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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

#211

Post by maxxxxx »

johnydepp wrote: post #67

The most intriguing thing I found in the article, is that, If you design & sell items specifically to elderly, they wont buy it. Because they don't want the product to remind that they are old. So the solution is to design a product which suits to the elderly but seems like its designed for young generation.

I don't think that's necessarily true. It's just that items designed for the elderly are designed by young people who think this is what elderly people need. My mom uses quite a few items that are supposed to be designed for the elderly. Only a few really work whereas others simply don't work.

I don't think most elderly don't want to be reminded that they are old. They will happily use stuff that actually works for them.

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

#212

Post by dwaltrip »

Shutaru wrote: post #209

I've seen this sort of argument many times before, most notably from Francis Fukuyama. The common thinking on the subject seems to be a deeply inaccurate decoupling of longevity and health. Yes, we fear death, but we also fear the image of ourselves spending the final years of our lives bedridden and in pain. What we don't seem to understand is that patients in such poor health don't survive very long (despite the in…

Only a minor reduction in this coupling could be sufficient to cause significant misery.

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

#213

Post by rsync »

vokep wrote: post #197
rsync wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I could understand the impulse people would have to not extend their lives if that's truly what they wanted, but the almost _cultural_ belief that seeking immortality is Bad and Wrong, something only pursued by cartoon villains and insane emperors ..." I've spent some time thinking about this. Bear with me ... First, let me agree with you that I am flabbergasted by the notion that one would have nothing but ill-use…

But only some of the ideology from then is reactionary and conservative by today's standards. Why the assumption that Past = Right/Conservative and Future = Left/Progressive? I grew up with about this view of politics, but I don't think it's accurate. It seems like a nice simplification, but it's a gross oversimplification that paints anything right of center as being obviously backwards.

"Why the assumption that Past = Right/Conservative and Future = Left/Progressive?"

No, that's not really what I am saying ... and you are correct, that would be a very blunt oversimplification (or just plain wrong).

What I am saying is that in an unbroken thread of society (that is, absent disaster or revolution or other "resets") views and mores become viewed as more and more conservative by each successive generation that succeeds them.

As I wrote, "progressive people, and their opinions, turn into reactionary conservatives with nothing but the passage of time." I don't mean that those people become conservatives, I mean that successive generations view them as more and more conservative.

I don't think that implies that conservative views are backwards - unless you start with an assumption that "new is always better". I don't assume that.

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

#214

Post by rsync »

magduf wrote: post #202
rsync wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I could understand the impulse people would have to not extend their lives if that's truly what they wanted, but the almost _cultural_ belief that seeking immortality is Bad and Wrong, something only pursued by cartoon villains and insane emperors ..." I've spent some time thinking about this. Bear with me ... First, let me agree with you that I am flabbergasted by the notion that one would have nothing but ill-use…

>However, I ask you to consider the most liberal and progressive figures of the 18th century People change over time. My mother is over 80 now, and happily buys all kinds of stuff on Amazon with her laptop or smartphone, even though she said decades ago she didn't see the need for a computer. Her politics are also quite liberal, a lot more so than a lot of 20-somethings I talk to these days who seem to be a bunch of…

"progressive people, and their opinions, turn into reactionary conservatives with nothing but the passage of time."

I'm sorry - that line makes it sound like I am saying those people who were progressive become, themselves, reactionary conservatives.

What I am trying to say is that viewed by successive, future generations those people become reactionary conservatives. That is, simply the passage of time changes the view, from outside, of those people.

"Many of today's conservatives are quite young, and lots of liberals are quite old."

Agreed. What I am saying is that, absent a revolution or other reset of our current society, both of those groups will be considered, 200 years from now, quite conservative.

An example looking backward:

Find me the most liberal and the most conservative participants at the signing of the US Declaration of Independence - now let's sign them up to speak at Berkeley tomorrow and see how that goes. See what I'm saying ?

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

#215

Post by jobigoud »

coldtea wrote: post #78
agent008t wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For a small number of "many". [...] according to 2010 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these are the measurements of the average American man: Height: 5 feet 9 inches (69.3 inches) Weight: 195.5 pounds Waist circumference: 39.7 inches

Height: 1.76 m, Weight: 88.7 kg, Waist circumference: 100.8 cm.

