[ExI] David Ewing Duncan's new book, When I'm 164

Sat Sep 22 22:52:55 UTC 2012

I think the most revealing part of this is here:

Curiously, after learning about these possibilities, few people wanted to
> change their votes. Even if I asked them to imagine that a pill had been
> invented to slow aging down by one-half, allowing a person who is, say, 60
> years old to have the body of a 30-year-old, only about 10 percent of
> audiences switched to favoring a life span of 150 years.
>
> Overwhelmingly the reason given was that people didn’t want to be old and
> infirm any longer than they had to be, even if a pill allowed them to delay
> this inevitability.
>
People are saying they don't want to live 150+ years because they don't
want to be old and infirm for longer. Would David have gotten a markedly
different result if he had specified that healthy years would be extended
but the period of infirmity would not? I suspect not, because I doubt the
reason given for not wanting more life is the real reason.

Hyperbolic discounting should mean that people would happily take the extra
(nearer) years of good health and not worry much about the (later) years of
infirmity. The reasons given seem to me to be rationalizations, and I think
James is right that the posited extra years are rejected because most
people don't believe they are likely to see those extra years. If they
aren't going to have those years, it a good thing that they don't! ("Aging
isn't going to be controlled in time for me. Good thing too -- I'd hate to
live longer. Why... I'd be bored, or would have to change jobs, or or or...
something.")

Even those who do want to live much longer don't get around to making
arrangements for cryopreservation, also (often) due to rationalizations.
Breaking through rationalization is extremely difficult. I wish I had a
ready solution.

--Max

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 12:34 PM, James Clement <clementlawyer at gmail.com>wrote:

