Age Reduction Breakthrough? • Hacker News Board

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#241

Post by orangecat » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

rossnordby wrote: post #191

ohyes wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask a valid question. Not wanting to die is fine, I think more importantly, not wanting to age and gradually become a burden towards end of life is also natural. Not wanting to be lost and missed (nevertheless hoping that you've done well enough to be missed). The idea of being bedridden and helpless is more scary to me than death. But not wanting to die __ever__ can be driven by narcissism. If no one dies or get…

> If the cure is widespread you get overpopulation, if it is limited you get a class divide, never aging fantastically rich immortals and a semi-permanent underclass. Neither seems fantastic. At the risk of repeating myself: imagine a world where everyone was ageless by default, and they started to experience issues like inequality or overpopulation. What would that world's top scientists come up with? Would it be "k…

imagine a world where everyone was ageless by default, and they started to experience issues like inequality or overpopulation. What would that world's top scientists come up with? Would it be "kill everyone above a certain age"? I doubt it

And it would most definitely not be "infect everyone with a pathogen that causes their bodies and minds to deteriorate over several decades".

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#242

Post by eganist » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #240

eganist wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of sounding absolutely insane: There's probably no way to prove that this hasn't happened. Anyone who realizes they're not aging normally would likely have taken on a new identity elsewhere for fear of: 1. being burned at the stake 2. being trialed in repeated experiments 3. being deified, and then subsequently being burned at the stake. --- I realize my comment sounds like a joke, but I'm entirely serious. I…

Sounds more like vampire-fiction like historical realities. People were "burned at the stake" for heretical ideas and challenging church dogma, not for looking suspiciously young. And the examples we have of living persons being deified was generally because they acquired enormous power (roman emperors, pharaohs and so on) not because of looking particularly young for their age.

> Sounds more like vampire-fiction like historical realities. People were "burned at the stake" for heretical ideas and challenging church dogma, not for looking suspiciously young. And the examples we have of living persons being defied was generally because they acquired enormous power (roman emperors, pharaohs and so on) not because of looking particularly young for their age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_for_wi...

Quite a number were burned for (obviously alleged) witchcraft. (grep page for 'burn')

That's where I derived that first bullet.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#243

Post by doh » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #220

doh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my most favorite sci-fi movies explores this idea [0]. It's very intriguing and quite entertaining. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth

I just commented before seeing your mention of it. Although I didn't realize until I commented that Jerome Bixby the author of The Man From Earth was also a Star Trek writer.

Oh yes. I met them in person a while back [0]. Super nice people.

[0] https://twitter.com/synopsi/status/1188295183130955778?s=21

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#244

Post by kbenson » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

maxander wrote: post #63

Since it seems like the upshot of all of this is that Katcher is claiming to have discovered a set of signalling molecules which, when injected, rejuvenate tissue and presumably lengthen life, it runs into one of the most fundamental objections that can be leveled at theory of aging (or cure thereof): of the billions of humans that have existed, how is it that none of them have possessed a mutation which (in this cas…

> of the billions of humans that have existed, how is it that none of them have possessed a mutation which (in this case) endogenously produced the signalling molecules which Katcher is proposing as treatment?

How would we know? What fraction of people in the past actually dies from old age and complications of old age, and not disease, infection, or strife such as wars or other conflict?

In the past, I imagine not degrading due to age would be at best an extra few decades of time until you got a bad flu, or pneumonia, or an infection, or were killed on a battlefield, or if you were female, died from complications of giving birth.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#245

Post by eganist » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

yodon wrote: post #148

eganist wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of sounding absolutely insane: There's probably no way to prove that this hasn't happened. Anyone who realizes they're not aging normally would likely have taken on a new identity elsewhere for fear of: 1. being burned at the stake 2. being trialed in repeated experiments 3. being deified, and then subsequently being burned at the stake. --- I realize my comment sounds like a joke, but I'm entirely serious. I…

> If you or I found out we're not aging normally and look e.g. 25 by the time we reach 40, or 30 by the time we reach 45, would either of us remain in our current lives? I was routinely told I looked 25 at the age of 45, and can assure you I felt no need to start accumulating secret identities.

A surprising number of people have taken my comment rather personally.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#246

Post by shrimp_emoji » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

ohyes wrote: post #154

throw1234651234 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with not wanting to die?

You ask a valid question. Not wanting to die is fine, I think more importantly, not wanting to age and gradually become a burden towards end of life is also natural. Not wanting to be lost and missed (nevertheless hoping that you've done well enough to be missed). The idea of being bedridden and helpless is more scary to me than death. But not wanting to die __ever__ can be driven by narcissism. If no one dies or get…

I got a little differently with it. But there's two parts, for me.

