Undoing Aging

[Overload]

I think there's a difference between becoming apparently younger and arresting the degradation of the body. I'd definitely say that you don't want a situation where the body continues to degrade but you don't give out; extrapolate how your grandparents (or great grandparents) aged and then continue the curve for another 50-100 years and it's bad times.

Exactly. Fortunately, there's no scenario in which we're living to 150+ without being biologically in good health, as aging is just the accumulation of damage, and only by periodically repairing said damage will we keep our biological machinery running, same principle as antique cars, which were only meant to last 10-15 years but can be kept running indefinitely with comprehensive, preventative maintenance.

[Exhuminator]

I'd rather die at 480 than 80. I'm not sure what your point is with this.

I'm not sure why you think living to be 480 years is better than living to be 80 years. What is the point of that? Will you be so much more fulfilled with life, the universe, and everything, after another 400 years of doing the same stuff you did the first 80? Do you think living 400 more years will somehow make you a happier human than you are now? Do you think seeing the further advancements of technology will be worth living through the continual decline of the global human condition? Do you think that if anti-aging becomes viable, that it will be available to just everyone? Or only the 1% who will make sure that it's so expensive, that deeply prolonged life is a luxury of the ruling elite? Or do you actually think in 400 more years that we'll all live in a space faring Utopian society and never age past 25 years physically?

It'd be unnatural for us not to strive to improve our condition.

The thing is, I believe that aging is not a disease. Aging is a cellular process that our bodies are genetically predisposed to do. A normal human isn't born with viruses or diseases, but rather contracts them. However aging is built right in. As such I believe that aging is an intrinsic informative element of our existence. Entropy is a universal constant after all. Why should our own DNA replication not be subject to such decay? Is that not grossly arrogant? I think it is. But, that's my own view. An opinion rooted in a personal weltanschauung that you clearly do not share. Fair enough.

I think it's obvious to most children, when they witness their family die, that aging is bad.

That could be so, if the child believes that material physical death is the absolute end of someone's existence. Which would require the child to be an atheist-materialist, a rather nihilistic philosophical stance that I don't believe most children have. Rather, I think most children see aging as both good and bad. Most children cannot wait to get older actually, so they can do adult things like drive cars or fly planes. To most children aging represents rites of passage, with death indeed being the final one.

Even if you believe in an afterlife, what's the harm of living this one for as long as you can? Learning as much as you can? Experiencing the cosmos to its fullest?

Well I could answer this question from my own philosophical view, but I promise you (and most others here) would not agree with it. No point in arguing philosophical positions about what comes after death, when the only way to prove it is for us both to die and one of us say "ha ha, I told you so". So I'll just say that after a while being here, the human experience one accrues becomes redundant. If you refused to learn the material in one course, you aren't going to learn it in ten.

I'm a fan of Occam's Razor.

"The simplest answer is the right one." But that's not always the case though, is it? For a simple example; there was a time everybody thought the earth was flat, because that's simply how it looks to us, so it must be flat. But it took complex mathematics, specially created tools, and ultimately space travel to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that the earth is indeed round. Just the same, our very existence is not so flat as it seems. But rather than argue with an internet stranger about why that is, I'd rather just let you find that one out for yourself someday. And if that's 80 years from now, or 480 years from now, you're only prolonging the inevitable truth.

[Overload]

I'd rather die at 480 than 80. I'm not sure what your point is with this.

I'm not sure why you think living to be 480 years is better than living to be 80 years. What is the point of that? Will you be so much more fulfilled with life, the universe, and everything, after another 400 years of doing the same stuff you did the first 80? Do you think living 400 more years will somehow make you a happier human than you are now? Do you think seeing the further advancements of technology will be worth living through the continual decline of the global human condition? Do you think that if anti-aging becomes viable, that it will be available to just everyone? Or only the 1% who will make sure that it's so expensive, that deeply prolonged life is a luxury of the ruling elite? Or do you actually think in 400 more years that we'll all live in a space faring Utopian society and never age past 25 years physically?

Asked what I wanted to be at age 5, I answered astronaut. I want to see what's out there, that's my driving force. As long as that exists, why would I want to die? Using your logic, why not just die now? Would you really be so much happier living to 80 than 40, or whatever your current age is? Again, the number isn't important. It's about remaining healthy. If we're in good health, we're probably not going to want to die, and we typically try to persuade those that do, otherwise.

