Aging Is a Disease; Treat It Like One 625
theodp writes "In a letter to Sergey Brin, Maria Konovalenko urges the Google founder to pursue his interest in the topics of aging and longevity. 'Defeating or simply slowing down aging,' writes Konovalenko, 'is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet.' Calling for research into longevity gene therapy, extending lifespan pharmacologically, and studying close species that differ significantly in lifespan, Konovalenko says 'it is crucial to make numerous medical organizations recognize aging as a disease. If medical organizations were to recognize aging as a disease, it could significantly accelerate progress in studying its underlying mechanisms and the development of interventions to slow its progress and to reduce age-related pathologies. The prevailing regard for aging as a "natural process" rather than a disease or disease-predisposing condition is a major obstacle to development and testing of legitimate anti-aging treatments. This is the largest market in the world, since 100% of the population in every country suffers from aging.'"
Watch out what you ask for! (Score:5, Insightful)
How fabulous! If we cure aging, then we'll get to have WAR all of the fucking time because of the population pressure.
Or we can reserve anti-aging treatments for the rich and privileged.
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You also have a much longer time horizon. People don't much care what's going to happen a century from now since it won't affect them. Immortals very much do care, because they expect to be around at that point.
Re:Watch out what you ask for! (Score:4, Insightful)
What does that have to do with anything?
People don't worry about retirement planning because they expect the government to bail them out. People in societies without welfare programs have been worrying about old age and retirement for thousands of years, that's why they used to have so many kids.
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Actually, if you look at the societies that have a lot of kids one of two things tend to be true - they have high childhood mortality (i.e. have lots of kids so at least a couple make it), or children provide a lot of "free" low-skill labor such as in traditional farming communities. Both are relatively short-term considerations compared to retirement.
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Forget retirement, think of how many people barely plan for how they are going to cover their expenses for even a month while at the same time making purch
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Don't worry, everyone who has a lot to lose won't get to fight in the war.
Seriously, why do you think that would change?
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Well, there's the simple fact that birth rates tend to decrease with increased living standards and population density. Most "developed" countries are now only gaining population through immigration - once the whole world is "developed", populations are actually expected to fall. A significant decrease in death rates will probably lead to a proportional decrease in birth rates.
Besides, we have time. I highly doubt we're going to go from a life expectancy of 70 years or so to 1000 in even several generations
Tithonus (Score:5, Interesting)
"when Eos asked Zeus to make Tithonus immortal, she forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonus indeed lived forever 'but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs.'" (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithonus [wikipedia.org]
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This is an important point. If you are ever confronted with a genie granting you wishes, take a long time to consider thoughtfully your answer.
Re:Tithonus (Score:4, Interesting)
pandora's box (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I like the idea of a longer life, there is simply no way our planet will support it. Which means it would be a perk for the wealthy and influential, rather than the unwashed masses. Nothing good could come from that.
Re:pandora's box (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares what 'our planet' will support?
99.9999999999999999999999999999% of all the resources in the universe start a few hundred thousand miles above our heads. The Earth is insignificant in the long term, and as immortals you have to think in the long term.
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And until we've gotten a permanent civilization off this Earth, let alone one that will absorb vast increases in population, we have to think of the Earth as the limit of what we have with which to sustain ourselves.
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And we've shown such an ability to get to those resources.
Not only do you not seem to understand exponential functions, you seem to have a bit of an issue with basic concepts such as gravity.
Reading science fiction is a wonderful hobby. Just don't mistake it for reality.
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"99.9999999999999999999999999999% of all the resources in the universe start a few hundred thousand miles above our heads."
Yes and you have not asked the question of whether it is cost efficient to get at those resources, i.e. by your comment you think getting at those at those resources is going to be space magic. I have serious doubts you've investigated the energy economics of space travel and ferrying space meteorites/debris back and forth across the solar system.
Missing a step (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Missing a step (Score:4, Informative)
No need to worry, it's highly doubtful that the peasants will be invited, this is most likely supposed to be a toy for the rich and famous.
Just 'cause it's possible doesn't mean that we'll get it.
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What makes you think that you'd even get notified when it arrives?
