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Comment by forloop | Hacker News Reader

The irony. Is it really going to take the death of generations for people accept anti-ageing?

I find it somewhat amusing. I can't guarantee it'll be as funny once I've got cancer/heart disease/dementia, though.

I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if the cure for death was for sale that people would be lined up around the block. You have to remember to view this in light of a world in which such a thing is not available, and there's no good to be had in sitting in a corner constantly pining for it.

We're a species that's been telling stories about people seeking immortality and being disappointed (and/or paying a terrible price to achieve even the shadow of immortality) seemingly about as long as we've told stories. An instinct to treat promises of or speculation about immortality (in our corporeal form, anyway) as either snake oil or false hope is practically built in to our cultural DNA.

As you wrote, though, that doesn't mean people won't be lining up for it if it's ever for sale. We've been telling stories of disappointment in the search for immortality for millennia, but we do keep telling it. We're jaded about it, but the topic's been with us so long for a reason.

Could it be connected to the just world fallacy? Many if not most of our stories - from the very ancient to whatever it is on TV right now - follow some sort of "rule of conservation of fortune"[0], i.e. you can't have any good things happen to you without at least an equal and opposite amount of misfortune that will cancel-out the gift. You can't just go out there, stumble upon wealth and long life, and remain a good and happy person (unless your life before that was so miserable that this is a perfect compensation).

And that, I guess, is a primary difference between stories and real life - in the latter you can become better-off just like that, with no strings attached.

[0] - TV Tropes probably has a better name for that.

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