Meaning of Life

[Piotr]

To fully grok the meaning of life, it would be helpful to have unlimited time at ones disposal. Or so I understood from a very young age, therefore I welcome this Good News with great pleasure:

"Scientists have already successfully intervened in ageing in a variety of animal species and researchers say there is reason to believe it could be achieved in people. "We have really turned a corner," says Brian Kennedy, director of the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing, adding that five years ago the scientific consensus was that ageing research was interesting but unlikely to lead to anything practical. "We're now at the point where it's easy to extend the lifespan of a mouse. That's not the question any more, it's can we do this in humans? And I don't see any reason why we can't," says David Sinclair, a researcher based at Harvard."

I let myself use my Owner powers and link to place which I normally consider #BadSource: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/11/-sp-live-forever-extend-life-calico-google-longevity

[Kaylesh]

I find it gross, that rich folks in Palo Alto are putting millions in this research, while we are already straining the planet to support the amount of people on it.

You can fix the genome to reduce aging by a tenfold, but there's still war and famine causing a multitude of people in the world to have their chance of not reaching their 26th birthday increased by a whole lot.

Besides, people living for a thousand years need more resources over their lifespan than the centennials do now. They stay "young" longer, so their cars decay from underneath them, needing to be replaced. And that's just an example.

In fact, say this pill is developed in the way described in the article. Aging is slowed by a tenfold. Does that mean people stay fertile during a longer period too? Even more mouths to feed, more sharing to be done.

[Kaylesh]

Just because people live longer doesn't necessarily mean they will have more kids. Lots of people get burned out after 2

Many people who get kids at a young(er) ago, end up getting a third once they get older (observation).
Messing with the genome could result in a increased fertile period. Say you can safely have children in the period 20-40 now, if that increases even to 50, overall more people will have a "second round".
Besides that, even if the average age would "only" double from 80-ish to 150-ish, it has a huge effect on demographics.
I'm not fully versed in demographic calculations, but the population would increase, even if the average number of children per couple would be two.

[Kaylesh]

To clarify, let's take an hypothetical situation.

We have a group of 100 couples.
Each couple has two kids, a balanced demographic setting. (Overall, each generation is the same size)
They have the kids at 20, and their kids do the same. At 60, the original parents pass away.

So, the parents (G0) have their kids (G1) at 20, who have their kids G2) at 20 (G0 is now 40).
When G2 gets their kids, G0 passes on.
Ergo: the population at any time is 3x size of the generation.
If we increase the age at which G0 passes on to 80, and keep all other variables the same, the population will become 4x the size of the generation.

=> longer life = more people.

[Piotr]

I find it gross, that rich folks in Palo Alto are putting millions in this research, while we are already straining the planet to support the amount of people on it.

You can fix the genome to reduce aging by a tenfold, but there's still war and famine causing a multitude of people in the world to have their chance of not reaching their 26th birthday increased by a whole lot.

Besides, people living for a thousand years need more resources over their lifespan than the centennials do now. They stay "young" longer, so their cars decay from underneath them, needing to be replaced. And that's just an example.

In fact, say this pill is developed in the way described in the article. Aging is slowed by a tenfold. Does that mean people stay fertile during a longer period too? Even more mouths to feed, more sharing to be done.

Your numbers are wrong ;] It is billions not millions, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-09/google-ventures-bill-maris-investing-in-idea-of-living-to-500 but it really would be trillions at this stage, if not for Socialism which slowed all technological progress down very considerably and for very long time now.

The struggle is for eternal life, my friend. Once you solve it, we can calm down.

If you believe that you can force me and the likes of me to feed the hungry poor world before we find immortality for ourselves and our families, you are wrong. We will feed the hungry too, but everything must be done in the correct order.

Your thinking about longevity and the risks related to it suffer from the common problem best described and cured by this video: http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging