Anyone don't want longevity for humans? I think death is a beautiful thing and for a lot of us including myself life has been really tough at times. The fact that there is an equalizer in death makes life comforting at times.
Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
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Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#42Actual substantial longevity - beyond quality of life enhancements - is something I greatly fear. It would change everything. Imagine life with no kids and the joy they bring, a stagnation in all societal structures, no turnover of ideas (loosely quoting "agendas don't die; people die"). I'm sure such a civilization would be very stable, but won't have any extreme sports.
Why do you assume there would be no kids? How else will we populate our solar system.
Although I'd assume that we have left our biological bodies behind before that.
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#43Anyone don't want longevity for humans? I think death is a beautiful thing and for a lot of us including myself life has been really tough at times. The fact that there is an equalizer in death makes life comforting at times.
Death is not an equalizer. Just because the beggar dies just the same as the rich man, that death doesn't undo any of the beggar's suffering nor any of the rich man's gluttony. There most likely is no afterlife in which those who have suffered are rewarded and those who inflicted suffering punished.
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#44Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#45Anyone don't want longevity for humans? I think death is a beautiful thing and for a lot of us including myself life has been really tough at times. The fact that there is an equalizer in death makes life comforting at times.
I think people who feel this way should be perfectly free to, but not everyone does, and they should be free not to die as per their preference. I think of it as, if my loved one (or me) were in the hospital with a fatal disease, but there was a cure, I would want the cure. I can't really see myself saying "Yeah, but death is so beautiful..." I see aging the same way, as another fatal disease and I'd cure it if I cou…
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Science advances one funeral at a time." - Max Planck "Death is very likely the best single invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." - Steve Jobs I know my life is accreting old biases and obstacles. Today and for years to come (I hope) I have more to do, but some day I will become an agent of stagnation instead of advancement. Nobody wants to die. But in the big…
For the vast majority of our history, there had been little to no technological changes. Only difference is that in the last few centuries, there had been technological and scientific changes. What changes? it's certainly isn't that old men die faster so that we embrace newer ideas faster. The old guards probably lived longer on average thanks to medicine.
As I grow older, I can see how my thinking is affected by my past. Someone with an unencumbered perspective will do the new thing, when I cannot.
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#47https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(14)...
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Death is not an equalizer. Just because the beggar dies just the same as the rich man, that death doesn't undo any of the beggar's suffering nor any of the rich man's gluttony. There most likely is no afterlife in which those who have suffered are rewarded and those who inflicted suffering punished.
But it is in a way, where the beggar does not have to suffer for eternity, and the rich man's luxury also cannot last forever.
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#49* What you eat
* When you eat
* How much you eat
* Exercise
Are by far the simplest, cheapest, and most well documented way to extend life by quite a lot. We have lots of evidence to back calorie restriction. We know that eating more earlier in the day vs later means your insulin levels can recover better (or something?). We know eating certain types of fats is bad for you, and eating certain types of other things are good for you. Exercise, or at least the right kind of exercise (seems like there are open questions here, like how much is actually important) is healthy.
Then there are a number of pills you can take. When it comes to the pills we have a lot less evidence. From what I've seen there are probably a dozen or so pills, each one with bits and pieces of science surrounding them, that will maybe have some impact on mortality or aging. Some of the research does seem quite compelling - niacin, for example, seems to be pretty well researched and is actually prescribed at times. Niacin is also one of the pills you'll see come up a lot if you start looking into anti-aging. Others like resveratrol (which, actually, appears to be old news - people have moved on, it seems, to more bioavailable substances) have a lot less research, though they're promising.
If you're willing to spend 100-200 dollars a month or so it seems that you can get most or all of these. I don't think any research has been done on what taking all of these will do to you, but there is research on how the chemicals behave and I suppose from there people seem to draw conclusions on interactions.
Interestingly, from what I've read a lot of the popular "anti aging" trends like anti-oxidants are, more or less, very much debunked. My understanding is that while anti-oxidants absolutely do what their name implies in a lab setting, most of them tend to not do a damn thing in humans with regards to oxidation. So who knows what is or isn't going to work.
From my layman understanding, if you're ~20 years old you can basically just not fuck up super hard and wait another decade and we'll know a lot more. If you're 30, definitely start taking health seriously but maybe don't worry so much about downing 50 supplements that only have a bit of backing research. If you're 40 and above, and your goal is life extension... you might have to take a gamble.
If you're interested, I found this channel quite interesting - I appreciated the guy always citing studies (and he explicitly calls out why he thinks the study is or is not high quality).
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpcvPcHJVOkO9Qp79BOagTg
This FAQ definitely seems to be a good 'one stop shop' for learning the state of things, without being prescriptive.
I'm not a doctor. I just got interested in the last few weeks about this stuff. None of this is without risk - that much is obvious. Only just the other day I was reading a post by someone who ended up in the hospital with liver failure that very possibly could have been tied to their supplementation. If you start taking pills that you don't understand you seem very likely to fuck things up - some pills require that you take other pills also, for example lots of nootropics will fuck you up if you don't get enough choline in your diet. All of this is to say, there's cool and promising stuff here, but do your own research, and if you're very young and healthy don't stress about this stuff yet - the first step is always diet and exercise.
Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research
#50If people were dying in troves of a disease (...) every effort would be put on saving them, right? How come some deaths are considered "fine", but others aren't? No. Just No. Let longevity come. Let immortality come. Let us live forever, sail the heavens, and travel to every world, every star, every galaxy, everywhere.
That's kind of selfish. You're ignoring the impact on parking availability for the rest of the universe.