Should we fight aging?

[Inclusa]

There's a website called Fight Aging http://www.fightaging.org/.
Sure immortality is a serious can of worms to open, but a world without diseases or age-related disabilities have been the dream of most humans.
We probably cannot envision something haven't happened YET.

[HenrikOlsen]

It still won't be immortality, it'll just mean that every death will either be accidentally or intentionally violent or it will be from stavation.
The latter looks most likely unless mandatory euthanasia at a certain age is introduced at the same time.

[kleindoofy]

... immortality is a serious can of worms to open ...
Yup.


... Many think "forever" means living to see one's greatgrandchildren grow up.

Oh, but it's more. Think about it.

After, say, maybe 70,000 years, humanity dies out. You live on.

After a few billion years, the Sun turns into a red giant, burning the Earth's surface to a crisp. You live on.

The Sun becomes a white dwarf and settles down to rest for the next hundreds of billions of years. You live on.

Matter slowly decays, the universe cools off, the lights slowly go out. You live on.

Living forever kinda sucks. ;)

[Ronald Brak]

I think a world with the technical ability to stop aging would also be one where controlling fertility would be quite simple, so I'm guessing people would be more partial towards birth control than euthanasia. Of course if aging is stopped before the world population is predicted to start declining around 2050, then things might start to get a bit crowded.

[Trakar]

So it's a trait only one person gets?

Why would any of the conditions you mention = "sucks"?

[SkepticJ]

The overcrowding is easy to solve, simply make it illegal to have children unless you or they will leave the planet.
Have a kid accidentally and can't afford for them or you to leave? You don't get to be immortal anymore.

Kind of a hard-*bleep* solution, but it'd work.

By the time practical immortality is available to the masses, cheap access to orbit and beyond should be possible, so hopefully this won't be much of an issue.

[HenrikOlsen]

The overcrowding is easy to solve, simply make it illegal to have children unless you or they will leave the planet.
Have a kid accidentally and can't afford for them or you to leave? You don't get to be immortal anymore.

Kind of a hard-*bleep* solution, but it'd work.

By the time practical immortality is available to the masses, cheap access to orbit and beyond should be possible, so hopefully this won't be much of an issue.
This has been the theme of quite a lot of science fiction stories over time.
For a real life experiment in whether it actually works when implemented for real, have a look at China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy).

There's nothing simple about it.

[JohnD]

Anti-aging has to be a long way/time away, but meanwhile, life expectancy increases, mostly, in the developed world.
Infectious diseases - tick! But antibiotic resistance may negate that.
Acquired heart disease, atherosclerosis - tick! But the obesity epidemic ditto
Diabetes - ditto ditto.
Cancer - tick! Survival after five years is up and rising for many cancers. No downside yet, except that many of the latest treatments offer benefits measure in weeks and are enormously costly, tens of thousands for one person's treatment.

There is global hope for infectuious diseases too for infectious diseases by eradication. Smallpox went long ago now, and cattle rinderpest (you don't survive well if all your cattle die). Measles and rubella have recently seen small outbreaks in the UK, thanks to the MMR Scare and a loss of herd protection, when previously they had become unknown. Polio is on the global horizon, and WHO has targeted hookworm, malaria, yaws, yellow fever and filariasis.

As a result, in developed countries, dementia has become a problem for the aged - THAT would be a good target, but we are a long way from solutions.

John

[Radom]

Quality over quantity, please. I've heard it said that we are not so much living longer, but dying longer.

[SkepticJ]

This has been the theme of quite a lot of science fiction stories over time.
For a real life experiment in whether it actually works when implemented for real, have a look at China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy).

There's nothing simple about it.

That's really not a proper analogy for several reasons:

The parents aren't immortal, and neither will their children be. I think I could control my willy in exchange for living forever.

Presumably a society that can make people immortal would also have birth-control pills and safe abortions. If you can't afford those options, then you shouldn't be having sex in the first place, because you couldn't support a child.

It's a problem confined to one country; if you accidentally have too many children, people in other countries are happy to adopt them.

[Philippe Lemay]

... Many think "forever" means living to see one's greatgrandchildren grow up.

Oh, but it's more. Think about it.

After, say, maybe 70,000 years, humanity dies out. You live on.

After a few billion years, the Sun turns into a red giant, buring the Earth's surface to a crisp. You live on.

The Sun becomes a white dwarf and settles down to rest for the next hundreds of billions of years. You live on.

Matter slowly decays, the universe cools off, the lights slowly go out. You live on.

Living forever kinda sucks. ;)Upon reading this I was reminded of that scene in Wall-E, when he's the last "living" thing on Earth and all he does all day is build cubes and stacks them. Over time he stacks them high enough and manages to build several sky-scrappers worth of cubes.

Even if the rest of humanity dies out... does this mean you personally are unable to continue it's legacy? Sure it would take time, but if you've got forever you could do it all yourself. Go mining for some ore, build some machines, gather some kerosene or liquid hydrogen, go to the moon? Hell, while you're at it you could perfect an army or robots to do your bidding. It may not be humanity, but you gotta work with what you got.

And yea, like the guy said in the other thread, once the Earth dies just travel to another star system. If you've got forever you don't even need FTL travel, just go by slow-ship. Very very slow ship... Keep looking for a system until you find one that's interesting to live on. When that planet dies, go find a new one. Once heat death starts to engulf the universe I might contemplate some supermassive blackholes for a few centuries, meditating on their awesome power, before I finally commit suicide.

So... while I might not want to live forever, I'd probably like to live for several billions of years if I could.

[Jens]

Just a caveat, but although it's true that life expectancy is improving, the actual maximum age to which people live is basically not. There seems to be a limit about 120 years, and none of our medical advances have really improved that. So more and more people are getting closer to that limit, but very few manage to exceed it.

[Ronald Brak]

I expect that expectancy will continue to increase and one of the most powerful drivers might well be people's smart phones nagging them into good health. And while we don't know how to rejuvenate old cells, we are fiddling around with replacing old cells with new ones. Given enough time to improve on this it might be possible to effectively stop people aging even if we can't stop cells ageing. But having said that, I have cells in my body that are about four billion years old and effectively ageless.* Unfortunately for me these are either in my gonads or a the large menagerie of single celled organisms I cart around where ever I go. (Hopefully none of them are result of cancer.) But with enough tinkering it may be possible to make cells that are ageless and use them to replace standard human cells.

