as we like to think we are. Why would we spend
so much time and money on something as stupid
as say, promoting artists instead of using that
money to help cure cancer or something.

It feels like we don't care about moving our
civilization forward anymore.

>> No.5577694

>>5577669
but people not dying still leads to very quick overpopulation
people still being born, and no1 dying
thats a problem

>> No.5577695

>>5577690
Forward to what end?

>> No.5577704

http://benthamscience.com/open/tolsj/articles/V002/23TOLSJ.pdf

Telomere Shortening is the Sole Mechanism of Aging


good luck with that

>> No.5577705
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5577705

I am biologically immortal

The only downside is the diffulty in learning new things

>> No.5577709

>>5577695
1) abolish involuntary suffering
2) population: 50 trillion
3) life expectancy: 5000 years
4) need for work: abolished
5) digital telepathy and superhappiness in cyberspace
6) spreading out into space...

>> No.5577710

>>5577694
There was a wager over this that you might want to look up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager

>> No.5577715

>>5577695
Well so far forward that perhaps much more people
will be interested in science. So far that we can
stop fighting on this planet and concentrate on
science instead. Just imagine what we could achieve. Obviously that wont happen for quite a while because people minds are weak and they
obey the most powerful or they kill in the name of
a god...

>> No.5577718

>>5577709

And this

>> No.5577719

>>5577718
Except the population.

>> No.5577721

>>5577694

We would still run into the same carrying capacity problem if we only lived to be 40. It would just take slightly longer. I treat life span and carrying capacity as separate, but related issues. They also have separate solutions.

>> No.5577727

>>5577709
You want to spread out into space?
You have the ethic of a virus?

>> No.5577728

>>5577694
>Distribute "cure" at specific, licensed locations
>Procedure requires the patient to agree to be sterilized

Checkmate

>> No.5577731

>>5577721
Carrying capacity is not a problem. It can be increased further through technology, and FWIW, I don't really need many forests on my planet.

Obviously, there needs to be limited reproduction. But thankfully, we have already invented contraception and can improve on it.

>> No.5577734

>>5577727
A virus needs hosts, space is devoid of life.

If suffering is abolished, spreading life into space is a good thing.

>> No.5577736

>>5577731

Carrying capacity is always a problem. It can be increased, but not without limit. To suggest otherwise implies limitless resources.

>> No.5577738

>>5577736
no, it implies limited reproduction

>> No.5577745

>>5577669
>First, it will cost money to keep these people going (it already costs far, far more to care for the elderly than it does for young people). Only the population of elderly will have exploded, because they won't be dying off.
>Also, the vast majority of you have the job you have now because at some point in the past the last guy who had it quit, or retired, or died. Picture a future where every high-paying position in your department or company is held by somebody who's been there for 200 years.

These two things are completely contradictory. If they still have jobs then they're not costing money, they're generating wealth.

Think of it this way. Right now, you spend about half your life (the first quarter and the last quarter, more or less) being an unproductive burden on the rest of us. If you "cure aging," you reduce the "uselessness ratio" from 1/2 to arbitrarily small. That alone would mean an unprecedented economic boom.

Plus the second thing you said is just the lump of labor fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

>Picture a future where every high-paying position in your department or company is held by somebody who's been there for 200 years.

Sounds good. They'll be really good at their jobs and everyone will benefit.

What we would probably see, also, is that "seniority" no longer means nearly as much as it does currently.

>> No.5577746

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBbG2tSDfOo

>> No.5577742

>>5577738

Why does reproduction need to be limited in the first place?

>Inb4 to avoid reaching our carrying capacity
>Inb4 that was the entire point what what I was saying.

>> No.5577754

>>5577745
I think what is underestimated here is that machines will do a lot of jobs humans currently do, and even art and creative expression can be copied digitally. A lot less labor will be needed.

>> No.5577765

>>5577694
>but people not dying still leads to very quick overpopulation

Not necessarily. The hidden assumption there is that people will continue to reproduce at the same rate they do now, and that's almost certainly completely wrong. Why have children in your 20s and 30s if you can wait indefinitely with no consequences? I'd wait until my 150s or something, when I'd accumulated enough resources and experience that I could be a much better parent. I think you would see the birth rate fall DRAMATICALLY.

