

Aubrey de Grey: "What will happen if we cure aging?" (video) - MikeCapone
http://www.bigthink.com/science-technology/medicine-biology/1448

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Allocator2008
Beyond the obvious issue of over-population, two problems occur to me:

1) The human brain can only record up to about 200 years or so worth of data,
so, beyond that, it cannot really store memories, so people might live to be
say, 500, but the continuity of the individual would disappear. (Frank
Rosenblatt of the Rosenblatt perceptron estimated that 200 year number, by the
way.) Living so long one cannot recall who one once was seems a dubious
proposition at best.

2) Evolution works by successive generations. If people live so long that they
do not have a need to reproduce very often, then interesting evolutionary
consequences will arise that I can only dimly speculate on. Seems like while
the humans are in a blissful state of ageless biological stasis, other species
will still be evolving, say, dolphins evolving opposable thumbs, or the like,
and ultimately, humans will become trapped in a time-warp, biologically
speaking. They won't evolve, but other species will. They may be sentient
(e.g. chimpanzees, dolphins, even highly evolved mollusks and the like
perhaps), or, they may be non-sentient, like viruses and the like. If we stop
evolving, we will eventually go extinct, simple as that. Oh, and, uh, sex,
Yeah, if there is no more need to reproduce, we will lose our sex drive. We
could still replicate ourselves via cloning, but that whole copulation bit,
that will be over.

So, basically to sum up, I see an ageless society as vastly over-populated, in
'Soylent Green' proportions, with people not even having a sense of memories
about who they are as individuals. People stop f*king, since there is no more
evolutionary impetus for that, and eventually we are replaced by viruses,
sentient mollusks, or both.

What the anti-aging people will have to come to realize is that only the gene
is immortal, her carriers are not, and if they try to be, the gene will still
win in the end.

~~~
jknight
that's what the regeneration process is for. and you only get 12 of them so
don't waste them by falling off the top of a radio tower or be poisoned by
gas.

in all seriousness, I very much enjoyed your comment. In my opinion, I think
it would be great if we could somehow make the process of aging less
uncomfortable for our last half of our life while keeping our natural lifespan
more or less the same 70 +/-. But if we can find cures for alzheimers, skin
cancer, etc that would be great for our quality of life. But where do you draw
a line between anti-aging and cures for diseases such as these?

~~~
Allocator2008
Interesting question. I am not a biologist, but I believe I read that cells
have a sort of "internal clock", modulated by certain enzymes. Normally cells
reproduce in a certain way, but these enzymes deplete over time, such that at
a certain point the cellular structures don't reproduce in the same manner as
before. Hence, "aging". So, sure I am all for finding treatments for
Alzheimer's and so on, but aging itself, as outlined above, is just really an
evolutionary necessity. Stephen King treats this sensitive topic well in his
novel, 'Pet Sematary', dealing with both the human resistance to, and the
biological necessity of, death, including the aging process leading into that.
Personally I find great comfort in the idea that even if however many millions
of years from now, all or most mammals, including humans, will be extinct,
some of our genes won't be, just as for example birds have some of the genes
the dinosaurs had. The individual may be here for only a short time, but the
genes she carries are far more transcendent.

