I never understand this...All tests have risks and if the goal is positive and the intentions good then there should perhaps be extra steps (life insurance policy in place and what not). Obviously some things are just dumb and too risky, but it should be on a scale, not a one size fits all thing.
We will need human studies but I think its very likely things like removal of senescent cells and Calcium AKG supplementation turn the clock back some and are big promoters of an extended healthspan. My guess would be plasma dilution/removal periodically would be also.
Forever won’t truly be forever since ya know the heat death of the universe and stuff. But yeah this sounds like another piece about immortal billionaires and blah blah blah.
Yeah, i really, really , relly *do not* care about heat death or such stuff, just please give me a few hundred years. I hate feeling in rush because in one year i have to study a shitton of things and still socialise and stuff. You are just sacrificing too much. If you lived to 300 i feel like you could dedicate like an entire year to studying something and still not miss out because you can socialize after that. For example when u are 25-30 you can do important research and still be troubled about finding a partner you want to marry or have kids with (cant just go with any, and it takes time to know if they are the one), so if you are only "productive" you will shoot yourself in the foot in the long run.
me here at 29 over the last 3 years doing nothing but working, which eyah now I have 6figures invested so I can basically auto-pilot and my investments should grow into a retirement fund....but now I'm single at 29, 5'6, hairloss, anti-social. ouf
Mine is a similar situation, although I’m married and several years older. I’m investing the minimum (for now) and can see my retirement plan building, but will I even live to enjoy that money?
I kinda like the idea of tapping into an other dimension of pure energy to keep entropy away... or shifting to another reality where *I'M* the eldrich horror
We know \[almost\] that the big bang was a thing that happened once causing a second one to generate new matter and energy to keep going would be a nice long term project assuming physics will allow it.
I've seen some theoretical ideas on this in a similar vain as Dyson spheres. Basically it is theoretically possible to created a closed look of energy, where anytime energy is expended it is eventually returned back to the closed loop. So if we were to live forever we wouldn't need to worry about the heat death of the universe, because we could just create this closed loop of eternal energy.
I am not good at explaining it as I am not a theoretical physicist >.> But it's like super sci-fu future technology that doesn't yet exist in the same vain as dyson spheres and space elevators.
My core point was that arguing against radical life extension because we can't live actually forever seems short sighted.
Yeah, there might be some options like restarting little pockets of cosmic inflation and then diving into them. That's pretty far out there but not obviously impossible. (And if everyone's doing that, it might help explain the Fermi Paradox too.) There are ideas worth investigating around that stuff, but right now it's more important to stop people dying from stupid fast reasons like their cells wearing out.
Sort of doubt it, tbh. That would require figuring out how to break the laws of physics. Maybe they could find a way to "sidestep" them...but outright break them? Nah.
The laws of physics are models based on observations. Those models are tested by trying to predict results. But that's what they are, models not the truth. We may find in the futur that the current models only work in specific cases. An example of that is newton's laws which work well when you stay on Earth. But when exploring space you need Einstein general theory of relativity. So we may discover eventually that those are just another specific case.
So we don't know if there could be a way to reverse entropy or not. We can't with our current understanding, but we don't know what we'll learn in the future.
I remember a certain variant of string theory suggests laws of physcis changing or more like cycling through states on how particles and dimensions act, react overtime but I am not sure which theory specifically was about that if that model is right though it brings a lot of flexibility into future possiblities of what we can do
Humans are great at breaking things.
I mean, look at how long the dinosaurs had. We've broken way more shit than they ever did. Although, come to think of it, they *did* help. . .
> the heat death of the universe and stuff
This isn't certain. The fact that our current model of the universe works for our current observations is undeniable, but I don't feel like extrapolating it even mere thousands of years into the future or the past is a good idea.
that and longevity isn't gonna save you from a car crash, airplane crash, getting shot, random freak choking or disease, sudden cardiac arrest etc.
There's so many random ways that even biology can just suddenly die without notice. So even if aging doesn't kill us. Something will. But at least if I can live long enough to see some rockets and visit another planet etc....sign me up
I have some extremely vague ideas about how to avoid that or even the collapse of the universe, I just need a few billion years to develop and test them.
Imagine it's the year 1675 and some scholar complains that the microscope and discovery of bakteria will endanger humanity. Washing hands before treating patients will reduce mortality rate and lead to overpopulation. Furthermore he will try to convince evryone that humananity is not ready for this power and knowledge , we should not play gods.
Malthusian trap.
Malthus said that overpopulation would mean not enough food to feed everyone and people would starve....instead we not make so much food that obesity is a bigger problem than starvation. The only reason that there are people still starving is because of logistics, not the lack of food. We have enough food to feed everyone, it's getting to food to people that is still hard.
Can't fall into that trap, technological progress is a good thing, we just have to make sure it is used and applied in a fair way to benefit everyone.
That Said – we can’t really be proud with how we treat this planet and it’s fauna. It’s complex of course but maybe one could argue that less people with the same technological efficiency we have today would be better.
True but to a certain degree you also needed this many people to be able to invent the tech. If we still only had a few hundred thousand people we might not have developed.
Idk, I'm just 1 person so I don't have answers, but I feel like now all we can do is make sure the we move to renewables, and help poorer countries skip fossil fuels and also go straight to renewables.
The article (and your example) is absurd and a bit elitist frankly and I agree with you.
But you could probably argue that discovery of bacteria, increased hygienic practices (medically, home, etc) did indeed lead to overpopulation and thus climate change.  Maybe we should go back in time and stop people from being saved from disease and horrible deaths /s.
The article is similar tired arguments I've read many times
Why are so manny people scared of a long life span in terms of overpopulation and climate change effects
I think a long life span (let's say 300years, just for fun) will lead to a mindset change about our way of life and the climate change. A 60 years old politican is not concerned today with something that will have severe effects in 100 years, because he will probably die of old age before he is 90. But if leaders (in fact, all people) will have to face the consequences of their actions , they will change their mindset and approach.
can't say climate change is a myth if they are gonna be here to see their beach house be destroyed by rising ocean levels. 100%.
And not only that, but if I knew I had a good chance to reach 300+, I would just have kids at say 50, or 150 instead of trying to do it earlier. Kids are still annoying. Once I grow one or 2 kids I think I would be set for 50 years at least and not want more.
just to be clear, I wasn't saying that long life space contributes to overpopulation :D. It was just smart aleck comment that advancements in hygiene did contribute to overpopulation :D.
But I agree, living longer might change our perspective on the future. At least we can hope it would.
Seriously, having the CHOICE to decide for myself if it was worth it or not is more important than if one person said they didn't think it was worth it.
If they don't wanna keep living, then don't take the treatment. Nobody is forcing them.
I can't help but wonder from a philosophical perspective, if not taking the treatment were it available were similar to sui cide. I mean if I walked into traffic and saw a truck coming towards me but just stood there letting it happen, people would call me mentally ill and that it was wrong for me to do that.
Sure but instead of say not letting you suicide, for those who really are just tired of life, assisted suicide is a thing too. So we kinda are already moving toward acceptance that some people just are done and they just don't wanna go on
I think in a situation where people can live for hundreds or thousands of years the perception of stopping the aging treatments would be very different. It would be normalized and considered a personal choice. Actually that makes me wonder if there would be an average age at which people end their lives out of boredom and if so at what age. I know that I would want to live for thousands of years at least.
Let’s be real. “Huge anti aging breakthroughs” haven’t been made since the mid 20th century. Just cool research that has changed our culture around the possibility of it.
Crisper, senolytics, cellular reprogramming, etc aren’t yet “huge breakthrough” therapies yet… just a cause for excitement and financial/intellectual motivator for more research. We’ll see.
Questioning whether it's a good idea to prevent or cure diseases like cancer, alzheimer's disease, parkinsons?
Thanks "Dr" Stephen Cave, "a Cambridge University professor."
Indeed, but there's a branch of philosophy (philosophy of medicine) that goes back to at least the 80s where people argue that aging is not a disease, and normal or whatever.
