
The fight to cheat death is heating up - edward
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21704788-fight-cheat-death-hotting-up-adding-ages
======
visarga
I don't think that "I" from 10 years into the future is the same as the "I"
from 10 years ago. The accumulation of small changes is like a "small death"
that comes every day. We forget most of everything, we are thrust in different
situations, and those situations make ourselves effectively different because
they trigger our abilities in a different way.

Fighting death is more about the immortality of the body. The mind is recycled
much sooner. The "I" is created by the mind anew every moment. Even sleep is
like a mini-death, because we "don't exist" for a short time, then we continue
existing again.

But, of course, if we actually get to cheat death and live forever, a new kind
of life opens up. If we can back up our minds and then upload them into a
young body or in a virtual reality, then we can also be more like a character
in a game. We could have many "lives", we could have "save checkpoints", we
could restore from previous points, or fork and create more of us. In fact
life would not be the same as it was during "linear life". Would a meta-life
such as this be the same as immortality? I don't think it would. It would be a
completely different thing altogether.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
Or you know the universe is a simulation and you and I are already temporary
characters.

~~~
Capt-RogerOver
Let's say that you believe (or know) that. What difference does it make? You
still have no access to the base reality, and you still have to make your life
around the rules of this one. In fact, how does it change a single thing
and/or emotion in your life?

For example: I go to work and do some project there. Let's say that I now
found out that there is a base reality, and my work won't matter in the base
reality, that there it's all like a video game. It doesn't change anything for
me, does it? I only do the work because I enjoy doing things with my mind,
because I enjoy the experience. I also know that my work will cause changes in
this reality (I have a lot of past evidence for this), like give me a paycheck
or change some part of the world in some way, and so I can plan according to
this and how the things I do will affect other parts of the reality, including
other people. All that still happens even if it's a simulation.

So why would you ever want to even think about if it's a simulation or not?
There is still no way to go to the "base" reality.

Also, if it's simulation, wouldn't you want to make your life here longer? (Or
are you just assuming that when you die, all your experience will somehow
travel with you into some base reality that you have no way of accessing now?
)

~~~
DefaultUserHN
>Let's say that you believe (or know) that. What difference does it make? You
still have no access to the base reality, and you still have to make your life
around the rules of this one. In fact, how does it change a single thing
and/or emotion in your life?

Would be amazing if it was a simulation. You would be able to hack this
reality, like in movie The Matrix, and perform hacks that seems like miracles,
for example, opening the sea, walking on water, and turning water into wine.

>Also, if it's simulation, wouldn't you want to make your life here longer?

If it's a simulation, you can just restore your HP.

------
chollida1
A few weeks ago I wrote, what I thought was a simple comment about how I use
fasting/calorie restriction that ended up getting 210 votes and causing a lot
of differing opinions as to its health benefits.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188577)

Aubrey De Grey is someone who has done alot of work in this area and I
recommend watching his TED talk.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_a...](https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging?language=en)

Like almost all science in this area, nothing is really proven to work yet.

~~~
andrepd
>Like almost all science in this area, nothing is really proven to work yet.

That's why nobody should really buy into these fad diets until such a time as
one is rigorously shown to be beneficial.

------
okreallywtf
I read The Dying Man by Damon Knight when I was a teenager and it had a
profound affect on me at the time in regards to thoughts about immortality (it
would be interesting to read it again, it would probably seem less significant
now).

It is not at all dystopian which puts it out-of-style but it paints an
interesting picture of a far-future where the population has settled and
immortality is essentially the norm. I recommend picking it up as a quick
short read.

Personally I find myself being more cynical about these kinds of things
because I think all reality this will not be a good thing in the near future
for all but a very small set of people who will (without changes to the
system) be able to maintain wealth and control for generations and further
imbalance our already imbalanced world.

My real hope is that this increased understanding can lead to increased
quality of life for all people if not widespread immortality, but given our
ability to disregard the suffering of other people already it seems unlikely.
Those of us living in the first world will probably continue to lead longer,
more comfortable lives at the expense of or disregarding that of the rest of
the world.

