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Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

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Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#101

Post by bitJericho »

bolocker wrote: post #94
a13n wrote: post #56

I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?

"Only mortals have told me that it would suck to live forever." - /r/Showerthoughts Aubrey De Grey calls it the "pro aging trance" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#Pro-aging_tranc...

It's right up there with "money doesn't buy happiness"

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#103

Post by [deleted] »

Taek wrote: post #95
a13n wrote: post #56

I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?

I'm not sure how controversial the opinion is, but it's pretty clear to me that immortality is harmful to a species in the vast majority of cases. Evolution is a constant processes of competition. When members of a species start living longer, the upgrading of their gene pool slows down. The older members maintain their old ideas and ways of life, and they soak up resources that crowd out the younger members. The env…

[deleted]

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#104

Post by mikeyouse »

echelon wrote: post #86
seizethecheese wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel is doing this.

Really? Is there a citation for this? Is it something he's continuing to do?

He obviously doesn't talk about it because it's super weird and vampire like, but Inc. did an interesting story about it last spring. I don't know that there's proof that he's doing it per se, but strong evidence in that direction. The evidence:

1. There's a pharma / plasma company in Monterey named Ambrosia. [1]

2. Ambrosia is running a study titled "Young Donor Plasma Transfusion and Age-Related Biomarkers" [2]

3. This study is patient funded, participants volunteered and pay $8k to recevie regular infusions of plasma from donors 4. Ambrosia didn't advertise or fundraise beyond seeking patients.

5. Ambrosia's CEO received a call from Jason Camm, an 'Angel Investor' at Thiel Capital who was interested in learning about what the company was doing.

6. Jason Camm isn't actually an investor, he's Peter Thiel's "Personal Health Director". His professional profile claims that he "Enables his clients to make radical breakthroughs in their immediate day-to-day health, cognitive functioning and physical performance -- all of which increase their prospects for Optimal Health and significant Lifespan Extension."

7. A year before the Inc. article, Thiel brought up parabiosis unprompted to a journalist but didn't think there was much of a business case for it, just a personal-health impact.

[1] - http://www.ambrosiatrial.com/

[2] - https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02803554?term=young+p...

All sourced from this Inc. article: http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.ht...

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#106

Post by optionalparens »

Somehow this conjures up the image of this Metalocalypse episode which I think sums it up perfectly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msGvEtmR970

"We can't die." And of course, don't call it Anti-Aging, please, call it "Hamburger time."

- Nathan Explosion

I hope I live long enough to eat my words or see this startup fail. Is that not the only thing to say at the investor meetings?

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#107

Post by elorant »

pointytrees wrote: post #65
a13n wrote: post #56

I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?

I sometimes talk about wanting to live forever and get weird stares. Are you joking me?? I want to hike every trail in the world. I want to climb every mountain. I want to play every video game. I want to beat the hardest raids in every expansion of WoW. I want to learn multiple langauges. I want to spend several years living in every biome. I want to learn all of the programming languages. I want to go back to schoo…

As long as everyone else lives forever. Otherwise you're in for a very depressing ride.

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#108

Post by aaron-lebo »

forthefuture wrote: post #99
nostrademons wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. Constraints give us meaning. They're what force us to make choices, and it's choices and opportunity costs that let us define who we are at people. If we lived forever, we wouldn't have to make any hard choices - we'd just do it all. And paradoxically, being able to do it all means that none of it means anything. It's like playing a game with all the cheats on. Sure, they let you "win" super easily, but beca…

It might be unthinkable to someone in the future that we could experience the universe meaningfully in 100 years. I tend to see human-lifespan rationalizations as simple fatalism. It's okay to think you'd get bored after a million years, but dooming every living human to die because you'd be bored is kind of insane if you think about it.

> I tend to see human-lifespan rationalizations as simple fatalism.

But you are very mortal and you are at most a few decades old. Your perspective would probably change drastically in your third century or millenia.

It makes conjecture like this as good as worthless because as mortals we do not have the ability to see it from another perspective.

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#109

Post by nostrademons »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #98
nostrademons wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. Constraints give us meaning. They're what force us to make choices, and it's choices and opportunity costs that let us define who we are at people. If we lived forever, we wouldn't have to make any hard choices - we'd just do it all. And paradoxically, being able to do it all means that none of it means anything. It's like playing a game with all the cheats on. Sure, they let you "win" super easily, but beca…

Anti-aging doesn't prevent death. You could still just as easily get hit by a car when you are 90 and look 20. Or 1000 and look 20, assuming that's even possible. What's really interesting is if people could actually prolong their lifespan indefinitely but we have the same limited bodies. Then you'll see people trying really hard to say alive to comical effect. I think Aronofsky's The Fountain is a really great outlo…

That seems even more meaningless though, to make the moment of your death random rather than mostly-predictable. I mean, it'd suck to live my life like I had a million years and then get hit by a bus tomorrow.

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#110

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #100
a13n wrote: post #56

I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?

I absolutely, 100% do not want to extend my life. And for the record, I am quite pleased with my life. I do not fear death, I do not worry about it, it does not concern me. Therefore I do not feel the need to combat it in any way. The good truly does not exist without the bad, life without death, and so on. Walking the path of "controlling" your life and/or death like this seems needy, egotistical, and pretty sad, im…

So you plan to end it all tonight? No?

I think, like everyone else, you expect a reasonable lifespan and would fight to achieve that. From there, its just a matter of how much is enough.

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