Life Extension Values Clarification Survey

July/August 2007 Comments

Num Comments Date
1874 Wow! You're making me think. Dunno about living so long... Think people have "their time on earth" i guess... 2007-07-03 16:07:20
1878 i would just like to meet another optomist :/ 2007-07-04 16:02:35
1881 Interesting... I do believe a longer life can be obtained but pharmaceuticals are not the answer- proper diet and freedom from toxins is the key. After all, why live longer if you can't enjoy it? Health IS important to the enjoyment of life. 2007-07-06 02:34:36
1882 I believe the greatest obstacles for revival are not technical or physical, but social,- political and monetary. 2007-07-07 08:04:19
1919 Do you believe there is a God is difficult to answer depending upon definitions. Other than that all clear and comprehensible. 2007-07-16 10:59:01
1927 26. I was raised Catholic but am currently not practicing and do not agree with some of the church's positions. 2007-07-17 17:21:02
1939 Did humankind ever have a longer maximum lifespan? 2007-07-22 15:27:16
1947 Interesting survey. 2007-07-25 23:22:34
1949 (9) we need to lower the birthrate. There are too many of us. (25) re-incarnation would make sense, but I really don't know. 2007-07-26 23:44:19
1957 able to reflect myself 2007-07-29 10:35:24
1964 medical possible 2007-07-31 07:45:25
1967 I had no idea this was about cryonics- I was just interested originally in looking up ststitics for a safe place to live! 2007-07-31 19:21:36
1970 I believe God invented science and it's part of our job on earth to discover it's benefical and destructive uses so we can make informed decisions about the use of scientific methods. Science in itself is merely a created thing to be explored and used for the benefit of mankind and the joy of it's creator. 2007-08-02 10:37:45
1980 I believe that most "ever be possible" questions are a definite "yes" unless humans somehow destroy their selves/widespread disaster prevents human progress. Until that point, what can be learned, what progress can be had, will continue forward, even to what now is not feasible. 2007-08-05 17:52:53
1983 I'll consider cryonics when they demonstrate that it works. 2007-08-05 23:20:26
1985 God? I'll wait and see. Meanwhile, it's my job to keep myself going, perhaps for no other reason than to enjoy an occasional moment of personel gratification or joy. 2007-08-06 14:12:26
1993 Cryonics is bullshit and just wants to take money from people who they make believe in it! 2007-08-08 07:40:58
2003 Interesting questions 2007-08-12 07:36:12
2004 personally I do not believe the cryonics theroy or practice. I have very strong ethnic and moral values and would look forward to the aging process. Unlike my european immigrant ancesters, i believe in scientific discovery ( not cryonics) and for my body to be cremated. I am very interested in agism. I am interested in how the baby boomers and the newest generation of children are willing to adopt or retain old values and incorporate or acculturieze themselve into new and old values regarding aging. I specifically am the bologna and cheese, nmustard and tomato on bread sandwich caring for aging and elder relatives like my parents did for their parents. It is about reminiscing and knowing who you are and not looking for the youth serums, but realizing who you are personally and what you are willing to do for yourself and age gracefully and with dignity. In today's society one can write and direct what one wants legally and ethically and have those wishes honored. Whining and worrying leads to depression instead of motivation and stimulation to do hwat one wants and plans as they age pasty the age of 65. What is needed is for clinicians, phsyicians, nurses and caregivers to learn... physical, cognitive, psychiological and other changes in dealing with a variety of aging illness and situations, especially with the aging brain and personality changes and behaviors. One needs to learn to miodify environments and not be so negative in their thinking, not patronize or be disrespoectful of the person. 2007-08-12 17:46:58
2008 question 1: Currently suffering from fibromyaglia, which alters how I feel about life many times in a *single day* and sometimes within the hour. Overall, I give my enjoyment of life a 5 because it could be MUCH better but it isn't quite so bad that I will die soon. question 5: I think it can happen sooner than the mimimum time frame, but also see the potential that such developments can be further delayed. As to why I think sooner (I am no expert in the field, though, this just seems more sesnsible to me) is that lobsters and tortises already can live as long (200 years) and remain relatively healthy. Okay, so it's right there! why not begin there and become more like lobsters/tortises? I think it would be far easier than building a means from scratch, which brings me to my reasons why I think this can be delayed... As to why not in my lifetime, I can see strong possibility that this may not be done while research is forced to build the impossible under the burden of two things: 1)over-caution: an entirely safe and sound way for non-aging from scratch! (if only by pereception that other methids are "bad") This would take many generations before even minor success was achieved, I think, and I daresay probably never would come about in time. At the going rate, things are far too slow and I think bio "ethics" is to blame, which slows the rate of learning by setting up un-nessecary road-blocks and "issues" to be dealt with. 2)Stagnate competition brought about by our system of money (government issue fiat dollars). From my perspective, the resistence to