You might assume these medicines will be prohibitively expensive when you look at the cost of medicine today, but they almost certainly won't be. The reason medicine today is expensive is not because it costs a lot to produce, but because it cost a lot in R&D, and investors need to make that money back, and there are a limited number of people with illness x at any given time, and they're only customers until that illness kills them. Everyone will be a customer for these treatments, and there's an astronomical amount more to be made by selling it at an affordable rate to everyone, than at an exorbitant rate to the richest 1-10%. Most of the developed world has universal health care, and by the time these therapies roll out, hopefully more will. There's no reason it can't be a social program. Instead of treating people when they're sick, prevent the illnesses. It'll save billions, and it'll also mean that the elderly will once again be able-bodied, able to contribute wealth to society. China recently struck their one-child policy because they weren't on track to have enough kids to replace all of the elderly that are going to die. We have no choice but to end aging. "In 2015, the costs to all payers for the care of people living with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias will total an estimated $226 billion, with Medicare and Medicaid paying 68 percent of the costs. Without a treatment costs are projected to increase to more than $1.1 trillion in 2050."

Assuming a Hollywood-esque scenario in which the evil billionaires try to keep it for themselves, how long do you think they'd really survive? They'd be dictators, and they don't historically die of old age anyway. Why would they want to in the first place? Any government or body that tries to keep this from the people will be trampled. There would be revolution on a scale never before seen. The worst that'll happen is it'll be prohibitively expensive to begin with, like other tech, but drop in price over time, and this drop will happen more rapidly than any other tech because the raw materials cost virtually nothing. It's also going to be a variety of different treatments, which will be developed at different times, so it's not like it's going to be one single pill/elixir that can be easily hoarded.

Or do you actually think in 400 more years that we'll all live in a space faring Utopian society and never age past 25 years physically?"

There will always be problems to solve, and we'll probably have new ones that spawn from solving aging, in the same way that the illnesses of aging are only a problem now that we've stopped death from infection, but they won't be bigger than aging itself.

You assume the human condition is on a continual decline, but if you zoom out and look at our entire history, you'll see that it's only getting better. Even if that weren't the case, I'd rather live to fight for a better world than die to avoid one that's shit.

It'd be unnatural for us not to strive to improve our condition.

The thing is, I believe that aging is not a disease, but rather an intrinsic informative element of our existence. Entropy is a universal constant after all. Why should our own DNA replication not be subject to such decay? Is that not grossly arrogant? I think it is. But, that's my own view. An opinion rooted in a personal weltanschauung that you clearly do not share. Fair enough.

You're right, aging isn't a disease, it is an intrinsic result of basic physics. Machines with moving parts damage themselves. However, we have repair mechanisms, so I'd argue that the trend for life, and the universe as a whole, is toward bigger, better, more complex structures. I mean we've gone from a uniform field of hydrogen to all of this. So while it is a natural result of physics, that also means that the laws of physics don't bar us from finely manipulating matter in a way that's beneficial to us. I get the feeling you haven't watched the video. Please take the 19 minutes. It's important to be on the same page when we talk about aging, and to understand what treatment would entail.

I think it's obvious to most children, when they witness their family die, that aging is bad.

That could be so, if the child believes that material physical death is the absolute end of someone's existence. Which would require the child to be an atheist-materialist, a rather nihilistic philosophical stance that I don't believe most children have.

All nihilists may be atheists, but not all atheists are nihilists. I believe the only true inherent meaning in life is to live. Beyond that, we decide what life means to us, and I've never been less nihilistic than I am now after learning about the work being done to tackle humanity's biggest problem, and realizing that I can make a difference, however small. IMO it goes religion -> nihilism -> subjectively defined meaning. First we deny the horrific reality we find ourselves in, then we find ourselves drowning in the realization, then we start swimming.

Rather, I think most children see aging as both good and bad. Most children cannot wait to get older actually, so they can do adult things like drive cars or fly planes. To most children aging represents rites of passage, with death indeed being the final one.

You're conflating growing up with aging. We peak around 25. It's all downhill from there.

A lot of people see death as finally knowing the universe, or finally becoming one with everything, or some poetic assimilation. I see it as something that robs us of the ability to do so.

Even if you believe in an afterlife, what's the harm of living this one for as long as you can? Learning as much as you can? Experiencing the cosmos to its fullest?

So I'll just say that after a while being here, the human experience one accrues becomes redundant. If you refused to learn the material in one course, you aren't going to learn it in ten.

Idk, things are starting to get pretty crazy. I can't imagine being bored any time soon with things like augmented and virtual reality, and artificial intelligence coming, not to mention all the things we can't even imagine, and beyond that the cosmos and any other lifeforms that may inhabit it.

I think this tiredness that comes with age is a result of knowing that our time is running out, so we don't invest as much into learning new things, or thinking about the future. I think we also start to become more conservative and cling to the way things are/were as an anchor to this life, because we don't want to die. This is generally true, but there are also plenty of people who are as curious and forward-thinking on their deathbed as they ever were. It's more likely just a difference in personality. We also can't ignore that an aged mind simply functions less well, which is going to have an effect on our cognition and ability to grasp new concepts.

I'm a fan of Occam's Razor.