*Depends on how you look at it.

[Atraveller]

Immortality - or atleast a very long life - would certainly be usefull if we ever wanted to explore space. Unless someone actually does invent a warp drive, it is going to take a very long time to get to other planets out side our own solar system.

Other socio-ethical questions about long life were explored by Kim Stanley Robinson in the Red, Green, Blue Mars series.

[Ronald Brak]

Should we fight aging?

Since in our society most young people fail to die while every elderly person seems to sooner or later, I'd say yes.

[Trakar]

Just a caveat, but although it's true that life expectancy is improving, the actual maximum age to which people live is basically not. There seems to be a limit about 120 years, and none of our medical advances have really improved that. So more and more people are getting closer to that limit, but very few manage to exceed it.

What makes you think this is an actual limit?

Foremost among the factors that lead to this current upperlimit on aging is that people who reach it began life when biology, medicine and healthcare were still as they were 120 years ago! They've had the benefit of truely modern medical understandings and care only during the last half century or so. Imagine the benefits of medical care and understandings a century from now. I'm at the half way point to your limit and I can see the potential for another 5 decades of healthy, active living ahead, more if medical, biological and bionic innovation and understandings progress at the pace they have over the last handful of decades. I don't think we've reached a generation that won't know natural death,...yet. But I don't see natural death as an inherent function of birth for intelligent technological species.

[HenrikOlsen]

Presumably a society that can make people immortal would also have birth-control pills and safe abortions. If you can't afford those options, then you shouldn't be having sex in the first place, because you couldn't support a child.
Voluntary abstinence is the least effective birth control in existence.

[HenrikOlsen]

What makes you think this is an actual limit?
Read up on the telomere clock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere), there's a real, hard, limit that has to be broken.

[tnjrp]

Wot, an anti-aging/immortality thread with no mention of Kurzweil? This will not do.

Here's Raymond on immortality:
2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138-1,00.html)
And here's PZ Myers on Raymond's ideas of immortality:
Singularitarianism (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/02/singularitarianism.php)

[parallaxicality]

Could it be that that lunatic eccentric gentleman's influence on the geek community is finally waning?

I don't understand why anyone would want immortality. If everyone on Earth were immortal, we would eventually reduce the planet to a lifeless desert through overconsumption. If we imposed a zero population growth rate, then the same people alive today would still be alive 1000 years from now, meaning that culture will never change and new ideas would never emerge. And while immortality may seem fun for a while, it will get boring. Eventually you'll have made friends with everyone on Earth, shared every possible life experience, explored every possible human achievement. Then the Earth would eventually settle into a giant retirement home. Assuming anyone can figure it out, as no new minds will be created, we might someday get off-world before the Sun burns out. But so what? Sooner or later the other stars will burn out too, and then the planets lose their heat, and then eventually all matter will be sucked into black holes and regurgitated as subatomic garbage. Who wants to live through that?

[HenrikOlsen]

. . . Eventually you'll have made friends with everyone on Earth, . . .
Or enemies of . . . Just to relieve the boredom.

[Ilya]

Quality over quantity, please. I've heard it said that we are not so much living longer, but dying longer.
You may have heard it, but it is not true. People ARE staying healthy longer. "Fifty is a new fourty" is entirely valid statement.

[Ilya]

Sooner or later the other stars will burn out too, and then the planets lose their heat, and then eventually all matter will be sucked into black holes and regurgitated as subatomic garbage. Who wants to live through that?
Very profound question. Let me think about it a few trillion years, then I'll get back to you.

Seriously, anyone who asks "Who want to live forever?" lacks imagination. Just reading all the books I want to read would easily take 150 years. Not to mention do all things/careers I'd like to do, all place on Earth (and off Earth!) I'd like to visit. I would have no problem at all filling up 1000 years and never geting bored.

And if I ever REALLY get bored of life -- maybe one-way trip into Jupiter's core, or something like that, would be a worthwhile ending.

[Trakar]

Read up on the telomere clock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere), there's a real, hard, limit that has to be broken.

If its known about, it isn't a hard, long-term limit, merely a limit of our current understandings and technology.

[schlaugh]

I fight aging every day. But so far it's aging 56, me 0. :)

As for Kurzweil and 2045, I worry he will be proved right - and I'll bite the dust in 2044!

[Jens]

If its known about, it isn't a hard, long-term limit, merely a limit of our current understandings and technology.

Of course. What I am saying, and probably HenrikOlsen as well, is that at present we face a hard limit. That's not to say that we might in the future develop drugs or procedures that can combat those, but that at the moment, we have not had any success in actually lengthening the maximum lifespan of humans. Some things are dangerous to do, because for example, telomerase is connected with aging, but it is also connected with cancer, so there is always a danger that if you try to make someone immortal, you will end up giving them cancer. But as you say, it's an issue of our current understanding. We may be able to overcome it in the future.

[neilzero]

There is a slight possibility that age 400 is already within grasp, but the procedures are known only to a chosen few. Of course the concept is not fully tested, unless someone born in 1611 is still alive today due to keeping the secret for 400 years. Neil

[Inclusa]

Sure. George Bernard Shaw's play "Back to Methuselah" suggests an intriguing cycle: First we want to limit lifespan to 1000 years; than we live only 120 years; suddenly we live to be 300; than we want to live without physical bodies.

[tnjrp]

If Kurzweilian "upload immortality" becomes feasible, then all the bets are off as to what may happen as far as I'm concerned. In other words, I won't hazard even a guess how the societies will change. But that would be the very idea of K's singularity, of course.

Other than that, it doesn't look very much like true immortality is available in our universe much given to entropy, dark energy and whatnot. I hear there are some indications that a finite amount of energy might be able to sustain information processing infinitely, but I'm not at all sure that will get around "the lack of substrate to store the information" problem that may present itself in finite, but "super-deep" time. And this discounts the possibility of the Big Rip of course.

[Jens]

If Kurzweilian "upload immortality" becomes feasible, then all the bets are off as to what may happen as far as I'm concerned.

I wonder how many people believe that is actually possible. It would seem foolhardy to me, because if you upload your mind to a computer and then kill off your own brain, then how are you supposed to know that the real you is the one in the computer and not the one in the brain that you just killed? And before you kill off one of them, there are two identical yous, but with different consciousnesses. Would you actually experience between two people at the same time? It seems counter-intuitive to me.

