[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:
Pooteeweet![/quote]
Says a person who cannot form concepts into a logical structure to give them meaning.
Birds chirp and they live in trees. They are slaves to nature and that is all they are capable of being.
Man transcends nature because he can propel his ideas into real things.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Cortes wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Cortes wrote:
Sure, LIFTICVS, the entirety of human nature, that which we have evolved to over millions of years, our desires and needs, will change, because of a change in perspective.
If that were the case, I imagine there’d be a lot less drug addicts and alcoholics in the world today.
Our current life span has pretty well doubled over the past hundred years and we haven’t seen a damn bit of change in the general state of human nature. Why should we expect another doubling or trebling would make any more difference?
Sounds like yet another utopian fantasy to me.
Kurt Vonnegut has a short story in which everyone in the future could take a pill to live as long as they pleased. They would not age as long as they continued taking the pill. I believe it’s in his collection Welcome to the Monkey House, and it’s certainly worth a read when discussing issues such as the above.
Why not? Evolution does not tell us to save, for example. Reason does.
Maybe you are one of the unreasonable ones that does not get this.
Kurt Vonnegut does not understand economic laws – he just writes stories for the dimwitted.
Evolution tells us to fuck and to not die.
Only someone as dimwitted as you would assert that economics could somehow trump those two most powerful animal drives.
So then humans are not capable of learning different behavior to suit their environment?
IF you do not understand that humans adapt to their surroundings as they currently exist then you do not even understand what drives evolution. Our biology would change and that is what evolution is.
Scarcity is a reality that humans have been dealing with since time immemorial and is as adapted into our genes as procreation. It is that economic reality which tells us when we should save or when it is okay to consume; when we should have children and when we should wait. No, some people do not understand this and in a world where time loses its scarcity people have to adapt or die. It is that simple.
If human being were to have a longer life span then they would have to change their behavior to suit this reality or else that reality would not last.
A Utopia it is not. Why some people throw out that red herring I do not get…
Maybe they just are not capable of reasoning or understanding written words…[/quote]
I throw out red herrings and you throw out ad hominems. BFD.
Thing is, there are plenty of societies around today that cannot economically manage themselves, due to shitty governance. You are about the most vocal proponent of this on this website.
And yet somehow now, with the hypothetical of longer lives, our societies are just going to magically fix themselves? Right, I’m the one who is not capable of reasoning or understanding written words (see, I can do that, too? It only really helps my argument to the choir, unfortunately).
If people can’t figure out much better how to stop killing themselves and enslaving themselves when we’ve already basically doubled our longevity, then I repeat, how the hell is another doubling or trebling going to achieve any difference?
Even Gambit’s assertion above doesn’t address this, but sticks to economic issues. Sure, societies that have it good tend to wait longer to have kids. SFW? You have to assume that societies are all going to somehow get better as a result of this increase in longevity. I’m pretty certain the people living in many areas of North Korea could give a shit less about being able to live another 500 years, if the conditions of their present lives remain unchanged.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Cortes wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Cortes wrote:
Sure, LIFTICVS, the entirety of human nature, that which we have evolved to over millions of years, our desires and needs, will change, because of a change in perspective.
If that were the case, I imagine there’d be a lot less drug addicts and alcoholics in the world today.
Our current life span has pretty well doubled over the past hundred years and we haven’t seen a damn bit of change in the general state of human nature. Why should we expect another doubling or trebling would make any more difference?
Sounds like yet another utopian fantasy to me.
Kurt Vonnegut has a short story in which everyone in the future could take a pill to live as long as they pleased. They would not age as long as they continued taking the pill. I believe it’s in his collection Welcome to the Monkey House, and it’s certainly worth a read when discussing issues such as the above.
Why not? Evolution does not tell us to save, for example. Reason does.
Maybe you are one of the unreasonable ones that does not get this.
Kurt Vonnegut does not understand economic laws – he just writes stories for the dimwitted.
Evolution tells us to fuck and to not die.
Only someone as dimwitted as you would assert that economics could somehow trump those two most powerful animal drives.
So then humans are not capable of learning different behavior to suit their environment?
IF you do not understand that humans adapt to their surroundings as they currently exist then you do not even understand what drives evolution. Our biology would change and that is what evolution is.
Scarcity is a reality that humans have been dealing with since time immemorial and is as adapted into our genes as procreation. It is that economic reality which tells us when we should save or when it is okay to consume; when we should have children and when we should wait. No, some people do not understand this and in a world where time loses its scarcity people have to adapt or die. It is that simple.
If human being were to have a longer life span then they would have to change their behavior to suit this reality or else that reality would not last.
A Utopia it is not. Why some people throw out that red herring I do not get…
Maybe they just are not capable of reasoning or understanding written words…
I throw out red herrings and you throw out ad hominems. BFD.
Thing is, there are plenty of societies around today that cannot economically manage themselves, due to shitty governance. You are about the most vocal proponent of this on this website.