"The simplest answer is the right one." But that's not always the case though, is it? For a simple example; there was a time everybody thought the earth was flat, because that's simply how it looks to us, so it must be flat. But it took complex mathematics, specially created tools, and ultimately space travel to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that the earth is indeed round. Just the same, our very existence is not so flat as it seems. But rather than argue with an internet stranger about why that is, I'd rather just let you find that one out for yourself someday. And if that's 80 years from now, or 480 years from now, you're only prolonging the inevitable truth.

"It states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected." For example, if the universe can't exist without a creator, why can it's creator? God is superfluous and can therefore be cut away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

I didn't realize we were arguing. I'm trying to challenge your beliefs, not attack you personally. People often try to dump things like your final statement as if they're more enlightened, and that anyone who doesn't want to die just hasn't figured it out yet. From my perspective, you're dumping the pain caused by confronting mortality onto me, almost sadistically. These discussions often end this way, unfortunately. I could be more personable.

[jp1]

Not to mention the world is going to shit, unless you missed that thread. In 500 years you would probably have to sell yourself into the sex trade in a bunker during a post apocalyptic hell filled with rich nympho goats. To top it off spam will be the only food to survive the fallout. I'll keep my mortality.

The world's only going to shit if you're not looking beyond the scope of your own lifespan. On the whole, things have always been on the up and up. If you truly believe it's going to shit, are you saying you'd rather die than live to fight for a better world?

No, I was joking. We have an entire thread dedicated to the world going to shit. I rarely participate in it. In fact I do not believe the world is going to shit at all, quite the opposite.

Besides, the goats and spam was something I was looking forward to.

[Overload]

Not to mention the world is going to shit, unless you missed that thread. In 500 years you would probably have to sell yourself into the sex trade in a bunker during a post apocalyptic hell filled with rich nympho goats. To top it off spam will be the only food to survive the fallout. I'll keep my mortality.

The world's only going to shit if you're not looking beyond the scope of your own lifespan. On the whole, things have always been on the up and up. If you truly believe it's going to shit, are you saying you'd rather die than live to fight for a better world?

No, I was joking. We have an entire thread dedicated to the world going to shit. I rarely participate in it. In fact I do not believe the world is going to shit at all, quite the opposite.

Besides, the goats and spam was something I was looking forward to.

Thought that might be the case. That's a relief.

[Exhuminator]

Using your logic, why not just die now?

Well, that would require suicide on my behalf, and would artificially cut short the natural progression of the biological vessel I'm currently inhabiting. I'd rather let the warranty run out on its own, than sabotage it purposefully, or prolong it synthetically. And before you correlate healthcare and gene therapy, one is a means to aid a machine in repairing itself, the other is to remodel the machine's firmware entirely. To me these are fundamentally different things. IMO.

We have no choice but to end aging.

I don't agree. The human race has multiplied by incredible exponential factors in multitude, as a species humans are far from being an endangered one. Old age has obviously not stopped the human species from evolving and expanding perpetually.

I believe we should figure out how to feed the millions of humans dying of starvation daily, before we worry about curing aging. I don't think it's more important to ignore the legions of the underprivileged, and instead focus on prolonging the pampered lives of the first world.

I don't think that stopping aging is going to advance the human race, more than discovering a way to enhance empathy in the human mind would. If someone could figure out a way to transmit an empathy resonance field across the earth, to make so many more people stop being so disgustingly stingy, vain, solipsistic, and utterly self absorbed, then I would be truly impressed indeed. If Elon Musk could do that, I'd actually buy a Tesla. Hell, I'd buy two and give you one.

I'd rather live to fight for a better world than die to avoid one that's shit.

I do not believe that since the furthering of the average human life span we've already seen, that the world's super power relations, the sociopolitical balance en masse, or the earth's environmental health, has directly improved as a result. To the contrary, rather.

It'd be unnatural for us not to strive to improve our condition.

If "our condition" includes the human race in total, and not just the lucky humans who would have access to this anti-aging technology, then it's unnatural for us not to cure cancer first. And its irresponsible not to cure AIDS first. After all, Cancer and AIDS tends to kill their victims before old age ever has a chance to. Surely curing Cancer alone would drastically improve our condition.

Machines with moving parts damage themselves. However, we have repair mechanisms

Yes, our bodies break and repair themselves naturally. And yet aging occurs regardless. Speaking biologically, I believe aging is not actually a result of a flesh machine breaking down, but rather an inbuilt mechanism for species survival. Hence every known species outside the potentially immortal Turritopsis Nutricula are subject to death by age.

It's important to be on the same page when we talk about aging, and to understand what treatment would entail.

It doesn't matter to me how the treatment works, the end result of "anti-aging" is what I'm concerned about. And because we see the net-gain of such an end result entirely differently, we are never going to be on the same page of this book.

I believe the only true inherent meaning in life is to live.

And it is because you do not believe you will be alive after your human vessel dies, that you seek to prolong the existence of said vessel for as long as possible. Given your personal philosophy, I can understand why you feel that way.

You're conflating growing up with aging. We peak around 25. It's all downhill from there.

