Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by pointytrees » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:42 AM UTC

megablast wrote: post #155

pointytrees wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you want to all that with a depleted body and will?

Obviously, I'd like to maintain my body and will. When I was in Maryland for a year, my landlady was 104 years old, and quite sharp. Her daughter was 80 and crazy spry. Every day my landlady would be out on the porch, cleaning and organizing. She couldn't run around, and she was probably past the point where I'd enjoy spending eternity, but the point is that her bloodline was amazing. I could certainly spend an eternity with the health that her 80 year old daughter had. She could pick up her grandson, and get around the yard just fine.

Part of the whole agelessness thing is that some of the mechanics of how our cells breakdown and begin to fail would need to be cured. At which point, our bones, and muscles, if cured of that deterioration, would lead to curing death, but it would also lead to the ability to maintain your health and body. As long as you continue to exercise, and eat well, you'd probably have a body similar to an average fit modern 40 year old I'd expect. Or somewhere between the crazy metabolism of 20 year olds, and the deterioration of 70 year olds.

I don't know any of the science though, so just speculating based on what I've read, and my opinions.

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

#162

Post by pointytrees » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:43 AM UTC

forthefuture wrote: post #113

aaron-lebo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Your perspective would probably change drastically in your third century or millenia. I'd rather have that opportunity than not.

I wholeheartedly agree.

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

#163

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:45 AM UTC

LargeCompanies wrote: post #139

pointytrees wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by ThomPete » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:59 AM UTC

solipsism wrote: post #150

ThomPete wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strikes me as an odd argument. Basically you are saying that it's better we die so that a new generation can come and then die for others come around just to die to make way for others. Whats the purpose of that for the individual? Why is that by any metrics desirable for humans to die for other humans to come along to just die for yet others? But what is the purpose of that?

You're actually starting a conversation on HN about what the purpose of life is? Good luck...

No. I am asking why I wouldn't want to live forever.

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

#165

Post by pdonis » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:01 AM UTC

notgood wrote: post #140

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 i…

> evolution does not care much about what happens after your reproductive years have gone by

So what? We humans care.

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

#166

Post by pdonis » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:06 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #90

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 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…

> If we lived forever, we wouldn't have to make any hard choices

No, if we lived forever, we would have to make a lot more hard choices, because we would have so much more time to be exposed to them.

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

#167

Post by jnicholasp » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

dkarapetyan wrote: post #143

enraged_camel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>[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.

Those were lives well lived and a lot of the meaning and wisdom now derived from their lives is because they are gone. Same can not be said for the multitude that just wants more time.

All of the meaning and wisdom derived from their lives was because they were alive. Now they aren't, and we don't get any more of their particular genius, and that is a damned shame.

It's also a damned shame that my grandfather, who is precisely nobody on the world stage, but still somebody, and currently in the hospital and I might get a text any minute saying he's dead, is on the brink of exiting the world, joining the hundred billion or so other humans who've ceased to exist for no good reason other than that the blind god Nature doesn't care about anything we care about. What Nature has ordained, she has ordained without reference to meaning or wisdom or the interests of those who live and die within her system, and we will be doing right when we remake her.

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

#168

Post by pkd » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

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'd love to live longer if I could stay young throughout. Death is not a pain point for me, but old age is. After watching my grandparents slowly lose control over their bodies, I don't wish to go through that same phase.

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

#169

Post by jnicholasp » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:33 AM UTC

elorant wrote: post #107

pointytrees wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is, unless you get yourself a time-traveling space ship and dedicate yourself to the engrossing project of personally insulting every single being in the universe, in alphabetical order.

http://www.hhgproject.org/entries/wowbagger.html (That site sucks to read, btw. White text on black background, ugh.)

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

#170

Post by jnicholasp » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 4:38 AM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #120

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?

>Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this? Because nobody ever seems to go around funding peer-reviewed medical science done in well-controlled labs with large sample sizes to study how to fight aging. This is not a problem that a startup company can solve. This is a problem for steady, difficult progress over decades. But people go for the…

How much steady, difficult progress is currently being made?

This seems like a thing that is being under-funded and under-researched, and more money, and particularly attention, being given to it is a good thing even if you don't think the particular method is likely to be effective.