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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

#41

Post by cyber_kinetist »

keiferski wrote: post #25

Sorry for the academic terminology, but: longevity is basically the dream of eternal life recast for a modern disenchanted world. If this topic interests you, I highly recommend reading some books by Charles Taylor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age https://ubcgcu.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/taylor-and-immane...

Also, recommend Baudrillard's Symbollic Exchange and Death for how this fantasy of immortality poses a devastating problem to Western society.

Seeing that you've mentioned Taylor's A Secular Age, maybe I should start reading it (it's been on my reading list for some time, but this renewed my curiosity as his studies seem to be closely related to what thinkers like Bataille and Baudrillard has problematized in political economy)

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

#42

Post by FollowingTheDao »

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.…

Dualism will lead to only a very basic understanding of existence. Death, nor cancer, are good or bad. Jesus might have had the whole thing wrong after all. Of maybe humanity, as its so often does, misinterpreted His teaching.

Before we knew about cancer, and yes there was a time we did not know what cancer was, was canned good or bad? Did we even see natural death as bad? So where did these constructs come from?

And now I guess you are saying immortality is good? Good for who? Overpopulation is already an issue, imagine if no one died!!

You cannot create a good thing without also creating a bad thing. That is just the way it is.

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

#43

Post by WhitneyLand »

bsedlm wrote: post #9
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.…

you'd say I'm rationalizing it, but I do not believe that death is a problem to be solved As I take it, that line of thought (that death is just a problem to be solved and that immortality is something to strive for) leads to solving death just before going on to "solve" childhood. Why do we have to be born ignorant of the world and must "waste" some 20 years learning about it (possibly more) before we can go on to b…

Ok, how about if all efforts are aimed only at eliminating sickness and suffering?

If somehow that were possible for all ages would you be for that?

Then, since death is not a problem we could just “schedule” it for some reasonable date in the future to retain all the philosophical benefits it brings? You first?

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

#44

Post by jacquesm »

feviskus wrote: post #40
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not stigmatizing anything.

Then please stop (mis)judging people just because they experienced a depressive episode in their life - this is exactly what that sentence meant, even if not your intent.

Definitely not my intent. I just think that if you are going to spread medical advice like that that maybe you should think twice about it, what works for you will not necessarily work for others and that is a caveat you did not add. 'thank me later' implies a guarantee that it will work.

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

#45

Post by alfor »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #3
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.…

It cant be solved yet as there isnt enough resources to go round for everyone. https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do... https://www.overshootday.org/content/uploads/2022/01/How_man...

We are made of a bunch of atoms and a bit of solar energy.

If you take volcanic rock like basalt or granite + water there is every atoms you need to make a human. The rest is a bit of energy.

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

#46

Post by andai »

hericium wrote: post #23
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.…

I like how aging is explained in "Lifespan: Why we age and why we don't have to"[1]: cells are analog holders of information and just like analog tapes, each copy holds data of slightly lesser quality. After a number of copies, cells become less performant in their job and eventually some lose enough information that new copies cannot function properly enough to survive and/or not mutate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org…

Then why aren't children affected, each generation becoming more damaged than the last? Are reproductive cells special in some regard? If so, can we make normal cells more like that? (I know about older parents having a higher risk of giving their kid Down's and autism but that only happens for a small percentage and the rest of the kids are fine.)

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

#47

Post by Terry_Roll »

moonchrome wrote: post #24
Terry_Roll wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cant be solved yet as there isnt enough resources to go round for everyone. https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do... https://www.overshootday.org/content/uploads/2022/01/How_man...

This kind of nonsense reasoning had people predicting civilization end within 15 or 30 - back in the 70s... Resources aren't a fixed notion, crude oil was worthless and toxic before we learned how to refine it and suddenly it's a critical resource. Natural ecosystems are considered vital today, but if we were to come up with artificial biospheres we would be looking back at the days people got infected by malaria and…

You are referring to the 1970 MIT LtG model which was updated in 2019 and still predicts a global collapse? https://medium.com/predict/2040-the-world-will-collapse-this...

