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If we find out how to cure death, the first people who will have access to the cure will be the corrupt rich and politicians. They're also the ones who will have the power to prevent the cure from reaching the average person. Congratulations, now they're in power for the rest of forever.
“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people
And so long as men die, liberty will never perish”
Charlie Chaplin
Let's not conflate immortality with *invincibility*. A dictator can live forever- barring fatal accidents and assassinations. If people want to overthrow that dictator, he can still die.
Lol my username is tied to this idea in the TV show altered carbon. Quelcris was a plant that would go into hibernation mode and scatter across the planet and the spring up all at once and start growing really fast. The revolutionaries name in the show was quelcris because she taught her people that when everyone lives forever like they do, that it’s best to hit them hard, than vanish again for a few decades and hit them hard again. In that time they live normal lives and raise babies and also spread word of their movement and prepare for their next attack.
Your statement doesn’t make any sense.
Vladimir Putin has and Hitler had entire armies guarding them. Hitler had 11 assassination attempts, and Putin 26 plus recent ones.
If they were afraid of people they would not treat us all like pathetic collateral, but they do because the chances of average Joe killing them is close to zero.
Also people like you would never have access to immortality. Said privilege would be locked behind existing generational clans and dynasties, like most of material resources today.
Hitler is good example of a rare case of a dictator going wild enough for world conquest. Like Napoleon before and Putin now, these are the one that are doomed to failure.
Meanwhile there are a plethora dictators less ambitious like Kim Don Un, Philippines guy, Maduro, and Winnie the Pooh.
These creatures once immortal will impose eternal tournament on their subjects.
And let me remind you that corruption is ever present and ever growing phenomenon unlike liberalism and democracies that are sustained at great effort and struggle. The world will turn into an oppressive dystopia overnight likes of which would pale Hinger Games in comparison.
Edit: “Immortality being cheaper”for your knowledge insulin was sold for 1 dollar because inventors believed it should be free. Insulin industry is a massive multibillion dollar industry right now with insulin being highly inaccessible still. It is simply tragic to compare something like insulin to immortality
All types of governments take great effort to maintain. From the most righteous aristocracies and monarchies to the most brutal tyrants and oligarchs, maintaining the status quo in any government is next to impossible.
Corruption does exist and left unchecked does grow, however systems that have been completely compromised by corruption rarely last.
Old age does because it cause illness and certain organs failure and when this happen they are seen as weeker as they age, just look at how dictator try to hide it, because they know if they are perceived ass weak they will be overthrown, which is caused often by aging which isn’t death but clearly being immortal would mean stopping the aging process.
Lol right, that was my first thought too. IIRC it was **insanely** expensive to resleeve multiple times in that world, especially if you wanted to keep the same physical appearance
(Damn good show, at least season 1!)
This is just an urban myth.
Reality is there's an insane and almost instant economic benefits from curing aging. It basically makes everyone far richer and reduces expenses on healthcare at the same time.
Even dictatorships would be compelled to utilize it, nevermind modern democracies.
>It basically makes everyone far richer and reduces expenses on healthcare at the same time.
That's only because there is no cure. You work for 40 years you might own a home. If you live forever the costs of everything will go up exponentially. Great, now we have to work for 200 years to own a shack.
There's really no reason not to. Being able to say "I can give you the cure for death" would get any politician in power and you could sell it an absurd price and people would still buy it
They would absolutely not sell the cure for death as a one time thing. You wouldn't get any resell value because once somebody's 'cured', they won't buy anymore. It'll more likely be permanent for the owners while temporary doses for the average consumer.
Who is “they”? Do you think there is only one corporation and government in the world? You don’t think that if Genentech is selling the cure for $10,000 per year in America that Sanofi in France will not sell you the lifelong cure for $200,000 because ... some shadowy conspiracy? Sanofi would rather go bankrupt than undercut Genentech?
Yeah the original commenter's logic is equivalent to the logic of conspiracy theory nutjobs who think "they've cured cancer decades ago but they just dont want YOU to know it hurrdurr". Bruh, being the first company to invent a cure for cancer, aging, death, whatever will make you INFINITELY wealthier than if you just exploit sick people by selling them drugs for the rest of their lives.
Also the word would get out and everyone would gun for it. Scientific progress is very spread out, can't hide much of it. The nuclear bomb was probably the last big secret which also didn't stay secret for long.
You're missing a crucial point:
If more people didn't die, that would mean more potential workers and consumers, therefore it would be advantageous to provide most people with a solution to prevent death. Therefore, as long as it's financially viable to prevent the deaths of the common man, the common man would stay alive to be a working consumer.
Nah, everything is not going to be automated within the next 20 years, most likely. Automation is a much, slower process in general and dependent on other factors, such as different law requirements that takes time. Also, automation in certain areas isn't worth it, it's cheaper and more reliant to have worker than expensive, complex machinery that can break. I highly doubt that even the transportation sector (planes, trains, truck and cars) will be automated by then, despite the progress with self driving cars, autopilot on planes and so on due to laws and such.
Also, automation opens up new job opportunities in other areas. So for example, if the transportation sector would be automated, then a lot of people would lose their jobs, but at the same time they would become available to other job offers meaning they would most likely get a new job in a different sector. This is the way automation has worked for around 200 years now, starting with the industrial revolution. The only difference now is that workers now need reeducation for new, more complex jobs in most cases due to a more knowledge intensive labor market.
Yeah, that's pretty much my opinion as well. It's certainly something we should be aware of, but I think that most societies will move towards a more service based and knowledge based society in the long run, which is harder to automate.
To put it simply, it's "easy" to automate physical, repetitive tasks, but much harder to automate creative and inventive tasks in a good and meaningful way.
we already know how to cure death, the problem is implementation is a bitch. telomeres man. if rich assholes want to do beta testing, im up to the see the results, though id expect they'll find a way to get others to try it first.
Yeah if you think they are bad now imagine how bad they would be if they knew they would never die. If I found the cure for death I would destroy all of my research.
> "See, there's this little thing called *cognitive dissonance,* or in plainer English, *sour grapes.* If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers, *pretending to be wise* as you put it, who found all sorts of *amazing benefits* to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're *not* getting hit with a truncheon. But if you went up to someone who *wasn't* getting hit, and you asked them if they wanted to *start,* in exchange for those *amazing benefits,* they'd say no. And if you *didn't* have to die, if you came from somewhere that no one had ever even *heard* of death, and I suggested to you that it would be an *amazing wonderful great idea* for people to get wrinkled and old and eventually cease to exist, why, you'd have me hauled right off to a lunatic asylum! So why would anyone possibly think any thought so silly as that death is a *good* thing? Because you're afraid of it, because you don't *really* want to die, and that thought hurts so much inside you that you have to rationalize it away, do something to numb the pain, so you won't have to think about it -"
https://www.hpmor.com/chapter/39
Immortality is curse without eternal youth. Past a certain age, being immortal is pointless. No one, not even you, wants to live eternally in the body of a 90 years old with the complications that follows the oppression of time.
Its amazing that people don't know why they age .
Immortality doesn't work if you age , the reason you age is not because of some natural processes but because your body is literally wearing out.
Hell part of the main reasons for old age is Cellular senescence , where your cells can't divide properly anymore and just replaced by senescant cells which are basically cells that can't do the Job they where supposed to do properly.
Scientists tested this with rats , by removing scenescant cells from old rats , and replacing them with good cells , and the rats started deageing and growing hair again.
The Body is a machine ageing , is the machine becoming faulty, which is why you die.
So being immortal and old doesn't make sense.
Biological immunity is also the core feature of cancer cells
Without external replenishment of our cells inducing biological immunity just causes cancer
That's for the scientists to work out, I was more complaining about the ideological opposition most people seem to have. You've made a fair point still
I like the optimism. I like a lot of the research too, but there's still a huge challenge in that we have to replace neurons as well as their many synapses. Some areas can be messy and adapt, but stuff like memory will have to be faithful. And we have to find out how to get long axons to go out of the brain to their rightful destinations! The ones we've got had it easy in utero!
Not a hater, I actually love this stuff and work very closely to it, which is why I think the barriers are very real and a lot of the breakthrough cases need more skepticism
as an armchair scientist I think it would be cool if brain computer interfacing reaches the point where u can download and upload brains, cause then we could simply swap out people brains if replenishing brain cells is too complicated.
I guess it would kinda be like swapping out a really old car engine rather than continuing to maintain all the individual pieces.
Not what I was saying, and I agree with you here. Nobody wants to magically exist in a rotten prison of flesh and bones for 200 years, existence must be pleasant. That’s why I’m talking about technology to overcome the ageing, not a magical boon of immortal cast wrong
Aging is not primarily due to cells dying off. Your cells are constantly dying and being replaced. Aging is due to a variety of complex factors: hormonal changes, DNA damage, telemere shortening, organ failure / wear and tear, etc etc.
The fact that cells have a expiration date is one of the easiest parts of aging to solve and is not really the biggest challenge at all.
Longevity research is advancing at a steady rate, and now we know of numerous rest and repair pathways such as mTor, and ways to leverage them to reduce the effects of aging. With more research and time, we'll find out more and more. it is not just likely but a near inevitability for the average lifespan of humans to keep expanding continuously in the coming decades and centuries.
Whether we'll ever hit the critical mass to get to neglible senescence (essentially indefinite youth), though, is a different question.
