What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#101

Post by api » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

hnnewguy wrote: post #58

teekert wrote: post #38

Oh how nice a couple of references to some peer reviewed articles would have been. Quotes like "This is my own perspective, shared by a handful of world-class aging scientists, but it is not yet mainstream." make all my scientific alarms go off. It is an interesting way of looking at it though.

> all my scientific alarms go off Is it required on HN that every article be terse list of peer-reviewed facts?

It's like citing Bible verses for fundamentalist positivists, so yes.

Never mind that the quality of published research itself varies wildly, or that this requirement creates an intrinsic tunnel-vision bias toward premature convergence at local maxima. If the measure of veracity is citations, then that creates a network effect, etc.

Not saying citations are a bad thing, just that they're not prima facie indicators of truth or rationality.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#102

Post by humanfromearth » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #31

nicky0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to live forever? In a world where everyone lives forever? I'm pretty sure most people will have had enough after the first million or so years. Someone must have written sci-fi of this.

In Ian Banks Culture novels, the post-scarcity super-advanced civilization has lifespans of around 350 years (IIRC). They could be longer, but don't for cultural and social reasons. With Culture stories though, I'm never quite sure if Culture society has genuinely agreed on it's conventions freely, or if they are the result of subtle manipulation by the Minds (hyper-intelligent AIs that run the ships and habitats tha…

People could have opted for indefinite life-span if they so chose: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Death

They had lots of children, overpopulation was not a problem because of huge habitats that hosted billions of individuals (and that were built with relative ease - The Player of Games). Also I don't agree with the intellectual degradation argument, it's just silly in the Culture AGI context.

Whatever the value of life I think it's best for the individual to decide what to do with it. Most would probably euthanasiate after a while anyway. I would very much prefer suicide than a random age related problem, but I don't really have a choice do I?

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#103

Post by jostmey » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 5:05 PM UTC

My favorite explanation of Againg comes from William Hamilton. He took advantage of the Euler-Lotka equation to calculate the number of offspring that would be alive at any given point in the future. Using this equation from the field of demographics, he showed that senescence has only a marginal effect on fitness. As such, selective pressure would not be strong enough to filter out mutations that might result in aging. Finally, he was able to derive various mortality curves that "seem" to match pretty well with real living systems.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#104

Post by jrh555 » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 5:09 PM UTC

One idea that I'm surprised I've never seen mentioned is the possibility that life ages in the same way that companies do. New high growth companies often have lots of money to hire new people, buy new equipment, build new office buildings, etc. When revenue eventually levels off or drops, often there are no longer enough resources to support everything that was built up in the growth phase. In older companies you might see a lot of old worn out equipment and infrastructure that is not getting repaired due to lack of resources. This effect can be seen on a larger scale in cities or even nations that experience a slowdown in growth.

What if aging is simply a side effect of the fact that we stop growing at a certain age? It could be that certain key resources needed to fully repair the body are reduced or shut off once growth stops. Aging might even be a kind of negative growth.

It's interesting that the effects of aging don't start showing up until after we stop growing. Also, the rate at which different forms of life age seems to be related to the growth rate. Some types of turtle can live to be over 200 years old but take 50 years to grow to full size.

I'd be curious to see if there is any research into aging along these lines. If aging is related to growth, perhaps an anti-aging treatment could be as simple as finding a way to restart growth for short periods of time to generate the additional resources needed to repair damaged tissue. I have heard of human growth hormone being used as an anti-aging treatment though something tells me there would be more involved than just one hormone.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#105

Post by aetherson » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 5:16 PM UTC

givan wrote: post #7

Widdershin wrote: post #3

This is truly the most amazing time to be alive (so far). No matter what repercussions the destruction of aging might have, it awes me that we talk of dramatically extended life and the colonization of the stars not only as something feasible, but even possible within the next century.

Unfortunately it's just talking, there is no real progress in either space exploration let alone colonization or aging, hygiene and antibiotics was and it's still is the only thing that prolonged life in the last century, we still have a long way in both directions.

Vaccination certainly has prolonged life in the last century.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#106

Post by aetherson » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

Does anyone here have the background to address this author's claims about telomeres? It seems like if telomeres were really a silver bullet to stop cellular aging, we'd have huge scientific consensus about it right now. My impression was that it was a promising line of investigation 20 years ago that didn't have the dramatic results that were hoped for.

But I'm not in biology or medicine, and I may be wildly off base. I'm naturally cynical about the presence of a silver bullet for aging, though.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#107

Post by Houshalter » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 5:24 PM UTC

I was extremely skeptical of the title, but he makes a good case. Still it's very unlikely aging is evolved. An animal that lives longer would be able to reproduce more, therefore there is selection pressure for longer (reproductive) life spans.

It's far more likely there are other reasons. For example limited telomeres prevent cells from multiplying out of control. And if aging was easy to biologically prevent/reverse, we would expect to find a few people out of billions that live far outside the normal life expectancy. Like someone with a rare combination of genes that happens to have longer telomeres or younger hormones etc. Instead everyone dies pretty consistently within 90 years, give or take a decade.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#108

Post by rwissmann » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #107

I was extremely skeptical of the title, but he makes a good case. Still it's very unlikely aging is evolved. An animal that lives longer would be able to reproduce more, therefore there is selection pressure for longer (reproductive) life spans. It's far more likely there are other reasons. For example limited telomeres prevent cells from multiplying out of control. And if aging was easy to biologically prevent/rever…

"therefore there is selection pressure for longer (reproductive) life spans"

this is too simplistic. there is also selection pressure for shorter generational cycles, leading to faster evolution. keeping older generations around would consume extra resources.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#109

Post by codexjourneys » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

Madmallard wrote: post #19

sanxiyn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing else. Basically, calorie restriction works, and nothing else does. I recommend Fight Aging! if you are interested. https://www.fightaging.org/faq/

I'm not so sure those are the only two. I'm fairly certain high dietary intake of various vegetables, fruits, and legumes over processed foods would probably greatly add to the life expectancy of regular people. Don't have a lot of hard evidence but I have relatives who outlived their brothers and sisters by 10-20 years because they just ate significantly healthier and moved around more.

"Moving around more" actually does significantly lower your risk of death from cardiovascular events (at the very least). http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/19/how-many-steps-does-it...

Common sense, while harder to study in a lab than a new specific medicine XYZ, actually can serve us well in the messy real world.

Re: What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong

#110

Post by Strom » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 5:39 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #14

Widdershin wrote: post #3

This is truly the most amazing time to be alive (so far). No matter what repercussions the destruction of aging might have, it awes me that we talk of dramatically extended life and the colonization of the stars not only as something feasible, but even possible within the next century.

This is truly the most amazing time to be alive (so far). If you're in the group of people privileged to have access to those innovations, yes. For everyone else it kind of sucks seeing what the elite get to play with.

From what I've observed, a great number of people who don't yet directly have access to new innovations aren't jealous, but are excited about the prospect of these innovations eventually getting wider application.