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Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

phys.org

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Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#61

Post by HSO »

jerf wrote: post #57
mrandish wrote: post #41

I was at a holiday party and some guy was telling me all about the exciting life extension breakthroughs he was reading about in mass media. I tried to explain that, while exciting, what works in mice models is highly unlikely to directly scale into humans and that making progress against aging is very probably a "wicked" problem. I pointed out how many headlines we saw in the 80s about a "cure" for cancer being just…

When you see an article on HN about how someone took some code, profiled it, and increased its speed by 10 times, I think it's tempting to credit virtue to the person who sped the code up. But I think you also have to remember that the only reason you could speed up the code by 10 times in the first place is that the original code left that much on the table. It isn't just that there is a person who was skilled enoug…

By the same token, there are animals who have the „live for 400 years“ problem solved so there must be sth left on the table yes?

Other animals have the „regenerate this body part“ problem solved, same.

Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#63

Post by gitanovic »

HSO wrote: post #61
jerf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you see an article on HN about how someone took some code, profiled it, and increased its speed by 10 times, I think it's tempting to credit virtue to the person who sped the code up. But I think you also have to remember that the only reason you could speed up the code by 10 times in the first place is that the original code left that much on the table. It isn't just that there is a person who was skilled enoug…

By the same token, there are animals who have the „live for 400 years“ problem solved so there must be sth left on the table yes? Other animals have the „regenerate this body part“ problem solved, same.

Some have the never get cancer solved (I read that about chickens... but I can't remember where)

Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#64

Post by brlewis »

patcon wrote: post #22

Surprise, a counter-argument on hacker news! :) Why does it seem no one worries about what we might break in humanity by disrupting the evolved pattern of death. It's a network characteristic selected for in living system, and very few creatures have survived into our epoch without developing the capacity to die. It's literally an evolved feature of our lifecycle and our existence within this web, and it terrifies me…

> no one worries about what we might break in humanity by disrupting the evolved pattern of death

Haven't we already disrupted it with spears to ward off predators, and more recently, hand soap and vaccines?

Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#65

Post by rsynnott »

jerf wrote: post #57
mrandish wrote: post #41

I was at a holiday party and some guy was telling me all about the exciting life extension breakthroughs he was reading about in mass media. I tried to explain that, while exciting, what works in mice models is highly unlikely to directly scale into humans and that making progress against aging is very probably a "wicked" problem. I pointed out how many headlines we saw in the 80s about a "cure" for cancer being just…

When you see an article on HN about how someone took some code, profiled it, and increased its speed by 10 times, I think it's tempting to credit virtue to the person who sped the code up. But I think you also have to remember that the only reason you could speed up the code by 10 times in the first place is that the original code left that much on the table. It isn't just that there is a person who was skilled enoug…

> Optimization being what it is, it is very likely that whatever that improvement is already effectively exists in us.

This only really works if there's evolutionary pressure on humans to live forever, though. And there probably isn't. We live longer than most mammals (even without good nutrition and modern medicine) but that's arguably because we're somewhat social animals; we provide a useful function after we stop reproducing. But there are limits. While having grandparents still around might be an advantage (and likely to make a prehistoric human more likely to pass on genes for long life), there are diminishing returns; having great-great-grandparents around is much less interesting.

Not to say massive human life extension is practical or even possible, but we shouldn't necessarily assume that our lifespans have already been fully optimised.

Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#66

Post by Tactic »

greg7mdp wrote: post #30

Dang, my retirement savings will have to last much longer than I had expected.

While stated in what I interpret is a joking way, it is a very real concern. As the average life expectancy increases we either have to plan for a longer period of non-productivity (in the private sector) or work longer. A blend of the two seems to be what is occurring, but over my life time I have seen my expected retirement age continue to push slightly further away.

Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#67

Post by rsynnott »

patcon wrote: post #22

Surprise, a counter-argument on hacker news! :) Why does it seem no one worries about what we might break in humanity by disrupting the evolved pattern of death. It's a network characteristic selected for in living system, and very few creatures have survived into our epoch without developing the capacity to die. It's literally an evolved feature of our lifecycle and our existence within this web, and it terrifies me…

> Why does it seem no one worries about what we might break in humanity by disrupting the evolved pattern of death

Well, we've disrupted pretty much everything else, by inventing modern society. What's one more thing?

Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#68

Post by titzer »

at_a_remove wrote: post #53
titzer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Evolution is not wise, evolution is not careful, evolution did not plan or reason for that fence. Evolution also gave us susceptibility to diseases, revolting parasites, defects of birth, and an often tragic fragility. Shall we preserve those as well? After all, they must be there for a reason. Copy. Mutate. Select. Simple algorithm, remarkable results. Incredibly robust to failure. I think you do yourself a disser…

This process that gave rise to me also gave me a painful, lifetime disability ... in its wisdom .

I'm sorry that you're suffering. No one should discount your experience. Yet even through our cloudy lens we behold a miracle beyond our possession, even beyond our comprehension. We are all transitional forms, even the best of us. We'll all die. It's nature's equalizer, grinding everything to dust and recycling it. We're all made of garbage. Junkyard parts, you and me both, buddy. Isn't it incredible? We're all Wreck Gar https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Wreck-Gar_(G1). I think the awe of that realization is worth the meager existence allowed to me for the moment.

Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#69

Post by jerf »

HSO wrote: post #61
jerf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you see an article on HN about how someone took some code, profiled it, and increased its speed by 10 times, I think it's tempting to credit virtue to the person who sped the code up. But I think you also have to remember that the only reason you could speed up the code by 10 times in the first place is that the original code left that much on the table. It isn't just that there is a person who was skilled enoug…

By the same token, there are animals who have the „live for 400 years“ problem solved so there must be sth left on the table yes? Other animals have the „regenerate this body part“ problem solved, same.

"By the same token, there are animals who have the „live for 400 years“ problem solved so there must be sth left on the table yes?"

Note my claim wasn't that optimization isn't possible, just that the impressiveness of the optimization is inversely proportional to the amount of performance left on the table.

In terms of that being a promising avenue, I'd observe all the animals with long lifespans I'm aware of seem to achieve that with a quality of life that would in humans be considered very elderly behavior, due to low energy consumption. People generally want eternal youth, rather than eternal elderliness. I don't know of any 200-year-old animal leaping about from tree to tree or anything like that.

Body part regeneration seems a lot more like a solvable problem to me than generalized "fix aging". While we know we're lacking spontaneous body part regeneration, we also know the "programs" for growing parts are in there, since we used them once.

(As I've observed before on HN, "solving aging" would be a lot easier if we just had to produce organs with the same DNA or something. It's a bit body-horror-esque, but if we could just grow clone bodies and transplant things in we'd probably be pretty close. But there's that whole problem where we'd be happy with a new heart, we'd be happy with a new liver, we'd be happy with a new left arm, but we stubbornly want our old brain....)

Re: Scientists identify pathways that extend nematode worm lifespan fivefold

#70

Post by ramraj07 »

nabla9 wrote: post #12

All longevity accomplishments work better with smaller animals. The increase of the lifespan decreases with the size of the animal. If the increase of healthy human lifespan is something like 5% that would be a huge accomplishment and nothing to sneer at.

They've proven much larger lifespan increases even in primates. Issue is it looks like many of these interventions might alter your mental health as well, and no animal model will faithfully replicate that.
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