> NOTE: the results of his survey to over 30,000 people, mostly at health
> conferences like TEDMED were quite disappointing!
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/sunday-review/how-long-do-you-want-to-live.html
>
>
> *How Long Do You Want to Live?*
> By DAVID EWING DUNCAN Published: August 25, 2012 260 Comments<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/sunday-review/how-long-do-you-want-to-live.html#commentsContainer>
>
> SINCE 1900, the life expectancy of Americans has jumped to just shy of 80
> from 47 years. This surge comes mostly from improved hygiene and nutrition,
> but also from new discoveries and interventions: everything from
> antibiotics <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/antibiotics/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
> andheart bypass surgery <http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/surgery/heart-bypass-surgery/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
> to cancer <http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/cancer/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>drugs
> that target and neutralize the impact of specific genetic mutations.
>  David Sparshott
> Readers’ Comments
>
> Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
>
>
>    - Read All Comments (260) »<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/sunday-review/how-long-do-you-want-to-live.html#comments>
>
> Now scientists studying the intricacies of DNA and other molecular
> bio-dynamics may be poised to offer even more dramatic boosts to longevity.
> This comes not from setting out explicitly to conquer aging, which remains
> controversial in mainstream science, but from researchers developing new
> drugs and therapies for such maladies of growing old as heart disease and
> diabetes <http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/diabetes/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
> .
>
> “Aging is the major risk factor for most diseases,” says Felipe Sierra,
> director of the Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on
> Aging. “The National Institutes of Health fund research into understanding
> the diseases of aging, not life extension, though this could be a side
> effect.”
>
> How many years might be added to a life? A few longevity enthusiasts
> suggest a possible increase of decades. Most others believe in more modest
> gains. And when will they come? Are we a decade away? Twenty years? Fifty
> years?
>
> Even without a new high-tech “fix” for aging, the United Nations estimates
> that life expectancy over the next century will approach 100 years for
> women in the developed world and over 90 years for women in the developing
> world. (Men lag behind by three or four years.)
>
> Whatever actually happens, this seems like a good time to ask a very basic
> question: How long do you want to live?
>
> Over the past three years I have posed this query <http://www.davidewingduncan.com/whenim164/survey-results.html>to
> nearly 30,000 people at the start of talks and lectures on future trends in
> bioscience, taking an informal poll as a show of hands. To make it easier
> to tabulate responses I provided four possible answers: 80 years, currently
> the average life span in the West; 120 years, close to the maximum anyone
> has lived; 150 years, which would require a biotech breakthrough; and
> forever, which rejects the idea that life span has to have any limit at all.
>
> I made it clear that participants should not assume that science will come
> up with dramatic new anti-aging technologies, though people were free to
> imagine that breakthroughs might occur — or not.
>
> The results: some 60 percent opted for a life span of 80 years. Another 30
> percent chose 120 years, and almost 10 percent chose 150 years. Less than 1
> percent embraced the idea that people might avoid death altogether.
>
> These percentages have held up as I’ve spoken to people from many walks of
> life in libraries and bookstores; teenagers in high schools; physicians in
> medical centers; and investors and entrepreneurs at business conferences.
> I’ve popped the question at meetings of futurists and techno-optimists and
> gotten perhaps a doubling of people who want to live to 150 — less than I
> would have thought for these groups.
>
> Rarely, however, does anyone want to live forever, although abolishing
> disease and death from biological causes is a fervent hope for a small
> scattering of would-be immortals.
>
> In my talks, I go on to describe some highlights of cutting-edge
> biomedical research that might influence human life span.
>
> For instance, right now drug companies are running clinical trials on new
> compounds that may have the “side effect” of extending life span. These
> include a drug at Sirtris, part of GlaxoSmithKline, that is being developed
> to treat inflammation and other diseases of aging. Called SRT-2104, this
> compound works on an enzyme called SIRT1 that, when activated, seems to
> slow aging in mice and other animals. It may do the same thing in humans,
> though this remains to be proven.
>
> “Many serious attempts are being made to come up with a pill for aging,”
> said Dr. Sierra, though he suspects that there will not be a single
> anti-aging pill, if these compounds end up working at all. “It will be a
> combination of things.”
>
> For over a decade, scientists also have experimented with using stem
> cells <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/stemcells/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>—
> master cells that can grow into different specialized cells — to replace
> and repair tissue in the heart, liver and other organs in animals. Some
> researchers have succeeded in also using them in people. The researchers
> include the urologist Anthony Atala of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center,
> who has grown human bladders and urethras from stem cells that have been
> successfully transplanted into patients.
>
> But another stem cell pioneer, James Thomson <http://discovery.wisc.edu/home/morgridge/research/regenerative-biology/leadership/>of
> the University of Wisconsin, believes that stem cell solutions will be a
> long time coming for more complex organs. “We’re a long way from
> transplanting cells into a human brain or nervous system,” he said.
>
> ANOTHER intervention that might thwart the impact of aging is bionics: the
> augmentation or replacement of biological functions with machines. For
> years cardiac pacemakers have saved and extended the lives of millions of
> people. More recent devices and machine-tooled solutions have restored
> hearing to thousands who are deaf and replaced damaged knees and hips.
> Physicians use brain implants to help control tremors brought on by Parkinson’s
> disease <http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/parkinsons-disease/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
> Researchers also are working on a wide range of other machine fixes, from
> exoskeletons that protect joints to experimental devices that tap into the
> brain activity of paralyzed patients, allowing them to operate computers
> using thought <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/ibrain-a-device-that-can-read-thoughts.html>
> .
>
> Curiously, after learning about these possibilities, few people wanted to
> change their votes. Even if I asked them to imagine that a pill had been
> invented to slow aging down by one-half, allowing a person who is, say, 60
> years old to have the body of a 30-year-old, only about 10 percent of
> audiences switched to favoring a life span of 150 years.
>
> Overwhelmingly the reason given was that people didn’t want to be old and
> infirm any longer than they had to be, even if a pill allowed them to delay
> this inevitability.
>
> Others were concerned about a range of issues both personal and societal
> that might result from extending the life spans of millions of people in a
> short time. These included everything from boredom and the cost of paying
> for a longer life to the impact of so many extra people on planetary
> resources and on the environment. Some worried that millions of healthy
> centenarians still working and calling the shots in society would leave our
> grandchildren and great-grandchildren without the jobs and opportunities
> that have traditionally come about with the passing of generations.
>
> Long-lifers countered that extending healthy lives would delay suffering,
> possibly for a very long time. This would allow people to accomplish more
> in life and to try new things. It would also mean that geniuses like Steve
> Jobs or Albert Einstein might still be alive. Einstein, were he alive
> today, would be 133 years old.
>
> That’s assuming that he would want to live that long. As he lay dying of anabdominal
> aortic aneurysm <http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/abdominal-aortic-aneurysm/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>in
> 1955, he refused surgery, saying: “It is tasteless to prolong life
> artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it
> elegantly.”
>
> David Ewing Duncan is a contributor to Science Times. This essay is
> adapted from his most recent e-book, “When I’m 164 <http://whenim164.com/>:
> The New Science of Radical Life Extension and What Happens If It Succeeds.”
>
>
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>

-- 
Max More, PhD
Strategic Philosopher
Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader*
President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation
7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
480/905-1906 ext 113
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