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Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

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Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#171

Post by Taek »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #132
Taek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how controversial the opinion is, but it's pretty clear to me that immortality is harmful to a species in the vast majority of cases. Evolution is a constant processes of competition. When members of a species start living longer, the upgrading of their gene pool slows down. The older members maintain their old ideas and ways of life, and they soak up resources that crowd out the younger members. The env…

>Immortality is largely incompatible with evolution and competition. That's an incredibly good argument in favor of immortality. "Evolution" and "competition" are not gods. They do not have any moral authority over us. Our entire civilization has been built on the principle of not subjecting ourselves to Darwinian survival-selection. That aside, you should probably go count ducks in a swamp or do some other ecologica…

> Our entire civilization has been built on the principle of not subjecting ourselves to Darwinian survival-selection.

I don't believe it's something you can escape. It largely boils down to the idea of infinite wants vs. finite resources. Bostrom and co. like to talk about how there's enough energy in the universe to power 10^XX human lifetimes, but I strongly don't believe that a human is going to be the ultimate lifeform. Already we can see that the average first-world human today uses substantially more energy than the average human 1000 years ago.

Unless we hit a ceiling on complexity (not currently in sight), there will always be people who want access to more energy. Since energy is finite, there will be competition between them for that energy. And that will more or less result in Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest, at least as far as some individuals/groups/organisms/species will be better at getting access to individuals as others.

I guess the other alternative is that we hit an entirely egalitarian society, but I think that's exceedingly unlikely, as it would require everybody to agree 100% to limit their energy consumption to exactly what they've been allocated, and not to try to acquire more.

> That aside, you should probably go count ducks in a swamp or do some other ecological fieldwork before talking about the evolutionary fitness of organisms or ecosystems. You sound atrocious at biology.

I appreciate the criticism, and apologize for the sloppy metaphors. Evolution thus far though has very clearly favored death as the primary means of design. Few species have remained unchanged over the past XX million years, and even fewer are theoretically capable of immortality (barring some sort of medical intervention). Most organisms have aging hardcoded into their genome.

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#172

Post by banhfun »

dcposch wrote: post #66
a13n wrote: post #56

I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?

Not just death, but the gradual loss of physical and mental capabilities you used to have. That feels scarier to me. Imagine you could chose to die on your 75th birthday, but in return keep your full 20-something health until then. I'd do it right away.

You should watch Logan's Run.

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#173

Post by Taek »

pdonis wrote: post #165
notgood wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to assume the natural course its somehow the best course, but its far from the true, the fact its that from a biological perspective its much easier to start from scratch than to remain alive for too long; and that's how evolution works, evolution does not care much about what happens after your reproductive years have gone by (so to speak), maybe only enough so you can take care of your offspring while i…

> evolution does not care much about what happens after your reproductive years have gone by So what? We humans care.

The tools that made us successful as a species capped our lifespans. Technology may have changed that equation such that it makes more sense to live longer (or forever), but if immortality had made evolutionary sense up to this point we'd see a few immortals walking around.

For whatever reason, hardcoded death was the more successful route for a species to take. (with some notable exceptions. I believe there are species of lobsters that won't die if you put them in the right environment, I believe a species of jellyfish as well, and then some microorganisms as well)

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#174

Post by mehwoot »

enraged_camel wrote: post #134
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully death comes along and sorts through the wants from the willing. It has a nice way of making space for a newer generation of thinkers. Old prejudices die, new thinkers arrive. There's nothing wrong with your thinking. In my humble opinion it shows your personal desires without much concern for everyone else. I guess this is the rub I get from most people that extol the Silicon Valley dream of extending the…

>>[Death] has a nice way of making space for a newer generation of thinkers. Old prejudices die, new thinkers arrive. On the other hand, humanity loses out on a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience with each death. Imagine if Einstein were alive today, for instance. Or Richard Feynman. Or Carl Sagan.

Planck said "Science advances one funeral at a time", and he was in that exact field...

