There are many reasons to want to study aging:
- one might prefer to live in a world where humans live longer and aren't forced to die
- one might think it's their duty to help humans live longer
- one might think aging is a very interesting problem to try to solve
- one might think the biology related to aging is a very interesting thing to learn more about
Are these all good reasons? What are the benefits and downsides of each one?
The first two are morally motivated. A downside of this is you're more stressed out; you think it's noble, important, necessary to solve the problem. Slacking off or being distracted hurts you. Noticing yourself being more internally motivated to do other things is a sign that you're immoral. This is terrible. The benefit is that people with this motivation seem to be able to endure lots of pain when working toward a problem; this seems to be important on harder problems like aging.
The last two are motivated by curiosity. Curiosity is awesome; it keeps you receptive to new evidence and doesn't blind you to how the world really works, which can happen if you're secretly hoping the world is a certain way. Curiosity means you really just want to know what the truth is, and you don't care too much what the truth ends up being. This makes working fun, but the downside is that you only go where curiosity leads you. You might not verify things that you're not curious about. At least, that's what I originally thought. But if I was really curious about how things were, wouldn't I definitely notice when things didn't seem quite right and be extra curious what was wrong? If I'm supremely curious, wouldn't I want to make sure I haven't made a misstep somewhere? I think so! And curiosity doesn't mean I'll definitely get bored of a problem. If I'm insanely curious about how aging works and how it might be reversed, I bet I'd work on the problem far longer and harder than if I was morally motivated which would just burn me out eventually.
Am I willing to accept that choosing curiosity might make me stop working on aging in a few years, when I find a new shiny problem to work on? Yes, I think I am. I want to enjoy my life. I also don't think this is very likely though! The longer I work on something, the more curious I get about it. Everything is a universe unto itself. If I work on this problem for my entire life, following my curiosity, and I don't solve it, I still think that would be a good life. I'd be happy to have had so much fun thinking and poking around and learning new things about how the world works. How fun!
This is explored more in "Why Truth?" and "Twelve Virtues of Rationality".