Perhaps physically, but not mentally. And if you believe that our brains hold our consciousness, and our consciousness is who we are, then you should know that stopping the brain from aging past 25 would be detrimental to "growing up". Recent neurological research has shown that the prefrontal cortex does not stop developing until the late 30s to mid 40s. To arrest the prefrontal cortex's age at 25 would be detrimental to this process.

For example, if the universe can't exist without a creator, why can it's creator?

If the universe can't exist without a big bang, why can a big bang?

From my perspective, you're dumping the pain caused by confronting mortality onto me, almost sadistically.

Perhaps I came off that way, but it was not my intent.

While I may fear dying, I do not fear death. And I only fear dying itself because I don't know how the act of dying shall occur for me. The being dead part however, and what comes after the death of this flesh machine I currently pilot, does not instill fear in me whatsoever. Rather you appear to be the one who is afraid of confronting mortality, and so wish to prolong the mortal.

You may have noticed I did not ask you any questions this time. It's because I'm done with this conversation. I don't mean that in a pissy way either. And it is not to say that I feel that I won, or you lost, or any silly petty thing like that. But rather it's to say that you and I have completely diametrically opposed viewpoints about aging, and neither of us shall ever sway the other on the topic. To continue to try is futile, a waste of effort for the both of us.

I do believe you are an intelligent person, and you debate well. I also understand why given your viewpoint on life, that arresting aging is a wonderful and deeply important thing to you. However, due to powerful incidences which I've experienced in my personal life, ones which I shall not be able to convince you of on a forum, I cannot agree with your own view on life, aging, or death.

[MrPopo]

it's unnatural for us not to cure cancer first. And its irresponsible not to cure AIDS first. After all, Cancer and AIDS tends to kill their victims before old age ever has a chance to. Surely curing Cancer alone would drastically improve our condition.

Since cancer is a malfunction of the growth regulation mechanisms of the body's own cells, longevity research and cancer research seem highly related in my mind.

biologically, I believe aging is not actually a result of a flesh machine breaking down, but rather an inbuilt mechanism for species survival.

I think that's incorrect. Rather it's simply that since the fitness of your genes is demonstrated solely through your ability to transmit them through offspring (and the offspring of those), so once you've had your kids and the kids are able to stand on their own you're useless, so the selective pressure doesn't differentiate between those who live one minute after they have viable kids and those who live 500 years after they have viable kids.

And it is because you do not believe you will be alive after your human vessel dies, that you seek to prolong the existence of said vessel for as long as possible. Given your personal philosophy, I can understand why you feel that way.

I feel like this is the religion argument in reverse. You know that old argument of "if you're right there is no God then there's no harm in worshipping him, but if he does exist then you're covered", right? If consciousness persists after death then there's no harm in having prolonged the living consciousness for a bit longer, but if there isn't then you're covered and you get the most time possible.

While I may fear dying, I do not fear death. And I only fear dying itself because I don't know how the act of dying shall occur for me. The being dead part however, and what comes after the death of this flesh machine I currently pilot, does not instill fear in me whatsoever. Rather you appear to be the one who is afraid of confronting mortality, and so wish to prolong the mortal.

While I can't speak for him, I like to think I have a very pragmatic approach to death. I'm not afraid of it, but I don't want it to happen. I've got shit I want to do. And when I do that shit I'm sure I'll have more shit I want to do. And maybe someday I'll run out of shit to do, and at that point, sure, bring on death. But that'd be my choice (barring some accident that cuts things short early).

[Overload]

Using your logic, why not just die now?

Well, that would require suicide on my behalf, and would artificially cut short the natural progression of the biological vessel I'm currently inhabiting. I'd rather let the warranty run out on its own, than sabotage it purposefully, or prolong it synthetically. And before you correlate healthcare and gene therapy, one is a means to aid a machine in repairing itself, the other is to remodel the machine's firmware entirely. To me these are fundamentally different things. IMO.

If these treatments were already available, and you eschewed them in favor of a gradual decline, that would still be suicide. If they already existed, do you really think we'd be having this conversation? And do you really think you'd so willingly die when everyone you know is continuing to live a healthy life?

You see them as fundamentally different, but they're only different in scale. We can repair and replace organs, and now we're learning how to repair and replace individual cells. The distinction doesn't exist, and I think people cling to it as it's the only way they can justify this irrational justification of aging.

I get the feeling you don't really understand the type of medicines we're talking about. I ask again, did you bother watching the video? If not, we're wasting our time here. We're not talking about rewriting the body's metabolism to stop aging from happening at all. We're talking about periodically treating the various aspects of aging so that they don't develop to the point of illness. That sounds a lot to me like aiding a machine in repairing itself.

We have no choice but to end aging.

I don't agree. The human race has multiplied by incredible exponential factors in multitude, as a species humans are far from being an endangered one. Old age has obviously not stopped the human species from evolving and expanding perpetually.

