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Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

theguardian.com

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Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#231

Post by jessedhillon »

thenerdfiles wrote: post #147
tesseractive wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurately, professional philosophers don't have any particular standing to discuss "serious philosophical issues." At any point in the discussion on whether people have a right to die, or whether it was ok to use tissue from aborted fetuses for stem cell research or whether we need universal health care, has anyone ever asked, "Well, what do the philosophers think?" (I have nothing against philosophers, btw. I…

"Philosophers" haven't had "serious philosophical issues" with this topic since Spinoza. Heck, even the Stoics. It's theology that has a problem, not philosophy , where theology crafts its ideas, very often, from the architectures of philosophical thought. Outside of a theological context, there isn't much of a debate anyway. Again: the Stoics. We do ask philosophers about "right to die" and "permissibility of stem c…

That's not what philosophy is about, but I have a strange feeling that "it's all personal opinion anyway" really motivates this idea that philosophers do not contribute meaningfully to law and morality.

A lot of it is American anti-intellectualism. We very strongly object to the idea that the challenges and struggles central to our lives are not unique but have actually been fully considered by others, maybe even centuries prior. That would mean we aren't the author and star of a uniquely great story.

Of course, if that person went to Orel Roberts University then we'll gladly listen and believe every dumb thing he has to say.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#232

Post by haliax »

thenerdfiles wrote: post #154
gaius wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I have a friend who is a full-time professional philosopher (teaches at a university) and you would not believe the amount of earnest essay writing there was in the philosophy community about Miley Cyrus's performance at the VMAs (something I've not actually seen myself). All sorts of theories about Freud and Hegel and this and that. Look Philos, I said to him, she got up on stage and did a little dance a…

I'm full steam ahead myself. I am fascinated by the idea of Open Aging. But anti-intellectualism is not cool. Saying "she did a little dance and that's all there is to it" or even "she's just being young" is more obnoxious than the fact that she did it. There are cultural analyses to be made, if not merely to gain an understanding of how activities like this will affect culture and influence opinion. Cultural nihilis…

> But anti-intellectualism is not cool. Saying "she did a little dance and that's all there is to it" or even "she's just being young" is more obnoxious than the fact that she did it.

It isn't anti-intellectual to question the validity of any analysis. Your argument, taken to its conclusion, provides as much protection for the previously mentioned analysis of Miley Cyrus's dance being a grounded argument to make, as it does for my claim that she was subconsciously invoking the goddess Kali.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#233

Post by marcosdumay »

LaGrange wrote: post #212
twobits wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can't one understand about "infinite 'free' labour"?

"infinite 'free' labour” We used to call that „slavery”. There’s ethical considerations to AI, and treating it as a potential source „free labour” is one of the reasons I believe humanity shouldn’t be allowed to play with matches.

Slavery is a word that applies to humans. Why would one create an AI that does not want to work, and then force it to work?

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#234

Post by hmsimha »

kbenson wrote: post #200
Filligree wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent. There are, oh, I think I once saw a lost of about fifteen major known causes of ageing. Some are worse than others; this is one of the really serious ones, but not #1. Others of note are... - Intracellular debris - Intercellular debris - Gradual macroscopic degeneration from incomplete healing/scarring - Progressive DNA damage, with any number of consequences (e.g. cancer) - Asymptotic loss of some brain…

uploading remains the most promising approach for completely eliminating ageing If so, in the future the equivalent of CryptoLocker will be a terrorist weapon that takes hostages.

I also see a strong future for bitcoin in this scenario. Virtual minds are going to have a hard time paying for things with cash. They'll probably want some form of currency to pay for their Amazon EC2 instances to offload various components of their sentience, essentially slowing down their perception of the passage of time so they can get more accomplished faster.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#235

Post by wpietri »

31reasons wrote: post #179
wpietri wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to call most medical treatments unnatural. That doesn't make them bad, but it should make us thoughtful and careful. Natural systems are often, thanks to evolution and adaptation, complicated and delicately balanced. I think reflexive appeals to tradition and novelty are both kind of dumb. But if people are going to err, I'd rather they erred on the side of tradition: at least that shit has been dem…

With your attitude I don't think we would ever invent or discover any medicine or treatment. Agreed, natural systems are complicated and delicately balanced, but we have Physics, Math, Chemistry and Computer Science to help us understand those delicately balanced and complicated systems. Please give some credit to Human Intelligence that itself is a product of millions of years of evolution. I often hear people sayin…

You seem to be arguing with a bunch of things I didn't say, while ignoring the things I did.

I'm a giant fan of technology, and there are many amazing advances in medical tech. But I'm not a fan of thoughtless adoption of something just because it a) sounds good and b) is shiny and new.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#236

Post by morganherlocker »

DennisP wrote: post #148
morganherlocker wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just point out that most of modern philosophy is not really like this. I think most people think philosophers spend there time arguing about ethics, when this is only one tiny part of philosophy. A good chunk of the current discussion in philosophy of science, for example, centers around epistemology to varying degrees as it relates to current discoveries in genetics and neuroscience. The top philosophers in…

If I wanted to learn the parts of philosophy that apply to machine learning, and how they apply, where should I look?

Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Metaphysics, Philosophy of Biology, and Symbolic Logic are all common Philosophy courses that have strong connections to CS, machine learning, and the biological models often behind (or inspiring at least) ML. Lower level Philosophy courses typically focus on the historical philosophy that most people think of as the entire discipline. It has been said that all philosophical debates go back to Plato or Aristotle, but this is hardly the case in these disciplines.

