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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

if they are successful (which I hope they are) then we're talking about pushing back retirement until 90 or maybe 95 right?

Which I would be totally OK with. Imagine how much more scientific progress we could make if we had 70-year veterans of their field with the sharp mind of a 27-year-old!

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That's an interesting question, but I think it could be less helpful for scientific progress than you might imagine. It could even be a hindrance. As Max Planck put it, "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Extending scientific careers could effectively slow the rate of Kuhnian revolution.

Alright, maybe I'm more excited specifically for engineering then. I'm an engineer, really, not a scientist, and I'm always blown away by some of the old stalwarts in my field.

Who says their minds will be sharp? This discovery is about muscle aging.

We're just speculating here :)

Good point indeed, that said, even physical health can be a toll on your mind. Freed from that you can spend more time thinking instead of aching.

Is that the goal of life? Incessant scientific progress?

For me? Yeah, pretty much.

Yup. There may be thousands of earth like planets in our galaxy alone. Shouldn't we explore them some time in future ?

With 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, we're talking millions (or more), not thousands.

Making eradicating aging even more important.

Wouldn't it make more sense to live well wherever we are? I'm not saying we have to settle for Earth, but the focus should be on how people are living and not how many planets get checked off.

Living longer means signification rise in population on earth and given the unsustainable state of our planet, it makes more sense to look for other similar planets for habitation. And if we invent faster than light travel in future it will be natural for people to leave earth in the spirit of exploration just like Europeans did to find the New World.

Why should we explore?

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