Engineering An End to Aging 986
Reason writes "Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey has put forward a biological engineering plan to end human aging and co-founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize in recent years. Now he is finally getting some of the public recognition he deserves in an excellent David Stipp article at Fortune Magazine. If you ever wondered exactly how to go about engineering away the 50 million deaths due to aging that occur each and every year - and how to bring about a sea change in the scientific establishment - then this is the place to start. As an added bonus, I don't think you'll find a more succinct (and utterly British) answer to overpopulation objections to life extension than the one at the end of this article!"
Don't (Score:1, Interesting)
In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bingo. It seems like there are always people who whine every time the subject of immortality comes up -- overpopulation, interfering with the divine plan, or just, "I wouldn't want to live forever. I'd get bored." To which the proper answer is: you can always die. If you feel that you're selfishly using up too much of the planet's resources, or that God doesn't want you to live past a certain age, or the ennui of your endless existence is too much to bear (oh, the angst!), fine -- please kill yourself now.
But of course people don't do this, because it is inherent in the nature of life to want to live. People who think a 200- or 1000- or 50000-year lifespan is nightmarish will still struggle, at the end of their lives, to hold on to whatever years or months or even days of life they have left. We rage against the dying of the light because the urge to live is part of our every cell.
So, for those of you who think this kind of research is a terrible thing, an affront to God and man -- please go off somewhere to die quietly. And those of us who choose to live will drink a toast on your graves.
for one thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Live longer now (Score:5, Interesting)
Happy Trails!
Erick
Ray Kurzweil... (Score:5, Interesting)
Low Caloric Diets (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't (Score:4, Interesting)
Just being old doesn't kill relatively that many people -- accidents, cancer, suicide, abuse of your body (smoking, drinking, etc) and other mortality factors knock off most people before they manage to linger into their triple digits in some retirement home.
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Entropy will win (Score:5, Interesting)
The only total solution I see is some kind of nanoprobes that cleans up DNA/RNA errors in potentially each and every cell. Only then we can turn up the metabolism to 20-year-old levels. But, that is a long way off.
I'm currently 58 years old and I'm not bored.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people would look forward to a longer life because they find some meaning in their lives and others, I am sure, don't and probably would not partake of these treatments. I suggest that you folks who are not familiar with Robert A. Heinlein's novels several of which concern, among other things, longevity issues. Take a look at "Time Enough for Love"(1973).
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
aging is natural (Score:2, Interesting)
however that planet is overpopulated or at least badly distributed
and, who is going to afford to be re engineered or their kids re-engineered to live forever?
not the people who work in shitty dangerous environments for nothing, but the ones who can interestingly get out of harms way even with diseases like cancer, aids and other ilnesses that kill the rest who cannot afford to be alive
i feel that if XY moviestar or president can heel from nasty stuff, the only reason others cannot do that is because our governments do not want it
and back to aging: why would you give the opportunity for the poor masses to live longer, spare longer, get out of poverty and stop doing the dirty stuff for you, while you could just live forever and make sure they reproduce into their own hamster wheel to keep you served ?
I am the kind of person who suspects that some diseases were released on purpose to keep control of overpopulation
ps: every time i see a vampire movie i start thinking if i would take the opportunity for the small burden of drinking blood and living at night
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW, I don't think anyone is expecting a magic pill that turns off the aging process to be invented one day. Much more likely is that we will take on aging one part at a time, and people will live longer and longer; at some point, there will be a generation that can reasonably expect immortality, because they will live longer than it takes to find the Next Big Thing that extends human lifespan by a significant amount of time. I have no idea if we're part of that generation or not, though of course I hope we are -- and there's only one way to find out.
Death certificate never says "due to aging" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't (Score:3, Interesting)
Longer Lives = A Better World (Score:4, Interesting)
By the time we realize it, life is over, and we need to hunker down to prepare for uncertain health in old age.