Philosophy of Mind probably has the closest connection to ML in particular though, as most of the course I took anyway was devoted to Turing Machines, neural networks, etc.

As far as general CS goes, Symbolic Logic is the most essential. Most CS programs cover this stuff, but subjects that might get a 1 week treatment in a typical Discrete Mathematics course would get a full semester in a typical Philosophy program.

As far as general scientific thought and skepticism go, Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics, and Biology are key. If you want to dip your toes in this sort of thing, check out Francis Bacon and the falsification principle, along with Thomas Kuhn and his theory of scientific revolutions and paradigms.

One last note: most people think about philosophy in terms of broad prescriptive pronouncements. Think Sartre, Plato, Nietzsche, Aquinas, Kant, etc. Most contemporary philosophers are more concerned with specific analysis of claims made by a paradigm, in which they explore whether or not these claims a) mean anything b) are internally consistent and c) lead to further implications. Coming out and making some completely new claim is exceedingly rare. An example of this (a bit contrived) in the context of ML and Biology would go something like:

1) Computer Scientists claim that neural network algorithms mimic biological brains. 2) What do we actually know about how biological neural networks work? 3) How do neural network algorithms typically mimic this? 4) Based on the current research, it turns out that neural networks in algorithms differ from their biological counterparts in X, Y, and Z ways. 5) Based on the efficacy these algorithms, how can we explain their ability to "walk like a duck and quack like a duck" without actually being ducks? 6) Assuming a reasonable advancement of this technology, is it reasonable to believe that we may reach a point when X, Y, and Z might be addressed?

TLDR: if you got bored reading what I wrote above, you will probably abhor the ridiculous density and verbosity of most contemporary philosophy. Hey, I tried :)

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#237

Post by X4 »

Okaaayyy... Can I buy NAD+? Or is the magic in using sIRNA[1] to inject NAD+ into the pathway?

I have read on Wikipedia that our body can generate it.

Moneyquote: "In organisms, NAD+ can be synthesized from simple building-blocks (de novo) from the amino acids tryptophan or aspartic acid. In an alternative fashion, more complex components of the coenzymes are taken up from food as the vitamin called niacin. Similar compounds are released by reactions that break down the structure of NAD+. These preformed components then pass through a salvage pathway that recycles them back into the active form. Some NAD+ is also converted into nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP+); the chemistry of this related coenzyme is similar to that of NAD+, but it has different roles in metabolism." [2]

And: "This NAD+ is carried into the mitochondrion by a specific membrane transport protein, since the coenzyme cannot diffuse across membranes." Link: http://www.jbc.org/content/281/3/1524 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16291748

I can buy Tryptophan [3] and D-Aspartic Acid (DAA) [4] pretty easily and legaly. Would an overdose in Tryptophan have the same effect? UPDATE: http://aminoacidstudies.org/l-tryptophan/ Yes, Tryptophan overdose is bad!

I'm sorry, I'm pretty good at absorbing all kinds of scientific materials, but I am really not familiar with all the "body science". That's why I'm asking you, if you know what would happen with regular Tryptophan overdose. I know that DAA can destroy Neurons when overdosed and should only be used according to the RDA.

I don't buy that it's sooo expensive. That's either because researcher's monthly wage is astronomers, or the lab equipment they think is needed is too expensive. I am sure it can be done much much cheaper without the advantages of mass production. You and I currently synthesize the NAD+ thing for free!! The problem they solved, should be repeatable with cheaper equipment or even at home. I would like to have a cat, dog, hamsters or fish that live longer. (Parrot's already live pretty long, but I guess they'd be funnier with more NAD too) --

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_interfering_RNA

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotinamide_adenine_dinucleoti...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-aspartic_acid

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#238

Post by sytelus »

rictic wrote: post #52
pvnick wrote: post #37

Researchers injected a chemical called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD, which reduces in the body as we age. The addition of this compound led to the radical reversal in the ageing of the mice. While this is pretty cool, it seems that the most immediate effect would be a higher availability of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), meaning more energy "currency" for the body's machinery to work with [1] [2] (someone…

This post fills me with questions. Foremost: What makes anti-aging technology unnatural compared to other medical treatments? To take one example, the smallpox vaccine was initially considered unnatural, and an affront to God[1]. [1] http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/whitem10.html

If something can be done, it can't be "unnatural". Unnatural things or processes DO NOT exists by definition.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#239

Post by Filligree »

hmsimha wrote: post #234
kbenson wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uploading remains the most promising approach for completely eliminating ageing If so, in the future the equivalent of CryptoLocker will be a terrorist weapon that takes hostages.

I also see a strong future for bitcoin in this scenario. Virtual minds are going to have a hard time paying for things with cash. They'll probably want some form of currency to pay for their Amazon EC2 instances to offload various components of their sentience, essentially slowing down their perception of the passage of time so they can get more accomplished faster.

Right.

Because there's no way, today, to pay for an EC2 instance without involving physical cash.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#240

Post by Filligree »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #208
Filligree wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a good deal to me. I'll take longer life over more children any day of the year.

So you're ok with living in a society where most of the children are made by religious fanatics of the "Quiverfull" style? Because this is what tends to be the consequence when educated, wealthier, secular people can't found families in their 20s.

No, I'd want to live in a world where said religious fanatics are not allowed to do that, otherwise you get evolution.

I don't like evolution.

I do tend to agree that we're pretty much screwed, though.

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