Do you support the movement for indefinite life extension?

Science is working to end the aging process.

There are a variety of ways to do it, but one of the only sets of comprehensive strategies that is developed so far, works to do this in an intuitively workable way. There are 7 forms of damage that accumulate in your cells that age you to death. We work to clean those out. If we do, we probably get indefinite life extension.

There is two pieces of great news that goes along with this. Forms of damage that are like these, like rare genetically inherited lysosomal storage diseases, have already had success in the labs. This means thats its not even a matter of "Can we?" anymore. Its a matter of "When will we?"

I can tell you when. It happens as fast, in direct proportion to the collective speed at which the world goes to get there. This can happen in your lifetime but only if you decide to care about it.

What do you think about this? Do you support this?

 

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There is no need for such things. Life is eternal anyway.

 

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Didn't take this thread long to get onto religion!

Personally, yes. Admittedly, life with no ageing, and hence the potential for centuries of existence before disease, accident or violence reaches out to snuff you, carries a major side effect. Massive over-population.

However, if human ingenuity is enough to extend life span, it should be enough to cope with this problem also. perhaps each person who is offered life extension has to accept surgical sterilisation at the same time?

 

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Im aroun 60 so i dout indefinite life extension (whether physically or mechanically) will hapen in my lifetime... however... i mite get to witness som strong evidence for such a thang occurin in the reletive near future... an yes im for it... an jus for the thrill of seein it hapen is enuff reason for me.!!!

 

I would be willing to bet that you are smarter than this, smarter than this knee jerk reaction, "but population!!" I might have had the same knee jerk reaction myself before, but think about it. Think about this situation, so in this hypothetical, we are smart enough to achieve indefinite life extension, but you suspect that though we do that, we would still some how be so dull and dim witted as to not be able to figure out a challenge like population?

Population is not a problem of the sort that causes us to slow down the movement for indefinite life extension at all. Death is not and never will be a an acceptable solution to population. There are plenty, plenty of others. Besides that, there might be an underpopulation problem.

 

Thats right, we would never want to live with all of those things, and we wont. One of the main things the movement for indefinite life extension works to do is defeat the 7 forms of damage that accumulate to age us to death. These forms of damage are responsible for age related diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, arteriosclerosis, etc... Get rid of the damage and you dont have those things. If you have other afflictions, time brings more cures for them too, but youll be healthy while you have them, most people succumb to an affliction or two because as they succumb to the decrepitude that comes along with these forms of damage they find it harder and harder to take it. A person will always have the choice to X themselves out if they really need it, or end the treatments. We reserve that right, thats right, this isnt about forever, its about indefinite life extension, having more control over your own destiny.

 

These breakthroughs could get here at any time. This happens in direct proportion to the collective speed at which the world all goes together. Its like, you need to get to the beach before the hurricane hits, you can see it on the horizon, you can give in and say our too far from the shore, or you can gun it and help get the hell out of there. Im not saying that this can happen tomorrow, and Im not saying it will happen in one year, but it could hypothetically, realistically happen in 1 year. Theres a concept called longevity escape velocity that says that a person may only need to hold on for another 20 years to be able to benefit from indefinite life extension.

 

There are over six billion people on Earth. That is quite a market for age extending technology. In this century much of that technology will be coming out of China and India.

Capitalism and entrepreneurship are thriving in 'socialist' China. When I was there 4 years ago, I witnessed a frenzied 'make-money' spirit that overshadows anything we have in the West. And...the idea of any 'moral' or 'ethical' guidance (just short of killing people) almost non-existent.

Our conference was in a city with a metropolitan area of 40 million people, and I'm not proud of it, but I had never even heard of this city or it's province before I went. There is 'another world' happening in China.

bottom line....it doesn't really matter what 'I' think. Genetic engineering, medical limitations, etc. are going to be determined largely by what happens in China and India...perhaps also Indonesia, Malaysia. It is not going to shaped by any meeting of the AMA in Boston or some 'get together' in London.

 

The problem there is that "Developed Countries" get lazy, they feel they are developed, so why should they develop any further and this in turn corrupts moving forwards.

In upcoming and developing countries the emphasis is on moving forwards to become better than what was originally the case, this usually means the people are motivated towards working towards solutions for problems as a common goal.

Eventually the Developed Countries that exist are slowly degrading and sinking as "developed" back to "undeveloped" only once the countries have sank far enough will people be desperate enough to work together towards solutions.

 

We would need an (unsupportable) exponential growing as a nation to accommodate all these immortal beings. 310 million now? How about a billion in 50 years?

I don't think we should be looking into immortality as much as looking to prolong our finite life and make it as pleasurable as possible.

With age comes the inherent realization that we have one lifetime to live. It is a process: we age and grow smarter and wiser and more self-respective.

I think if there was an immortality pill, it wouldn't be a profitable venture.

 

Irrespective of how long life can be extended we will always die someday of something.

 

It's really dependent on whether a Transhumanist extension actually means extending life genetically, after all if we became emulated within an emulated environment, the emulation itself would be compressible meaning that we wouldn't have the limitations of space which are usually a concern with population figures.

 

I have lived/observed/proven that 90% of everything is crap. An immortal life would be a burden on humanity. Imagine Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton were given immortality... how long could we take them before we discarded them?

 

Who? where do you live?

 

Great point. Issues of physical resources may only be a pre-occupation for a couple of centuries before we achieve an efficiency through some digital or quantum existence....either the resources themselves being produced through advances in particle physics or we ourselves being altered...probably both.

 

Then it should be discussed what preconditions need to be met, before such a condition were to become apparent:

--Space Colonies one on the list?

(Space Colonies also shows up one on the list of viable job creation conditions for early 21st century Earth?)

 

yah, overpopulation will force us to the precipice. Either, butcher each other, or band together to use technology to give us an answer, 6 billion people working together, that would be incredible.