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Age Reduction Breakthrough?

joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com

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Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#261

Post by hammock »

rantwasp wrote: post #236
sterlind wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh that's too simple in humans. Hanging around longer to tend children and pass on knowledge benefits the survival of your grandchildren, who carry your genes too.

yes. you need to reproduce and to ensure your offsprings reach sexual maturity. but humans are in no way special. we believe we have escaped our biology because of the cultural stratum we posses (ie exchanged memes for genes) but we are still basically animals.

Why couldn't it be true that we want to survive to ensure our grand-offspring and great-grandoffspring reach sexual maturity as well? That's a valid strategy (with tradeoffs, as there are with everything)

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#262

Post by tjalfi »

steelframe wrote: post #105
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…

Someone I work with looks very youthful for their actual age, and that isn't always a good thing. When the team went on an offsite morale event jet skiing, he was told by the proprietor that he couldn't participate because their policy requires you to be at least 16 years old. He was 27 at the time. He never lived that down with his peers. When he tries to go to a bar with friends, he's sometimes accused of trying to…

Here's a response that he can use when people comment on his youthful appearance.

"You look so young."

"I have this portrait in my attic."

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#263

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sterlind wrote: post #210
rantwasp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the right answer. once you reach reproduction age and you are able to reproduce, from an evolutionary point of view you're done.

Eh that's too simple in humans. Hanging around longer to tend children and pass on knowledge benefits the survival of your grandchildren, who carry your genes too.

Not necessarily. Hanging around longer could provide more of a resource drain than the relative benefit, humanity aside, and older people can create limits to societal change that could be a governance beyond material aspects too.

This will sound callous, but some older people really should be allowed to die. There's definitely points of diminishing returns for all involved; I hope that under certain conditions (eg dementia) I'll be allowed to die when I'm decrepit.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#264

Post by JoshuaDavid »

gameswithgo wrote: post #45
curiousgal wrote: post #30

Age reduction. Enammel reconstruction. Batteries. The three pillars of perpetual breakthroughs.

Since 1990 the energy density if lithium ion has has increased by a factor of about 4, and the cost had reduced by a factor off about 6. While keeping in mind that consumer lithium ion itself was quite a breakthrough in terms of energy density in the first place. Both of these metrics are still improving too.

I dunno about enamel reconstruction (though I was under the impression that materials used to _replace_ tooth enamel have gotten enormously better in the last few decades to the point where your fillings will wear down slower than your teeth), but life expectancy has also been slowly increasing over the past few decades, and a significant fraction of that comes from people staying relatively healthy for longer.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#265

Post by coryfklein »

amluto wrote: post #11
peter_l_downs wrote: post #4

As someone entirely outside this field, can someone with more inside knowledge give any insight into where this lies on the crank/hoax spectrum? A biorxv paper and a well-written blogpost don't really point either way.

When the author says things like: > But Katcher has no research grants or university lab or venture capital funding, no team of grad students mining databases and screening chemicals in the back room. > One thing Katcher has going for him is the correct theory. I start to suspect the author’s opinion is stronger than their evidence.

Given that many major scientific discoveries occurred with the prototypical mad scientist working alone, often apart from their main field, this description doesn't seem out of the norm for what I'd expect in somebody trying to urgently raise the signal of a very early and promising discovery.

Let's consider the universe where Katcher has discovered the secret to aging. At some point in that universe, Katcher's work is going to be relatively unknown and unsponsored, and at a later point there will be trillions poured into it. The above quote you posted aligns just fine with the earlier part of that timeline so now you're just left to decide, given your priors about major scientific discoveries, how likely it is that a major scientific discovery can come from a "dark horse".

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#266

Post by buboard »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #113
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…

To put it simply, a population with aging is more fit than a population without. The speed at which beneficial mutations in a population reach saturation in the gene pool is a function of the number of generations that have gone by. So we can expect some downward selective pressure on lifespan.

That assumes that the species is not smarter than nature at assessing what is "more fit" for them. For example, smart chicken that wanted to go to alpha centauri might engineer themselves to live much longer in a way that nature never would.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#267

Post by restalis »

chubot wrote: post #164
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…

I think Jared Diamond had a similar argument that seems valid. Roughly speaking, it boils down to the fact that you need 90 out of 100 subsystems in your body to be working. Your lungs, your heart, your skin, your brain, etc. They interact, but each part also needs to work on its own for you to live. Every one of those systems can fail and leave you dead. Since evolution only "cares" about you to the point where you…

"Every one of those systems can fail and leave you dead. Since evolution only «cares» about you to the point where you bear children and raise them, what are the chances that it engineered ALL those systems to last FOREVER?"

Evolution works in small steps, over long periods of time (given the humans slow grow up process). Mutations in any of those systems may increase or lower the chances of such failure. Evolution takes care of both, albeit by a small margin. Currently, cause of death number one worldwide is the ischemic heart disease¹ (i.e. the famous "coronary"). Now guess what, there are genetic mutations that work on this out there already, one of them being the Gilbert's syndrome². Yes, forever is unattainable, but (humanity scale speaking) I'm glad having lived past twenty four and willing to take any blessing coming after.

"I'd even conjecture there's a sexual selection effect going on in the «live hard die young» people, like rock stars, athletes, etc."

I hope you're aware of survivor's bias here. Assume a lot more of those to be weeded out. Also, the stars made it not only because they were risk inclined but also because they they have that value they were recognized for.

I find the gradual improvement that one may gain having a bit of time to be a very useful edge over the young and inexperienced, in the game of life. Especially for a male (that is not that restricted by an inherent fertility age limit), this edge fits perfectly in the reproductive selection window you mention.

¹ https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-...

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert%27s_syndrome#Cardiovas...

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#268

Post by alexilliamson »

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…

This whole “fuck the outrage about wealth inequality” 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 without money and you consider them vampires because they want to avoid dying for as long as possible.

Go and be insufferable elsewhere.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#269

Post by subsubzero »

mortenjorck wrote: post #137
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…

This implies a sort of binary between "normal" aging and vampire-like eternal youth, but if these mutations do exist within the population, their practical effects are likely far more nuanced due to confounding factors. There would almost certainly be a continuum, perhaps following a power law. The top quartile might be the "40 not looking a day over 25," while the top 0.1% might be true Dorian Greys.

regarding mutations, perhaps they are just confined to certain physical systems. The reason I bring this up is my mother-in-law has brownish hair with not a single grey hair, she does not dye her hair and is about to turn 70. Her mother also has barely any grey hair and is in her 90's, this to me is extremely strange as people in my family get alot of grey in their 40's and most get grey at least by 50ish.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#270

Post by AnimalMuppet »

eganist wrote: post #260
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you know, the way you wrote the comment, it kind of invited us to take it as personal - as applying to ourselves.

My personal experience led to that assumption; I've never guessed anyone's age wrong by 15 years, hence the example. Sorry it hit you the way it did; wasn't my intent.

I don't think we took it "personally" in a way that calls for an apology. I don't think anybody felt accused or anything - just that we are responding literally, noting that some of us are in those circumstances, and aren't reacting the way you said. That's all I meant when I said you invited us to take it personally. I did not at all mean that you gave us grounds for feeling accused or defensive. (But thanks for the non-defensiveness of your reply - this conversation could easily have blown up with you feeling accused by my post, and I would not have known why, because I didn't mean it that way at all - which may mean that I wrote it badly.)
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