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quality, not quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
The statement "Defeating or simply slowing down aging is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet." is nonsense, if we do not first deal with the issues of , oh, for example, sex slavery (wouldn't it be GREAT to be forced to live 150 years as a sex slave?). How 'bout getting more people to a healthy 70, free of autoimmune diseases and cancer, well nourished, with a decent roof over their heads, and decent care for injury and illness? Could we, somehow, free the millions (if not billions) of women trapped in archaic, abusive societies?
We don't have enough decent-paying employment on the planet to support the population we have now, and you're going to double the number of years someone has to support themselves? Where do we find those jobs?
Maria Konovalenko has a serious case of aerobic encephalitis.
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Science is easy. Changing the behaviour and social traditions of a huge chunk of the world population that sees nothing wrong with their ways isn't.
I think it's a better idea to stick to the science. More scientific knowledge always has absolute value, while changing the behaviour of people relies on morals, and is therefore clearly of subjective value.
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Actually there are some promising age-extending gene therapies being demonstrated in simple invertebrates that, if they could be translated to humans, actually appear to drastically slow most age-related diseases right along with the more obvious cosmetic and metabolic effects - as in that 70 year old will still mostly be in as good a shape as today's 35 year old. Now if we coupled those technologies with a dystopian "report to the death clinic on your 100th birthday" we could all live long, healthy, produ
Wrong, it's a trade-off (Score:4, Interesting)
Aging is a tradeoff. Cell reproduction and functions build up more errors at higher churn rates (metabolism). The end result is cancer. The alternative is to slow processes down to reduce the error rate, but slowing stuff down means parts start to not work right. Thus, we either die of organ failure or of cancer. There's no free lunch.
The only "fix" would be artificial error correction so that metabolism can be set to normal (30-year-old-like), and that's several decades away, at least.
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Well, if you're immortal, you don't have to worry about a several decade delay.
Oh. Wait.
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Some organisms have cells that do not age.
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Or two forty year old adults, for that matter.
No, I can't, and that's a fascinating question.
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Sperm? Egg? Stem cells? Embryology?
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Can you explain how two thirty year old adults are able to form a zero year old baby?
Yes, actually. It's a combination of limited cell division and selection.
Men produce huge numbers of sperm. Sperm with damaged dna tend not to win the race to the egg.
Women produce far fewer eggs but they do it early in life before much damage can accumulate.
If the zygote does end up with damaged DNA, it usually aborts spontaneous. In fact, about 70% of conceptions abort spontaneously. [rationalwiki.org]
So any fetus that survives these trials is generally in good shape at birth. If that baby is female, eggs are then quick
faugh (Score:2)
is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet.
Most people won't be able to afford gene therapy or "phamacology". Lots of people can't even find enough to eat and/or can't stay well long enough to die from our current old age.
Hunger (Score:2)
What ever happened to hunger is a disease, treat it like one? That was too hard I guess:
http://www.goofball.com/photos/thing_Paris_France_vs_Paris_Kentucky [goofball.com]
There - fixed that for you. (Score:2)
'is the most useful thing that can be done for all the *super rich* people on the planet.'
Dumbass. Should be fucking shot.
Most telling two words in the whole summary (Score:5, Insightful)
largest market
Those two words tell you everything you need to know about the motivations of Maria Konovalenko and why she would make such an appeal to a guy with very deep pockets.
Also, I can "recognize", say, unwanted body hair as a disease, but all that means is that I'm delusional; my recognition doesn't make it so.
Dementia, Cancer, Osteoporosis are a Gift! (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdotters signing up to die! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care... (Score:3)
Really, I honestly don't care if I live to be 70, 80 or 90 but what I do care about is quality of life. I'd take perfect health, no bad knee, no bad back, no arthritis, no shoulder problems and if that meant I dropped dead by the time I was 75 then so be it and at least I'd be better able to enjoy my life rather than being in endless pain in one way or another.
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No, they are parasites. For the term of gestation and for 20 or so years after birth at least.
Re:That's so sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this comment modded up? Suffering from disease, disability and decrepitude on both physical and mental levels is a gift?? Then even being in disease and disability at any age is a gift. Why bother treating them at any age?
Parent comment is so bad it's not even wrong (to word it like Wolfgang Pauli)
Re:That's so sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, the people who believe death is a gift will rapidly die out, and only us aspiring immortals will be left.