I wonder what the world would be like if my grandparents were still around and healthy and vibrant as say.. 40 year olds? I wonder what the world would be like if the wisdom and compassion that accumulates with age was allowed to be expressed by vibrant and energetic elderly instead of being locked up in the shadows we become?
Really what we are talking about here a child understands and we fatalistically complicate things with our hopelessness that anything can be done about aging..
Life is good.
Death is bad
and anyone who suggests that the suffering and death of millions is desirable and that the "negative" changes to our world that would come about by extending life couldn't be dealt with should take a real hard look at what they are saying...From what I've been able to see so far.. our world could do with a few changes.
br
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Would society let them? Suicide is against the law where I live.
Worse than you might think. (Score:2, Interesting)
The world belongs to the young--as you grow older you grow less adaptable and more set in your ways. This isn't true of everyone, but MANY. This is the definition of Conservative.
If the older filthy rich Americans running the place right now don't die (SOON) then I really question if we are going to have a future any of us would care to live in.
no (Score:3, Interesting)
Reproduction itself flies in the face of aging. Consider, too, that some species (such as turtles, I believe?) are basically immune aging. How can you be so pessimistic in the face of such things? No, give us enough time and I'm sure we could find the cure, though it might be availible only to our genetically-engineered children. If we still haven't found a cure in a century or two, it will be because we don't want to find a cure, because we're afraid of the consequences such a thing might bring... NOT because it's a hopeless fantasy.
What happens to 100+ year old memories (Score:5, Interesting)
With diseases like Alzheimers we at least have an idea of what causes it, and we know what changes happen to the brain as it progresses.... I think it's only a matter of time before it can be prevented. However, I daresay that theories about where and how exactly memories are formed and stored in the brain are mostly wild speculation. We know the roles that certain regions of the brain play in memory, and there are some good abstract models (such as the Phonological loop and the Visuospatial sketchpad) but we are a very long way away from knowing how these are done at the hardware level of the brain.
Re:Ray Kurzweil... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Entropy will win (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok... (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as using up the resources of the entire universe is concerned, I think we'd probably experience heat death [wikipedia.org] before that happens.
Re:Don't (Score:5, Interesting)
Check it in the poulation stats
Low birth rates, on the other hand, make for low to negative population growth almost every time.
It's counterintuitive and supprised the heck out of me the first time I noticed that.
lies, damn lies and statistics (Score:2, Interesting)
Calling natural deaths a "human holocaust" or "greatest catastrophe humankind has ever faced" is a little misleading. To say that losing less than 1% of the population of the world to natural death is worse than losing over 3% of the total population every year to the Black Death (not to mention all of the people dying natural deaths as well) seems a little off. Same thing with the Great Indian Plague, to have 3% of the world die completely unexpectedly seems a little more horrific.
After seeing the stats and reading the claims it was kind of hard to take the rest of the article seriously.
Re:Job applications of the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't (Score:3, Interesting)
India, China and a Muslim super-state if they ever create one. Mostly it's European and Euro-American birthrates that are declining. China's population would explode again if they stopped the governments regulation of the birthrate. India is huge, and birth control/abortion isn't big in islamic countries. Those populations are going to explode while the western world is heading twards population implosion due to birth control, women in the workforce, etc etc. Russia is going to be particularly fucked if their population keeps dropping. I forget the exact numbers, but I remember it pans out that by 2050 if birthrates stay the same, China will have doubled their population, and the islamic states will have doubled theirs while Russia's population is halved. At some point, China is going to want her old land (Siberia) back. Nuclear weapons may be the only deterant.
Russia also has it's own terrorism problems with radical islam.
Overall, the western world could use some population growth.
Re:Job applications of the future (Score:3, Interesting)
As with anything else, solving one issue (aging) raises even more (health care?!?!, memory, boredom, etc.)
Re:Don't (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bias (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps if human life was eternal, we would be less inclined to drop atomic bombs. In a strange sort of way, I think the value of life becomes more important when people live forever. Kill someone now and you take away 60 years, kill someone in the future and you have stolen an eternity.
