
The Humanness of Death - DiabloD3
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-humanness-of-death
======
reasonattlm
Really now, what is so terrible about the prospect of failing to suffer years
of hideous pain, disfigurement, and disability that it forces people to wax
lyrical and beat their breasts and say, woe is me, we might have the chance to
not suffer and not be diseased and not be forced into a painful death not of
our choice?

I mean, I believe near everyone you can find to ask is generally in favor of
cancer research. That's absolutely about preventing all of the above.

But the prospect of treating the medical condition we call aging and removing
its consequences? Suddenly everyone is a poet, inclined to the morbid.

~~~
ams6110
Cancer research is well into the realm of diminishing returns. Far more lives
could be saved if the money were spent on things such as malaria prevention
and potable water in the developing world.

~~~
reasonattlm
8.2 million cancer related deaths in 2012:

[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/)

627,000 malaria related deaths in 2012:

[http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/](http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/)

Lack of potable water is a harder one to pin down for things other than
childhood mortality, but probably in the low millions per year:

[http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/wash_statistics.html](http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/wash_statistics.html)

Further, cancer research is far from being in the realm of diminishing
returns. The next generation of targeted treatments such as immunotherapies,
chimeric antigen related approaches, engineered viruses, etc, that work for
many different varieties of cancer will be far more effective than today's
staples of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

------
forloop
The irony. Is it really going to take the death of generations for people
accept anti-ageing?

I find it somewhat amusing. I can't guarantee it'll be as funny once I've got
cancer/heart disease/dementia, though.

~~~
jerf
I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if the cure for death was for sale
that people would be lined up around the block. You have to remember to view
this in light of a world in which such a thing is not available, and there's
no good to be had in sitting in a corner constantly pining for it.

~~~
ashark
We're a species that's been telling stories about people seeking immortality
and being disappointed (and/or paying a terrible price to achieve even the
shadow of immortality) seemingly about as long as we've told stories. An
instinct to treat promises of or speculation about immortality (in our
corporeal form, anyway) as either snake oil or false hope is practically built
in to our cultural DNA.

As you wrote, though, that doesn't mean people won't be lining up for it if
it's ever for sale. We've been telling stories of disappointment in the search
for immortality for millennia, but we _do_ keep telling it. We're jaded about
it, but the topic's been with us so long _for a reason_.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Could it be connected to the just world fallacy? Many if not most of our
stories - from the very ancient to whatever it is on TV right now - follow
some sort of "rule of conservation of fortune"[0], i.e. you can't have any
good things happen to you without at least an equal and opposite amount of
misfortune that will cancel-out the gift. You can't just go out there, stumble
upon wealth and long life, and remain a good and happy person (unless your
life before that was so miserable that this is a perfect compensation).

And that, I guess, is a primary difference between stories and real life - in
the latter you _can_ become better-off just like that, with no strings
attached.

[0] - TV Tropes probably has a better name for that.

------
placebo
I'm not some enlightened guru (quite the opposite in fact), but I keep
wondering whether the obsession with immortality is just another symptom of
what prevents peace of mind and happiness in life in the first place which, if
true, would mean the worst thing that can happen to those seeking personal
immortality is to attain their goal (whether via biological or non-biological
means).

~~~
convexfunction
Would you really expect that a large majority of people who are interested in
immortality, are interested in it because they _don 't like being alive_?

Also, psychoanalysis-at-a-distance of broad groups of people is generally
awful, even when the broad groups of people are unusual. Please don't.

Also, unbounded lifespan isn't the same as irreversible immortality.
Irreversible immortality, assuming you can implement it somehow, seems like a
sort of bad idea.

~~~
placebo
What I'm suggesting is that perhaps many people who are interested in
immortality, are interested in it more because they are afraid of dying than
because they enjoy living.

As for generalisations of broad groups of people - any attempted
generalisation on observed phenomena will automatically be false, but saying
that you can't make generalisations on phenomena because they are not
absolutely true is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What I said was
not a value judgement, and not an attempt at "psychoanalysis-at-a-distance"
but my current assessment based on what I've learned so far about people and
life. It could very well be false. Also, I'm no exception. Had I access to a
magic pill that would be able to prolong a healthy life for my loved ones and
myself as much as we want, I'd not hesitate to take it (as I think most people
probably would), but I have a feeling there is a higher level of happiness one
can seek than extending one's life indefinitely.

------
eli_gottlieb
Oh for Heaven's sake. You know, couldn't someone bother to explain why we
should be pro-mortality by way of _good things about dying_ rather than by
threatening us with various terrible collapses of society if we don't shut up
and accept our mortality?

Also, evolution isn't a god. Don't worship it.

------
convexfunction
Journalist suggests mass death of a particular demographic appears to be the
politically easiest path, and conveniently also a teleological imperative.

------
guylhem
To all those who do not want immortality and prefer death - I will be very
happy to take what you do not want, and let you have what you want.

Please let me have what I want. I promise I won't complain about immortality
being boring and all that.

Thanks for your concerns about my immortal soul and whatever, but just give me
what I want.

------
fsiefken
The author talks of evolution in terms of meaningful progress, what meaningful
progress? It's just change and adaptation, eventually this primate race will
die out or evolve into a dumber species. Eventually life on earth will return
to simple life before the sun runs out. Meaningful progress!

~~~
D_Alex
> into a dumber species

Why necessarily dumber? I know that there is a trend for lower educated
families to have more children, but also smart people tend to marry other
smart people, so there is selection for intelligence at play.

>evolve

So over the next say 100 years, the contribution of Darwinian evolution to
"evolution" of human species will be unnoticeably small, just as the
contribution of technology will be larger than ever before.

------
M8
_" This is how evolution works..."_ \- no it doesn't, almost every child in a
rich country is saved and given a chance to procreate.

------
nnrocks
We should calculate when we are going to die:
[http://deathdate.info/s/death](http://deathdate.info/s/death) ;)

