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Age Reduction Breakthrough?

joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com

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Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#411

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

James_Henry wrote: post #316
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a long enough timeline, can't we assume that pretty much everyone is going to die of cancer?

The body, when it is healthy, generally kills cancerous cells on its own. This is, from what I understand why many cancers come with sickness/age, because your body doesn't react as robustly to broken cells as it did in health and youth. Something like "age reduction" could end up being a cure for many cancers, one could think.

Given that there are cancer's that strike the young as well, I don't know if that would actually work out.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#412

Post by Faint »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #227
koheripbal wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Just try fasting. I'm on a fast right now (500kcal max for 3 days, day 2 ongoing), and I'm much more focused & energetic than I've been in weeks. If I haven't fasted in a long time, getting through the "low energy" phase can be rough. If it's been say, less than a couple of months, it's a breeze. From experience I can tell that fasting will bring me calm, easier sleep, and reduced tendency to overeat (except maybe the day after) that will visibly linger for at least a week or 2.

If you enjoy bodily activity and experiences, why not try fasting too :)

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#413

Post by stinky »

Tsagadai wrote: post #392
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…

Probably also worth noting that there are [stories of it happening before]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah ).

If you read Genesis most people mentioned there lived 100s of years. This most likely is an artifact of years corresponding to moon cycles (aka months) in the earlier parts of the Old Testament.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#414

Post by michaelbrave »

entee wrote: post #378
tantalor wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Important caveat for one of the patients mentioned in the article: “Her telomeres were considerably shorter than those of healthy teenagers, suggesting that her cells were ageing at an accelerated rate.“ Aging is weird. Maybe there’s something to be learned from these cases, but it’s very unlikely to be straightforward. Unless you’re a roundworm. We can make those live hundreds of human-relative years. But in those c…

There are several kinds of animals with long lifespans https://onekindplanet.org/top-10/top-10-worlds-longest-livin...

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#415

Post by smegma2 »

mdszy wrote: post #410
smegma2 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to sound obtuse. I've heard this claim many times and I can imagine it being true, but I have no way of knowing whether it is or not. So I wanted to see what the reasoning is.

The fact that there are millions of workers who are being exploited constantly in order to produce things or provide labor in ways for which they're not being fairly compensated? I mean the most obvious example of this is how minimum wage is well under the poverty line and there are folks out there still being paid it and expected to live off of it.

How do you know if someone is being fairly compensated? My stance is that a market is likely to produce more accurate prices than any individual could, but maybe you disagree. It's true that minimum wage is very low, but it should be the job of the government to support people who aren't compensated enough to support themselves.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#416

Post by JeremyNT »

eganist wrote: post #70
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…

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…

Assuming such a de-aging mutation had occurred, the countless other ways to die would eventually kill all such people. Setting aside the fact that - in a long enough time line - an illness, accident, combat, or some external factor independent of one's baseline physical condition would be guaranteed to get you, other natural effects of longevity like e.g. cancer incidence may not be reduced by either.

Aside from that, it's only in the last millennium or so that we have record keeping that we could plausibly consider credible enough to prove the existence of such a person - in ages before that we have countless myths of immortality or unnatural longevity that we immediately disregard as fictional. So if Methuselah really had lived 969 years due to this mutation, we'd all be none the wiser!

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#417

Post by [deleted] »

Udik wrote: post #206
ishjoh wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older you get the more difficult it is to conceive children as well as raise them. Given that most people have a partner that is roughly the same age as them, and that there would be a much smaller percentage chance of pairing with someone with the same long life trait, the period of time that they are likely to have children probably stays consistent with societal norms. Therefore living a long life wouldn't inc…

> The older you get the more difficult it is to conceive children as well as raise them. Are you trying to provide an evolutionary justification for aging by using aging itself as a reason?

[deleted]

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#418

Post by mdszy »

smegma2 wrote: post #415
mdszy wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that there are millions of workers who are being exploited constantly in order to produce things or provide labor in ways for which they're not being fairly compensated? I mean the most obvious example of this is how minimum wage is well under the poverty line and there are folks out there still being paid it and expected to live off of it.

How do you know if someone is being fairly compensated? My stance is that a market is likely to produce more accurate prices than any individual could, but maybe you disagree. It's true that minimum wage is very low, but it should be the job of the government to support people who aren't compensated enough to support themselves.

Okay, we can talk all day about the "should"s but the fact stands that almost everything that has brought any individual to billionaire status in today's world was the result of exploitation.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#419

Post by Valgrim »

koheripbal wrote: post #405
Valgrim wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it seems like a "complete fucking mess of code" because it's not code at all! See https://phys.org/news/2020-04-dna-life-bookjust-jumbled-ingr... Also relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/1605/

The first link is essentially a description of epigenetics - which I'm not arguing against. It's "part of the mess". The second link is funny, but not an accurate comparison because when decompiled/deobfuscated, the google.com page resolves to well structured code. The human genome does not - there are interdependencies that have no logical purpose - pure happenstance. ...but that's not really my point anyway. My poi…

Maybe it would be easier, maybe not. My point is that we don't understand how the brain, intelligence, consciousness and emotions works. We try really hard to, in many different ways, and it's anything but easy. Every time artificial intelligence gets popular, we get the impression that we are on the grasp of understanding it, until we hit a wall. I'm pretty sure the robots we send on other planets or around other stars will be very capable, but I don't think we can just reinvent our humanity from scratch.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#420

Post by dennis_jeeves »

eganist wrote: post #70
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…

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…

>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. 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?

1, 2 and 3 are very astute observations about human nature. ALL people who disagree on 1,2 and 3 are just naive in what they think human nature is. History repeats.

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