Should we endeavour to increase the maximum human lifespan? You'll have mastered the violin. Nothing appearing on Longevity Advice should be considered medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. So count me in for the adventure however terrifying. The worst fate possible might well be immortality. [citation needed]Some scientists, futurists, and philosophers have theorized about the immortality of the human body, with some suggesting that human immortality may be achievable in the first few decades of the 21st century with the help of certain technologies such as mind . All the ones listed above have been known about and studied for decadesin some cases over a centuryis there evidence that newly discovered and developed drugs would be similarly inexpensive? Human has pursed immortal throughout history, but we havent succeeded. Almost half (45%) of Americans, Internationally, we have a waste problem. Other people could also be immortal, and you could choose to die at any point. But all of that is just my own opinion. - Longevity Advice. Never dying. (yes reddit I know I said Retard). Would You Want Immortal Life as a Cyborg? I showed them a Time Magazine cover from February 2011 titled 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal with an 18 page story featuring Ray Kurzweils vision of the coming Singularity. But they are also unlikely to live as long as a spanneror even the average American. And many find that option far more palatable; if one practices yoga or avoids processed carbohydrates in an effort for a longer healthspan, the prospect of a lengthened lifespan becomes far more palatable. Sure, you might like the idea that you get to live forever and see what the world's like hundreds of years from now, but what's eternal life compared to the pain of life in general? After experience all the changes of the world, you will get tired of changes. Much of human exceptionalism is predicated on our knowledge and fear of death: our hedonism, yes, but also our cooperation and altruism, our creativity and inventiveness, and much more. Is "Immortality" Achievable? - tomorrow.bio First off, I realise that if it was only me who got to live forever, the sadness of losing everyone I ever loved in a horribly short space of time, relative to my everlasting life, would be unbearably sad. Specifically, you could stop aging at any age or even retard your current age to a younger one. Alive today. But immortality would also bring with it room for stillness, contemplation, vast efforts and who knows what else currently unavailable to mere mortals. What more could you do with those extra rich years of life? Can I ask you whether you have done or checked the math on overpopulation (I dislike the word, lets say: resource scarcity)? In fact, philosophers like Heidegger have argued that most people live their lives in denial of their death. I want to take an eternal nap. Wake up to the day's most important news. So, when we look in the mirror, and we ask the person we see, "do you want to be immortal?", all these things play into the kind of immortal we'll be. The technical term for this is compressing morbidity: shortening the decrepit, morbid years and extending the healthy ones. If given the chance, would you want to become immortal - GirlsAskGuys Things like gene therapy can cost millions of dollars. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. we've been exploring all the different ways, replacing your heart with an artificial one. A second drug, Metformin, was hailed for diabetics. Is it two times? So if anti-aging medicines and treatments turn out to be one of those rare types of goods that will only ever be available to the super wealthy, is it moral to ban them or prevent their development? Vishev is convinced that medical technology is advancing so rapidly that sometime later in this century, Homo sapiens will become Homo immortalis. Some even go as far to claim that death is required for life to have meaning. These health-cost savings from longevity medicine are often referred to as the Longevity Dividend.. Let's say that immortality has no effect on your motivationin fact, you have the curiosity of a 25-year-old and the body to match. Its the reason the smartphone in your pocket only costs a couple hundred dollars, and you dont need to lug a car around to use it. Can immortality be achieved. Intuitively, anti-aging medicine should even help lower the total cost of medical care for people, as individuals will have to spend less on treating the very expensive chronic diseases of old-age like Alzheimers or cancer. I get that all this wouldnt be enough to counteract the deep impact immortality would have on ones psyche, as extensively raked over by a large swathe of science fiction and vampire literature. Most people stop learning new tech because; You're getting old and your brain just doesn't work the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Such_a_Beautiful_Day_(film). Do You Want to Be Immortal? I get that living forever can seem scary; the unknown is. In the survey, carried out in August by Sapio Research on a representative sample. And these savings may not even fully account for the longevity dividend of the additional productive work older people could provide if rejuvenated by anti-aging treatments. The first fact is that we have already made astounding, historical, almost unimaginable progress against the worst (non-aging related) killers and afflictions of humanity in just the last few decades. High initial