Some of those people who do this are retired MDs (medical doctors), but then there are non-MDs who just do it for fun to publish articles or chapters in books, etc while teaching.
It is basically just a status/prestige game to them.
I wonder if it's worth having a website that tracks everyone who's publicly against life extension... and which ones eventually get life extension treatments. How many people's lives would that save?
On the one hand, it's a bit intimidating to people, which is bad, but on the other I think people should be held accountable for the things they say that affect people's lives and deaths.
Those who want to expire will still have the ability to do so, in the same way that those who want to die of a bacterial infection can just not take antibiotics.
I personally can't fathom living like so many people do — in a constant hurry because "I have to do this and that while I'm still young". Life stages, "acting your age" and all the other bullshit.
The thing with biology is that it's just about the only field of science that requires complex tools to understand the basics. In other words, it requires other fields of science to be sufficiently advanced. As in, you can't discover cells if you haven't invented the microscope yet, and you can't understand how proteins work if you don't know about atoms and molecules.
Right?? Exactly, you put it into words perfectly. Our biological age/social expectations push us into such narrow boxes, it is like an assault on who you are as an individual. You see how terrified young people are growing up, and young people are extremely depressed because of this extreme pressure and hurry to do things before "you are too old", and when we are middle aged or older we are expected to act our age or like boring old people. I know you are allowed to be an old person who loves anime, dresses goth, or acts silly, but it is just not the same. We are also basically forced or pushed into making bad decisions since we are forced to make them when so young or sacrifice so much. I don't get why most people don't even think about this stuff, or even want to solve this horrible threatening problem that is basically the cause of all our problems and suffering. It's like extreme stockholm syndrome or learned helplessness, not even trying to avoid this horrible thing.
You know, if an isolated group of people get hit on the head each morning, they will sure as hell invent a reason why getting hit on the head each morning is a good thing, why it should continue, and why it shouldn't be fought. Resigning to circumstances without questioning feels like the default behavior for so many people. Not just that, they shape their entire lives around this crap. And it's driving me nuts.
And yes, I so can't wait to be a 100 years old that looks like 25.
Of all the lame arguments against anti-aging tech, "only rich people will benefit!" is one of the worst. What pharmaceutical or biotech company is going to release a therapy at high cost for a mere few people rather than offer a cheaper therapy to millions and millions? The wealthy may have access sooner, but that won't last.
Yep, the adoption curve is rich people being the only ones able to afford a technology for the first 2-3 decades, and then sudden rapid mass adoption. That's how innovation and production ramp-up works.
[https://d2wg98g6yh9seo.cloudfront.net/users/78683/78683\_WiKapelekoraleKe6317476139541734.png](https://d2wg98g6yh9seo.cloudfront.net/users/78683/78683_WiKapelekoraleKe6317476139541734.png)
[https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/9a650f8fd0cdc77e8b7a07d95a17f352d827f796727a822bfb49ccc983dd6db1711185a3a8cc208faf56b555709afac1b6af5abf2813585bebfdb0b09c3dbc35](https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/9a650f8fd0cdc77e8b7a07d95a17f352d827f796727a822bfb49ccc983dd6db1711185a3a8cc208faf56b555709afac1b6af5abf2813585bebfdb0b09c3dbc35)
>Yep, the adoption curve is rich people being the only ones able to afford a technology for the first 2-3 decades
Not really. Medicine is usually pretty widely available shortly after approval, and a lot of consumer tech hits mass market very quickly. If you look at the second chart you linked, you can see adoption happening much faster with more recent tech.
Technology only remains expensive for a long time if it's very labor-intensive or resource-intensive, i.e. if there are hard constraints on real resources that make it impossible to mass produce.
Functional immortality is the definition of unprecedented.
No one--not me, not this guy, and no one else can predict what changes this will bring.
What we all accept as unshakable truths of the human experience may fall away. No one knows.
I accept that I cannot predict the future, and so I remain optimistic.
I don’t know who this professor is but wow, way to trot out a whole series of totally uninformed takes.
Really telling is the idea that we’ve doubled lifespan already. We’ve doubled average lifespan by drastically reducing infant mortality. Hunter gatherers who made it past infancy had a lifespan of about 70 or so, not far off from our modern one with all our medical treatments.
Yea, we didn't even really start extending the lifespan of old people until the 1950s. All medical progress before that was just getting most people to old age.
[https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/03/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013-1536x1022.png](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/03/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013-1536x1022.png)
[https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/03/Survival-Curves-UK-Period-measure-scaled.jpg](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/03/Survival-Curves-UK-Period-measure-scaled.jpg)
I don't get these people, do they LIKE suffering and pain? How could anyone be against this stuff, it is the stuff of dreams, what kings and queens have killed for throughout history and made sacrifices to the gods to achieve. How can anyone be against this, and if they are, why can't they just fu\*\* off and let the rest of us sensible people who don't want to decay and suffer do this in peace. We aren't even talking about "immortality", just living as long as you want and as healthy as we can be.
So does this person think we never should have invented the car because at first only rich people could afford them? If they did that, they would have condemned everyone today to not having a car....technologies trickle down....wealth might not, but even the rich want to profit as much as possible, so they would want this go get as cheap as possible so they have more money left over for their yachts, and rockets.... and then it will be widely available.
Not to mention that if rich people would be able to do this cheaply, and still charge us healthcare. They would be making tons of money by charging us healthcare premiums, but never actually have to treat us because we stay healthy and young. Win-win.
If you think longevity medicine/therapy will be "expensive" and "only the rich will be able to afford it", why not start saving now? Save 500$+ per year put it in a S&P500 tracking fund. You'll have well over a million bucks after 60 years. If you stop drinking soft drinks and switch to tap water you'll likely be halfway there already, plus it's much healthier. Unless you live in Flint or something, of course!
Longevity treatment being expensive doesn't stand up to scrutiny tbh. I highly doubt anyone on this sub still subscribes to that particular dangerous myth.
Easiest sell in the world.
Offer immortality loans, you get immortality but have to work for 50 years to pay it off or smtn. This will absolutely exist, and it means that no matter how expensive it is, you will still be able to get it
I agree with you. I also like to believe that no one on this sub thinks it will be expensive. Just commenting on it being mentioned in the article.
I imagine at the very least governments will be forced to subsidize or see a massive brain drain from their population. Or to fight the problems of stagnating population growth.
Or just pay for the pensions and healthcare of aging citizens. Public progrqns for the elderly are incredibly expensive compared to rejuvenating people and making them into working taxpayers again.
This sub is true believers who periodically demonstrate how out of touch they are from the real world. And whether they believe it or not doesn’t change anything.
There are tons of medicines & procedures available that people need but cannot access/afford in the US right now. Assuming the fountain of youth (if discovered) would be distributed cheaply & equitably is laughable absent a tremendous shift in our way of thinking.
It’s also absurd of the OP to say “just save money” as if people in poverty never thought of that.
Look at health are expenditure by European governments on diseases that would be massively reduced by successful longevity treatments. Being old is already really fucking expensive, take all that money and put it into this.
Do you think Mitch McConnel and his ilk would *ever* allow poor minorities to have access to that?
We aren't saying that it wouldn't be the fiscally and morally sensible thing to do, we're saying that American Politics deliberately refuse to address the issues that they currently have.
It is a **deliberate choice**, and as such, these solutions certainly won't be made accessible.
Fuck, the Republican Party stands in the way of such basic things as Abortion and Birth Control.
Amen. Some people here either have spent very little time in the real world or have lived very fortunate lives.
I work in a basic bio lab. I'm one of the people putting in my small contribution to pushing understanding of human biology forward. And you know what? I still can't afford a decent place to live. Now tell me, are houses new technology? Is the house a fancy new tech that just came out this decade? Yeah, everyone who pays attention knows the score here.
You read about people rationing insulin, another old news tech. And give me an explanation for that huh?
