I just finished a book by Nick Lane where he discussed how he believes aging is cause by mitochondrial free-radical leakage. His hypothesis (and he is a smart guy) is that science will allow people to live longer, but probably not much longer than 125. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20021368
What's the book? Would like to read it. Thanks.
it is talked about a bit in The Vital Question [1] and a more in depth in Power, Sex, and Suicide [2]
His books are honestly life changing, i can recommend them or him enough.
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…
>Immortality is largely incompatible with evolution and competition.
That's an incredibly good argument in favor of immortality. "Evolution" and "competition" are not gods. They do not have any moral authority over us. Our entire civilization has been built on the principle of not subjecting ourselves to Darwinian survival-selection.
That aside, you should probably go count ducks in a swamp or do some other ecological fieldwork before talking about the evolutionary fitness of organisms or ecosystems. You sound atrocious at biology.
I just finished a book by Nick Lane where he discussed how he believes aging is cause by mitochondrial free-radical leakage. His hypothesis (and he is a smart guy) is that science will allow people to live longer, but probably not much longer than 125. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20021368
>but probably not much longer than 125. enter new organs growth. Any organ, except for the brain, could be replaced by a new one, and thus there is no limit. Brain probably too can be updated in some ways, we just don't know how yet.
im not a biologist (anyone qualified to comment please do) but i dont think the new organs will stop the free-radical leakage. it occurs in every cell in your body, organs are only a small portion of those cells.
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…
Thankfully death comes along and sorts through the wants from the willing. It has a nice way of making space for a newer generation of thinkers. Old prejudices die, new thinkers arrive. There's nothing wrong with your thinking. In my humble opinion it shows your personal desires without much concern for everyone else. I guess this is the rub I get from most people that extol the Silicon Valley dream of extending the…
>>[Death] has a nice way of making space for a newer generation of thinkers. Old prejudices die, new thinkers arrive.
On the other hand, humanity loses out on a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience with each death.
Imagine if Einstein were alive today, for instance. Or Richard Feynman. Or Carl Sagan.
> real good by funding research Like the planet need humans to live longer???
The planet has no needs at all, and human longevity is unlikely to be a major issue when most of our human ventures center around efficient ways of killing each other.
>most of our human ventures center around efficient ways of killing each other.
Excuse me? What planet are you living on? I thought I was already living on the dystopian-social-scifi planet.
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…
You are already extending your life by going to the doctor. What's the difference between that and an anti-aging therapy? How is that even controlling your death? You are going to die one day. It's a fact. How do you want to die? Would you rather die in the worst conditions possible, like it happens to most people nowadays? If you are happy about dying like that, you might as well stop going to the doctor. Fact is, even if you don't realize, we have been 'manipulating' death for a long time. I think what's egotistical is your comment, honestly. You are basically opposing to a therapy which would remove plenty of suffering from the world, starting with reducing the chances of cancer, removing Alzheimer, etc., yet you don't want to remove it because evolution decided that living indefinitely was not advantageous for human survivability, and so we should not touch that. Heck, what's the point of technology if not to improve our daily lives? Should we oppose to all technology?
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…
Like the movie the green mile you may not want to live forever when everyone you love dies and that cycle continues over and over. Emotionally you might wish you too followed the cycle of life all those you love were following.
Thankfully death comes along and sorts through the wants from the willing. It has a nice way of making space for a newer generation of thinkers. Old prejudices die, new thinkers arrive. There's nothing wrong with your thinking. In my humble opinion it shows your personal desires without much concern for everyone else. I guess this is the rub I get from most people that extol the Silicon Valley dream of extending the…
>There's nothing wrong with your thinking. In my humble opinion it shows your personal desires without much concern for everyone else. Oh shush. You know, I've got a 93-year-old grandmother with a damned sharp wit who should not fucking need assisted living and should be able to remember what we were talking about five minutes ago. I've also got a 68-or-so uncle who came down with Parkinson's Disease almost instantly…
People like to assume the natural course its somehow the best course, but its far from the true, the fact its that from a biological perspective its much easier to start from scratch than to remain alive for too long; and that's how evolution works, evolution does not care much about what happens after your reproductive years have gone by (so to speak), maybe only enough so you can take care of your offspring while is needed, but thats about it.
Dragon Flys only live for 4 weeks, but its enough time to reproduce and that's all "mother nature" cares about, and hardly anyone would suggest that living 4 weeks is long enough; so we need to understand our lifespans are just as arbitrary.