~~~
nugget
Forget achieving immortality - if we manage to extend average lifespan to even
120 years of age then almost all of our socioeconomic systems break down and
we have to more or less rebuild society from the ground up.

~~~
melling
The next time this topic comes up, notice how quickly people run into the
weeds to discuss all of the social impacts. Happens every time.

There are a handful of people working on the tough problems in the world, the
rest are just bullshitting about why if it ever happens, society will
collapse.

~~~
nugget
Hate to break it to you but I worked around some of the most prolific hard
scientists in the world and many of them genuinely enjoyed bullshitting about
the potential future social impact of their work.

~~~
melling
Good for them. Kept them motivated. The rest of us aren't adding any value.
Straight to the bullshit.

------
oli5679
In the UK, your chance of death within the year crawls from approx 0 to 5%
between 0 and 80 but then climbs rapidly to 30% by 100 and >50% by 110.

[https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html)

The recent 100 years of medical advances have lead to massive life expectancy
gains (1/4-1/3 year per year in the developed world) but has had no noticeable
impact on the age of the oldest living humans or mortality rates of
centurions.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people)

Based on this, I think there's a good case for pessimism when speculating
whether any living human will live to 150+.

~~~
duncan_bayne
"I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly
for fifty years" \- Wilbur Wright

"It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or
three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine]
problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere." \- Thomas
Edison

"There has been a great deal said about a ... rocket shot from one continent
to another, carrying an atomic bomb and so directed as to be a precise weapon
... I say, technically, I don't think anyone in the world knows how to do such
a thing. and I feel confident it will not be done for a very long period to
come. I think we can leave that out of our thinking. I wish the American
public would leave that out of their thinking." \- Dr. Vannevar Bush

Edited: what I meant by the above is that humanity has a solid track history
of mis-estimating the pace of progress in new fields.

~~~
krastanov
But mis-estimation goes both ways. Most academics were very optimistic about
early general AI, for instance.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Absolutely. Also, there was a lot of misplaced optimism about helicopters
replacing cars. But either way, I don't think the pessimism is justified.

~~~
Idontagree
I just find it a little difficult to believe that the one thing to have truly
plagued mankind for all his existence (death) has suddenly received a serious
blow. It has literally never happened before (as far as we know), and I'm not
saying it can't, but current technology is like an infant if you consider it
in the scale of what could be. I don't think death is just some easily fixed
malfunction, but maybe many do.

~~~
chongli
I don't find it that hard to believe. I think of doctors as highly trained
mechanics. We've already figured out how to keep old cars going forever.
Humans are several orders of magnitude more complex but the basic idea is the
same: fix the problems that kill you, one at a time.

------
paulcole
Before being diagnosed with a chronic disease, I was very interested in life
extension. Now, I really couldn't care less about living a long time and try
to enjoy the life I have-- inconvenient and frustrating though it may be.

In a way it's funny. Now I think about how I plan to shorten my life when/if
the need arises rather than extending it at all costs.

------
johnward
I guess I don't understand the desire to live forever. Do people really want
suffer through daily life for eternity? Disclaimer: I barely make it through a
week without thinking about not wanting to live though.

~~~
kafkaesq
There really is so much beauty (and yes, meaning) out there to experience,
comprehend, and enjoy. And there are so many kind, brilliant, fascinating
people (and other living entities) to experience and share notes on it all
with. Despite all the inevitable hassle and suffering and messiness.

So yes, I'd say it's worth it. You don't have to try to stretch it out
indefinitely, time-wise, if that's not your thing. I think the key to our
journey through all of "this", whatever it is, is to treat it as if it is, in
fact, infinite (or rather _timeless_ ), even though our conscious experience
of it happens to be stuck on a one-way track which makes it seem (to our
primitive minds) like it's finite.

~~~
ZeroFries
But why do you need to experience that beauty through one particular
consciousness track, experienced through one particular mind (even this
statement is incorrect, because if you define a person as a particular
configuration of matter, then you are a new mind each time-interval)? Make way
for new configurations, for more brilliant, fascinating minds.

~~~
Capt-RogerOver
If you are speaking in terms of spiritual experiences, you can of course be
having any kind of those and nothing can really be argued about it, because
they are subjective.

