Do people believe it's impossible to solve aging, and death?
What role does religion, afterlife beliefs, wealth inequality, and financial elitism play (if any)?
It's a very interesting thought isn't it - that we all age and die, overall pretty quickly, and nobody seems to care too much about it. Nobody wants to talk about it.
As if most people don't even see a problem to solve.
And when I look at the problem... it seems entirely solvable! I can't help but wonder why nobody else cares?
I think the worst possible reply to this question tends to be something like: "who would want to live forever?" (a different philosophical question, also interesting, but to me less urgent).
I genuinely want to know why nobody cares to solve aging - a biological phenomenon easily knowable and conquerable that would easily be the greatest discovery in the history of the Universe.
Op, consider using fewer absolutes. Many people have worked on aging science to identify how to prolong human lifetimes.
You're getting at an answer, but I'm wondering why we haven't.
Adjacently sure I want to know why more people aren't working on it.
You have to really step back and consider that we live in a world where people pay rent, buy groceries, have jobs, believe in gods, and watch the news. We can do things. We do do things. We're choosing it this way. Is it so bad to wonder why not something else?
Especially when it comes to the one topic that affects us all, that we may be the only ones able to actually answer (in the entire Universe)?
Because we have no clue of how to, yet.
But I agree that we could throw more people and resources at the problem, if aging didn't seem just natural and the idea of a defeating it didn't seem a bit crazy. But it's also true that the knowledge, tools and methods that might make it possible are only very recent acquisitions.
I can't imagine having this mentality
Of course aging is something we will solve - probably within the next 1000 years.
We will look back on these times like before humans wore clothes and had language.
Since on 1 hand you got an afterlife, eternity, and what-not.
And on the other, well, it's a bit like before you were born!
I guess to your point - why am I not interested in the problem of those who are not yet born? Hahahah
Enjoy your Sunday
Suffering, absolutely. But I think there is more nuance to death.
Idk if I'll ever get it.
Death and aging seem like very clear and basic problems to solve, like inventing a roof to get out of the rain.
This is amazing.
Yes, death prevention is a huge part of it!
And to your point - even if you solve something like consciousness, I could still be blown up and we wouldn't know how to build me back.
Humpty Dumpty out
I once read that we could in theory produce things like synthetic organs, but something like a synthetic liver would be the size of a 50,000 sqft factory requiring a full staff of chemists, would need a refinery complete with boilers, smokestacks, chemical waste facilities, and so-on for each individual person.
Think of kidney like a dialysis machine, or a heart like an advanced blood pump, lungs like aerators, muscles, bones - we can reverse-engineer most of it.
But there are still many mysteries in blood production, cellular function, digestion, hormones, genetics, and consciousness, to name a few areas.
It's humbling, we are at the very earliest stages of the biological sciences. But it's something nanotech and funding could chip away significantly at IMO in our lifetime, potentially solving many of the organ-related issues like diabetes, cirrhosis, cancer, and other things.
And lol, easily solvable? Scientists have been trying to figure it out for well over a century (and non-scientists probably since the origin of the man race). They’ve made marginal progress so far.
Go do a web search or two.
Where is progress halted in your opinion?
Consciousness/mind?
Basic cellular understanding?
Senescence?
But knowing there’s plenty of research going on (mostly in mice and in cell cultures) takes little more than reading the headlines in the HN “New” feed for a few weeks.