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With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

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Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#31

Post by garmaine »

ekianjo wrote: post #17
cfj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paragraph on that page: > In humans, the long-term health effects of moderate caloric restriction with sufficient nutrients are unknown.

It's not because it's unknown we should assume there is no effect (positive or negative). Rather, it's worth exploring.

Agree with the sentiment. But in this instance the data, preliminary as it is, is pointing towards "no effect" in humans.

This is true of both animal studies, and preliminary statistical data on the few humans that have been trying CR for a few decades now. There is health improvement, but that's because CR is watching your diet, which is generally good for you. You correct for those factors and the effect basically disappears, at least into the high level of noise that comes with low sample sizes.

But if you still believe in CR, even easier is taking resveratrol. My understanding is that the caloric restriction basically causes the production of resveratrol which is the cause of the beneficial effects in mice. So take resveratrol and eat a normal amount of healthy food should have the same result.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#33

Post by kristofferR »

hannob wrote: post #9
BuildTheRobots wrote: post #2

Anyone interested in the idea of living longer (without the detrimental effects of aging) should check out any Aubrey De Grey talk/video/interview.

Or get a gym membership, actually use it and eat less crap. This may only give you a few years, but chances that it'll actually work are much higher.

Aubrey De Grey isn't focused on giving esoteric anti-aging advice (unlike say Ray Kurzweil), he spends his time talking about the science and progress of anti-aging research.

Knowing that; living healthy is obviously important, but to suggest that you should also drop your intellectual curiosity for anti-aging science, like your comment essentially did, is just absurd. It's close to saying that people interested in physics should stop reading physics books and start playing ball sports instead.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#34

Post by gnode »

m4r35n357 wrote: post #19

By living longer you are merely stealing resources from those that follow you. You can have immortality or reproduction - choose.

Is there a need for so many new people? I don't see why the current pool of conscious agents can not live longer and reduce the frequency of ultimate personal tragedy.

Few people are trying to make the case for shortening life in the interest of having more children, so is there anything special about the current balance to suggest we should not continue to push it further away from this?

If ageing becomes something we can turn off, and we become biologically immortal, then I think the main unfortunate consequence is that the remaining causes of death become more dominant and are unnatural and unpredictable: accident; poverty; war; disease.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#35

Post by malvosenior »

m4r35n357 wrote: post #19

By living longer you are merely stealing resources from those that follow you. You can have immortality or reproduction - choose.

I would never classify being alive as “stealing resources” but regardless, you’re assuming that people don’t make meaningful contributions to society while alive. What if while you were living longer you cured cancer?

Under your philosophy wouldn’t reproducing steal even more resources? If you have three children then you’re stealing them 3X faster.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#36

Post by RichardHeart »

In this thread I've seen the overpopulation argument framed as theft. Here are all the others I've found.

Summary of pro death arguments:

  Fairness
      Only rich people will get it. (No tech has ever done this.)
      Better to give money to the poor than science. (family, city, state, nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.)
  Bad for society
      Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.)
      Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistent)
      Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.)
            Stop having kids
            Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136)
      Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age)
      Old people are expensive (50% of your lifetime medical cost occur in your final year. Delay is profitable.) 
      Old people suck.  (death is an inferior cure to robustness.)
  Bad for individual
      You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related)
      You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?)
      You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.)
      Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.)
      People will force you to live forever (they aren't able to do this now, why would they begin to be?)
Do you think less people make progress faster? What's your target level of depriving life of existence? How do you plan to keep mankind robust from extinction events on a single planet? You might just need more people. What do you think our technology would look like if we had 10x less people for the last 100 years?

More people make more progress faster. Aren’t you glad your parents didn't decide the world would be prettier or work better without you in it? If great minds like Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc., were still alive and productive today, the world would be a better place. You're literally asking for others to die out of your fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage. If living longer comes with too many disadvantages, we'll know 100 years from now and decide then.

Man up, save your family, save yourself.

P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident, and if the parade of imaginary horrible things comes true, even earlier.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#37

Post by phito »

agent008t wrote: post #21
whatshisface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing is for sure, the average Western diet has so many calories than most people could probably do with a little restriction. (Not even to do anything special, just to return to a healthy state.)

At the same time, many young men in the West struggle to put on weight and are underweight.

oh yeap, been struggling with this forever.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#38

Post by malvosenior »

qwsxyh wrote: post #30
novaRom wrote: post #7

Yes we can. Calorie restriction is well known slowing biological aging process. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction

I swear most HN users have some form of orthorexia.

I had never heard of that term but now that I know what it is, I think you’re right. There are so many very strong opinions about diet here and very little quality data to back it up (because for the most part it doesn’t exist).

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#39

Post by deytempo »

novaRom wrote: post #7

Yes we can. Calorie restriction is well known slowing biological aging process. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction

This has to do with mitochondrial metabolic processes being the most efficient to break down smaller quantities of sugar. There are mitochondrial mechanisms to break down a lot at once that are turned on in the presence of more sugar but they just aren’t as finely tuned and thus generate free radicals which can cause cellular problems. There really wasn’t a point throughout evolutionary history where there was a prolonged abundance of sugar available to the degree it is today. Because of that, the mechanisms to break down a lot of carbohydrates/sugars at the same time just did not evolve to be as operationally efficient. Free radicals can cause DNA/RNA disruptions and also damage other processes. Source: father is a dedicated microbiologist

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#40

Post by sicariusnoctis »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #26
corobo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immortality please

I wonder if you would enjoy it as much as you imagine.

Sure, why not? Then I could study all of mathematics, physics, computer science, or whatnot at my leisure! Right now, I can only experience the smallest of glimpses into incredibly interesting fields.
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