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I mean, I evidently disagree! From my understanding of biology (which ought to be better than average, or I've wasted 7 years of my life), aging doesn't seem fundamentally intractable at all. I'd be hard pressed to think of anyone other than the other doctor here, and perhaps @ChristPrattAlphaRaptor who might know more, though I don't know if gerontology and SENS is anything he's interested in.
If I had to put semi-serious numbers on it, I'd say that most people under 30 have a 70-80% chance of reaching longevity escape velocity (when your life expectancy grows faster than you age), in the counterfactual world where AGI doesn't become a reality.
Now, I sincerely expect AGI to become a thing more likely than not, and within a decade at most, at which point it's a tossup as to whether it gives us immortality and catgirl blowjobs, or kills us all.
At any rate, I have no qualms about claiming that a superhuman AGI should trivially be able to solve the problem, not that I really want to take that risk until I'm already old and doddering haha
I can't see it. Increases in average lifespan haven't translated into increases in maximum lifespan (Aeschylus lived to 92 in ~400 B.C., that's still longer than most American men today). It seems to be no low hanging fruit. Diseases that were easily treatable are becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics, and development of new ones has slowed down. Maybe that will pick up again, maybe it won't. More than immortality, dying of a hyper-MRSA infection after a difficult surgery in late middle age seems a likely outcome to me. Of course, I'm not a doctor or a biologist.
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