And yet somehow now, with the hypothetical of longer lives, our societies are just going to magically fix themselves? Right, I’m the one who is not capable of reasoning or understanding written words (see, I can do that, too? It only really helps my argument to the choir, unfortunately).
If people can’t figure out much better how to stop killing themselves and enslaving themselves when we’ve already basically doubled our longevity, then I repeat, how the hell is another doubling or trebling going to achieve any difference?
Even Gambit’s assertion above doesn’t address this, but sticks to economic issues. Sure, societies that have it good tend to wait longer to have kids. SFW? You have to assume that societies are all going to somehow get better as a result of this increase in longevity. I’m pretty certain the people living in many areas of North Korea could give a shit less about being able to live another 500 years, if the conditions of their present lives remain unchanged.[/quote]
You are misinterpreting what I said.
It is simple. Man must adapt to new realities vis a vis scarcity or perish.
Sacristy of resources will not change but scarcity of time does. Man can learn to be more patient but he still has to eat.
All I am saying is that as a result of this change society will, de facto, have to change since economic and physical laws cannot.
If you lived 1000 years, would you remember anything from your childhood?
…live forever? No thank you. I’m curious about dying actually, altough not just yet…
[quote]belligerent wrote:
If you lived 1000 years, would you remember anything from your childhood?[/quote]
I cannot remember certain things from yesterday.
Information I deem worth remembering I either commit to memory or figure out how to save them so that I can reference them later on if I might need to. Technology helps me with this.
I do not see why having a limited memory would mean we would have a necessarily lesser quality of life should we grow capable of living longer.
Can you imagine the possibility that humans can adapt so that their memory is improved.
I used to think human life extension was impossible. Now I think it is. But it’s a lot further off than a lot of these scientsts want us to believe. It will not emerge until the current sociopolitical system has been thoroughly supplanted and the nation rebuilt from the ground up. Maybe in the 2100s.
[quote]Badunk wrote:
They have already found some of the genes involved in delaying the ageing process in animals. Tinkering with them, geneticists have created races of super-organisms - fruit flies, for instance, that can live double their natural life-span and that die healthy and vigorous.
[/quote]
Somehow I think that there is a failure of observation involved here, or of accuracy in reporting.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Badunk wrote:
They have already found some of the genes involved in delaying the ageing process in animals. Tinkering with them, geneticists have created races of super-organisms - fruit flies, for instance, that can live double their natural life-span and that die healthy and vigorous.
Somehow I think that there is a failure of observation involved here, or of accuracy in reporting.
[/quote]
“Die healthy and vigorous” had me in stitches too.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
I used to think human life extension was impossible. Now I think it is. But it’s a lot further off than a lot of these scientsts want us to believe.[/quote]
I’d have to agree. Considering we haven’t even cured Cystic Fibrosis yet, which has only 1 malfunctioning gene, we’re lightyears away from discovering the secret to immortality or extremely enhanced lifespans. CF is unique among almost all diseases because of the fact that there is only 1 gene malfunction. ONE! And it’s still fatal and its still uncured, after over 20 years (1988) since the mapping of the gene, the protein and primary gene mutation responsible. Almost that entire issue of “Nature” was dedicated to CF… and we’re still not able to cure it.
Fat chance we’ll ever figure the extreme lifespan extension out in this century. It’s on par with cancer in terms of complexity.
That might be very much an understatement.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Schlenkatank wrote:
Pooteeweet!
Says a person who cannot form concepts into a logical structure to give them meaning.
Birds chirp and they live in trees. They are slaves to nature and that is all they are capable of being.
Man transcends nature because he can propel his ideas into real things.[/quote]
Off topic:
Vonnegut is definitely a frustrating writer for a lot of people, because every one of us is “guilty” of rationalizing the world around us. After all, it’s only human nature. Vonnegut did spend a lot of time rationalizing the universe, but he found the practice to be inane, at least in the context of his life.
Slaves eh? I always had the feeling that birds are very content to do what they do best. We are still part of nature wether you would like to admit it or not, even if we do more complex things than birds. Out of curiosity, what do you mean by “real things”. Reality is a very subjective thing.
On topic:
Everything has a beginning and an ending, even the very atoms we are made of. The very foundations of the reality we have created will fall one day, so it shall be, so it has always been. The ultimate goal of ones life should not be a quantitative measurement, but a qualitative understanding. After all, some of the worlds most fullfilled lives were completed by death and self sacrifice. I firmly believe that to find ones legend is the only thing we should really be concerned with. If you’re a bird, sing beautiful songs. If you’re a father, raise fine children.
One of the theories is that advancemets in this field would mean a person’s physiological age would revert to the start of adulthood (let’s say 20, for the sake of arguement) and, over the next 30 years, there would be advancements which would allow that person to ‘regress’ another 30 years, and so on and so forth.
The advancements would take less time to perfect and come into use, therefore, the 200-year-old would still, theoretically, have the body and functions of someone in their 20s. We’re not talking about living to 300 and having paper-thin skin, brittle bones, eight hip replacemets, colostomy bags, etc. The theory is that we would be ‘forever young’.