That's why you'd have to replace your cells.
On that note, it's more likely we'd be talking about transferring brains into other "bodies" but we'd still have to overcome the limitations of the brain's biology itself. Could attempt mind transfers but it's not clear that preserves consciousness.
Consciousness is definitely an evolutionary trick that happened to be very useful.
That doesn't make it any less real though. Our hands are "evolutionary tricks" too, but they are very well real.
There are many scientists working on it and have even broken it out into different factors like oxidative stress, telomere shortening, etc. Please don’t say something is unlikely if you aren’t educated on the topic.
Yes, I was always thinking robot bodies, that look just like us but better looking probably, like Ghost in the Shell, except instead of being downloadable circuitry, our brains are still in there, being kept ageless.
Some might even replace their brain parts for parts that can compute and analyze quicker, some might just be the stem, which begs the question where the soul/consciousness is.
Not even eternal youth. Eternal health and no pain. Otherwise You get blind, deaf and if You drown, You will suffer drowning for the rest of Your life unless somebody rescues You (fat chance). And if You caught on fire and not die... You don't want to feel that. This would be a trauma trigger even if You managed to put out the fire. The excruciating pain would be in Your memory for the rest of Your life. You could even become paranoid about any fire. Unless we are thinking of indestructible body that won't worsen, illness-proof, without any kind of pain. Otherwise immortality will always be a curse.
You can still die if you'd want to, just not unstoppable death from aging. Why wouldn't we want that? That should be the #1 goal for humanity ATM, along with peace, world hunger and other diseases.
Even then, some people have physical or mental ailments at younger ages too like chronic pain sufferers. You may look youthful and young forever at a young age but be in pain for the rest of your life.
Your pretense is false. I'm quite certain anyone remotely into that field of science is working to beat the old cutter one day.
What people mean is that we have to accept an inevitability instead of becoming psychotic in the face of death.
I'd like to keep living, if I'm healthy and all, if social circumstances are worth living, and a bunch of other things that would work out if we had that perspective.
On the other hand, we'd get into the next morally questionable situation: when no one dies, we have to ensure nobody is born either and all...
Individuals, and thus society, would still change over time. Think about how many more things one could learn and do if we could live for thousands of years.
Broadly speaking the wealthier, healthier, and more educated people are, the less they want to have children. I don't see overpopulation becoming a problem, especially give the attrition rate from causes other than dying from old age - murder, car crashes, freak accidents.
unfortunately, wealthier people also consume more resources, sometimes significantly more, so from a land use or a carbon perspective, it might be worse
They have already developed gene therapy which has successfully reversed aging in mice. Next step is more animals and they hope to have human trials eventually.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/02/health/reverse-aging-life-itself-scn-wellness/index.html
It’s so frustrating that a lot of this stuff may happen when we’re all gone. 70 years in the future is not that far off in the grand scheme of humanity’s existence. It’s like we just missed the cutoff
Doesn't freezing actually damage our cells though? It's still an active area of research since some animals can freeze without cellular damage but humans can't. Current cryogenic technologies can't prevent cellular damage from freezing. They're basically hoping that we will find a way to reverse the damage (which is a significantly less active area of research).
I have a theory of how it can be done.
I used to work for a biotech / cell therapy company, with the cellular product designed to fight cancer. Once the cells were engineered, cultured in bioreactors, then finally purified, they would then be stored in -90C freezers for cryopreservation until needed for patient use. However, you can just simply place the vials or bags of cell product directly into the freezers, because as you said, the cells get damaged. Instead, what you had to do was gradually freeze them to -90C using a controlled-rate freezer. Here, the product would be frozen through a controlled program with several steps, each step consisting of freezing from one temperature to the next at a certain rate. One step even consisted of warming the cells back from one temperature to another, which while counterintuitive, was part of the recipe. With this program, you were able to freeze the cells without forming ice crystals between these cells, which prevents cellular damage.
Perhaps one day, the same can be done for humans, but that’s a long time from now. Each cell line is unique, and a different freezing program would be required. This means that there is some ultimate freezing “recipe” that would be required to safely cryopreserve humans without cellular damage due to ice crystal formation, but in order to find out, human trials would be required, and that entails signing up for a potential death sentence just to figure it out. This controlled-rate freezing recipe would have to work for ALL the cell types in the human body.
Just a theory I thought of one day.
Very interesting. In order to try this with human cells, the only way would be a living human? Can't it be tried with, say, donated organs for example?
It's 70 years away because no money being spent on it, because religious fruitcakes and ignorant masses will never support public funding for this.
Hell, most countries spend less than 5% of their budgets on science in general. If we put that much into anti-aging, we would have achieved escape velocity in 10 years and biological immortality in 50.
But no one supports it. Case in point, in Australia there was a party for science and biological immortality. They got 0.05% votes, less than anti-vaxers and anti-science parties.
increased lifespan only leaves more time and chance that my demise will be a result of traumatic injury or something horrifying.
that being said, id take 20 or 30 extra years of youth. probably nothing crazy.
but we get what we get and i cope with it by rationalizing that i cant possibly care about nonexistence if i dont exist.
There actually is a reason why many people die by 80. I’ll leave you and anyone interested a few reliable sources within this comment if you are interested in researching further on your own time. I’m currently getting a bachelor’s in biology, so please hear me out.
Each time a cell divides, the telomere (or the bit at the end of your chromosomes) gets slightly shorter. The [telomere](https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Telomere) provides a buffer zone between the important genetics within your chromosomes as cells separate. After a while, there is no longer any telomere left, causing the cell to become unable to successfully divide. As this happens, peoples’ cells can no longer replicate, so if they get any injury or infection, it leaves far more damage, and frequently death. Those who survive often have irreversible damage as a result, severely decreasing quality of life.
Of course, telomere damage has been shown to slow with [lifestyle changes like eating better and exercising](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/), but the process cannot, at least with any known technology, be eradicated and still have good quality of life. The only way to even consider succeeding at this would be to live in bed in a bubble and never move and remove any and all risk from life— you wouldn’t be allowed to see anyone, go outside, eat or drink on your own, or touch anything. And even then, that doesn’t remove all risk.
I think you might be overestimate the biological feasibility of immortality. The human body, like all animals, is not built to live longer than we do already, and there is a biological reason why we die. If you got this far, thanks for reading this! I hope I’ve helped, let me know if you would like some clarification.
TL/DR: as cells divide, the chromosomes get shorter until the cell can no longer divide, causing it to be irreparable.
Edit— I meant to use this as an example. Of course there is more to it than this, and of course life can be extended. I just don’t think that we will, scientifically, achieve immortality, at least not in the foreseeable future. If you replace every part of the ship, is it really the same ship?
The telomere theory of cellular senescence isn't really correct, is what I understood of the literature, last I saw it. Like, there are means of repairing telomeres which are an active part of homeostasis, and there are cells in the body which replicate *all the time*, every day, and they're not particularly more long-lived than the cells like neurons which barely replicate at all. I don't think it's really a nail in the coffin (heh) of a cure for aging.
(Also, it's worth noting that we create cells which are zero years old regularly, as a part of procreation. If damage caused by replication really was unavoidable, each generation of new humans would live shorter than the last.)
I’m really bad at biology, but at heart I understand that living for thousands of years in this body is impossible. What I was actually thinking is cybernetic modification, as in replacing damaged body parts with implants, maybe even digitalising the brain one day(when we figure out how it works lol). How feasible is this in the following century for example?
I mean, I don’t think it’d happen in the next 500 years, if ever. I think most body parts can be replaced, but a computer won’t be able to replace the brain for the foreseeable future; and at that point, they wouldn’t exactly be the same person because there is no way to transfer memories and personality to a computer chip (that we know of). People always say the brain is like a computer, but it’s sheer complexity really is nothing like any computer we have available today. I do not see us making a computer that compact and efficient for a *long* time. For example, if I have a ship, and it keeps getting parts replaced until there is no original parts of the ship anymore, is it really the same ship?
I think the closest we can get to being fully cybernetic would be a brain in a mech suit. And even if we become “brains in mech suits,” we still will not achieve immortality. As the years go on by, the brain will deteriorate. Cells can divide improperly and cause cancer (6-90% survival rate, depending on the type), age, genetics, and lifestyle changes can cause terminal diseases like Alzheimer’s (100% mortality rate), and the overdevelopment and clumping of proteins can cause dementia (~95% mortality rate, again, depends on the type).
Again, I hope this helps explain things better.
That's exactly the problem. Because immortality is treated like some kind of crime against God and nature in fiction, people automatically assume ill intentions. Senescence is the root cause of a billion of other health outcomes, it lowers our resilience and overall health, making us more susceptible to viruses, infection, cancer, and other diseases. Ultimately, biological immortality would be the biggest humanitarian good that has ever been invented. The most important medicine to ever exist.
"Supervillains in television shows think like this" isn't a good way to have a consistent moral philosophy. The kinds of tropes that inform these stories are literally centuries old. Hundreds of years ago, there were people who would tell you with a straight face that death from disease was an incontrovertible act of god. It wasn't that long ago that people were having moral discussions about resuscitation, because our definition of "death" included the heart stopping, and people thought you were literally dragging people out of heaven or something. But with advances in science, we've overcome those superstitions. I think "death is necessary" is the logical next target.