If, however, you are making an objective claim about "past lives" and
reincarnation - there is no solid evidence for it. 99% of "past life memories"
examples are in the form of "I had a family and we had a house" (omg, that
sounds like our dead relative, you must be him reincarnated), or in a form of
an obviously imagined past life of a historic figure, with details which have
been read in history books by the individual claiming to experience the said
past life. And interestingly they always seem to read about the historic
figure first (giving their subconscious mind the change to soak up that
knowledge (in this life though)), and "experiencing a past life" only after.

So to answer your question - because you only get one particular mind, and
that's it. This is what science shows us. Whether you "feel like" you are "one
with all other minds" is just a subjective experience. It's not physical
reality.

~~~
ZeroFries
I'm not making a claim about reincarnation or past lives. I'm saying something
along the lines of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_individualism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_individualism).
And no, science has not shown that you get one particular mind. It could, at
best, show that you experience one mind at a time. But what is experiencing
the mind?

------
davidf18
Curiously, just today I was researching the public health efforts in the
Finnish town of North Karelia which is known in public health as a place that
started reducing heart attacks beginning in the early 1970's and saw an
article referencing Blue Zones.

The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426211929/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426211929/)

[https://communities.bluezonesproject.com](https://communities.bluezonesproject.com)

From the first Amazon review of the book, written by a woman:

"I first ran into my own "Blue Zone" when I hiked up a mountain near Zermatt,
Switzerland to a village that was only accessible by hiking or cable car. A
102-year old woman dashed past me, UPHILL ON ICE, in felt boots, while I was
(in my 40's) trying to struggle up the incline with the assistance of two ski
poles. Later, I found her, running the local inn and making strudel, which was
the most delicious I've ever had. She was making the strudel that day, because
her OLDER sister was taking a nap."

------
micky_25
Reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of
embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death,
leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap
of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no
reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to
get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever
escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the
single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old
to make way for the new."

~~~
hacker42
That's just an appeal to nature. Just because something was an evolutionary
necessity (and that is not even clear in this case) it does not follow that
that thing should actually be desirable for us.

A plausible explanation of aging is for example the evolutionary shadow: From
the perspective of your genes you don't matter (much) after you've
successfully passed on you genes to the next generation. Thus there is no
evolutionary pressure for longevity. The programmed cell decay of aging might
be a way of multicellular organisms to fight cancer.

~~~
wruza
Even more, evolution is often 'ineffective' and also can't make big leaps
without complete disasters. It is quick only when you die young, as you
already mentioned. It could happen that aging became unneeded at some
epochs/species, but there was no easy way and/or strong reason to "turn it
off" again.

Our bodies are not well-designed, they are full of legacy. The whole idea of
moving via contracting meat is... strange. For real, lower _half_ of me exists
only to move the upper half. That's crazy.

~~~
remontoire
Don't flap your meat at me like that.

------
tvural
Longevity research is interesting because you could theoretically get to a
point where one year of research extends people's lives more than one year.
Then the people who avoided car accidents and the flu could live indefinitely,
which is much more of a transformation than people living to 120.

Will we live to see this happen? The optimistic view is that longevity
research is very under explored right now, and there may be some significant
low-hanging fruit. Also, if AI or nanotechnology live up to their hype quickly
enough, they could significantly accelerate research.

More pessimistically, I see at least three major obstacles:

(a) Medical research sucks as it is, and longevity research is inherently
time-consuming. There are ways to ease this, like testing treatments on mice
first, but I don’t see an easy way around the need to apply the test to humans
and wait many years to see the results.

(b) The human body is hard to understand and manipulate - we haven’t cured
cancer yet, despite all our effort.

(c) Until people’s attitudes about death change (or those people die and are
replaced by people with different attitudes), longevity research will continue
to attract much less attention than it deserves. Most people have
psychologically committed themselves to doing nothing about death. They accept
it will happen to them with 100% certainty, but they deny it will happen to
them anytime soon, so they ignore it.

~~~
Salgat
It's scary to think of what life would be if you are immortal, but can still
die from an accident. Makes you wonder if you ever want to leave the house
until society becomes safer.

~~~
AstralStorm
The trouble is, your house is a death trap too. Heck, the whole planet is.
Typically, mobility and active approach to such immortality brings better
results.

