Comment by ympb121
21 hours ago
It may be a dumb reason to do it, but recently I've started to focus on my health a bit more because of news like this (more exercise and healthier food).
The thinking is, if we find a way to massively extend the human lifespan/reverse aging I want to live long enough for that.
I'd be pissed if we as humanity solved aging and I die just before that, not taking any chances.
I doubt that we will get there in my lifetime. Science is one thing, and maybe AI will super-charge some of it. But experiments will need to be made, and that needs brick and mortar labs, and labs need money, and at least right now, the absurd amounts of investments are not going in that direction. Oh, and did I mention regulators? They are very, very slow.
There could, however, be some promising signs down the road, like more capable in-silico methods, which will make it possible to bypass some/more of the brick and mortar labs. Another sign to watch for are orders of magnitude more companies and cartels of individuals doing advanced bioengineering outside of USA.
Actually aging research is probably really well funded in comparison. Loads of billionaires are investing. So at least money is not the issue. Morals and time. Sure, and then regulators.
One big thing with aging research is though that it just needs time. No shortcuts really. You don't know it works until the first people love another few years.
I'd be surprised if we don't get close to longevity escape velocity this century, given the rate of AI progress.
Given the massive investments billionaires (maybe even that trillionaire?) have done, and continue doing, in longevity, if a working treatment was discovered I'm sure it will be obscenely expensive.
Every old person with money will want to pay as much as they can, it will be biggest return on investment of history. If even common drugs that cost cents to manufacture are sold for hundreds of dollars, an age reversal drug would be invaluable.
> It may be a dumb reason to do it, but recently I've started to focus on my health a bit more because of news like this
A healthy mind and body leads an organism to want/be able to survive and thrive. Glad to hear you're there now.
> I'd be pissed if we as humanity solved aging and I die just before that
No, you wouldn't :)
I’d be pissed as I was dying if it seemed like we were on the cusp!
Better stack your chips too. At this point I think there's a fair chance massive life extension will be available before I die, but I likely wont be able to afford it.
Why? If you can live 500 years just focus 20 years on compound interest hard, then retire for 400 years?
I reckon this would be self-correcting. If the average person could reach retirement in such a small fraction of their lifespan, then the vast majority of the population at any given time would be non-productive retirees. The economy would slow until your interest was zero and you'd be forced back to work. Eventually an equilibrium would be reached, wherein the average Joe could look forward to a rewarding and fulfilling career of, say, 450 years or so.
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How do you image the world will work if everyone is living on "compound interest".
The economy is imploding because a tiny fraction of population is living on "compound interest" even now.
> Why? If you can live 500 years just focus 20 years on compound interest hard, then retire for 400 years?
The first version of this technology will only be available to billionaires. So if you reach 70 when it’s invented and are not a billionaire, you’ll never get to try the 500 years of compounding trick
We’re likely to see this stuff get invented in our lifetimes (I’m 38), maybe practical, but we’re def all too old to see it become widely available.
Then again, life extension will not be a singular technology. You could argue antibiotics and vaccines were the first big step and those became affordable within a few decades of invention
Make a loan and pay for the life extension treatment over your extended lifetime.
If you're late on the monthly payment, they send a guy to repo the life extension.
They'll probably give us 300 years for the low-low price of total serfdom
If most/all human work is replaced by AI, serfdom loses any economic sense.
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> I'd be pissed if we as humanity solved aging and I die just before that, not taking any chances.
You wouldn't be pissed. You'd be dead.
Seems like you are interested in living longer. One cool trick to doing that has always been to focus on your health. Are you saying that before recent developments the extension of life benefit wasn't worth it for you? By the way, when you die it's impossible to be "pissed".
Maybe they mean the compromises they're making didn't weigh out enough to be motivating over the thought of just a few more years, but if those few years might make the difference to catching an opportunity for double or more the years it's suddenly motivating enough.
The difference between a healthy lifestyle and a bad one can be much more than that though, decades or even more if we consider habits like smoking.
Maybe. But that's contingent on serious life extension possibilities only becoming apparent recently.
If what you're doing doesn't allow you to see an affordable miracle youth treatment, but it allows you to live your natural life with more quality, it's not dumb.
lol, I am kind of in the same mode of thought but just kind of expect it not to happen.
There was a really shitty movie starring Jared Leto I think about the same problem. Being the last guy to miss out on being immortal
Mr. Nobody is not a bad movie!
There is a rumor that some employees at Anthropic have started smoking to prove their conviction that ASI will be here soon and that it will fix them.
Only something I have seen online, I cannot vouch for its validity
I'm not so sure humanity will be around that long
massive calorie deficit seems to be the best. But then you need to be on the edge of starvation the whole time
More like we solve aging but then we get smacked down by our new AI overlords