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I think he’s really just trying to spur your imagination into imagining if someone like that had lived longer.

Anyway, this conversation has been had repeatedly. Many people seem to be unable to imagine that positive benefit of much longer lives.

Suppose that’s why “Science advances one funeral at a time.”

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Imagine what a guy like that could do with 79 more years... or 10x of that.

It's not that outlandish: sharks, turtles, etc get far more years than we do.

It's shocking all billionaires aren't devoting all their resources to solving this cosmic crime against humanity.

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I recognize and appreciate that you likely believe your contribution is one of optimism, but respectfully, I feel ill reading things like this.

Ever heard of Chesterton's fence? I don't believe we are more clever than our mother, the computational machinery of the universe. If we remove death, there will be great consequence.

Heck, it's arguable that the slow decline and death spiral we're in on this planet (empathatically NOT just human well-being metrics here), that this is already due to pushing death back, and systematically allowing power/opportunity to accumulate ever more deeply at scale of the selfish individual...

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A complete human experience is to have relatively little time, no point in doing anything if you have 500 years to do it IMO.

Edit: Maybe there wouldn't be nilihism, but I don't think you could get more fulfilled with the extra time. I feel like an insect that lives 24 hours and a shark that lives several hundred have an equal feeling of accomplishment.

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500 years is as arbitrary a number as 79 is.

A Craig Venter that lives (a healthy life) to 158 is quite likely to accomplish at least 1 more great thing than one who lives to 79.

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More likely that he would live most of those years with compounding mental and physical health issues, quality of life degrading to the point where most would wish for death instead.
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What an un-hacker ethos: the idea is to continuously fix problems so that, if anything, quality of life improves from year to year.
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