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
The mouse winner played the Free Radical game. This is _NOT_ Healthy living. If you did this, you wouldn't be strong enough to walk, and barely enough to bring air into your lungs.
There are people out there that count their calories so closely they can perdict a 5yr added life bonus by decreasing the amount of waste products metabolism produces. Many are now suffering from delbitating illness like Osteoporosis.
So yes, Science does hold the answers to everything. It's not a miracle, it's _science_. We're a machine, we can be maintained like one.
Re:Memory limitations (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not give credit to the techs? (Score:2, Interesting)
A very American attitude to credit the money rather than the brains.
Back on topic though - my personal opinion is that all this research is a bit doubtful. My problem is that they are based on relatively short-lived organisms or tissue culture where DNA damage may indeed be important. Very hard to extrapolate to humans I think, where many of the accumulated errors may be on the level of the organization between cells (scarring is a trivial example) and not inside cells. Still it is very interesting research...
Re:Don't (Score:3, Interesting)
This is as naive as the people who predicted a constant exponential growth - you're trying to predict a trend based on the last few data points. There's no reason to believe that industrialized nations cause themselves to die out. For one thing, the nations having the most problems (the Scandinavian countries) are beginning to push towards trying to encourage people to have more children (one of the countries suggested putting state sponsored porn on TV, if memory serves).
Reasons for less children are many, and they aren't going away.
And you also forgot another one - late interest in children. Here's a thought experiment for you - what if it's not that people don't want children, but that people want children later in life? Fertility drops off significantly in the 40s, so convolving the dropping fertility with a shift in the age at which people want children will naturally lead to a lower birth rate. The total number of average *desired* children might not be changing at all.
But then what happens when science is able to significantly improve the fertility of those in their 40s? A boom happens all over again.
Like I said, it's a little naive to say that the birth rate trend won't change. They thought this back in the 80s, as well. I'm sure they had just as impressive reasons as we have for believing that the birth rate will continue along its (relatively recent) trend. But despite our arrogance, we really haven't figured out human societal trends yet.
Re:Low Caloric Diets (Score:3, Interesting)
An interesting study on the effects of severe calorie restriction was done in the 40s. The volunteers in the study showed side effects such as moodiness, food obsession, decreased libido, general apathy, etc. This was on a 1500 calorie diet for just 6 months, and when the study was over many of the volunteers (all male) experienced binge eating and weight gain. Sorry I couldn't find any good online info, but the reference is: Ancel Keyes, et al, "The Biology of Human Starvation" (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1950)
Given the choice between a long life of deprivation and a somewhat shorter life of all-things-in-moderation, I'll take the latter...
Re: Corruption and Power (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't you think people like the Pope or Queen Mom have very good advisors already ? I once looked at the homepage of some rich american family who is hosting funds for other rich families(1) [slashdot.org] and they do have in fact some medical research foundation.
Making this kind of research public increases the chances that some of it will trickle down into the normal population.
IMHO, this kind of research should not be focused just on living longer, but on the quality of life. One should be able to work longer years and have fun longer years. Spending more time in a home for the elderly just isn't going to cut it.(2) [slashdot.org]
And another point, draft and military service should be required from the old not the young.
(1) I forgot the name it is probably among my 1000s of bookmarks, makes me wonder how many bookmarks you could collect in a longer lifespan.
(2) Unless, of course, I can read my beloved slashdot every day.
Re:I'm currently 58 years old and I'm not bored.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that there are certain people who could do productive work for hundreds of years in a variety of fields (imagine an immortal Linus Pauling). But i think there are also those who are motivated to greatness by looming mortality. And, sadly, there are many for whom life is so miserable that they don't want to continue.