Or the depleted global fish stocks? https://www.fao.org/NEWSROOM/common/ecg/1000505/en/stocks.pd...

Or the fact that if everyone went vegetarian we could free up 80% of the farmland in the world?

Whilst resource are not fixed, like lab grown meats, supplements which can alter people's diets like histidine will reduce red meat consumption, I am aware some businesses have also kept some resources under wraps from the public so I agree they are not a fixed notion, but in ten years the US lifestyle has increased its use of resource from 4 planet earths to just over 5 planet earths.

Sure anything can be a resource, we might even be able to use plate tectonics as landfill waste disposal because everything came from this planet so is technically from the Earth, and who knows what resources could be mined from the planets core, or do we get into mining Helium13 from the moon?

there is a still a problem and that is quality of life, being kept in smaller more expensive livestock pens called homes.

What price do you put on having rolling pastures all around your home and no manmade noise around you?

With a global population set to peak in 2100, we still have 80's years of declining quality of life to put up with.

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

#48

Post by jacquesm »

gw67 wrote: post #33

All the public companies backed are now down badly. - METACRINE -92% (1 year) - Unity biotechnology -86% (1 year) - DECIBEL THERAPEUTICS -80% (1 year) - PRECISION BIOSCIENCES -62% (1 year) https://www.longevity.vc/

Of course they are. It's so far beyond our current understanding of aging that there is no way that you are going to turn this into applied science today. These are at best open research problems and they will likely be so for many years to come. Assuming we don't collectively kill ourselves first.

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

#49

Post by keiferski »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #41
keiferski wrote: post #25

Sorry for the academic terminology, but: longevity is basically the dream of eternal life recast for a modern disenchanted world. If this topic interests you, I highly recommend reading some books by Charles Taylor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age https://ubcgcu.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/taylor-and-immane...

Also, recommend Baudrillard's Symbollic Exchange and Death for how this fantasy of immortality poses a devastating problem to Western society. Seeing that you've mentioned Taylor's A Secular Age , maybe I should start reading it (it's been on my reading list for some time, but this renewed my curiosity as his studies seem to be closely related to what thinkers like Bataille and Baudrillard has problematized in politi…

Thanks for the suggestion! I didn’t know Baudrillard wrote about this.

> this fantasy of immortality poses a devastating problem to Western society.

Absolutely. While I agree with the other commenter that basically no one is against life extension research in principle, the energy that leads to deifying it (which is the vibe I get from a lot of longevity materials) might be better served learning to understand and accept death as a natural phenomenon. I’ve found Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life to be an excellent work on this topic.

Then again, one might characterize the technological successes of the West in the last ±500 years as deliberately ignoring cyclical time in favor of linear “Progress.”

> Seeing that you've mentioned Taylor's A Secular Age, maybe I should start reading it

I really do recommend it. It’s a bit dense but I’ve found the concepts he uses (the immanent frame and the Nova Effect to name a couple) to be extremely useful in understanding the modern world.

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

#50

Post by resoluteteeth »

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.…

> 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. That somehow death gives life meaning. Makes it good.

> But I’ve never found anybody who thinks cancer is a good thing. Nobody sane at least.

This seems to be suggesting that people (have convinced themselves that they) dislike aging research because they have convinced themself that aging is good, which... I just don't think is true? I think most people would like to not get old, but they are just skeptical about this research.

In other words, aging research doesn't have a bad reputation because people are morally opposed to aging research, it has a bad reputation because it's just pretty dismal as science.

A lot of aging research makes assumptions (such as the "programmed aging" theory) that are widely believed to be false by mainstream scientists, simply because that's the only scenario in which it is actually feasible to "solve" aging at our current level of technology.

As Peter Thiel said in that quote, most people want to solve diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer.

The problem with a lot of aging research is that we haven't solved these diseases, and it seems like we simply can't solve them yet because we don't understand enough about how the human body works. We can't even prevent hair from turning gray or (in a satisfactory way) balding. The idea that we can seriously slow or stop aging overall at a point in time where we can't even solve these individual diseases frankly seems pretty unlikely.

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