I hope no one has their hopes up about extending their lives much past 80-100. I’ve reading this nonsense for at least 20 years. We were supposed to have pills which would allow us to live past 120 by now, where are they? I have longevity magazines from the early 90’s which claim that “by the year 2010 we’ll all live to be 120”. Sheer nonsense.
The best advice for longevity is and will most likely always be:
Eat a lower calorie diet full of natural foods such as vegetables and fruits and avoid.
Workout at least 5 days per week, mostly cardio, the heart and lungs are more important than how big your biceps are (life isn’t fair).
Become a social person who gets along well with people.
Don’t smoke and only drink in moderation.
Take a good multi-vitamin.
Have a happy marriage (sorry guys married men live longer).
Be a positive person who tries to see the good in most situations.
Wear your seat belt and visit the doctor at least once per year.
Don’t become overweight (they say it’s as deadly as smoking in the long run).
If you do all of the above and you have reasonable genetics on your side you might make it to 90. If you have great genetics maybe 100. Hoping for much more than this is purely wishful thinking.
[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:
Everything has a beginning and an ending, even the very atoms we are made of. [/quote]
Atoms are just indistinguishable pieces of matter. They make up the parts of our body which can be rebuilt. Our body replaces itself completely every 11 years or so. Who is to say we could not control that process indefinitely?
Off topic:
Reality is not subjective. If we cannot at least agree that reality contains objective truths then there is nothing worth arguing about.
The essential feature of reason is to imbue man with the ability find those objective truths and expose them to the light.
Birds cannot do this but I can.
[quote]Schlenkatank wrote:
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by “real things”. [/quote]
Manifestations of human action
[quote]ZEB wrote:
I hope no one has their hopes up about extending their lives much past 80-100. I’ve reading this nonsense for at least 20 years. We were supposed to have pills which would allow us to live past 120 by now, where are they? I have longevity magazines from the early 90’s which claim that “by the year 2010 we’ll all live to be 120”. Sheer nonsense.
The best advice for longevity is and will most likely always be:
Eat a lower calorie diet full of natural foods such as vegetables and fruits and avoid.
Workout at least 5 days per week, mostly cardio, the heart and lungs are more important than how big your biceps are (life isn’t fair).
Become a social person who gets along well with people.
Don’t smoke and only drink in moderation.
Take a good multi-vitamin.
Have a happy marriage (sorry guys married men live longer).
Be a positive person who tries to see the good in most situations.
Wear your seat belt and visit the doctor at least once per year.
Don’t become overweight (they say it’s as deadly as smoking in the long run).
If you do all of the above and you have reasonable genetics on your side you might make it to 90. If you have great genetics maybe 100. Hoping for much more than this is purely wishful thinking.
[/quote]
We’re just theorizing, man. Just throwing ideas around and discussing the pros and cons. It’s all purely hypothetical (our discussion, I mean).
Who becomes ‘immortal’ would have to be tightly regulated. Where’s the wisdom in tripling the life span of lines of generationally goverment dependent, out of wedlock/broken home birthing, violent crime prone, tax consumers? Only the high in IQ and ambition, and obviously wealth, would be eligible. It would relieve the ever increasing burden of entitlement and public services beneficiaries if the tax producing class would just stop dying.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Who becomes ‘immortal’ would have to be tightly regulated. Where’s the wisdom in tripling the life span of lines of generationally goverment dependent, out of wedlock/broken hom birthing, violent crime ridden, tax consumers? Only the high in IQ and ambition, and obviously wealth, would be eligible. It would relieve the ever increasing burden of entitlement beneficiaries and public service users if the tax producers would just stop dying, therefore, build up in numbers.[/quote]
Well, the good thing is that even if everyone were given lasting life only the elite would be around long enough to make a difference.
I doubt immortals would allow themselves to become slaves of the statists for an eternity and once those slugs are kicked off the teat of government largess they would be forced to fend for themselves thus the problem takes care of it self – natural selection.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Who becomes ‘immortal’ would have to be tightly regulated. Where’s the wisdom in tripling the life span of lines of generationally goverment dependent, out of wedlock/broken hom birthing, violent crime ridden, tax consumers? Only the high in IQ and ambition, and obviously wealth, would be eligible. It would relieve the ever increasing burden of entitlement beneficiaries and public service users if the tax producers would just stop dying, therefore, build up in numbers.
Well, the good thing is that even if everyone were given lasting life only the elite would be around long enough to make a difference.
I doubt immortals would allow themselves to become slaves of the statists for an eternity and once those slugs are kicked off the teat of government largess they would be forced to fend for themselves thus the problem takes care of it self – natural selection.[/quote]
Nope. Because the masses of immortal dependents, who out reproduce you, and whose offspring are more likely to be dependents too, have the power of the vote.
Edit: And their government provided healthcare will pay for treatments against the “aging sickness.”