The whole longevity movement is also mostly driven by fear of death. OK, so you take every drug under the sun in the hope of living another day. In order to what? Be a wage slave for longer? Spend more time on Medicare?
That's a depressing viewpoint, since that's true, even if you don't manage to find the fountain of youth. Life has joy and meaning. If you have a purpose, whatever it is, then every singlenday longer you're alive is another day you get to help people, to educate them, to heal them, to ease their suffering, do good for the world, spend time with friends and family; whatever!
It’s interesting how my one and only motivator for these things would be the things you mention. I could imagine discovering a zest for life where I decide to take on such longevity advice. On the other hand in the modern age there are now thousands of subcultures for all kinds of things where the people who practice them must surely treat it at least like a hobby (meaning a serious pursuit). So I wonder: are they doing it as a means to an end because life-is-great? Or has it taken on its own life and it’s now being done for the sake of it?
There’s just an overwhelming amount of information and advice out there from all these subcultures.[1] What would I do if I found a burning meaning in life? Maybe adopt an eclectic set of advice and lifestyles from all these subcultures as a means to the end of living longer and better?
[1] And I know: eat well, exercise... the basics are not complicated. Intellectually speaking.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Vast majority of people don't want to die or grow sick and enfeebled with age. It's like observing that the reason people usually don't leap off tall buildings is because they fear falling and death - true, but obvious.
If people prefer being alive and healthy, and they obviously and overwhelmingly do, then we should be looking for solutions. If people want to escape the drudgery of work they are free not to take whatever medications or treatments are discovered - but the tiny minority that prefer death to labor shouldn't restrict the rest of us.
This is very selfish. As the population gets older we'll have fewer and fewer workers supporting all the healthy and long-lived old farts. The young will be taxed to within an inch of their life, causing their lives to be more miserable than they already are.
Before you get that dopamine hit from hitting that downvote button, ask yourself this: can more or fewer young people afford to own a home now? Why? Are they really that much more "lazy" than their parents generation?
Not at all. The only reason we support the elderly now is because they're unable to work. In a world of negligible senescence the old will support themselves.
So overpopulation via geriatrics is good but overpopulation via birth rate is bad? What's the benefit of running the planet-wide distributed human computer with ancient parts held together by drugs rather than new replacement units?
You are talking about individual benefits. I am talking about the entire humanity. Cancerous cells also benefit from having their kill switches deactivated. They just happen to kill the system that they are a part of while optimizing for their own survival. I am making the point that selfishly wishing to live forever is exactly like that.
You aren't making that point so much as asserting it without evidence. There is no reason to think longer lived humans will contribute to extinction. Perhaps thousand year old scientists and economists will figure out solutions to humanity-threatening issues that would have gone undiscovered and longevity will, therefore, save rather than doom humanity.
Just because you can imagine that, but not really articulate how, longevity might be bad for humanity doesn't mean you've made an argument.
> can more or fewer young people afford to own a home now?
More. Gen Z is ahead of previous generations. “30% of 25-year olds owned their home in 2022, higher than the 27% rate for Gen Xers when they were the same age.”
> Why?
Low interest rates during the pandemic helped, but generally homeownership stays steady regardless.
> Are they really that much more "lazy" than their parents generation?
Huh? Oh, did you assume the answer was “less”? Guess you should have looked up the numbers first, or at least not gotten your ideas about the world from Reddit.
You dismiss Reddit so readily. You must believe 90% of Russians support Putin. After all, that is also an official number published by a government authority.