prices of a new product are thus almost an extended form of R&D funding (and clinical testing with data provided by early adopters). Would we have the internet? The first writing assignment for all students was a narrative essay on the subject What would you accomplish with your life if you could live forever? It's now easier to find unique loot in Diablo 4 - Polygon Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Part of the reason is because being old without being healthy is horrific. By 2017, that figure fell to 1.77 (below replacement rate). Youve ticked off your bucket list. Immortality & Overpopulation: Explaining the Argument Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity Would You Want Immortal Life as a Cyborg? | Mind Matters Many people, when they think about life extension, assume the process will simply extend the tail-end of our lives, adding more years on to that period when we are beset with frailty and age-related mental and physical decline. Some of them will be very bad. Wealthy early-adopters buy it (think investment bankers and car phones back in the 80s), and their purchases fund the research and development needed to improve the innovation, better distribute it, and make it less expensive. ), Cause Prioritization.Orgs Arguments against life extension (with counterarguments), Rejuvenactions Answers to concerns and objections, Future Is Greats Top Answers to Societal Arguments Against Radical Life Extension. Immortality is the concept of eternal life. Extensive research has suggested that the main factors moving a country from authoritarian to democratic rule are not the natural deaths of dictators, but broader changes like economic failures, a better-educated populace, and external financial or military pressure. Bioethicist John Harris offers a utilitarian perspective: If immortality or increased life expectancy is a good, it is doubtful ethics to deny palpable goods to some people because we cannot provide them for all., Harris further analogizes, We cannot and should not seek to prevent the development of [longevity treatments], any more than we should deny kidney transplants because there are not enough kidneys to go aroundin other words, we should develop life-extension even if we cannot provide it to everyone.. De Greys answer is, of course, that we are saving lives (by extending them) and that it is immoral, through inaction, not to attempt to save those lives (even if the people being saved are wealthy). +1 y. I would become immortal because you would the only person on Earth and that would make you unique and stand out. Following this line of thinking, life-extension research is a categorical imperative. All week,we've been exploring all the different wayshumans are trying to extend life, to digitize it, to push off the specter of death, either for a little while, or forever. They might see it as an important personal choice, but not something to put on others. Even if were spending less on healthcare, will old people have to work forever? I don't want to just stop existing. Christians look forward to heaven. Maybe, bucking all the trends we discussed above, women will continue to have kids well into their 100s. Because at some point, there will be nothing left to see and do. Page 1 of 2 - Why would people want to be immortal? Towards the end it depicts the main character as becoming immortal and outliving everything that come and goes on Earth and Earth itself until he is literally nothing because he can become no more because there is no more. Why are women in both countries having so many fewer babies? Would you want to be immortal? Why or why not? : r/AskReddit She, like many, is concerned about the earths limited resources and climate change. 2 What would you do if u could live forever? The search for Methuselah. If you want to live forever, you just have to make it to 2045 or around 2050. I would only agree want to be immortal if all everyone else in the world could be immortal as . I don't know the solutions yetmaybe we'll live on Mars, maybe we'll leave our meatbags and store ourselves in the cloudbut that's the whole excitement of living to see the ever-changing future: We can keep trying things and learning and pushing for improvement. First an experimental, expensive innovation is developed. We try to base our discussion here at Longevity Advice, as much as possible, on peer-reviewed science and well-established evidence, so, given that, what do the nerds have to tell us about the answers to these questions? That argument mainly applied to thiests who believe in an afterlife because they will be reunited with their family. Theyre completely comfortable with, say, finding a cure for Alzheimers, cancer, and diabetes, but when age itself is indicated as a major precursor to all these diseases, they shrug it off. The trouble with climate change is that there are so many solutions that its unclear which a country like the United States will choose. Meanwhile, conditions here on planet Earth will get shittier, and shittier, and shittier for you and whoever else had the gall to want to live forever. No one questions that residents of those countries deserve a longer, better quality of life. In short: yes, there is already a (small) gap in the longevity of the rich versus the poor. Hypothetically any medical intervention, drug, or treatment is done to extend life in some manner. You wont get sick, or get any physically injury. And the good news is this problem is lessening over time. Tolstoy and Nietzsche