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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

#51

Post by vitiral »

Majestic121 wrote: post #17
bsedlm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'd say I'm rationalizing it, but I do not believe that death is a problem to be solved As I take it, that line of thought (that death is just a problem to be solved and that immortality is something to strive for) leads to solving death just before going on to "solve" childhood. Why do we have to be born ignorant of the world and must "waste" some 20 years learning about it (possibly more) before we can go on to b…

That's a lot of words, but I still don't see a justification why death (I.e. the end of life) is not a problem for people that do not want to stop living (most people).

The problem is always, and has always been, wanting things. Desire and our compulsive need to split the world into concepts that can be the aims of our desire.

Not saying it's not a fun game, but if you take it too seriously you're bound to go crazy!

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

#52

Post by jacquesm »

mft_ wrote: post #26
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 curv…

I think it shows the risk of being dead by a particular age.

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

#53

Post by rozab »

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.…

Nick Bostrom, 2005, 'The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant', Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 31, No. 5

https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

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

#54

Post by specialist »

andai wrote: post #46
hericium wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then why aren't children affected, each generation becoming more damaged than the last? Are reproductive cells special in some regard? If so, can we make normal cells more like that? (I know about older parents having a higher risk of giving their kid Down's and autism but that only happens for a small percentage and the rest of the kids are fine.)

Perhaps the (biological) choices are growth and decline. No steady state (stable equilibrium) is feasible. Just a stupid guess; I have no basis for this notion.

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

#56

Post by netfortius »

I hate it when this type of info does not have a date attached to the main article, right in the beginning. I could assume some years, by looking at the references and some mentioned inside (2016?!? A little after?!?), but in today's accelerated scientific progress, especially in the light of recent developments of successful applications, post-COVID appearance, it is hard to determine how authoritative this info is.

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

#58

Post by hericium »

andai wrote: post #46
hericium wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then why aren't children affected, each generation becoming more damaged than the last? Are reproductive cells special in some regard? If so, can we make normal cells more like that? (I know about older parents having a higher risk of giving their kid Down's and autism but that only happens for a small percentage and the rest of the kids are fine.)

Human race is not destroying its DNA at current pace for long. Deterioration may be more pronounced in a few generations.

And as to why the child is not formed from bad copies of worn-off cells of a mature parent - it's been some time since I read the book but I think that there was some reset mentioned when a whole new person is formed inside another organism. Fetal stem cells are known to have superior properties.

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

#59

Post by culi »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
gw67 wrote: post #33

All the public companies backed are now down badly. - METACRINE -92% (1 year) - Unity biotechnology -86% (1 year) - DECIBEL THERAPEUTICS -80% (1 year) - PRECISION BIOSCIENCES -62% (1 year) https://www.longevity.vc/

Of course they are. It's so far beyond our current understanding of aging that there is no way that you are going to turn this into applied science today. These are at best open research problems and they will likely be so for many years to come. Assuming we don't collectively kill ourselves first.

Perhaps its not necessarily a bad thing that there's a delay in this type of research. Given the extreme inequality in the world today, it might end up really hard to overcome the way that that inequality manifests itself with regards to access to these types of medicine/research.

Even your own comment hinted that perhaps we have some more pressing issues to figure out first

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

#60

Post by CryptoPunk »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #42
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.…

Dualism will lead to only a very basic understanding of existence. Death, nor cancer, are good or bad. Jesus might have had the whole thing wrong after all. Of maybe humanity, as its so often does, misinterpreted His teaching. Before we knew about cancer, and yes there was a time we did not know what cancer was, was canned good or bad? Did we even see natural death as bad? So where did these constructs come from? And…

Overpopulation can be solved while increasing the human population, by eliminating people's environmental footprint. This is a much better way of solving the issue of overpopulation than consciously avoiding solving the problem of aging.

A larger population, that sees an acceleration in the rate of per capita human capital accumulation, as a consequence of aging being solved, could also be a huge boon for other lifeforms, as it could mean artificial habitats being created outside of Earth where these lifeforms could flourish. It is entirely possible for human civilization to one day create continent sized O'Neill cylinder covered with forests originating from Earth.

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