Stop aging- would you?

[MeAndYou]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/05/is-aging-an-acc.html

Interesting article. Personal beliefs aside (as far as evolution goes) ...if they did figure out a way to halt aging all together in the human body...would you? Would you still feel suicidal or would it open up a desire or hope for the future that you could be apart of? How long would you want to live? What would happen with our normal jobs and retirement?

I think the world would change dramatically. Would we loose the instinctual drive over time to reproduce? How would they police this... overpopulation would increase severely. This would also change how we think of suicide. Would they have a law making it illegal to commit suicide before a certain age and how long would people really want to live? How much would our understanding of the world and ourselves grow or would it be stunted? Would there still be a need for trends and fashion? (lets be honest most fashion/trends/counter culture is born from kids)

For some reason I would love to live 400 or 500 more years...simply to see the technological advances and our understanding of life and everything about it but i dont really want to be around during the crazy times lol. Im sure it would create mass amounts of tension between people who believe we should stop having kids, and people who believe thats infringing on our rights as a human and how all of this would go over with the religious community. Our ever depleting recourses, global warming, government corruption, war, and all that fun stuff in movies isnt fun in real life :P

 

[aoeu]

I would choose to halt aging. My body is already in pieces - I don't need it getting worse... And I'd like the ability to choose with certainty when I die. I want to learn so much more than I possibly can in this life. Right or wrong, I don't know... it would certainly burden the world if everyone chose to remain young forever and not have children... Actually. That might fix the world. There's no, "somebody else's problem further down the line" - you WILL live to see the consequences.

 

[Random]

My problems have nothing to do with getting older. My life was crap when I was 12 and it's crap now that I'm in my mid-30s. I don't know if I'd even say that it's gotten any worse, really.

My entire life has been just existing. Waiting for........nothing. Just waiting for the clock to tick. Waiting to shave and wash off the dirt and gunk that accumulates on me while I wait for nothing.

I had a feeling once, when I was very young, that there was something special waiting for me right around the corner. That one day, I would just magically be "old enough" and everything would fall into place. That I would finally understand all the things I didn't. That I would be able to function in a world that seemed overly complicated, disjointed and pointless to me. The older I got, the more I realized it was never going to happen. That my first impression (Wow! This life thing really stinks!) was more on target than I ever thought possible.

You know....we always think first impressions are unreliable but it's amazing how right they often are. I didn't think about suicide when I was five years old but now that I look back, I think that's right around the time when it started to dawn on me that there was nothing here for me. I saw that other people were leading great lives and having lots of fun but I knew, somehow, it was a path I couldn't take.

If I could stop aging (or even reverse it), what would be the point? Just to sit here forever? I have all the time that I need. I don't have the psychological ability to do anything.

I guess that's a little more than you asked for and I'm rambling so I'll stop. I wouldn't stop aging if I could.

 

[Aurora Gory Alice]

Hmm if I could stop the physical aging process at 25 I would, yes.

But I want to age personally, when it comes to mentality and experience, wisdom etc. I also want to die at some point.

Maybe if I was given a time frame of, I will die at some point in my 70s - 90s but physically I'd still look and feel 25, I'd take that deal.

 

[fromthatshow]

I do not want to live forever in this body. 20 years is already too many.

 

[The_8th_Wonder]

The world would become much shallower than it already is... which is quite hard to believe. I wouldn't do it.

 

[Neverhappyalwayssad]

I like how in 300 leonidis tells the traitor soldier "I hope you live forever" or somthing along those lines. (ment to be the worse thing you could say)

So if by stop aging you mean become immortal hell no. I don't want to live for tommorow, so def not forever.

But if by stop aging you mean, that you would eviently die, but your phsycial features, ur body wouldnt age then I would probably def do it.

 

[Lovecraft]

There is no immortality. There is the distinct possibility of being able to stop aging - be able to regenerate indefinitely, but sooner or later a hurricane will blow your way, or a drunk drive, a tumour, etc. I'd stop it if I could - but not with whatever they have, it's still theoretical and experimental. I don't think that it should be allowed to be used on any humans before the colonization of other planets/moons is viable. We have a few too many people as it is.

 

[Brighid Moon]

I'd have stopped my aging at 16-20 years old. That's human physical prime. But I wouldn't want to live forever. I'm miserable enough in 44 years, and can't imagine the next 44 being any better. I wouldn't want to live 444 or 4444 or more years feeling this way! But being 16-20 for the next 60ish years? Yeah, I think anyone could do that!

