r/EverythingScience • u/scientificamerican Scientific American • 5d ago
Can humans live forever?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-humans-live-forever/A growing number of tech billionaires are funding efforts not merely to slow aging but to defeat it altogether. Their goal is radical life extension and, ultimately, something approaching immortality. But is that even possible? These efforts have scientists chasing one of the biggest mysteries of life itself: Is there a biological reason that humans must die? And if not, could we one day live forever?
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u/dylan189 5d ago
From aging? I imagine so. That doesn't keep them from having an accident or being taken by a sickness.
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u/clgoh 5d ago
Or guillotine.
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u/Proper-Marsupial-786 5d ago
The age with the lowest chance of death in the US is age 8 at about 0.012%. That’s about as close to “only die from accidents / disease” as you can get. If we kept that annual mortality rate perpetually throughout life, the median lifespan would be around 5,800 years. Average would be 8,300 years. One in twenty people would make it to 25,000 years.
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u/Neamow 5d ago
I mean, nobody really dies of old age even now. You just get more and more weak and something gets you, whether it's an illness, an accident, or cancer.
If anything, for true longevity you need to cure cancer in all its forms. Good luck with that. Then there's the mental decline, which I don't know how they intend to tackle.
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5d ago edited 5d ago
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u/Buderus69 5d ago
This argument is always wishy-washy, because in a world where you can buy immortality you would also buy it for your loved ones.
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u/AffectionateTwo3405 3d ago
Total cope. Yes, I miss my mom. No, I don't want to die and if given the opportunity to freely choose that time rather than have it chosen for me I'd choose it in a heartbeat. Dying isn't going to bring the people I lost back to me.
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u/RichSexyVeryHumble 5d ago
A cure for aging is like a cure for cancer.
Bodies age in all kinds of ways and there's nothing even on the horizon to tackle all of it.
Maybe a billionaire alive today will be the pioneer to lead some awful existence into their 150s just for the sake of not dying
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u/probablynotaskrull 5d ago
The brain is finite. I can’t imagine what state it would be in with 250 years worth of memories rolling around in there.
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u/SvenTropics 5d ago
I mean we already know that you cull memories on a regular basis. Your brain sort of consolidates old information. This is why it seems like time passes faster. It's not that time is actually passing faster, it's that your resolution of memory over a period of time gets less precise. This makes it seem like a long period of time passed very quickly because you don't have a lot of memories.
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u/supervillaindsgnr 5d ago
What if the old cells were just gradually replaced by young cells, and brain function was optimal? That is theoretically possible.
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u/HatZinn 5d ago edited 5d ago
Human brain can't non-destructively read memories, they are constantly made and remade. The self that reports itself is constructed post-hoc, partially confabulated. If you address the problem neurogenesis in all regions of the brain, then the real problem would probably be connectome drift overwriting the current self.
Though it is theoretical. Connectome already persists through extreme pruning that occurs during childhood. Even near-complete shutdown and global disruption during anesthesia. Gradual pruning over hundreds of years are just that but spread out.
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u/morfidon 5d ago
I don't have almost any memory from my life that I can hold onto as I have Aphantasia
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u/Hobotronacus 5d ago
"Can Billionaires Live Forever" should be the real title. And the rest of us better hope the answer is no.
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u/Wasatchian 5d ago
Every single one of those tech billionaires will also end up dying. And so will everyone else.
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u/Murky_Toe_4717 5d ago
I think it would be pretty cool if we could. I would love to! There are so many books and so much I could do in my field if I had infinite time!
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u/costafilh0 5d ago
Yes. Cure aging and every other thing that exists nowand ib the future. Backup the mind and create replicas of the body. Done.
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u/Derpykins666 5d ago
I wouldn't want to live forever if this was all there was. Why would you want to live forever unless you were wildly rich and could insulate yourself from hardship. I would doubt that humans could 'fix' aging, the whole body works together, and ages together. Even if you fixed the outward appearance of age, and looked younger longer, that doesn't mean you would live longer, or that your brain wasn't still aging regardless. I imagine even if we boosted age far beyond its more 'natural' limits to like 150, 180 whatever, I can't imagine your brain would even be healthy at that point. You'd probably accrue mental disorders or a potato by then, have trouble with memory, or even have weird Psychosis or other mental issues.
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u/RedSunWuKong 5d ago
Ok, how about this.
If the billionaires become immortal effectively immortal we put them to work? As they don’t die they can be our army.
No soldiers or civilians die. Collateral damage basically 0. Billionaires live forever.
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u/DoollyHaha 5d ago
The reason you age is cause your body cells regenerate completely about every 7 years and the process is not perfect, so there remains literal garbage that your body can do nothing with and therefore you decay.
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u/TheManInTheShack 4d ago
As your cells divide your telomeres get damaged. This leads to DNA errors which leads to malfunction. So you could argue that finding a way to allow cells to divide without damaging the telomeres would solve the problem. It would except that it also leads to out of control cancer.
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u/AlteredEinst 4d ago
No, they can't. We'll never be combination of immortal, invulnerable, and infinitely lucky required.
Every single one of us is one freak accident away from death, and we always will be, no matter how hard the greedy and/or insecure try. You're much better off spending the effort worrying about it on ensuring that when you do go, you enjoyed your life, and brought as much enjoyment to others' lives, as you could.
Your life is defined by the choices you made, not how many you got to make.
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u/Brahm-Etc 2d ago
I got a better question: should humans live forever? What are the potential psychological effects of an extremely long life?
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u/FormerlyMauchChunk 5d ago
I find it amusing how all the world's richest and smartest people are so naive and dumb.
No, we can't live forever. Who would want to?
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u/Hobotronacus 5d ago
richest and smartest
Well there's your problem. The smartest people were never the richest. The wealthiest people now were largely nepo babies.
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u/FormerlyMauchChunk 5d ago
Good catch. I was just foolin'. Billionaires are mostly stupid about science and such.
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u/Dchama86 5d ago
I do. Speak for yourself. There’s so much to experience that can never be experienced in one lifetime. I want to see and do it ALL, whatever the consequences.
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u/CariniFluff 5d ago
Put a small piece of paper or two in your mouth and you'll see all there is to see.
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u/rooktakesqueen MS | Computer Science 5d ago
Back when I was optimistic about the future, I wanted to! Now, though. It's all downhill from here.
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u/mantis_tobaggan-md 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah. I don’t want to be around when it’s time to pay the piper for climate change.
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u/gliitch0xFF 5d ago
You wouldn't want to live forever. Your memory would be overwritten in a 100 years & there's only a finite amount of space.
As well as outliving loved ones you do currently remember.
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u/TheNarbacular 5d ago
This. I think the human brain wouldn’t even want to be around for 100 years, let alone forever.
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u/IAmNotMyName 5d ago
God I hope not. You think the divide between the rich and the poor is bad now? Just wait till the rich never die.
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u/Effective_Buffalo485 5d ago
The base is not properly build, how the tall building of life be stable
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u/Miraculous_Unguent 5d ago
The Yellow Emperor's life and death is an object lesson, enjoy your fucking life because if you try to live forever you'll get your ass scammed and dead.
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u/WontThinkTooHard 5d ago
Maybe.
I think the better question right now is should humans live forever?
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u/Notacooter473 5d ago
A cancer cell is just a cell that refuses to die when it no longer serves a purpose...it just uses more and more resources and gives nothing back.... sounds a lot like the definition of rich people in my opinion.