Do You Want to Live Forever?

TechnologyReview.com ^ | February 2005 issue | Sherwin Nuland

[Michael Barnes]

Thought you might be interested...

[Old Professer]

Motive:

We will realize there is an overpopulation problem, and if we have the sense we’ll decide to fix it [by not reproducing] sooner rather than later, because the sooner we fix it the more choice we’ll have about how we live and where we live and how much space we will have and all that. Therefore, the question is, what will we do? Will we decide to live a long time and have fewer children, or will we decide to reject these rejuvenation therapies in order that we can have children? It seems pretty damn clear to me that we’ll take the former option, but the point is that I don’t know and I don’t need to know.

Verifiability :

de Grey received his PhD in Dec. 2001 from Cambridge.

Conclusion:

Someone needs to take Nuland's unabridged dictionary and hide it until he recovers.

[mista science]

read later

[snarks_when_bored]

The article's author, Sherwin Neuland, thinks...

Oops...Nuland, not Neuland.

[snarks_when_bored]

I'm not quite sure of the point you're making. Could you clarify?

[Mr. Jeeves]

If people lived much longer lives, the rate of civilization's progress would probably slow way down. There wouldn't be any time pressure to do great deeds - one could just decide to do them in the next century, "when I get tired of surfing in Hawaii". In the other hand, people would have more time to learn how to do things right, and great minds could continue their work, which might get exponentially better as they reach 200, 300, or 400 years old.

Society would run into an ugly problem: we need the Einsteins to live for thousands of years, but we would prefer that Earl the janitor get out of the way in about seventy, to avoid stressing social welfare systems and because, frankly, Earl just doesn't contribute much. I expect access to the therapies that extend life will be limited to those who can pay a huge price for them or those the government deems worthy of an "extension grant".

[snarks_when_bored]

I agree with most of that (except there probably won't be an 'Earl the janitor'—robots, you know).

[Old Professer]

The article's author, Sherwin Neuland, thinks de Grey is almost completely isolated from the real world as far as biological matters are concerned, and that, even if de Grey's seven problems could be solved, the indefinite prolongation of human life wouldn't be a good thing either for individuals or for the species.

Your statement seems to be somewhat supported by this early quote from Nuland:

I should declare here that I have no desire to live beyond the life span that nature has granted to our species. For reasons that are pragmatic, scientific, demographic, economic, political, social, emotional, and secularly spiritual, I am committed to the notion that both individual fulfillment and the ecological balance of life on this planet are best served by dying when our inherent biology decrees that we do.

And here:

If we are to be destroyed, I am now convinced that it will not be a neutral or malevolent force that will do us in, but one that is benevolent in the extreme, one whose only motivation is to improve us and better our civilization. If we are ever immolated, it will be by the efforts of well-meaning scientists who are convinced that they have our best interests at heart.

[marktwain]

An excellent read, but it seems the author has spent so much emotional capital reconciling himself to death that he cannot accept the possibility of a long life.

There is no immortality in this article, just life extension. Everyone still dies, you just get to live long enough to become wealthy, and do all the exploring adventuring loving and laughing that you want to. But everyone still dies, even if it is only by accident.

To claim that life extension is wrong is to claim that fighting disease is wrong.

[henderson field]

"...saw most of the last century from start to finish..."
Excellent point. The last century has been the most fabulous, most interesting time that could be imagined: The automobile. The airplane. Radio. Television. Coast-to-coast travel. The interstates. Growth of manufacturing. Interesting ways to make a living. Interesting sports and pasttimes. Even with the decline of America beginning in 1965, it's still a fabulous world. I can't imagine that the future could be half as great so, really, what will there be to see then?

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

The author's worldview is telling. Take this quote:

It should not be surprising that a man as insistently individualistic - and as uncommon a sort - as he would emphasize freedom of personal choice far more than the potentially toxic harvest that might result from cultivating that dangerous seed in isolation. As with every other of his formulations, this one - the concept of untrammeled freedom of choice for the individual - is taken out of the context of its biological and societal surroundings.

Translation: ordinary people can't be trusted with personal freedom.

And this quote:

More probably, acclaim would be balanced by horror. Ethicists, economists, sociologists, members of the clergy, and many worried scientists could be counted on to join huge numbers of thoughtful citizens in a counterreaction.

Translation: The wise elites will rise up to save the ignorant masses from the consequences of their greed and stupidity.

[Quix]

THANKS. Will check it out.

[snarks_when_bored]

Well, Nuland is a Yalie. Still, he does sketch a fairly admiring portrait of de Grey.

[LibertarianInExile]

Valeria!

[Old Professer]

Two aging hippies (don't argue, I'm 64, lived in Monterey through the Festival, and I know hippies when I see them) childless by design, he 49, she 60 and probably too old to show up on film, living in "a flat" in Cambridge dressed in clothes so old and worn they would be rejected by Goodwill, hair unwashed, unbrushed and strangers to the razor immersed in their science and intent on remaking the world before the clock runs down finally decided that the only reason we die is because we wear out, now presume to embark the resources of our huge and unsinkable ship-of-state on the turbulent waters of MacArthur Park in search of tumbling orts of fast-disappearing sweetened lipids before they sink to Neptune's bed.

[snarks_when_bored]

I've got to watch out for you, man! (grin)

BTW, de Grey is 41.

[PistolPaknMama]

he would emphasize freedom of personal choice far more than the potentially toxic harvest that might result from cultivating that dangerous seed in isolation.

Does anyone out there know what this means? I musta missed the initial instructions about what to smoke/ingest before reading.

[mista science]

Sherwin Nuland is a crusty old prof (as I read him) at Yale med school who has written a pretty interesting book, How We Die, and counting the ways. Not many.

Pretty funny at times too, eg. his description of his first heart surgery when he was on night duty in an ICU ward as a first or second year med student. The patient didn't survive. He claims there are no good deaths, meaning, I think, that everybody fights death more or less like the fellow that he opened up who sat up in bed bellowing loudly as he was having a massive, and fatal, heart attack.

Somehow I doubt it, but he sure has more experience in this area than I do.

[longtermmemmory]

Bump

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Didn't you read the translation in my post? The author believes that ordinary people can't be trusted with personal freedom, because you can never tell what they might choose to do with it (i.e., the "potentially toxic harvest").