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

#216

Post by saltcured »

rsync wrote: post #213
vokep wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But only some of the ideology from then is reactionary and conservative by today's standards. Why the assumption that Past = Right/Conservative and Future = Left/Progressive? I grew up with about this view of politics, but I don't think it's accurate. It seems like a nice simplification, but it's a gross oversimplification that paints anything right of center as being obviously backwards.

"Why the assumption that Past = Right/Conservative and Future = Left/Progressive?" No, that's not really what I am saying ... and you are correct, that would be a very blunt oversimplification (or just plain wrong). What I am saying is that in an unbroken thread of society (that is, absent disaster or revolution or other "resets") views and mores become viewed as more and more conservative by each successive generati…

I understood your original point. Implicitly, you are assuming that people develop their values and beliefs and lose plasticity over time, so they will not adapt to the societal changes happening around them.

I think the underlying thought experiment "would I want to be immortal" is plagued by these and other unspoken assumptions. We simply don't know what it would mean to have a lifespan decoupled from our evolutionary experience. Clearly, we have psychological and emotional development coupled to our physical development and our functional roles within human society.

What does it mean to freeze our physical health at our "prime" of 20s-30s? Would it also freeze our cognition and emotion? Or would an accumulation of experience still shift our minds into very different modes incongruent with what we assume of young adults? Think of idioms like "young at heart", "wise for her age", or "has an old soul". Will people freeze with one personality, or all trend towards some world-weary and sage disposition as they witness more and more of life and loss?

And what of pathologies and maladaption? When would people reproduce, if they are immortal? Where does evolutionary pressure provide feedback, if traits can erupt with arbitrarily inter-generational delay?

Can an economic and social system develop to handle immortal participants? The worst aspects of primacy could emerge, if actual individuals can take the place of dynasties and corporations as permanent centers of wealth and power. Conversely, would any potentially immortal individual want to take on great personal risk for the betterment of a larger group? How does this change with time? Would centuries of experience lead one to sacrifice for the young, or would the absence of decrepitude encourage selfish delusions of grandeur, thinking that an accumulation of vast experience should be preserved by spilling blood of relatively empty youth...?

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

#217

Post by Madmallard »

deytempo wrote: post #39
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 prol…

Ask your father about drug induced mitochondrial dysfunction. I had ciprofloxacin 4 years ago and my exercise tolerance swiftly dropped in the months afterward. Research tells me this is due to mtdna depletion and dna damage and I just want to know how to get better. I now have stage 1 diastolic dysfunction and a plethora of seemingly unrelated problems, coming from none before.

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

#218

Post by solveit »

nabla9 wrote: post #71
ggambetta wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm extremely interested in the topic (as I get older but happen to like living). However some people seem to think De Grey is a bit of a crackpot?

His research agenda and goal is outrageously challenging and controversial and he might be a too overconfident. There is good reason to be skeptical, but he is not a crackpot. Attempting to do something that may turn out to be impossible or wrong approach is not crackpottery. His work of identifying reasons of aging seems really reasonable. Trying to reverse every one of those is incredible challenge. It's the bigges…

> and he might be a too overconfident

It's pretty much a law of nature that the pioneers in any field will be overconfident. If they weren't, they never would've tried.

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

#219

Post by D-Coder »

paideic wrote: post #106

Somewhat off-topic, but I always thought the most prominent real-life reenactment of The Fox and the Grapes was all of the media and thinkpieces that people have written about how living for an extended period of time would be just _awful_. You wouldn't find many people who think that 40 years would be an acceptable lifespan, and most people would probably like to live to 100 if they got there in good health, but as…

I am willing to struggle with the problem of boredom for as many centuries as it takes to solve it!

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

#220

Post by D-Coder »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #55
sicariusnoctis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, so you are assuming that you would be immortal and free to pursue intellectual endeavors forever. This implies that all of your problems would be solved. You would be forever chasing the dopamine hit of understanding more of the fields that interest you. Or you could just shoot heroin. Without mortality or problems to confront, all meaning would be lost. Math, heroin, sex, all the same. Consider the dissolution o…

"Live forever" here, I think, mostly means "Live indefinitely" — NOT "Live until the heat-death of the universe."

And if you get bored after 500 years, you can always opt out. I'd like to have the choice to see if I do like it.

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