Re:That's so sad. (Score:4, Insightful)
This comment is modded up by young people who have almost zero exposure to death and disease.
Re:That's so sad. (Score:5, Interesting)
This argument (^) is a strawman created by an idiot.
I have many genetically heritable issues, and I strongly advicate normal, natural death. I am not a 20 something, and I do have health issues.
Death is required. Making death clean and without suffering would be humane and beneficial, but killing death itself is foolish in its most extreme.
Creating strawmen to shove in other people's mouths because you don't like what they are actually saying is delusional and stupid.
(For the record, since I am sure you will ask, despite having no business asking, I have a congenital heart defect, genetically linked soft tissue tumors, blood sugar regulation trouble associated with early type 1 diabetes risk factors, and several other noteworthy things. I consider death essential, and I am glad it exists. Take your strawman and shove it up your ass.)
Re:That's so sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Death is required. Making death clean and without suffering would be humane and beneficial, but killing death itself is foolish in its most extreme.
Personally, I believe that anyone who does not want to live forever is either insane or a liar. The solution is to have something to live for. I don't remember who said it, but to paraphrase, I plan to live forever, and I believe I'm off to a good start.
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You are welcome to such a belief, but I hold a different one.
The second law of thermodynamics is just that-- a law. Current observations predict that the universe will die from entropy stemming from unrestrained expansion, and that eventually all protons in the universe will decay.
This means that immortality is fundementally inachievable. The best you can do is fight to stave it off. Much like the carnot equasion showing the maximum possible efficiency for a heat engine, the laws of thermodynamics state the
I think it depends how you interpret it? (Score:5, Interesting)
I viewed the initial comment as relatively insightful. No, I don't think anyone's calling disease or disability a gift. But since the human body is a biochemical machine, it seems to generally cease functioning via those processes. (Not everyone is going to die cleanly and painlessly in their sleep.)
The "gift" refers to the beauty inherently designed into the process as a whole. IMO, medicine should be focused on giving the best quality of life possible, within the parameters nature has set up -- NOT trying to "cheat" the natural course of things.
I recall reading a piece of sci-fi a while ago where the characters had supposedly achieved very long life-spans (thousands of years, typically). Eventually, many just opted to "check out" after a while, voluntarily putting themselves into a coma. The idea was, after you've been around that long, you reach a point where you feel like you've "seen everything, done everything". The things you still haven't learned yet are pretty much the things you already concluded you simply have no interest in, or get no enjoyment from -- and you're bored with the rest.
It's just a fiction story, but I think it would be pretty accurate.... Most of the people who fear death or even aging just fear the unknown. If you can't say that you lived a "full, rewarding" life in the window of time most of us naturally get, you were doing something wrong. Plus, there's just something that motivates us, knowing that our time is limited on this planet. If you had essentially unlimited time to accomplish things, would you really get more done -- or would you just keep putting things off?
I'm not old enough to say for certain yet, but I sure hope there are some great, valuable and rewarding experiences to be had when I'm in those older, retirement years. When society (and your own health situation) deem you incapable of working a job each day for a paycheck and you've reached "old age", it's a little bit like a second shot at childhood, except with all the wisdom you gathered along the way as an adult. Surveys have been taken, asking people how happy they were in their 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's ... and overall, people were increasingly happy with each decade. So "youth" clearly isn't everything.
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Re:That's so sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Aging isn't a disease; it's a gift.
I pity the people who can't see this.
While I'm sure there's a lot to mental maturity, what is happening to the body I can't call anything but decay. Loss of sight, loss of hearing, loss of smell, loss of motor function, all sorts of aches and pains, wrinkles, sagging and hair loss there's absolutely nothing there I'd consider physically or aesthetically positive. Some age gracefully but that's just saying they look less shitty than the rest, if I could keep/regain the body of a 20yo I'd take that in a heartbeat. And judging by all the people who desperately try to cling to their youth, I'd wager 99%+ of the population would gladly avoid this "gift".
Re:That's so sad. (Score:5, Informative)
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Yep, you've enumerated another symptom from the disease of aging, but soon we'll be able to make you stupid as 20year old with only a few injections!