Frankly, i think that immortality or even a significant extension in longevity would conflict with so many aspects of the human psyche that it's impossible to predict what would happen. I don't think it's so much a matter of remaining engaged and active as it is a matter of re-imagining what life means without death. I think society's ideas about success, family, work, and education would have to change radically.
Re:Death certificate never says "due to aging" (Score:3, Interesting)
It's annoying, since you realize that we are deliberately obfuscating information (the actual cause of death would be written in the medical chart's death note) , but that is the reality of medical care. You are correct that we wouldn't write "old age" as that is too non-medical (even at 120yo you'll still die of something) so we would hopefully have some more detail than that.
How you can help (Score:1, Interesting)
Age and Evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
If we would reproduce beyond the age of 80 then evolution would HAVE to select the genes that are vital for longevity (is this the word? german here.). He also claims that it would be theoretically possible to raise the bar by passing a law that would forbid reproduction before the age of 40, then 50 and so on. Of course this is utopical but if you look at it it makes pretty much sense...
Re:What happens to 100+ year old memories (Score:3, Interesting)
One well supported idea about memory is that the act of recalling memories, and talking about them reinforces those memories. But it isn't actually the original memory that is being reinforced, but the recollection or the story, which may be different than how the event really occured.
There are many events in my childhood that I don't remember at all but my friends remember vividly. There are other events that I had forgotten, but the memories came back when triggered. I have other memories which I would swear were true, but turned out to have no grounding in reality, and were just dreams or stories that had become real to me over time.
Living for a long time would be very interesting as you would like lead many differnent lives during that time. Would your own life would take on the meaning of a story or legend to you? Would it be possible to forget an entire section of your life if it was not reinforced latter on? Would this be innevitable no matter how much reinforcement took place simply because of limitations on how much the brain can remember? Or alternately, would you get to the point that constant reinforcement would be necisarry to remember all the important things in life, and instead choose that living life is more important than remembering your own past?
Re:I am just afraid... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't waste your TIME! (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't find this kind of attitude in much evidence in extreme sportsmen/sportswomen.. why? Because they are doing stuff they LOVE and they are all too aware that each day could be their last and so they DON'T casually put things off (forever).
Re:murder rate will sky rocket (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Overpopulation isn't the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Living longer would make you avoid risks? (Score:1, Interesting)
Would you change what you do if you could live 1000 years barring accidental death? What about 10,000? Or 100,000? Or if you could live forever?
Would you go fight in Iraq for USA if you knew you had 1000 years of life ahead of you (meaning you would live much longer than USA is likely to exist)? Would you go blow yourself up with the hopes of ending up in heaven, if you knew you could live forever here on earth?
I would imagine that a lot of people would become a lot more risk averse if they potentially faced a lot longer lifetime.
You can do better than this (Score:2, Interesting)
Even weeding the victims of "Star Trek Syndrome" (the unfortunate tendency to consider technological advances in isolation) out of the mix, I don't see much sign of intelligent life here. There are exceptions: MythoBeast's reply, in particular, shows an awareness of the more fundamental issues.
For the record, the capability to engineer functional immortality in the human species is a question of "when", not "if". Assuming that we can maintain a technological civilization, it seems inevitable within the next two centuries. The real question is: "How are we going to deal with it."
Consider: the technology is going to cost a fortune to develop, but will probably be cheap to reproduce, self-replicating and inheritable. I base these statements on the assumption that the mature form of the technology is a combination of gene-tweaking and nano-or-bio-technology-based house-cleaning agents. Given, this, and the implied capability that goes along with it, the beneficiaries of this technology will not have to worry about being fat, ugly, or old, and the only diseases they're likely to be plagued by are the ones designed in laboratories. All of which implies that the primary causes of death in a society with access to such technology would be reduced to three: accident, violence, and suicide (considering going off your longevity regime as a form of suicide).
