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Age Reduction Breakthrough?

joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com

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Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#341

Post by koheripbal »

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…

This is not a logical comment.

Everything is made of stardust - including the androids we'd construct. ...and while "complexity" is one word for our DNA - another more accurate term would be "complete fucking mess of code". It breaks frequently, is nearly impossible to model and predict, and can only be modified with agonizing inaccurate testing.

Your only reasonable argument here is that computing power isn't up to snuff. That's true - but that argument is rapidly dwindling.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#342

Post by david-gpu »

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)

"How About Adolf?" (2018) [0].

"Perfect Strangers" (2017) [1].

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7477310/

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6101820/

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#343

Post by LouisSayers »

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…

A friend of mine also has this issue. She just turned 30 but looks like she could be a teenager, or perhaps a uni student.

We did a Dexa scan a few months back and it put her age based on body composition at 14.

She gets annoyed about it sometimes as she feels people don't treat her seriously. Because of this she's quite conscious of what she wears, and how she presents herself.

For anyone curious you can find her on youtube - search "Good Paleo Life"

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#345

Post by ohyes »

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…

I seem to have struck a nerve.

The ‘heat death argument’ is not about 100 years vs. a billion years, it is about the inevitability of things. Even if you live a very very long time it will still not be forever, and we all have to make peace with that whether we like it or not. It comes for us all inevitably. It isn’t even an argument it is more of a tautological statement.

Make no mistake if there were some longevity potion and I were offered it I would absolutely take it. But that doesn’t change the fact that some things are inevitable and that it isn’t clear cut that me or anyone living for an extremely long period of time is a ‘net good.’

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#346

Post by chongli »

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…

evolution only "cares" about you to the point where you bear children and raise them

Humans are highly social beings that naturally live in large kin groups. Knowledge and culture form a huge part of our survival strategy. Who among us have the most knowledge and experience to pass on? Elders.

Take a look at the role of elders in traditional hunter/gatherer cultures. Huge importance. Is it not implausible that natural selection would favour increased life expectancy so that elders can maintain and transmit the group's body of knowledge?

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#347

Post by dntbnmpls »

koheripbal wrote: post #219
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…

I believe the most impactful thing you can do is drastically reduce caloric intake - like by 50%. Experiments have show large increases in lifespan, across mammals.

Except that worldwide, life expectancy has increased along with increases in caloric intake. Of course there can be other factors involved, but everywhere you had increases in caloric intake, you've had significant increases in life expectancy.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#348

Post by DenisM »

Meegul wrote: post #175
steelframe wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm only 23, so I understand that I am young, but looking young is, without a doubt, a serious disadvantage when it comes to people trusting in your ability. I recently worked on overhauling the reporting system for one of the largest police departments in the US, and every step along the way I was asked who was in charge, how did I enter the workforce so young, how I got an internship while attending high school (I…

Wear a suit? That thing buys a lot of deference.

You have to be careful not to come across like "a suit" in the engineering circles, it's a tricky balance, but it's worth it.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#349

Post by ohyes »

pharke wrote: post #195
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…

That's a rather depressing way to look at the world. It seems a bit of lazy thinking to assume that waiting for one generation to die is the only way for society to advance. You're also taking for granted that new ways are always better than old ways but human civilizations have collapsed and regressed too many times for that to be true. Perhaps longer, healthier lives would allow more people to find their way out of…

I am a fairly depressing person when it comes down to it. Perhaps those things you’re saying could happen, but they don’t seem likely given history. The rich get richer and compound interest compounds. Maybe it will turn our financial systems on its head, probably.

I didn’t say generational death was the only way for society to advance, I said it was a “strong force.” Sure, possibly people become less selfish now that death is not a foregone conclusion, but now you also have to plan for an infinite retirement, or work forever. There’s no promise of utopia. More likely than not things stay the same, the status quo isn’t really that great for a lot of people.

The heat death argument is about the inevitable end of things. Yes I would take more time and yes it would be great to not get old, but you have to settle your own finiteness and make peace with that. Even with some miracle technology being something that will eventually not be is simply what it means to exist.

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