------
ue_
I'm surprised there's no mention of Buddhism here. To accept death as a
natural process, to realise that every being is subject to birth, old age,
sometimes sickness and death, to constantly remind oneself of death leads to,
in many ways, a more fulfilling life.

Clinging to youth, good looks, being alive itself - these are all causes of
suffering, as there is nothing permanent. People wanting to "cheat death" are
attempting to find refuge in impermanence. But there isn't any to be found.
What is changing is unsafe. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't take
medications or life-saving surgeries, as those aren't done with the intention
of permanence in mind.

Buddhism says that superior to "cheating death" is in fact fully comprehending
death, the unsatisfactory nature of our lives and the fact that the self
cannot be found in any of these passing phenomena. To realise this puts an end
to birth and therefore death. But in the context of _here and now_ , our
suffering is reduced.

The search for youth only causes suffering. Desire is a root of suffering.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Without hope, we should indeed accept. Let's make the most of what we have.

Death is not like that. It is not clear we couldn't find ways to double or
triple our lifespan. It is not clear reincarnation (of the non-imaginary kind,
mind uploading) is utterly impossible. It is not clear we couldn't find ways
to keep our lives interesting for a very, very long time.

Simply put, this is not hopeless.

Yes, desire is a root of suffering. But it is also a root of progress. I'd
rather not cut that root just yet.

------
reasonattlm
The fascinating thing about the transition of aging research from mere
investigation to the possibility of intervention is that many researchers
don't even want to talk about extending life, but only a small expansion of
healthspan. This lack of ambition, and refusal to engage with the large body
of evidence that suggests we can do far better, is why we need organizations
like the SENS Research Foundation and Methuselah Foundation, working to make
the better option happen. It is possible and plausible to extend healthy life
and overall lifespan indefinitely by implementing the approach of repairing
the cell and tissue damage that causes aging. Yet all too much of the rhetoric
and effort in the scientific community still goes towards tinkering with the
operation of metabolism to slightly slow the pace at which damage accumulates
- a clearly far inferior approach, that can at best produce only marginal
outcomes.

All of the technologies and approaches mentioned in this article are marginal,
ways to only modestly slow the damage of aging from accumulation. They are
very limited in what they can achieve - adding five to ten years to life would
be an enormous, unlikely success for any one of these. Calorie restriction we
know doesn't add more than that to human life spans, since we have plenty of
examples to look at. Metformin data is all over the map in animal studies,
just as contradictory and half-refuted as sirtuins. The transfer of young
plasma to old individuals doesn't extend life in animal studies; it is pretty
unlikely to have the desired effect in humans - that isn't the same thing as
parabiosis. Human Longevity Inc is a personalized medicine company in fancy
clothing, doing nothing that will greatly extend life, but rather looking for
incremental gains in ordinary medicine. And so on.

Sadly journalists typically don't distinguish between the potential value and
outcome of different approaches to aging - it is all the same to them, just a
flat list. So they pull five or ten items from the larger list to populate
their articles, and mark them all equivalent. That's something of a problem
when the differences are in fact enormously important and the expected
outcomes are night and day when comparing approaches that repair damage versus
approaches that do not repair damage. If there is to be significant progress
towards healthy life extension in our lifetimes, the better strategies, those
involving damage repair, must gain far greater support. This means the SENS
list: senescent cell clearance, mitochondrial DNA damage, clearing metabolic
waste like amyloid, lipofuscin, and cross-links, and so on.

------
mulcahey
Relevant reading from philosopher Nick Bostrom:

[http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html](http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html)

------
rhodri
Death makes space for new life, and new strategies. It's a key part of the
evolutionary process, and thus of life itself. Yet another sign of the
desperate egocentrism of a generation alienated from what it means to live.

~~~
saulrh
Evolution is an awful optimization process. It's only effective in real life
because it's had literally billions of years to work. Intelligently-guided
directed optimization is _vastly_ superior and we should prefer it whenever
possible, if only for reasons of practicality and efficiency. For example,
look at the development of flight: biological evolution took probably a few
billion years to evolve things like pteranodons and archaeopteryx; we _landed
on the moon_ in about seventy years.

Evolution is amazing, sure. It's also evil, bad, and wrong, even without
getting into ethical issues. Don't do it.

(speaking of ethical issues: [http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-
egan/](http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/))

~~~
ionwake
Funnily enough I was just thinking today about how a living organism is in
some ways essentially a brute force attempt at finding the solution to
persistence.

