Now, apparently we can quite safely say that caloric restriction will extend health benefits to the point of extending life expectancy (note all this does not guarantee a longer life, since age-agnostic diseases can still get ya).
All you have to do is eat less cake! A 20 year study on rhesus monkeys should be quite reliably predictive for hominids, although the effects seem to decrease the larger the mammal (rodents saw up to 80% lifespan increases).
It raises quite a question though - what do we prioritise? Most people quite enjoy food, and most people would quite like to live longer. So what a great joke that our own appetites are our greatest threat. Of course, certain ascetic god-fearing outlooks have made a virtue of denying the flesh in order to preserve the quality of the soul. And if one has a 'greater purpose' than having a good time, then it would be only logical to preserve the capacity to act by denying certain base pleasures and thereby deny debilitating ill health.
But these are all compromises of the basic question, and do not touch it fundamentally. So what do we want to do? Live longer, or live fuller?
7 comments:
I want to have my cake and eat it too :)
And that is not a problem, just means you're gonna die sooner!
I choose to believe in quantum immortality (one which involves as much cake as I want), I have no reason not too :P
What the hell does that even mean? Quantum immortality? Like, one single quantity of immortality, or immortality based on quantum mechanics, where you are in two places at once and so can never be killed by normal means? (that would be a cool superhero...and how about this for a character: quantimmy, the cripple boy from A Christmas Carol, only the size of a single particle. You can't even see him. He's just a disembodied voice saying "please mister, one lump of coal, its sooo cold!")
Hee hee :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality
"God bless us, every quantum!" - Quantimmy
Ah ha!
Well, my ignorance of quantum immortality, in denying your solipsism, clearly shows that you need to worry about the collapse of the waveform due to other observers, which means to achieve quantum immortatlity, you need lock yourself in a box with a deadly quantum contraption. That's a quality of life problem, I'd say.
:) that reminds me of a dream I once...
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