Aging prevents us from growing wise enough to deal with our rapid development. We risk collapsing in on ourselves unless we start thinking long-term. It's an enormous financial drain. It robs us of decades of knowledge, wisdom, and skill. We also waste a lot of time and money inculcating new people with the knowledge that was lost. It's incredibly inefficient. Also, money: https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/ ... on-by-2060

I believe we should figure out how to feed the millions of humans dying of starvation daily, before we worry about curing aging. I don't think it's more important to ignore the legions of the underprivileged, and instead focus on prolonging the pampered lives of the first world.

This is a false dichotomy. We can do both at the same time, and we already produce more than enough food to feed everyone, so if you're arguing from an overpopulation standpoint, that's only one of the reasons it holds no water.

I don't know about you, but if I'm living in the states and not aging, I'm not going to be okay with people aging to death overseas. We're generally not okay with people not having basic resources like clean water, and this would be the same. People might also generally care more about those in other countries if their lives weren't so pitifully short. There's not enough time for most people to give a second thought to anything else going on in the world.

Starving third-world people appeal to us emotionally because they're relatively worse off. But try looking at things objectively: if they don't starve to death, they're still going to die of aging. Aging still kills 2/3 of people. It's still the bigger problem. How does their suffering justify the suffering of aging? Again, progress is not linear. We can't put off one problem because some other problem isn't solved yet, or we'd never get anything done. These treatments may not be immediately globally available, but they eventually will be. The sooner they're developed, the more lives saved. Again, I have to reiterate that it's important to understand what the aging "cure" will look like. We're talking about various preventative and rejuvenative medicines. These illnesses aren't going to go away unless we can stop them from happening in the first place. Either we keep spinning our wheels, throwing billions at the problem from the wrong angle, or we try something new.

Arterial plaques build up because our immune cells are ill-equipped to deal with oxidized cholesterol. They absorb it but can't break it down. This eventually kills the immune cell, which in turn cannot be broken down. These accumulate, and get lodged in our vessel walls. You can find these even in young kids. So if we can give our immune cells the ability to process this oxidized version of cholesterol, why shouldn't we? And in fact, they found a bacteria in graveyard soil capable of doing just that, identified the enzymes it uses, and have got it working in human cells, albeit in a petri dish, but the concept is proven, and human trials are an inevitability.

I don't think that stopping aging is going to advance the human race, more than discovering a way to enhance empathy in the human mind would. If someone could figure out a way to transmit an empathy resonance field across the earth, to make so many more people stop being so disgustingly stingy, vain, solipsistic, and utterly self absorbed, then I would be truly impressed indeed. If Elon Musk could do that, I'd actually buy a Tesla. Hell, I'd buy two and give you one.

I think we'd be more empathetic as a species if our short lifespan didn't make it so easy to justify living selfishly.

I'd rather live to fight for a better world than die to avoid one that's shit.

I do not believe that since the furthering of the average human life span we've already seen, that the world's super power relations, the sociopolitical balance en masse, or the earth's environmental health, has directly improved as a result. To the contrary, rather.

You're unnecessarily tying the current state of affairs to a very recent doubling of average lifespan as if it's the only changing force in society. Technology is what's enabled us to live longer, and it's going to change more in the coming decades than it has in the last few centuries. Go back to when we were raping and murdering every tribe we came across and tell me things haven't gotten better. Look at the still isolated tribes that exist in the world today who murder anyone who comes ashore, who still perform human sacrifice. We only think the world is going to shit because, thanks to technology, we're hyper-aware of every little bad thing that happens, but it's always been happening, and it used to happen much more regularly. If you want to look at it from a sort of evolutionary view, those that engage in anti-social behaviors are more likely to get themselves killed. In a world where the average lifespan is 1000+, this personality trait would weed itself out. As things stand, we lose the good and the bad regardless.

It'd be unnatural for us not to strive to improve our condition.

If "our condition" includes the human race in total, and not just the lucky humans who would have access to this anti-aging technology, then it's unnatural for us not to cure cancer first. And its irresponsible not to cure AIDS first. After all, Cancer and AIDS tends to kill their victims before old age ever has a chance to. Surely curing Cancer alone would drastically improve our condition.

Ah, but cancer is part of aging. While it can strike at any age, it's more likely to happen as we get older for a reason. We accumulate mutations over time, and our immune systems also grow weaker as senescent immune cells that would normally be recycled and replaced with fresh ones instead float around, taking up space like garbage. That's what the SENS plan is all about: Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. Cleaning up the garbage in and between cells, repairing structures, replacing cells, etc. General maintenance. Parkinson's is due to a lack of dopamine receptors. Scientists are working on fixing this by replacing them with stem cells. That is a rejuvenative treatment that repairs a specific type of damage (of which there look to be 7) of aging. Now, cancer is going to be the most difficult to solve, because it's different in every case and ever person, but if we can keep people biologically fit by repairing the various other aspects of aging, then they're more likely to survive cancer, and less likely to get it. IIRC a girl was recently cured of leukemia with a treatment specifically tailored to her genes. Things like CRISPR (though I think they used a similar, but older method) are revolutionizing medicine. Here's a great Radiolab episode about it that even laymen like us can get our heads around:

