serafaery

I love this guy. This a very optimistic, hopeful, interesting 20 minute video from TED of Aubrey de Grey talking about treating aging as a disease, due to evolutionary neglect, that we should treat like any other illness.

He feels we don't have the right to stay in our "aging trance", in which we accept it as inevitable - that we can make progress toward treating aging and extending healthy, robust life. He feels we have a moral imperative to give future generations the choice to live longer, rather than neglect this endeavor and sentence them to shorter than necessary lives.

I. Don't. Want. To. Die.

I know I will, all too soon, because we haven't advanced far enough for science to be able to extend my life much, if at all. But what an amazing, hopeful gift; to be able to give future generations the choice to live twice as long, or ten times as long, if they so wish.

(Yes, there would be a need to balance longer lives with lower birth rates. Let them figure it out.)

It's hard not to be dazzled by the prospect of people in the future pitying our tiny little short existences, and becoming so much more; more wise and gentle, I would hope, with extended life spans.

I wish I could be one of them.