And also, it's not like nobody would die. Ageless =/= immortal.

>> No.5577769

>>5577754
>A lot less labor will be needed.

Which is a good thing.

>> No.5577775

>>5577765
Birth rates won't fall forever without some kind of coercive intervention.

Imagine a 1% demographic with the gene-religion combination that makes them want to have many children and teach most of those children the same thing. They would quickly (a couple of generations) dominate the population.

>> No.5577776

>>5577769
Yes, of course. Unless the capital-trillionaires starve everyone off.

>> No.5577778

>>5577765

>when I'd accumulated enough resources and experience that I could be a much better parent

A shame a great deal of the rest of humanity doesn't share such noble ideology. We inform them of this strategy and how it can be applied today and many will furiously reject it, claiming "MUH RUGHTS" to have more children than they can adequately support.

>> No.5577789

>>5577775
>Imagine a 1% demographic with the gene-religion combination that makes them want to have many children and teach most of those children the same thing.

Such people already exist. They have reality tv shows about them. But they're a lunatic fringe, and, despite what they might like, you can't actually reliably pass that shit on to your children unless you raise them in total isolation.

>> No.5577787

>>5577778
It should be legal to have children only when you can afford them.

Furthermore, you could make it so that property rights are absolute and if you can't afford existence anymore, you can die (without pain, euthanasia should be free).

>> No.5577790

>>5577776
They can't starve everyone off. There will be many who hold just enough capital to live off the interest forever.

>> No.5577793

>>5577778
>We inform them of this strategy and how it can be applied today

But the situation is extremely different today.

>> No.5577792

>>5577789
Reliably is relative. If 55% have 4 or more children, it's still exponential.

>> No.5577812

>>5577792
>Reliably is relative. If 55% have 4 or more children, it's still exponential.

But again, they already exist. Do they dominate the population? No. In fact, birth rates overall are actually falling. And atheists make up a bigger proportion of the population every year. That's certainly not because atheists have more children.

>> No.5577819

>>5577812
>Do they dominate the population? No.
How do you know that? Reproduction isn't instantaneous, it takes over a decade to replace a generation for humans. Wait a few decades, and you may have a different answer.

>> No.5577829

>>5577819
>How do you know that? Reproduction isn't instantaneous

People who have a lot of children for religious reasons have always existed.

>> No.5577832

>>5577793

Different? Yes. Extremely? No. The same idea holds true: people will be pissed off if they are forced to give up what they consider to be "their rights". The only way some would do it willingly is under the threat of suffering, institutional or natural.

>> No.5577842

>>5577829
Maybe you're right. My grandparents all had many siblings and were very religious and now the average child-per-woman ratio in our family has dropped to something like 1.5 and we're not very religious.

But if you can home-school/brainwash your kids and make them grow up without TV, internet or radio, it may still work.

>> No.5577847

>>5577641
>Self-preservation is built into almost every organism

not after you have kids it isn't

>> No.5577862

We are actually programmed to die genetically, and even if we would have the technology to live longer, i'm not sure people would use it because life gets boring after a time.

>> No.5577867

>>5577862
You could always kill yourself though without aging. There are also 80+yo people who like living

>> No.5577873

no more evolving
stuck being stupid forever
???
not profit

>> No.5577877

>>5577873
Everyone would die eventually due to diseases or accidents, its just about the average life-span. Artificial genetic selection could be used to make the new offspring more intelligent. And AI is also possible.

>> No.5577882

>>5577862
You couldn't be more wrong
Don't forget entertainment and antidepressants are also evolving.

>> No.5577883

>>5577873
>implying we're currently evolving to be smarter

>> No.5577909

>>5577877
>eventually

Its not even that long, some people cap accidental death as low as 100 years old

>> No.5577913

>>5577909
you could scan everyone's brain each evening and restore them from backup if they get hit by a hoverbus.

>> No.5578146

>>5577909

The correct figure for this based on actuarial tables is about 700 years. But death would stop being an exponential decay thing. Some people will continue dying at 15. Some will live to 15,000.

