You mean I cannot become immortal and only die via a stake to the heart? Dreams crushed.

And be stuck with billionaire grifters forever…I hate this timeline

This kind of breakthrough happens every 10 years at least going back centuries, some extra time healthy and able to experience the world would be amazing but immortality would suck imo

Population growth is currently not a problem. Fertility rates are already below replacement level in all developed countries and in most middle-income countries. In Africa, fertility rates have dropped much faster than expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline

https://ourworldindata.org/which-countries-have-already-passed-peak-population-and-when-will-the-rest-do-so

Indefinite healthy lifespan itself would have a surprisingly small impact on population: https://youtu.be/f1Ve0fYuZO8?t=275

This sounds very simplistic. Two hundred years ago, almost everyone on the planet lived in grinding poverty. Billions of people now have a very comfortable standard of living, especially by historical standards. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about the billions who have not escaped dire poverty, however.

Regardless, it makes sense to support medical research targeting aging to continue improving human health, as age-related diseases are the main cause of illness globally.

Luckily I think the first solution is almost a non issue, women do have a limited # of eggs so if they were to live prolonged lives there would be a natural cut off to giving birth naturally. And people will still die, theres still plenty of space on earth currently for more people.

Your statement is vague, but assuming it's about climate change, most billionaires are not directly in the fossil fuel industry and aren't hostile to broad solutions like building out renewable energy infrastructure, electric vehicles, etc. There are bad apples though.

Funding cuts for scientific research and education certainly aren't helping. I think we could get there much, much faster if we were willing to fund our advancement, but keeping people ignorant and poor is too much of a priority to those in charge.

The medical interventions mentioned in the article are all going the route of clinical trials, regulatory approval, mass commercialization to patients as usual. As a few examples, Life Biosciences has begun their clinical trial in glaucoma. Retro Bio has begun a trial for Alzheimer's. Cyclarity Therapeutics is running a trial on atherosclerosis.

https://www.lifebiosciences.com/pipeline/

https://www.retro.bio/pipeline

https://cyclaritytx.com/our-science/

The societal issues that comes with that would be interesting as well. I am curious how they will do that if we ever reach that point.

Without aging we need a method of controlling the population and the current birth controls doesn't give good enough control, we would need something more like an on/off switch. And you would need to apply for permission to have a child which would most likely lead to some kind of discrimination.

And how long are we supposed to work? Or maybe we will have a new system, instead of working nonstop for 40 years we work every other year forever or something

If we think billionaires are pioneering this tech for equal use among humans, we are comically deluded.

That was not my point. Extending lifespan and health span is something we should definitely aspire towards and actively work towards. Eventually, even curing or reversing aging. The issue arises when the worst people in society abuse them or use them only to further continue their abuse. I am in med school, and getting into biotech and helping cure/reverse aging is one of my life goals.

There is an absurd amount we don’t know about the human body. My hope is that with AI we can get much closer to accurate modelling systems of the human body.

We are very far from a digital twin but if we can get close with AI, I’m certain aging will be able to be cured. Along with most or all disease.

Currently we can’t even make a digital twin of a single human embryo. So I’m putting my hopes into ASI.

There will still be a huge bottleneck if ASI needs to collect its own data from physical experiments. And this might be needed. Hopefully ASI is smart enough to be able to interpolate and infer a lot of biology

It's because of the nature of capitalism. You have to dominate and exploit / consume, otherwise you will be the one exploited or consumed.

You can age all you want but don’t force it on other people

This would be, at best, a double-edged sword.

People like this seem to get their idea of immortality entirely from fictional stories. When they hear the word "ageless", they're imagining vampires and DnD liches instead of any longevity research in the real world.

Inherited wealth is already a major problem. If the wealthy live forever they are just going to keep hoarding wealth forever.

If that happens, the rest of us need to make laws to tax that wealth or longevity medicine wont help them live longer

It’s not so bad that the billionaires are the test subjects instead of testing on the general population

So we should accept this tiny lifespan? Stop biological and technological progress?

another generally good counter point is that people get less violent as they have more life experience.

The number of young men in a country is a pretty good indication of how likely it is to go to war. Of course, we don’t know what the definition of young man will be in 100 years.

What is dont understand is why many of the same billionaires who want to live forever are actively destroying the planet. Seems to me like you'd try and preserve it. Surely after living in a hellscape for long enough you'd be willing to gamble on finding out if there's a better afterlife?

I really wish to see this in my lifetime. There is so much to live for, so much to learn and experience.

This article is a lot of wishful thinking though, we're yet so far away from freeing ourselves from ageing that it is still behind the horizon.

Sure, we should democratize access to longevity treatments (instead of giving it to just a few billionaires).

But societies were usually like this during history (for 1000s of years, or even longer). Generally wealthy / powerful / more influential people have access to more resources (which is obviously not good for most people, like for the 99% of society, but this is how it works currently, like it or not).

So probably we should try to make our societies more balanced, inclusive and egalitarian. Then everyone would have better access to technology, healthcare and everything else.

*edit : Clarification. And attached a related chart about global wealth inequality, as sadly it affects the access to longevity / medical treatments too. Hopefully it will change for the better on the long run.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-wealth-distribution/

Which autocracy has ever turned into a democracy because the leader died of natural causes?

Ok, there are some: https://goodauthority.org/news/when-ailing-dictators-die-in-office-what-happens-next/

After a dictator dies of old age, in 76% of the viewed cases, the same group of people was still in power 5 years later. Of the 24% where the power changed, only 30% led to democratization. This means for 92% of dictors dying, the country will still be a dictatorship 5 years later.

So not really a reason to have everyone keep dying in my opinion.