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We will be able to live to 1,000

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Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#41

Post by mechanical_fish »

gte910h wrote: post #6

When I donate to research, I like to see what the "partial failure result" is. One of the neat thing about sens research is that if you happen to even get one or two of the parts of damage fixable or even moderated, then you have a much less inactive old age period, even if no actual longevity is gained. I find decrepit old age to be one of the biggest issues of our time (who cares if grandma is 80 if she can move li…

prolonging the useful life of the workforce is a big worry

Not in my world. The world where we are at the tail end of the largest recession in two or three generations, with danger of double-dip; we have lots and lots of surplus productive capacity, productivity just keeps going up, and unemployment is between 10% and 25% in the US depending on how you count it.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#42

Post by MikeCapone »

teilo wrote: post #13

I just have to shake my head at this. The only adequate word for this is arrogance. The arrogance to believe that we know enough about the processes of life to extend them indefinitely. We don't even know what we don't know. How many times have we been at this place in the history of biology, where we honestly believe that we are just "that" close to figuring out the processes of life. We were wrong then, and we are…

> We don't even know what we don't know. How many times have we been at this place in the history of biology, where we honestly believe that we are just "that" close to figuring out the processes of life. We were wrong then, and we are wrong now.

Aubrey's point is that we don't need to understand metabolism to repair the damage of aging, just like you can maintain and repair a house or a car without understanding in detail all of the mechanisms that cause damage and failure. You just clean up some of the damage and change some parts periodically so that it never reaches a threshold at which failure is possible.

Our bodies already do this quite well for the first 20-30 years of our lives, but after that, we're in an evolutionary blind spot and long-lived molecules accumulate and eventually make maintenance and repair mechanisms stop working for long enough to lead to pathologies. If we clean up these long-lived molecules, that'll be a very good start.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#43

Post by abstractbill »

[deleted] wrote: post #32
MikeCapone wrote: post #2

We might or might not defeat the diseases of aging anytime soon, but if you want to help the people who are trying to make it happen, consider donating to the SENS Foundation (money goes directly to research): http://www.sens.org/ Sadly, because aging isn't considered a disease by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, there is actually very little research being done on it if you take into consideration the fact that…

[deleted]

Aubrey is a hack and about as far from being a scientist as I am from passing a Google technical interview.

Cambridge University awarded him a PhD for his work, and they don't exactly give those away on the back of cereal boxes. Do you have any hard evidence that he's not doing valid work?

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#45

Post by biggitybones »

It's amazing to think that just 500 years ago things were so bad that people awaited death patiently and willingly because they believed life was a punishment rewarded with an afterlife.

Now we're trying to extend the amount of time that we live 10 fold because things are so great right now. I'm not saying either is right, just an observation.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#46

Post by gte910h »

tingley wrote: post #17

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red/Blue/Green) has this sort of development as a backdrop. Nothing good comes of it.

And Heinlein had tons of novels where it worked out fine.

I don't think we should fund research based on what storytellers wrote to entertain us.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#47

Post by gnaritas »

biggitybones wrote: post #36
sshumaker wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. Everyone was worried in the 1970's that the 1990's would have massive overcrowding and famines, but it didn't happen. Instead, the world population growth rate has begun to level off. Why? In affluent countries, people no longer have children out of necessity, but of desire. In fact, many first-world nations are actually now undergoing population contraction (Japan, much of Europe). If you eliminate ag…

If people lived 10x longer than they do now, the birth rate would have to drop dramatically (my rudimentary math would assume that it would require 10% of the amount of births we have now) or you'd risk overcrowding. We'd end up with government controlling the number of children, possibly even a lottery system. The overcrowding worries of the 70s and 90s were not because of a 1200% increase, rather a 10-20% increase.

> If people lived 10x longer than they do now, the birth rate would have to drop dramatically

And it would, if you knew you'd live that long most wouldn't tie themselves down with kids while they're still young, they'd wait much much longer and go out and live life.

As it stands now, if you don't have kids by the time you're 30 you risk not being able to have them at all and having to suffer though months of fertility treatments and such just to try.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#48

Post by gte910h »

rauljara wrote: post #18

When my intro to genetics teacher in college explained to us how aging in cells worked, he told us that one of his professors had explained to him that a "cure" for aging was about 10 years away. But that had been more than ten years earlier. My professor said that he had recently talked to that same professor again. The new ETA: about 10 years. This is one of those problems that seems easy to solve in principle, but…

I honestly don't think we're throwing very much effort into the work.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#49

Post by JustinSeriously »

Someone smarter than me noted that all predictions of living forever always have one thing in common: it places the time when people start living forever within the lifetime of the predictor.

Aubrey de Grey is 43, and he's predicting that this might be in place in 20 years.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#50

Post by rabidgnat »

teilo wrote: post #13

I just have to shake my head at this. The only adequate word for this is arrogance. The arrogance to believe that we know enough about the processes of life to extend them indefinitely. We don't even know what we don't know. How many times have we been at this place in the history of biology, where we honestly believe that we are just "that" close to figuring out the processes of life. We were wrong then, and we are…

I disagree with your perspective. Scientists don't need to understand everything about life to make meaningful contributions to our lifespan. This stuff isn't magic - there are sound, repeatable principles at the bottom of everything you mention, and the principles are possibly within our grasp. The technology needed for making these discoveries only gets better with time, never worse.

Look at it this way: crude principles applied at the macro level have extended our lifespan by decades. As scientists get better and better at piecing together the building blocks from the bottom, they'll likely find principles at the micro level that improves our lifespan as well

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