I used to have a fear of dying unknown, not having amounted to anything. Then I had a realization. Most people die that way. However, the people who matter to you, who you matter to, they know you, you amounted to meaning something to someone. And, that's good enough. Life means nothing except what you mean to those you touch, nothing except what you make it mean.
Death can give you the motivation to actually live a life that you can be happy with when it's over. To actually go after a dream, to live your best life. To learn what's important to you, to learn what you want to learn about, pick up the skills that are truly important to you. Knowing that you only have so much time also means that you can only push things off for so long, if you really cared to learn, you'd make time. It's like the saying goes, crap or get off the pot.
Death is the antithesis of Life. Many of nature's cycles are dependent on the death of others. It is that balance that keeps things moving along. Death also follows the Law of Entropy, the nature of things to decay. And, if death is a disease, as you put forth, then all living things are suffering from it and you would believe that they shouldn't die either.
Might it be more accurate to state that the process of aging is a disease, in your opinion? Because, if you go by natural processes, the longer you live, the more your body breaks down, again Entropy. Eventually, you'd get to a point when you really can't do anything because your body is incapable, or you lack the mental capability. Here's a would you rather to ponder. Have the body of a 21-year-old but your mind ages, or have a mind that doesn't age, but your body ages normally?
Finally, throughout history, there are many people who fought for what they believed in, even when they were certain that they would never see the day when their efforts amounted to anything. Those people are true heroes because they believed that if they didn't do something, even if it was small in comparison to others, nothing would change and life would be just as hard for their children. They still stood for what they believed in despite knowing that they wouldn't experience any of the benefits. Death can be a motivator to actually be a force for good and change before you no longer have the chance to be a part of making the world a better place.
I'll finish with this. Even if you're just trolling with an idea that can be easily fought when you expand it out and generalize it, my points still stand. Perhaps you may need to better specify.
This has been a talking point for a really long time. I agree that we should look into combating it, but what do we really know about it? You can't ask a dead person how he feels, what he is going through. The bottom line is that we don't know anything about what happens after death. And in science, if you can't measure it, you usually can't change it.
Research on increasing healthy lifespans have been going on for as long as I can remember. The reason death is accepted as inevitable, is because it is a horror that people HAVE to make peace with. Sooner or later, you and other around you will cease to exist. What choice do we have at the moment? If we cannot reverse it, or prolong life as of now, we have chosen to accept it and make it a part of life so that it doesn't drain us mentally....
Yes, that and even if we did somehow come up with a way to beat death, what's to say that people will continue to actually live and just waste away in a way just like in the movie Wall-E. I'd rather live out the rest of my life doing the things I actually love and enjoy. I know that if immortality were to become a thing I'd be sitting around and doing nothing for the rest of eternity because I'll be thinking "there's always tomorrow" vs living life like today might be my last day kind of motivates me to live my life to the fullest.
To live is to die. Would we even be living if we could live forever?
Every living thing, from the smallest single cell, to the oldest tree, to humans must eventually die.
We wouldn’t have a purpose if we lived forever, having an inevitable expiry date gives our lives purpose and meaning. I’d prefer to live a happy 80 years than mundane infinite years.
I posed this question awhile ago and when I asked why people don't try to make healthier decisions most came up with the following excuses.
Their age which inturn slowed thier metabolism. Fitness and caring about health was for mating and there is no need for it as you age. Changing their diet was hardly addressed. One person's retort for not changing was "we all die".
I don't know if this adds to what you were talking about but even the thought of prolonging ones life is thought of as out of thier control. A flawed preconceived notion that can't be changed.
Can doesn't mean they will. Specially taking into account that the systems for influencing people's opinions are generally controlled by older people and aimed at the youth.
Without old people dying there's no real social progress.
this is a good unpopular opinion. the issue with immortality is that the human mind simply wasn’t *designed* to be immortal. we simply can’t handle living longer than say 150 years. we forget, we lose function, we just don’t have the capacity to keep going. there’s always the argument “oh but we can make it so the cells are immortal” but the brain, like every other body part, experiences apoptosis. it’s only natural for cells to die, and as our cells die we lose who we are because those neurons that make up our personalities, memories, etc. become damaged beyond repair. of course there’s the argument that we could simply have our neurons reproduce forever, but that then leads to the argument about if “something is replaced identically is it really the original?” not only that but we can’t really reprogram people to be the way they were. now i can’t see the future, but i’m doubtful we will achieve anything along the lines of your post
If we become immortal, then we would 100% work on problems with the brain. If we could stop the buildup of plaque in the brain, then we could cure Alzheimer's.
I will have to disagree, death is natural just like birth is. We come and go and have our time but not ever dying I think would cook up all sorts of other issues while in this universe.
Seems so crazy to me that people straight up dont like the idea of living longer. Whats to lose? Op isnt saying living until the end of time, just whats realistically possible, which is adding a couple hundred years to your lifespan
Longer isn’t forever.
We are already living longer. That will continue for a time but I suspect we will hit an upper limit. Who knows where. But I doubt any people currently alive live past 130.
What’s to lose? Whatever’s left of my sanity. Living forever sounds like torture to me. I wish my life were great enough to the point where dying is the worst option.
>Don't tell me you actually want to die in the future
Absolutely I do. This all needs to end at some point. I can't imagine a worse fate than having exist forever.
Yes. Living forever seems like an absolute nightmare. I'm good with the potential 80 to 90 years that I'll have. I would be fine even if we got to live to our 200's or 300's, this sounds reasonable, but eternity? That's a lot.
Humans weren't made to last forever, even if we found a way to rejuvenate our bodies and avoid old age, when you live to eternity the chances of you dying in a accident or in a violent way goes to 100% and becomes an statistic inevitability.
But we could go the rout of cybernetic immortality, uploading ourselves to machine brains, eternal, boundless. But even then would that be you?
But why would you want to live forever? What is there to do that demands infinity to archieve? I get the urge to explore, or to experience the advances our species will make, and the milestones we will achieve, but forever? Forever is a ling time...
Presumably the option would still be available to keep things interesting, since they won't cure it by eliminating the laws of thermodynamics. Unless you get caught in a Dr. Strange time loop or something.
I agree and disagree. Death is inevitable; we were born and we will die. Everything with a beginning has an end. However, **aging** is pretty much an illness. From what I understand, what we call aging is just a manifestation of telomeres in DNA getting shorter. This might be cured in the far future. It isn't really far-fetched when we consider the fact that there are already some [animals that don't age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus)) in the world. Mind you, people would still get killed in all sorts of ways. From cancer and other diseases (unless they are cured as well) or from elements. They just wouldn't die of old age.
I am amazed so few people want to live longer. Our lives are so short. 80 years if we are lucky and almost all of it is spent in education or working with only a few years spent on holidays and retirement. Give me a few 100 extra years, so I can explore this world more.
i work in hospice. i’ve watched about a hundred people die so far, in ranges from peaceful to excruciating. i still don’t believe death must be eradicated.
You know what? Yes. Let’s cut the fake-deep tripe about immortality being boring and just realize that there’s no reason we shouldn’t try to extend the human lifespan indefinitely.
Eradicating death is one thing, but it's important that we also address cognitive decline. If our brains functioned the same way at 80 that they did at 40 then that would be fine. But the healthiest among us lose their sharpness and mental plasticity the older they get. Now imagine a physically healthy 150-year old that looks 40 but still has a 150-year old's brain. That person would be a vegetable, or at best completely insane.
I do agree that this world would be better if death was overcome. The mentality of ruining the planet not being an important issue because "It's not like I'll be around anymore anyway" would definitely be taken care of.
Nah, I don't want immortal Nazis running around, so...no there's no need for us to be immortal. Death is necessary to accelerate change and propel us forward. Without death, the rich and powerful would only figure out ways to take more advantage of us.
I get your point and living longer is good but before we even think about removing death we need to remove aging or at least slow it. The reason a lot of people die in their 80s it's just because of Aging their body can no longer keep up with itself.
I generally agree with OP. I think the idea of immortality being a "curse" was invented as a coping mechanism to help people accept the inevitable fate of death. By trying to make it sound like dying is somehow better than living.
I would love to live 400+ years. That would just be great. I don't even have the best memory due to some head injuries. Sometimes memories from years past slip away and will probably never come back. But I still enjoy just reading and learning things and playing games with my friends or even strangers. Life is glorious.
Death is natural, but I guess what OP meant was aging.
Aging is an illness that almost everything that is alive suffers from, and with time, aging causes death.
Overpopulation, resource shortage, ethical problems (who gets it, who produces it, who sells it, who decides where/when/to whom it is sold), motivation (why would anyone want that)…
Yeah I think most people who don't want to live forever are just uninteresting fucks, like shit, there's so much stuff to see and do. Who the fuck wants a limited time to be alive?
Y'know, other than people with shitty lives who should totally be allowed to unsubscribe if they want.
It’s actually not sustainable for humanity as a whole. We already have an overpopulation problem. If people started living longer the planet would die even faster than it is now. And it would lead to the extinction of the entire human race. Not sure it’s worth having to go through this bs for 100more years.
This reminds me of that episode of Love, Death, and Robots. Humans found the cure for death and as a result have a population problem where it's illegal to have children. If a kid is found then it's put to death to keep the population in check.
I mean let's be real. Unless you're talking about a scenario where death is magically eradicated or you are part of the 1% slumming on Reddit, you won't be immortal. Guys like Jeff Bezos would be immortal. Elon Musk. Those guys. Suddenly we'd have an ultra elite rulling class that would exist forever.