Also, heart disease beats cancer by about 100k deaths per year. But again, things can be worked on simultaneously. Nobody's saying the people working on AIDS should drop everything and switch to aging, and the way things are going, AIDS is well on track to be cured before each individual aspect of aging is tackled. That's no reason not to put more into aging. Hell, we don't even have to put more into aging so much as we have to take the money that's being put into curing many of the illnesses of old age after they've developed into preventing them from happening in the first place. Please watch this. There is no distinction between the illnesses of old age and the processes of aging. They're just the advanced stages of it. This is not just the opinion of the man in the video, it's the scientific consensus.

Machines with moving parts damage themselves. However, we have repair mechanisms

Yes, our bodies break and repair themselves naturally. And yet aging occurs regardless. Speaking biologically, I believe aging is not actually a result of a flesh machine breaking down, but rather an inbuilt mechanism for species survival. Hence every known species outside the potentially immortal Turritopsis Nutricula are subject to death by age.

You can believe that, but the world's leading scientists say otherwise. We eventually break down because our repair mechanisms are not perfect. They're imperfect because of evolutionary neglect. Our genes use us as vehicles to propagate, so we really only needed to live long enough to breed. That's why we peak around 25. Reproduction is evolution's plan B. Not dying is plan A, or why else would life grow more complex and long-lived over time? But even granting you the programmed death theory (which is, itself, dying), how is that justification for keeping aging around, exactly? There's no distinction between nature and man. You mentioned arrogance yesterday, well I think it's arrogant to suppose that we could possibly do something outside of nature, or that we're separate from it. A chimp uses a stone to break a coconut open. We've just developed better tools. Your essentially saying we should stop medical progress. Now, you don't see it as that because you make a distinction between aging and the illnesses of old age, but that is demonstrably false.

It's important to be on the same page when we talk about aging, and to understand what treatment would entail.

It doesn't matter to me how the treatment works, the end result of "anti-aging" is what I'm concerned about. And because we see the net-gain of such an end result entirely differently, we are never going to be on the same page of this book.

The goal is not longevity but health. Longevity is an obvious side-effect. The reason to call it anti-aging is because there needs to be a shift in how the illnesses of old age are seen if we're going to make any progress on them. If we cure Alzheimer's, cancer, and heart disease, do you really think people aren't going to live longer? If the only way to cure these (and all of the lesser known illnesses of old age) is to prevent them, thus leading to an indefinite lifespan, are you saying we shouldn't? Even though that is the majority consensus and everything points to it being true, answer that question as if it were a thought experiment. I want your answer. It sounds to me like you're not even willing to go there, as if you don't want to take in that relevant information because you're afraid you'd be forced to admit your position is untenable.

I believe the only true inherent meaning in life is to live.

And it is because you do not believe you will be alive after your human vessel dies, that you seek to prolong the existence of said vessel for as long as possible. Given your personal philosophy, I can understand why you feel that way.

There's no evidence to suggest I will be, and wishful thinking just doesn't cut it for me. I guess it's just a fundamental difference in how our brains our wired. I'm sure whatever life experiences have led you to your conclusion, should they happen to me, probably wouldn't lead me to the same conclusion, because I wouldn't be able to prove they weren't just in my head.

You're conflating growing up with aging. We peak around 25. It's all downhill from there.

Perhaps physically, but not mentally. And if you believe that our brains hold our consciousness, and our consciousness is who we are, then you should know that stopping the brain from aging past 25 would be detrimental to "growing up". Recent neurological research has shown that the prefrontal cortex does not stop developing until the late 30s to mid 40s. To arrest the prefrontal cortex's age at 25 would be detrimental to this process.

And this is why I keep reiterating the importance of being on the same page when talking about the medical advancements that will end aging. There's no stopping development at any age, only repair damaged cells and tissue to match what they were in a more youthful state. These will work even in people who are middle aged or older, and in fact, many would be useless until that age. Rejuvenate a 50 year old to 35, and by the time they're biologically 50 again, the therapies will have been improved. There's nothing about these therapies that are going to stop people from fully developing. There's a difference between development/growth and damage. I don't think it'll ever be possible to rewrite biology to create an organism that "naturally" lives for centuries, at least, not without some sort of godlike intelligence (AI?) far beyond our own. Luckily, the maintenance approach is pretty damned simple, and we're more than capable enough of pulling it off. Please, for the love of god, if you're willing to devote all this time debating, you should be willing to watch a brief talk:
We've collectively wasted way too much time debating points that stem from this fundamental misunderstanding.

For example, if the universe can't exist without a creator, why can it's creator?