[Ronald Brak]

Yes, I can never decide whether to kill myself or my twin brother. Unfortunately he shows no sign of any such indecision. (Thank Zog for kevlar.)

[Luckmeister]

I wonder how many people believe that is actually possible. It would seem foolhardy to me, because if you upload your mind to a computer and then kill off your own brain, then how are you supposed to know that the real you is the one in the computer and not the one in the brain that you just killed? And before you kill off one of them, there are two identical yous, but with different consciousnesses. Would you actually experience between two people at the same time? It seems counter-intuitive to me.

I think you would become two separate entities and each one would lead a separate life from then on. Your identity would be connected to whichever one you were. But you might disagree with the other you as to which one has a right to be called Jens. It would be like having a real close twin who had experienced everything you had.

[tnjrp]

Personally, I tend to agree with that. This problem only exists if you subsrcibe to some sort of dualistic notion of "true you" that is not a process running on wetware -- be it a soul, an immaterial consciousness or whatever. And people who do so wouldn't probably agree to a deleterious upload, or in fact most likely to upload of any kind anyway.

[Ronald Brak]

This whole uploading process is a lot easier than most people think. Basically people don't have a very good idea of who you are and you don't have a very good idea either. If I was to copy you and get your body, voice and walk identical but all your mental faculties and aspects of your personality were a random 5% off it very likely that no one would be able to tell the difference, including you. Since fairly shoddy copies are good enough to make no difference in practical terms no fancy science fictional downloading is necessary to make a convincing copy, just a personal history and a few years of high definition video of the subject should be plenty. You might complain that the copy is not really you, but that's okay, you're not really the person you think you are anyway.

[parallaxicality]

Seriously, anyone who asks "Who want to live forever?" lacks imagination. Just reading all the books I want to read would easily take 150 years. Not to mention do all things/careers I'd like to do, all place on Earth (and off Earth!) I'd like to visit. I would have no problem at all filling up 1000 years and never geting bored.

So that's your vision of immortality. Passively consuming the fruits of other people's labours. How do you plan to move humankind forward? Once there are no more future generations, that onus would fall on you to do so, unless you want to doom humankind to bloblike stagnation. This whole Kurtzweilian philosophy is essentially a paean to cow-like consumerism. Seriously; does anyone think these "uploaded" people are going to do anything but take electricity and data storage space from useful projects?

[shadmere]

So that's your vision of immortality. Passively consuming the fruits of other people's labours. How do you plan to move humankind forward? Once there are no more future generations, that onus would fall on you to do so, unless you want to doom humankind to bloblike stagnation. This whole Kurtzweilian philosophy is essentially a paean to cow-like consumerism. Seriously; does anyone think these "uploaded" people are going to do anything but take electricity and data storage space from useful projects?

Who says that the uploaded people can't be useful?

I don't really think the idea of an uploaded person is that practical, but if people start doing it, then they can get jobs like everyone else. :p

[Trakar]

So that's your vision of immortality. Passively consuming the fruits of other people's labours. How do you plan to move humankind forward? Once there are no more future generations, that onus would fall on you to do so, unless you want to doom humankind to bloblike stagnation. This whole Kurtzweilian philosophy is essentially a paean to cow-like consumerism. Seriously; does anyone think these "uploaded" people are going to do anything but take electricity and data storage space from useful projects?

I notice a trend in this discussion, whereby some people are equating the elimination of aging to some sort of invincible immortality,...I don't think this is appropriate.

[IsaacKuo]

So that's your vision of immortality. Passively consuming the fruits of other people's labours.
Ilya does explicitly include "careers". That implies active productivity.

[jj_0001]

I would be happy to see aging countered, even if you died on the same day, you just didn't age until then.

Getting old sucks, until you consider the alternative.

[Procyan]

There are powerful sentiments against anything as unnatural as life extension, at least in the 2 countries where I've spent appreciable time. If there was a place, Galt's Gulch perhaps, where likeminded people could work together to fight the genetic malaise we call aging I would be first in line. The Methusela Foundation is making a try at it, and Aubrey De Grey's book Ending Aging is enticing but they need better science leadership. They remind of the guy who set out to cure cancer but decided he'd found a free-energy device instead.

Imagine a person, fully functional and youthful but very experienced. 100 years +, then imagine a planet-full of them. Maybe that is the next quantum leap for humanity. I mean lets have babies too but not too many...oh dear...here we go again...technical advance creates moral dilema.

Yes we should fight aging for the scourge it be, but maybe not too hard just yet.

[tnjrp]

This whole Kurtzweilian philosophy is essentially a paean to cow-like consumerism. Seriously; does anyone think these "uploaded" people are going to do anything but take electricity and data storage space from useful projects?I don't think it's anyway a given that they'd just be flat out useless (or worse), "seriously".

[parallaxicality]

The average male, given the choice between contributing constructively to society and being waited on by a harem of naked Angelina Jolie clones, would probably chose the latter. Since, in an uploaded state, the two options are equivalent, it would be only a matter of time before the addiction set in.

[tnjrp]

Well, given your basic assumptions about "an average male", "probably choose", "equivalent options" and "a matter of time", I suppose so. How about average females?

[parallaxicality]

Personally, I don't think the average female would care to be uploaded in the first place. This is very much a computer nerd thing, and computer nerds are overwhelmingly male.

[Trakar]

There are powerful sentiments against anything as unnatural as life extension, at least in the 2 countries where I've spent appreciable time. If there was a place, Galt's Gulch perhaps, where likeminded people could work together to fight the genetic malaise we call aging I would be first in line. The Methusela Foundation is making a try at it, and Aubrey De Grey's book Ending Aging is enticing but they need better science leadership. They remind of the guy who set out to cure cancer but decided he'd found a free-energy device instead.

Imagine a person, fully functional and youthful but very experienced. 100 years +, then imagine a planet-full of them. Maybe that is the next quantum leap for humanity. I mean lets have babies too but not too many...oh dear...here we go again...technical advance creates moral dilema.

Yes we should fight aging for the scourge it be, but maybe not too hard just yet.

