This is not a question about magic but rather advanced scientific intervention that could potentially circumvent senescence or growing old.
Assuming an affordable aging intervention was found that would grant you that ability to be young forever would "YOU" personally take it? Yes i know this wouldn't prevent death, accidents could still injure you.
Perhaps the question is better asked would you like to retain your youth and health for as long as possible or is growing elderly something that is a non-issue to you or perhaps something you look forward to?
Note: that the aging process(decline leading to gerontological state) does not itself confer wisdom to individuals, but the process of living and experiencing various events does. For this reason a 15 year old boy may have more wisdom then an 80 year old man who has been locked in a room for his entire life.
I would personally do this without hesitation. The thought of not existing has always filled me with misery, unless existing was so miserable that annihilation would be preferable.
iPondR Graduate Thinker
Joined: Aug 19, 2009
Posts: 534
Location: Aussie Prawn Facility; District 10
Posted:
Mon Mar 14, 2011 6:35 am
Voted 'yes'
why wouldn't you
! The way the question has been phrased, it's to do with staying in good condition
physically
well into older age (and presumably staying healthier for longer, since we would be slowing the aging process)...
This is a distinct question from 'would you take a pill that prolonged life for (say) 20-30 years... to which (I understand) many people would say 'no' [go figure]. That's not to say that the gradual ageing of populations in the developed world is not a growing problem!
Like it or not, it appears that this is becoming more and more likely in future. I now don't respond with an immediate
'bollocks'
when I hear a news item predicting a cure(s) for cancer(s) for example. And yet, frustratingly, it always seems to be 'within the next 10 years' [hmmm]. Learning how to block viruses (e.g. that nasty shingles/cowpox bugger) is one example.
What I cant see happening (yet) are those nano-bots that are supposed to go into your system and clean all the crap out, repair your DNA etc. At the moment that's sci-fi IMO. Probably a good thing!
_________________ I take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance, any day... - Douglas Adams
DigitalAtheist Graduate Thinker
Joined: Apr 13, 2009
Posts: 661
Location: Canada
Posted:
Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:54 am
FullMentalJackpot wrote:
Assuming an affordable aging intervention was found that would grant you that ability to be young forever would "YOU" personally take it?
I might take the pill, and then surreptitiously slip some into my girlfriend's cereal every morning. She's pretty hot.
I'm not sure of my actual position on this, but it interesting to know that there are people actually working on this.
This video
has stuck in my head for about a year since seeing it.
_________________ Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
MockingGods Master of Logic
Joined: Nov 14, 2002
Posts: 5693
Location: Planet Earth
Posted:
Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:53 pm
FMJ wrote:
Assuming an affordable aging intervention was found that would grant you that ability to be young forever would "YOU" personally take it?
Being "young forever" sort of indicates the ability to have "eternal life". While I would love to be young until I die (voted yes), it seems this potential "cure" would do nothing but exacerbate our biggest problem; population growth.
_________________ Believing Yahweh could send someone to hell is just like believing Zeus could strike someone with a lightning bolt.
Religion: Born of human imagination, sustained by unapproachable dogma.
FullMentalJackpot The Learned
Joined: Jan 11, 2008
Posts: 109
Posted:
Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:10 pm
MockingGods wrote:
FMJ wrote:
Assuming an affordable aging intervention was found that would grant you that ability to be young forever would "YOU" personally take it?
Being "young forever" sort of indicates the ability to have "eternal life".
Well yes and no. Theoretically you could not die from diseases that eventually manifest in older individuals and result in death, however in a statistical sense it is unlikely that the body that houses the information that is you could avoid a life-threatening injury indefinably. For this reason you would be clinically immortal but still subject to death from extreme and unexpected injury, like a car accident or a large enough exposure to a toxin or even a disease that went untreated because it might not have been detected. So its' possible that, given you don't get suicidally bored and are able to avoid accident forever you might end up blowing-out 600,000,000 candles on your birthday cake one has to ask if they could avoid at least 1 traumatic injury for 6 million years; and if an accident didn't' kill you then attempting to blow out 6 million candles would.
MockingGods wrote:
While I would love to be young until I die (voted yes), it seems this potential "cure" would do nothing but exacerbate our biggest problem; population growth.
So then the question is would you be willing to die or in the case of aging "die slowly" experiencing some rather horrible and de-humanizing conditions on your way for others? Still there would be potential solutions. Those that obtain teh benefit of avoidance of decline would only be able to do so after the accepting a contractual obligation to take a suicide tablet at 72. This might seem horrible but to some might be preferable to senescence. Or others could elect to be voluntarily sterilized prior to being granted aging intervention, granted they don't have any offspring and have not donated gametes. Both these solutions, to me, seem more humane then aging. However there is still stem cell conversion of somatic cells so people will be able to breed even if they never generate one gamete ever. Though a social order should be able to police institutions that have the ability to do this if that is what they truly desire.
