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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

#131

Post by selestify »

krageon wrote: post #120
TheRealNGenius wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider if world leaders didn't die. That would potentially mean an indefinite rule in the cases where there is no peaceful transfer of power. That means no change. This means being governed by an increasingly old person, whose ideas and beliefs haven't changed since the stone ages. "[Death] is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." Edit: By downvoting without commenting why you disagre…

> That means no change. This presupposes people cannot change, which you haven't supported sufficiently with your argument.

The general population has indeed been observed to be resistant to change. Max Planck noted that science advances one funeral at a time, and the same appears to be true of social norms as well (e.g. really old people being forgiven for blatantly racist behavior because they’re “from a different time.”)

The fact that a minority of people are able to adapt their views over time does not change how the general population does not do this.

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

#132

Post by TheRealNGenius »

krageon wrote: post #120
TheRealNGenius wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider if world leaders didn't die. That would potentially mean an indefinite rule in the cases where there is no peaceful transfer of power. That means no change. This means being governed by an increasingly old person, whose ideas and beliefs haven't changed since the stone ages. "[Death] is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." Edit: By downvoting without commenting why you disagre…

> That means no change. This presupposes people cannot change, which you haven't supported sufficiently with your argument.

Let's not forget that one old wanker is presumably responsible for the ongoing bloodshed and travesty in Ukraine

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

#133

Post by TheRealNGenius »

rozab wrote: post #129
TheRealNGenius wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the same philosopher who thinks we live in a simulation. They're about as credible as their profession is respected. I'm fairly certain I'd disagree with him in the piece of writing he next pens as well.

No, he believes that one of these three things is true: 1. "The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or 2. "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero", or 3. "The fraction of all p…

Yes. He has no basis for that belief. The three points you've raised in clarification on his behalf are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive over the entirety of the probability space. He is pulling "very close to" out of thin air, in complete disregard for rigorous evidence borne of the scientific method.

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

#134

Post by TheRealNGenius »

D-Coder wrote: post #128
TheRealNGenius wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider if world leaders didn't die. That would potentially mean an indefinite rule in the cases where there is no peaceful transfer of power. That means no change. This means being governed by an increasingly old person, whose ideas and beliefs haven't changed since the stone ages. "[Death] is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." Edit: By downvoting without commenting why you disagre…

So everyone gets the death penalty instead.

Such is the inevitability of death and taxes.

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

#135

Post by TheRealNGenius »

rozab wrote: post #129
TheRealNGenius wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the same philosopher who thinks we live in a simulation. They're about as credible as their profession is respected. I'm fairly certain I'd disagree with him in the piece of writing he next pens as well.

No, he believes that one of these three things is true: 1. "The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or 2. "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero", or 3. "The fraction of all p…

Furthermore, reality itself is the "simulation". It takes the entire universe at one time t1 as input, transforms it according to the functions known as the fundamental forces, to produce the entire universe at time t2 as output, where t1 and t2 are one discrete time step apart. Restricting the "simulation" on a subset of the input is bound to introduce errors.

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

#136

Post by joaogui1 »

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.…

There is much more rationalising about death being good in Christianity (with the notion of a heaven for the believers) than in Judaism (no set beliefs on the after life) or even many pagan religions of that time (Greek life after death is often depressing for non-heroes)

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

#140

Post by gcanyon »

etherealpine wrote: post #95
gcanyon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cells may be analog, but DNA is digital -- with error correction even (or error deletion at least). I don't know the details of the epigenome, so maybe that isn't digital?

DNA is not digital though. It has a geometrical structure (independent of epigenetic modifications) that is dependent on a slew of environmental factors that alters it’s meaning. The computer programmer’s incessant need to reduce complexity to bits needs to stop.

DNA is literally digital: it is a quaternary system based on four values: AT, TA, CG, and GC. Those are the only four values possible within the system. If you want to claim it's not (without resorting to the epigenome) then nothing is digital.
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