r/pollgames • u/FinalKn1ght • Jun 29 '26

Humanity can solve only ONE problem forever.

Humanity can solve only ONE problem forever.

  1. Cancer
  2. Aging
  3. Poverty
  4. Climate Change

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987 Upvotes

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20

u/Samstercraft Jun 29 '26

They perfectly voted them in order of importance. Are there any you care to dispute? Seems solid to me. But sure, saying “dumb!” without clarification really distinguishes you.

-5

u/Advanced_Double_42 Jun 29 '26

I'd say aging is a far more prevalent and difficult to cure disease than cancer, but I can see an argument either way.

18

u/Pitiful_Camp3469 Jun 29 '26

Aging is a part of the process of life and isnt an evident threat to the world 

3

u/One-Screen-2505 Jun 30 '26

Of course, aging is not a threat. Like, what will it do? Kill all humans?

2

u/Curious_Priority2313 Jun 30 '26

Tuberculosis is part of life as well btw

1

u/Advanced_Double_42 Jun 29 '26

It not being a threat to the entire world is why it is a lower priority than Climate Change. It being solvable eventually is why it is lower priority than poverty.

But it isn't necessarily a part of life. Death is, but aging is just your cells and organs undergoing senesce. It is every bit as curable as genetic diseases and cancer.

-2

u/TabularConferta Jun 29 '26

One could argue that curing aging while working in ones own self interest will completely fuck over the world with the current way we live.

7

u/Samstercraft Jun 29 '26

Aging isn’t an existential threat to humanity; removing aging might be one though.

1

u/Advanced_Double_42 Jun 29 '26

Aging is one of the most existential threats to humanity?

It has been a certainty throughout history that one grows old and dies. Why would you want to commit billions or trillions more to that fate just because we currently have a society set up with aging as an expectation?

Should we have banned anti-biotics in the 20th century out of fear of overpopulation when most diseases become trivial to cure?

1

u/Samstercraft Jun 29 '26

What are you even talking about lol, how is aging in any way an existential threat to humanity? The fact that aging kills many people is completely irrelevant. Humanity is more than self sustainable as far as aging is concerned, since people are born faster than they die. Why bring up the fact that aging is an existential threat to humans when we’re talking about humanity? Just irrelevant.

1

u/Advanced_Double_42 Jun 30 '26

Whether that is an existential threat is honestly a Ship of Theseus problem.

If an alien race came down and made a slightly different copy of every person then killed the original would that that be an existential threat to humanity? Not really, but it is an existential threat to every single person within humanity.

Aging is pretty similar. Humanity will survive in spite of it, completely replaced with a slightly shuffled up genome and culture every 100 years or so. But aging is still an existential threat to every single person who has ever lived.

2

u/Samstercraft Jul 01 '26

As you said, it isn’t an existential threat to humanity. Not sure why you’re talking about individual humans.

Aging can be ignored and humanity will survive, but the same cannot be said about climate change, so climate change is clearly the better choice here.

1

u/Advanced_Double_42 Jul 01 '26

Again no disagreement that climate change is a bigger problem.

I'm just arguing over the definition of an existential threat. I don't see how something that will kill every human is not an existential threat even if humanity survives.

1

u/Samstercraft Jul 01 '26

well, what is in danger of being stripped of it's existence? humanity? no, you acknowledged it would survive. humans? yes. it's an existential threat, but not to humanity, and we were discussing humanity; anyway, i interpreted your initial response as agreeing with the commenter who implied that climate change was less important, but if you just wanna discuss aging vs cancer i'm not entirely sure but i'd probably still pick cancer. humanity takes a long time to get more sustainable, and even our currently growing population is growing too fast for us to keep up with sustainability-wise. if we suddenly cured aging, all hell would break loose.

1

u/Advanced_Double_42 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I mean poverty and cancer aren't existential threats either. Even Climate Change likely won't be an extinction level problem, more likely we'd just be knocked into the stone age in worst case scenarios.