Well, regardless of how well we combat the physical degradation of aging, without some re-engineering, women are born with all the egg cells they will ever produce. I'm not sure that some natural limiting factors wouldn't come into play. Getting pregnant and raising children might be something some of the young do, but it seems there might well be a lessening of the psychological drive to replace oneself and live into the future through your children. Death would possibly become all the more tragic in life that spans centuries, so it might breed a caution and timidity that would argue against the very dangerous and risk filled adventuresome future most of us anticipate and look forward to. I can feel some of that at a decade or so over half a century. I don't seek, and rather actively try to avoid, a lot of the risks and experiences I relished when I only had a couple, or three, decades tucked into my breechclout. The idea that one could live for centuries could alter a lot of individual and societal perspectives on just about everything.

[tnjrp]

Personally, I don't think the average female would care to be uploaded in the first place. This is very much a computer nerd thing, and computer nerds are overwhelmingly male.In other words you assert that women don't want to "live forever" even if uploading provides a method for such. Maybe so.

[Trakar]

In other words you assert that women don't want to "live forever" even if uploading provides a method for such. Maybe so.

Personally, I think it may be a denial that given the option of societal discrimination, abuse and disrespect, or being waited on by a harem of romance novel stud-muffins, that women wouldn't seek the same addiction.

[tnjrp]

Well, given the comments so far I can't really be sure what women's motives for not uploading would be, other than "not being a nerd". Maybe the assumption is that indulging in sexual fantasies would be the only service that the upload environment actually would provide.

[Van Rijn]

I consider personal immortality to be impossible. On the other hand, I don't see why we should oppose research to reduce or stop bodies from falling apart (a very different thing). It's funny: Most people don't seem to have a problem with trying to stop cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, or a lot of other things that are strongly related to aging, but if you talk about trying to directly counter physical aging, that (according to many) is wrong somehow.

[shadmere]

I think that, given unlimited resources, immortality would be the obvious choice to take for the entire human race. Heck, even let us be immune to accidental death somehow, perhaps through the uploading process described earlier. (A chip that records out brain-state and syncs with an off-site server every few minutes, or something like that.) Or if we really want to talk about far future magic science, give us bodies that are literally invulnerable to death in any fashion.

Of course, some sort of kill-switch would have to be implemented. With literal immortality an option, a person would have to be able to kill themselves when they wished. After a few hundred billion years, I can't imagine most people staying sane.

[IsaacKuo]

The average male, given the choice between contributing constructively to society and being waited on by a harem of naked Angelina Jolie clones, would probably chose the latter. Since, in an uploaded state, the two options are equivalent, it would be only a matter of time before the addiction set in.
Well...so what? I happen to believe that the purpose of society is to serve its citizens, not the other way around. So, if society devotes more resources to videogame consoles than supercomputers to research earthquakes, and that's what the citizens desire, then that's okay with me.

[parallaxicality]

Because if everyone took such a selfish path, then society would cease to exist, and eventually everyone would die or shut down. Someone's gotta maintain the machinery keeping the simulants "alive."

[IsaacKuo]

Because if everyone took such a selfish path, then society would cease to exist, and eventually everyone would die or shut down. Someone's gotta maintain the machinery keeping the simulants "alive."
Not everyone would take such a selfish path, though. Why doesn't everyone spend all of their time playing videogames? Because even if they played videogames, they've still got to pay for food and water and the electricity to play the games. It's stuff like that which makes them go out and get a job.

With virtual people, it's the same difference. Got to pay the rent for the hardware and the electricity bills somehow...

[parallaxicality]

But that's the point. Obviously this path can't be for everyone, because someone would have to keep the machines going. Eventually if you take this to its logical conclusion you'd have the ultimate Marxist fantasy; a caste of virtual indolents who have no impact on the real world, and a group of laborers who exist to maintain them. Quite frankly I don't see why said laborers wouldn't just pull the plug out of sheer embarrassment.

[IsaacKuo]

But that's the point. Obviously this path can't be for everyone, because someone would have to keep the machines going. Eventually if you take this to its logical conclusion you'd have the ultimate Marxist fantasy; a caste of virtual indolents who have no impact on the real world, and a group of laborers who exist to maintain them. Quite frankly I don't see why said laborers wouldn't just pull the plug out of sheer embarrassment.
The thing about the Marxist fantasy is that it was and remains a fantasy. It might sound like it makes sense, but reality is under no obligation to follow that fantasy.

In the real world, improvements in average per capita free time and cheap availability of endless entertainment has NOT resulted in the collapse of society. It has meant things like increased vacation time, the ability to support non-productive children and elderly for more years, and so on. But it has NOT resulted in Marxist class warfare.

(Not to say that class warfare couldn't still happen, but it's not going to be because everyone is wasting time watching the boob tube or playing videogames.)

[semi-sentient]

I'd be willing to give up my ability to have children for the sake of immortality. I suspect many would. What would be the point in reproducing if you're immortal? I guess there's always the possibility of death, but I'm confident that at some point we'd be able to recover ourselves in that event. I envision something along the lines of what shadmere described, although I think synchronizing every few minutes would be unnecessary. I think a nightly "snapshot" of our brains would be good enough in the event that we die tragically and need to restore a "last known good" version of ourselves. Tired of being a man? Maybe life for the next 100 years would be more interesting as a woman. :D

BTW, has anyone seen "The Man from Earth (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/man_from_earth/)"? It's an interesting story about an immortal man who tells his story to his colleagues (all scientists) -- much to their disbelief. It's kind of interesting how he perceives the past/present, as well as how little knowledge he retains through the ages. He talks about how he's had various professions in his lifetime but can hardly remember the specifics, which I think would be true of any immortal human given our existing brains. Think about how much we forget over a 5 or 10 year period, then imagine how much we'd forget 100 or even 1000 years from now. If you're a physicist for 100 year then take, say, a 1000 year break, how much information will you really retain? What about all the progress that's been made since? I don't think we'd ever get bored because we just don't have the capacity to remember everything that ever happens to us -- not with brains that continually rewire themselves the way ours do.

Anyway, I'd highly recommend "The Man from Earth (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/man_from_earth/)" to everyone interested in this topic. It starts off a bit slow, but it gets interesting in a real hurry when his colleagues start interrogating him to see if he's telling the truth or not. It's available for streaming on Netflix.

[shadmere]

The Manifest series, by Stephen Baxter, has a lot to say about that, actually. In the books, extreme far-future humans have begun an energy management scheme so strict that new thoughts aren't possible. They may only have thoughts already in existence. With the heat-death of the universe approaching, there simply isn't enough energy to produce new thoughts unless absolutely necessary. Even old thoughts are unusual, considering the entropy that the process of thinking adds to the system.

