[MikeCapone]

> Just an intuitive understanding that if we decrease infant mortality we will net the human race many more years of life than anti-aging research.

If we accept that there's no reason why we couldn't defeat aging (mostly with periodical repair of the molecular damage that accumulates as a by-product of metabolism -- not need to understand how everything work, just keep damage under a certain threshold) and that we will some day do it, we should do everything to bring that day closer;

100-200k deaths per day. All those that die won't come back. Lifes saved by curing aging are actually saved for real, we don't just delay their death by a few years/decades.

This would be one of the most important things that humanity ever did, and once we do, we'll look back at our current lack of enthusiasm in curing aging as a great sin of omission (we could have did it sooner, but just took our time).

I'm all for vaccines, but right now it's not anti-aging research that is taking money away from vaccines. There are a billion other places to cut first.

If you're looking for a very important field that is dramatically under-funded, it's hard to get more marginal utility than in curing human senescence.

[tsally]

100-200k deaths per day. All those that die won't come back. Lifes saved by curing aging are actually saved for real, we don't just delay their death by a few years/decades.

So you're talking about immortality? I'm not sure we're capable of devising a governmental system capable of surviving such an invention.

When I read anti-aging, I assume the extension of lifespan, not immortality.

I really like your posts on this issue though, I'm going to check out the links you provided.

[mnemonicsloth]

I'm not sure we're capable of devising a governmental system...

From the perspective of our ancestors, birth control is just as weird, arguably weirder.

Human beings are strongy predisposed to believe that the way we do things right now is the only correct/justifiable way they could be done:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias

[tsally]

As an educated person, obviously I'm aware of this. I'm not rejecting the possibility of designing a government that can handle immortality; I'm merely remarking on what I perceive to be great difficulty in designing such a system. I haven't said anything regarding the correctness, justifiability, or longevity of our current systems of government.

Having a degree of skepticism is a far cry from supporting the status quo; I want to be clear that I do not support it.

[MikeCapone]

Not immortality, you can still get hit by a truck. Just indefinite lifespan.

At the rate at which fertility is dropping, and at the rate at which technology is progressing, it would probably be pretty sustainable. But even if it causes problems, these would probably be much smaller than the problem of aging we have right now; besides, we can't make that choice for the future. If people decide they want to die of aging, they can stop taking the therapies. But if they want to live, they'll have to figure how to make it work.

edit: I'll add that the main motivator of many people working on this is curing horrible diseases (cancer, alzheimer's, diabetes, etc), and living a really really long time is a side-effect of not becoming decrepit and frail.

[xenophanes]

If you get good at anti-aging research, you get to the point where you extend lifespans by more than 1 year per year of research. And that is immortality, like it or not (minus accidents, murders, etc).

[cglee]

<sarcasm> Embrace constraints. Basecamp was built in 10hrs/week. You can do something great in ~60-80 years</sarcasm>