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Death is probably what is driving us towards all our progress, after all if you live forever why do anything today, you might as well put it off until tomorrow.

Fear of death is a natural thing, just as natural as dying.

Long term my money is on the grim reaper, he'll just have to get a bit more inventive in case we breed out of control. If we haven't already passed that point.



Just as natural as dying of diarrhea, exposure, septicemia, TB, polio, contaminated water, aids, starvation...

"Natural" != "good" or "desirable".

I don't want to give up clothes, shelter, clean water and farming just to be 'natural', nor do I want to accept aging just because it's 'natural'.


Well, wanting to accept it and having to accept it are two very different things.

The age of something is simply the measurement of elapsed time since something came into its present configuration. A 'war on aging' makes as much sense as a war on pi or a war on stone, aging is a simple fact, easily observed and unavoidable.


> The age of something is simply the measurement of elapsed time since something came into its present configuration. A 'war on aging' makes as much sense as

You are committing the fallacy of equivocation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation_fallacy

The war under discussion is a war on aging, definable as biologically senescencing, rather than a war on simply existing-over-time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence

Please also see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466749


Oh come on, now you're changing the terms. I've never heard anybody wanting a war on the measurement of aging.

It's the human bodily degeneration and weakness, physical and mental, that results from the biological processes of life running for tens of years that's the undesirable part. Commonly known as "old age" and "aging".


>> The age of something is simply the measurement of elapsed time

>now you're changing the terms.

Ambiguous use of terminology (e.g. age defined one way vs. age defined another way) is equivocation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation_fallacy

May I suggest the term senescence, or biological senescence, be used instead of the term age? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence




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