[jj_0001]

Imagine a person, fully functional and youthful but very experienced. 100 years +, then imagine a planet-full of them.


That would be a benefit. We're reaching the point where it takes what used to be a full lifetime to get educated enough to be functional in the world.

[Luckmeister]

That would be a benefit. We're reaching the point where it takes what used to be a full lifetime to get educated enough to be functional in the world.

Today the world demands that we continue getting educated as long as we live to keep up with the evolution of our technology.

[Jens]

Eventually if you take this to its logical conclusion you'd have the ultimate Marxist fantasy; a caste of virtual indolents who have no impact on the real world, and a group of laborers who exist to maintain them.

I don't know where you get that from. Marx himself stated what his fantasy would be:


In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

So he was specifically arguing against the kind of specialization you mention.

[adapa]

Stopping aging definitely has its complicating factors. However, I see 2 potential benefits:

1. It could provide an extra incentive to build space colonies.

2. It could potentially solve one of the biggest obstacles to interstellar travel.

[Ronald Brak]

I see a further benefit to stopping aging, namely not dying.

[Ara Pacis]

I see a further benefit to stopping aging, namely not dying.

That's a mixed bag. There are a lot of people we are better off without.

[shadmere]

That's a mixed bag. There are a lot of people we are better off without.

One could use that argument against the concept of medicine as a whole.

[kleindoofy]

"Oldest person alive" is a title one doesn't want to hand over to another person.

[Trakar]

"Oldest person alive" is a title one doesn't want to hand over to another person.

True, particularly due to the nature of the "baton passing."

[Jens]

"Oldest person alive" is a title one doesn't want to hand over to another person.

Interestingly enough, I looked into this and there has never been an instance of a person voluntarily handing over the title before their death.

[Ara Pacis]

Well, I suppose someone might discover records that prove another person is actually older than the currently recognized title holder.

[kamaz]

Imagine a person, fully functional and youthful but very experienced. 100 years +, then imagine a planet-full of them. Maybe that is the next quantum leap for humanity

Nope, that would be an end to the humanity, and a nasty one at that.

The problem is that human power structures are hierarchical in nature. Since it takes time to advance up the ladder, the general rule is that the higher up, the older people are (there are of course exceptions). In a stable organization (i.e one which does not expand), the main mechanism by which an upward movement is accomplished is that the senior people die or retire, and the junior ones are promoted to their positions. Next, take into account that a person's set of beliefs generally crystallizes before they are about 20-30. Since people typically get into high-level command positions at around 50, that means the society is managed according to philosophical trends which were current 30-50 years ago. For example, there is a significant number of influential European politicians who were born around the end of WW2, and who cling to the ideas of the 1968 revolution (which happened when they were ~20 years old), despite the fact that the events of 1989 demonstrated these beliefs to be way off. I will not elaborate to avoid politicizing the thread, but the examples can be found by looking up some biographies on Wikipedia.

Are you beginning to see the problem? Imagine that overnight a miracle happens and everyone stops aging. The immediate impact is that the power structure freezes. Nobody goes out of politics into retirement. No CEO retires. No manager is promoted.

As a result, no new ideas are admitted. Today, a Ph.D. candidate can reasonably expect to get his advisor's job once he retires. However, since the professor is now immortal, he will never retire; and thus, no new professors will be hired, as the budget remains fixed. Research is forced to remain forever in lanes which were current 20 years before the change, as those giving out money are firmly set in a worldview which was current when they were young.

But it gets worse. Remember, that people who happened to be too young at the time that the shift occurred, are going to realize that they got the bad end of the deal. Tough, because it's the top which writes the laws. So the frozen power structure will focus the policy on maintaining the status quo at all costs. That would literally result in a few hundred years of social, scientific and technological stagnation. Until the power structure rots to the core and collapses under its own weight.

A counter-argument can be made that the top people could voluntarily move into other jobs. This is unwarranted. The appeal of the top is both money and power, and these are very strong motivators. Sure, some of these people would probably make such choice, but the rate of management rotation would be much lower then it currently is.

And we actually have real-world examples of this happening. I know some companies which were growing very rapidly in the 1990s, and as a result, all management jobs (except the very top) have been staffed with 30-somethings. 15 years later, you have the exact same people, in the exact same offices, doing the exact same jobs, by the exact same methods which were current 15 or more years ago, while the world moves on. Worse, since no vacancies open in the higher positions (nobody retires), the only way of moving up is by making someone else loose his job, which results in some very nasty office politics. In short, these places are hell to work at. The rank-and-file employees typically last about two years, before noticing that there are no prospects in this business and moving elsewhere.

Now, imagine that on a planetary scale. That's your "quantum leap". To hell.

Those who dream about immortality don't realize that being mortal is actually a blessing.

[kamaz]

One could use that argument against the concept of medicine as a whole.

The life expectancy increase has already caused massive strain on European insurance systems, which were not designed to support such a large number of pensioners with such expensive medical care.

My personal theory is that the life expectancy is currently at it's peak, and within a decade it will start decreasing. There is simply not enough GDP around to pay for the medical care needed to achieve this in the long run. (In fact, it seems that there wasn't enough money in the first place, but the insurance systems could run on debt for past tens of years, due to favorable demographic situation. Not anymore.)

[Trakar]

greatly extended life expectancy would require a shift in the way businesses and management function, and while it may be upsetting to some applecarts, particularly in a transition period between the way things are done now, and how they would need to be adapted to a world where people are suddenly living significantly longer. Likewise, some institutions, like health insurance, may disappear altogether. Through combinations of being healthier, and public healthcare to address injury and disease, and the fact that you may now have centuries to pay into such such systems.

Regular and constant retraining and requalification for jobs may extend the spectrum of employment. It may well become common for people to only work a decade or two in any given profession or field and then pursue entirely different lines of work, research or personal fulfilment.
Things will change, but that is true now. There are people now who have climbed the ladder of career progression through two or three seperate careers, and probably have one or two more such episodes left in them before retirement. I could see this becoming more the norm. Yes, there would be some that wish to stay with one devotion, and as long as they could stay abreast of developments and changes within the field, should have every right to do so. But most will gradually lose their value to a given company field, and will either find themselves shuffled around until they don't requalify, or until they decide to undergo retraining for a career that they value enough to stay current in.

