Age Reduction Breakthrough? • Hacker News Board

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#281

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #115

commandlinefan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought too - maybe it's just wishful thinking, but the bible does talk about people who lived for thousands of years. We're prone to dismiss this as hyperbole from uneducated ancients, but maybe they actually did exist and this sort of thing was why.

"Someone slipped up the distinction between years and generations and a legend was born" still seems enormously more probable than anomalous longevity existing but somehow never making it into the wider gene pool.

Do you (they) mean "distinction between years and months"?

That would be between solar cycles and lunar cycles: seems enticing. That would make Methuselah 80yo when he reportedly died; but there are problems still as Seth (for example) became a father at 105, which if it were months would be 8¾ years.

Another possibility is that when it says Methuselah it just means "Methuselah's blood line" or "Methuselah the tribe"; it's a Hebraic thing (elsewhere in the OT) to refer to a tribe as if referring to the founding person.

Or, the person writing down the numbers used a different system, through error or otherwise.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#282

Post by rantwasp » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #258

zemvpferreira wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me to say so but this intervention is one of the few things that, even if it were to demonstrably increase my lifespan from ~80 to ~120 years, I probably wouldn't do. I don't know if that's because I enjoy food and bodily activity too much to value a longer life without them or because I'm addicted to food. I've wondered. What wouldn't you be willing to give up for a much longer life?

Depends which parts gets prolonged - if you are at 80 deteriorated +-same as somebody who dies at 80, and they just keep fixing the next thing that is going to kill ya, then yes, that's a pure physical misery and spiral down progressive dementia (almost all old folks suffer from some form of it). Now if we would be 40-like in our 60s and so on, that's another story. But first thing that would probably change is retir…

yes, the longevity "movement" actually talks about this. nobody want to live to be 130 if it sucks. but if you have the same quality of life like a 40yo all of a sudden people are waaay more open to living longer (I have also observed a huge pushback against living longer from most people I've chatted about this - it's so ingrained in our way of thinking that saying you want to live to be 130 is heresy)

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#283

Post by riggins » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #124

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…

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140520-the-girls-who-ne... > A handful of girls seem to defy one of the biggest certainties in life: ageing. He has identified four girls with this condition, marked by what seems to be a permanent state of infancy, a dramatic developmental arrest. He suspects that the disease is caused by a glitch somewhere in the girls’ DNA. His quest for immortality depends on finding it.

I'm sad this comment hasn't been upvoted higher. The comment explain how the mutation could be possible.

The key is that the mutation would prevent reproduction. If you never age, you never reproduce.

You can think about different cancers. A mutation that causes fatal childhood cancer doesn't get passed on. A mutation that causes prostate cancer can spread.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#284

Post by Valgrim » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #224

rantwasp wrote: post #213

Improving longevity is what the people at https://www.lifespan.io/ have been trying to do for ages. The research is being done, there are tons of new promising things - with the catch that they are experimental / not tested on humans. Before you get too excited and wonder where you can buy these magic pills, remember that there are things you can do right now to improve both your longevity and your quality of life: 1…

While I generally support these efforts, I have feeling it would be easier to engineer a way to escape these meat bag prisons we live in, and construct an android body that isn't built from the worst form of spaghetti DNA code imaginable.

This meat bag is made from star dust, self-assembling from a single microscopic machine, into a form so complex that it's complexity, adaptability and computing power dwarves by several orders of magnitude all the machines and computers we have built or will build in the foreseeable future, combined. And billions of them exist, doing things like inventing imaginary worlds, loving each others, gardening and playing soccer. And they work only with a bit of water and food.

We'll get some sort of usable artificial intelligence (meaning robot slaves and autonomous rovers) at some point, but I think it's a mistake to underestimate human intelligence.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#285

Post by ryanmarsh » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

zarkov99 wrote: post #189

ryanmarsh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google "vampire facial" and I can tell you from personal experience the results are impressive beyond anything else I've paid for my wife (laser facials, botox, fillers, lip injections, etc...). I don't understand what the "rage" would come from, or why it's "pot". This is available today, and many people pay for it. The results speak for themselves. People who pay for this stuff don't make a habit of talking about i…

Pot was a typo for post, sorry about that. The rage would come from people who feel that any indulgence accessible only to those richer than themselves is an outrage. There are many such people in tech circles.

That seems like at least half of HN.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#286

Post by degradas » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #176

parentheses wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the only movies that remains intriguing throughout despite being basically a single conversation.

I happen to love certain niche movie genres, which happens to include "dinner party movies". Feel free to list some recommendations, if you like "people talk in a room" movies. Some of my favories: Coherence (scifi) Garden Party (sleazy young adult Los Angeles drama) Murder Party (low budget horror comedy) How English sounds to non-English speakers (youtube) Circle 2015 (scifi)

El método (2005) is a really good take on corporate/personal dynamics.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427582/

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#287

Post by rantwasp » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:45 PM UTC

Valgrim wrote: post #284

koheripbal wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally support these efforts, I have feeling it would be easier to engineer a way to escape these meat bag prisons we live in, and construct an android body that isn't built from the worst form of spaghetti DNA code imaginable.

This meat bag is made from star dust, self-assembling from a single microscopic machine, into a form so complex that it's complexity, adaptability and computing power dwarves by several orders of magnitude all the machines and computers we have built or will build in the foreseeable future, combined. And billions of them exist, doing things like inventing imaginary worlds, loving each others, gardening and playing so…

it depends. in the next 10 years, no. next 100 years, probably no.

but if you have thousands or millions of years ahead I think artificial intelligence is going to become a thing. also we'll drop the artificial and call it what it is going to be: intelligence.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#288

Post by gmaster » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

pharke wrote: post #172

gmaster wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death and aging is a feature of evolution. These features evolved to further enable evolution and allow it to iterate more quickly. Species that iterated more quickly, and therefore evolved more quickly were more successful. Features that are deliberately evolved exist within many different genes as a mechanism to protect the feature, this is why dropout works so well on neural networks.

I wouldn't say a feature of evolution. Perhaps it is an adaptation of sexually reproducing multicellular life but it certainly doesn't apply to all life.

Just like organisms evolve things such as vision, frontal lobes, etc, we have evolved aging because it ultimately positively impacts the survival of species. This makes it an evolved feature, wouldn't you say?

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#289

Post by exolymph » Mon, May 11, 2020, 7:53 PM UTC

sirtaj wrote: post #88

spacephysics wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economically, and historically, the more wealthy tend to try out the expensive, new technologies, then as market forces play out, such technologies become cheaper, to where most average workers can afford them (see genome sequencing costs decline over the past 15 years.) We need wealthy people to try out the expensive new advances. Just because someone is wealthy doesn’t necessarily mean they’re apart of the “evil bi…

Didn't the price of insulin in the US nearly triple in 10 years? The market is not always particularly efficient.

"Big Pharma" is a cartel with more steps (via semi-emergent regulatory capture). Nothing to do with healthcare in the United States is anywhere close to a free market.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#290

Post by indy » Mon, May 11, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #224

rantwasp wrote: post #213

Improving longevity is what the people at https://www.lifespan.io/ have been trying to do for ages. The research is being done, there are tons of new promising things - with the catch that they are experimental / not tested on humans. Before you get too excited and wonder where you can buy these magic pills, remember that there are things you can do right now to improve both your longevity and your quality of life: 1…

While I generally support these efforts, I have feeling it would be easier to engineer a way to escape these meat bag prisons we live in, and construct an android body that isn't built from the worst form of spaghetti DNA code imaginable.

The eternal struggle between "rewrite it from scratch" and "build upon legacy code"