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I think neural network algorithms give some insight here - they start off very flexible and prone to "leaping to conclusions", but gradually grow more stable, then become so fixed in their ways that they almost completely ignore inputs.
So what do you think is better? Fixing this relatively minor problem? Or letting billions of people die like clockwork.
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If people didn't grow old and die, we'd turn into a society of stodgy, inflexible people lacking dreams and unwilling to compromise over anything.
That is a remarkably pessimistic view of yourself and others. Do you really think that you have become inflexible, lost your dreams, and are less willing to compromise as you have grown?
I speak for myself, but as I have grown to better understand myself and the world around me, I have become far more confident and flexible. I have figured out how to steadily improve my condition and that includes improvements to the speed and efficacy with which I learn new subject matter.
I mean to never stop tryin
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Aging isn't a disease; it's a gift.
There's two observations to make here. First, a gift is not forced onto another but voluntarily accepted. If aging were a true gift, I'd have taken it back to the store by now.
Second, aging is a pretty horrible thing and I find it odd that someone can't even conceive of the benefits of living even a few more decades in a healthy body. So a horrible burden which is forced onto all of us who live long enough is a "gift". I think it more an abuse of the English language.
I pity the people who can't see this.
I don't. I agree with those people.
short term is sad... Re:That's so sad. (Score:3)
However, you're necessarily taking a short-term view.
Consider this:
The largest problem facing Planet Earth is foolish shortsighted decisions by power holders (e.g. governments, corporations).
By the time many decision makers achieve power, their lives are half over (e.g. ages 50+, which is what most group photos of congress, legislative bodies and various boards-of-directors look like). So why do they care if the enviro
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I feel compelled to point out that the word "gift" is, with the same spelling and pronunciation, the word for "poison" in German.
Re:That's so sad. (Score:4, Funny)
German is a funny language.
In the card game Magic the Gathering, there are cards that do points of damage to players.
In German, the word used translates not to damage, but to "suffering."
As in, "I play a lightning bolt against you. Take three points of SUFFERING!!!!"
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I am a native German speaker and I am quite sure you got that right. Post the actual card text and I will elaborate. Without knowing it, my best guess is that the word is "erleiden" which would be the equivalent of "take" not "damage", the the re-translation would be "suffer three points of damage".
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Depends on the gift, obviously. And as always, on the amount you get.
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That's nice, but he isn't speaking German, he's speaking English and in English it doesn't mean poison.
Ah, but English is a Germanic language. Aging beyond young adulthood is deadly. If it is a gift, then it is a poisonous one, so the interlingual play on words is quite apropos.
Re:That's so sad. (Score:4, Interesting)
You are making an equally dangerous one.
Age related mental decline has been directly associated with increased stresses on ogliodendrocites [nih.gov], which comes about as the number of axonal connections needing care increase.
Using the existing data from these kinds of studies, you can derive a maximum theoretical upper bound on the complexity to longevity coefficient.
The prognosis is not good. You can probably boost the numbers somewhat by introducing genetic modifications to improve cellular health of these vital support cells, and to improve the number of divisions from progenitor cells they can be reasonably derived from, but that intoduces yet more complex problems.
The human brain is simply not constructed in a fashion that is infinitely durable. Even if you solve the hygiene issues with the ogliodendrocytes, you will still run into issues with axonal branching reaching critical capacity, and the individual neurons being unable to cope with new information.
So, either you fix this by making people suffer dementia, and forget things in order to avoid this "post death" era overload, or you end up with vegetables who have siezures. Again, if you go through the trouble of solving the dendrocyte problem.
This is a problem that cannot be solved, while retaining physical humanity.
Sure, you could possibly find a way to liberate a brain from its bony prison, and gently loosen the neural fibers in a nutrient bath, to allow nueronal and axonal migration to continue, but then the patient isn't really human anymore, are they? Congratulations, your immortal person is a giant, energy hungry brain in a tank.
Even then, there are mechanical stress limits from the raw weight related mass of the liberated organ to contend with. Eventually, being displaced in a fluid won't be enough, and the young modulous of the axons inside the bloated mass of tissue will be exceeded, just from the collections own rest weight, resulting in systemic brain damage. You'll have to go into orbit.