I don't see what the big issue is, unless you are looking forward to a static future?

[kamaz]

I don't see what the big issue is

The problem is that a person managing a big organization -- such as a corporation, or a state -- can do the job correctly for about 10 years (20 years tops). There is a point, after which a leader will run out of new ideas, and start chasing his own tail. The organization will stagnate.

Now, if the organization has mechanisms which ensure that the leader is rotated out after a certain time limit, there is no issue. Even if the leader "burns out", he will be rotated in due time, at most wasting a few years. But there are organizations, which do not have such checks in place. In such organizations, once a person gets the top position, they cannot be forced to leave it until they retire or die. Non-democratic states, religious organizations and academia are classic examples. In such organizations, aging (and death) is the only mechanism which allows rotation of management. If the leaders are immortal, they will be never rotated out.

We know that an immortal leader leads to stagnation, because we have seen it happen. A 30-year-old who seizes power, has between 30 and 50 years ahead -- which, compared to timescales commonly used in politics, is close to eternity. (30-50 years corresponds to 7-12 US presidential terms, i.e. 5-10 different administrations.) Take Cuba for example. After the 1959 revolution, the new leaders have had some success in developing the country, but, after a few years they have stagnated. The stagnation continues to this day, because the crowd which did the revolution is still in power today. Iran is in pretty much the same place where it was 30 years ago, because the crowd currently in power generally recruits from the students who did the 1979 revolution. And so on. If you look at political leaders who have spent a lot of time in power anywhere in the world, you will see the exact same pattern again and again.

Human society would require a massive changes to deal with immortality; I have no doubts, that such makeover would be viable in principle. However, were immortality discovered in today's world, in many places it would simply conserve the existing power structure indefinitely.And we must remember that if the "immortality treatment" was discovered, people in power would be among the first ones to benefit from it. And it's likely, that after that they'd actively seek to deny it to the rest of the population, in order to keep their privileged position.

[Trakar]

The problem is that a person managing a big organization -- such as a corporation, or a state -- can do the job correctly for about 10 years (20 years tops). There is a point, after which a leader will run out of new ideas, and start chasing his own tail. The organization will stagnate...

These are issues the market resolves, not a fundemental problem of process or life-extension. Companies that adapt and change their standards will succeed and establish the model adjustments which incorparate these changes. Companies that fail to compete due to outmoded management (manufacturing automation, rapid global communications/transportation, storage and distribution warehousing, internet marketing/management/interaction, etc.,) will pass into the history books as have all the other examples of businesses (and occassionally entire industries) that cannot or will not adapt to change. No one ever claimed evolution (of any kind) was painless or without casualties. No pain, no gain!

The rest seem more speculation, than demonstrable fact.

[Ara Pacis]

Kamaz has a point. However, I think it could be overcome with proper planning. I also think that it would not necessarily be a had thing, but that's because I think there is a best solution paradigm to government that if put in place could be adequate for millenia, although I agree with rotating people out even if the structure of government stays the same.

We shouldn't rule out the number of people who will still die due to non-aging related causes. Eventually statistics may catch up to people who fly to work in their own private helicopters. Next!

[IsaacKuo]

Also, the supposedly hopeless younger population may not be in such a hurry to climb up the corporate ladder if they have centuries to do so.

I could see that progress might be slowed in some areas, but I can't imagine it to be stopped. And if people live orders of magnitude longer, what's so bad about some slowdown in progress? Each person would still see more progress in his/her own lifetime.

[SkepticJ]

That's a mixed bag. There are a lot of people we are better off without.

Immortal doesn't equal invincible, at least not in the real world. An ageless despot can still be dispatched with a knife, gun, or explosively formed penetrator.

The actions of anyone less than pure evil can be dealt with via education. Immortal Klan members, Creationists, and Glenn Beck would become irrelevant as people come around to seeing what pitiable fools they are.

[Hlafordlaes]

As a practical matter, I'd need any anti-aging to be accompanied by a way around the diminished learning capacity of the brain over time. As long as I could continue to learn with, say, mid-30's prowess, I'm OK with staying around. Else who needs a buncha whining old fogies who won't go away.

[Inclusa]

s a practical matter, I'd need any anti-aging to be accompanied by a way around the diminished learning capacity of the brain over time. As long as I could continue to learn with, say, mid-30's prowess, I'm OK with staying around. Else who needs a buncha whining old fogies who won't go away.



Hey, fight aging definitely includes fighting brain degeneration, too.

[kamaz]

The rest seem more speculation, than demonstrable fact.

It is instructive to look at Soviet leadership:

1. Stalin - born 1878 - assumed office 1922 - died 1953. Original system designer.
2. Khrushchev - born 1894 (predecessor +16 years) - in office 1953-1964: completed several major reforms
3. Brezhnev - born 1906 (predecessor +12 years) - in office 1964-1982: 1965 reform resulting in rapid economic development until 1973 (~10 years into the term), then stagnation
4. Andropov - born 1914 (predecessor +8 years) - in office 1982-1984: continued the previous policy
5. Chernenko - born 1911 (predecessor -3 years) - in office 1984-1985: continued the previous policy
6. Gorbachev - born 1931 (predecessor +20 years) - in office 1985-1991: major reformer

All, except Khrushchev, died in office.

The important lessons here is that even if you ensure that the leader is rotated out, the new leader should have a different mindset. You can see from the list above, that the reformer is usually at least 10 years younger then his predecessor. If you replace a leader with another one, but born around the same time and with similar history, you get the new guy, which is pretty much the same as the old guy (Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko). Fortunately, since aging was at work here, two immediate Brezhnev's successors have quickly cleared the stage for a younger leader. Were the leaders immortal (and only died due to helicopter crashing and backstabbing), then you'd basically have Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko cycle going for several hundreds of years until all of the old crew was cleared out.

In order to avoid this problem, you'd have to ensure that the brain of the immortal would have to indefinitely retain elasticity it has before the age of ~30. That would ensure that the person's mindset can change together with the environment. Otherwise, you get leaders which will attempt to bend the reality to their outdated mindset, for eternity. A corollary here is that if the immortality treatment was discovered, it should be only given to people under the age of 30 (before their mindset fixes permanently due to irreversible neurological changes).