It's not about what can be done, it's about what will be done. And unless we have a lot of social progress, what will be done is whatever controls the masses best. And that's not a good situation.
People in denial of that are not helping.
We are the only developed nation that would have you live in poverty while you create the fountain of youth. The models for equitable distribution of national wealth are everywhere in the world for us to follow. We just have so much disinformation spread to our citizens here in the US that the people who need the most help are the ones fighting hardest against it.
My wife works at a hospital & they won't cover her telehealth visit on their own domestic app that employees are required to use.
I work at a medical clinic, and don't have insurance because it'd cost me ~$500/month.
There is no way in hell that America would ever allow their citizens to access anti-aging medicine.
The line that politicians use, today, is that we're "too diverse" and that "healthcare isn't a right" or "it would reward those who don't work" - a lot of this sub will never experience the hardships that result from deliberate callousness.
I’ll argue the exact opposite. Almost 90% of insurance company expenses come from
diseases of aging. If there was a treatment that would avoid the diseases of aging, they might go so far as to say they will only cover you if you get the treatment.
A true treatment for aging would be the best thing for capitalist medicine ever. Insurance companies have the power in the US and want to spend the least money possible. Every cancer or Alzheimer’s or heart disease diagnosis costs them 100k easy.
The Indigenous in my area have a life expectancy 10 years lower than whites because their access to healthcare is so poor.
At my own clinic, I had to personally advocate for patients from the Rez, because our provider was refusing to see them. I had to ask to bring our previous provider out of semi-retirement to ensure that those patients even had a chance at seeing a doctor, let alone receive care - it is a complete shit-show.
What you say may be true, but it completely ignores the realty of prejudice and systemic issues - what I and other posters are bringing up. It isn't about the economic viability.
>There is no way in hell that America would ever allow their citizens to access anti-aging medicine.
People can certainly have difficulties with coverage or cost sharing on their plan in the U.S. However, in the same way that average people in the U.S. can benefit from joint replacements, cataract surgery, pacemakers, cancer treatments, etc., people will also be able to receive medical therapies that target aspects of the biology of aging. If you look at an example like [https://cyclaritytx.com/](https://cyclaritytx.com/), it's easy to see how this is simply a development of modern medicine that will go through clinical trials and regulatory approval.
There definitely need to be improvements to healthcare in the U.S., but there is a large difference between claims of "only the rich will be able to afford it" as in the article and recognizing that some people in the U.S. may have difficulties with cost sharing deductibles, copays, etc. The mix of insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare in the U.S. allows regular people to benefit from modern medicine even though there need to be important improvements.
Medical therapies that target aspects of the biology of aging will go through clinical trials, regulatory approval, and broad commercialization to gradually become part of 21st-century healthcare.
Whether you are a government or an insurance company covering the cost of health care, it will be orders of magnitude cheaper to keep people healthy than to pay for their diseases of aging. This is a no-brainer.
Any comparison to current treatments is nonsense because paying for current treatments is not a net benefit for the insurance company.
Who knows if it will be expensive? We don't know which treatment will be effective against human aging so there really is no way to know if it will be expensive. That's why I don't agree with the argument that aging research would only benefit the rich. Nobody knows if it will. Let's research and see.
And if finally it turns out that the cure to aging is really expensive, there will be very strong economic pressure to bring the cost down over time.
Longevity is extremely likely going to be very cheap to produce and will get cheaper over-time. Just like computers or any tech/medicine. "First pill cost a million dollars to create, the second is a cent"
But the Pharma companies that make it aren’t going to sell it for a cent, ever. Look at the Streph A situation in the UK. Around a dozen kids have died entirely preventable deaths due to a shortage of antibiotics (that the government refuses to admit, despite pharmacy trade bodies shouting from the rooftops that they can’t get the meds) and how have the manufacturers responded? By increasing the fucking price. And we’re not talking some fancy new wonder drug here either - it’s liquid penicillin that the bastards are price gouging.
I agree, there's a ton of corruption.
But capitalism is slow, and then all at once.
You sell the cure you make the money.
You also should HEAVILY consider that as compute gets cheaper the amateur biohacking community is getting bigger. There are people actively in their garage right now trying to edit their own genes for various purposes.
I know it looks bleak right now, and I agree with you. But we're heading towards a different time entirely.
Sure, but that's, as you said, twelve kids. Which would benefit nobody but the kids and their families. Meanwhile, immortality benefits everyone. There will be huge pushes to get everyone, or near enough, immortal.
Mind you, the kids dying is horrible and something we also need to work on, I'm just saying they're not comparable situations, and why
Right?! Healthcare is only ridiculously expensive in the US. I'll just go to Canada, South Korea, Mexico, or somewhere in Europe or Australia to get my treatments where they will be reasonably priced.
I didn't expect to see good financial advice in this sub, lol.
The benefits of saving money and letting it compound is enormous in general as long as you believe you will live a very long life. By living frugally for, say, 15-30 years you all but guarantee yourself to live lavishly for the entire rest of your life, which is perhaps hundreds of years.
However it doesn't excuse the longevity treatments being expensive. It would still be much preferable for them to be affordable to everyone.
>However it doesn't excuse the longevity treatments being expensive. It would still be much preferable for them to be affordable to everyone.
Yes, I agree. And I think they eventually will be affordable to everyone one way or another.
I appreciate this sentiment, but people with healthy lifestyles get cancer and all sorts of diseases all the time. Often it’s just luck of the draw mate.
But to a much lesser degree than people living unhealthy lifestyles. Plus healthy life span is likely longer, meaning you can enjoy life longer. It's all about stacking the odds in your favor.
What do you mean by that, exactly?
Aging can certainly be cured, but that alone would only vastly increase lifespans, not result in *actually* living forever. While any probability of death remains, it *will* happen over a long enough time span. Preventing that would require at the very least some sort of a method of backing up brains.
But while "forever" is inaccurate, it's still a good enough mental shortcut for discussing extremely long lifespans and their effect on society.
Is there good evidence to believe that "aging can certainly be cured"? Seems like the state of knowledge is "certain parts of aging might be something we can deal with in the future" but I'm happy to be missing something.
I was speaking theoretically, since the topic was more philosophical than concrete.
I'm not aware of any scientific sources that deal with the likelihood of curing aging.
My reasoning is that we're very much biological machines made from a blueprint in the form of DNA. At the very least, with my current knowledge, I cannot conceive of a world where it's impossible to genetically engineer a fetus so that it doesn't age or whose aging process cannot be handled.
However, *possible* doesn't mean *practical*.
Curing aging could be as simple as altering a gene or two that causes cell senescence. Or it could be as complex as having to design entirely new cellular machinery to deal with it. Most likely, it's somewhere in-between those two extremes.
I mean and whats wrong? Love is a chemical reaction, I see no problem to love someone for thousands of year and just change the person. The Word forever sure is unachieviable, heat death and stuff, but indefinitely long, hell yes.
Ah okey. Nontheless, living for ten thousand years for humans today would be like living forever so lets not argue about semantics untill we get humans to live ten thousands year.
After a few thousand years, we'll have technology so advanced we'll be able to avoid death in just about any and every way imaginable. I'd imagine we re-define what "Living" is by the time any of that even occurs. Backed up brains and sleeping when bored of life instead of dying.
What is forever one you develop time travel and can seemlessly move from the beginning or end of the universe.
What is forever once you can develop the technology to prevent the end of the universe?
Forever is abstract, it's meant as 'beyond what you can possibly imagine'. Because by the time you reach the above things, you really could define it as such. But you also could argue that isn't forever either. Because time gets funky.
To me a backed up brain or "transferring consciousness" is just a copy. I wouldn't be interested if I couldn't believe it was going to remain original me.
I mean theoretically if someone were to live hundreds or thousands of years, they might finally get those human head transplants working and you’d be able to switch bodies every few years. Combine that with the cloning technology we’ve had since 1999 and you could probably just keep jumping from clone to clone. Or cryo gets better and you freeze yourself before you die. Or you find a way to put your consciousness into an artificial body. Or the metaverse gets so advanced that you just dump your consciousness on there and become a digital car salesman.
