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Want to live forever? You probably will have that option!

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S

sssstententen

Member
Sign me up as well.

I want to be immortal. I want to continue to experience life for as long as I am able to.

There is nothing else. There is no peace after death. You will just cease to exist. There is too much to consume, to experience, to do, in one lifetime as it is. I want to continue to see new art, experience new culture, taste/smell/feel/see/hear new things. I want to explore space.

I'd even be okay with suffering for thousands of years if it meant I'd get to live for millions.
 
A

Alexlf

Member
Langdon Alger said:
I always hear about amazing medical advances that are going to change everything in ten years, and then ten years later nothing has changed. All this stuff is always insanely over-hyped.
Click to expand...

There's actually been hundreds of breakthrough technologies put into practical use in the medical industry over the past few years, from drugs to treatments.

EDIT: Wider ranges of transplants, bionic limbs, huge variety of new/better birth control, diabetes medication/monitoring(and patient wearables as a whole), the HPV vaccine as we know it today, and way more effective cancer treatments are just a few examples of the things that we have seen happen in the medical field over the past few years. All in practical use.
 
O

Onemic

Member
Nocebo said:
I'm not. It seems to me that the way things seem to you are not how they actually are.


Good news! There are road maps of sorts. And they're gaining traction in main stream scientific discourse. Watch anything by Aubrey de Grey for instance. If you want to keep up with developments here is a good website. There news, papers etc. relevant to fighting aging are discussed and linked. It is written a bit dry, though.
I suggest looking at the FAQ if you want to get a quick idea of things.

There is certainly reason for hope that something significant comes a long in the next 50 years. Did you look at the video posted earlier about CRISPR? While not necessarily directly related to longevity, the video claims that the cost of genetic engineering has been reduced by 99% over night. Which is a huge deal obviously.
Click to expand...

Your initial post came off as condescending, so I took that followup as a doubling down. If that wasnt your intent I apologize.

Thanks for the links. I'll definitely check them out when I finish work.
 
P

PsychBat!

Banned
DarkKyo said:
As far as we know entropy is inescapable. As far as we know. But we don't even understand the nature or purpose of the universe. We understand so little, so yeah, in our current state there is literally no way to survive entropy.

Chances are humanity will be gone long before then(at the very least it won't exist in the same form), but it would be interesting if there was a solution to every problem.

Cure death.
Lose the flesh.
Escape the planet.
Figure out FTL travel.
Colonize.
Survive heat death.

What if you could escape the universe?
What if you could siphon energy from other dimensions and keep your digital society alive in a cube inside your cold, dead universe?

Pretty fantastical but we don't know what's possible with the right technology because we are still basically monkeys poking atoms around.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you just don't want to die
and keep watching anime.
 
Melon Husk

Melon Husk

Member
SugarDaddy said:
I'm good, just give me a pill when I'm old and decrepit and my organs are failing so i can die peacefully at my own leisure.
Click to expand...

I don't think you understand that "live forever" in real-life medical science context means "indefinite healthy lifespan".

DarkKyo said:
As far as we know entropy is inescapable. As far as we know. But we don't even understand the nature or purpose of the universe. We understand so little, so yeah, in our current state there is literally no way to survive entropy.

Chances are humanity will be gone long before then(at the very least it won't exist in the same form), but it would be interesting if there was a solution to every problem.

Cure death.
Lose the flesh.
Escape the planet.
Figure out FTL travel.
Colonize.
Survive heat death.

What if you could escape the universe?
What if you could siphon energy from other dimensions and keep your digital society alive in a cube inside your cold, dead universe?

Pretty fantastical but we don't know what's possible with the right technology because we are still basically monkeys poking atoms around.
Click to expand...

Brash to think we know all the questions. P.S. local pockets of low entropy are possible, and I don't think the heat death of the universe is an acute problem.
 
Astral Dog

Astral Dog

Member
Neo C. said:
Well, good news for you then! Most improvements we'll get in the next few decades will extend our lives within reason.
Click to expand...
Extended, healthy lives ≠ inmortality though, his point still stands (sorry if i not followed the conversation and missed something)

Anyways, here is what i think, worthless as it is.

Accepting death is a process, a difficult process but something every living being has dealt with since the beginning of time, and will continue to do so the upcoming decades .

I suffer just by knowing when someone i care about is going to die, suffer, become old and age or get sick like any human being
even Iwatas death from last year still hurts
, i wish people would get to have healthier, longer and happier lives than what we have right now, and it appears thats the way we are going now.and thats good.

