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If you had to choose right now, how long would you want to live?
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80 years? 90?
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120?
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Longer?
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And do you think you'll change your mind once you reach that age?
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Fifty thousand years ago most humans died very young.
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As we learned how to use the resources around us to treat ourselves, this got better and better.
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Today, humans are living longer and healthier lives than ever before.
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But this has an unforeseen consequence.
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We spend an ever-increasing part of our lives being sick and in need of care.
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Most of us will die in a hospital bed, which is depressing enough by itself.
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But we also have to witness the same happening to our loved ones.
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Except, maybe we can stop this forever.
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The most effective way to treat a disease is to prevent it.
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It saves many more lives if you stop a million people from smoking, than coming up with better chemotherapies.
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So why not put a halt to the cause of all disease: the process of aging.
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In a nutshell, aging is caused by physics, and not biology.
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Think of cars. Parts wear down from rubbing and grinding. Metal rusts. Filters get plugged. Rubber cracks.
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Our bodies are worn down by trillions of tiny physical processes.
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Oxygen, radiation from the sun, our metabolism.
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Our bodies have many mechanisms to repair this damage,
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but over time they become less effective.
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So our bones and muscles weaken. Our skin wrinkles. Our immune system gets weaker.
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We lose our memory and our senses diminish.
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There's no such thing as dying of old age. We all die because one of our important parts breaks.
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The older we get, the more damaged and fragile we become until one or multiple diseases take over and kill us.
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Unnoticed by most of us, longevity research has made some unprecedented advances in the last few years.
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For the first time, we're starting to understand the mechanisms behind aging and how to manipulate them.
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Aging is neither mystical nor inevitable, and we might be able to stop or delay it during your lifetime.
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We'll discuss the science behind it and how scientists are trying to stop it in another video.
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But first, if we could, should we end aging? Is this a good idea?
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The end of aging or life extension makes many people uncomfortable.
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We're born, are young, become older, and then we die.
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This has been the natural order for literally all of human history, and getting old is a good thing, right?
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We celebrate the idea of living long enough to experience old age. We even call them the golden years.
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But the reality is that everybody wants to become old, but nobody wants to be old.
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Think of the Greek myth of Tithonus for example.
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Tithonus was the lover of the goddess Eos and probably an amazing dude,
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because she begged Zeus to grant him immortality, so they could spend eternity together.
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But she forgot to specifically ask for eternal youth.
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Tithonus was granted eternal life, but he kept aging, unable to die.
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After a few hundred years, he was reduced to the size of a grape, babbling on senselessly forever.
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Thousands of years ago, humans already feared never-ending old age.
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But ending aging does not mean getting weaker and weaker. If you become too old, it's too late.
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A 90 year old who stopped aging would die anyway after a few years.
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Too much damage has been done to his internal machinery. There are already too many surfaces for disease to attack.
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Instead, the concept of life extension promises to end diseases, and with them, the end of a fixed maximum age.
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We don't know how much we could prolong our lives.
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We might make every human healthy to the currently accepted maximum age of around 120,
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or we might stop biological aging and disease indefinitely.
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Nobody knows at this point what's possible.
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Okay, but even if we could achieve that, should we?
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Well, life extension is really just another phrase for medicine.
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All the doctors are doing is trying to prolong life, and minimize suffering.
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The vast majority of healthcare resources are spent on the consequences of aging.
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Nearly half of your lifetime healthcare costs will be spent during your senior years, and another third during middle age.
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We are actually already trying to prolong life with our current medicine. We're just doing it very inefficiently.
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Trying to stop aging from happening is not less natural than transplanting a heart,
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treating cancer with chemotherapy, using antibiotics or vaccines.
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Nothing humans do nowadays is purely natural anymore, and we enjoy the highest standard of living ever as a consequence of that.
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What we're doing right now is waiting until it's too late and the machine is failing.
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And then we use the vast majority of our resources trying to fix it as well as we can, while it breaks down even further.
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But life extension still feels hubristic.
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Most people assume that they will want to die once they reach a certain age, and this might still be true.
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The idea of avoiding death entirely is off-putting for many.
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The end of biological aging would not be in the end of death in any way.
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It's more like a summer evening when you were a kid, and your mom called you inside.
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You just wanted to keep playing, have a little more fun during sunset before you went to sleep.
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It's not about playing outside forever, just a little longer, until we feel tired.
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If you imagine a world without disease where you and your loved ones could live in good health for another 100 or 200 years, how would this change us?
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Would we take better care of our planet if we knew we would be around longer?
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If we could work for 150 years, how much time would we spend figuring out what we're good at? How much more time would we spend learning?
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Would the intense feeling of pressure and stress many of us are feeling right now, go away or get worse?
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So asking again, if you could choose how long to live right now, in good health and with your friends and family, what's your personal answer?
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What would you like your future to look like?
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CGP Grey: But maybe you're still unconvinced.
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Some nagging feeling remains. That is the Reaper whispering into your brain.
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Watch my video to hear what he says, and why you shouldn't listen.
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Your eternal future may depend on it.
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Kurzgesagt: Go watch the other part over at CGP Grey's channel, and if you're not already subscribed, subscribe.8921
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