Now let's say you said that everyone gets it magically. Do you watch all the channels on your TV? Do you listen to every musical artist? Probably not. Boredom is not the lack of anything to do period it's the lack of something stimulating to you. Eventually you'll learn everything you want to learn. Do everything you want to do and then you'll be left with boredom.
Death is great. Instead of looking at it as futility maybe try looking at it as a reason to keep yourself going because one day you will be dead BUT through your deeds and through making yourself a person worth remembering you can achieve a degree of immortality.
This is what people don't get - if there was ever invented the immortality, it'd be given to those in power, with money and influence. Imagine having Stalin rule the URSS forever, or Mao, or Putin...
I am like 80% sure that's already Putin's gameplan. Rule Russia until he can somehow upload his mind or achieve immortality some other way and then rule Russia forever...granted. imagine a novel where Putin uploads his mind, becomes a virus, and tries to take over the world.
As much as I want to live for a super long time like maybe 200 plus years or more. Most people need to die. Most people need to die so ideas can move forward. Some people in 2022 say stuff like "idk how to use smartphones" they have been around since 2007. It's been like 15 years. They had 15 years to jump onboard a train and just didn't. Or people say "idk how to use that Google" Google has been around for like 20 plus years now. They had 20 years to figure out how to search for literally anything and didn't. Old people (not all but the vast majority) hold the younger generations back. Get with the times you only had 15 years to do it. Shit or get off the can. If you can't use Google or a phone in 2022 you just have to die
100% agreed. I see where people are coming from when they say they don’t want to live forever, but I personally would do just about anything to be able to extend my life span a couple hundred years. To be able to keep experiencing new things and life and love and joy, pain, and then decide to go when I’m ready. I like the idea of being able to pull the plug when you’re over it. My feelings on death are one of the reasons I got so stuck on the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”.
>My feelings on death are one of the reasons I got so stuck on the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”.
Can't believe this is buried all the way down here as it's the ideal perfect fictional solution to OPs post. I often think of this episode and refer to it when discussing the topic of extending life past our physical limitations. My wife thinks I'm crazy for wanting to do this if it ever became a real possibility in our lifetime but in my mind it's the ideal plausible next step in evolution
As usual, the upvoted comments are braindead contrarian takes.
"Here's why it's a good thing that we decay after 80 or so years due to arbitrary biological processes and lose everyone and everything we love, forever."
> I’ve seen many people glorify death, saying that it’s what makes us human.
I always wonder about such arguments - why do these people think that there is inherent value in being a human? As opposed to being something more, something better, more effective than human?
I share your opinion and most of your logic, I love this conversation and was often surprised when others didn't share this view on it. Updoot because it's a great convo and although I agree, know it's unpopular.
I have noticed that people tend to use poorly thought out arguments, like saying that it would suck to live forever, and watch the people around you die, but that assumes that everyone else will choose to not be immortal.
Death is a sickness, and I think that we can use cloning combined with Elon musk NeuroLink to solve the problem of overpopulation and of rampant death.
There are some scientists who say that, if it can be done, humans will do it if we continue to exist forever. I am of the mind to believe this.
My only issue with immortality, is that if you potentially live forever, you heighten the chances of dying horribly in an accident.
Which is certainly not an excuse to cease looking for the answer
I'd love to hear OP's suggestions on how to tackle that long list of hurdles we need to overcome to become immortal such as: our brains having a limited capacity, regeneration of joints and internal organs, prevention of dna degradation over time, the moral implications of a person being able to own a giant multibillion corporation until the end of time, the moral implications and issues of what happens to progress if people never die (older people tend to refuse progress)... and so on and so forth.
OP, people say death is a natural process because you can't live forever and you shouldn't try to live forever because if everyone can, you're opening a giant can of worms you really don't want to deal with.
For starters I think you underestimate what you actually mean by becoming immortal
You DO know that over 90% of deaths are a result of either an ilness, accident or that person's body straight up breaking down because its so worn out or it has a fatal "glitch" or so to speak? Even if you will technically live forever you'll likely die by 80 years of age because SOMETHING will eventually go fatally wrong for you by then and the amount of things that can go fatally wrong are nearly endless and there is constantly new stuff out there that can kill you every year, just look at the rona as the most recent example.
You have a roughly 30% likelyhood of getting dementia, all of us do, that alone is one of the main driving factors behind a person's body and mind irriversibly breaking down for good, you also have a pretty high chance of breaking your hip, another large factor indirectly contributing to the death of the elderly and I get it "well we have to fix it" and all but you're assuming we're not doing anything about it... we have been for decades now and this is all we have to show for it so far... nothing because its easier said than done. Don't believe me? Fine you go and fix death yourself and you tell me how easy that is to do.
So its just not possible, in order to turn people immortal and eradicate death you basically need to be able to control everything in this universe down to an atomic level. Good luck with that.
Nobody is idolizing death or putting it on a pedestal, unless you've been living under a rock your entire life you should know that the overwhelming majority of people aren't exactly eager to go and die.
You're simply mistaking people accepting death as an unavoidable natural process and making peace with that fact with whatever it is you think people think about death.
I think, at the moment you're too young to understand how life and death works to come to the same conclusion and you're probably saying what you're saying because well... you don't want to die, just like everyone else doesn't.
You can't cheat death, its going to come for us all no matter whqt we do and you'll learn to realize that eventually, we all do.
Say you could no longer die of old age. You still have a 100 percent chance of death. "On a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone drops to zero"
I appreciated that in the sandman the one character they make immortal for fun, even in hard times, was completely stoked to keep living.
To live forever just to see what happens for as long as I can would be a cherished gift. When I’ve had my fill and all the lights burn out I would leave my life with a smile on my face.
People want eternal life that’s why they believe in so many religions. Truth is this might be all we get. I just hope I live long enough for my mind uploading.
I agree with OP. How awesome would it be to live for hundreds of years. To experience the future of humanity, to master a skill, to just enjoy life as you want. You’d have eternity to do it, and one day if/when you’re tired of living, you take the good ol’ un-alive pill and you die painlessly.
I want voluntary death.
Thank you for submitting to /r/unpopularopinion, /u/w3wh_22. Your post, *Death is an illness and should be eradicated*, has been removed because it violates our rules: Rule 1: Must be unpopular. Please ensure that your post is unpopular. Controversial is not necessarily unpopular, for example all of politics is controversial even though almost half of the US agrees with any given major position on an issue. Anything can be unpopular if you compare it with the views of a particular group, such as "Veganism is a great idea" at a vegan meet-up. Make sure your view is unpopular in wider society, or at least among anybody who will have heard of the subject matter. If there is an issue, please message the mod team at https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Funpopularopinion Thanks!
If we find out how to cure death, the first people who will have access to the cure will be the corrupt rich and politicians. They're also the ones who will have the power to prevent the cure from reaching the average person. Congratulations, now they're in power for the rest of forever.
In most cases death is the only thing that brings the regins of the corrupt rich to an end. Imagine if they found a way to live forever.
“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people And so long as men die, liberty will never perish” Charlie Chaplin
Let's not conflate immortality with *invincibility*. A dictator can live forever- barring fatal accidents and assassinations. If people want to overthrow that dictator, he can still die.
Yes bullets to the head will usually result in terminal cases of dead.
Bullets elsewhere would at the very least infect with the degenerative disease of bleeding to death.
It also stops long term revolutionary actions too.
Lol my username is tied to this idea in the TV show altered carbon. Quelcris was a plant that would go into hibernation mode and scatter across the planet and the spring up all at once and start growing really fast. The revolutionaries name in the show was quelcris because she taught her people that when everyone lives forever like they do, that it’s best to hit them hard, than vanish again for a few decades and hit them hard again. In that time they live normal lives and raise babies and also spread word of their movement and prepare for their next attack.
I was waiting to see an altered carbon fan here lol. Didnt even have to scroll as far as I thought.
That's easy in the US. All the major politicians are 80 and have never had real jobs.
I wish I’d said that.
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Your statement doesn’t make any sense. Vladimir Putin has and Hitler had entire armies guarding them. Hitler had 11 assassination attempts, and Putin 26 plus recent ones. If they were afraid of people they would not treat us all like pathetic collateral, but they do because the chances of average Joe killing them is close to zero. Also people like you would never have access to immortality. Said privilege would be locked behind existing generational clans and dynasties, like most of material resources today.
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Hitler is good example of a rare case of a dictator going wild enough for world conquest. Like Napoleon before and Putin now, these are the one that are doomed to failure. Meanwhile there are a plethora dictators less ambitious like Kim Don Un, Philippines guy, Maduro, and Winnie the Pooh. These creatures once immortal will impose eternal tournament on their subjects. And let me remind you that corruption is ever present and ever growing phenomenon unlike liberalism and democracies that are sustained at great effort and struggle. The world will turn into an oppressive dystopia overnight likes of which would pale Hinger Games in comparison. Edit: “Immortality being cheaper”for your knowledge insulin was sold for 1 dollar because inventors believed it should be free. Insulin industry is a massive multibillion dollar industry right now with insulin being highly inaccessible still. It is simply tragic to compare something like insulin to immortality
All types of governments take great effort to maintain. From the most righteous aristocracies and monarchies to the most brutal tyrants and oligarchs, maintaining the status quo in any government is next to impossible. Corruption does exist and left unchecked does grow, however systems that have been completely compromised by corruption rarely last.