It might be the case that extending youthful life might accelerate research into mitigating a Malthusian problem as individuals that be aware they are going to live for thousands of years would have to be conscious of the threat of resource depletion and pollution and every act of pollution or overuse of resources would then become more costly to an individual. Also knowledge encapsulated in individuals brains regarding engineering, waste processing technology, agricultural etc would not be destroyed 50 to 60 years after it's accumulated. This might ensure the acceleration of discovering solutions to enable living spaces to support more life.
Thanks for the response also. When i ask this question of Christians they tend to give me the answer that death is the beginning of something much better or that tampering with things would be an affront to god, or against celestial mandate so it's interesting to get the secular take on existence.
FullMentalJackpot The Learned
Joined: Jan 11, 2008
Posts: 109
Posted:
Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:21 pm
DigitalAtheist wrote:
FullMentalJackpot wrote:
Assuming an affordable aging intervention was found that would grant you that ability to be young forever would "YOU" personally take it?
I might take the pill, and then surreptitiously slip some into my girlfriend's cereal every morning. She's pretty hot.
I'm not sure of my actual position on this, but it interesting to know that there are people actually working on this.
This video
has stuck in my head for about a year since seeing it.
Does degray address the notion that aging actually might serve a critical decentralized tumor immunosurvailence function ? that is that aging is a means of identifying rapidly dividing cells and stopping that replication on a cell to cell basis rather then relying on immune system response? This is why i'm skeptical we can solve this problem anytime soon. Assuming you could turn off or rather extend a telomere indefinatly or hack it by some mechanism so cell division is unlimited we might see a massive increase in incidence of lethal cancers. Becasue of this i wonder if you would have to cure cancer totally before you disable the cellular aging function, that is you would have to offload decentralized tumor immuno-suvailence to technology rather then instructions in every cell in your body. So you could imagine in a world where aging doesn't happen people might have to be constantly attached to a device that monitors every cell in our body and if it's dividing to fast.
This would be the same problem if we wanted to remove the immune system because it requires heavy energy expenditure or it turns on your body sometimes we would have to intervene technologically to sterilize our environments of ever germ / virus before we could do this or we would "War of the Worlds" ourselves.
MockingGods Master of Logic
Joined: Nov 14, 2002
Posts: 5693
Location: Planet Earth
Posted:
Sat Mar 19, 2011 1:32 am
FMJ wrote:
Well yes and no. Theoretically you could not die from diseases that eventually manifest in older individuals and result in death, however in a statistical sense it is unlikely that the body that houses the information that is you could avoid a life-threatening injury indefinably. For this reason you would be clinically immortal but still subject to death from extreme and unexpected injury, like a car accident or a large enough exposure to a toxin or even a disease that went untreated because it might not have been detected. So its' possible that, given you don't get suicidally bored and are able to avoid accident forever you might end up blowing-out 600,000,000 candles on your birthday cake one has to ask if they could avoid at least 1 traumatic injury for 6 million years; and if an accident didn't' kill you then attempting to blow out 6 million candles would.
I totally agree with your assessment here. Please excuse my rather flippant notation of the word "forever" in the OP In fact, I just logged back to this thread to edit my original post to read, "or at least much longer lifespans and also probably reproduction at much older ages".
Quote:
Those that obtain teh benefit of avoidance of decline would only be able to do so after the accepting a contractual obligation to take a suicide tablet at 72.
The "Star Trek" option... no thanks
Quote:
Or others could elect to be voluntarily sterilized prior to being granted aging intervention, granted they don't have any offspring and have not donated gametes.
This one is for me
Quote:
Both these solutions, to me, seem more humane then aging.
I agree, as long as population levels can be maintained at sustainable levels. If they couldn't be, the ensuing human disaster would probably be much worse then dieing of old age.
Quote:
It might be the case that extending youthful life might accelerate research into mitigating a Malthusian problem as individuals that be aware they are going to live for thousands of years would have to be conscious of the threat of resource depletion and pollution and every act of pollution or overuse of resources would then become more costly to an individual. Also knowledge encapsulated in individuals brains regarding engineering, waste processing technology, agricultural etc would not be destroyed 50 to 60 years after it's accumulated.
Both excellent points. However, we humans are becoming better and better at accumulating knowledge independent of the human brain. First the printed word, now the computer... who knows what the future will hold.
Quote:
This might ensure the acceleration of discovering solutions to enable living spaces to support more life.
Food (and possibly potable water) would probably be the most pressing issue of a much larger population, at least at first.
Quote:
Thanks for the response also.
Always a pleasure sir
Quote:
When i ask this question of Christians they tend to give me the answer that death is the beginning of something much better or that tampering with things would be an affront to god, or against celestial mandate so it's interesting to get the secular take on existence.
Yeah, those silly Christians and their bizarre superstitions.
_________________ Believing Yahweh could send someone to hell is just like believing Zeus could strike someone with a lightning bolt.
Religion: Born of human imagination, sustained by unapproachable dogma.