EDIT > great story thx

------
Joof
So if nobody dies, how do we deal with evolution in the case that we need it.
What about brain plasticity? Young brains learn new concepts well and use
those experiences to create new ideas and innovations.

We should try to fight aging, but if that succeeds there are a lot of other
societal problems that need to be solved as well.

~~~
kafkaesq
_So if nobody dies, how do we deal with evolution in the case that we need
it?_

It needs to be seen that having older people around isn't a hindrance to
evolution, but rather a great assist to it -- precisely because they have so
many memories, and so many of the positive qualities (patience, forbearance...
and a general lack of vanity) that naturally come with being around the planet
for so long.

Which those of stuck in (seemingly) lively, energetic younger bodies can
greatly benefit from.

~~~
GrumpyYoungMan
>It needs to be seen that having older people around isn't a hindrance to
evolution, but rather a great assist to it ...

That seems rather unlikely.

" _A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die,
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it._ " -Max Planck

~~~
AstralStorm
He could have been wrong too. Because he was still alive. ;-)

------
pessimizer
Of course it is, the baby boomers are dying. 10-15 years from now, they'll all
have left their positions of authority, and the fight to cheat death will cool
down again.

~~~
jfoutz
I'm not so sure about the cool down, but i think you're exactly right about
the baby boomers. Nobody wants to die. I don't think many baby boomers are
connecting the anti-aging dots directly. But that large, wealthy, aging group
of people are certainly spurring a ton of research.

Take this pill to not die is the ultimate killer app.

I don't think it's going to work out. I think a lot of money will go to snake
oil, but hopefully something good will come of it.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Nobody wants to die."

I do. Living for ever, or even much longer than our current life expectancy
doesn't appeal to me at all. I like my life, but I also like that someday it
will end. Back when I was religious (I'm not now) the idea of heaven or
eternal life seemed strange to me as it was 'the goal' yet not something I
wanted and the idea that I had to 'live forever' was quite worrying.

I'm curious if I'm in a minority on this. It's probably important to point out
I don't want to die anytime soon but the idea that I continue living for
longer than another 80 years for example is not appealing.

~~~
JoshTriplett
If living forever were the default, would you choose to intentionally kill
yourself?

~~~
happyslobro
It would be the last new experience, after everything else had been done to
death...

~~~
kaybe
It's not like people haven't done it before, or does it not count if you get a
revive after 30 minutes without any brain activity?

~~~
happyslobro
It only counts if you don't know that there is a revive available ;)

------
apatters
At this point I can recall reading starry eyed articles about future life
extension technologies 10-15 years ago. My question is simple: what products
have been brought to market that can be classified as "life extension" and are
we certain they work? Is there actually anything out there yet which is as
effective as good old diet and exercise?

------
AWildDHHAppears
With obesity at 66% (in the United States) I think the average life expectancy
will start going down.

1900/day isn't very extreme. It's what I do on days I don't go to the gym (and
2200/day on days I do go). And I'm not underweight either--I'm within the
healthy BMI range. People just eat too much food!

~~~
adrenalinelol
66% is overweight OR obese[1]. Being overweight doesn't pose as many health-
risks as being obese.

~~~
Symmetry
Heck, obesity correlates well with life expectancy but that's probably because
sickness causes weight loss.

------
bhewes
Seems like this will be a growth technology field. Though I am making the
assumption that developments will also apply to more then just the elderly. An
example would be keeping a larger percentage of the population in peak or near
peak mental and physical health for longer.

------
mohn
The discussion of calorie restriction (CR) brought to mind a piece by NYmag
reporter Julian Dibbell on his experience trying out CR for two months:

[http://nymag.com/news/features/23169/](http://nymag.com/news/features/23169/)

On the sillier side, I recommend "Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary
Shteyngart. It's an entertaining novel with themes of life extension and near-
future dystopian technology. Anyone who liked the "please drink a verification
can" greentext will probably enjoy it.