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#175

Post by Taek »

ThomPete wrote: post #142
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully death comes along and sorts through the wants from the willing. It has a nice way of making space for a newer generation of thinkers. Old prejudices die, new thinkers arrive. There's nothing wrong with your thinking. In my humble opinion it shows your personal desires without much concern for everyone else. I guess this is the rub I get from most people that extol the Silicon Valley dream of extending the…

This strikes me as an odd argument. Basically you are saying that it's better we die so that a new generation can come and then die for others come around just to die to make way for others. Whats the purpose of that for the individual? Why is that by any metrics desirable for humans to die for other humans to come along to just die for yet others? But what is the purpose of that?

Well, I can understand how from your perspective it makes sense for you to want to live forever, but from an evolutionary perspective your species is more successful if you die after a while.

If if immortality didn't have negative consequences as severe as stunting an entire species, we'd probably see more species that were capable of immortal individuals. Such species do exist, but not in the Mammal kingdom as far as I'm aware.

But I also think it sets a good guideline. Death improves a species, because it leaves room for more children + more generations (for a given set of resources), which means more opportunity for improvements to evolutionary fitness.

edit: another commenter pointed out something I think is fairly profound. When a group of cells in your body decides to pursue immortality, it's usually cancer. And if you don't address it, it kills you, and them too. Science theoretically has a way to grant our individual cells immortality without causing cancer, but it'd have to be orchestrated carefully.

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#176

Post by rsync »

a13n wrote: post #56

I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?

"Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?"

Imagine a cell in your body that thinks this way.

What would you call that cell ?

It starts with a "c" ...

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#177

Post by rsync »

misiti3780 wrote: post #46

I just finished a book by Nick Lane where he discussed how he believes aging is cause by mitochondrial free-radical leakage. His hypothesis (and he is a smart guy) is that science will allow people to live longer, but probably not much longer than 125. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20021368

I highly recommend the book - Power, Sex, Suicide - that the parent is referring to. Nick Lanes other long form book, Oxygen, is also very, very good.

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#178

Post by sgift »

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #100
a13n wrote: post #56

I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?

I absolutely, 100% do not want to extend my life. And for the record, I am quite pleased with my life. I do not fear death, I do not worry about it, it does not concern me. Therefore I do not feel the need to combat it in any way. The good truly does not exist without the bad, life without death, and so on. Walking the path of "controlling" your life and/or death like this seems needy, egotistical, and pretty sad, im…

Let's talk again after you had the "great" experience of waiting in an ER for your end thanks to cancer, if you really do not fear death (or rather do not miss all the things you'd still want to do with your life).

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#179

Post by sgift »

a13n wrote: post #56

I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on the list. Why are people fighting this?

Probably, because they somehow revere age-related death as something more than it is (see all the comments about making space for new generations and so on). Age-related death is simply another sickness or the accumulation of sicknesses that finally overwhelms your body and strikes you down. And like every other sickness, I hope we get rid of it as fast as possible. Unfortunately, it will probably take longer than my lifetime until that happens.

Re: Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing

#180

Post by Taek »

nullc wrote: post #111
pointytrees wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes talk about wanting to live forever and get weird stares. Are you joking me?? I want to hike every trail in the world. I want to climb every mountain. I want to play every video game. I want to beat the hardest raids in every expansion of WoW. I want to learn multiple langauges. I want to spend several years living in every biome. I want to learn all of the programming languages. I want to go back to schoo…

I've found it helpful to share this with people: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

The article paints death in a very black and white, good-vs-evil picture, but I hold that it's a much more complex mechanism.

And I don't mean to suggest that we should accept death or not pursue the escape of death, but most species (with some notable exceptions) who have enjoyed evolutionary success have death hardcoded into their genome.

Which suggests to me that over a sufficient timescale (probably dozens to thousands of generations), death is beneficial to a species. Death means that there are more resources available to younger generations, and means that you get more cycles of genetic optimization. That makes the species more successful as a whole.

Humans may find some way to get optimization cycles that don't involve death, but I hold the opinion that if we don't continuously pursue optimization cycles, we'll eventually be out-competed evolutionary by something that does. We have a huge head start, but in the fable, so did the dragon.

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