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Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#141

Post by 7thaccount »

somenameforme wrote: post #131
sirobg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's so good. An amazing way to give a new perspective on life and death as we know it _today_ imho. Strong emphasis on _today_ because life expectancy, healthy life expectancy and death are already really different from some time ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

There's a quite common misconception around life expectancy. We aren't living all that much longer than in the past. The main thing bringing up life expectancy number is that childhood mortality dramatically declined. [1] If one person lives to 80, but another dies in infancy, then you have a life expectancy of 40 years old. Rather than living longer, more people are able to reach the ages that we all start dying aro…

I believe what you're saying is correct, but the OP is also correct in pointing out that those who lived prior to antibiotics or other modern inventions probably died a lot more often of things we can prevent now. Not to mention all the routine surgeries that save lives. The massively declining child mortality is the big disruptor here, but there's more going on in the data. More recently, we might be reversing the positive trends with our extremely unhealthy diets that have led to other issues such as heart disease and diabetes.

Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#143

Post by richbell »

huytersd wrote: post #128
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epstein.

Epstein is a saint compared to a truly evil person. What did he even do? Him and his buddies slept with some 16 year olds from what I know. That’s not even a crime in most countries.

> Epstein is a saint compared to a truly evil person. What did he even do? Him and his buddies slept with some 16 year olds from what I know. That’s not even a crime in most countries.

Child prostitution and sex trafficking is a crime in most countries.

Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#144

Post by somenameforme »

cubefox wrote: post #139
somenameforme wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine we saw the mother of all asteroids incoming. It was large enough that it would almost certainly extinguish all life on Earth, and even throwing every nuke we had at it would barely scratch it. Yet we also saw this from relatively far away - let's say about 10 years. It seems exceptionally probable that by the time it got here we'd have established colonies on both the Moon and Mars. The main issues are not te…

The cost of establishing a Mars colony is so high that the money is probably better spent in a different way. An asteroid defense program (using big Starship rockets), for example.

I don't see it as just a thing of ensuring the species, a la Elon. But even if you do, there are countless other scenarios it guards against - self annihilation via nuclear weapon, bioweapons or bioweapons research accident, any of the zillion astronomical phenomena that could screw out atmosphere (like a gamma ray burst, as hypothesized for a cause of one the great mass extinction events), a super volcano explosion (again hypothesized as the cause for a previous mass extinction event), and so on.

I think us doing something on a huge scale that people could actually be proud of, even if they didn't directly take part in it, is something that could be good for society on a much more broad level. We've achieved a lot in "our time", like the internet, but oddly enough it never really felt like an achievement - by contrast the Moon landing is something who got to experience even today speak fondly of.

And in any case, the exceptional cost is only for a truly self sustaining and independent planet, as would be needed in case of a catastrophe. We can "safely" start with a dependent system where various industrial goods can be shipped to e.g. Mars, and ideally even back to Earth as Mars' industry starts to come to life - even silly things like trinkets from Mars' surface, alcohol brewed on Mars, etc. will all be simple and valuable trade goods.

Getting things started will be done for a relatively low cost. Fortunately, thanks to interests like SpaceX this initial seeding need not even come from the public at large. And hopefully once something is there, that will inspire more people to see what could be there.

Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#145

Post by zdragnar »

godelski wrote: post #138
unsupp0rted wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely what you'd want politicians to do: represent the shifting will of the people. Or, dare I say, learn what they themselves were wrong about and become right about it. We vilify politicians when they change direction and make them dance around and mince words, when what they really want to say is "I was wrong before".

Yeah I don't get why people get upset over that. It's like the people that are like "we didn't learn that in school when I was your age." Times change, we learn, we correct, we update our beliefs. Being static is not healthy and creates a dissonance between the public and the __representatives__. i.e. the representatives become disaligned from those they are supposed to represent. And as my claim (which I add data to…

We wouldn't need politicians if all they did was repeat opinion polls. And very very few politicians say that they were wrong or that they stand corrected- they'll just blame their earlier comments on "it was a different time" or some similar nonsense.

To admit they were wrong would be to say everyone who previously voted for them was also wrong. We don't have that much bravery from most of our politicians.

Editing to add: of course, the real reason nobody expects them to ever say they were wrong is because nobody trusts they actually fully believe what they say in the first place.

Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#146

Post by protomolecule »

thfuran wrote: post #15
Symmetry wrote: post #10

It's not clear from the article but animals can generally live quite a bit longer than you'd expect if they continue to grow for their entire life, which is true for some types of fish. Gunk that builds up inside or between cells gets redistributed over larger areas, as do cells that become senescent. And larger size means more space for memory T cells. Those are only some aspects of aging of course.

Don't cancer rates tend to correlate positively with number of cells?