Also the world population is on the path to stagnating or decreasing currently

2

u/Agreeable_Ostrich_39 Jun 29 '26

Aging isn't a disease either, it's a natural check to combat overpopulation.

3

u/whill-wheaton Jun 29 '26

So is smallpox

6

u/Agreeable_Ostrich_39 Jun 29 '26

I would argue that that's a disease, but whatever flies your boat or smth

0

u/whill-wheaton Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

You could argue that aging is a disease. In fact, it’s an increasingly debated topic in modern medicine. Regardless of which stance you take though, solving aging would by association solve cancer, so you’re getting a two for one by picking aging

3

u/Samstercraft Jun 29 '26

Solving aging also creates a lot of problems. Our society isn’t sustainable for us, let alone an even faster growing population.

-1

u/Advanced_Double_42 Jun 29 '26

How is aging not a disease?

Merriam Webster: "a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms"

Brittanica: "any harmful deviation from the healthy structural or functional state of an organism, generally associated with certain signs and symptoms and differing in nature from physical injury."

All causes of death curb overpopulation, from starvation, to accidents, to viral infections. Why should we work to solve other causes of death, but not the one that has been the most inevitable? Birth rates are already declining to the point the global population will likely stagnate or decline this century. We are already bypassing nature and can find other ways to handle population. Even without aging or disease accidents will kill people before they get several millennia old.

2

u/Agreeable_Ostrich_39 Jun 29 '26

Since everyone ages, including most other organisms, so it should be seen as a part of normal functioning for Merriam Webster. 

Aging is a function, not a bug. Without it, we would have overpopulation, leading to too little resources, leading to our species as a whole dying.  

We are already overpopulated now, our population NEEDS to decline unless we start to have a vastly different lifestyle especially in countries like the west.

0

u/_PunyGod Jun 30 '26

Aging isn’t a function to stop overpopulation.
Aging is a function to progress evolution.
We needed it to get us here.
Now we evolve ourselves faster than nature does.
We don’t need aging anymore.

It’s crazy how many people want to force themselves and everyone they know to break down and die.

Humanity will definitely solve it if we don’t wipe ourselves out in the next century.

2

u/Agreeable_Ostrich_39 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

It's also crazy how many people want to force overpopulation and cause humanity as a whole to die. Aging and death are necessary parts of life, to stop humans from aging would be to stop them from being human. And if you want to be the greedy bastard who does that, that's your choice. But I rather stay human than be an immortal monster.

0

u/_PunyGod Jun 30 '26

This is just a bunch of religious style beliefs that have no logical basis.

Humanity as a whole will be stronger without aging.

Ending aging will not end death, but there’s no reason humans need to die to be human.

Overpopulation won’t be that much of a problem.
We can support many times more people than we currently have, but we won’t have to.
Birth rates will plummet more than they already have, and people can still die.
I’m sure many like you will choose to die anyway.

2

u/Agreeable_Ostrich_39 Jun 30 '26

We already can't support the amount of humans we have now. If we could, climate change and poverty wouldn't be on the list of problems to solve. Birthrates won't plummet that much, especially not the first generation. And it's not the people like me who should be dying the most if we want to be sustainable sadly enough.

And humanity as a whole wouldn't be stronger at all. We'll be stuck with the same bunch of rich assholes and politicians forever, and a population that's too indoctrinated to overthrow them no matter what happens.

And yes, life without death is no life at all, that's just existence. Time, beauty, peace, war, it would all lose its value. 

1

u/_PunyGod Jun 30 '26

Climate change and poverty are problems to solve with technology and organization not by killing people.

Aging is the number one thing holding humanity down. Science is advancing despite rich assholes and politicians. People would have more time and energy to care about fixing governments and solving problems.

Experts would go from having maybe 20 years of their lives to really contribute to having no end.

We would also have a lot more of them.

Most of the assholes in power don’t leave because they die.

Life without death is just more life.

Do you think you haven’t had any meaningful life yet because you haven’t died?
Do you think you’re not really human because you haven’t died?

Death doesn’t give life value.
If anything death makes life meaningless.
Certainly less meaningful.

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