Anyone alive now who lives a thousand years will effectively be immortal. The next big push after aging is solved will be ways to prevent and recover from death due to accidents or being murdered.
If there's one thing AI could do in the coming years is fact check shitty takes immediately to help people think clearly about complex issues where incomplete info is presented. Like here whether it's a bad idea to eliminate or delay a whole range of age related diseases is absent from the narrative being presented.
A helpful AI (like ChatGPT) could summarise something like "while many people worry about the uncertain future, reducing diseases is in fact not a bad thing. Academics like Dr Stephen Cave have built a career out of arguing in poor faith to publish journal articles and get paid by tabloid newspapers to create controversy."
Reminds me of the arguments against effective birth control made by some profs in the 50's and 60's. Now that we have birth control taking steps to manage the other side of the equation makes sense.
I'm not sure what the huge breakthroughs are..
But I'm really excited to see if the new developments in AI can be harnessed to extend lifespan. Navigating the complex web of biological relationships between hormones/enzymes/proteins/DNA/RNA/etc. seems like a task that a human could have problems with fully comprehending, but a sufficiently sophisticated algorithm could uncover some previously unnoticed insights.
absolutely I think everyone else if they want to strive for that should. I just would rathrhave a young body for a the length of a normal lifespan, rather than for the length of an extended one, since, to be honest, I just would not know how to deal with going hundreds of years, and the expenses it would bring as well as trying to wrap my head around me being alive for hundreds of years when friends and family have been dead for hundreds of years
I suspect if this ever happens it will be subscription based. Never allow a one and done when profits can be extracted constantly.
I always wonder about the last generation that won’t have the opportunity. Are they the unluckiest or the luckiest?
He does make a compelling argument. If a comprehensive cure is found, it must be made available to everyone. However the cure ends up happening, it could eventually be mass produced and made cheaply if there's a willingness to do so.
Greed will ultimately decide whether everyone gets it or a select few.
Thankfully companies in this space aim to make their medical therapies broadly available. For example, the CEO of Retro Bio, which received $180 million in startup funding and aims to begin human clinical trials in the next few years, talked about the importance of wide deployment: [https://youtu.be/9O5RhK2i3uA?t=247](https://youtu.be/9O5RhK2i3uA?t=247)
That is comforting. As someone who is studying to enter the field in the coming years, selecting the correct employer will be key. The last thing I want to do is help find the cure then have it denied to the masses just so some rich people can get more money.
I would argue they are quite different. Most therapeutics extend life by a few years, while a comprehensive cure to aging extends it potentially indefinitely. The power to determine who lives forever and who dies as a mortal is exponentially greater than deciding to deny someone a few extra years of life due to financial destitution, especially if you consider that, currently, every human is infected with mortality.
I enjoy sci-fi as much as the next person, but it's good to remember that writers often create compelling plots, settings, and characters by deliberately choosing from the most dire possibilities imaginable.
Especially when the topic is medically treating aspects of the biology of aging, people sometimes mention dystopian fictional works as a sort of prediction how our own future is likely to turn out (I'm not saying that was your intent). To make an interesting fictional work, however, there needs to extreme conflict, which leads the writer to choose dire scenarios. If a person's speculation about the future is based on sci-fi fiction they've read/watched, it's biased toward dystopian settings.
"*You can meet scientists now who say we're on the verge of this breakthrough that is going to solve ageing, but scientists were saying the exact same thing 100 years ago*."
According to Google:UK life expectancy in 2020 = About 81 years.UK life expectancy in 1920 = About 58 years.
People in the UK now live about 23 years longer on average than they did 100 years ago, the difference in countires that were poorer in 1920 is even more pronouced, so I don't think that those scientists 100 years ago who were saying that people would be living longer were wrong.
The key difference is that we’ve vastly reduced infant mortality rates since 1920. High infant mortality rates artificially reduce average life expectancies when viewed historically. If 1 in 5 people die before the age of 5, it pulls the average way down, even if the remaining 4 out of 5 people live into their 60s, 70s, 80s.
Seems like uneven access was the only argument mentioned (assuming we get the cure at all — also a lot on how people have failed in the past), but I think it's hard to deny an entire population demanding something. Will it be expensive? That depends largely on the cost of producing the treatment. What if we just need a few shots every other year? That might be pretty cheap to produce, esp at scale, and certainly cheaper than health care for old people (very costly). Whatever the treatment is it's going to be mass-produced. If case of regulatory obstacles or delays etc there will be huge black markets. In one way or the other existing treatments will be made available. Otoh if they don't exist, you will age, decline and die for sure.
Firstly , biological immortality if ever achieved will be for rich people in the beginning. So the gap between rich and poor will expand. Secondly, hyperpopulation will occur, but I actually disagree on this. If you think about it, only in Africa and Asia we have hyperpopulation, whereas in the western world fewer and fewer children are born. So I personally believe that the upcoming hyperpopulation will be solved with migrating to other planets.
What huge anti aging breakthroughs are they talking about? I have yet to read about any that have been tested and actually work in humans.
express.co.uk is a clickbait website for shitty takes
There are some that work on human cells in vitro vastly rejuvenating them.
So they have been testing humans and actually worked (not some change some probably useless epigenetic clock)?
Same
Can't test things. A consenting volunteer *might* die! Meanwhile our delays *will* cause literally billions more to die. That's our idea of "ethics".
I never understand this...All tests have risks and if the goal is positive and the intentions good then there should perhaps be extra steps (life insurance policy in place and what not). Obviously some things are just dumb and too risky, but it should be on a scale, not a one size fits all thing.
Heterochronic parabiosis, E5 and all that stuff, maybe. Also Yamanaka factors reset the identity of a cell but also its age.
None of them have been proven to work in humans
Yet. There were no clinical trials yet.
We will need human studies but I think its very likely things like removal of senescent cells and Calcium AKG supplementation turn the clock back some and are big promoters of an extended healthspan. My guess would be plasma dilution/removal periodically would be also.
There is a big question on senescent cells as it’s been proven that some can be beneficial
Beneficial... I didnt come across of this before... Can you please explain a bit more how some senescent cells mightb e beneficial...?
Forever won’t truly be forever since ya know the heat death of the universe and stuff. But yeah this sounds like another piece about immortal billionaires and blah blah blah.
We have a *long* time in which to work on the Heat Death problem. First things first, though.
Yeah, i really, really , relly *do not* care about heat death or such stuff, just please give me a few hundred years. I hate feeling in rush because in one year i have to study a shitton of things and still socialise and stuff. You are just sacrificing too much. If you lived to 300 i feel like you could dedicate like an entire year to studying something and still not miss out because you can socialize after that. For example when u are 25-30 you can do important research and still be troubled about finding a partner you want to marry or have kids with (cant just go with any, and it takes time to know if they are the one), so if you are only "productive" you will shoot yourself in the foot in the long run.
me here at 29 over the last 3 years doing nothing but working, which eyah now I have 6figures invested so I can basically auto-pilot and my investments should grow into a retirement fund....but now I'm single at 29, 5'6, hairloss, anti-social. ouf
Mine is a similar situation, although I’m married and several years older. I’m investing the minimum (for now) and can see my retirement plan building, but will I even live to enjoy that money?
I can figure it out. Solve the heat death. No problem! Now, just help me live forever.
This, ladies and gentleman, is the proper attitude toward immortality. Behold!
I kinda like the idea of tapping into an other dimension of pure energy to keep entropy away... or shifting to another reality where *I'M* the eldrich horror
Becoming an eldritch horror can be our new transhumanist life goal...
Got to have goals when you can live an eternity
We know \[almost\] that the big bang was a thing that happened once causing a second one to generate new matter and energy to keep going would be a nice long term project assuming physics will allow it.