a cure for aging is largely based in economics and politics strangling grip over it, which sustains the many ongoing myths about logevity and immortality as both a direct and indirect result. I could write a book to explain this, but it will suffice to say that the current system of money causes massive distortions in what is and what isn't doable and so can (and is) affect/ing people's attitudes towards aging (and a cure for it) perhaps more than religion itself does/can. It also allows oppositional interests to guarentee that changes will be so slow in the making as to be nonexistant! But, if economic freedom from counterfeit money can be acheived (and I am strongly optimistic this will happen very soon) then reaching age 200 would be "no sweat"! Question 7: I say possibly only because I have little doubt that humanity WOULD experience boughts of boredom. We experience this now and have throughout the ages. But on a whole, this is really an unfounded concern for a few reasons. For starters... I don't know ANYONE that has even thought of ending their life because of idleness. The sick/afficted hang on to hope even when there is little to hope for. The bored... complain of being bored! lol So even if we were bored more oft than not, it wouldn't be hell on earth I think. Humans seem able to endure a slow pace to a rather large degree, even when times are bad. One might argue that this occaisonal slowing down in an ageless world through boredom will be how new ideas will "slip by" without so much initial resistence while keeping competitive pressures in check so that tensions and injustices are minimized. Second, we don't have any idea what an ageless world would be like. All we can be certain of is that we won't dread going around the sun one too many times and won't have as much disease to worry about. Thusly safer than ever, how this will affect us psychologicaly is not something anyone today can know; it would take many generations of long-lived people before this affect was witnessed, I think. third and last, psychology/neurology of the future will better address the issue of chronic boredom (IF it arises). I don't think current research in non-aging need burden itself with this issue. Besides, once long-lived youth was acheived future reseacrhers might find it a heck of a lot easier to to understand things like boredom and help do away with it better than today's understanding of things can. If such a thing was totally useless, but as I said it may have advantages in the future. question 8: This largely depends if non-aging science takes off or not. I can guarentee that things will not get better without it. For one, medical costs can only continue to rise in the absence of good and solid cures. Politics would get involved and before anyone knew it, we would all be slaves to a world-tyrant (and the war would likely end all intelligent life on earth...). Unthinkable as it may sound, there is a good chance this can happen within 100 years (and most likely less) if people don't wise up to what's going on and why. That aside, I think it's hard to say to what extent life will be better. There is not too many meaningful improvements that can be made before a cure for aging is found, so I guess things would be as well as they can assuming humanity makes it that far. questions 14-23: I have heard of cryonics, looked into the possibility of undergoing it myself (and was rather suprised to find it costs so little!). I will most likely undergo it if I need to, even though I don't really believe it stands a "chance" of working and that nonaging health will likely come first. But I could always be wrong, and so I don't think those who do sign up for and undergo it are making a bad bet; if it works, they will see a future that perhaps many today will never get to and if not they died anyway so it's no big (financial) loss. I do think freezing damage could be repaired, but wheather or not this would lead to a living person (would they be the same person?) emerging from the cryonic state cannot be answered by an affirmative to that question alone.There's many problems facing cryonics and it's patients, of which I don't think freezing damage will turn out to be the biggest. I am sure a number of these can be solved as well, in time, and *perhaps* all of them can be. I will say this much: Cryonics has the advantage of being an unprovable concept that can be scientificaly supported *without* intellectual dishonesty. That's a very rare thing. In fact, I think that's the only example I know of where fact and fiction collide without all the usual fuss! That will prove to be it's strong point and so I think one can be reasonably assured that all ideas will be tried until it is no longer feasible to keep trying to revive them. But one important question I never see answered is when that termination point is. It is "unthinkable" that such a thing will happen, it seems, to the experts in the field. Life insurance is supposed to cover it, but one has to assume that a point would come where funds would be cut off. This, I think, makes the cure for aging all the more important; the experts tending these patients can ensure no disruption better/longer if they're alive to do so (obviously!). Assuming it DID work, though, cryonics list of problems would finally be at the easy end. I am fairly certain that revival wouldn't be an unpleasant experience so long as my memory was fairly intact, along with my sense of self. Otherwise, I guess I would be a new-born and would feel afraid... But assuming not, the new world would not be so alien as to disvalue life (else I wouldn't have been revived.) I assume that much from the