What does that really mean? All of our cultural institutions (and it doesn't make any difference whose culture you're talking about; by "our", I mean humanity's), all of our societies are shaped by the knowledge of death. By implication, ALL of these societies will lose their viability in the face of Universal Functional Immortality (UFM). The problem is, we've got nothing to replace them. And its not just UFM; consider all the other technological trends and you potentially have a world in which everyone could be young, health, beautiful, immortal and idle, the latter because all of the forms of purely physical labor have been automated. Ironically, I suspect the development of A.I.s sophisticated enough to create this "utopia" will take much longer than finding a way to put the brakes on the aging process.
It's not just our culture; the structure of our brains is shaped by death as an environmental constant. Much of what we consider "human nature" is likely "hard-wired" as a mess of evolutionary spaghetti-code. Fixing aging is one thing; changing human nature is another. Unfortunately, that nature did not evolve in an environment where really long-term thinking was a survival trait. We run by simple rules: survive, reproduce; monopolize resources; minimize change within our environment. As individuals we exhibit a wide variety of thresholds at which we consider these imperatives to be satisfied, but they drive us all.
What happens when immortals with no physical wants try to satisfy these urges? How do you build a society, starting where we are now, that won't self-destruct or go into stasis? Or is the technological singularity simply inevitable?
Come on, show me that you're part of that "top 25% of the I.Q. curve".
Re:Bias (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'm currently 58 years old and I'm not bored.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Consequently, in short stints I have spent working at retirement homes, I have met increasingly large numbers of elderly persons who just haven't gotten themselves out of the habit of learning. It's second nature by old age. They spent the last couple decades before retirement keeping pace with technology and change, and now that they no longer truly have to, they do so anyway.
One thing nice about humans -- they die! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why, exactly, is death a problem? Just pause a moment and really think about why death is a problem, for you.
Life doesn't work without death. In the end, that fact should be very life-affirming and comforting to you. Look around outside and realize that even horrible deaths contribute inifnitely to the natural world.
People weren't meant to live in fear of death.
Re:5000 years? I think not (Score:3, Interesting)
I find this interesting as most people assume when discussing increasing lifespans that all that is involved is a matter of medicine and genetics. Of course it could be assumed that in such a society fewer accidents are fatal, but personally I rather doubt it. Seems to me that if you could live a long time in a reasonable state of health by the time you reached 150 with the body of a 30 year old you'd be looking for all sort of novel experiences, and inevitably novel experiences involve risk. And that's in addition to the normal risks of living - I've been driving for 25 years and during that time I've had a couple of very close near misses. I'm sure if I'd been driving for 250 years (or the equivalent) the probability of one of the expected 20-odd near misses being fatal must be very high indeed.
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe to you. Death is a problem for me because I enjoy life so very much. Death will put a very definite and wholly unwelcomed end to the fun. So far, my life is working just great without death, and I'd like to keep it that way. Do I fear death? NO. I resent it.
I know full well that immortality is impossible, given entropy. That pisses me off. But if longevity is the best the universe has to offer, give me the maximum. I take first rate care of the equipment (at 51, I can still run a mile under 6 minutes, bench my body weight for reps, and cycle all day at 18 mph avg in rolling country), so I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to hold biomedical scientists responsible for doing their part to keep me alive and healthy at least long enough to get tired of it. "Accepting death" is a defeatist attitude that I just cannot abide.
(uh-oh...I seem to have gotten a little worked up)
Regarding non-charismatic dictatorships (Score:4, Interesting)
1. The kid doesn't know how to weild the power and loses respect.
2. The kid disagrees with the parent about how power should be weilded.
3. Power is divided among several siblings (this is especially true about money), and some of it is lost due to lack of appreciation for it.
Of course, none of that stopped the Plantagenets from ruling England for over two hundred and fifty years, but I suspect that immortality would have extended this reign, probably to the current day.
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
4. Quit snacks. Period. Learn to live on your three meals a day, with the *occasional* treat.
I agree with most of what you said, except for these two. Just about all nutritionists (who aren't trying to sell some kind of fad diet at least) agree on the type of foods we should eat, which you covered. However there's a lot more disagreement about how much and how often we should be eating them.