>> No.5578158

>>5577665
>I was thinking more along the lines of aging prevention.

Easier said than done. Lots of things contribute to "aging" (cell senescence being first among them). There's just no one magic bullet that will cure it.

That said, there IS a lot of research into that field, if you'd just take a minute to look instead of apparently assuming that since all the world's resources aren't focused on that one topic, then none must be.

>> No.5578212

>>5577641

Dear God. You'd want to live forever?

>> No.5578243

>>5577641
I'm not helping anyone live forever until they learn to live. That would hardly happen with this american culture spreading like cancer in the world. Sex brings overpopulation, alcohol and other drugs bring death and idiotness, greed brings, well, that's the reason there are so much poor shit people in the world.

If people can't even solve these problems by themselves they are not worth of being given eternal or a long life. The most i can do for them is giving them a good death.

>> No.5578251

You know, if you were to live forever, you would eventually be so alienated you'd want to die. Let's say you were still alive millions of years from now when people began to look different (and the culture with it) You'd have that same brain and body. You'd be looked at how we look at cromagnons. It would be very confusing and frustrating

>> No.5578255
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5578255

Many reasons:
1.) There are many things that end life, and we do not know how to cure most of them.
2.) Learn to differential equation: P'=kP. P is population at time t. In other words, if the human death rate completely stops, we'll reach a population of over 12 billion in less than a decade....we'll all starve to death.
3.) Only the rich will be able to afford it. This has the potential to cause political unrest.

It would be wise to fix all these other problems before we find a way to prolong our life. We would most likely change the way we reproduce, and feed before prolonging our life for all people.

>> No.5578279

>>5577641
Every successful species ever (except for a handful) has consisted entirely of individuals that have died.
Hence death is adaptive.
Why would you want to go against what has worked for our species, and related species, for tens of millions of years?

>> No.5578288

You guys are not using your imagination.

Picture a world where everyone lives forever. Clearly, population cannot continue to grow, even if people didnt live forever. Lets assume that the wealthiest people didnt hoard their eternal life technology from everyone else. Who would be the only ones living? The smartest, best human beings would live as a result of having either the smarts or money to get the dwindling natural resources, space being the most valuable one, since agricultural and food technology is ever quickly approaching a singularity.

After all, eternal life would imply halting DNA mutations completely, leaving the cells to replicate with 100% chance of no defect. Children can still be parented, and with each child brought into the world, a less smart, strong human has to leave it...eventually. So when this 'survival of the fittest' ends.

We will have a super human race, all the bitter scientists and bright intellects who seem to be supressed by modern day society would revel in a world filled with only thinkers, doers and, well, manipulators...but our evolution would halt though, leaving genetic stagnancy, the most frightening result of eternal life. But, I assume gene therapy would increase the rate of our species evolves anyway, leaving natural evolution an extinct process.

>> No.5578291

>>5578288
I meant:

So when this 'survival of the fittest' ends, we will have..

>> No.5578314

>>5578288

sure is agenda 21 in here

>> No.5578336

>>5578288
> Lets assume that the wealthiest people didnt hoard their eternal life technology from everyone else.

>>>/lit/

>> No.5578350
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5578350

>>5578288
>no mention of transhumanism
>2113

>> No.5578384

>>5578288
>Lets assume that the wealthiest people didnt hoard their eternal life technology from everyone else
but they would

>> No.5578395
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5578395

>>5578384
Like Bill Gates? Richard Branson? Elon Musk? Collaboration is the norm more often than not. Maybe the elite will get a clunky prototype but by the time it filters down to the masses it will be refined to completion.


For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon

>> No.5578402

>>5577669
I think the current paradigm is a worth sacrificing if its for something like immortality

>> No.5578535

>>5578395

Even if it IS available to all, it will be fucking expensive. Maybe it's not reserved just for a dozen super-elites, just for the 0.1% at the top.

You still have the same result. Those who dominate society now no longer have to fear death. The one nice thing about human power mongers is they have to die like the rest of us, and chances are their kid or grand-kid is going to be incompetent and lose the Empire. Happens all the time.

