this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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A very short survey on attitudes towards biological immortality (forms.office.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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My friend's daughter is doing a project on biological immortality. It would be great if you could help her by answering a short survey.

She writes:

"This is a part of the primary research for my EPQ, titled: "To what extent does telomere biology hold the key to achieving biological immortality?"

By completing this form, you will be helping me to gather data for the second half of my project, which involves an evaluation of public understanding and perspectives on biological immortality. The results will be analysed and used as a source of information for my final dissertation."

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Agree. I added something like that in the "other negatives" box. There's that saying, society advances one funeral at a time.

I like to think that myself, I'm very good at being open minded and adapting to the times (though honestly only time will tell). But I know many people don't do that. This is clearly evident in electoral polling as well as polls for social issues (eg, US 2023 support for same sex marriage is 89% among 18-29 but only 60% among 65 and older).

Perhaps social changes could help with this problem. Clearly older folks can still change because the stat I just quoted was far worse in the not too distant past. Maybe our problems are with how we run news media or how we basically write off old folks as unlikely to change. Maybe it's because our society focuses on education being something you only do when young and you're never really expected to go back to school after that. Maybe we need to better teach empathy from a young age? Maybe us losing religion will make the biggest difference.

Maybe we don't deserve this kinda advancement yet. To quote one of my favourite parts from the show The Orville:

Technology and societal ethics have to progress hand in hand, each one supporting the other incrementally. Anything else is begging for disaster.

  • a member of an advanced, "space communism" version of humanity, talking to someone whose species has not yet advanced to the same point and wondering why they don't share their advanced tech with less advanced people.