Comments on Existence is Wonderful: Trends In Attitudes Toward Life, Death, and Progre...

abfh said: So I'd guess there are many people w...

2007-05-18T17:50:00.000-07:00
abfh said: So I'd guess there are many people who don't differentiate between death from aging and death from other causes -- they just figure we're all going to die someday, so it doesn't really matter how. (

That reminds me of a conversation I had with my SO's brother-in-law last weekend -- he likes to (teasingly) give me a hard time when I talk about cryonics and cyborg limbs and all that, but this time he was going on about how he didn't see any reason to avoid tasty but nutritionally-void beverages (for instance) because we're all going to die anyway.

Personally I don't know where people get this idea that wanting to extend lives by intervening in aging damage is somehow intended to confer invulnerabilityL -- aging is only one potential cause of death, and indeed, regardless of how old or young or healthy any one of us is, there's still the chance for us to walk outside and get hit by a bus or something along those lines.

If a person is going to bother getting medical treatment at all, for any reason, how can they assert that it's silly to take other life-extending measures? I agree totally with the assertion (which I think came from Aubrey de Grey) that there's really no difference between saving lives and extending lives; the example he gave at the ethics conference I attended last year was that of the ethics of saving an old woman from drowning versus saving her from age-related death.

There really shouldn't be any philosophical difference between doing either of those things, and in general, the entire point of medicine is technically to permit life and health where it might otherwise not exist.

daedalus said: I think it isn't so much an "ant...

2007-05-18T17:43:00.000-07:00
daedalus said: I think it isn't so much an "anti-aging trance", but rather an estimate that the "solution" to aging is so difficult and so far in the future and so outside their understanding that they need to think about more important and immediate things, like who to vote for on Idol.

That's a good point, but what you're describing is actually a component of this "trance" -- it's not all just an attempt at extistential placation, but also a kind of "eternally distracted" state that makes people less prone to thinking over the long term. I don't know to what extent not thinking about the long term has to do with a desire to "experience the moment fully" versus, say, a desire to deliberately avoid the uncomfortable conclusions such thought might entail, though.

infidel: I am not personally discouraged by negati...

2007-05-18T17:39:00.000-07:00
infidel: I am not personally discouraged by negative attitudes -- except to the extent that I think they can contribute toward the shaping of policy and research efforts. While individuals may indeed not tend to refuse lifesaving treatments for themselves or family members, a case must be made for the necessity of those treatments in light of the fact that research grants, money, and lab resources and such are critical for developing them. I just think that if more people could come to recognize the imperative to develop longevity medicine, new breakthroughs would arrive in time to help more people.

Even if we had effective anti-aging treatments, we...

2007-05-18T06:52:00.000-07:00
Even if we had effective anti-aging treatments, we still would die eventually from accident or disease (and perhaps from war or murder, if we can't learn how to prevent those).

So I'd guess there are many people who don't differentiate between death from aging and death from other causes -- they just figure we're all going to die someday, so it doesn't really matter how. (The same mindset seems to be what's going on with the people who don't wear their seatbelts, etc.)

Personally, I'd rather live a healthy and happy life for 100,000 years than be decrepit at 100, but I imagine there are a lot of folks who don't quantify it like that.

How do you reconcile that there are many simple th...

2007-05-17T17:08:00.000-07:00
How do you reconcile that there are many simple things that people could do that would prolong their lives, stop smoking, lose weight, eat properly, moderate exercise, wear seatbelts, and many of them refuse?

I think it isn't so much an "anti-aging trance", but rather an estimate that the "solution" to aging is so difficult and so far in the future and so outside their understanding that they need to think about more important and immediate things, like who to vote for on Idol.

I recommend reading a science fiction story, "the youth monopoly". It was about a huminoid race that could supply real immortality a decade at a time, and it worked for essentially all humanoid races. They would travel around the galaxy, set up shop, sell their life extension a decade at a time to the richest individuals until they ran out of money. After a millenia or so, they would move on, having extracted everything of value that the civilization had.

I think it's important not to get discouraged by n...

2007-05-17T04:28:00.000-07:00
I think it's important not to get discouraged by negative attitudes. Every effort to solicit opinions about anti-aging technology reveals that the "anti-aging trance" -- the view that death by aging is "natural" and should not be resisted -- is very widespread. Yet very few people faced with the threat of imminent death, even death from an aging-related medical condition, actually refuse whatever medical treatment is available to extend their lives.

Past behavior is always a better predictor of future behavior than verbal statements are.

I think what we have here is a fundamental disconnect between the reflexive rhetoric of fatalism fostered by millennia of religious belief, and the biological reality of the animal instinct to survive.

It would be very interesting to do the same survey in a society where most people are not religious (such as many European countries) and see if the results differed.

As a recent posting on Fight Aging pointed out, whenever any particular aging-related disorder moves into the realm of the potentially curable, people start to refer to it as "not part of the 'natural' aging process" -- so that they can take advantage of the new treatments becoming available while still clinging to their rhetorical stance of not resisting aging itself.

Very likely many, even most, of those who chose option 1 on your survey will still be alive 200 years from now. They may even have contrived some way to convince themselves that the technology they took advantage of to reach that age did not constitute "resisting aging".

Comments on Existence is Wonderful: Trends In Attitudes Toward Life, Death, and Progre...

abfh said: So I'd guess there are many people w...

daedalus said: I think it isn't so much an "ant...

infidel: I am not personally discouraged by negati...

Even if we had effective anti-aging treatments, we...

How do you reconcile that there are many simple th...

I think it's important not to get discouraged by n...