> So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't.

Yikes! That's a scary conspiracy theory!

(Note that I don't agree it would cause a breakdown in society.)

It doesn't seem to be happening that way. Current research doesn't seem to aim at indefinite life extension but at some decades more of healthy life. The current goal of most companies and foundations is to make 90 the new 50. So it seems that it will happen gradually.

> Imagine if they succeeded. Instant breakdown of society. So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't.

My comment comes across as semantic nitpicking, but I don't mean it that way; I just think I'm not understanding what you mean by reasoning "by induction" here.

I am a mathematician, so am most familiar with induction in its technical mathematical sense, which I assume isn't what you mean. More generally, my dictionary says that induction is "the inference of a general law from particular instances". For that to be what you mean here, you would need to infer that "someone makes sure they don't" (meaning, I assume, "they don't succeed in curing death by aging") in general from the fact that someone has done so in particular cases. Is that what you meant? If so, who and when? Or is my dictionary wrong, or are you using some other sense of 'induction'?

If you replace "induction" with "implication" then the comment is probably closer to what the poster meant.

You are correct; I have ESL'd a malformed meaning, I admit.

Society won't break down. Societies of the high longevity future are almost certain to look back at the current age and balk in confusion at the number of people afraid of living longer the same way we balk at things like human sacrifice.