would argue that thats absolutely the caseand theyve gotten plenty of attention for it, especially in Western culture, because it runs contrary to an unspoken assumption that death itself is what gives life meaning. For instance, the diabetes drug metformin is a classic candidate for a possible anti-aging pill. Diablo Immortal Bug Report. As David Sinclair points out in his top anti-aging book Lifespan, Most people arent afraid of losing their lives; they are afraid of losing their humanity., Sinclair also points out that long, slow, painful deaths are likely not in store for humans based on studies done in rodents. Or venture into intergalactic space, scouting for and settling Earth 2.0! Physicist Max Plancks famous assertion, quoted above and sometimes misquoted and shortened to, Science advances one funeral at a time, is a fair concern. 6 Pros and Cons of Immortality: The Ethics of Life Extension Regardless, we do have to address that each new person will consume resources, possibly contributing to how out-of-control we already are with our trash. This tied into a later argumentative essay Will robots take over society, leading to the end of the world as we know it? They did also caution that though the gap is not as large as originally thought, it has been widening slightly over the last 30 years, possibly due to differences in education levels. Such longevity will be self-propelling. A 1995 study that looked at acceptance of the theory of evolution by age cohort found that, regardless of the amount of time elapsed since Darwins theory of evolution was introduced, we find no systematic empirical evidence that older scientists were any slower than younger scientists to embrace this revolutionary theory.. But you put great points into the post. I am 72 now, working as a substitute when they call me, but my local high school has been closed most of the fall term, so I have recently covered a kindergarten and a second grade class, though of the 11 times I was scheduled, nine were cancelled. Five? 8) The longer we live, the more time well have to set up workable sources of income for ourselves. Some estimates hold that aging could be cured for just 1% of the Medicare budget, or around $3 billion per year, for a few years. How To Redeem Gift Codes For Chaos Immortal Era. Improve this question. And just maybe you can picture a futurea whole bunch of different moments in the future, eventhat are worth sticking around for. For more information, please see our It's, ya know, natural. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. However, in general, it's because you wouldn't want to leave behind the people you care about. Living to your 500th of 1000th birthday gives you something specific to aim for. 5 Reasons You Don't Want To Live Forever - The Roman Catholic Mass They still die of the same diseases [cancer, Alzheimers, etc], but, perhaps because they are very old, and the animals are on the brink anyway, they tend to suffer for days rather than months, then keel over.. In 2019, U.S. Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said, Theres scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. How to Become Immortal for Real - Immortology (One might be, no longer taking my anti-aging meds). There is evidence also that beliefs about race and gender are very changeable indeed, and in fact are based much more on political affiliation than age. Inequality and accessibility: What if only the rich can afford it? Of course, the ironic side of this question is that medical advances have already likely benefited some dictators and allowed them to live longer. Between 1960 and 2020, poverty rates for people older than 65 dropped from 35.2% to 9.4%. There is a movie called Its Such A Beautiful Day that I have seen in the past. In the end, I suppose that with the lack of true insight into the future we have so far, your position on the issue right now largely comes down to your general outlook on life, whether that life be extended or cut short. The irony is that you are already immortal, but you don't experience this because of your false identifications. (Im looking at you, Boomers.). And older people, while not as fast to adopt new attitudes on changing social norms, nonetheless are still quite capable of doing so, and in significant numbers. Desperately boring. In Venezuela, socialist dictator Nicols Maduro took over as heir after socialist dictator Hugo Chavez died of natural causes, and he has killed over 7,000 people and made the country even more tyrannical under his rule. - Longevity Advice, Pingback: 5 Sustainable Eating Tips for People Serious About Life Extension, Your email address will not be published. Developing a vaccine can cost as much as $2.8-$3.7 billion and yet many vaccines, including those for the most widespread diseases, are offered free-of-cost or at very low prices. For example, the flu vaccine is often free and almost always fully-covered by insurance. Henrietta Lacks' 'Immortal' Cells - Smithsonian Magazine And yet even with such small relative funding levels, longevity researchers have made enormous strides in the last few years. Using this logic, aging should be embraced as a natural part of life. may be kind of boring for a god. First, in terms of urgency, while things like malaria and poverty kill tens of thousands of people a day, aging kills over 100,000 people a day. Reddit, would you want to be immortal? If we were immortal, we could legitimately postpone every action forever. My sister once called me "King of the