logic of this hypothetical revival. Anyway, I wouldn't fear such a future but I would of course miss family and friends that perhaps didn't make it. If I knew no one, it would perhaps prove difficult to adapt but I don't think this would be an unsurrmountable challenge for myself. question 10: A big question, and relates to the boredom issue somewhat. I don't think stagnation will occur on the whole, ultimately, because to live long and possibly forever practically ensures that a person/people will overcome previous limitations sooner or later. Some say stagnation is the way to death, but I don't buy that unless one is on the other side of the cure availability. I think the other side will be different in that regard. To a point, at least, because in order for anything to get done we'd have to have some people not actively seeking to advance. This, like I said above, may prove to keep competition in natural balance and thus tensions and injustices (perceived or otherwise) would be minimized. Some would become bored/stagnate for a while and when they had the motivation to snap out of it, others wanting rest would surely take their place. So I have to say no, it wouldn't harm society either way. tradition would be maintained as advancements madde steady progress. Of coure, one never knows when things will get intense and become interesting to almost everyone! I think such moments would be rarer, though. On the other hand, I say aging robs us of seeing many of the opportunities to see old things in new light as well as totally new concepts never imagined before. This robbing happens even as we live, of course, and so it the bigger problem we face. Religious questions: Being a satanist, I am not concerned what other holy religious literature has to say on the matter of longevity/immortality. Besides, I beleive that things can be interpreted in more than one way than absolute meaning of printed words. It's a destiny, else we mire ourselves in a world of ever-growing problems that no amount of faith or policy can solve. Science is oft accused of playing God, but when one looks at it it is policy and faith that plays God most often, because it asserts the arbitrary and then parades about like a hero! History is full of such "play God" sorts and there's no shortage of those willing to don towel capes and jump from the coffee tables (consequently, history is rife with bumped heads and scraped appendages, to put it lightly!) But ultimately, I don't think God would mind that we figured things out in order to better/more experience the scope of his/her creation, perhaps beyond what exists now. It would be more dignified of his/her creations to do so, in trying to be more like him/her. Which, btw, I think that what exists now was made by such a people that we call divinity today, who figured out how to live forever and create in order to add to the experience of immortality. The way I see it, I think that it will be learned that to be ageless forever will require perpetual growth like the lobster or tortise seems to undergo. Naturally, new things would have to be created (not just discovered) in order to have that benefit... new particles, structure of matter that don't collapse into a blackhole etc... in order to meet the demands of not only ever-growing populations but also ever-growing people! In short humanity would have to become as God. We may have already achieved this; perhaps we have already created new matter in researching nature's laws without realizing it! This possibility alone I consider good reason to pursue immortality... I want to know if we have or haven't and what the potential to do so "again" (?) is! It would totally blow away how we regard existence and ever greater freedom would be acheived at a pace that most people, I think, can keep up with (and therefore not reject...) 2007-08-14 05:28:06
2011 I'm going to have to Google cryonics now. Previously I assumed it was just science fiction. 2007-08-14 22:43:00
2014 Questions 13: Do you believe that any Western religious scripture (Bible,Koran,Torah) indicates a maximum allowable lifespan? Should also another options as answers: Don't care and Irrelevant. 2007-08-15 06:37:00
2016 Do you want to earn money from cryonics? 2007-08-16 14:02:15
2021 In the future, who knows. 2007-08-18 11:28:30
2023 No comments. I think we must be worried about more important things in humanity problems. Ok? 2007-08-19 11:46:15
2026 Nonsense! 2007-08-20 22:44:24
2032 I recently read an article from wikipedia claim that suspended animation has success in pigs, dogs and mice. Hope that this can be also success in human in future. I hope that Cryonics and suspended animation will be available in Hong Kong or Guangdong province. 2007-08-21 07:52:46
2046 question 15, could not list one. New to cryonics. 2007-08-23 00:53:42
2063 IMO, cryonics is an emergency measure for those who lose the race with life extension technology development. If tech improves fast enough, cryo need never be utilized; if not, it relocates you far forward in time to a point where resuscitation & rejuvination tech develops sufficiently to enable you to rejoin the living community and begin partaking of all of the new improvements in extension methodologies which have occurred during your cold convalescence. IMO, the break in consciousness continuity is undesirable and thus to be avoided if extension tech develops sufficiently to keep pace with or outstrip your aging process. 2007-08-25 11:05:17
2074 Go for it!!!!! 2007-08-26 14:59:35
2094 I believe that you live once, die, your body returns to dust and you soul goes back to God. Stop fooling yourself... Believe in God. 2007-08-31 08:55:34