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This discussion relates to Technology Review's article Can Aging Be Solved?.

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  darwinskernel
  

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  07/01/2009 06:46 AM

  Backwardness of Logic

  TR: So it doesn't imply that there is a solution to aging?
  LH: Why would you want to do that?
  # what?!
  TR: Some people would like to slow or halt the aging process.
  LH: They haven't thought about the consequences. We relate to each other by perceptions of differences in age, which would be destroyed if some chose to increase their longevity and some did not.
  
  # Yes it would, that is what disruptive innovations do. And incidentally, why would you want to keep the status quo?
  
  …
  People who say they want extended longevity say they want it to be so when life satisfaction is greatest.
  
  # That's one of the reasons but not the most important one as you picture it here. How about we take the lost of one's loved ones for a reason. Have you given thought to the horrible trauma that people go through as a consequence of losing someone and the enormousness of its impact on people's life?
  I think you have got this all backward.
  
  Yet they won't know [when that is] until late in life.
  
  # Backwards again… yes, it is true that nostalgia comes to you when you have lost something but if you never get to lose it then there is no reason to be nostalgic about it. If I never get to be old I would not have any perception of being old and losing my youthfulness and therefore I would not miss it. Why would I? It would not even cross my mind is it will be nonexistence.

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  • 
    mikey248
    

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    07/08/2009 05:22 AM

    Re: Backwardness of Logic

    Dr. Hayflick reminds me of Einstein commenting on God not playing dice to discredit quantum physics.
    
    A father of the field tries to "hold your horses."
    
    Also, I didn't like his car analogy.  The body is self-repairing.  Various human cells have been immortalized.  There are all sorts of reasons why that analogy is specious.
    
    Aside from all the many reasons we should try to extend life:
    
    1)  People can invest more in achieving and employing great capabilities and skills that may require decades to master, resulting in all the greater realization of human potential
    2)  There will need no longer be a tradeoff between wisdom and vigour
    3)  Old folks can be happy and productive, rather than bored and burdensome
    4)  If we do not respect life to the extent of focusing on its preservation, then what moral claims do we possess?
    5)  As with Everest, because it is there to be conquered.

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  avacoder
  

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  07/01/2009 08:23 AM

  hmmm...

  There seems to be a great deal of 'faith' in Dr. Hayflick's views on the inevitabililty of ageing...an holistic 'correctness' to death simply because people have always been born, lived and died. He says those who would extend life 'haven't thought it through'. I completely disagree. Just because we can't predict what will happen if people suddenly start to live longer doesn't mean no one has thought about the ramifications. Just because we can't predict the future doesn't mean catastrophe is certain.
  

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  • 
    StupidPeasant
    

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    07/01/2009 08:48 AM

    Re: hmmm...

    Longer life is already causing upheaval; as the retirement savings and medical bills leave old poor people begging for government benefits that the young must pay for.   Social Security was designed for us to die about the time we get it.  The Economics of "technology success" will be difficult in this transition to immortality and the mobs beat down the doors of the scientist and governments.

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    • 
      lund1967
      

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      07/01/2009 03:41 PM

      Re: hmmm...

      It isn't longer life that is causing the upheaval, it is the physical deterioration.  If we didn't age, there would be no extra health problems, and there would be no need to retire.

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        VxSw
        

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        07/01/2009 06:29 PM

        Re: hmmm...

        Actually, people already choose keep working more and more, not because they need, but because they can. Google "The Myth of 2016".

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    z0rr0
    

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    07/01/2009 12:46 PM

    Re: hmmm...

    When death is removed from the circle, so is the need for birth, leaving the boredom of the same faces, for all eternity.
    Sounds like hell..

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      07/01/2009 05:27 PM

      Re: hmmm...

      That is ridiculous, removing or drastically slowing death and deterioration has little influence on the desire to procreate. If lucky, it may help stem the trend of overpopulation. Or you could postulate that people living a thousand years might sire hundreds to thousands of children during their lives...hopefully not. With billions of individuals on the planet I hardly think you would grow tired of "the same old faces". Just possibly, you could MOVE once or twice a century and meet a new person or two. You think?

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  INOVE51
  

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  07/01/2009 08:24 AM

  Aging is a biological Process

  DNA is a chemical machine that carries all the isntructions (recipe) to the precise construction of large functional megamechines(humans, animals etc; it nanostructures matter in an organized way to create the megastructures. The Recipe has isntructions to construct, maintain and to destroy the machine, in an organized way. Different types of organisms(megastructures/machines) have different "instructions" about with regard to the speed of construction and speed of destruction. Compare humans and a sea turtle. Both have the same bio technology of construction, but the "software is progamed, for the some variables, with different "values".
  
  The point is. Is possible, yes, to stop aging, to reverse aging,to reverse to an age of choice, to become a a teeneger again. Its only a question of "programing" the recipe to do so.
  
  The society will never be the same when we discover how to control this "programing" to stop the destruction processes.
  The replacement of destroyed megamachines will no longer be an clicle, isntead, will be an eventual activity based on accidents (To die will be very difficult, not the rule). So the replacement processes (procriation)will need to be changed. Kids will be a very rare presence.
  
  And about Inserting knowledge in a dfferent way in our brains. Acceleratig the rate we learn. Why go to school until 23. If we can insert all the knowledge in 1 day.
  
  Humans not dying and learning ultra fast.Where it will lead us?
  
  What is the reason of life? For the other organisms besides humans, can possibly be "to keep life existing". For us, I suspect is to discover all the knowledge to create the universe. Will take time. But the the process is working toward it, taking a thousand, a million years. But the process is here.

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  • 
    rvandell
    

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    07/01/2009 09:26 AM

    Re: Aging is a biological Process

    Life without children?  You must be joking...

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    • 
      VxSw
      

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      07/01/2009 06:24 PM

      Re: Aging is a biological Process

      We can allow ourselves some children... when we begin colonizing space. Couldn't you wait a hundred years knowing it's just the beginning?

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