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215 points XzetaU8 | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | 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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wizzwizz4 ◴[] No.45082857{3}[source]
Reproduction is not physically special. If it is physically possible to create a new organism with a longer lifespan than its parent (which it is), then it is physically possible to extend the lifespan of an existing organism. This may be impractical, but we cannot prove that no organism can live ≈forever, because it's not a physical impossibility. (Assuming a source of power remains present: it looks like the universe won't last forever, so we can trivially assert that no organism can live forever.)
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1. brabel ◴[] No.45090217{4}[source]
> it is physically possible to extend the lifespan of an existing organism.

This is not at all guaranteed until we actually manage to do it. And that's exactly what we're discussing, you can't just say "but it must be possible". There's no rule of the universe that says it should, and given life has been around for 4 billion years and there's no single species (specially animals which is what we really should consider here if we're talking about human lifespan) that manages to live for more than a few hundred years, I think that's strong evidence that life is approaching a fundamental limit here. Someone else said "maybe that's enough" - well, why?? Maybe 100 years is already quite enough then??

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2. wizzwizz4 ◴[] No.45093777[source]
Take the existing organism apart, fix all the problems, put the organism back together. No laws of physics prevent this, so by the totalitarian principle it's physically possible. Principles of engineering might make it impractical, and even if it is practical we might never discover how to do it, but it's possible.