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[Rolepgeek]

"ey bruv you got me dosh for the month, i swer on me mum ill rek u if u don't m8"

"Yes, honored ancestor, this moon-cycle's tribute is of the usual standard."

kek

"What does the supreme ancestor say we should do?"

"He says pack it in you're being a bunch of numpty mongs."

"Truly, words to live for."

The entirety of our classic works will turn out to be dick jokes. We'll find out that Latin is just subtle variations on various genital slang, that became a full fledged language once the dank memes became too much for that time period. Each language is a recursively more unique and flavored experience of slapstick humor, of whom few if any of it's current users understand the true extent.

I would love to be immortal. Not just 'you get to be this forever', though. I'd want a bit more memory space, for one thing.

[scrdest]

Can't even imagine the side effects of constantly growing non-self deleting cells would be however.

Oh, we already know that.

It's called 'cancer'. Hell, a lot (but not all) cancers *are* biologically immortal.

Assuming it locked my biological age to roughly where I was when I became immortal, then hell yes I'd take biological immortality in a heartbeat. If I were to continue becoming decrepit then I would have to think on it for a while.

Aging (*not* physical maturation, mind you, two separate processes) and biological immortality are pretty much mutually exclusive; aging is not a simple function of time, something that happens at a rate of a day per day of life, it's an accumulation of damage.

Keep aging and, well, you *will* die after a certain threshold. Any treatment for any age-related disease is just a stopgap. Cancer didn't get you? Well, let's try neurodegenerative disease. Or heart disease. Or infection, since your immune system is shot. Or trauma, since your bones aren't what they used to be.

So, at very least, biological immortality would require stopping the damage from accumulating, keeping you at the same age. Optimistically, we could reverse the damage already done, so you'd be locked to being somewhere in the range of twentysomething to thirty, mature but un-aged.

If we somehow achieved 100% reversal, you'd actually be *younger* purely aging-wise, than, say, a 6 y.o. currently is. Realistically, we would have some very odd-looking cases depending on what we managed to fix up, like someone looking like a perfectly normal adult except for liver spots and yellowed eyes.

[Tack]

I'd be really happy with the immortality thing if the protection from disease also affected corpulence. After a few centuries I'd get kinda indolent and cholesterol-clogged veins would be a really shitty way to live.

[Descan]

Eh, that's probably small beans compared to, say, preventing neurodegenerative disease without wiping out your personality. (How do you make new neurons/prevent neuron death without affecting the neurons (and their connections) that are already there?)

Or fixing telomere shortening without runaway cancer.

[NRDL]

The cancer thing can probably be dealt with, assuming our future technology involves shit like nano machines and things that can selectively chip away at targeted cells.  As long as we trim the unnecessary bits off, nothing malignant should grow. 

Kinda wish we had that sorta stuff NOW.

[scrdest]

Eh, that's probably small beans compared to, say, preventing neurodegenerative disease without wiping out your personality. (How do you make new neurons/prevent neuron death without affecting the neurons (and their connections) that are already there?)

Or fixing telomere shortening without runaway cancer.

Respectively:

- You don't let them start dying in the first place; the suspected cause is something that wouldn't hurt to have addressed in all cells, currently healthy or not.

- Telomerase treatment on its own does not induce runaway cancer, especially as a single dose, not an on switch. If anything, it could potentially make cancer development easier, but... it's not so clear-cut, apparently.

The cancer thing can probably be dealt with, assuming our future technology involves shit like nano machines and things that can selectively chip away at targeted cells.  As long as we trim the unnecessary bits off, nothing malignant should grow. 

Kinda wish we had that sorta stuff NOW.

We do, in a way. The much-touted new cancer marker was tested that way; they just coupled together a toxin and a 'targetting system' of a specific antibody, antibody attaches to the marker, toxin activates only on those cells with it, boom, killed.

[Rolepgeek]

Eh, that's probably small beans compared to, say, preventing neurodegenerative disease without wiping out your personality. (How do you make new neurons/prevent neuron death without affecting the neurons (and their connections) that are already there?)

Or fixing telomere shortening without runaway cancer.

You don't, anymore than your brain stays frozen from day to say in precisely the same neural configuration.

[scrdest]

Eh, that's probably small beans compared to, say, preventing neurodegenerative disease without wiping out your personality. (How do you make new neurons/prevent neuron death without affecting the neurons (and their connections) that are already there?)

Or fixing telomere shortening without runaway cancer.

You don't, anymore than your brain stays frozen from day to say in precisely the same neural configuration.

The issue is that it can only last for so long without proliferation. Metabolic activity - and brain is extraordinarily active - causes damage to the cells' structures - that's what causes the neuron death, which you have to prevent and/or replenish neurons.

[i2amroy]

I think the point that he's getting at is that it's totally possible to replace neurons (which your brain already does on it's own in many places) without necessarily needing to prevent them "affecting the neurons (and their connections) that are already there". The idea that the adult brain doesn't undergo neurogenesis has simply been shown to be wrong in modern science, so it should be totally possible to amplify/replicate the current neurogenesis effects to repair the brain without destroying it, just like your brain already does.