Do i want to live forever? Hell no.
Life is not about the time we have, but how much we enjoy it, and sometimes the thought of death releases me from frivolous life problems. Many problems and conflicts are caused by human fear of death.
Putting aside the ethical, overpopulation, starvation and climatic babble i would not be against some people achieving inmortality.

But mostly i cant imagine a world without death,is that even possible? There must be a price to pay for this.in our bodies and mind,we can extend our lives, but there have always been limits and currently accepting those limits is as much of a part of life as being born, and finding a bit of peace in this chaotic world.

Regardless, good luck and hopefully great scientists continue to find ways to increase the Quality of Life for everyone :)
 
C

cHaotix8

Member
Sign me up. Hell, I'll take a "normal" human life span as long as it would keep me in my physical prime. I'm fine with dying but aging is a disease. All it does is decrease the quality of your life.
 
N

Nocebo

Member
kavanf1 said:
Our bodies maintain themselves by cellular division. As cells divide, the support structure that keeps our genetic material intact gradually wears away. The more the cells divide, the more that structure wears away. This manifests itself as aging. Eventually it wears away completely, and your cells can no longer reproduce. This manifests itself as death. Its a bit more complicated than that but essentially that's it.

Other factors like stress contribute to this degradation, which is probably why stress is considered a major factor in reducing life expectancy.

I'm almost 37 and a half.
Click to expand...
That's a small part of what happens. Not all tissue degrades by division. And clearly cells do have the ability to divide indefinitely and not die, see cancer cells.

Also you say this manifests in aging. But aging is a rather nebulous word. Basically you're saying that cells die. And then we die. Right? But what as cells die systems in our body break down and this manifests diseases of old age.
You replied to my question "If we keep people healthy what would they die from?" So if old age is defined by you as cells breaking down, this is systems failing and chronic diseases. You know like with heart disease. Keeping people healthy would seem to me to have to also include keeping these cell division problems at bay.
So in my eyes a health old person can't die from his body failing because that would mean he wasn't what we consider healthy anymore.

Saying people die from old age is a meaningless or even incorrect statement. Do people die from getting hit by a car? No, they die from their chest being crushed and their organs being punctured/smooshed and ceasing their functions because of the damage. This in turn causes other systems to fail etc. Resulting in death.

As a side note look at atherosclerosis. When it affects the arteries of the heart it is the number one cause of death in America. People don't get atherosclerosis because of old age. Signs of the beginnings of atherosclerosis can be seen as early as 10 years of age. People die from it because the problem builds up for so long.

Onemic said:
Your initial post came off as condescending, so I took that followup as a doubling down. If that wasnt your intent I apologize.

Thanks for the links. I'll definitely check them out when I finish work.
Click to expand...
I was a bit of an ass. So I should apologize.
 
andythinkpad

andythinkpad

Member
It's a good premise for a scifi story: everyone has to work 300-400 years to save enough money in order to immigrate off earth so they can retire in cheaper Florida-like planets.
 
Melon Husk

Melon Husk

Member
andythinkpad said:
It's a good premise for a scifi story: everyone has to work 300-400 years to save enough money in order to immigrate off earth so they can retire in cheaper Florida-like planets.
Click to expand...

What's the point of retiring if you never turn into a retiree? Vacation? If I were forced to work 300-400 years without vacation I'd riot.
 
C

cartesian

Member
The thought of my two brilliant parents being in the last generation to die, and me living so long that I eventually forget what their faces looked like or what their voices sounded like, except through centuries-old recordings, breaks my heart so much. It seems cosmically cruel to think that they would be condemned to wither and die while I live on forever; it's deeply depressing. I'm so upset thinking about it.

Hard to imagine just how much a 'cure for death' would radically transform society. Everything would be different. Marriage. The job market. Having kids. Education. Experiencing childhood and growing up. Retirement. Population controls? And how is the cure delivered - simple one off or costly maintenance therapy? How long will it take to permeate the third world? How many generations of the world's poor will die waiting for the immorality enjoyed by the advanced economies? And so on. Mind boggling stuff.

In many ways I find it quite a sad thing to ponder, as I suspect much of the world I feel at home in would be totally lost in the upheaval, but I guess that just shows what a fossil I would be in the brave new world.
 
G

GuitarAtomik

Member
I don't want to live forever, but I'd totally be down for a few hundred years as long as it comes with anti-aging.

That said, this is totally how the zombie apocalypse is going to start.
 
