Thoughts on slowing aging?

[spinningship]

I have a vision of a dystopia where technology evolves at such a rapid rate that people are effectively immortal. And then the government restricts suicide methods enough that effectively people are trapped in a reality prison. We should count ourselves incredibly lucky that our lives are finite. I think that death leads to the progress of society generation by generation and if we lived forever we would stagnate as a society. Wanting to live forever is something the ego naturally wants for itself but it's very selfish.

 

[theboy]

people are afraid of being old

 

[Rocinante]

I just drink 3000ml of water and use tretinoin

 

[Jarni]

So far only HBOT increases telomere length...

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy increases telomere length and decreases immunosenescence in isolated blood cells: a prospective trial | Aging

Aging | doi:10.18632/aging.202188. Yafit Hachmo, Amir Hadanny, Ramzia Abu Hamed, Malka Daniel-Kotovsky, Merav Catalogna, Gregory Fishlev, Erez Lang, Nir Polak, Keren Doenyas, Mony Friedman, Yonatan Zemel, Yair Bechor, Shai Efrati

www.aging-us.com

 

[Rainy_days]

It sucks... don't know what else to say about it.

 

[Sakura94]

I think it's probably a very simple process which we'll discover eventually. Once someone figures it out everyone will be able to do it like the image generators are now unstoppable.
Makes me want to stay alive long enough to find out what it is.
I can't say about progress. It might progress even faster because you'd quickly get hyper intelligent people who don't have to start from scratch on anything they also wouldn't have aging brain any longer that is set in its ways.
It's evolution that programmed us to die and be replaced. Growing animosity to the old (because of dispositions they may no longer be able to help) is factored into that.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I think some time in the future, there will come a time where the population is very unbalanced. Too many people reaching old age and draining resources and not enough young people paying taxes. I feel like the mental health crisis is on the rise- which will impede people's ability to work. Plus, more and more people may choose not to have children.

I think at that point- our 'noble' rulers will quite happily bring in assisted suicide for those who they'd rather not have to take care of anymore.

Reckon the young and relatively able bodied of us will still have to resort to the DIY approach sadly.

As for growing old myself- screw that! Life's shit enough as it is without an increasingly failing body on top.

 

[GlassAlwaysEmpty]

I think we're on the verge of science being able to massively slow down the aging process, but probably one or two generations away from that happening.

It'll be limited to the rich and famous obviously for a while, i can imagine it would be very expensive.

 

[disillusion]

Look up this billionaire bryan johnson. He spends like 2 million a day to reverse aging. He is 40 something but his body age 20 something. It is called " blue print" the project of what he is doing. I saw on youtube too. Kinda boring. He has a team of doctors

 

[sick.faery]

that's litterally a tv show on netflix lol

personally think it's good thing if we can stop aging. why die when you could live forever, if you're happy at least

 

[ksp]

We should count ourselves incredibly lucky that our lives are finite. I think that death leads to the progress of society generation by generation and if we lived forever we would stagnate as a society. Wanting to live forever is something the ego naturally wants for itself but it's very selfish.

excellent point!

It might progress even faster because you'd quickly get hyper intelligent people who don't have to start from scratch on anything

another excellent point! i think this is one of the few positives, and it's huge!

I think some time in the future, there will come a time where the population is very unbalanced.

i think that too (life being unbalanced has been going on for very long, but it will be moro so in the future)

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fascinating thread, so thank you for posting :)

we might be able to become immortal, but that might have terrible consequences
we're too arrogant, selfish, and shortsighted to consider fundamental implications

like it was mentioned above:
- nature needs to upgrade itself through evolution (newer improved version of us)
- eliminate weaknesses, and promote success for both: physical attributes (DNA) and intellect
- evolution generated intelligence, but our current intelligence is limited - it must evolve to get to higher levels, even if human intelligence is much higher than all the rest of the animals

imagine we became immortal, right now - 8 billion people
the only way to evolve is by adding new members
- live is already unsustainable as it is (more births than deaths)
- consuming all resources available (nature is unable to regenerate fast enough)
- the current 8 billion will need diversity in DNA
— potential of 8 billion deaths caused by a virus
— if no viruses: +134 million births (vs -67 million deaths) (2022) - avg 100 m / year, 1 billion / 10 years
— 100 years from now we'll get to about 20 billion - exponential overpopulation
—- because nature will never be able to generate enough resources:
—- we need to conquer space, and Mars is not considered naturally inhabitable
—- we need exoplanets - not possible in 100 years (maybe 1,000 years from now - big maybe!)

other factors:
- 8 billion with current intelligence vs 12 billion at (much) higher levels of intelligence
— 8 billion of extremely unhappy people (12 billion miserable from other reasons, such us philosophy)
- current mental memory capacity - no one ever thinks of this:
— is our memory considered infinite? (i don't think so, but our suffering will be)
—- even if we have infinite memory - are we able to handle/bear it? (with current mental health care?)
- another one that is quite obvious, related to current level of intelligence
— we will be extremely bored - immortality is very troubling, because of other strict limitations

i think we can come up with a lot more, but probably won't: shot first, ask questions later (so we'll shot ourself in the foot:)