Those Irrepressible Errors

I noticed another op-ed column on radical life extension today that, despite a promising start, manages to nicely bracket the common (mistaken) errors and objections regarding longer, healthier lives.

The down side? You get twice as long with that sore hip and arthritis. You must spend more time dealing with the inability to sleep through the night without getting up two or three times to visit the bathroom. You have to listen to several more generations talk about how you screwed up the world. You have to see all those "Murder, She Wrote" episodes over and over and over.

And worst of all, for many people, you have to spend 147 years working for The Man.

That was what I figured would be the biggest hurdle for most people - having to work day after day after day for nearly 15 decades. To work at the factory for 40 years and be just a quarter of the way into your career.

But nearly everyone would do it. What's your take? E-mail me with your feelings - ... bstanhope@dailyrepublic.net

I'd suggest doing your part for healthy life extension advocacy and writing to this fellow to point out the ways in which he gets it wrong - the Tithonus Error for the hips and arthritis; economic misunderstandings relating to savings and retirement; on insinuations of boredom. Wonderful rebuttals for all these points have existed for decades - we need to do a better job of spreading the word.

Comments

I tried emailing a response to Hope's uninformed rambling, but my mail is being returned as "unsolicited." Sounds like he doesn't like the responses he's getting.

Posted by: Ben Wolf at April 21st, 2005 2:33 PM

I had that problem myself - the charitable assumption would be that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing in their IT organization.

Posted by: Reason at April 21st, 2005 3:33 PM

I fear you are more of a gentlemen than I. I generally assume the worst of others.

Posted by: Ben Wolf at April 22nd, 2005 4:35 AM
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