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ActuaryGlittering16 t1_ivbi1j8 wrote

Reply to comment by apple_achia in Becoming increasingly pessimistic about LEV + curing aging by Phoenix5869

This is really refreshing. I’ve never seen this type of pessimistic, prodding sentiment on Reddit before. If only there was an entire subreddit full of millions of people like this, all discussing the future! Every fascinating advancement could be funneled into the same talking points of climate change, race, gender, and classism! Just think of everything we could accomplish with a subreddit like that, wow!!

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apple_achia t1_ivbt6yh wrote

Gees it’s like those issues tend to reproduce themselves when new technology develops since nobody ever touches the power structure behind them. Surely the invention of the cotton gin will end slavery and the oppression of the African diaspora.

If there were reasonable expectations for what something like protein folding simulations could accomplish, I wouldn’t poke fun like this. There’s a reason I’m not doing this on a computational biology subreddit right now

But no, rather than thinking of enzymatic pathway engineering or costly advances in artificial food technology or expensive and extensive clinical trials on novel proteins, this sub always goes to “eureka! I’m immortal! We can be gods!”

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[deleted] t1_ivcny0n wrote

100% the biggest barriers to ordinary people benefitting from scientific breakthroughs is our harsh unequal capitalist system.

It’s laughable seeing people think that all we need to do is discover life extension.

I bet they sell it with a multimillion dollar per year subscription attached.

I bet that then leads to a political movement asking for it as a human right but just like most movements demanding access to life in the form of housing, food, healthcare etc which have been raging for centuries against our current system, there’s no guarantee of victory at all.

In fact I think the asymmetric power imbalance has never really been worse.

Police are more militarised than ever. Mass surveillance is a weapon of repression an order of magnitude more powerful and one-sided than the invention of iron or gunpowder… it could well be true that capitalism has completely triumphed and so ordinary people will never be able to afford life extension.

I put the odds of this at 90%.

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StarChild413 t1_ivedwqo wrote

so we just need to inspire people with the promise-via-parallel of immortality to join a movement for housing, food and healthcare as human rights and have among the movement good enough hackers to combat the surveillance state to make those rights a guarantee so immortality is

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[deleted] t1_ivelyuf wrote

Hackers like that exist but get captured by state interests fairly fast, competing probably isn’t viable. That said I do think there is an internationalist protracted people’s war ongoing against capitalist interests that is the best hope for the socialising of immortality tech.

Until that tech is discovered, socialising healthcare is the necessary preparation.

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