Why do we have to be lucky to not get a shitty disease...

[Deleted]

Cancer is probably the only disease you can get even if you are perfect.

[Deleted]

And in the case of cancer you can even do things to prevent it.

Not entirely true. Cancer has many causes these days. It can be caused by things in the atmosphere, such as polution, things you eat on a regular basis and which contain various chemicals or can even have genetic causes. There is literally no way to prevent cancer, well maybe with regular checkups you can detect it in its early stages and likely cure it but you can't prevent it altogether. If you get it, you get it, and it's probably nothing you could have done to avoid it.

[Auloria]

You don't want humans to live TOO long. We'd be too slow to evolve, physically and culturally.

[Deleted]

Scary sure, but i don't worry about it much. It is a sad thought that it can be lurking around the corner without you knowing it! But that goes for a lot of things in life

[Jayburner]

Cancer usually gets most people in the end. I like to read the obituaries and 80 percent of the time the person has died from sort of cancer.

[Palmatum]

Ok...it still sucks but alright.

I don't see why people spend so much time working and doing that with their life though, working is fine and all, but if you have one life....enjoy it?..

Well what do you propose... You need to work to survive. If everyone stopped working then our lives would be pretty short, even if they were 'leisurely'.

I don't mind what I do and I don't work that many hours, so it doesn't bother me too much.

I'm also my own boss, so I spend most of the day sat at the desk looking on the internet at things to do or read etc.

[saffi]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15987082
stop worrying

[Powerogue]

The thing is, imagine if we just eradicated disease one day, the population would explode, and we'd all start starving to death in greater or equal numbers.

We've got to have some check in place, and I honestly prefer this to animal maulings and witch burnings of old.

[Brubear]

The OP has a point, and most of the above responses miss it.

Yes, we absolutely should not accept disease and death as a given. We have the means to overcome that, by investing heavily into biomedical sciences, which are relatively underdeveloped compared to their potential. Every cent we don't spend on biomedical research is a cent that adds to our death sentence.

We are hourglasses with less and less sand in them, every minute. There are near-infinite piles of sand right nearby, which we could be shoveling in, to top our hourglasses off. But we don't, because we are complacent. Instead, people wax poetically about needing to accept our powerlessness, being small in the universe, and defeatist shit like that.

While it's true that we can do certain things to increase our longevity, when it really comes down to it you only have so much control over whether you live or die. You can't help it if you step outside and your neighbor suddenly decides to blow up their house and the shrapnel gets you or if, while walking down the street someone has a heart attack while driving and hits you with their car. So you should worry about the things you can control but only to a certain extent.

[Tradewind]

Probably not a "theory" or a particularly unique viewpoint. But we live longer than before, I doubt back in 500BC it was more common to be killed by a Spear or Dysentery than Cancer or Heart Disease, mostly because you were lucky to live past 40.