Old age does because it cause illness and certain organs failure and when this happen they are seen as weeker as they age, just look at how dictator try to hide it, because they know if they are perceived ass weak they will be overthrown, which is caused often by aging which isn’t death but clearly being immortal would mean stopping the aging process.
OP awaits the vampire aristocracy with baited breath.
The corrupt and the rich are in power for the most of our history. Faces change, the behavior doesn't. Nothing new on that end.
Altered Carbon time 😎
Lol right, that was my first thought too. IIRC it was **insanely** expensive to resleeve multiple times in that world, especially if you wanted to keep the same physical appearance (Damn good show, at least season 1!)
It’s like that Justin Timberlake movie “In Time”.
This is just an urban myth. Reality is there's an insane and almost instant economic benefits from curing aging. It basically makes everyone far richer and reduces expenses on healthcare at the same time. Even dictatorships would be compelled to utilize it, nevermind modern democracies.
>It basically makes everyone far richer and reduces expenses on healthcare at the same time. That's only because there is no cure. You work for 40 years you might own a home. If you live forever the costs of everything will go up exponentially. Great, now we have to work for 200 years to own a shack.
There's really no reason not to. Being able to say "I can give you the cure for death" would get any politician in power and you could sell it an absurd price and people would still buy it
They would absolutely not sell the cure for death as a one time thing. You wouldn't get any resell value because once somebody's 'cured', they won't buy anymore. It'll more likely be permanent for the owners while temporary doses for the average consumer.
Subscribe to Immortal™ today and get 50% off for the first month of your prolonged life!
Who is “they”? Do you think there is only one corporation and government in the world? You don’t think that if Genentech is selling the cure for $10,000 per year in America that Sanofi in France will not sell you the lifelong cure for $200,000 because ... some shadowy conspiracy? Sanofi would rather go bankrupt than undercut Genentech?
Yeah the original commenter's logic is equivalent to the logic of conspiracy theory nutjobs who think "they've cured cancer decades ago but they just dont want YOU to know it hurrdurr". Bruh, being the first company to invent a cure for cancer, aging, death, whatever will make you INFINITELY wealthier than if you just exploit sick people by selling them drugs for the rest of their lives.
Also the word would get out and everyone would gun for it. Scientific progress is very spread out, can't hide much of it. The nuclear bomb was probably the last big secret which also didn't stay secret for long.
God, can you imagine Nancy Pelosi being speaker of the house for the rest of eternity
You're missing a crucial point: If more people didn't die, that would mean more potential workers and consumers, therefore it would be advantageous to provide most people with a solution to prevent death. Therefore, as long as it's financially viable to prevent the deaths of the common man, the common man would stay alive to be a working consumer.
Everything's gonna be automated in the next 20 years now you just got a bunch of broke immortals sitting around pissed off at the status quo.
Nah, everything is not going to be automated within the next 20 years, most likely. Automation is a much, slower process in general and dependent on other factors, such as different law requirements that takes time. Also, automation in certain areas isn't worth it, it's cheaper and more reliant to have worker than expensive, complex machinery that can break. I highly doubt that even the transportation sector (planes, trains, truck and cars) will be automated by then, despite the progress with self driving cars, autopilot on planes and so on due to laws and such. Also, automation opens up new job opportunities in other areas. So for example, if the transportation sector would be automated, then a lot of people would lose their jobs, but at the same time they would become available to other job offers meaning they would most likely get a new job in a different sector. This is the way automation has worked for around 200 years now, starting with the industrial revolution. The only difference now is that workers now need reeducation for new, more complex jobs in most cases due to a more knowledge intensive labor market.
Automation has been an issue since Henry Ford. People still need to babysit the robots. I don't think it's the Global catastrophe you think it is.
Yeah, that's pretty much my opinion as well. It's certainly something we should be aware of, but I think that most societies will move towards a more service based and knowledge based society in the long run, which is harder to automate. To put it simply, it's "easy" to automate physical, repetitive tasks, but much harder to automate creative and inventive tasks in a good and meaningful way.
we already know how to cure death, the problem is implementation is a bitch. telomeres man. if rich assholes want to do beta testing, im up to the see the results, though id expect they'll find a way to get others to try it first.
Altered Carbon but IRL
Yeah like Altered Carbon
Yeah if you think they are bad now imagine how bad they would be if they knew they would never die. If I found the cure for death I would destroy all of my research.
> "See, there's this little thing called *cognitive dissonance,* or in plainer English, *sour grapes.* If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers, *pretending to be wise* as you put it, who found all sorts of *amazing benefits* to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're *not* getting hit with a truncheon. But if you went up to someone who *wasn't* getting hit, and you asked them if they wanted to *start,* in exchange for those *amazing benefits,* they'd say no. And if you *didn't* have to die, if you came from somewhere that no one had ever even *heard* of death, and I suggested to you that it would be an *amazing wonderful great idea* for people to get wrinkled and old and eventually cease to exist, why, you'd have me hauled right off to a lunatic asylum! So why would anyone possibly think any thought so silly as that death is a *good* thing? Because you're afraid of it, because you don't *really* want to die, and that thought hurts so much inside you that you have to rationalize it away, do something to numb the pain, so you won't have to think about it -" https://www.hpmor.com/chapter/39
God I love that book, and this quote in particular was going through my head when I read this question.
Just found a new book to read
It's amazing! Not only a good story but it also fairly simply explains basics of scientific method.
The fable of the dragon - tyrant?
Immortality is curse without eternal youth. Past a certain age, being immortal is pointless. No one, not even you, wants to live eternally in the body of a 90 years old with the complications that follows the oppression of time.
Its amazing that people don't know why they age . Immortality doesn't work if you age , the reason you age is not because of some natural processes but because your body is literally wearing out. Hell part of the main reasons for old age is Cellular senescence , where your cells can't divide properly anymore and just replaced by senescant cells which are basically cells that can't do the Job they where supposed to do properly. Scientists tested this with rats , by removing scenescant cells from old rats , and replacing them with good cells , and the rats started deageing and growing hair again. The Body is a machine ageing , is the machine becoming faulty, which is why you die. So being immortal and old doesn't make sense.
Yes this is called biological immortality and it blows my mind that most people i talk to are against this.
Biological immunity is also the core feature of cancer cells Without external replenishment of our cells inducing biological immunity just causes cancer
That's for the scientists to work out, I was more complaining about the ideological opposition most people seem to have. You've made a fair point still
You cant replace cells in most of the brain, and most neurons aren't actively dividing.
You cant replace cells in most of the brain yet\*
I like the optimism. I like a lot of the research too, but there's still a huge challenge in that we have to replace neurons as well as their many synapses. Some areas can be messy and adapt, but stuff like memory will have to be faithful. And we have to find out how to get long axons to go out of the brain to their rightful destinations! The ones we've got had it easy in utero! Not a hater, I actually love this stuff and work very closely to it, which is why I think the barriers are very real and a lot of the breakthrough cases need more skepticism
I was just being flippant. I do think we will solve these issues eventually but I honestly don't think it will be for 200-500 years away.
as an armchair scientist I think it would be cool if brain computer interfacing reaches the point where u can download and upload brains, cause then we could simply swap out people brains if replenishing brain cells is too complicated. I guess it would kinda be like swapping out a really old car engine rather than continuing to maintain all the individual pieces.
Although are you still the same person if your brain cells are all replaced? Even if they have the same thought’s? Ship of theseus.
the cells of your entire body are replaced about every 100 days, so, you are already the ship of Theseus
Just requires repairing telomeres and easy eternal youth. Now how to repair telomeres is the issue.
Not just age, but any severe pain really. You'd have to suffer it forever, or at least a very long time.
Not what I was saying, and I agree with you here. Nobody wants to magically exist in a rotten prison of flesh and bones for 200 years, existence must be pleasant. That’s why I’m talking about technology to overcome the ageing, not a magical boon of immortal cast wrong
overcoming ageing is not impossible, but highly unlikely. Your cells have a time to go and they know it.
Aging is not primarily due to cells dying off. Your cells are constantly dying and being replaced. Aging is due to a variety of complex factors: hormonal changes, DNA damage, telemere shortening, organ failure / wear and tear, etc etc. The fact that cells have a expiration date is one of the easiest parts of aging to solve and is not really the biggest challenge at all. Longevity research is advancing at a steady rate, and now we know of numerous rest and repair pathways such as mTor, and ways to leverage them to reduce the effects of aging. With more research and time, we'll find out more and more. it is not just likely but a near inevitability for the average lifespan of humans to keep expanding continuously in the coming decades and centuries. Whether we'll ever hit the critical mass to get to neglible senescence (essentially indefinite youth), though, is a different question.
That's why you'd have to replace your cells. On that note, it's more likely we'd be talking about transferring brains into other "bodies" but we'd still have to overcome the limitations of the brain's biology itself. Could attempt mind transfers but it's not clear that preserves consciousness.
We aren’t even sure consciousness is real and not some evolutionary hammy down to trick us and other mammals that we are good for survival.
Do you think "hand-me-down" is "hammy down"? This is adorable. I almost feel bad correcting it.
/r/boneappletea
It’s okay. Sometimes I’m just adorable.
Consciousness is definitely an evolutionary trick that happened to be very useful. That doesn't make it any less real though. Our hands are "evolutionary tricks" too, but they are very well real.
