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We did it today. On photo: Maria Konovalenro, http://www.facebook.com/MariaKonovalenko She posted it in social networks with following comment:
I, Maria Konovalenko, leader of Longevity Party, call to fight aging on a global scale.
Aging is a disease that needs to be cured. Eliminating aging will lead to much longer and healthier lives, to fulfilling your goals and desires, to self improvement, wealth and will give you much more happy days with your family and loved ones. Fighting aging is the first step to radical life extension. Everyone who believes aging has to be defeated, upload your pictures with posters like this one in front of memorable places in your city. It will be nice to have a gallery of places where people are vocally advocating longevity.
Swap out "aging", and swap in "cancer."
Would you trust the person holding that sign? Especially if they had something to sell?
Our ability to treat (not cure) cancer is far more sophisticated than our ability to treat aging. This type of rhetoric, put bluntly, does not lend credibility to transhumanist movements.
What signal about the efficacy and seriousness of antideathist groups do you think it sends when, of all possible ways to make things happen in that direction, the public is aware of people who go outside and picket and write on facebook walls ?
We don't know which way is most effective to fight against death - if we know we would already win. But luck of attention to the problem is an issue here. Most people dont know latest scientific results about life extension and also do not want to live longer at all. The money which goverments spent on life extension depends from public demand of such research. So by growing awareness about the problem, we could help govermnets and reach people to make investments in life extension. Life extension means also reduction of global risks.
I wish we had a lot more "normal" folks doing it, instead of those seen as weirdo professional cranks.
I was disappointed to see that the woman was " leader of Longevity Party", whatever that means. I'd rather have a cashier at Walmart wearing a button "Cure Aging", or putting it on her facebook page.
In order to a chasier to put such button, some one should explain the idea to her, show an example and probably print the button. I also hope that normal folk will do such things.
To be fair, having a pretty woman do it is much better signaling than any other kind of human. It could halve been (even) worse.
You don't explain how it's relevant to the interests of people here, and I don't see why it would be.
Also, it's a link without any kind of summary in the body, which people here seem to prefer.
Yeah, don't be discouraged. LW is just like that sometimes. If you link to something with little or no commentary, it really needs to be directly about rationality itself or be using lots of LW-style rationality in the piece. This was a bit too mainstream to be appreciated widely here (even in discussion).
Glad to see you're posting though! You still in ATL and learning about FAI? I made a post you might like. :)
LW needs just a generic link-submission area to give it some of that reddit functionality its missing. Maybe have a third area besides main and discussion which is just for reddit-style img/link submission...
I guess I should add, I assumed life extension and such as being entirely on-topic here. It's kind of an obvious, major interest to any rationalist. To those who have no idea what I'm talking about, go read HPMOR a couple more times or something, jesus.
Also, good list, thanks. I actually don't know anything about functional programming, I'm going to look that up today.
LW needs just a generic link-submission area
The biweekly Open Thread works well for that sort of thing.
LW needs just a generic link-submission area to give it some of that reddit functionality its missing.
Is making LW more like Reddit a good idea? What if it actually becomes more like Reddit?
It's kind of an obvious, major interest to any rationalist.
I'm wary of this conflation of rationality and a specific set of values. Rationality is a tool for achieving your values; it doesn't specify what your values should be.
I haven't downvoted this as it's downvoted enough, but you need to explain what the article is about.
Most of us know that there exist 51-year olds and even 81-year olds, so an 81 year old saying "life exists beyond 50" doesn't communicate much useful information.
I still don't know whether there's anything in the article that I'd be interested in reading.
You are guilty of nothing except trying to share your squee over this (which I personally think is pretty nifty, BTW, although it isn't very on-topic according to the usual interests of LW) with a bunch of people who think of a decade as a long time and have a severe, cultural case of mortality-denial.
81-year-old Fashion Week model: 'Life exists beyond 50'
http://thelook.today.com/_news/2012/09/10/13778903-81-year-old-fashion-week-model-life-exists-beyond-50?lite