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Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

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Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#81

Post by antepodius »

flyinglizard wrote: post #11
vimy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume there would be no kids? How else will we populate our solar system.

I remember the times where colonizing the solar system was a means for our collective survival, not an endgame for which we irreversibly change our society. That aside, we could populate the solar system just as well with people who live a healthy century. It only takes a few months to get to Mars with the current technology.

We could populate it equally well with people who live a healthy half-century. And think of the progress that would be possible with that sort of population turnaround!

Will you join me in making this dream come true?

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#82

Post by hyko »

xwdv wrote: post #5
flyinglizard wrote: post #3

Actual 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.

The best time to be alive is when longevity break throughs first appear. You have the advantages of experiencing the old ways of living and get to live unexpectedly longer and see the world adapt to the new normal. Fortunately that is what we are positioned for.

Fortunately that is what we are positioned for.

I would actually suggest that anyone reading this is likely to be too old to benefit. Thinking otherwise is completely fine, but we must acknowledge that the temptation towards motivated reasoning is unusually strong in this case.

I would also like the breakthroughs to be many centuries in the past, with all the biological and societal bugs worked out before I arrive :)

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#83

Post by lrem »

SMAAART wrote: post #47

Food intake is regulated primarily by dietary protein and carbohydrate • Low-protein, high-carbohydrate diets are associated with the longest lifespans • Energy reduction from high-protein diets or dietary dilution does not extend life https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(14)...

> in mice fed one of 25 diets ad libitum

You got me for a moment.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#84

Post by Gatsky »

koonsolo wrote: post #67

I stopped reading after seeing the cancer/hearth disease chart. It reinforces the belief that most deaths are caused by cancer, while actually it's hearth disease. So if you make a chart, please make it accurate. Therefore I couldn't trust the rest, since it might all be "drawn from the wrist".

This isn’t true. Cancer is often the top cause of death in women depending on which country you are in (eg Australia).

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#85

Post by bpizzi »

millstone wrote: post #30
lachlan-sneff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say I understand this viewpoint. If you feel you're going to become an agent of stagnation, as you put it, simply put effort into not stagnating.

I think we stagnate because we accumulate experience. As we grow old, we gain wisdom, but our wisdom is centralized in the past. We can't shed our experiences without forgetting ourselves. Steve Jobs also talked about "the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything." But I can't be a beginner again and again and again: some day my biases/old-dreams and stale-ideas/past-successes will dominate. No…

Those beliefs you spell are quite absolutes to me. Humanity is not made after a single mind model. What you take for granted (« nobody has endless capacity for creating the new ») might very well be an utterly false premise.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#86

Post by antepodius »

millstone wrote: post #46
kiba wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Progress (technological or otherwise) is exponential by nature, because it builds on itself. What has changed is that its pace has outstripped our capacity to integrate it. So our age of peak contribution trends lower, towards the younger generation, which has less to unlearn. 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 cann…

It's an economic problem. Right now, there's this torrent of new minds to come up with new ideas thanks to their lack of preconceptions, so there's no effort put towards alternatives.

There's a lot of possibilities that will open up as our tech advances. Say, wiping all memories of your field so you can learn it again with a fresh mind. Spawning short-lived digital clones of your mind with the mental 'temperature' turned up, in whatever way that's possible- maybe just dose them up with synthetic lsd in different doses- and observe the results. Lots of ways to get novel ideas without having to rely on wastefully growing billions of brains (and the attached bodies!) before throwing them, and most of the information in them, away to rot.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#87

Post by bpizzi »

flyinglizard wrote: post #68
echelon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do you. I want to live 900 years and explore every discipline under the sun. I want to travel the world twenty times, read every book, see a hundred thousand sunsets. Don't tell me I or anyone else doesn't deserve that. Evolution left us with bodies that don't permit it, but we'll escape that limit someday.

Do you have kids? I think my view on this radically changed as a father. I feel like my generation sticking around forever would come at the expense of our children (or their children, which by proxy is the same thing). With kids around, there’s just something biologically soothing that tells you “you’ve done your part. You can leave this world at peace”. I know it’s not the same for everyone but on a humankind level…

Those are beliefs from the past. Given time it will change. What human kind is biologically hardwired for is personal survival ability, not leaving the world for youngsters as soon as possible, and those two precepts are mutually exclusive.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#88

Post by antepodius »

koonsolo wrote: post #70
lachlan-sneff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never understood why so many people are so vehemently against anti-aging sentiments. Are they in denial about their own, current mortality?

Maybe we're atheists that accepted our own mortality.

Would you accept your mortality if you were standing on a track in front of an incoming train, and could live longer by walking sideways?

Aging is, in principle, is engineering problem. The sooner and more people start to work on it, the sooner it might be fixed. Maybe too late for us, but maybe for our kids, or theirs, or whoever's- doing work towards curing aging is a gift to whichever generation fixes it.

(Not that it's as binary as 'just fixing it', of course, but you get the idea.)

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#89

Post by antepodius »

flyinglizard wrote: post #68
echelon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do you. I want to live 900 years and explore every discipline under the sun. I want to travel the world twenty times, read every book, see a hundred thousand sunsets. Don't tell me I or anyone else doesn't deserve that. Evolution left us with bodies that don't permit it, but we'll escape that limit someday.

Do you have kids? I think my view on this radically changed as a father. I feel like my generation sticking around forever would come at the expense of our children (or their children, which by proxy is the same thing). With kids around, there’s just something biologically soothing that tells you “you’ve done your part. You can leave this world at peace”. I know it’s not the same for everyone but on a humankind level…

Nobody's telling you you're not allowed to die, and I'll always be on the libertarian end of that equation. Just please don't stop people from trying to live.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#90

Post by est31 »

koonsolo wrote: post #67

I stopped reading after seeing the cancer/hearth disease chart. It reinforces the belief that most deaths are caused by cancer, while actually it's hearth disease. So if you make a chart, please make it accurate. Therefore I couldn't trust the rest, since it might all be "drawn from the wrist".

If you unify all cancers into one category, then cancer is the top cause. If you split them up into the different types, then heart disease is bigger than any single of them. So you are wrong.

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

Shows heart disease as #1 with 3 million deaths but separates the cancer types.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer

Says there were 9.6 million deaths caused by cancer, so more than 3 times the heart disease amount.

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