Certainly what you suggest is one valid diet. However there have also been studies showing that eating smaller meals more often can work well (maintains the metabolic rate at a more steady level.) There are of course the studies that show that reducing calories by a lot (to 2/3rds of your recomended allowance i believe?) seems to promote longevity and general health. However they've also found that fasting for medium periods of time (between 24 and 48 hours i believe) and than eating a lot of food at once can provide some of the same benefits. (I'm unsure of the exact details, but it seems to trick your body into thinking it's starving, and thereby inducing the same effects as the low calorie diet.)
So in effect everyone agrees on what you should eat, and they mostly agree that you shouldn't eat more than your RDA, and probably not much less than 2/3rds your RDA (i believe) but there isn't any real agreement to how those calories should be split up. So if three meals a day with no snacks works for you, that's great. However if someone feels good having a (healthy) 250 calorie snack every two hours but no real meals, that would probably work too. Or they could have one 2000 calorie meal every day, and no snacks.
My totally unsupported theory... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, here it is
The implication is that certain people will go to extraordinary lengths to kill themselves if you take away ordinary mortality. A person might fill their need by riding motorcycles too fast and suffering the consequences. A person whose life is already hard will have their misery quotion filled already and won't seek it out.
Some people always are getting addicted to something, some people are always sad and sabotaging relationships. Misery is a constant. If we don't get it naturally, we'll find it.
This reminds me of the Genesis account of the antedeluvians. They had hundreds of years to perfect their natures, for good or ill. Look how that turned out. Even if it's just a cute oral tradition, the idea of the perfectability of man's nature is worth reviewing.
Who's up for a Charles Manson with 800 year lifespan? Heck, I can't say I wouldn't want to kill a few annoying *****s if I only had to spend 20 years out of 800 in jail. A true life sentence would really suck though. People would be sure to commit really high grade aggravated murder in order to insure the death penalty if they got caught. Some half-baked theory huh, and it's only wednesday.
Population Growth is Tied to the Local Death Rate (Score:2, Interesting)
The real cause, as you pointed to, is in regions with high death rates. In fact, the only strong corollary that has been statistically linked to a birth rate is the death rate of the area.
This can be seen by the fact that Europe has the lowest death rates and has the lowest birth rates--the native populations are declining in many European nations. The also holds true for the United States, Japan, et alii. --it is pan-culture, pan-race, pan-religion.
The trick then would be finding a way to use this to extend the life-expectancy of the developing peoples--and the requisite "quality of life".
Of course, if you can do that you'd be able to solve most of the global problems anyway.
--
It's the same with men as with horses and dogs:
nothing wants to die
Thom Waits, "The Fall of Troy"
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
And I think that's the point a lot of people miss. If it was beneficial for our species to be immortal, don't you think evolution would have found a way to do so? The human body is too complex to make wide sweeping changes at the peek of its maturity, thus the need for a "rebirth", a biological rebooting if you will.
Of course, you could argue that in our day and age, the problems solved through procreation can be solved just a well with modern technology and medicine. This may be true, but still, don't be so quick to discount what has taken several million years to unfold.
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Neither of the current record HOLDERS of the Methuselah Mouse PRIZES (NOTE the plural) used caloric restriction. Even if they did, caloric restriction has been demonstrated to produce very healthy and superior constitutions in all the organisms its been tried in with reduced incidence of cancer, diabetes and a whole host of other related diseases. Moreover the mechanisms by which this is accomplished has NOTHING to do with a decrease in free radicals. Your kind of jaw flapping really pisses me off.
Try doing your homework before you start bleating..
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with parent poster, and have same remark to make to grand-parent.
I'm a high performance athlete, and aside from the fact that I *have* to eat three humoungous meals a day without fail (or else I'll lose wait almost instantly), I need to keep eating fruits and other nut type things throughout the day to keep my hunger level down.