------
rxlim
Are there any benefits from fasting without calorie restriction? e.g. fasting
for 23 hours then eating all recommended calories?

~~~
exclusiv
I'm curious on this too but I'm thinking of doing a Belgian monk fast though
which allows beer of course. :)

Lost weight and drink solid beers? Nice! I found a post about this experience
[1] which also has a few bits of research [2] linked as per your question.

One of the articles says "Water-only fasting should only be done in a
specialized clinic" and "certain types of very low calorie diets, and
particularly those with high protein content, can increase the incidence of
gallstones in women at risk"

So perhaps the Belgian monks know what they are doing with the calories and
low protein in the beers!

[1] [https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/monk-style-
be...](https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/monk-style-beer-fast-
diet.306185/)

[2] [https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-
appears-...](https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-to-
slow-aging/) and [http://www.cell.com/cell-
metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131%2815...](http://www.cell.com/cell-
metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131%2815%2900224-7)

------
pallavsharda
This article illustrates superbly what Bill Gates said "We tend to
overestimate the impact of changes that will happen in 2 years, and
underestimate those that will happen in next 10 years"

------
ZeroFries
We should focus on reducing suffering, not on creating arbitrarily long life-
times. When suffering is low enough that death-anxiety is the greatest source
of human angst, then work on immortality.

~~~
ggreer
Considering that age-related illnesses are responsible for 100,000 of the
150,000 deaths each day[1], I think working on aging is a very effective way
to reduce suffering.

Also, I hope readers notice that nobody makes this criticism when someone
works on a new mobile app, another static site generator, or My Little Pony
fanfiction. It's an excellent example of the Copenhagen Interpretation of
Ethics.[2]

1\. [http://www.sens.org/files/pdf/ENHANCE-
PP.pdf](http://www.sens.org/files/pdf/ENHANCE-PP.pdf)

2\. [https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-
eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

------
grondilu
Whatever life is worth living for, I don't think it requires eternity.

~~~
pjscott
How long _does_ it require? And might the answer, perhaps, be higher than 78.8
years?

Or maybe higher than 200?

How about 1000?

~~~
grondilu
To put it simply, I don't feel like the current human lifespan is too short.

------
Pxtl
Related comic:

[http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/8/1556848/-Cartoon-
Mi...](http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/8/1556848/-Cartoon-Millennial-
lament)

------
tantalor
"hotting up"?

[http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hot-
up](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hot-up)

~~~
mc32
It's the trend against declension so instead of using "heating", you use
"hotting", or instead of total "spending", total "spend". For many it sounds
like it's more modern and young. But there are times when using the base word
introduces collision with other meanings.

~~~
morley
"Hotting up" appears to be a quirk of British journalism, not necessarily a
"trend." Not exactly modern and young when the first usage was in 1923 by P.
G. Wodehouse.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10wwln-
safire-t.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10wwln-
safire-t.html)

------
tantalor
Who wrote this? There is no byline.

~~~
chollida1
See this....

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2013/09/ec...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2013/09/economist-explains-itself-1)

The Economist’s writers are always anonymous.

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astazangasta
It's appalling that something like this, which would fundamentally alter what
it means to be human in a profound and everlasting way, can be so casually
described and is being pursued with relatively little debate. I guess we'll
have plenty of time to debate our folly after the immortal/vampire class has
put the leashes on us for a few half-centuries.

~~~
pilom
Oh but how much fun is it to contemplate? How does love, war, work,
retirement, achievement, purpose, etc. change once you can live forever? Or
once some subset of humanity can live forever? If you were nearly immortal how
long would you mourn the death of a non-immortal spouse? Would you work an
additional 5 years before retirement on the off chance that they figure out
how to make you immortal between now and then? How would you treat a person
who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you
couldn't afford? How would that treatment affect inflation? How would
immortals affect inflation? There is so much awesome material here for science
fiction writers!

~~~
astazangasta
I fully intend to write this science fiction, but the fact that this COULD be
reality (and I think the biology is tractable) should be sparking some sort of
policy debate. There is actual capital flowing into these ventures...
Speculative fiction is ten years behind where the money is.

~~~
surlyadopter
Drew Magary beat you to it.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-
postmortal](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal)

(It's a good read)