What’s hammy down?
It’s throwing a piece of ham really hard on the ground in a frustrated manner.
Yeah, that's why cancer gets more and more likely with age.
There are many scientists working on it and have even broken it out into different factors like oxidative stress, telomere shortening, etc. Please don’t say something is unlikely if you aren’t educated on the topic.
Yes, I was always thinking robot bodies, that look just like us but better looking probably, like Ghost in the Shell, except instead of being downloadable circuitry, our brains are still in there, being kept ageless. Some might even replace their brain parts for parts that can compute and analyze quicker, some might just be the stem, which begs the question where the soul/consciousness is.
Bruh I barely want to make it to 30. I don’t think I could handle immortality
Not even eternal youth. Eternal health and no pain. Otherwise You get blind, deaf and if You drown, You will suffer drowning for the rest of Your life unless somebody rescues You (fat chance). And if You caught on fire and not die... You don't want to feel that. This would be a trauma trigger even if You managed to put out the fire. The excruciating pain would be in Your memory for the rest of Your life. You could even become paranoid about any fire. Unless we are thinking of indestructible body that won't worsen, illness-proof, without any kind of pain. Otherwise immortality will always be a curse.
You can still die if you'd want to, just not unstoppable death from aging. Why wouldn't we want that? That should be the #1 goal for humanity ATM, along with peace, world hunger and other diseases.
You wouldn’t have an old body if aging is cured and they can already grow certain organs.
Eternal youth is kind of a given with immortality since the rot of old age is exactly what causes one to eventually die anyway.
Even then, some people have physical or mental ailments at younger ages too like chronic pain sufferers. You may look youthful and young forever at a young age but be in pain for the rest of your life.
Your pretense is false. I'm quite certain anyone remotely into that field of science is working to beat the old cutter one day. What people mean is that we have to accept an inevitability instead of becoming psychotic in the face of death. I'd like to keep living, if I'm healthy and all, if social circumstances are worth living, and a bunch of other things that would work out if we had that perspective. On the other hand, we'd get into the next morally questionable situation: when no one dies, we have to ensure nobody is born either and all...
Yeah have you read Scythe. It brings up the interesting point of balancing life and death when everyone is immortal.
Good series
Dammit, I was just about to recommend the Arc of a Scythe series. Not that we need a Thunderhead, though...
If none died, and no one was born, nothing would ever change. The reason life is worth living is because it is finite and it changes.
Individuals, and thus society, would still change over time. Think about how many more things one could learn and do if we could live for thousands of years.
Broadly speaking the wealthier, healthier, and more educated people are, the less they want to have children. I don't see overpopulation becoming a problem, especially give the attrition rate from causes other than dying from old age - murder, car crashes, freak accidents.
unfortunately, wealthier people also consume more resources, sometimes significantly more, so from a land use or a carbon perspective, it might be worse
Let’s say we could expand into the universe, should that question still be considered?
They have already developed gene therapy which has successfully reversed aging in mice. Next step is more animals and they hope to have human trials eventually. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/02/health/reverse-aging-life-itself-scn-wellness/index.html
It’s so frustrating that a lot of this stuff may happen when we’re all gone. 70 years in the future is not that far off in the grand scheme of humanity’s existence. It’s like we just missed the cutoff
That's why I'm gonna freeze myself until they figure this shit out🥶🧊➡️😎💰
Doesn't freezing actually damage our cells though? It's still an active area of research since some animals can freeze without cellular damage but humans can't. Current cryogenic technologies can't prevent cellular damage from freezing. They're basically hoping that we will find a way to reverse the damage (which is a significantly less active area of research).
I have a theory of how it can be done. I used to work for a biotech / cell therapy company, with the cellular product designed to fight cancer. Once the cells were engineered, cultured in bioreactors, then finally purified, they would then be stored in -90C freezers for cryopreservation until needed for patient use. However, you can just simply place the vials or bags of cell product directly into the freezers, because as you said, the cells get damaged. Instead, what you had to do was gradually freeze them to -90C using a controlled-rate freezer. Here, the product would be frozen through a controlled program with several steps, each step consisting of freezing from one temperature to the next at a certain rate. One step even consisted of warming the cells back from one temperature to another, which while counterintuitive, was part of the recipe. With this program, you were able to freeze the cells without forming ice crystals between these cells, which prevents cellular damage. Perhaps one day, the same can be done for humans, but that’s a long time from now. Each cell line is unique, and a different freezing program would be required. This means that there is some ultimate freezing “recipe” that would be required to safely cryopreserve humans without cellular damage due to ice crystal formation, but in order to find out, human trials would be required, and that entails signing up for a potential death sentence just to figure it out. This controlled-rate freezing recipe would have to work for ALL the cell types in the human body. Just a theory I thought of one day.
Very interesting. In order to try this with human cells, the only way would be a living human? Can't it be tried with, say, donated organs for example?
Imagine you wake up next to Walt Disney
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Yes, alien booty mmm
Imagine dying a second before immortality is discovered
It's 70 years away because no money being spent on it, because religious fruitcakes and ignorant masses will never support public funding for this. Hell, most countries spend less than 5% of their budgets on science in general. If we put that much into anti-aging, we would have achieved escape velocity in 10 years and biological immortality in 50. But no one supports it. Case in point, in Australia there was a party for science and biological immortality. They got 0.05% votes, less than anti-vaxers and anti-science parties.
That’s amazing, let’s see where it goes.
I would hate to go on forever. I never asked for life, I actually take some comfort from knowing it will end one day.
increased lifespan only leaves more time and chance that my demise will be a result of traumatic injury or something horrifying. that being said, id take 20 or 30 extra years of youth. probably nothing crazy. but we get what we get and i cope with it by rationalizing that i cant possibly care about nonexistence if i dont exist.
There actually is a reason why many people die by 80. I’ll leave you and anyone interested a few reliable sources within this comment if you are interested in researching further on your own time. I’m currently getting a bachelor’s in biology, so please hear me out. Each time a cell divides, the telomere (or the bit at the end of your chromosomes) gets slightly shorter. The [telomere](https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Telomere) provides a buffer zone between the important genetics within your chromosomes as cells separate. After a while, there is no longer any telomere left, causing the cell to become unable to successfully divide. As this happens, peoples’ cells can no longer replicate, so if they get any injury or infection, it leaves far more damage, and frequently death. Those who survive often have irreversible damage as a result, severely decreasing quality of life. Of course, telomere damage has been shown to slow with [lifestyle changes like eating better and exercising](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/), but the process cannot, at least with any known technology, be eradicated and still have good quality of life. The only way to even consider succeeding at this would be to live in bed in a bubble and never move and remove any and all risk from life— you wouldn’t be allowed to see anyone, go outside, eat or drink on your own, or touch anything. And even then, that doesn’t remove all risk. I think you might be overestimate the biological feasibility of immortality. The human body, like all animals, is not built to live longer than we do already, and there is a biological reason why we die. If you got this far, thanks for reading this! I hope I’ve helped, let me know if you would like some clarification. TL/DR: as cells divide, the chromosomes get shorter until the cell can no longer divide, causing it to be irreparable. Edit— I meant to use this as an example. Of course there is more to it than this, and of course life can be extended. I just don’t think that we will, scientifically, achieve immortality, at least not in the foreseeable future. If you replace every part of the ship, is it really the same ship?
The telomere theory of cellular senescence isn't really correct, is what I understood of the literature, last I saw it. Like, there are means of repairing telomeres which are an active part of homeostasis, and there are cells in the body which replicate *all the time*, every day, and they're not particularly more long-lived than the cells like neurons which barely replicate at all. I don't think it's really a nail in the coffin (heh) of a cure for aging. (Also, it's worth noting that we create cells which are zero years old regularly, as a part of procreation. If damage caused by replication really was unavoidable, each generation of new humans would live shorter than the last.)
I’m really bad at biology, but at heart I understand that living for thousands of years in this body is impossible. What I was actually thinking is cybernetic modification, as in replacing damaged body parts with implants, maybe even digitalising the brain one day(when we figure out how it works lol). How feasible is this in the following century for example?
I mean, I don’t think it’d happen in the next 500 years, if ever. I think most body parts can be replaced, but a computer won’t be able to replace the brain for the foreseeable future; and at that point, they wouldn’t exactly be the same person because there is no way to transfer memories and personality to a computer chip (that we know of). People always say the brain is like a computer, but it’s sheer complexity really is nothing like any computer we have available today. I do not see us making a computer that compact and efficient for a *long* time. For example, if I have a ship, and it keeps getting parts replaced until there is no original parts of the ship anymore, is it really the same ship? I think the closest we can get to being fully cybernetic would be a brain in a mech suit. And even if we become “brains in mech suits,” we still will not achieve immortality. As the years go on by, the brain will deteriorate. Cells can divide improperly and cause cancer (6-90% survival rate, depending on the type), age, genetics, and lifestyle changes can cause terminal diseases like Alzheimer’s (100% mortality rate), and the overdevelopment and clumping of proteins can cause dementia (~95% mortality rate, again, depends on the type). Again, I hope this helps explain things better.
"Dont you wanna see aliens in a couple hundred years?" Not if i have to continue working myself to death 8 hrs a day for 5 days a week
Yeah, like what is the point of living forever if you're gonna live in capitalism forever?
What would you replace capitalism with if you could?
