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submitted 1 year ago by steb@kbin.social to c/science@kbin.social

My friend's daughter is doing a project on biological immortality. It would be great if you could help her by answering a short survey.

She writes:

"This is a part of the primary research for my EPQ, titled: "To what extent does telomere biology hold the key to achieving biological immortality?"

By completing this form, you will be helping me to gather data for the second half of my project, which involves an evaluation of public understanding and perspectives on biological immortality. The results will be analysed and used as a source of information for my final dissertation."

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[-] CoderKat@kbin.social 26 points 1 year ago

I filled it out, but let's discuss in the comments because filling out a one sided form isn't as fun as being able to have a multi sided discussion.

I personally find biological immortality super appealing. Despite the word "immortality" in it, it actually just means you can live as long as you want, which takes away many of the downsides to immortality that often get discussed. Since I'm not religious, I don't believe in any kind of afterlife, so scientific advancement letting me live longer is the only way I can avoid death (which I'm afraid of). And more than just avoiding death, I want to avoid being a frail senior whose quality of life is severely diminished.

That said, for me, I ranked the positive advancements with the disease prevention, medical advancement, and QoL above simply extending human life. I think these all do of course go hand in hand. But fewer people dying young is better than fewer people dying old. Dying young is really tragic, because there's so much of life you won't have experienced. Similarly, the big issue with growing old is age related diseases, which impact your quality of life. At a certain point, Alzheimer's and dementia seem worse than death. I feel conflicted because I don't want to die but if I had a disease like one of those, it seems like I'd no longer be myself and it's unlikely there's any hope for recovery before the disease eventually kills me. There's also the fear that perhaps I would be myself, but feel trapped inside a body, constantly confused and afraid by what's going on, which sounds horrible.

On the negative impact side, by far my biggest concern is imbalance in access to this immortality. My fear is that regular folks (including myself) won't have access but billionaires will. That's worse than not having immortality, since billionaires are generally terrible people and not who we want living longer. Overpopulation is a bit of a concern, but one that I think we can eventually solve. e.g., with social changes to expectations about having kids, automation improvements to reduce our need for people to work, and eventually moving beyond just living on the surface of earth. Wealthy nations already have a declining birth rate, anyway. As well, I'm a bit skeptical about true biological immortality, as opposed to, say, extending life on earth for a good chunk of time, but eventually moving to a digital afterlife, where overpopulation is less of a concern.

I didn't know how to answer the regulation question. I think most things need some level of regulation, but the options were "strict regulation" vs "unrestricted", neither which sound right to me. As well, regulation would likely be completely situational. e.g., obviously safety is a vital part of any form of medical treatment. We shouldn't be reducing any existing regulation there. But I certainly don't want research into the area to be unnecessarily held back. For a large part, I see this as no different from researching a cure for any other disease. Aging can be viewed as a disease.

[-] HipHoboHarold@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

The medical side to things is definitely a huge step up. On a personal side, I think it would be cool to be able to actually witness history as it's being made. Sure, we already are, but there's going to be so much more. I'm a big fan of horror, and one discussion I've has more than once with people is "Would you become a vampire if given the chance?" And while the whole drinking blood thing is a turn off, there is the idea of getting to see humanity evolve. If anything, I almost would rather have had that option earlier. Getting to see everything from the mid 1800s to now would be perfect. But they say there's no better time than the present, so I guess if given the chance, I would actually consider going the immortal route to see everything.

But the whole financial factor is also the big thing that makes me really question if I could support it. We are already seeing how fucked capitalism can be. And since it would likely only be for the rich for awhile, it would mean they can just take even longer to set up a world for them even more than it already is. Eventually they might start to offer it to us, but it would be more so for working purposes. Line Bezos will provide it to people for free... as long as they work for him. But once they quit, they no longer have it available. So either work 60 hours a week minimum for Amazon, or you don't get to be immortal.

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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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