If the universe can't exist without a big bang, why can a big bang?

The difference between a belief in a god and the big bang is that scientific theory adapts with new evidence. The Big Bang is just the best explanation we have right now (though there are other theories, and admittedly I'm not well verse enough to be able to tell how viable they are, nor does it interest me all that much when there are more practical issues to solve). That said, I think you misunderstood my point. There are no irrelevant assumptions that go into the big bang, whereas believing that there had to be something to start the start of the universe is a little redundant. Regardless, I don't really care either way what you believe, as I don't think belief in a creator and/or afterlife should have any bearing on our efforts to reduce human suffering, and many there are plenty of Christians who see ending aging as a fulfillment of god's work toward reducing suffering.

While I may fear dying, I do not fear death. And I only fear dying itself because I don't know how the act of dying shall occur for me. The being dead part however, and what comes after the death of this flesh machine I currently pilot, does not instill fear in me whatsoever. Rather you appear to be the one who is afraid of confronting mortality, and so wish to prolong the mortal.

I wish to continue existing, yes. I also don't want to suffer ill health. I don't see a problem with that. I'd rather be able to choose when I go, not be forced to suffer a slow, painful decline after such a short time when there's so much to look forward to.

Don't mistake my desire for the end of aging as a selfish endeavor. That's a cheap way to write everything I've said off. I firmly believe humanity will only be able to reach its full potential if we can stop dying in droves. I want it for myself and everyone else.

You may have noticed I did not ask you any questions this time. It's because I'm done with this conversation. I don't mean that in a pissy way either. And it is not to say that I feel that I won, or you lost, or any silly petty thing like that. But rather it's to say that you and I have completely diametrically opposed viewpoints about aging, and neither of us shall ever sway the other on the topic. To continue to try is futile, a waste of effort for the both of us.

I do believe you are an intelligent person, and you debate well. I also understand why given your viewpoint on life, that arresting aging is a wonderful and deeply important thing to you. However, due to powerful incidences which I've experienced in my personal life, ones which I shall not be able to convince you of on a forum, I cannot agree with your own view on life, aging, or death.

My final point is that whether or not you believe a longer lifespan is good or bad for society, nobody knows with certainty, and we shouldn't condemn people of the future to suffer because we thought we knew better. By the time these medicines are finished, society and technology will have changed quite a bit. Humanity will be better equipped to make that decision when the time comes. We can't afford to procrastinate.

I didn't expect to change your mind (though I have convinced many, so there's always that hope), so no worries, that's all fine. My only gripe is that you made a lot of points that stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding about what ending aging means. You could at least have pretended to humor me xD.

I enjoy this because I get to refine my arguments and maybe this convinces someone reading it down the line. For anyone interested in learning more, search youtube for various talks by Aubrey de Grey. He was on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast a little while back. If you have an hour to kill, or want some background noise, it's a great place to start. The short TED/x talks go into some detail, the longer talks go into more. There are at least a couple debates up as well. is the most recent.

If you're on reddit: /r/longevity

FighAging.org for a wealth of information.

Lifespan.io for crowdfunding projects in this area.

SENS.org if you're feeling charitable.

for the why: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

[jp1]

Religious beliefs aside, part of the appeal to anything is that it is finite. The fact that life is fleeting is what in my opinion helps give meaning to what you choose to do with it.

Since we are on a video game forum, I'll relate like this.

If I take your favorite game and remove all the challenge from it, effectively removing all limitations of time, effort, and nullifying any real reward, would you still love it the same? I know I would become incredibly bored with it. "God mode" is no fun.

Sure, there are many things I would love to accomplish, and many more things I'd love to just "do" in my lifetime. The fact that I have to pick and choose is what makes each one of them special. If I, along with everyone else, get to experience and accomplish everything...what is the point of any of it?

Have you ever noticed how many insanely rich people are not satisfied with life? Especially those born into privilege. Excess is their normal routine, and mundane excess of existence would become our normal routine as well. I'm curious about what the future holds, I'm just not sad that I won't be able to experience it. The mystery behind it has always been part of the human experience, and a fundamental part as far as I'm concerned.

You can see the same mindset I'm speaking of reflected in the attitudes of people who envy the rich. Belittling their contributions because of the percentage of net worth it constitutes. If my time with a loved one constitutes a great percentage of my life it is predisposed to feel more significant. Even so, over the course of generations five hundred years or a thousand would become the new normal, and just like everything we in the first world take for granted now, so would be the story of undoing aging.

Everything that I can think of in the whole of existence that is valuable is also rare. Tangible or intangible, it is the things we struggle to hold onto that we covet the most. I think that relationship is inseparable.

[Overload]

Religious beliefs aside, part of the appeal to anything is that it is finite. The fact that life is fleeting is what in my opinion helps give meaning to what you choose to do with it.

Since we are on a video game forum, I'll relate like this.