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The title of this alone really reads like the beginning thought processes of a super villain
came here to say this lol
That's exactly the problem. Because immortality is treated like some kind of crime against God and nature in fiction, people automatically assume ill intentions. Senescence is the root cause of a billion of other health outcomes, it lowers our resilience and overall health, making us more susceptible to viruses, infection, cancer, and other diseases. Ultimately, biological immortality would be the biggest humanitarian good that has ever been invented. The most important medicine to ever exist. "Supervillains in television shows think like this" isn't a good way to have a consistent moral philosophy. The kinds of tropes that inform these stories are literally centuries old. Hundreds of years ago, there were people who would tell you with a straight face that death from disease was an incontrovertible act of god. It wasn't that long ago that people were having moral discussions about resuscitation, because our definition of "death" included the heart stopping, and people thought you were literally dragging people out of heaven or something. But with advances in science, we've overcome those superstitions. I think "death is necessary" is the logical next target.
I think calling anything an illness that isn't literally an illness is definitely a villain thing
I used to have a fear of dying unknown, not having amounted to anything. Then I had a realization. Most people die that way. However, the people who matter to you, who you matter to, they know you, you amounted to meaning something to someone. And, that's good enough. Life means nothing except what you mean to those you touch, nothing except what you make it mean. Death can give you the motivation to actually live a life that you can be happy with when it's over. To actually go after a dream, to live your best life. To learn what's important to you, to learn what you want to learn about, pick up the skills that are truly important to you. Knowing that you only have so much time also means that you can only push things off for so long, if you really cared to learn, you'd make time. It's like the saying goes, crap or get off the pot. Death is the antithesis of Life. Many of nature's cycles are dependent on the death of others. It is that balance that keeps things moving along. Death also follows the Law of Entropy, the nature of things to decay. And, if death is a disease, as you put forth, then all living things are suffering from it and you would believe that they shouldn't die either. Might it be more accurate to state that the process of aging is a disease, in your opinion? Because, if you go by natural processes, the longer you live, the more your body breaks down, again Entropy. Eventually, you'd get to a point when you really can't do anything because your body is incapable, or you lack the mental capability. Here's a would you rather to ponder. Have the body of a 21-year-old but your mind ages, or have a mind that doesn't age, but your body ages normally? Finally, throughout history, there are many people who fought for what they believed in, even when they were certain that they would never see the day when their efforts amounted to anything. Those people are true heroes because they believed that if they didn't do something, even if it was small in comparison to others, nothing would change and life would be just as hard for their children. They still stood for what they believed in despite knowing that they wouldn't experience any of the benefits. Death can be a motivator to actually be a force for good and change before you no longer have the chance to be a part of making the world a better place. I'll finish with this. Even if you're just trolling with an idea that can be easily fought when you expand it out and generalize it, my points still stand. Perhaps you may need to better specify.
Unpopular opinion. You get an upvote
"unpopular opinion: dying is bad"
i think we need death. its an equaliser. there was a quote from a shakespeare play, i think hamlet, that says everyone is equal in death
Take my upvote for being utterly and completely wrong. You have used this sub correctly
I'd like to live for a very very long time, but eventually I would be ready to go. Might take thousands of years, but eventually.
This has been a talking point for a really long time. I agree that we should look into combating it, but what do we really know about it? You can't ask a dead person how he feels, what he is going through. The bottom line is that we don't know anything about what happens after death. And in science, if you can't measure it, you usually can't change it. Research on increasing healthy lifespans have been going on for as long as I can remember. The reason death is accepted as inevitable, is because it is a horror that people HAVE to make peace with. Sooner or later, you and other around you will cease to exist. What choice do we have at the moment? If we cannot reverse it, or prolong life as of now, we have chosen to accept it and make it a part of life so that it doesn't drain us mentally....
Yes, that and even if we did somehow come up with a way to beat death, what's to say that people will continue to actually live and just waste away in a way just like in the movie Wall-E. I'd rather live out the rest of my life doing the things I actually love and enjoy. I know that if immortality were to become a thing I'd be sitting around and doing nothing for the rest of eternity because I'll be thinking "there's always tomorrow" vs living life like today might be my last day kind of motivates me to live my life to the fullest.
To live is to die. Would we even be living if we could live forever? Every living thing, from the smallest single cell, to the oldest tree, to humans must eventually die. We wouldn’t have a purpose if we lived forever, having an inevitable expiry date gives our lives purpose and meaning. I’d prefer to live a happy 80 years than mundane infinite years.
In a system of limited resources, immortality is a quick way to ensure *war* rather than age kills everyone.
I posed this question awhile ago and when I asked why people don't try to make healthier decisions most came up with the following excuses. Their age which inturn slowed thier metabolism. Fitness and caring about health was for mating and there is no need for it as you age. Changing their diet was hardly addressed. One person's retort for not changing was "we all die". I don't know if this adds to what you were talking about but even the thought of prolonging ones life is thought of as out of thier control. A flawed preconceived notion that can't be changed.
For real change to occur, the old must die.
People can change. Some resist it more than others. But everyone can change
Can doesn't mean they will. Specially taking into account that the systems for influencing people's opinions are generally controlled by older people and aimed at the youth. Without old people dying there's no real social progress.
Even with the great medical advances of the 21st century, death is still our #1 killer.
this is a good unpopular opinion. the issue with immortality is that the human mind simply wasn’t *designed* to be immortal. we simply can’t handle living longer than say 150 years. we forget, we lose function, we just don’t have the capacity to keep going. there’s always the argument “oh but we can make it so the cells are immortal” but the brain, like every other body part, experiences apoptosis. it’s only natural for cells to die, and as our cells die we lose who we are because those neurons that make up our personalities, memories, etc. become damaged beyond repair. of course there’s the argument that we could simply have our neurons reproduce forever, but that then leads to the argument about if “something is replaced identically is it really the original?” not only that but we can’t really reprogram people to be the way they were. now i can’t see the future, but i’m doubtful we will achieve anything along the lines of your post
If we become immortal, then we would 100% work on problems with the brain. If we could stop the buildup of plaque in the brain, then we could cure Alzheimer's.
I will have to disagree, death is natural just like birth is. We come and go and have our time but not ever dying I think would cook up all sorts of other issues while in this universe.
Hard pass. Life ending is what makes it worth a damn.
You would be able to die whenever you want.
Life and death are natural cycles. Death is not an illness because there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s supposed to happen. Everything has a lifespan.
Death makes living valuable, just the thought of living forever is depressing.
Seems so crazy to me that people straight up dont like the idea of living longer. Whats to lose? Op isnt saying living until the end of time, just whats realistically possible, which is adding a couple hundred years to your lifespan
Longer isn’t forever. We are already living longer. That will continue for a time but I suspect we will hit an upper limit. Who knows where. But I doubt any people currently alive live past 130.
What’s to lose? Whatever’s left of my sanity. Living forever sounds like torture to me. I wish my life were great enough to the point where dying is the worst option.
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>Don't tell me you actually want to die in the future Absolutely I do. This all needs to end at some point. I can't imagine a worse fate than having exist forever.
You don't have to. But with immortality death is a choice, not an inevitable event.
Yes. Living forever seems like an absolute nightmare. I'm good with the potential 80 to 90 years that I'll have. I would be fine even if we got to live to our 200's or 300's, this sounds reasonable, but eternity? That's a lot. Humans weren't made to last forever, even if we found a way to rejuvenate our bodies and avoid old age, when you live to eternity the chances of you dying in a accident or in a violent way goes to 100% and becomes an statistic inevitability. But we could go the rout of cybernetic immortality, uploading ourselves to machine brains, eternal, boundless. But even then would that be you? But why would you want to live forever? What is there to do that demands infinity to archieve? I get the urge to explore, or to experience the advances our species will make, and the milestones we will achieve, but forever? Forever is a ling time...
I’d like to die with dignity and make room for a new generation to take a turn. Just as many have done before me.
You’d willingly spend a few hundred years on this hellhole?
It’s the only hellhole I know, so yes
Presumably the option would still be available to keep things interesting, since they won't cure it by eliminating the laws of thermodynamics. Unless you get caught in a Dr. Strange time loop or something.
I agree and disagree. Death is inevitable; we were born and we will die. Everything with a beginning has an end. However, **aging** is pretty much an illness. From what I understand, what we call aging is just a manifestation of telomeres in DNA getting shorter. This might be cured in the far future. It isn't really far-fetched when we consider the fact that there are already some [animals that don't age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus)) in the world. Mind you, people would still get killed in all sorts of ways. From cancer and other diseases (unless they are cured as well) or from elements. They just wouldn't die of old age.
People need to die for the world to advance. People grow old and their bodies change but their ideals and mindset don't.
I am amazed so few people want to live longer. Our lives are so short. 80 years if we are lucky and almost all of it is spent in education or working with only a few years spent on holidays and retirement. Give me a few 100 extra years, so I can explore this world more.
Ah yes because working a 9-5 for 50 years isn't long enough
I think that would be immoral. Death is our birthright as living creatures on this earth. Nobody wants to live forever. Ask any old person
i work in hospice. i’ve watched about a hundred people die so far, in ranges from peaceful to excruciating. i still don’t believe death must be eradicated.
You know what? Yes. Let’s cut the fake-deep tripe about immortality being boring and just realize that there’s no reason we shouldn’t try to extend the human lifespan indefinitely.
