
How Silicon Valley Is Trying to Hack Its Way into a Longer Life - JumpCrisscross
http://time.com/4672962/silicon-valley-longer-life/
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arcanus
I've always had a personal saying to short any story or company that appears
on the cover of Time Magazine. The thought being that by the time a movement
or company is that mainstream it is oversold.

I'm inclined to stick to my heuristic here. I'm not seeing any scientific
basis to these life enhancing approaches. Rather, I see extremely wealthy
individuals who are afraid of dying.

Lorenzo de Medici was also magnificently wealthy and willing to deploy
substantial capital in an attempt to live longer. Supposedly he ate crushed
diamonds on the recommendation of his doctors, before he died.

~~~
ktRolster
Some of the earliest writing we have is about attempts to live longer. Epic of
Gilgamesh, Egyptian tombs.....

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Qin huangshi (China's first emperor) was famous for this, so much that he died
taking mercury to prolong is life.

~~~
yorwba
Nitpick: He was Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), which literally means "First Emperor of
Qin".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang)

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reasonattlm
Journalists as a rule exhibit next to no ability to analyze or distinguish
varieties of what is going on in the areas of (a) meaningful longevity science
that can plausibly produce large gains in life span at some point, (b) dumb
"anti-aging" industry nonsense, and (c) longevity science that is not in
principle capable of useful gains in life span.

They are given the instruction from above to write something about efforts to
live longer in order to fill today's news hole, grab the first five things
they come across in a quick search of recent news, rank them all equally, and
throw them into the blender. Out pops a popular science article. Little to no
attempt is made to gain or convey insight or understanding.

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untilHellbanned
Molecular biology professor at an elite school here with over a decade of
experience in what's regarded as one of the most critical aging pathways.
Nothing to see here.

~~~
Brakenshire
Could you point the ignorant towards us towards recommended places to read?
Not to live forever, but to be interested!

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supercoder
We're just in the process of setting up our longer life tech startup. We will
guarantee you will live to 120 or your money back.

~~~
virmundi
Ha, you think you're tricky, but your not! You didn't define the units. 120
what? Seconds? Nice try though.

~~~
fny
I think the joke here is that if you're dead a refund is pointless...

Even if they do refund the money, they could make a killing on interest.

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RichardHeart
Summary of pro death arguments

    
    
        **Fairness**
        Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.)
        Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.)
    
        **Bad for society**
        Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.)
        Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant)
        Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.)
          Stop having kids
          Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136)
        Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age)
    
        **Bad for individual**
        You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related)
        You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?)
        You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.)
        Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.)
    

More people make more progress faster. I'm glad my parents didn't decide the
world would be prettier or work better without me in it. Einstein, Bell,
Tesla, Da Vinci etc, still alive and productive would be nice. You're
literally asking for others to die out of your fear. The burden should be
higher. Have courage. If living longer sucks, we'll know 100 years from now,
and decide then. First 220 year old in 2136 unless you know how to make one
faster than 1 year per year? And that's if you added 120 years to a 100 year
old person starting TODAY.

P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident,
and if the parade of imaginary horribles were true, even earlier.

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known
Finding cure to diseases like Cancer is better;

~~~
RichardHeart
Curing cancer is only worth less than 3.9 years. Curing heart disease is only
worth less than 4.55 years.
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12972744_Gains_in_l...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12972744_Gains_in_life_expectancy_by_eliminating_major_causes_of_death_Revised_estimates_taking_into_account_competing_causes_of_death)

