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Re:Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing by eli_gottlieb on Thursday October 27, 2016 @08:29PM (#12811774)
>There's nothing wrong with your thinking. In my humble opinion it shows your personal desires without much concern for everyone else.

Oh shush. You know, I've got a 93-year-old grandmother with a damned sharp wit who should not fucking need assisted living and should be able to remember what we were talking about five minutes ago. I've also got a 68-or-so uncle who came down with Parkinson's Disease almost instantly upon his retirement from a lifetime of practicing medicine.

That's not to mention the in-laws with fibromyalgia and the step-father with several "bad lifestyle" diseases.

If your argument in favor of aging and death is, "Indiscriminately inflicting extreme suffering to randomly-selected people for every moment of their lives really helps to freshen up the world", you should reconsider. The problems I mentioned are not unique and special things that happened like a car accident happens. They're just what happens to everyone from living long enough. The bit at the end where you go to sleep and never wake up is nothing; the problem is the decades of suffering followed by that.

Re:Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing by notgood on Thursday October 27, 2016 @09:17PM (#12812141)
People like to assume the natural course its somehow the best course, but its far from the true, the fact its that from a biological perspective its much easier to start from scratch than to remain alive for too long; and that's how evolution works, evolution does not care much about what happens after your reproductive years have gone by (so to speak), maybe only enough so you can take care of your offspring while is needed, but thats about it.

Dragon Flys only live for 4 weeks, but its enough time to reproduce and that's all "mother nature" cares about, and hardly anyone would suggest that living 4 weeks is long enough; so we need to understand our lifespans are just as arbitrary.

Re:Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing by pdonis on Friday October 28, 2016 @12:01AM (#12812966)
> evolution does not care much about what happens after your reproductive years have gone by

So what? We humans care.

Re:Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing by Taek on Friday October 28, 2016 @02:09AM (#12813504)
The tools that made us successful as a species capped our lifespans. Technology may have changed that equation such that it makes more sense to live longer (or forever), but if immortality had made evolutionary sense up to this point we'd see a few immortals walking around.

For whatever reason, hardcoded death was the more successful route for a species to take. (with some notable exceptions. I believe there are species of lobsters that won't die if you put them in the right environment, I believe a species of jellyfish as well, and then some microorganisms as well)

Re:Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing by ehnto on Friday October 28, 2016 @03:35AM (#12813799)
Mother nature could never have awareness for the contexts in which we live now.

Purely biological success knows nothing of the societies we have built and the knowledge, ability to experience, and the complex contexts within which we all live our lives. Death really doesn't make sense for an individual, and no one is really itching for Humans V1.1 so the idea of letting evolution continue doesn't make much sense either.

If I could stop aging right now, I would be content with what I am capable of. Even if I die in 30 years from bus to head syndrome, I will have been fit and active for those years and that is a much better situation than slowly deteriorating to death.

That is the reality medicine has given us already, and anti-aging is only the focusing of a subset of general health issues that tend to cause problems as we age. It isn't the search for the imoral and exclusive elixr of life as some people seem to claim it is.

Re:Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing by Taek on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:05AM (#12813910)
> no one is really itching for humans v1.1

Then why are we spending so much energy trying to augment ourselves? Better exercise, better diets, better schools, less disease, etc.

I would say that almost everyone can name something about themselves that they wish evolution had optimized more. (And if not evolution, then direct intervention).

Re:Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing by ehnto on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:32AM (#12814034)
I guess that was my point, no one is expecting to enjoy the benefits of evolution (because of course they will be dead). So the argument of halting evolution or that it goes against the so far proven way to become a better species makes no sense. Better that we focus on working with what we have.

Perhaps the version was number a bad way to express that though!