One part is emotional: attempted empathy

Current, alive me regrets not seeing the continued beauty of humanity on continental plates in O'Neill cylinders in belt nations strewn around the Sun inhabited by trillions, but I take solace in something "higher than myself" or more significant, stepping out of myself, than my own experience: the experience of everyone else.

As in: don't be so self-obsessed; it sucks that you won't be there to see miracles in the year 3,000, but countless future generations will, so that suck is only a drop of bad in an infinite ocean of good. Be grateful for what you are here for, and be happy for other people, whether they exist now or not.

NIN, In This Twilight, black-is-really-white shit na mean xD

The second part is more rational: deprecation of consciousness

This one's harder to think or talk about and more philosophical and probably has veins running into the first part. I kind of feel like, "objectively", all consciousness is unified in its reductive, anthropic-principle-nothingness. All consciousness seems to be is a runtime with memory data. In the future, or when you wake up tomorrow, is your consciousness then still "your" consciousness? Still the same consciousness as now? And, if not, what's the difference between that and the consciousness of a completely separate person? Think a clone or an uploaded, digital clone (a la the game Soma), whose experience you don't share and, despite being a clone, seems as alien to your qualia as any non-clone. But they're still a clone. So then extend that to other people. Fetishizing your own consciousness is like fetishizing the NAND gates in the SSD that your OS runs on. In the end, it's just as good as another OS running on different hardware.

These two things make my death a miraculously beautiful, globally happy ending, rather than a bleak, local tragedy. It's just a shift in focus, and I think a sober, reasonable one.

... Until heat death, when everyone dies, but that's even farther out. xD And, hey, we don't even know what the majority of matter or energy in the Universe are yet; that buys some leeway in being tied down to predicted cosmic tragedies, r-right??

AND if you're feeling so astrophysicsy, there's always the emergency lever of multiple universes, which inductively follows the same reasoning for self-among-others, just at a slightly larger scale.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#247

Post by saiya-jin » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #58

babesh wrote: post #25

Was told by my wife years ago that there is a Hong Kong tycoon who has been doing this for years. Supposedly hires young people to do nothing but to stay healthy and then has transfusions of their blood. Just checked and he is still alive at 91. But this echoes vampire. This reminds me of plasma treatment for covid-19 which is actually proven. Perhaps someone will create a market for that.

90 is not that old these days. Both of my parents have reached their 90s without doing anything like this. Let’s take a look at that guy in 20 years and see how he is doing.

Both of my grandparents from dad's side are 93 and still doing relatively well - self-sufficient, nothing horrible looming that we are aware of.

Genes, good eating habits and healthy dose of exercise (rather low/medium effort that lasts long like gardening or foraging mushrooms in their case), coupled with obvious things like no addictions... and voila. They both had very good work ethics, on a level I can only envy (thanks to communists that didn't get them far professionally but that's another story and it didn't bother them).

Bad part is, all of their friends and colleagues are dead by now. They can only meet their kids' generation.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#248

Post by abootstrapper » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

Meegul wrote: post #226

abootstrapper wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always looked about 5 years younger than my age. It sucked when I was young. At 40 it’s not the worst quality, but it also doesn’t help much. So I look 35, big whoop. I did discover wearing my hair long in my 20s made me look a bit older (eh, more like my age). Might try modifying your look.

Absolutely, just dressing differently and changing a few things has helped. Facial hair is a big one. I'd rather look young than be balding at 23 like some of my peers.

Right!? I found dressing “older” actually made me look younger. It looked like I was pretending to be grown up. I kind of embraced a rock/slacker look in my 20s and that worked best. These days I just do the dad look. That works fine. Best of luck out there!

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#249

Post by mdszy » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

troughway wrote: post #61

I wonder if HN would have a viscerally negative knee jerk reaction if this was about a cancer treatment breakthrough, that could have saved someone they know or love if it was discovered in due time. This whole “fuck the billionaires” attitude on a website that is supposed to uphold some kind of techno-progressiveness is just so tiresome. We get it, you don’t like people with money and you consider them vampires beca…

Maybe if they weren't leeches on society it'd be easier to want technology like this to exist.

But as it stands, there's no reason to believe it won't just be used as a way to make the rich even richer by letting them live forever.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#250

Post by stronglikedan » Mon, May 11, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #203

stronglikedan wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any elective treatments that people don't have equal access to?

Almost all of them, due to cost.

But cost is not access. People save money for elective procedures/treatments all the time, regardless of their income level, indicating that they have the same level of access as anyone else.