And then, you run out of resources, because neural tissue is absurdly energy hungry, (your existing brain consumes a full third of all calories consumed!) And space doesn't exactly have raw material in infinite abundance.
Immortality simply can't work.
Re:That's so sad. (Score:4, Insightful)
The linked abstract clearly states that this is a hypothesised model, and that this may lead to new insights into how to treat the onset of Alzheimers.
Based on this abstract, I doubt that the author of this paper would concur with your wide sweeping conjectures with regards to longevity.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:5, Insightful)
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at the same time we're resource bound if people's life spans increased significantly and suddenly and our rate of growth stayed the same we'd starve ourselves in no time.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, if people continue to have the same number of children they do now, and our lifespan doubled (or tripled), we'd have a brief period of doubling or tripling the population, and then the rate of growth would fall back to original levels as people started dying again.
For most longer-living and/or higher educated cultures, the birth rate is already closely tracking the death rate. For those with a shorter lifespan, women are already limited to the number of children they can have in their lifetime, and the number wouldn't change.
Short story: the sooner we expand our lives, the better, as we can sustain doubling the population _now_, but that might not be the case after we travel further along the growth curve.
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There's something missing in this discussion - in the event people manage to double/triple human lifetime, this would affect first and foremost developed countries, and those don't have an overpopulation problem.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:5, Informative)
There is an enormously strong anticorrelation between lifespan and reproduction. Where are birthrates highest? Places like Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, and other such places. Where are they lowest? Places like Japan and Germany, where women both have access to roles in society other than babymakers and where they can expect to live long, healthy lives.
I bet if the average Somali woman could look forward to a century of fulfilling life she'd have fewer kids.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:5, Insightful)
So much for the theory. And now look around you.
Essentially, it would give 90% of the population more time to waste, nothing else.
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Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:4, Insightful)
The opposite is likely more true. For example, Einstein wrote all is great papers in his 20's. It is often said that the only way for science to move forward is for the old scientists to die. If we old farts stick around too long, we'll crush the crazy out-there creativity of the young. There's a reason we age and die: because it is better for the species. We here on slashdot have mostly become experts at something. I'm considered something of a "place and route" guru. Now I'm doing web programming instead! I love doing new stuff, but holy cow! The next generation of programmers need to grow up with this rat-bastard twisted way of accomplishing very little each day. I can hardly stand it. If geeks like us refuse to die, we'll stall this age of incredible progress.
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The opposite is likely more true. For example, Einstein wrote all is great papers in his 20's.
Maybe if Einsteins 20's lasted 100+ years he would have accomplished more.
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It is often said that the only way for science to move forward is for the old scientists to die.
Sure, but where is the scientific proof of that. Also, were this proven, fields could just implement "term limits." Many would rather reskill than die.
As to the "all great works before age X" that is just a rule of thumb, some great things are introduced by the elderly, and as long as longevity is acheived in a way that avoids prolonged states of senescence, many would be acheived by longer living humans.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:5, Insightful)
There *is* that axiom:
But the person I'm quoting here is almost a counterexample. Leon Lederman, Nobel laureate and former director of Fermilab, wrote this in his book on particle physics, The God Particle. In his younger years, Lederman discovered some crucial elements of the Standard Model. What's he doing now? Writing books and teaching (even into his nineties), something that to my way of thinking is even more invaluable than his work in the lab. Feynman continued to do good work very late in his career (like figuring out why Challenger blew up). Looking beyond physics, Mozart's best work (the Requiem and the C Minor Mass) was done late in his career, as was (according to one musicologist I know) Brahms'. Rachmaninov was known as a brilliant teacher of piano later in life: I've heard one of his students play, and she is incredible.
There seems to be a pattern of people revolutionizing something or another early in their lives, and teaching and consolidating that revolution later on. I think our world would be more improved if we put more emphasis on the latter, as the dissemination of knowledge is as important for human wellbeing than "having a nonzero count of people who understand concept XYZ". Science needs more Carl Sagans and fewer Isaac Newtons these days, I think (and I say that as someone paid to do fundamental physics research).
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It's better for our genes that we reproduce and die, so that they can mix, and so that we can clean out damaged and worn bodies and start from a "fresh" cell once in a while. Scientific progress has nothing to do with it.
