

Living to 100 and Beyond - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904875404576528841080315246.html?mod=WSJ_hps_RIGHTTopCarousel_1

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reasonattlm
Peter Thiel says this in the foreword:

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"Unlike the other animals, we have knowledge of death. The origins of
language, of culture, and of religion can perhaps all be traced to that point
in the distant past when our ancestors first acquird this terrible knowlege
and needed to tell themselves stories to make sense of life and death. Every
myth on this planet is an untrue story that tells people that the purpose of
life is death. Nationalistic myths tell us that it is sweet and fitting to die
for one's country, ideological myths tell us that progress requires violence
and that one must break some eggs to make an omelet, and religious myths tell
us to worship the old, the ancient, and the spirits of the dead. The crisis of
the modern world is the crisis of mythology. We no longer believe in the old
stories about life and death, but we also cannot go back to a time when we
were not yet human and did not know about death. We cannot go back in time [to
the innocent ignorance of youth] and we would prefer not to be turned [into
animals]. As the same time we cannot simply deal with death as a 'fact of
life.' What we desperately need is a new story - a true story - to help make
sense of the world in which we find ourselves."

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The book should be read in the light of this thought: we build our myths,
recapitulating them in technology just as soon as we are able. Though nowadays
people are more likely to talk of "vision" and "cultural aspirations" than to
tie present directions to the legacy of stories and desires that emerged from
the deep past. Unlike Thiel, I don't think that all of the old tales are bad
for being lies. In some tales, humanity lives in a world in which objects
think and speak, aging can be banished, wounds healed with a touch, and
spirits and gods watch over all - and with progress in artificial intelligence
and biotechnology most of that will come to pass. There are good reasons why
certain forms of story survive the millennia: they attract us and steer us
just as much as we steer them. So long as there are at least a few people who
prefer to build a tower rather than talk of building a tower, then we will
build our mythology. Thiel is, however, right in the prevalence of tales that
celebrate death and aging over life and longevity, and there is a scale crying
out for a rebalancing.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/02/our-beauteous-
but...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/02/our-beauteous-but-
destructive-heritage-of-myth-legend-and-stories.php)

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"This is an age of progress and biotechnology. Yet we folk who might be the
first ageless humans stand atop a bone mountain. Its slopes are the stories of
the dead, created, told, and appreciated by people who knew their own
mortality. It is an enormous, pervasive heritage, forged by an army of
billions, and no part of our culture or our endeavors is left untouched by it.
This is one part of the hurdle we must overcome as we strive to convince
people that a near future of rejuvenation biotechnology is plausible,
possible, and desirable."

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Burying the bone mountain is a big job, but that's why books like this have to
be written. The better visions and better myths must win out if we are to see
the broad support and desire needed to accomplish any great advance in
technology, and then make it widespread.

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tokenadult
Link to an academically hosted .PDF of the paper "The Value of Health and
Longevity," mentioned in the submitted article.

[http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/labor/lap05/topel-050325.p...](http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/labor/lap05/topel-050325.pdf)

I'm going to have to check the methodology of this working paper, as I am
dubious about its conclusion.

And here's a link to Amazon's description of the newly published book on which
the submitted article is based:

[http://www.amazon.com/100-Plus-Longevity-Everything-
Relation...](http://www.amazon.com/100-Plus-Longevity-Everything-
Relationships/dp/0465019668)

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theatraine
I think that some points in this article are a bit misleading. Much of the
focus is on an increase in the average life span of the population, of which a
large portion can be attributed to a reduction in infant mortality and an
increase in sanitation, or treatments of common disorders. However, for 100+
year lifespans and (optimistically) 1000 year life spans, we would need to
drastically increase the maximum life span, which proves to be a much more
difficult task in healthy individuals.

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joemysterio
I was thinking the same thing. If we still had to feed ourselves by hunting
mammoth with nothing but pointy sticks and sharp rocks we probably wouldn't
live much longer than 18 even today.

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melling
To solve difficult problems like this, we really need to game problems to get
more people involved. To get a man on the moon, for example, it took almost a
decade, billions of dollars, and 300,000 Americans working on it. The problem
he wants to solve is even more difficult.

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billswift
Apollo was a difficult but reasonably straightforward engineering problem,
which made it extremely susceptible to having money and manpower thrown at it.
Life extension, and even most more modest medical problems, still lack large
areas of basic understanding which makes them much less vulnerable to such
mass attacks.

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SteveJS
Very thought provoking. My first thought de Grey's claim that the first people
to live a 1000 years have already been born is that will certainly require
changes to social security. It seems likely even modest advances are enough to
start getting societal conundrums. It looks like an interesting book.

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ddw
There's a lot of big questions that come out of this. I'm thinking about how
available such technological gains would be to the general public. As our
current economic system stands now (U.S.) this would probably only apply to
the wealthy. Think Dick Cheney, who seemingly will outlive all of us.

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breathesalt
People would work longer than they do now because they would live healthier
longer, possibly mitigating our current SS problems. It would also be in the
best interest of the government to subsidize _proven_ rejuvenation
technologies because caring for the old is much more expensive than caring for
the young.