D

DavidDesu

Member
Get ready for maximum politician's term lengths to be extended to decades as a result. The elites are going to run amok with the lot of us, now there is legitimate benefits to having several lifetimes worth of wealth, rather than just the notion of your family name living on, now they can literally live on forever.. that's where we'll see this happening first.
 
C

curls

Wake up Sheeple, your boring insistence that Obama is not a lizardman from Atlantis is wearing on my patience 💤
Nanobots inside everyone? All the more easier for Skynet or some bad Ai to take over the world. No thanks.

I mean did anyone watch Terminator Genisys? 😱
 
P

PsychBat!

Banned
cartesian said:
The thought of my two brilliant parents being in the last generation to die, and me living so long that I eventually forget what their faces looked like or what their voices sounded like, except through centuries-old recordings, breaks my heart so much. It seems cosmically cruel to think that they would be condemned to wither and die while I live on forever; it's deeply depressing. I'm so upset thinking about it.

Hard to imagine just how much a 'cure for death' would radically transform society. Everything would be different. Marriage. The job market. Having kids. Education. Experiencing childhood and growing up. Retirement. Population controls? And how is the cure delivered - simple one off or costly maintenance therapy? How long will it take to permeate the third world? How many generations of the world's poor will die waiting for the immorality enjoyed by the advanced economies? And so on. Mind boggling stuff.

In many ways I find it quite a sad thing to ponder, as I suspect much of the world I feel at home in would be totally lost in the upheaval, but I guess that just shows what a fossil I would be in the brave new world.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Thank you for this.
 
D

DOBERMAN INC

Member
All I can picture is germ warfare and this being the only defence.

Manufactured germs released with no cure apart from the nano enabled bodies, I think I read too much science fiction.
 
E

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
LookAtMeGo said:
Just got around to watching this. Very cool. Im all for it. If I could tack on another few decades or more, I'd be happy to.

I love the part where the person turn super saiyan.
Click to expand...

Yep. I don't imagine our generation will gain more than a couple extra decades max out of this and similar technologies, but as the science progresses we could be looking at average life expectancies in the centuries! At that point society will have to restructure and rules will have to be put in place to avoid overpopulation, but that just might be what we need to push humanity forward into space.

For example we may establish a socioeconomic system in which instead of saving up for retirement, people work until they're 100 at which point they use their savings to join one of many available space colonization programs. Imagine if there are habitable planets 10 light years from here. Traveling at 1/10th the speed of light it would take 100 years to get to one of those, which seems prohibitively long today, but if your expected to live for 300 years it could make sense to spend the first 100 on earth, the next 100 journeying through space and the final 100 settling and building up a new colony in a nearby star system. Once the colonies are developed enough to have their own space programs people born there could spread out even further, etc.

This sounds like something that could become normal before the end of this millennium!
 
N

Nocebo

Member
MidgarBlowedUp said:
Unless we can greatly modify the Hayflick limit of human cells it's just wishful thinking.
Click to expand...
Is it really the Hayflick limit that is causing death? Do you have any articles or papers proving that?

This article seems to suggest otherwise.
Some interesting quotes:
What gives more hope is that no one has actually proved that the Hayflick limit actually limits the lifespan of an organism. Correlation is not causation.
Click to expand...
The Hayflick limit may represent an organism’s maximal lifespan, but what is it that actually kills us in the end? To test the Hayflick limit’s ability to predict our mortality we can take cell samples from young and old people and grow them in the lab. If the Hayflick limit is the culprit, a 60-year-old person’s cells should divide far fewer times than a 20-year-old’s cells.

But this experiment fails time after time. The 60-year-old’s skin cells still divide approximately 50 times – just as many as the young person’s cells. But what about the telomeres: aren’t they the inbuilt biological clock? Well, it’s complicated.
Click to expand...
Within the human body, most cells do not simply senesce. They are repaired, cleaned or replaced by stem cells. Your skin degrades as you age because your body cannot carry out its normal functions of repair and regeneration.
Click to expand...