Nerds" and it's a title I've been trying to live up to ever since. But then I'm one of those people who wouldn't even agree to a process that freezes aging (even if it doesn't make you immortal), and everyone I know thinks I'm crazy or deluding myself as a result. The solution is not to get rid of the body and the mind, but to recognize that you are separate from them. Bernard Williams has argued that immortality would not be desirable, because the desires that drive us in life would eventually grow old. Before diving deep into how we may soon become "timeless", it's helpful to understand why humanity is so interested in immortality. The changing views on gay marriage in the United States, for example, show a fairly consistent increase across all age cohorts over time. Not to mention, how would such a ban even define life-extension treatments?. Reddit, Inc. 2023. So that means more robust social and educational programs to make saving tools like IRAs and 401Ks more accessible to those who need them is essential. And with rising concerns about wealth inequality, its entirely understandable that many people ask the question: What if only the rich can afford life-extension treatments?. Dying should give you some anxiety. On the right side of the Welfare Events screen, tap " Gift Code " on the left-hand side. Excellent article! After I knew every single things in this world, whats next? And while many studies do show a slowing down of productivity and a loss of neuroplasticity as we age, these are quite likely as a result of the accumulated damage and decay brought on by the physical process of aging itself. In principle, I dont think that most people would disagree with the goal of a program like Social Securityor Medicare or Medicaid. Will expensive life-extension treatments widen that gap so much that the poor will be doomed to die early? you can do everything you want to do, go anywhere you want, not afraid of times run out and getting old. And no one could look at North Korea and say the death of Kim Jong-il and the ascension of his son and heir Kim Jong-Un has done the people there any good or lessened their burden of tyrannical rule. And fiction often portrays being immortal as bad because it: 1) will be boring. If the FDA labels aging a treatable disease (which may well happen), and since fully 100% of the population is afflicted by this disease, demand for effective longevity treatments will be so high that medical and pharmaceutical companies can afford to set prices low, since they will be selling their products to so many people. Thanks Tom! Will humans ever be immortal? | Live Science We can colonize Mars! Theythe likes of the late Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl and philosopher Sir Bernard Williamspresent three major arguments against life extension: Religious fatalism is the belief that an individuals health is predetermined by a higher power; the individual can not and should not intervene. Buddhists believe death leads only to rebirth. International financial institutions pressured a number of African dictators to agree to multiparty elections (Bratton and van de Walle 1997). People could still die, accidentally or otherwise, but eventually techniques of "practical resurrection," toward which today's cloning is a primitive first step, would be able to restore life to those who somehow lose it. What about newer, expensive anti-aging medicines? It's death, after all. But there is always the possibility that the next rock we land on will be shittier than the one we're already on. By 2000, they lived to 76. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. Dying a natural death is OK. The NIH spends less than 10% of its annual budget on aging research, and most of that (almost 90%) is not for discovering life-extension treatments, but for treating specific age-related diseases like Alzheimers, or for behavioral or social research. And Socrates argued that because we don't know what death is, to fear it is hubris, pretending to know, and know well enough to fear, what we do not know. But that person will die eventually, and you wont. I would rather feel something than nothing. While some big name life-extension companies like Unity Biotech, Juvenescence, and Calico make headlines for funding rounds in the hundreds of millions of dollars, this is dwarfed by the tens of billions of dollars invested by pharmaceutical companies in cancer research alone. This life-extension con can be expanded to almost every realm of civic and political life. Diablo Immortal New Class Blood Knight Release Date - ClutchPoints You will feel lonely all the time. If offered the gift of immortality, would you take it, and why? All your friends are long gone, so do your relatives. However, perhaps, in the future, humans could discover the secrets to . When someone says they're not afraid of anything because they're going to . you can do everything you want to do, go anywhere you want, not afraid of times run out and getting old. 2) The universe appears to be planning for jellyfish and some types of trees to live forever. Pesto_Enthusiast 4 yr. ago Depends on what else comes with the package. Sure, bad things will happen if you live forever. Humans are only capable of accomplishing so much during their lifetimes. Something went wrong. Explorer Age: 22 , mho 38%. Other potential life-extension molecules are similarly cheap. But even if financial resources like Social Security may not be as big an issue as people think, what about all the better things we could be doing with the money and effort being spent on life extension research? Aren't you immortalists afraid of ever missing out on Heaven etc? Some contemporary psychological studies support Frankl. FernandoCR-2529 June 20, 2023, 5:08am #2. Rethinking reality: Is the entire universe a single quantum object? Its within these developing countries where resources are fraught. Now I know Im not addressing the immortal person themselves, but I think it is still equally as interesting to think of the people around them as the immortal itself. In the last 17 years, the cost to have your whole genome sequenced has gone from roughly $1 billion in 2003, to as low as $299 today. 