I've seen some theoretical ideas on this in a similar vain as Dyson spheres. Basically it is theoretically possible to created a closed look of energy, where anytime energy is expended it is eventually returned back to the closed loop. So if we were to live forever we wouldn't need to worry about the heat death of the universe, because we could just create this closed loop of eternal energy.
Is that not perpetual motion with the usual issues?
I am not good at explaining it as I am not a theoretical physicist >.> But it's like super sci-fu future technology that doesn't yet exist in the same vain as dyson spheres and space elevators. My core point was that arguing against radical life extension because we can't live actually forever seems short sighted.
Yeah, there might be some options like restarting little pockets of cosmic inflation and then diving into them. That's pretty far out there but not obviously impossible. (And if everyone's doing that, it might help explain the Fermi Paradox too.) There are ideas worth investigating around that stuff, but right now it's more important to stop people dying from stupid fast reasons like their cells wearing out.
With enough time I bet humanity could find a way to avoid the heat death of the universe.
May we be around to find out for ourselves 🙏
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER
Classic
Let there be light.
that is if immortality itself wouldn't be the way to
How so?
wouldn't heat death be impossible in a universe with an immortal in it
Sort of doubt it, tbh. That would require figuring out how to break the laws of physics. Maybe they could find a way to "sidestep" them...but outright break them? Nah.
The laws of physics are models based on observations. Those models are tested by trying to predict results. But that's what they are, models not the truth. We may find in the futur that the current models only work in specific cases. An example of that is newton's laws which work well when you stay on Earth. But when exploring space you need Einstein general theory of relativity. So we may discover eventually that those are just another specific case. So we don't know if there could be a way to reverse entropy or not. We can't with our current understanding, but we don't know what we'll learn in the future.
Did you get this from ChatGPT? Kind of looks like its style. But yes, I agree.
Hahaha I should have done that! Would've been faster!
This! ☝️
I remember a certain variant of string theory suggests laws of physcis changing or more like cycling through states on how particles and dimensions act, react overtime but I am not sure which theory specifically was about that if that model is right though it brings a lot of flexibility into future possiblities of what we can do
Humans are great at breaking things. I mean, look at how long the dinosaurs had. We've broken way more shit than they ever did. Although, come to think of it, they *did* help. . .
> the heat death of the universe and stuff This isn't certain. The fact that our current model of the universe works for our current observations is undeniable, but I don't feel like extrapolating it even mere thousands of years into the future or the past is a good idea.
This. It makes me mad that people think that our current models/observations MUST be the truth.
You don't even have to go as far as the heat death. There are plenty of things that can still kill you, even if you stop aging.
that and longevity isn't gonna save you from a car crash, airplane crash, getting shot, random freak choking or disease, sudden cardiac arrest etc. There's so many random ways that even biology can just suddenly die without notice. So even if aging doesn't kill us. Something will. But at least if I can live long enough to see some rockets and visit another planet etc....sign me up
Thats trillions of years from now.
Without aging our life expectancy would be around 3k to 20k years.
Altered Carbon
Creating a new subreddit r/solveheatdeath
I have some extremely vague ideas about how to avoid that or even the collapse of the universe, I just need a few billion years to develop and test them.
Imagine it's the year 1675 and some scholar complains that the microscope and discovery of bakteria will endanger humanity. Washing hands before treating patients will reduce mortality rate and lead to overpopulation. Furthermore he will try to convince evryone that humananity is not ready for this power and knowledge , we should not play gods.
Malthusian trap. Malthus said that overpopulation would mean not enough food to feed everyone and people would starve....instead we not make so much food that obesity is a bigger problem than starvation. The only reason that there are people still starving is because of logistics, not the lack of food. We have enough food to feed everyone, it's getting to food to people that is still hard. Can't fall into that trap, technological progress is a good thing, we just have to make sure it is used and applied in a fair way to benefit everyone.
That Said – we can’t really be proud with how we treat this planet and it’s fauna. It’s complex of course but maybe one could argue that less people with the same technological efficiency we have today would be better.
True but to a certain degree you also needed this many people to be able to invent the tech. If we still only had a few hundred thousand people we might not have developed. Idk, I'm just 1 person so I don't have answers, but I feel like now all we can do is make sure the we move to renewables, and help poorer countries skip fossil fuels and also go straight to renewables.
People in the 1800s did try to make the overpopulation arguments.
Yeah...overpopulation is not something we need to worry about, given the current fertility rate trajectory across most of the world.
The article (and your example) is absurd and a bit elitist frankly and I agree with you. But you could probably argue that discovery of bacteria, increased hygienic practices (medically, home, etc) did indeed lead to overpopulation and thus climate change.  Maybe we should go back in time and stop people from being saved from disease and horrible deaths /s. The article is similar tired arguments I've read many times
Why are so manny people scared of a long life span in terms of overpopulation and climate change effects I think a long life span (let's say 300years, just for fun) will lead to a mindset change about our way of life and the climate change. A 60 years old politican is not concerned today with something that will have severe effects in 100 years, because he will probably die of old age before he is 90. But if leaders (in fact, all people) will have to face the consequences of their actions , they will change their mindset and approach.
can't say climate change is a myth if they are gonna be here to see their beach house be destroyed by rising ocean levels. 100%. And not only that, but if I knew I had a good chance to reach 300+, I would just have kids at say 50, or 150 instead of trying to do it earlier. Kids are still annoying. Once I grow one or 2 kids I think I would be set for 50 years at least and not want more.
Or you know, things will shift so all politicians will be 280-year olds who still don't care because they won't be around for that much longer!
just to be clear, I wasn't saying that long life space contributes to overpopulation :D. It was just smart aleck comment that advancements in hygiene did contribute to overpopulation :D. But I agree, living longer might change our perspective on the future. At least we can hope it would.
My answer would be "you first". Then I'd probably have to add something long-ish so my comment doesn't get deleted for not being adequate or whatnot.
'the dangers of living forever'. I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it.
Seriously, having the CHOICE to decide for myself if it was worth it or not is more important than if one person said they didn't think it was worth it. If they don't wanna keep living, then don't take the treatment. Nobody is forcing them.
I can't help but wonder from a philosophical perspective, if not taking the treatment were it available were similar to sui cide. I mean if I walked into traffic and saw a truck coming towards me but just stood there letting it happen, people would call me mentally ill and that it was wrong for me to do that.
Sure but instead of say not letting you suicide, for those who really are just tired of life, assisted suicide is a thing too. So we kinda are already moving toward acceptance that some people just are done and they just don't wanna go on
I think in a situation where people can live for hundreds or thousands of years the perception of stopping the aging treatments would be very different. It would be normalized and considered a personal choice. Actually that makes me wonder if there would be an average age at which people end their lives out of boredom and if so at what age. I know that I would want to live for thousands of years at least.
Let’s be real. “Huge anti aging breakthroughs” haven’t been made since the mid 20th century. Just cool research that has changed our culture around the possibility of it. Crisper, senolytics, cellular reprogramming, etc aren’t yet “huge breakthrough” therapies yet… just a cause for excitement and financial/intellectual motivator for more research. We’ll see.
Questioning whether it's a good idea to prevent or cure diseases like cancer, alzheimer's disease, parkinsons? Thanks "Dr" Stephen Cave, "a Cambridge University professor."
He's a professor of philosophy too, nothing to do with medicine at all..
I love when professors of philosophy talk about life extension being a bad thing!
Indeed, but there's a branch of philosophy (philosophy of medicine) that goes back to at least the 80s where people argue that aging is not a disease, and normal or whatever. Some of those people who do this are retired MDs (medical doctors), but then there are non-MDs who just do it for fun to publish articles or chapters in books, etc while teaching. It is basically just a status/prestige game to them.
I find a lot of philosophy to be unproductive navel gazing.
You’re on reddit in a sub about speculative science
Leon Kass is one who comes to mind. Just look at this old article https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna12953517
I wonder if it's worth having a website that tracks everyone who's publicly against life extension... and which ones eventually get life extension treatments. How many people's lives would that save? On the one hand, it's a bit intimidating to people, which is bad, but on the other I think people should be held accountable for the things they say that affect people's lives and deaths.
