> it seems like a case of spending a lot of resources in the hope of improving something that isn’t really broken
This puzzles me. Ageing is extremely expensive to society. Healthcare and care for the elderly is often >10% of total expenditure. Surely that's pretty broken?
And of course there's all the pain they're in, the things they wish to enjoy but can't (like football) and things like covid lockdowns that have to be done because the elderly are at risk (a 20 year old has a risk of death from covid under 0.005%). Lockdowns severely damaged the mental health of many people I know and being housebound due to age related infirmity causes depression in the elderly.
I meant the human life cycle wasn’t broken, because I was only thinking of this in terms of preventing death. Framing it as a reduction in suffering helped me understand, thanks!
I still have concerns that it would be used in such a way that people would live long despite intense suffering, thus increasing suffering overall. But hopefully that isn’t the case.
This puzzles me. Ageing is extremely expensive to society. Healthcare and care for the elderly is often >10% of total expenditure. Surely that's pretty broken?
And of course there's all the pain they're in, the things they wish to enjoy but can't (like football) and things like covid lockdowns that have to be done because the elderly are at risk (a 20 year old has a risk of death from covid under 0.005%). Lockdowns severely damaged the mental health of many people I know and being housebound due to age related infirmity causes depression in the elderly.