A relevant question with regard to science is why it is that breakthroughs often comes from young scientists. What if Einstein would have been able to discover revolutionary things at a higher age if his cells and body hadn't aged? Or perhaps it would just take longer than for a younger per
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:4)
There's a reason we age and die: because it is better for the species.
There may be a reason that we age and die, but this certainly isn't it. Evolution just doesn't work that way. Individuals don't die for "the good of the species", they die for "the good of the gene."
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This. Imagine the absolutely huge amounts of crappy, useless posts now on ./, and then scale it infinitely. A veritable Ghraham's Number of useless, meaningless ./ posts.
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Right. Whenever you ponder the advantages of longevity, read my posts and realize that given infinite life, I'll make them forever!
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If you could double the active lifespan of a (sane, healthy) individual, you'd get twice the amount of wotk for the same amount of high-school and college man-years.
So what do you do about the rest of us?
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:4, Insightful)
And far more people exploiting our natural resources. We're way beyond capacity as it is.
No, we're not.
The doomsayers have been doomsaying for thousands of years, and we've always figured out ways to avoid the doom they're saying. But, hey, if fantasizing about doom makes you feel good, keep on doing it.
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I take it you have problems understanding the concept of an exponential function.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:4, Interesting)
We've always had a significant percentage of arable land undeveloped and ways to significantly increase production ... the way out has always been abundantly clear, grow more crops. We still have significant amounts of undeveloped land, but the percentage is much smaller than in Malthus his time and production increases are stalling. They are both going to hit zero at some point.
Also there are additional novel problems like peak water, peak oil, peak fossil fertilizer and peak charity (a lot of countries procreating themselves into the abyss can't feed themselves). In the past feeding the additional masses never really relied on better technology, just better organization and use of existing and already recognized resources ... which might be also still for fertilizer (ie. better recycling of shit) but not so much for oil and water. We absolute need to invent new sources of extremely cheap energy in the future just to replace oil and to power desalination plants ... or we're fucked.
Basically a single solution has always kept the doomsayers at bay ... and that solution is running out of steam.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it will. The only thing that will 'end our species' is listening to the doomsayers.
But, as I said, if dreaming of global doom gets you off, keep at it.
Drought == famine. (Score:4, Interesting)
Humans are territorial mammals, they were fighting and killing each other over access to resources long before Homo Sapiens arrived ~200ky ago, I see no signs of that behaviour changing but I do see signs of dwindling resources, in particular the most essential resource of all - water. Princes and priests don't normally cause' wars they simply rationalise them for the rest of their tribe. The instinctive 'mob' behaviour is obvious and easy to spot from a safe distance, but knowing the cause won't help you much when you're standing in a bread line.
But, as I said, if dreaming of global doom gets you off, keep at it
If pretending the likelihood of a self-induced population crash is zero makes you comfortable, keep at it. Fortunately for the rest of us, the pentagon considers climate related mass migration as the #1 long term threat to global security, and has held that opinion since the mid-naughties.
In shorter words, the life support system on this spaceship is broken but operable, we need a major upgrade just to keep the population we have. Taking on extra crew is not advisable at this time, we should be encouraging (as opposed to demanding) an overall reduction in numbers through natural attrition.
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This.^^ Also: the real key is to make the landscape more impervious to both flood and drought using permaculture design and holistic management. By putting dams in runoff areas and swales on contour you can slow down the water and keep it in the soil much longer. In this way, even the most arid climates [youtube.com] can be transformed. In many cases the transformation can be quite dramatic. [youtube.com] Add to this the multiplier effect of managed grazing, and you can not just re-green the desert but also sequester vast quantities [youtube.com]
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Population size has always been one of the strongest catalysts for economical and technological progress.
Which has lead to exponential increase in consumption of natural resources, which are finite. Increasing lifespans would similarly lead to more people consuming. How long can keep playing this game?
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Why is this modded insightful?
Are some non-hippy people seriously considering negative growth and other absurd anti-globalist options as viable?
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:5, Insightful)
Except people might care a little more if they planned to live that long. We're going to run out of oil in 100 years? In 100 years we'll fry from global warming? Almost everybody alive today will be dead and buried by then, so nobody cares much. Sure a few nice speeches about what we leave our children and grandchildren but if people realistically could live 200 years they'd care a lot more.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:4, Interesting)
Any couple that has four children is already doing more harm to the population than one person living forever. Should we force-sterilize people at two or three kids per couple?
