This article definitely made me feel like my lifespan was shortened.

This author does not, in fact, say why we shouldn't. There is merely a hand-wavy comparison that in countries where life expectancy has increased also have more years of declined health.

In the last two sentences of this mess, the author asks whether it's ethical to increase the lifespan of richer countries without attempting to answer. Then, asserts that fairness would mean we focus on extending the lifespan of people living in less-developed countries. I'm still trying to figure out how this got from "living longer is bad" to "we should help under-developed countries live longer."

Save yourself the time of reading this. You'll live longer.

How did such an empty, ill-researched, ill-backed article even make it onto Hacker News?

"Drivel" is putting it charitably.

> We already live far longer than our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who invariably snuffed it before the age of 40.

Not only does having an average lifespan ot 40 years not mean that everyone dies at 40, but it's also severely distorted by infant and early childhood mortality, which is higher than adult mortality, and increasingly so the farther back in time you go. When compared to our hunter-gatherer ancestors older than 13, we may not fare so well.

An interesting argument. Is it a moral question, or philosophical, to extend life as long as possible? To further complicate that, what is a reasonable extension of life? Is it to replace the heart, lungs, all of the major organs? Is there a dividing line between the extension of life and the creation of a “ghost in the shell” ?

I don’t know. It is a hard question.

Who are the "we" in the we shouldn't? If it is possible, rich enough people will do it, shouldn't or not. Even if it makes even more unsustainable the current conditions (rich enough individuals/families/countries consume/pollute/etc more than poor ones). And eventually, if you get enough rich people living till, I don't know, 150 years, that will be democratized (shouldn't or not, again, different countries will have different policies).

Of course, that would be unsustainable in the long term, but we might not have a long term to worry about anymore. The climate clock is ticking faster than the life extension one.