Mind you, it's never to the point of gauging myself, but as an athlete, I should never ever hear my stomach rumble because it's empty. Never. That just simply means I'm at the point of starving and my body starts digging into reserves, which unfortunately for me, quickly means muscle breakdown (I have a very lean body).
From what I just said, some people will say I'm lucky of such a diet and metabolism, but I have just as many problems as anybody else: I *have* to eat three balanced meals a day, and I *have* to keep my carb intake healthy and steady or else my health will immediately suffer - the only difference between a person a slow metabolism, and someone like me that has the metabolism of a bumble-bee is the consequences: they will get fat, I will lose all my muscle.
Re:What happens to 100+ year old memories (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a very good point. I think our minds have evolved such that they have become optimized to remembering exactly how much information we need to for a 70 or so year life span. And also become optimized enough to know when to throw out "junk" and when to reinforce things worth keeping. (though it is still debatable whether that information is actually gone or just difficult to access).
I think one of the problems is that our minds are not suited to remembering the amount of information one would *desire* to over such a long lifetime. That would be pretty awful to live through 5000 years of history and not have more than a cursory knowlege of events similar to what one remembers from a world history class. I suppose you'd have a smattering of personal memories in addition to the historical overview, but I think people want much much more than that. They'll want to recall things in as great a detail as they do now over 70 years. Not to have those memories divided up between the 5000 years they are alive.
So you're right, some sort of enhancement to memory is definitely necessary. But whether that would be through genetics or some other means is up for debate. I would hazard a guess that our brains are so honed to remembering 70 years worth of memories that even with genetics it may not be possible to cram more than a few hundred years into it, while retaining the basic structure. Maybe there will be some sort of computer interface, such that we'll be able to use electronic memory to enhance our own. Who really knows? I would guess the more pragmatic future... that people who want to remember will have to learn to write more and take more pictures (videos, holograms, whatever).
About your last point, I can only imagine what living 5000 years would do to someone's mental state. One could presumably be profoundly depressed for a hundred years (over a lifetime today) and no one may think anything of it.
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, it's a transition. It's a transition from existence to nonexistence. Personally, I like existing, and I find it hard to imagine being excited at the prospect of not existing.
They all offer a common response to a common unacceptable fear.
We humans are capable of abstract thought; whereas other animals pretty much dwell only in the eternal present, we find ourselves planning for the future pretty much all the time. We see the people around us age and then die, and with our power of abstract thought, we recognize that we are also at risk of dying in this manner.
Perhaps the most important function of abstract thought is to anticipate danger in order to avoid it. We anticipate the possibility of death by being hit by a bus, and avoid it by looking both ways before crossing the street. We anticipate death by pneumonia, so we dress in warm, dry clothing in the winter. We anticipate death by poisoning, so we throw away that tainted meat instead of eating it. We anticipate death by old age, so we seek a way to avoid it, and we're driven to the brink of insanity when we realize we can't find a way to avoid it.
One of the common ways of coping with a problem is to pretend it doesn't exist. Psychiatrists refer to this as "denial", and it's considered an unhealthy delusional state.
Developing an internally consistent set of delusions takes a lot of time and effort; it's a lot simpler to borrow a set from someone else, and sharing a common set of delusions also provides a sense of community and an external affirmation of the delusions. Gather together a large enough community sharing their delusions, and you can start to call that community an "organized religion".
As for the notion that aging and death are "natural", sure, that's true. They're as natural as smallpox and bubonic plague.
Re:Engineering a new planet? (Score:3, Interesting)
For myself, I know that I'd love to have a few extra centuries to look forward to, if for no other reason than getting off this damned planet
SB
Re:Engineering a new planet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now people don't care because they think they'll be dead when all the accumulated environmental degradation really hit. All the messages about passing the buck to one's children really doesn't register with most people.
Also people living longer might become conservative in the general sense. It's hard to adapt to new ideas, etc.