If only my modpoints would not have expired yesterday.
You, sir, are 100% spot on. I have 1 child, exactly for this reason. We can slice the world population in half within a generation and save the earth, rather than this energy conservation bullshit. There is enough to support 3 billion people.
Re:Yeah, that's just what the world needs (Score:5, Informative)
Well, not quite. If we could bring all the nations on the planet down to zero population growth *today*, we'd still be looking at somewhere around a 9 billion person peak mid-century just because of generational lag. If we managed to cut that in half to one child/woman we'd still keep growing for a fair bit - we keep adding new people, and the elders keep living longer.
Current Birth rate: 19 /1000/year = 1.9%
Current Death Rate 8.4/1000/year = 0.84%
Current Net population growth rate = 1.06%
Even if we sterilized everyone tomorrow the death rate is still only .84% - that is a survival rate of 99.16%/year so in fifty years (2+ generations?) the cumulative survival rate would be 0.9916^50 = 0.5, or 3.5 billion people.
If we instead aimed for half of steady-state - a birth rate of 0.84%/2 = 0.42% then the "net survival rate" = 99.58%, for a cumulative 50-year rate of 0.9958^50 = 81%, or 5.7 billion
And just for sanity-checking sake, if we do nothing we get 1.0106^50 = 1.69%, or 11.9 billion people, which is about in line with the worst-case forecasts.
Of course that's just a very rough "back of the napkin" calculation, but I think it illustrates the challenges we face on this front.
I absolutely agree (Score:5, Funny)
I say sterilize after one. And heavy tax burdens for families with more than one child. Irresponsible breading will be the death of us all.
You would not want to fry the population with mass-produced tasteless breading. To bread the right way, I suggest the following:
1 dozen eggs (per human)
1 lb flour
3 boxes of bread crumbs
herbs and seasonings to taste
1) Mix seasonings in bread crumbs.
2) Coat a damp human in flour.
3) Dunk human in eggs and then roll it around in the bread crumb mixture
Then you can fry and bake the human, but make sure that it's fully-cooked. You can get diseases from undercooked human.
Re: (Score:2)
You must leave earth. You get to live forever, but get on a space ship and go fucking explore the universe. Don't over crowd this tiny planet.
Isn't that pretty much the plot of the recent Neill Blomkamp movie?
Except there it was supposed to be a bad thing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:death is an evolutionary adaptation (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's more that long life isn't necessary, rather than death being necessary. If you reproduce and raise individuals capable of doing the same, job done. The universe doesn't care. As long as the process sustains itself, it wins evolution.
But we can focus on what is best for the living individuals, rather than just the genes.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm willing to handle the experiment. (Score:5, Interesting)
The brain as miraculous as it is can only handle a single lifetime of information.
And you have how many multi-lifetime old samples in your research to support this claim.
Come up with a way to give me multiple lifetimes, healthy as I was in my late teens, to see if my brain crashes due to "filling up", and I'm willing to be an experimental subject.
I'm already in my late '60s. I'm also studying for a college degree and getting 4.0 (much better than when I was trying to work my way through college and avoid the draft during the Vietnam era.)
Psych research has shown that intelligence, as measured by I.Q. tests, increases with age. ("Senile dementia" is a handfull of specific diseases, which only a fraction of people get, and eliminating THOSE would obviously be part of "curing" aging.) Meanwhile, the brain's capacity for both memory and processing is very large (as shown by the amount of info people with eidetic memory accumulate, and are able to index and retrieve without apparent problems, over normal life spans.)
So you think there's a limit to how much the brain can handle, a wall we might hit if we cured aging? Let's find out. Bring it on!
Re: (Score:3)
It most certainly does not - where did you hear such a thing? There is a steady decline in scores on IQ tests after age 20 or so.
That's what they thought for decades - that intelligence ramped up about linearly until the late teens to early twenties, kneed over, and declined about linearly (though more slowly) until death.
But after IQ tests had been used for a few decades there was a substantial population who had taken IQ tests several times in their lives. Somebody got the bright idea to track the traje