this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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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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[โ€“] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Also super appealing. Achieving this advancement will be our first step in exploring the universe. Seeing as we've as yet found no others, it falls on us to become the "precursors"

The prospect of getting older - now that I'm older - and running out of time, ability or mental sharpness has had a negative impact on me in the last couple years.
There are so many things I still want to do, try, and create. Some of which I have a lot of regrets that I haven't done yet. Some of which I fear I've grown too old to accomplish.

I'd really like to live a lot longer. Now, fear of death, running out of time and my body and mind degrading have established a firm purchase on part of my mind.

What I'd love to be able to do is survive the trip to another planet and spend a couple decades researching and exploring the local flora/fauna.

I agree that billionaires will own it but... advanced tools like the crispr are available to almost anyone today and as science progress is posted and talked about, I think there will be a lot of people that can duplicate the work.

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