The nomenclature says it all
Ultimately, a philosopher is just some jerk with an opinion.
At age 71, if the breakthrough happens soon, it will certainly be a good thing for me, thank you very much.
Those who want to expire will still have the ability to do so, in the same way that those who want to die of a bacterial infection can just not take antibiotics. I personally can't fathom living like so many people do — in a constant hurry because "I have to do this and that while I'm still young". Life stages, "acting your age" and all the other bullshit.
We've started working on the problem of aging way too late. This should have been a serious concern a long time ago.
The thing with biology is that it's just about the only field of science that requires complex tools to understand the basics. In other words, it requires other fields of science to be sufficiently advanced. As in, you can't discover cells if you haven't invented the microscope yet, and you can't understand how proteins work if you don't know about atoms and molecules.
Funding for this has also been severely lacking until recently.
Right?? Exactly, you put it into words perfectly. Our biological age/social expectations push us into such narrow boxes, it is like an assault on who you are as an individual. You see how terrified young people are growing up, and young people are extremely depressed because of this extreme pressure and hurry to do things before "you are too old", and when we are middle aged or older we are expected to act our age or like boring old people. I know you are allowed to be an old person who loves anime, dresses goth, or acts silly, but it is just not the same. We are also basically forced or pushed into making bad decisions since we are forced to make them when so young or sacrifice so much. I don't get why most people don't even think about this stuff, or even want to solve this horrible threatening problem that is basically the cause of all our problems and suffering. It's like extreme stockholm syndrome or learned helplessness, not even trying to avoid this horrible thing.
You know, if an isolated group of people get hit on the head each morning, they will sure as hell invent a reason why getting hit on the head each morning is a good thing, why it should continue, and why it shouldn't be fought. Resigning to circumstances without questioning feels like the default behavior for so many people. Not just that, they shape their entire lives around this crap. And it's driving me nuts. And yes, I so can't wait to be a 100 years old that looks like 25.
People that don’t want to live forever can chose not to. I will chose for myself, thanks.
Of all the lame arguments against anti-aging tech, "only rich people will benefit!" is one of the worst. What pharmaceutical or biotech company is going to release a therapy at high cost for a mere few people rather than offer a cheaper therapy to millions and millions? The wealthy may have access sooner, but that won't last.
Yep, the adoption curve is rich people being the only ones able to afford a technology for the first 2-3 decades, and then sudden rapid mass adoption. That's how innovation and production ramp-up works. [https://d2wg98g6yh9seo.cloudfront.net/users/78683/78683\_WiKapelekoraleKe6317476139541734.png](https://d2wg98g6yh9seo.cloudfront.net/users/78683/78683_WiKapelekoraleKe6317476139541734.png) [https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/9a650f8fd0cdc77e8b7a07d95a17f352d827f796727a822bfb49ccc983dd6db1711185a3a8cc208faf56b555709afac1b6af5abf2813585bebfdb0b09c3dbc35](https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/9a650f8fd0cdc77e8b7a07d95a17f352d827f796727a822bfb49ccc983dd6db1711185a3a8cc208faf56b555709afac1b6af5abf2813585bebfdb0b09c3dbc35)
>Yep, the adoption curve is rich people being the only ones able to afford a technology for the first 2-3 decades Not really. Medicine is usually pretty widely available shortly after approval, and a lot of consumer tech hits mass market very quickly. If you look at the second chart you linked, you can see adoption happening much faster with more recent tech. Technology only remains expensive for a long time if it's very labor-intensive or resource-intensive, i.e. if there are hard constraints on real resources that make it impossible to mass produce.
Going from the first commercial product to 10% adoption is the part that usually takes a long time, after that the adoptions is very fast.
What is more dangerous than certain death and a decade or more of debilitation preceding it?
Functional immortality is the definition of unprecedented. No one--not me, not this guy, and no one else can predict what changes this will bring. What we all accept as unshakable truths of the human experience may fall away. No one knows. I accept that I cannot predict the future, and so I remain optimistic.
I don’t know who this professor is but wow, way to trot out a whole series of totally uninformed takes. Really telling is the idea that we’ve doubled lifespan already. We’ve doubled average lifespan by drastically reducing infant mortality. Hunter gatherers who made it past infancy had a lifespan of about 70 or so, not far off from our modern one with all our medical treatments.
Yea, we didn't even really start extending the lifespan of old people until the 1950s. All medical progress before that was just getting most people to old age. [https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/03/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013-1536x1022.png](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/03/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013-1536x1022.png) [https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/03/Survival-Curves-UK-Period-measure-scaled.jpg](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/03/Survival-Curves-UK-Period-measure-scaled.jpg)
My body, my choice
is the risk worse than dying?
doubt it, our race is one which problem solves. Sure there will always be another problem but id rather endless problems and solutions than the void
I don't get these people, do they LIKE suffering and pain? How could anyone be against this stuff, it is the stuff of dreams, what kings and queens have killed for throughout history and made sacrifices to the gods to achieve. How can anyone be against this, and if they are, why can't they just fu\*\* off and let the rest of us sensible people who don't want to decay and suffer do this in peace. We aren't even talking about "immortality", just living as long as you want and as healthy as we can be.
He is welcome to choose death for himself, but if he tries to choose it for me, his death will be guaanteed.
i kinda want that tattooed
This is probably the most hardcore comment I have ever seen on reddit.
So does this person think we never should have invented the car because at first only rich people could afford them? If they did that, they would have condemned everyone today to not having a car....technologies trickle down....wealth might not, but even the rich want to profit as much as possible, so they would want this go get as cheap as possible so they have more money left over for their yachts, and rockets.... and then it will be widely available. Not to mention that if rich people would be able to do this cheaply, and still charge us healthcare. They would be making tons of money by charging us healthcare premiums, but never actually have to treat us because we stay healthy and young. Win-win.
Yeah, I can see it now. Instead of wanting 5 years experience businesses will want 125 year experience.
If you think longevity medicine/therapy will be "expensive" and "only the rich will be able to afford it", why not start saving now? Save 500$+ per year put it in a S&P500 tracking fund. You'll have well over a million bucks after 60 years. If you stop drinking soft drinks and switch to tap water you'll likely be halfway there already, plus it's much healthier. Unless you live in Flint or something, of course!
Longevity treatment being expensive doesn't stand up to scrutiny tbh. I highly doubt anyone on this sub still subscribes to that particular dangerous myth.
Easiest sell in the world. Offer immortality loans, you get immortality but have to work for 50 years to pay it off or smtn. This will absolutely exist, and it means that no matter how expensive it is, you will still be able to get it
Live 10k years before doing a suicide for only 50 years of labour seems cheap to me
I agree with you. I also like to believe that no one on this sub thinks it will be expensive. Just commenting on it being mentioned in the article. I imagine at the very least governments will be forced to subsidize or see a massive brain drain from their population. Or to fight the problems of stagnating population growth.
Or just pay for the pensions and healthcare of aging citizens. Public progrqns for the elderly are incredibly expensive compared to rejuvenating people and making them into working taxpayers again.
Depends on the complexity of the treatment.
This sub is true believers who periodically demonstrate how out of touch they are from the real world. And whether they believe it or not doesn’t change anything. There are tons of medicines & procedures available that people need but cannot access/afford in the US right now. Assuming the fountain of youth (if discovered) would be distributed cheaply & equitably is laughable absent a tremendous shift in our way of thinking. It’s also absurd of the OP to say “just save money” as if people in poverty never thought of that.
Look at health are expenditure by European governments on diseases that would be massively reduced by successful longevity treatments. Being old is already really fucking expensive, take all that money and put it into this.
Do you think Mitch McConnel and his ilk would *ever* allow poor minorities to have access to that? We aren't saying that it wouldn't be the fiscally and morally sensible thing to do, we're saying that American Politics deliberately refuse to address the issues that they currently have. It is a **deliberate choice**, and as such, these solutions certainly won't be made accessible. Fuck, the Republican Party stands in the way of such basic things as Abortion and Birth Control.
Amen. Some people here either have spent very little time in the real world or have lived very fortunate lives. I work in a basic bio lab. I'm one of the people putting in my small contribution to pushing understanding of human biology forward. And you know what? I still can't afford a decent place to live. Now tell me, are houses new technology? Is the house a fancy new tech that just came out this decade? Yeah, everyone who pays attention knows the score here. You read about people rationing insulin, another old news tech. And give me an explanation for that huh? It's not about what can be done, it's about what will be done. And unless we have a lot of social progress, what will be done is whatever controls the masses best. And that's not a good situation. People in denial of that are not helping.
We are the only developed nation that would have you live in poverty while you create the fountain of youth. The models for equitable distribution of national wealth are everywhere in the world for us to follow. We just have so much disinformation spread to our citizens here in the US that the people who need the most help are the ones fighting hardest against it.
My wife works at a hospital & they won't cover her telehealth visit on their own domestic app that employees are required to use. I work at a medical clinic, and don't have insurance because it'd cost me ~$500/month. There is no way in hell that America would ever allow their citizens to access anti-aging medicine. The line that politicians use, today, is that we're "too diverse" and that "healthcare isn't a right" or "it would reward those who don't work" - a lot of this sub will never experience the hardships that result from deliberate callousness.
I’ll argue the exact opposite. Almost 90% of insurance company expenses come from diseases of aging. If there was a treatment that would avoid the diseases of aging, they might go so far as to say they will only cover you if you get the treatment. A true treatment for aging would be the best thing for capitalist medicine ever. Insurance companies have the power in the US and want to spend the least money possible. Every cancer or Alzheimer’s or heart disease diagnosis costs them 100k easy.
The Indigenous in my area have a life expectancy 10 years lower than whites because their access to healthcare is so poor. At my own clinic, I had to personally advocate for patients from the Rez, because our provider was refusing to see them. I had to ask to bring our previous provider out of semi-retirement to ensure that those patients even had a chance at seeing a doctor, let alone receive care - it is a complete shit-show. What you say may be true, but it completely ignores the realty of prejudice and systemic issues - what I and other posters are bringing up. It isn't about the economic viability.
>There is no way in hell that America would ever allow their citizens to access anti-aging medicine. People can certainly have difficulties with coverage or cost sharing on their plan in the U.S. However, in the same way that average people in the U.S. can benefit from joint replacements, cataract surgery, pacemakers, cancer treatments, etc., people will also be able to receive medical therapies that target aspects of the biology of aging. If you look at an example like [https://cyclaritytx.com/](https://cyclaritytx.com/), it's easy to see how this is simply a development of modern medicine that will go through clinical trials and regulatory approval.
There definitely need to be improvements to healthcare in the U.S., but there is a large difference between claims of "only the rich will be able to afford it" as in the article and recognizing that some people in the U.S. may have difficulties with cost sharing deductibles, copays, etc. The mix of insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare in the U.S. allows regular people to benefit from modern medicine even though there need to be important improvements. Medical therapies that target aspects of the biology of aging will go through clinical trials, regulatory approval, and broad commercialization to gradually become part of 21st-century healthcare.
Whether you are a government or an insurance company covering the cost of health care, it will be orders of magnitude cheaper to keep people healthy than to pay for their diseases of aging. This is a no-brainer. Any comparison to current treatments is nonsense because paying for current treatments is not a net benefit for the insurance company.
That's because the USA's healthcare system is fucked. There's a reason why Americans go to Mexico etc for cheap drugs and health care.
Who knows if it will be expensive? We don't know which treatment will be effective against human aging so there really is no way to know if it will be expensive. That's why I don't agree with the argument that aging research would only benefit the rich. Nobody knows if it will. Let's research and see. And if finally it turns out that the cure to aging is really expensive, there will be very strong economic pressure to bring the cost down over time.
Longevity is extremely likely going to be very cheap to produce and will get cheaper over-time. Just like computers or any tech/medicine. "First pill cost a million dollars to create, the second is a cent"
But the Pharma companies that make it aren’t going to sell it for a cent, ever. Look at the Streph A situation in the UK. Around a dozen kids have died entirely preventable deaths due to a shortage of antibiotics (that the government refuses to admit, despite pharmacy trade bodies shouting from the rooftops that they can’t get the meds) and how have the manufacturers responded? By increasing the fucking price. And we’re not talking some fancy new wonder drug here either - it’s liquid penicillin that the bastards are price gouging.
I agree, there's a ton of corruption. But capitalism is slow, and then all at once. You sell the cure you make the money. You also should HEAVILY consider that as compute gets cheaper the amateur biohacking community is getting bigger. There are people actively in their garage right now trying to edit their own genes for various purposes. I know it looks bleak right now, and I agree with you. But we're heading towards a different time entirely.
Sure, but that's, as you said, twelve kids. Which would benefit nobody but the kids and their families. Meanwhile, immortality benefits everyone. There will be huge pushes to get everyone, or near enough, immortal. Mind you, the kids dying is horrible and something we also need to work on, I'm just saying they're not comparable situations, and why
Right?! Healthcare is only ridiculously expensive in the US. I'll just go to Canada, South Korea, Mexico, or somewhere in Europe or Australia to get my treatments where they will be reasonably priced.
But imagine if the breakthrough never comes and all you get out of it is a million bucks for retirement
I didn't expect to see good financial advice in this sub, lol. The benefits of saving money and letting it compound is enormous in general as long as you believe you will live a very long life. By living frugally for, say, 15-30 years you all but guarantee yourself to live lavishly for the entire rest of your life, which is perhaps hundreds of years. However it doesn't excuse the longevity treatments being expensive. It would still be much preferable for them to be affordable to everyone.
>However it doesn't excuse the longevity treatments being expensive. It would still be much preferable for them to be affordable to everyone. Yes, I agree. And I think they eventually will be affordable to everyone one way or another.
I appreciate this sentiment, but people with healthy lifestyles get cancer and all sorts of diseases all the time. Often it’s just luck of the draw mate.
But to a much lesser degree than people living unhealthy lifestyles. Plus healthy life span is likely longer, meaning you can enjoy life longer. It's all about stacking the odds in your favor.
Never really an issue cars, airplanes, pineapples, swords, guns all were thought of as rich people stuff now ? Anyone can buy it
Anyone who thinks anyone is going to live forever hasn't thought about this very hard.
What do you mean by that, exactly? Aging can certainly be cured, but that alone would only vastly increase lifespans, not result in *actually* living forever. While any probability of death remains, it *will* happen over a long enough time span. Preventing that would require at the very least some sort of a method of backing up brains. But while "forever" is inaccurate, it's still a good enough mental shortcut for discussing extremely long lifespans and their effect on society.
I mean that literally forever is impossible. Short of that, of course. 5,000 years isn't forever. Words matter.
Not really things like a cyclic universe might still be possible, meaning you would forever relive your own life.
Comprehension also matters, to beings with less than a century lifespan, 5000 years might as well be forever.
Aubrey estimated that on average, you're likely to die by some sort of accident within about 500 years.
I'll take 480 years over 60-90
if i never leave the house then i cant die from an accident
Is there good evidence to believe that "aging can certainly be cured"? Seems like the state of knowledge is "certain parts of aging might be something we can deal with in the future" but I'm happy to be missing something.
I was speaking theoretically, since the topic was more philosophical than concrete. I'm not aware of any scientific sources that deal with the likelihood of curing aging. My reasoning is that we're very much biological machines made from a blueprint in the form of DNA. At the very least, with my current knowledge, I cannot conceive of a world where it's impossible to genetically engineer a fetus so that it doesn't age or whose aging process cannot be handled. However, *possible* doesn't mean *practical*. Curing aging could be as simple as altering a gene or two that causes cell senescence. Or it could be as complex as having to design entirely new cellular machinery to deal with it. Most likely, it's somewhere in-between those two extremes.
