<story><title>Google Bets on Health</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-12/google-ventures-seeks-to-make-name-as-farsighted-health-investor</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>matt_wulfeck</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t help but feel the motivating factor here is not helping people live longer (invest in food storage, transportation, and production and help millions of people survive). Instead this seems to me more like wealthy folks beginning to fear the realization that someday they will grow old and die like the rest of us.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>haberman</author><text>Imagine being in a situation where doing anything that benefits both yourself and others is used as evidence of your selfishness because it will benefit you.&lt;p&gt;When did win&amp;#x2F;win become a bad thing? Would you rather these rich people were building bigger mansions instead?</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Bets on Health</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-12/google-ventures-seeks-to-make-name-as-farsighted-health-investor</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>matt_wulfeck</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t help but feel the motivating factor here is not helping people live longer (invest in food storage, transportation, and production and help millions of people survive). Instead this seems to me more like wealthy folks beginning to fear the realization that someday they will grow old and die like the rest of us.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reasonattlm</author><text>Speaking as an advocate for the cause, I can assure you that isn&amp;#x27;t it. Wealth doesn&amp;#x27;t grant vision. Most wealthy people have exactly the same biases and preconceptions about aging as everyone else.&lt;p&gt;If it was otherwise, it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be at all hard to raise funds for initiatives like the SENS Research Foundation&amp;#x27;s program aimed at medical control of aging. As it is, the number of the ultra-wealthy who have supported this cause is well below 1%, and those have been fairly cautious investments in the grand scheme of things, e.g. those by Peter Thiel.&lt;p&gt;What is happening at the moment is an initial tipping point of sorts across the entire population in the realization that, hey, treating aging as a medical condition is plausible. Researchers have been saying this for a decade, with increasing volume following the pro-longevity faction winning the cultural battles within the scientific community, but it takes time to bootstrap a movement and get to the point at which Prudential puts up posters suggesting that people should think about living to 150. We may not even be at the main 10% support tipping point yet in the broader population.&lt;p&gt;A recent Pew study suggests that the majority of people continue to believe that the current state of things is the best state of things, and they don&amp;#x27;t want live longer because people don&amp;#x27;t live longer. People want to be slightly better than their peers. Live to 90, because that&amp;#x27;s a little more than what other people have on average. Be more healthy as you decay into death, because that&amp;#x27;s a little more than other people have. Stasis is the default opinion, which has always struck me as crazed given the tangible, obvious pace of progress in technology that we are living through.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pewforum.org&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;living-to-120-and-beyond-americans-views-on-aging-medical-advances-and-radical-life-extension&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pewforum.org&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;living-to-120-and-beyond-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the end this is no different than any other field of human endeavor. It takes unreasonable visionaries to force beneficial progress down everyone else&amp;#x27;s throats, and once done everyone else agrees that it was self-evident and obvious.</text></comment>