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 Inga rated 4 months ago - Aubrey de Grey brings good news about the prospects of staving off aging in the not too distant future. With a confidence that makes you both doubt the scientist's words and wonder whether the ethical and socio-political aspects of an indefinitely long life span (let alone immortality) were ign...
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3 Reviews
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- stevetempo rated 3 months ago
- An extremely interesting article regarding therapies combating aging. The author (a scientist at forefront of this topic) takes an historical approach in explaining the expected developments in the future. The author also uses a neat analogy of escape velocity in explaining the possible on-set of immortality. I sure hope I'm not too old :-). What an exciting time to be alive!
- Inga rated 4 months ago
- Aubrey de Grey brings good news about the prospects of staving off aging in the not too distant future. With a confidence that makes you both doubt the scientist's words and wonder whether the ethical and socio-political aspects of an indefinitely long life span (let alone immortality) were ignored by the author deliberately or accidentally. Even if our web of life is not so exaggeratedly interdependent as it was featured in Ray Bradbury's story A Sound of Thunder, the conflict between the selfish (and very understandable) "I want to live forever" and no less selfish (but also very understandable) "Move over, and let me live here too" is inevitable. And eventually someone will have to decide who will have the right to stay around and in what numbers... Reads like an old sci-fi story. (Or a history book?)
From the page:
"The body is a machine, and that's both why it ages and why it can in principle be maintained. I have made a comparison with vintage cars, which are kept fully functional even 100 years after they were built, using the same maintenance technologies that kept them going 50 years ago when they were already far older than they were ever designed to be. More complex machines can also be kept going indefinitely, though the expense and expertise involved may mean that this never happens in practice because replacing the machine is a reasonable alternative. This sounds very much like a reason to suppose that the therapies we develop to stave off aging for a few decades will indeed be enough to stave it off indefinitely... So there you have it. We will almost certainly take centuries to reach the level of control over aging that we have over the aging of vintage cars--totally comprehensive, indefinite maintenance of full function--but because longevity escape velocity is not very fast, we will probably achieve something functionally equivalent within only a few decades from now, at the point where we have therapies giving middle-aged people 30 extra years of youthful life. I think we can call that the fountain of youth, don't you?"
- DickBeldin rated 4 months ago
- Which would you prefer: a surprising death while in your prime or an expected death after years of declining powers? These are our choices. The fantasy of "life everlasting" is just that, a fantasy.
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