3) If mortality is a motivator, life extension is a good one too. That compressed morbidity also, again, alleviates many of life-sustaining medical costs that we have to pay for now. His recommendations ranged from offensive (forced delayed marriagesomething were already consensually doing now) to obscene (court the return of the plague). Of course living forever would come with all kinds of ennui, loss of purpose, diminishing drive possibly for centuries at a time. But some transhumanists hope to slowly morph into "immortal cyborgs" with endlessly replaceable parts. Would you like to be immortal, and why ? If not, why not like Wolverine, you would be able to heal from trauma very quickly but you would still feel the pain. For example: These statistics are troubling now. You won't get sick, or get any physically injury. The answer to that question has several components: To answer that first component we can look at some real-world examples, both of existing anti-aging treatments already on the market, and of past medical innovations. If you're immortal, you outlive your friends, family, and lovers. And in the end, the ethics of life extension require that no one is forcing anyone else to live longer than they would like. In 1900, the average American lived to 47 years old. There will be war, food shortages, and disease. very nice article, thank you. Therefore, Inhibiting the development of life-extension is unjustified, even though it will probably not be available to everyone for a long time. This can be the most interesting blog I have never read! But not you. Climate change is a real threat. He, together with a demographer, did some math and the results are not too optimistic. You live where you want, work where you want (if you want), and you do what you want. So its not either/or. Meanwhile, possible existential risks for all of humanity like global warming, AI, and nuclear proliferation continue to concern experts. So is it ethical to pursue life extension if its not accessible to everyone? Early in 2020, speculation about North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Uns disappearance led to reports that he had undergone major cardiovascular surgery to save his life. Social (in)security: What about poor old people without jobs and government insolvency? Archived post. Is that a bless or a curse? Angel: Exactly. From extending worm lifespans by 500%, to finding a drug that made already aged mice live 14% longer, tofor the first time evershowing an actual reversal of aging in human beings by 2.5 years (as measured by an epigenetic biological clock) in 2019, anti-aging scientists have already done tremendous work with the limited resources they have. [] But in the face of death as absolute finis to our future and boundary to our possibilities, we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes to the utmost, not letting the singular opportunities whose finite sum constitutes the whole of life pass by unused.. Lets talk about the advantages of immortal first. He writes, most of our lives are neither meaningless nor meaningful, but lie somewhere between these two extremes.. MintBeast-31487 June 26, 2023, 2:20am #3. I think its hard to argue that those suffering with cancer, or Parkinsons, or other painful, debilitating, age-related chronic diseases are suffering any less than those suffering from poverty, or malaria, or other health concerns, simply because they happen to be older. Diablo Immortal's newest class, the Blood Knight, will be arriving in the game on July 13, 2023, just a week after its official reveal. Of course, scientific productivity is one thing, attitudes towards race, gender, slavery, and sexuality are totally different, right? It is a very interesting film that I would suggest anyone to check out. A Point of View: Would you want to live forever? - BBC News (yes reddit I know I said Retard). How much more damage and suffering could they have inflicted if longevity research had allowed them to live even longer? All rights reserved. Second, if they are expensive, will they remain so? By day, I am a problem solver, writer, and the co-founder of. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Realistically, there is a range of reasons why people do thingsfor praise, for accomplishment, or to just do it,and very few of them have to do with the inevitability of death. All else equal, which market would you rather develop an anti-aging product for? From there, we'll be forced to do it all over again. Ironically, we all know that this is impossible yet we compete to see who will come up on top. While the rich lead lives of unimaginable luxury in their space stations, enjoying near-immortality and all the sexbots they can afford, the poor toil in the spice mines below, dying early from Spice Lung or malfunctioning cheap cybernetic implants.