[Jens]

Kamaz, the thing I would dispute with your use of the Soviet leadership is this: each of those people knew that their time was limited. If you knew that you were immortal and didn't have to achieve anything in the next 30 years to leave your name in the history books, would you bother trying to kill off your rivals? It may be that our psychology would change without that awareness.

[Trakar]

It is instructive to look at Soviet leadership:

1. Stalin - born 1878 - assumed office 1922 - died 1953. Original system designer.
2. Khrushchev - born 1894 (predecessor +16 years) - in office 1953-1964: completed several major reforms
3. Brezhnev - born 1906 (predecessor +12 years) - in office 1964-1982: 1965 reform resulting in rapid economic development until 1973 (~10 years into the term), then stagnation
4. Andropov - born 1914 (predecessor +8 years) - in office 1982-1984: continued the previous policy
5. Chernenko - born 1911 (predecessor -3 years) - in office 1984-1985: continued the previous policy
6. Gorbachev - born 1931 (predecessor +20 years) - in office 1985-1991: major reformer

All, except Khrushchev, died in office.

The important lessons here is that even if you ensure that the leader is rotated out, the new leader should have a different mindset. You can see from the list above, that the reformer is usually at least 10 years younger then his predecessor. If you replace a leader with another one, but born around the same time and with similar history, you get the new guy, which is pretty much the same as the old guy (Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko). Fortunately, since aging was at work here, two immediate Brezhnev's successors have quickly cleared the stage for a younger leader. Were the leaders immortal (and only died due to helicopter crashing and backstabbing), then you'd basically have Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko cycle going for several hundreds of years until all of the old crew was cleared out.

In order to avoid this problem, you'd have to ensure that the brain of the immortal would have to indefinitely retain elasticity it has before the age of ~30. That would ensure that the person's mindset can change together with the environment. Otherwise, you get leaders which will attempt to bend the reality to their outdated mindset, for eternity. A corollary here is that if the immortality treatment was discovered, it should be only given to people under the age of 30 (before their mindset fixes permanently due to irreversible neurological changes).

I'm not sure that your soviet leadership comparison bears any illustrative viability in application to what is being discussed, perhaps you could overlay your proposal onto the management/leadership of a major modern industry or business and help me to see the analogy you are imagining? Most of what you discuss with regards to the elimination of the aging process would essentially be a part of the process. I think you over-estimate how much of the average human brain's neural plasticity stays with most people throughout their lives (as opposed to the fervered tunnel vision devotion to ideology so prevelant among youth - cults don't target youth recruitment without a reason), regardless, if it is a symptom of the aging process, it should be minimized or eliminated when you remove the aging processes.

[kamaz]

If you knew that you were immortal and didn't have to achieve anything in the next 30 years to leave your name in the history books, would you bother trying to kill off your rivals?

Interesting point, this. You may be right.

But my main argument here is that progress (and reform) happens because new people come to the scene. If the leadership is immortal, the ability of new generation to enter the leadership is extremely limited. As evidenced by the history of Soviet, Cuban, etc. leadership, if you have the same management for over 10 years, stagnation results. The effect is hard to see in the corporate world, because there are competitive pressures to eliminate inept management. But in politics, the same management can persist for tens of years, and the effect is visible. A political leader may gain power in year 1; do major reforms by year 5; so some more reforms by year 10; and then look only after keeping his position for next ten years or more.


I'm not sure that your soviet leadership comparison bears any illustrative viability in application to what is being discussed, perhaps you could overlay your proposal onto the management/leadership of a major modern industry or business and help me to see the analogy you are imagining?

That's very simple really... Soviet Union was a corporation. Secretary General was the CEO and Politbiuro was the board; the citizens were the employees.

Alright. Imagine that you have a CEO and a board. These guys all learned doing business 50 years ago. Since their way of doing business is outdated, the company is not doing well. One day, the CEO dies/retires/is fired. Now, they need to select a new CEO. They select one of them. Soon they learn that despite the change, the company is still doing badly, because the new CEO has the exact same mindset as the old one, so the company strategy remains unchanged. The solution is to hire a younger guy, with a fresh outlook. But the problem is that, you cannot make a random guy the CEO, because the CEO must originate from among the members of the board. And the board has a fixed number of members.

And here is the catch. If a board members dies or retires, then he is replaced by younger, aspiring manager. But if the board members are immortal, they do not die or retire, and hence, no new people are allowed into the board. So the board is forever locked into the old way of doing business, until the company runs into the ground...

...Except that the company will not run into the ground, because every other company in the world also has an immortal board, i.e. the exact same problem our company does. So in effect, there is no competitive pressure to change anything. Things remain the way they are indefinitely.

[IsaacKuo]

...Except that the company will not run into the ground, because every other company in the world also has an immortal board, i.e. the exact same problem our company does. So in effect, there is no competitive pressure to change anything. Things remain the way they are indefinitely.
That's not the way the real world works. Few companies last for more than a century, and those which do last longer do so partly because they buy up potential rivals. In doing so, they can absorb some of the newer innovations.

There will always be room for some lucky startups to succeed and to either displace or be incorporated into older companies.

[Ara Pacis]

I suspect that adaptability to change can be as much a set-mind as a mind-set. The stagnation of the past politicoes may be due to holding on to theories which are believed to be true not just because they are dogmatic but because there is a lack of contrary evidence. All you need to refute your theory is to look for scientists who have made breakthroughs at ages beyond 30.

[Trakar]

That's very simple really... Soviet Union was a corporation. Secretary General was the CEO and Politbiuro was the board; the citizens were the employees...

But the comparison is ludicrous with respect to a proper and accurate portrayal, both with regards to business structure and function (at least under US law) and the manner and function of the Soviet political system. And if you distort your analogies out of all sense of reality, how do you expect them to illustrate any point effectively? More generally, such winds up as a variation of circular ad hoc reasoning.

[Ilya]

So that's your vision of immortality. Passively consuming the fruits of other people's labours. How do you plan to move humankind forward? Once there are no more future generations, that onus would fall on you to do so, unless you want to doom humankind to bloblike stagnation. This whole Kurtzweilian philosophy is essentially a paean to cow-like consumerism. Seriously; does anyone think these "uploaded" people are going to do anything but take electricity and data storage space from useful projects?
Did you miss the word "careers" in my post you were replying to?

[Ilya]

Nope, that would be an end to the humanity, and a nasty one at that.