Anyway, the right to reproduce at will is such a fundamental part of EVERY culture (barring the Chinese of late and their success has been limited to say the least). Can you imagine the social upheaval if we make everyone immortal but require them to all stop reproducing? Forced sterilizations, forced abortions, unauthorized infants being seized and euthanized ... it'd be terrifying. We won't give those rights up willingly so there'd either need to be an all-powerful Orwellian state to police us brutally, or else there'd just be civil wars and religious wars. Or if we become immortal and nobody has an iron grip on us, we just become far too numerous far too fast.

Seriously, immortality would be a fucking disaster for humans.

>> No.5578551
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5578551

>>5578535

>implying the big power brokers havent kept it in the family already.

you dont change the world with a vision limited to a single lifetime.

>> No.5578618

>>5577641
The more people who live longer the less people can be born (for risk of overpopulation), the less people are born the more we slow our evolution. This probably wouldn't be a major issue on small time scales but if we remove or drastically slow our species ability to adapt by producing genetically varied offspring regularly we are going to have major problems keeping the human race alive in the long run.

>> No.5578643
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5578643

>>5577641
Because science has only been a prominent part of our civilization for a short time. One could argue that it STILL struggles to be such: Our society, on a global scale, did not arise from an intellectual crux. It evolved from an instinctual one.

Instinctively, we sought the food and water needed to stay alive. And so civilization first arose from the bountiful Fertile Crescent, India, and China.

Instinctively, assertion of dominance and the drive to reproduce won out over egalitarianism. And so the female gender as well as anyone from outside of the most advanced group(s) were viewed as inferior to the most advanced (Caucasian) male(s).

And instinctively, the drive to not die won out over the idea of prolonging life. Death is accepted as an inevitability, so to maintain dominance the old dying alphas claimed their actions to be mandated by entities beyond themselves that could NOT die.

Put it all together and you get several millennia of humanity being driven by fear and the blind leading the blind. Dissent is a threat to survival and thus is destroyed as soon as it appears.

The modern result of this is a society where science struggles because the lack of change allows most of us to maintain a life that we might not like but are unable to change because change means anything between ostracizing or imprisonment or even death.

That's not to say we're a lost cause, of course. Science is advancing. Technology is advancing. Ideas and practices once met with hostility are now becoming common or even encouraged. But again, instinct is hard to fight. Control won't be easily given up. And control comes in two powerful forms: religion and money.

So we're working with what we've got, basically. We're slowly making progress. If there's a word for this beyond a blanket term like 'chaos theory,' I don't know it. But that's how I figure it to be.

>> No.5578657

>>5577641
Quality of life is more important than longevity.
If you can make yourself live to be 200 years old but the last 130 of those years are going to be in a wheelchair having to have other people do everything for you because your body is otherwise too worn out, then it's not a life worth living. I'd rather have 50 awesome years then just die in my sleep than 100 mediocre years full of failure and pain.

>> No.5578677
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5578677

Get ready to die.

You will never become immortal in a world where people like this still exist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rikEWuBrkHc

Sorry.

If it's any consolation, your entire "self" can be reduced to a cascade of neurochemical signals.

You're a self-renewing ship of theseus, and matter and energy can never be destroyed.

In a very technical, Pantheistic way, you are God, and you will live forever.

But that face? That attitude? That ego?

That's all gonna go away, my friend. Not shit you can do about that.

You'll die many times while you're still alive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H-0Tm4TXZU

>> No.5578681

>>5577705
is this post really terrifying?

>> No.5578684
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5578684

>>5578681

No, >>5578677 is.

Because it's true.

>> No.5578704

>>5578677
Yep.

Thread's dead, baby.

Thread's dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Yp2L6c2KM

>> No.5578893

bump

>> No.5578917

>>5577734

Why is spreading life a 'good' thing?
Is life intrinsically 'good'?

>> No.5578919

>>5578551

He never actually said that, you know.

>> No.5578940

>>5578917

The answer is yes

>> No.5579209

Well I read that currentl there are many emerging life extenstion activists. Aubrey De Grey, Bill Andrews etc
And work is being dont and people are trying.
Help them through donations and stuff.

sorry for the grammar.
drunk slav here