Me personally or a user in general?
I’m sorry, but I find THE Dr. de Grey’s arguments unconvincing. And I also have a website. Luckily, I’m not alone: de Grey isn’t considered a crackpot, but most of his collegues share my skepticisms rather than his optomism.
I’d prefer to discuss arguments, here, instead of qualifications or websites.
In this case, both.
You’re not really in a strong position to comment. Meantime, why don’t you have a good stiff drink? A belt and suspension.
Now, now Bryan, both you and I know that when a GD thread degrades into a spit fight (which is perfectly ok by me, by the way) the mods get their panties all in a bunch. it’s the mods; it’s not me.
I would be very pleased to know more about what you think about lifespan extension, besides more time to post to boards like these, and perhaps at less expense.
I don’t spit in GD, and it is indeed you.
Given the increasing pace of technological development, we can’t be sure what’ll be possible in 50 years, let alone 500. Given the chance, I’ll stick around just out of curiosity.
Besides, the alternative is apparently death. How hard a choice did you expect this to be? At the very least, I’d’ve expected some kind of O. Henry-esque twist where you can be 25 forever, but have to live in the same house, wearing the same clothes and driving the same car as when you were 25 the first time, no substitutions or replacements allowed.
Lots of people have websites. Not many are qualified to speak on the most fundamental issue that has ever existed: the extension of human life. de Grey consults with experts in each of his identified areas of research to determine their feasability. The skepticism he encounters is from a group of people who have already conducted the (to this point) necessary task of reconciling with their own mortality.
Having done so, they also want to rationalize this unpleasantness as being a good thing to happen. They have also gone ahead and told the world that this is just how things are, because they have said so, and the world has bought it. de Grey’s proposals are very embarrassing to this orthodox lot. So, they pretend to be skeptical of de Grey, when they know full well that he is right.
Fair enough. Let’s have at!
Okay, perhaps I should have said “pissed” on threads, as my friend Aeschines has so aptly pointed out, and recently. Are you better than that? Only further repartee will tell.
Quite exactly my point. So would I.
Again, my point exactly. O. Henry was an okay weaver of readable stories, but still basically a hack. de Grey’s proposals suggest no such twists, although there will certainly be others that no one can anticipate at this point.
We will just have to find out, and adjust as best we can, as the various issues arise. This is just what we have been doing all along, to this point, and with some success. We live 3-4 times longer now than we did when we were hunter-gatherers. No one’s complaining, except for the part of having to die in a state of excrutiatingly slow degradation. Take that latter part away, and what?
Well, he’s wrong, but this isn’t the appropriate place to discuss it.
Absolutely. I would spend at least a year in every major city while raising as much money as possible to fund to astrophysics research and an orbital shipyard.
He’s right about you, but you’re right that this isn’t the appropriate place to discuss it.
So, what about my OP? Sure, you’d opt to live longer, if you could. Pretty much anyone would. Let’s plumb the depths of this issue.
C’mon! My gloves are on! My blood is up! Let’s have at it!
Why these, specifically?
Among many reasons, to give NurseCarmen a lift on her voyage would be nice.
“Second star on the right, and then straight on til morning.”
drmark2000, no offense, but go back and read what you’ve written in this thread. You sound like a zealous convert who worships this guy, rather than a scientist. You might do better with a tone that doesn’t lionize and idolize a person and defend his words from heresy, and instead works on presenting brass tack arguments.
No offense taken.
I neither lionize nor idolize Aubrey de Grey. I genuinely admire the guy‘s thoroughness and his ability to set the orthodoxy on its ear. What he is proposing, should it succeed even partially, will change humanity forever. Longevity is by far the most important thing for humanity to accomplish at this time. The man has gone ahead and said it, and given us some avenues by which to accomplish it. I find his efforts admirable, it’s true.
The “brass tack” arguments you seek are all on his website. Work through it and see if you can possibly argue against his ideas. You may be fearful of the possibilities at first, but in the words of our great American General George S. Patton, “Courage is fear, holding on a minute longer.”
By what logic or evidence do you make this claim? I hear this all the time, and it always sounds to me like a ‘fact’ pulled out of thin air. Unless the procedure itself is horrendously expensive, I see no reason to believe that life extension would be priced out of reach of the masses. Why do you believe so?
And if you continue the rather lame snide remarks directed at other posters in this thread, we will demonstrate what you call getting ones panties in a bunch and we call carrying out the trash.
If you really want to debate the topic, then stick to the topic. If you have presented the topic merely to provide a grandstand on which you can bait other posters or from which to hurl veiled insults, then you are in the wrong Forum.
[ /Moderating ]
Your comment is truly bizarre. We are talking about a hypothetical potential treatments for prolonging life, solutions to any number of unknown puzzles: not a “fact.” Are you accusing me of claiming to have traveled into the future and reporting what it was like, only lying about it? No one has the facts on what it would take to seriously change the dynamic of longevity and eternal youth.
But it’s a perfectly reasonable expecation that the sorts of treatments will be hidiously expensive, at least for the foreseeable future after their development. Why wouldn’t they be so? If most major reconstructive surgeries to preserve just youthful appearances are priced out of the range of the masses right now, why would you ever expect that things like growing new organs and tissues, or undergoing massive genetic therapy to stop the aging process, or whatever else would be required (and personally, I expect that a wide and extensive range of different treatments for all sorts of different elements of the aging process) would be a bargain bin technologies?
Heck, most people can’t even afford the true costs of basic healthcare NOW, when medicine is dawning into an age where it actually can help a lot of the common diseases and ailments.
That’s a reasonable expectation in the short term, immediately after the development of the techniques (for one thing, it would take time to bring large number of facilities and personnel up to speed), but to claim that it would remain so for “the foreseeable future” strikes me as an exaggeration. There’s no fundamental reason why it shouldn’t get cheaper along a timescale similar to (for example) computers.
Which brings up an important issue: If people are being born at the rate they are now but the death rate slows to a trickle, you’re going to have a pretty serious population problem in no time.
Either child-bearing will have to heavily regulated or the live-sustaining treatment will have to be made available to only a few. Otherwise you’re going to have a bottleneck.
People will move around a lot. Make new friends, check out new scenes. I mean who could stand watching a buddy chew with his mouth open for 1000 years?
Sex, marriage, and child-rearing will change fundamentally.
I’d give it a shot. If I don’t like it, I can leave.