If I take your favorite game and remove all the challenge from it, effectively removing all limitations of time, effort, and nullifying any real reward, would you still love it the same? I know I would become incredibly bored with it. "God mode" is no fun.

I don't see how not dying removes challenge from life. If you decide you're bored with life, you'll be free to end it. I don't see myself getting bored any time soon.

Sure, there are many things I would love to accomplish, and many more things I'd love to just "do" in my lifetime. The fact that I have to pick and choose is what makes each one of them special. If I, along with everyone else, get to experience and accomplish everything...what is the point of any of it?

Some might ask what the point of any of it is if you're just going to die? Why bother accomplishing anything? Each experience doesn't lessen the value of future ones, it enhances them, because you have a greater frame of reference.

Have you ever noticed how many insanely rich people are not satisfied with life? Especially those born into privilege. Excess is their normal routine, and mundane excess of existence would become our normal routine as well.

So instead of risking people taking life for granted, we should all just die. Makes sense.
People already take life for granted, whether rich or poor. Plenty of people die before ever figuring things out. Death is not a solution. These privileged rich kids aren't satisfied because they've never been challenged. That's an entirely separate issue from aging. Aging doesn't challenge us (unless you consider disease a challenge), it robs us of the ability to be challenged.

There's no comparison between having an excess of anything in life and an excess of life itself, because it's not something you have or own, but something that allows you to have or own. You again assume it would be mundane, that's your opinion. I, and many others, don't think it would be, and we should be able to make that choice. Just because you don't want to be put in that position doesn't mean everyone else should be forced to die as well. You're extrapolating linearly to infinity, and that makes you uncomfortable. It's a limitation of our brains. Don't think of life as a linear story, but as a moment to moment, ongoing experience.

I'm curious about what the future holds, I'm just not sad that I won't be able to experience it. The mystery behind it has always been part of the human experience, and a fundamental part as far as I'm concerned.

I don't see how remaining alive removes mystery from the future, but I do know that death robs us of the joy of that mystery.

You can see the same mindset I'm speaking of reflected in the attitudes of people who envy the rich. Belittling their contributions because of the percentage of net worth it constitutes.

I'm not sure I understand how this point is connected to the previous one, can you elaborate?

If my time with a loved one constitutes a great percentage of my life it is predisposed to feel more significant.

"I'd rather spend 50 of my 80 years with a loved one, then have both of us die, than spend potentially hundreds of years with them."

Even so, over the course of generations five hundred years or a thousand would become the new normal, and just like everything we in the first world take for granted now, so would be the story of undoing aging.

We take things like vaccines and modern technology for granted because we were born into a world where that was the norm, but we can look back and appreciate how much these things have improved our lives. Similarly, anyone born in the post-aging times will take it for granted, but they'll be able to look back at how people used to grow progressively more ill, suffer years of pain, witness the loss of friends and loved ones regularly, then die.

Everything that I can think of in the whole of existence that is valuable is also rare. Tangible or intangible, it is the things we struggle to hold onto that we covet the most. I think that relationship is inseparable.

You're conflating not aging with immortality. Life is precious because of it's contrast with being dead. That contrast will always exist. I think it's important to recognize that we can die at any time, and to accept that. What we shouldn't accept is the ill health of old age, and the guaranteed death sentence it brings. Is a video game more enjoyable if you know someone's going to blow your brains our at the end of it? If a time bomb were strapped to your chest with 5 minutes on the clock, would you be able to think about anything else until it was defused? What if it had a day on the clock? A week? A year? 10 years? At what point does it become okay? Read this short story and then try to justify the dragon's existence: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html I don't think you can. Aging is the same.

Do you think we should stop work into the illnesses of old age?. There is no distinction between these illnesses and aging. Aging is not an immaterial clock, some separate, immutable function. Aging is meaningless pain and suffering that adds nothing to life. Only those of us living in a time where we had no choice in the matter would cozy up to the idea. It's pure Stockholm Syndrome. It's trying to justify aging to others so that you can live with it yourself, because if the majority no longer believe in something, then it goes from being an acceptable delusion to insanity. Every human life matters. Nobody wants to grow frail and sick.

People lose their shit when Youtube's layout changes, so the idea of suddenly having hundreds or thousands of years to look forward to is even more disruptive. Ask these same people if they'd like another 10 years and they's not hesitate to take them. At the end of those 10 years, ask if they'd like another 10, and so on. It's not going to be something that happens overnight, because it's not just one cure. We're going to have plenty of time to acclimate to the idea once it's obvious that's the way things are heading. And once the general public realize this how close it is, only those who fear they'll miss out will be vehemently arguing against it. Crab mentality.

If we were already living in a post-aging world, we wouldn't be having this conversation. The only reason to justify ill health and eventual death is so that you don't have to admit that you'd rather not suffer that fate. It's an insidious, intellectually dishonest position. You're arguing that people should die at a certain age. Not only that, but that they should suffer years of debilitating illness leading up to it.