People don't die from old age.
What does it mean to die of old age?
As it turns out, that's almost never quite what's going on from a medical perspective. Aging — in and of itself — is not a cause of death.
Click to expand...
Can people die of old age?
“The idea that people die of pure aging, without pathology, is nuts,” said Gems, the deputy director of the Institute of Healthy Aging and a professor at the University College London. Here Gems uses “pathology” to refer to something that can kill you — some sort of condition, disease, or ailment — not something so boring and normal as having a lot of birthdays. Something else has to be going on.
Click to expand...
What isn’t killing us are the processes that define biological aging: telomere shortening, oxidative stress, and glycation. These forces come stock with every human lifespan — congratulations, your body succumbs to entropy — and together they cause old age to be synonymous with old.
Click to expand...
Telomere shortening is correlated with the hayflick limit. Every time a cell divides the telomeres at the end of DNA becomes shorter. When they become critically short the cell basically dies. According to the first article I posted, laboratory mice have telomeres 5 times longer than those of humans. Yet the mice live 40 times shorter. This suggests that the hayflick limit or telomere length is not necessarily an indicator of how long an organism can live.

Furthermore for some cells telomeres get lengthened automatically by an enzyme called telomerase or get repaired by other mechanisms.

More on telomeres.
Telomeres shorten as we age. By analogy to the cellular mitotic clock, telomeres have been postulated as a marker of “genetic age,” and telomere length has been marketed as a simple predictor of longevity. Assays of telomere length have been bundled with recommendations for lifestyle modification and for drug therapy, neither based on appropriate clinical studies. Simple but appealing arguments relating telomeres and aging are currently controversial, likely simplistic, and potentially harmful. Telomere length does indeed reflect a cell’s past proliferative history and future propensity for apoptosis, senescence, and transformation. Cellular aging, however, is not equivalent to organ or organismal aging.
Click to expand...
 
A

A Fish Aficionado

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
Don't be fooled on the magic of science.
Telomeres are still yet to be researched in full.

That's when you venture on to alternative health and quackery.

Cellular dying is why we can have certain autoimmune checks. It's why certain mutation markers like BRCA1 is so important.

Don't oversell this because you end up in alarmist and quackery.

See the deaths of STEM cell quackery
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-stem-cell-hard-sell/

You're putting the cart before the horse.
 
Darklor01

Darklor01

Might need to stop sniffing glue
Sooo, if someone lived to say, 200.. They don't retire until age 165? Hrmmm. 165ish years of work unless I invest properly. Hrmmmm.
 
A

A Fish Aficionado

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
Nocebo said:
What or who is this referring to? Also, what does "magic of science" mean?
Click to expand...
What you are taking about. None of these are in the realm of possibility. Just proof of concept.

Drug and therapy attrition are huge. I want big money to fund these questions, but you're selling a cruise to made up island.


Quality of life is just going to be the main thing. How do we treat these diseases early, what environment and medicine changes can we do? What is giving us false positives? What is more harmful than good? What are environment, behaviors and mental health have to do with standard of care?

These are the challenges, not some overreaching panacea.
 
KonradLaw

KonradLaw

Member
Nice. I'm hoping for 200 years at least :) And I live in Europe, radical life extensions are the only thing that might save us economically in the long run,
 
T

Terrifyer

Banned
There's no way we're anywhere near this. I believe that healthcare and medicine will absolutely continue to progress and extend life expectancy, but there are still so many things we don't know. I think there's a strong tendency to linearize promising research into "surely this will all be fleshed out in x years" without realizing that that's nowhere near a certainty. Doing that will constantly make it seem like we're on the verge of huge breakthroughs that will revolutionize everything. I used to be really buy into the idea of a medical/technological singularity, but now I'm certain that it will never happen.
 
N

Nocebo

Member
A Fish Aficionado said:
What you are taking about. None of these are in the realm of possibility. Just proof of concept.

Drug and therapy attrition are huge. I want big money to fund these questions, but you're selling a cruise to made up island.


Quality of life is just going to be the main thing. How do we treat these diseases early, what environment and medicine changes can we do? What is giving us false positives? What is more harmful than good? What are environment, behaviors and mental health have to do with standard of care?

These are the challenges, not some overreaching panacea.
Click to expand...
Wait, maybe you have confused me with someone else? What overreaching panacea am I talking about according to you?
Could you quote anything specific?
 
A

A Fish Aficionado

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
Nocebo said:
Wait, maybe you have confused me with someone else? What overreaching panacea am I talking about according to you?
Could you quote anything specific?
Click to expand...
Search your posts. I'm not doing it for you.
When you have ever not been overbearing on this subject?

I've given very specific details. Either with the questions of apopstosis and telomeres.

I'm saying the science isn't just there and that we shouldn't conjecture. We need to holdfast and wait for whatever can be gleaned from such research.
 
B

Bennettt2

Member
so i google "Life extension technology" and find a news article about Brain augmentation. Reminds me of Deus Ex and The Matrix. The company is called Braingate.
 
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