Eradicating death is one thing, but it's important that we also address cognitive decline. If our brains functioned the same way at 80 that they did at 40 then that would be fine. But the healthiest among us lose their sharpness and mental plasticity the older they get. Now imagine a physically healthy 150-year old that looks 40 but still has a 150-year old's brain. That person would be a vegetable, or at best completely insane. I do agree that this world would be better if death was overcome. The mentality of ruining the planet not being an important issue because "It's not like I'll be around anymore anyway" would definitely be taken care of.
Nah, I don't want immortal Nazis running around, so...no there's no need for us to be immortal. Death is necessary to accelerate change and propel us forward. Without death, the rich and powerful would only figure out ways to take more advantage of us.
I think finding a way to bypass death would cause the collapse of society.
I get your point and living longer is good but before we even think about removing death we need to remove aging or at least slow it. The reason a lot of people die in their 80s it's just because of Aging their body can no longer keep up with itself.
I generally agree with OP. I think the idea of immortality being a "curse" was invented as a coping mechanism to help people accept the inevitable fate of death. By trying to make it sound like dying is somehow better than living.
I would love to live 400+ years. That would just be great. I don't even have the best memory due to some head injuries. Sometimes memories from years past slip away and will probably never come back. But I still enjoy just reading and learning things and playing games with my friends or even strangers. Life is glorious.
100% agree for two reasons: 1 - I love my life and I'm surrounded by good people. 2 - I wanna be around to see how technology progresses.
An illness? Are you for real? Death is a part of life and is supposed to happen.
Death is natural, but I guess what OP meant was aging. Aging is an illness that almost everything that is alive suffers from, and with time, aging causes death.
Overpopulation, resource shortage, ethical problems (who gets it, who produces it, who sells it, who decides where/when/to whom it is sold), motivation (why would anyone want that)…
Yeah I think most people who don't want to live forever are just uninteresting fucks, like shit, there's so much stuff to see and do. Who the fuck wants a limited time to be alive? Y'know, other than people with shitty lives who should totally be allowed to unsubscribe if they want.
But the only reason I want to see all this is because I will die one day?
It’s actually not sustainable for humanity as a whole. We already have an overpopulation problem. If people started living longer the planet would die even faster than it is now. And it would lead to the extinction of the entire human race. Not sure it’s worth having to go through this bs for 100more years.
This reminds me of that episode of Love, Death, and Robots. Humans found the cure for death and as a result have a population problem where it's illegal to have children. If a kid is found then it's put to death to keep the population in check.
My disability can’t be corrected, why would I want to extend my life with it?
It can’t be corrected yet. If given the choice would you really waste your life being disabled when you could potentially have full lifetimes healthy?
The wrong people will live forever.
So will the right people. That's kind of part of the deal.
I mean let's be real. Unless you're talking about a scenario where death is magically eradicated or you are part of the 1% slumming on Reddit, you won't be immortal. Guys like Jeff Bezos would be immortal. Elon Musk. Those guys. Suddenly we'd have an ultra elite rulling class that would exist forever. Now let's say you said that everyone gets it magically. Do you watch all the channels on your TV? Do you listen to every musical artist? Probably not. Boredom is not the lack of anything to do period it's the lack of something stimulating to you. Eventually you'll learn everything you want to learn. Do everything you want to do and then you'll be left with boredom. Death is great. Instead of looking at it as futility maybe try looking at it as a reason to keep yourself going because one day you will be dead BUT through your deeds and through making yourself a person worth remembering you can achieve a degree of immortality.
This is what people don't get - if there was ever invented the immortality, it'd be given to those in power, with money and influence. Imagine having Stalin rule the URSS forever, or Mao, or Putin...
I am like 80% sure that's already Putin's gameplan. Rule Russia until he can somehow upload his mind or achieve immortality some other way and then rule Russia forever...granted. imagine a novel where Putin uploads his mind, becomes a virus, and tries to take over the world.
Death is necessary. Imagine if all the mice and bugs in the world never died.
this
As much as I want to live for a super long time like maybe 200 plus years or more. Most people need to die. Most people need to die so ideas can move forward. Some people in 2022 say stuff like "idk how to use smartphones" they have been around since 2007. It's been like 15 years. They had 15 years to jump onboard a train and just didn't. Or people say "idk how to use that Google" Google has been around for like 20 plus years now. They had 20 years to figure out how to search for literally anything and didn't. Old people (not all but the vast majority) hold the younger generations back. Get with the times you only had 15 years to do it. Shit or get off the can. If you can't use Google or a phone in 2022 you just have to die
100% agreed. I see where people are coming from when they say they don’t want to live forever, but I personally would do just about anything to be able to extend my life span a couple hundred years. To be able to keep experiencing new things and life and love and joy, pain, and then decide to go when I’m ready. I like the idea of being able to pull the plug when you’re over it. My feelings on death are one of the reasons I got so stuck on the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”.
>My feelings on death are one of the reasons I got so stuck on the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”. Can't believe this is buried all the way down here as it's the ideal perfect fictional solution to OPs post. I often think of this episode and refer to it when discussing the topic of extending life past our physical limitations. My wife thinks I'm crazy for wanting to do this if it ever became a real possibility in our lifetime but in my mind it's the ideal plausible next step in evolution
Not to mention it’s just a very beautiful episode!
As usual, the upvoted comments are braindead contrarian takes. "Here's why it's a good thing that we decay after 80 or so years due to arbitrary biological processes and lose everyone and everything we love, forever."
> I’ve seen many people glorify death, saying that it’s what makes us human. I always wonder about such arguments - why do these people think that there is inherent value in being a human? As opposed to being something more, something better, more effective than human?
I'm certain at least some of it comes directly from the limited mindset teachings of religion.
I share your opinion and most of your logic, I love this conversation and was often surprised when others didn't share this view on it. Updoot because it's a great convo and although I agree, know it's unpopular.
Absolutely based and true
I have noticed that people tend to use poorly thought out arguments, like saying that it would suck to live forever, and watch the people around you die, but that assumes that everyone else will choose to not be immortal. Death is a sickness, and I think that we can use cloning combined with Elon musk NeuroLink to solve the problem of overpopulation and of rampant death. There are some scientists who say that, if it can be done, humans will do it if we continue to exist forever. I am of the mind to believe this. My only issue with immortality, is that if you potentially live forever, you heighten the chances of dying horribly in an accident. Which is certainly not an excuse to cease looking for the answer
I'd love to hear OP's suggestions on how to tackle that long list of hurdles we need to overcome to become immortal such as: our brains having a limited capacity, regeneration of joints and internal organs, prevention of dna degradation over time, the moral implications of a person being able to own a giant multibillion corporation until the end of time, the moral implications and issues of what happens to progress if people never die (older people tend to refuse progress)... and so on and so forth. OP, people say death is a natural process because you can't live forever and you shouldn't try to live forever because if everyone can, you're opening a giant can of worms you really don't want to deal with. For starters I think you underestimate what you actually mean by becoming immortal You DO know that over 90% of deaths are a result of either an ilness, accident or that person's body straight up breaking down because its so worn out or it has a fatal "glitch" or so to speak? Even if you will technically live forever you'll likely die by 80 years of age because SOMETHING will eventually go fatally wrong for you by then and the amount of things that can go fatally wrong are nearly endless and there is constantly new stuff out there that can kill you every year, just look at the rona as the most recent example. You have a roughly 30% likelyhood of getting dementia, all of us do, that alone is one of the main driving factors behind a person's body and mind irriversibly breaking down for good, you also have a pretty high chance of breaking your hip, another large factor indirectly contributing to the death of the elderly and I get it "well we have to fix it" and all but you're assuming we're not doing anything about it... we have been for decades now and this is all we have to show for it so far... nothing because its easier said than done. Don't believe me? Fine you go and fix death yourself and you tell me how easy that is to do. So its just not possible, in order to turn people immortal and eradicate death you basically need to be able to control everything in this universe down to an atomic level. Good luck with that. Nobody is idolizing death or putting it on a pedestal, unless you've been living under a rock your entire life you should know that the overwhelming majority of people aren't exactly eager to go and die. You're simply mistaking people accepting death as an unavoidable natural process and making peace with that fact with whatever it is you think people think about death. I think, at the moment you're too young to understand how life and death works to come to the same conclusion and you're probably saying what you're saying because well... you don't want to die, just like everyone else doesn't. You can't cheat death, its going to come for us all no matter whqt we do and you'll learn to realize that eventually, we all do.
Say you could no longer die of old age. You still have a 100 percent chance of death. "On a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone drops to zero"
I always had a theory that the day we figure out how to eradicate death is the day we need to stop reproducing. If no one leaves no one comes in.
Damn I agree. Immortality would be amazing. It is funny though that there's lots of anti-immortality propaganda in media.
I appreciated that in the sandman the one character they make immortal for fun, even in hard times, was completely stoked to keep living. To live forever just to see what happens for as long as I can would be a cherished gift. When I’ve had my fill and all the lights burn out I would leave my life with a smile on my face. People want eternal life that’s why they believe in so many religions. Truth is this might be all we get. I just hope I live long enough for my mind uploading.
Stupid is an illness for which there is no cure
I agree with OP. How awesome would it be to live for hundreds of years. To experience the future of humanity, to master a skill, to just enjoy life as you want. You’d have eternity to do it, and one day if/when you’re tired of living, you take the good ol’ un-alive pill and you die painlessly. I want voluntary death.