 

[Lovecraft]

After more reading of the article:

Aging is NO accident. To support our reproductive capabilities, we need a snappier death rate than parrots or tortoises. We produce more babies - or at least manage to get more to survive. Without death, we would over populate quickly, and end up ruining the environment and dying off... Kind of like the modern world. We're too prosperous for our own good. It used to be a good equilibrium of death to birth, but nowadays with all the technology, we have people living far longer than the equilibrium allowed. This whole not aging* thing would be the last nail in the coffin of overpopulation unless we can get people to stop all the sex and/or get more contraceptives out to most everyone.

* I read about a year ago on the idea of human immortality through science. Although it was not known, it seems many biologists think it it telomarase that ages us. Telomarase keeps the telomeres in the cells from degrading with each mitosis. If the telomeres degrade too far, they booch the DNA in mitosis and the cell is not viable.

In the 50's they got some cells from a woman's tumour, and to this day it still grows - Not in the corpse, of course - because cancers have telomarase in the mix. It regenerates the telomeres after mitosis.

 

[aoeu]

I read a far more convincing argument about aging. Our goals at all times were to produce as many children as possible to take over the world, just like every other creature.

Basically, if the chance of a catastrophic death is high enough, there's no point to maintenance. So, if we're likely to die sometime between 20-30 years old, there's no point to doing maintenance near the end - the energy would be more useful going to reproduction. During most of our evolution, about 30 years old was when you're likely to die, so our evolution selected to ensure maximum output before that time period. If you spent a great deal of energy on longevity over reproduction, you would be less successful.

The analogy that was used noted the world's car crash capital, where a car lasts on average a year before it's totalled in a collision. Are you going to keep up with your oil changes? Are you going to remove dents? Of course not. The cash that goes to maintenance would be better saved for a new car for after this one is destroyed.

Further, there's no way of evolving longevity beyond the age of reproduction. Any genes that affect you after the time you're likely to breed will be randomly placed, since there's no selection pressure one way or another.

 

[Lovecraft]

That may work for women - with the fixed egg count and all - but men could, theoretically, be potent indefinitely without the effects of aging. If telomarase is responsible for the atrophy of age, then getting rid of it would expand the time-frame of fertility indefinitely.

 

[aoeu]

Ah, that's the TECHNICAL requirement to breed. You also have to get a mate. Unless you had perfect longevity to begin with, men are likely to be less able to breed as they age, due to competition. And you only addressed a side-theory of mine, the last bit.

In general, humans in the wild are likely to be killed by famine or beast or something like that by the time they're 30-35, so maintenance is not useful beyond that time frame.

 

[Lovecraft]

If they were eternally 20 years old, I imagine they would still die before 45, but they could definitely live longer if their youth never left them at all.

 

[aoeu]

I'm not so sure about that. By 35-45 you're probably at peak effectiveness [your body hasn't decayed much, but your brain is sharper], but in the wild you rarely get there, again with the average age of death about 30. So, it's statistical processes limiting, not genetics, in my opinion.

 

[Bubble]

Nope. Simple answer, I wouldnt stop ageing, its a natural process. Its how im going to get to see my children grow up and become adults themselves.

 

[bhawk]

Oh god nothing scares me more than eternal life and eternal youth.
With a bit of thought most people would come to realise the torment it would bring on each person.
Imagine 500 years of thought, 500 years of repetetive life, 500 years of falling in love and the pain when falling out of love, the amount of friends that would be aquired and how much time would be spend on them, the amount of animals you would have, then watch die. How many years would you have to put up with mental illnesses, centuries of fights, sleepless nights, the amount of adverts you would have to cope with, the amount of regrets generated in that time!
Far too much time, far too much to cope with. Its living hell.
people become tired of life

 

[Lovecraft]

Just because you stop aging doesn't mean you can't die...

 

[LetItGo]

There is no immortality. There is the distinct possibility of being able to stop aging - be able to regenerate indefinitely, but sooner or later a hurricane will blow your way, or a drunk drive, a tumour, etc. I'd stop it if I could - but not with whatever they have, it's still theoretical and experimental. I don't think that it should be allowed to be used on any humans before the colonization of other planets/moons is viable. We have a few too many people as it is.

I agree

It would be nice to stay the age I am now...physically, but immortality would be grossly irresponsible at this point in time. Anyway that argument has already been decided. They wanna get rid of 80% of us...havent you heard?

 

[MeAndYou]

Just because you stop aging doesn't mean you can't die...

Yea i didnt exactly include there would still be disease, famine, violence, car accidents etc.

So basically YOU choose how long you live assuming these things dont get you first. I think it would give a whole new meaning to suicide.