The problem is that human power structures are hierarchical in nature. Since it takes time to advance up the ladder, the general rule is that the higher up, the older people are (there are of course exceptions). In a stable organization (i.e one which does not expand),
...and that's where your whole argument fails.

Taking the entire human species as "organization", who said it must be stable? Bill Gates did not wait for his turn in IBM's power structure -- he started Microsoft instead. Given unlimited time, any individual can start a new venture. Obviously that's not possible if energy/resources are fixed, but they are not. There is a whole universe of energy/resources out there.

[Ilya]

A corollary here is that if the immortality treatment was discovered, it should be only given to people under the age of 30 (before their mindset fixes permanently due to irreversible neurological changes).
If by "immortality treatment" you mean something done once and person stops aging, then I do not believe it will EVER happen. It amounts to reversal of entropy. OTOH, immortality treatment as something done every 20-40 years to repair aging is entirely plausible -- not too different from maintaining a car indefinitely by fixing whatever wore out since last time. Since neurological changes you are afraid of are part of "wearing out", any real immortality treatment should reverse them too.

[Ilya]

Kamaz, the thing I would dispute with your use of the Soviet leadership is this: each of those people knew that their time was limited. If you knew that you were immortal and didn't have to achieve anything in the next 30 years to leave your name in the history books, would you bother trying to kill off your rivals? It may be that our psychology would change without that awareness.
On a related note, one of the things which enable individuals like Stalin and Lenin to come into power in the first place is people's desire to "be part of something bigger than yourself". I think people who do not worry about dying would not have such desire nearly to the same degree, and would be far less willing to follow the likes of Lenin, Stalin, or Sun Myung Moon.

(as opposed to the fervered tunnel vision devotion to ideology so prevelant among youth - cults don't target youth recruitment without a reason)
That is, once that "fervered tunnel vision" I am well familiar with from my college days wears off.

[Ara Pacis]

If by "immortality treatment" you mean something done once and person stops aging, then I do not believe it will EVER happen. It amounts to reversal of entropy. OTOH, immortality treatment as something done every 20-40 years to repair aging is entirely plausible -- not too different from maintaining a car indefinitely by fixing whatever wore out since last time. Since neurological changes you are afraid of are part of "wearing out", any real immortality treatment should reverse them too.

The difference between cars and humans is that humans can regenerate from uh-ohs. An immortality treatment that makes one's body better at repairing itself may not require additional servicing.

[Ilya]

The difference between cars and humans is that humans can regenerate from uh-ohs. An immortality treatment that makes one's body better at repairing itself may not require additional servicing.
"Who watches the watchers?"

Any self-repair mechanism eventually breaks down itself. Moreover, I think keeping repair mechanism external to the body is an easier task.

[Ara Pacis]

"Who watches the watchers?"

Any self-repair mechanism eventually breaks down itself. Moreover, I think keeping repair mechanism external to the body is an easier task.

Possibly, but so far its giving us up to 110+ years.

[subcutaneous]

What makes you think this is an actual limit?

Foremost among the factors that lead to this current upperlimit on aging is that people who reach it began life when biology, medicine and healthcare were still as they were 120 years ago! They've had the benefit of truely modern medical understandings and care only during the last half century or so. Imagine the benefits of medical care and understandings a century from now. I'm at the half way point to your limit and I can see the potential for another 5 decades of healthy, active living ahead, more if medical, biological and bionic innovation and understandings progress at the pace they have over the last handful of decades. I don't think we've reached a generation that won't know natural death,...yet. But I don't see natural death as an inherent function of birth for intelligent technological species.

You can't simply conclude medical advances are the source... Granted, centenarians are very rare and 120 year olds would be case studies at best, but surely not all of them are born in first world nations, some living their whole lives in areas where running water, electricity, and doctors are all uncommon! I like to think strong family ties play a part.



I wonder how many people believe that is actually possible. It would seem foolhardy to me, because if you upload your mind to a computer and then kill off your own brain, then how are you supposed to know that the real you is the one in the computer and not the one in the brain that you just killed? And before you kill off one of them, there are two identical yous, but with different consciousnesses. Would you actually experience between two people at the same time? It seems counter-intuitive to me.

I always thought the same thing about teleportation. If we ever get around to stepping into a tube and poofing out on the other side of the planet, would it be you who steps out on the other end? For all you know you could've died in the process, and the end result is matter selectively recombined in your exact image with all your memories. For all intensive purposes it would be you, but here's where consciousness come into play.

[Trakar]

You can't simply conclude medical advances are the source... Granted, centenarians are very rare and 120 year olds would be case studies at best, but surely not all of them are born in first world nations, some living their whole lives in areas where running water, electricity, and doctors are all uncommon! I like to think strong family ties play a part.


I'm sure there's a strong genetic factor, but last I checked, there were close to 80K centenarians in the US (up from ~40K in 1990), and projected to be well over a million by mid century. Only one, unquestioned and verifiable instance of greater than 120, but quite a few that have lived, and are still currently alive, at greater than 110.

[subcutaneous]

last I checked, there were close to 80K centenarians in the US (up from ~40K in 1990), and projected to be well over a million by mid century. Only one, unquestioned and verifiable instance of greater than 120, but quite a few that have lived, and are still currently alive, at greater than 110.

That's good to know,


I'm sure there's a strong genetic factor,


I meant family ties as in social environment, as opposed to genes.

*Being a new member, I hastily posted before even thinking of reading forum rules. After reading them and criticisms by moderators to other threads, I'd like to apologize for my shoddy statements and lack of evidence!
I haven't done enough research in this area to back my views up.

[Trakar]

...I meant family ties as in social environment, as opposed to genes.


Interesting, so you are suggesting that close familial and community ties are a better indicator of geriatric health and potential longevity than the quality and character of available healthcare? Sort of,..."it takes a village to maintain its elders,"...to paraphrase Hillary. I can certainly see some merits to this line of consideration; in the absence of advanced modern medical knowledge and understandings, this approach probably does more to achieve those goals than anything else.


*Being a new member, I hastily posted before even thinking of reading forum rules. After reading them and criticisms by moderators to other threads, I'd like to apologize for my shoddy statements and lack of evidence!
I haven't done enough research in this area to back my views up.

Welcome to BAUT!
For what its worth (and that's not much given the source), my opinion is that the character of an individual who can accept, acknowledge and apologize for such minor oversights far outweighs the flaws which allowed them to make those oversights in the first place.
Go forth, produce great things!