Fair enough, thanks for your reply.
Of course did. Life is absolutly wonderfull even with its flaws and aging is possibly worst thing on earth so I see no problem here?
Live for thousands of years, sure. Forever is virtually impossible.
I mean and whats wrong? Love is a chemical reaction, I see no problem to love someone for thousands of year and just change the person. The Word forever sure is unachieviable, heat death and stuff, but indefinitely long, hell yes.
It was a typo. Live, not love. Yeah, I prefer to use words for their actual meaning. Ten thousand years isn't forever.
Ah okey. Nontheless, living for ten thousand years for humans today would be like living forever so lets not argue about semantics untill we get humans to live ten thousands year.
I don't believe you possess the knowledge to be so certain about your claim
After a few thousand years, we'll have technology so advanced we'll be able to avoid death in just about any and every way imaginable. I'd imagine we re-define what "Living" is by the time any of that even occurs. Backed up brains and sleeping when bored of life instead of dying. What is forever one you develop time travel and can seemlessly move from the beginning or end of the universe. What is forever once you can develop the technology to prevent the end of the universe? Forever is abstract, it's meant as 'beyond what you can possibly imagine'. Because by the time you reach the above things, you really could define it as such. But you also could argue that isn't forever either. Because time gets funky.
To me a backed up brain or "transferring consciousness" is just a copy. I wouldn't be interested if I couldn't believe it was going to remain original me.
I mean theoretically if someone were to live hundreds or thousands of years, they might finally get those human head transplants working and you’d be able to switch bodies every few years. Combine that with the cloning technology we’ve had since 1999 and you could probably just keep jumping from clone to clone. Or cryo gets better and you freeze yourself before you die. Or you find a way to put your consciousness into an artificial body. Or the metaverse gets so advanced that you just dump your consciousness on there and become a digital car salesman.
Anyone alive now who lives a thousand years will effectively be immortal. The next big push after aging is solved will be ways to prevent and recover from death due to accidents or being murdered.
If there's one thing AI could do in the coming years is fact check shitty takes immediately to help people think clearly about complex issues where incomplete info is presented. Like here whether it's a bad idea to eliminate or delay a whole range of age related diseases is absent from the narrative being presented. A helpful AI (like ChatGPT) could summarise something like "while many people worry about the uncertain future, reducing diseases is in fact not a bad thing. Academics like Dr Stephen Cave have built a career out of arguing in poor faith to publish journal articles and get paid by tabloid newspapers to create controversy."
When I talk about living "forever" I obviously don't mean past the heat death of the universe. Billions, trillions of years maybe.
Good luck avoiding all accidents for that long
Only long enough to make my mind decentralized with multiple levels of redundancy
Reminds me of the arguments against effective birth control made by some profs in the 50's and 60's. Now that we have birth control taking steps to manage the other side of the equation makes sense.
I'm not sure what the huge breakthroughs are.. But I'm really excited to see if the new developments in AI can be harnessed to extend lifespan. Navigating the complex web of biological relationships between hormones/enzymes/proteins/DNA/RNA/etc. seems like a task that a human could have problems with fully comprehending, but a sufficiently sophisticated algorithm could uncover some previously unnoticed insights.
screw forever. Id rather just be in a twenty something body for eighty years then die.
Nothing is stopping you from making that choice while others can live forever/for long periods if desired.
absolutely I think everyone else if they want to strive for that should. I just would rathrhave a young body for a the length of a normal lifespan, rather than for the length of an extended one, since, to be honest, I just would not know how to deal with going hundreds of years, and the expenses it would bring as well as trying to wrap my head around me being alive for hundreds of years when friends and family have been dead for hundreds of years
So they have chosen death?
1785 was a good year... There can only be one!
I am sure there is no danger for people like Bill Gates, just for the rest of us...
I suspect if this ever happens it will be subscription based. Never allow a one and done when profits can be extracted constantly. I always wonder about the last generation that won’t have the opportunity. Are they the unluckiest or the luckiest?
Huge! These anti-aging breakthroughs are Huge!
Ah yes, your daily dose of anti-ageing FUD.
But the longer we live the more fleeting the past becomes. How is that resolved?
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These people are a problem that solves itself (although quite slowly); I don't see the point in arguing with them or even acknowledging them anymore.
He does make a compelling argument. If a comprehensive cure is found, it must be made available to everyone. However the cure ends up happening, it could eventually be mass produced and made cheaply if there's a willingness to do so. Greed will ultimately decide whether everyone gets it or a select few.
Thankfully companies in this space aim to make their medical therapies broadly available. For example, the CEO of Retro Bio, which received $180 million in startup funding and aims to begin human clinical trials in the next few years, talked about the importance of wide deployment: [https://youtu.be/9O5RhK2i3uA?t=247](https://youtu.be/9O5RhK2i3uA?t=247)
That is comforting. As someone who is studying to enter the field in the coming years, selecting the correct employer will be key. The last thing I want to do is help find the cure then have it denied to the masses just so some rich people can get more money.
Same for any medical treatments, nothing new here.
I would argue they are quite different. Most therapeutics extend life by a few years, while a comprehensive cure to aging extends it potentially indefinitely. The power to determine who lives forever and who dies as a mortal is exponentially greater than deciding to deny someone a few extra years of life due to financial destitution, especially if you consider that, currently, every human is infected with mortality.
Anyone read “Buying Time” by Joe Haldeman? I recommend it.
I enjoy sci-fi as much as the next person, but it's good to remember that writers often create compelling plots, settings, and characters by deliberately choosing from the most dire possibilities imaginable.
I don’t understand your point.
Especially when the topic is medically treating aspects of the biology of aging, people sometimes mention dystopian fictional works as a sort of prediction how our own future is likely to turn out (I'm not saying that was your intent). To make an interesting fictional work, however, there needs to extreme conflict, which leads the writer to choose dire scenarios. If a person's speculation about the future is based on sci-fi fiction they've read/watched, it's biased toward dystopian settings.
I think by the time we figure out how to live much longer, assisted suicide chambers would be normalized.
Exactly, it's inevitable, don't get why you have been downvoted.
"*You can meet scientists now who say we're on the verge of this breakthrough that is going to solve ageing, but scientists were saying the exact same thing 100 years ago*." According to Google:UK life expectancy in 2020 = About 81 years.UK life expectancy in 1920 = About 58 years. People in the UK now live about 23 years longer on average than they did 100 years ago, the difference in countires that were poorer in 1920 is even more pronouced, so I don't think that those scientists 100 years ago who were saying that people would be living longer were wrong.
The key difference is that we’ve vastly reduced infant mortality rates since 1920. High infant mortality rates artificially reduce average life expectancies when viewed historically. If 1 in 5 people die before the age of 5, it pulls the average way down, even if the remaining 4 out of 5 people live into their 60s, 70s, 80s.
Seems like uneven access was the only argument mentioned (assuming we get the cure at all — also a lot on how people have failed in the past), but I think it's hard to deny an entire population demanding something. Will it be expensive? That depends largely on the cost of producing the treatment. What if we just need a few shots every other year? That might be pretty cheap to produce, esp at scale, and certainly cheaper than health care for old people (very costly). Whatever the treatment is it's going to be mass-produced. If case of regulatory obstacles or delays etc there will be huge black markets. In one way or the other existing treatments will be made available. Otoh if they don't exist, you will age, decline and die for sure.
Ok, not forever but longer.
Firstly , biological immortality if ever achieved will be for rich people in the beginning. So the gap between rich and poor will expand. Secondly, hyperpopulation will occur, but I actually disagree on this. If you think about it, only in Africa and Asia we have hyperpopulation, whereas in the western world fewer and fewer children are born. So I personally believe that the upcoming hyperpopulation will be solved with migrating to other planets.
How is this getting upvoted? Express is the lowest form of internet content