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215 points XzetaU8 | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.706s | source
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ggm ◴[] No.45081331[source]
Remarkable hostility and strange circular logic from some people posting here. Clearly belief outstrips evidence.

If research suggests there's an observable asymptotic trend, public health dollars at the very least might be better spent on quality of life as much as quantity.

The posts saying an atom of oxygen is potentially infinitely long lived (ignoring radioactive decay?) As a "proof" that life extension has no limit is about as reductively silly as it is possible to be.

Bills of mortality bootstrapped Financial investment in annuities. You think the money people aren't tracking this trend now, when they have for the last 400 or more years?

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nabla9 ◴[] No.45081536[source]
Radical life extension within our lifetimes has become secular religion substitute. It’s driven more by hope and faith than by scientific fact.

While a lifespan has no limits in theory if technology is advanced enough, the belief that it can be achieved by a living person is based on hope rather than evidence.

- Possible in our lifetime.

- Affordable to the faithful.

You remove these two, and the faithful lose their interest in discussing the matter.

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brabel ◴[] No.45081649[source]
What theory says that human lifespan has no limits with technology assistance? Anything involving replacing biological systems with artificial ones is not really extending human lifespan, it’s replacing human life with something else.
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nabla9 ◴[] No.45081697[source]
If you had full understanding of human cell and how they contribute to homeostasis, you could reprogram the cell to rejuvenate them endlessly without turning into cancer (many cancers have unlimited lifespan). You would also need to find ways to remove all cruft that gradually accumulates even in healthy body, like heavy metals etc.
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brabel ◴[] No.45082139[source]
How do you know that you could? That’s the question! If we did understand biology perfectly it may be that we would then prove no organism can live forever and reproduction is the only way.
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1. fluidcruft ◴[] No.45083265[source]
Reproduction doesn't create whole new cells from nothing (except in the ship of Thesius sense). It's existing cells getting reprogrammed to do new things.

Reproduction does result in new matrix/scaffolding being built but the cells build that (and can rebuild it if so directed).

Of course some things "we" care about exist exclusively in the matrix (configurations of neurons, learned behaviors, memories, etc) so that could well be a limit for those parts of the body where we care primarily about preserving the matrix.

Anyway my point is that "reproduction" doesn't create whole new life, it's just a continuation.

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2. brabel ◴[] No.45090183[source]
> Anyway my point is that "reproduction" doesn't create whole new life, it's just a continuation.

Then you're just arguing that we're already immortal, after all we reproduce, but I don't think that's what we're talking about when we talk about longevity. Longevity is the continued existence of a particular being, not its continuation through descendants.

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3. fluidcruft ◴[] No.45094602[source]
The point is that a fundamental assumption that "reproduction" does anything that can't be done by regeneration is just a hunch that so far isn't actually supported by anything in microbiology. The existence of reproduction is irrelevant to the question.