FullMentalJackpot The Learned
Joined: Jan 11, 2008
Posts: 109
Posted:
Sun Mar 20, 2011 2:23 am
MockingGods wrote:
. The "Star Trek" option... no thanks
Not familiar with this aspect of startrek. I remember one episode where Bones commented that he had a touch of arthritis and I became so livid at the thought they hadn’t cured such a terrible disorder. I guess I put a tremendous premium on health. For me the idea of infirmity is so horrible I would, atleast now, prefer a quick death to having
Quote:
This one is for me
Me too. Of course my reasoning for not wanting kids is cost in time and money, it’s purely selfish and is not influenced by potential ecological or resource issues. Still oxytocin(neuropeptide associated with love, amongst other things) is so tremendously potent on human psychology I’m not sure I could resist wanting to please a woman, in an effort to maintain the feelings associated with oxytocin/vaspressin, if I got involved with a really good one. I mean i say i'de want to now, and i think i know what i want, but love , or whatever you call it, can do some really fked things to people. I really believe that some of these young girls are, in a biochemical sense denied, their free will when they are not permitted abortions or pressured into not having them. At the time of birth a woman's brain is saturated with these chemicals and i think an ethical dilemma arises with this regarding that individual woman's free will. In this sense it puts females at an economic disadvantage because the institutions of church and tribal family do not effectively enforce more responsible behavior with regards to both parties involved in the conception process. The male being able to easily divorce himself from teh sitution as he is not subjected to the same biochemical cascade as females. I never considered myself a feminist but i think that the universality of control overy our biochemistry, especially hormonal/neurotransmitter control is an important goal. However that is well outside the boundaries of this discussion.
Quote:
I agree, as long as population levels can be maintained at sustainable levels. If they couldn't be, the ensuing human disaster would probably be much worse then dieing of old age.
Well there may be a negative relationship between fecundity and life expectancy in ecology. Longer lived organisms tend to reproduce less. Which may suggest the solution to overpopulation may be to figure out a way to extend life span to tremendously un-natural levels potentially significantly reducing population growth rates.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20814241
Still considering the finality of death(I believe it is but hope it isn’t) I would violate any mandate I was subject to to not only avoid a death sentence but even more vigorously would I oppose the being subject to the process of decrepitude or disfigurement that normally accompany aging. It seems that if we look at the cosmetics market alone we could impute that woman go to tremendous effort to present the appearance of youth by concealing blemishes via make-up sacrificing tremendous wealth to do so. Showing somebody that you can put their youth in stasis but telling them they have to grow old may end up creating more of a problem then a Malthusian one as you’re not only being asked to die but do so in a slow and potentially de-humanizing way. By mandate we may accomplish removal of people from the population but it may be because of violent opposition to the mandate; I can guarantee you I would oppose such an order with extreme prejudice. I can’t imagine dying let alone dying slowly in a gerontological state for the sake of another person. The mere possibility that I could halt the process and save myself tremendous misery would be worth the risk of death as my intent is to avoid a slow miserable death. A quick death, one way or another will always be preferable no matter how it’s delivered, by agents of the state or by my own voluntary acceptance.
Quote:
Both excellent points. However, we humans are becoming better and better at accumulating knowledge independent of the human brain. First the printed word, now the computer... who knows what the future will hold.
Still there is a lag period to transmit this knowledge into an instrument that can make use of it. By allowing people to die we would be, if we could prevent this, unnecessarily creating an societal problem by having to reintegrate the information back into citizens. We know that human capital is valuable to society and that training costs and maturity on these investments typically pay-off with attractive dividends. By treating age-related death as a disease we are increasing the value of our investments.
DigitalAtheist Graduate Thinker
Joined: Apr 13, 2009
Posts: 661
Location: Canada
Posted:
Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:38 am
FullMentalJackpot wrote:
When i ask this question of Christians they tend to give me the answer that death is the beginning of something much better …
… like, not having to deal with christians?!?
_________________ Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
FullMentalJackpot The Learned
Joined: Jan 11, 2008
Posts: 109
Posted:
Mon Mar 21, 2011 6:26 pm
DigitalAtheist wrote:
FullMentalJackpot wrote:
When i ask this question of Christians they tend to give me the answer that death is the beginning of something much better …
… like, not having to deal with christians?!?
Or eternally singing, dancing, loving, and praising god as it was once described to me, basically a celestial North Korea(as hitchen's calls it). Screw that, even it it corporeal existence on earth sounds better.
iPondR Graduate Thinker
Joined: Aug 19, 2009
Posts: 534
Location: Aussie Prawn Facility; District 10
Posted:
Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:20 pm
FullMentalJackpot wrote:
MockingGods wrote:
. The "Star Trek" option... no thanks
Not familiar with this aspect of startrek. I remember one episode where Bones commented that he had a touch of arthritis and I became so livid at the thought they hadn’t cured such a terrible disorder. I guess I put a tremendous premium on health. For me the idea of infirmity is so horrible I would, atleast now, prefer a quick death to having ...
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In fact, I just logged back to this thread to edit my original post to read, "or at least much longer lifespans and also probably reproduction at much older ages".
