Curing aging – feasibility and desirability

[AlfredBete]

#1 Edited by Mortein (4507 posts) - 1 year, 4 months ago - Show Bio
We all grew up believing how growing old and dying around the age of 70-80 is unavoidable fact, and that fighting aging would be a futile attempt. But what I discovered is that there is a growing field of research, applying various approaches in order to defeat or postpone aging. After reading some books and watching countless videos I’ve decided to start a discussion on our lovely comic book forum.

If you are not familiar with this field you can use these videos as a starter point of your research :









So after you've watched some or all of these videos answer these 2 questions:

So do you think it is feasible to do something about aging before the end of this century (or ever)?

Do you think that would be desirable?

Why?

List of companies working on defeating aging:

http://www.sens.org/

http://www.humanlongevity.com/

http://www.sierrasci.com/

http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2013/09/calico-announcement.html

http://www.calicolabs.com/

http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/sinclair/

http://www.ellisonfoundation.org/

http://genopharmix.com/

[AngDype]

#2 Edited by Bruxae (16778 posts) - 1 year, 4 months ago - Show Bio
Unless we find a way to colonize other planets this is just a terrible idea, the world is already severly overpopulated and with diseases becoming curable and even aging potentially being stopped it's just gonna get alot worse for all of us.

[aaaapolon]

@bruxae said:
Unless we find a way to colonize other planets this is just a terrible idea, the world is already severly overpopulated and with diseases becoming curable and even aging potentially being stopped it's just gonna get alot worse for all of us.

We'll probably have to wait a few centuries before we can really colonise other planets, but before that happens we can endure by lowering the birth rate and increasing the Earth's carrying capacity with nuclear fusion, electric cars, better ways of producing food, water cleaning technologies etc..

We could make laws by which people will have to choose between reproducing and using rejuvenation technologies, or we could make 1 child per a family law. I think we have enough time to prepare, even the most optimistic prognosis put the emergence of these rejuvenation technologies couple of decades into the future.

Also it is important to put things into prospective and try to compare pros and cons of rejuvenation technologies.

Aging is the causing the most suffering and death in the world, and it is also economically extremely expensive.

Millions are dying each month and hundreds of millions are suffering each day due to aging, and unless we do something about aging, billions of people are certainly going to suffer and die before the end of this century.

[aotvfdqd81]

@robotindisguise said:
Immortality through cybernetics is the answer.

"Singularity is near" written by Ray Kurzweil is one of my favorite books, but I just don't believe in timeframes he gave there, I think we'll first have to postpone aging for a century or 2 via biological means in order to reach indefinite lifespan through cybernetics.

[aixuzayimau]

@mortein said:
@bruxae said:
Unless we find a way to colonize other planets this is just a terrible idea, the world is already severly overpopulated and with diseases becoming curable and even aging potentially being stopped it's just gonna get alot worse for all of us.

We'll probably have to wait a few centuries before we can really colonise other planets, but before that happens we can endure by lowering the birth rate and increasing the Earth's carrying capacity with nuclear fusion, electric cars, better ways of producing food, water cleaning technologies etc..

We could make laws by which people will have to choose between reproducing and using rejuvenation technologies, or we could make 1 child per a family law. I think we have enough time to prepare, even the most optimistic prognosis put the emergence of these rejuvenation technologies couple of decades into the future.

Also it is important to put things into prospective and try to compare pros and cons of rejuvenation technologies.

Aging is the causing the most suffering and death in the world, and it is also economically extremely expensive.

Millions are dying each month and hundreds of millions are suffering each day due to aging, and unless we do something about aging, billions of people are certainly going to suffer and die before the end of this century.

The problem with that is that limiting reproduction is nearly impossible to do, making 1 child per family a law is just a terrible idea since pregnacy is not always easily preventable and it would put terrible strain on people whether it's because they would be happier with more children or something else, people just would not want to go along with it, they -couldn't- always go along with it, let's say someone -does- have a second child, what then? Jail the parents for performing their most basic biological function? Kill the child? Forced abortions? I don't know but none of the options sound very attractive. I do think we should do our best to limit unwanted pregnacies as it is but enforcing it as law is not a good idea. Forcing people to choose would be a pretty terrible idea as well since it's basically telling them to not have more children or die.

People need to die to make room for new, that is the most basic law in nature. One could also argue the philosophical facts of the matter as in is it really right for us to sacrifice future generations and other species for our own selfishness? There's also religious aspects to consider (even though I am myself very anti-religion it would most certainly cause an argument). I am all for curing or atleast helping against painful diseases since nobody should have to suffer for no reason, but death as unattractive as it sounds for oneself is neccessary, at least for the moment.. Assuming the rest of the galaxy or a very large part of it is unoccupied then colonization is the only thing that could possibly make technical immortality a less bad idea.