Quoting wiki [0]:

"Peto's paradox is the observation that, at the species level, the incidence of cancer does not appear to correlate with the number of cells in an organism. For example, the incidence of cancer in humans is much higher than the incidence of cancer in whales, despite whales having more cells than humans. If the probability of carcinogenesis were constant across cells, one would expect whales to have a higher incidence of cancer than humans. Peto's paradox is named after English statistician and epidemiologist Richard Peto, who first observed the connection."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox

Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#147

Post by cubefox »

somenameforme wrote: post #144
cubefox wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of establishing a Mars colony is so high that the money is probably better spent in a different way. An asteroid defense program (using big Starship rockets), for example.

I don't see it as just a thing of ensuring the species, a la Elon. But even if you do, there are countless other scenarios it guards against - self annihilation via nuclear weapon, bioweapons or bioweapons research accident, any of the zillion astronomical phenomena that could screw out atmosphere (like a gamma ray burst, as hypothesized for a cause of one the great mass extinction events), a super volcano explosion…

Getting the first human group on Mars does indeed sound like an inspiring goal. But getting the second or tenth group there sounds quite uninspiring. Remember, after some people landed on the Moon, the novelty wore off rapidly and taxpayers rapidly lost interest.

For Mars this problem is even greater -- we already sent a lot of robots to Mars, we got tons of high quality photographs from there, better than anything we go out of the Apollo missions. The novelty has already worn off to some degree. Getting humans there will be a nice achievement, but NASA will never get a gigantic Apollo-like budget for a Mars program.

Luckily, they can contract SpaceX for a lot of it, so the cost should be more manageable. But only for getting an American flag there. Setting up a permanent Mars base would be an undertaking which is orders of magnitude larger.

Currently NASA doesn't even have any plans for a permanent Moon base! There is a recent book, "A City on Mars", which highlights the enormous difficulties of establishing a permanent or even independent Mars settlement. I haven't read it, but in this interview with the authors the prospects sound grim:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dJqr_cCi9tM

For example, it is doubtful whether pregnancies and childhood growth work normally in low gravity environments. It hasn't even been studied properly using mice on the ISS, even though this would be perfectly possible. Maybe all the children come out severely crippled.

Then there is the constant radiation, which means everyone has to live deep underground. Then the question arises: Why not instead build underground (or underwater) cities on Earth, for a much lower cost?

They also mention things like this: Biological warfare against Earth would potentially be a lot more safe for the attackers if they sit on Mars, due to being separated by gravity wells. So the existential risk might actually increase.

They argue that we should first build a permanent Moon base before going for a permanent Mars base. There are just so many things we can learn in a much less difficult to reach environment. At least from the Moon you can fly people back to Earth in case of a medical emergency.

Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#148

Post by poulsbohemian »

godelski wrote: post #137
poulsbohemian wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges. Do you live on one of the US coasts? Because if so, you are probably right - before Obergefell, most people didn't care about your private life and after Obergefell it could all finally be out in the open. But in a big chunk of this country, it really doesn't m…

Not important. I'm working off of US polling data. See sister comments for reasoning. Everyone that is calling me laughable and "haven't looked at the data" has clearly not themselves.

I’m not calling you “laughable” I’m saying that the data doesn’t matter. We lost Roe, there’s no reason to believe that ugly politics won’t seek to roll back Obergefell too given the opportunity. These people don’t give a shit what the majority think.

Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#149

Post by pvaldes »

MostlyStable wrote: post #60
pvaldes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> otoliths in temperate fish species are generally one of the most consistent and reliable aging methods Ha ha ha haaaa!! Sorry, but that claim was hilarious. I had the (lets call it) "pleasure" to read otoliths in the past, and consistent and reliable is not how I would describe it. Not even close. For most species it just happens that nobody validated the system first. This means that everybody extrapolates, but no…

I currently work in a lab that primarily does otolith based growth and aging. It is and has been my primary job for over 7 years (although I don't do that actual reading of the otoliths, I work with the data that comes out of it) I think you are misreading my comment. I did not say that it was easy or that it was always consistent and reliable. I said it was one of the most consistent and reliable aging methods, whic…

> I currently work in a lab that primarily does otolith based growth and aging.

The magic of HN. That's pretty interesting. Can I ask with what species do you work?. Anchovy? Cod?

> I did not say that it was easy or that it was always consistent and reliable. I said it was one of the most consistent and reliable aging methods

Fair point. Yep, is all what we have, but I would wish that somebody find a better method. Is very fuzzy after some ages with all those rings that fork or fuse.

Re: Some fish live beyond 100 and get healthier as they age

#150

Post by huytersd »

richbell wrote: post #143
huytersd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epstein is a saint compared to a truly evil person. What did he even do? Him and his buddies slept with some 16 year olds from what I know. That’s not even a crime in most countries.

> Epstein is a saint compared to a truly evil person. What did he even do? Him and his buddies slept with some 16 year olds from what I know. That’s not even a crime in most countries. Child prostitution and sex trafficking is a crime in most countries.

Ah I didn’t know that. How did that work out? Was it just flying in willing 16 year olds or more sinister like bringing them in against their will.
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