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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

#21

Post by Cicero22 »

jdrc wrote: post #7
grishka wrote: post #4

As someone who follows life extension research closely: all the lifestyle stuff like "eating less" is useless. You can't rejuvenate an organism by changing the external inputs to its natural processes. It's half-measures at best.

fasting does have something to do with longevity (in mice and other animals). Maybe not in humans but it's certainly a valid line of research

are there other studies on animals / mice which have a larger sample size? the one linked in the post has a sample size of 106 which to an untrained eye seems small. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a2069c3ccc5c5325fd05...

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

#23

Post by hericium »

DantesKite wrote: post #2

Peter Thiel once said something along the lines that nobody is against aging research, because in practice what you’re solving for are problems everybody wants cures for, like Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s, etc. I often think about that quote because aging is such an intractably hard problem, we’ve sort of collectively rationalized it as something “good”. You see it in many religious traditions. In the zeitgeist.…

I like how aging is explained in "Lifespan: Why we age and why we don't have to"[1]: cells are analog holders of information and just like analog tapes, each copy holds data of slightly lesser quality. After a number of copies, cells become less performant in their job and eventually some lose enough information that new copies cannot function properly enough to survive and/or not mutate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespan:_Why_We_Age_%E2%80%93...

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

#24

Post by moonchrome »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #3
DantesKite wrote: post #2

Peter Thiel once said something along the lines that nobody is against aging research, because in practice what you’re solving for are problems everybody wants cures for, like Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s, etc. I often think about that quote because aging is such an intractably hard problem, we’ve sort of collectively rationalized it as something “good”. You see it in many religious traditions. In the zeitgeist.…

It cant be solved yet as there isnt enough resources to go round for everyone. https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do... https://www.overshootday.org/content/uploads/2022/01/How_man...

This kind of nonsense reasoning had people predicting civilization end within 15 or 30 - back in the 70s...

Resources aren't a fixed notion, crude oil was worthless and toxic before we learned how to refine it and suddenly it's a critical resource.

Natural ecosystems are considered vital today, but if we were to come up with artificial biospheres we would be looking back at the days people got infected by malaria and tick born disease living in uncontrolled environments like we look at people who live(d) in cities without sewage systems.

Anything can be a resource, and be worthless or harmful, depending on the context. Claiming that resource problems can't be solved is a logical fallacy - resources are anything you use to solve a problem.

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

#25

Post by keiferski »

Sorry for the academic terminology, but: longevity is basically the dream of eternal life recast for a modern disenchanted world. If this topic interests you, I highly recommend reading some books by Charles Taylor.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age

https://ubcgcu.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/taylor-and-immane...

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

#26

Post by mft_ »

hwers wrote: post #16

Only tangentially relevant nitpick: shouldn't that first graph have a sigmoid shape since it represents chance of dying as a function of age. At age 130 is should top out at 100% but it shouldn't increase exponentially.

It looks basically accurate, as it's showing your risk of dying at a particular point in time during your life. This risk increases as you get older: the you're more likely to die if you make it to 80 than at 70 or at 60, and so on. So it would seem accurate that the risk increases steadily with time.

This table [0] shows the underlying data. If you plot age against death probability, you get a similarly-shaped curve to the article's.

A sigmoid curve would seem to imply that your risk of dying decreases after a certain age, which isn't the case. I think what you're imaging is a curve that shows one's overall chance of dying at a particular age (rather than risk at a point in time)? Or am I missing your point?

[0] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

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

#27

Post by thelittleone »

DantesKite wrote: post #2

Peter Thiel once said something along the lines that nobody is against aging research, because in practice what you’re solving for are problems everybody wants cures for, like Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s, etc. I often think about that quote because aging is such an intractably hard problem, we’ve sort of collectively rationalized it as something “good”. You see it in many religious traditions. In the zeitgeist.…

"I wonder whether humans will be involved at all; whether machines will silently develop cures while our bodies lie in a metal tomb, explaining to us what happened afterwards in terms we can understand."

Could this already be?

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

#28

Post by ramraj07 »

grishka wrote: post #4

As someone who follows life extension research closely: all the lifestyle stuff like "eating less" is useless. You can't rejuvenate an organism by changing the external inputs to its natural processes. It's half-measures at best.

Are you sure you’re actually following life extension research as opposed to some “quantified self” hacks?

I’ve personally starved and seen worms live much longer than they normally do, and regularly found worms in plates months after they should have all died. There’s nothing unnatural about an organism going into “survival” mode when food becomes scarce. It’s clearly something that benefits a species survival.

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

#30

Post by ganzuul »

keiferski wrote: post #25

Sorry for the academic terminology, but: longevity is basically the dream of eternal life recast for a modern disenchanted world. If this topic interests you, I highly recommend reading some books by Charles Taylor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age https://ubcgcu.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/taylor-and-immane...

You don't need capital G God to live a spiritual life, which is the process of becoming fully human. Qualia that you experience are of a mind operating in non-dualistic reality which we are always a part of because of its transcendental nature.
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