Will we defeat death and live forever?

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peter
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Post by peter »

Fair comment Z - but I think it almost inevitable that something as significant as this would be controlled and corralled irrespective of the cost.

As an example of this, I'd give the way that access to assisted dying (currently under consideration by the House of Lords in the UK) will be controlled by the medical profession when the Bill passed. You won't be able to walk into a chemist and buy a shot glass of the grolly used to deliver the job, despite the fact of its being as cheap as chips and requiring no more talent to administer than downing it like a tot of whiskey. (As it happens, I believe that it should, if it is to be made legal, be available in this manner.)

I think that our Governments are never going to allow free access of the lumpen masses to such a powerful tool (unless it be the 'upload' version, because in this case they will have direct control of the uploaded entities that believe (possibly quite erroneously) that they are continuations of the individuals from whom their base data was uploaded).
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Post by wayfriend »

Give away immortality? I don't think so.

It benefits everyone to vaccinate as many people as possible. It doesn't benefit everyone to make as many people immortal as possible. So a comparison that falls apart with less than 30 seconds of examination.
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Post by Zarathustra »

I didn't say they'd give immortality away for free, necessarily. I mentioned flu shots and Covid shots being free as counter examples to the idea that life saving medicine is necessarily expensive. Sure, those shots benefit everyone, undermining a strict altruistic interpretation. But why do covid shots benefit everyone? The shot doesn't prevent you from getting or spreading coronavirus. The benefit to everyone lies in lessening the severity of the sickness so that we don't fill up hospitals with sick people, leaving those resources available to people in other emergency situations.

The same reasoning could apply to "immortality" medicine. Eliminating aging doesn't mean that people wouldn't still be susceptible to car accidents, other emergencies, or even just getting sick. Having a population that doesn't drain our finite health care resources due to diseases related to aging *would* benefit everyone, because it would no longer put such a strain on our system. Driving down health care demand would drive down costs and increase availability to everyone. Most of our health care dollars are spent on end-of-life care. This sucks up most of our health care resources. But the rest of us who aren't elderly still need health care from time to time. And this would still be true even if we no longer have to worry about end-of-life issues due to "immortality" medicine.

You guys just aren't thinking this through. And the reason is clear: an admitted cynicism. That clouds your thinking. Give it more than 30 seconds! You might realize how silly it sounds to claim that "it doesn't benefit everyone" to make everyone immortal. :lol: Umm, yes it does!

Immortality may not come all at once. It might be a series of piecemeal solutions to individual aging related problems. The cumulative effect might be to gradually extend our lifespans. And each of those solutions could be just like any other piece of our healthcare system now. The fact that most of our population has access to such healthcare is already evidence against your worst case, conspiratorial cynicism.
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Post by peter »

At what point does benefitting everyone come into the picture Z?

I'm afraid that benefiting everyone is pretty low down on the priorities of the biotech/big pharma companies that will spearhead the research from which this advance will be sourced. Their chief priorities are, and will remain, benefiting their shareholders in general and their executives in particular. Only when these criteria would be satisfied by a mass rollout - and I concede that it ultimately would be, but not for a long time after the capability is developed - would such a move be made. In the meantime, as is the case right now as we speak, when the chips are down you will need money to buy yourself life. No dough and it's into the ground with you!
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
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Post by Zarathustra »

Peter, I agree that health care costs money. That's an entirely different issue from whether it would be kept from the masses. If some medical technology is proven to be efficacious, then insurance companies are legally bound to cover it. Anyone with health insurance could have access to it. And that's the vast majority of people in our country. I assume it would be covered by national health care programs, such as in your country. There's simply no rationale against it, especially if it saves billions in costly end-of-life care to keep bedridden people alive.

As for "benefit to everyone," it's obvious: every person benefits from longer life, especially if that is longer vitality and wellbeing. People would no longer have to retire due to frailty or sickness. They could keep being productive, no longer a drain on society. Instead of losing the expertise and experience of people who have mastered their careers, we'd see benefits from those people continuing in their fields, getting better and better. Or, without death hanging over our heads, we might find it easier to change occupations and try something new, rather than staying in a dead end job forever. You would have enough time to start over and over and over, until you found your perfect path. Wealth would be easier to accumulate, given the time-value of investments.

I don't see reason for all the cynicism. People are being offered the mythical Paradise and find reasons to complain.
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
Zarathustra wrote:[…]

Or, without death hanging over our heads, we might find it easier to …

[…]
"Tired of that pesky Death getting in the way?" sounds like a perfect infomercial intro.

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peter
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Post by peter »

HaHaHa! Love that dancing sausage Wos! Can't help but remember that republican politician who ran for mayor of New York who fancied himself as a bit of an amateur photographer on the side.

But back on track - granted Z, the advent of such a significant step in alleviation of human suffering should not be a subject for cynicism - and just going one step further back, to the op as it were, I'm interested that the general consensus on the subject seems to be that we will effectively postpone death to the point where life-span becomes limited only by the actual desire of the individual to be done with it. Nobody has, to the best of my memory, actually expressed the belief that it will not be achievable.

Some time ago the Horizon TV series did an episode investigating how far advanced we were down the road toward such a 'goal' (it needn't actually be the goal - we go down the path indirectly, simply by much non-intentional medical research anyway) which made interesting viewing. I'd be interested to see a follow up program made in the same vein now that a couple of decades has passed. Just how close, or much closer, we are, is pretty difficult to guess at - you'd need to look at a number of different research areas in order to get an accurate idea.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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Post by Avatar »

Did I quote this somewhere else recently?
HP Lovecraft wrote:That is not dead which can eternal lie
and yet with strange aeons,
even Death may die.
:D

Oh, and as always with reports of upcoming medical miracles, as far as I'm concerned they're meaningless until available to the man on the street.

--A
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peter
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Post by peter »

:lol: The term 'medical miracle' has become so debased by our media these days Av, that it is essentially meaningless.

Over my sixteen plus years flogging newspapers I've seen so many headlines telling us that breakthroughs have been made in the drugs to fight Alzheimer's that I'm surprised anyone ever gets it at all these days. ;)
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

We are the Bloodguard
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