The scientific community is starting to believe in life extension. There's still a lot of resistance, though, as the discussion about grant titling indicates. There's an old saying (generated, I believe, in the wake of Kuhn's Structure Of Scientific Revolutions) that "science advances, funeral by funeral." Ironically, it may ultimately require the deaths of a generation of researchers to achieve indefinite lifespan.

I've read it attributed to Edwin Hubble, who supposedly said, ""the only progress in this field happens at the funerals of astronomers"

'"science advances, funeral by funeral." Ironically, it may ultimately require the deaths of a generation of researchers to achieve indefinite lifespan.'

Heh. At which time all scientific progress ceases.

Anybody read an old Alan E. Nourse Sci Fi collection called, I think "Psy-High?" I seem to recall a life-extension story where the protagonist discovered that extended lifespans was causing people to cease making any real progress-a memorable bit character was a composer who had been working on a single symphony for "only" 50 years or so.

It's kind of neat how sci fi stories often consider these issues many years before the mainstream of society even notices the possibilities.

Yes, I remember that story, though I'd forgotten the name. And I think there's cause for concern about this longevity business -- I'm sure I wouldn't be able to resist if I were offered a chance to live in this universe for a thousand years, but what if that opportunity had been offered to the people living in the 1830's? Live forever, and slow down your childbearing to about one per century? Can anyone really believe that society wouldn't still have consensus opinions that were racist and sexist, and likely to endure forever? And if so, can we feel sure that our own generation is worthy of being the highest level of moral development that humanity will ever achieve?

When I consider how illiberal (in our blogmeister's sense of the word) is the present-day consensus opinion, I rather shudder at the thought of corporeal immortality coming along right now and permanently preserving it in amber.

Max Planck once said, "The way physics progresses is, a new theory is devised, overwhelming evidence is collected to support it, an unshakable case is constructed. Then you wait for the old physicists to die."

If scientific progress slows to a crawl, and a composer spends 50 or 100 years on a single symphony, so what? All things are relative, and to immortal (or sufficiently long-lived) people 100 years will be an expected and reasonable amount of time to spend on a symphony. As for current generation's level of moral development -- since we have no way of knowing how the future will judge it, nor how far-off that said judging future will be, we should just do the best we can and not worry about it not being "good enough fast enough."

It's kind of neat how sci fi stories often consider these issues many years before the mainstream of society even notices the possibilities.

You just noticed? SF has been doing that since Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein".