[HN Gopher] Rapamycin: The unlucky history of an anti-aging drug
___________________________________________________________________
Rapamycin: The unlucky history of an anti-aging drug
Author : theNewMicrosoft
Score : 163 points
Date : 2023-05-08 04:59 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bigthink.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bigthink.com)
| robinsord wrote:
| [dead]
| tysam_and wrote:
| Anti-aging is a hard problem, Rapamycin is most certainly not the
| most powerful anti-aging drug from my best understanding, it just
| targets 1 of 7 or 8 critical areas that are implicated in the
| aging formula.
|
| If you want to start down the rabbithole (SENS talks can be
| trusted and are good, well-backed by science, etc etc. Have been
| derailed by some drama recently, but still, they've really done a
| lot) then you can start by going to the rejuvenation roadmap:
| https://www.lifespan.io/road-maps/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/
|
| A little further (Aubrey de Grey, from SENS originally):
| https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_a_roadmap_to_end_ag...
|
| If you want to lose 4-5+ hours (minimum -- think TVTropes level
| of rabbithole addiction here), then here is your next free
| joyride. It's a fun one, I've been pretty interested in it as
| it's continued to have developed. Have fun reading the saga:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/sleephackers/comments/ohfetn/turnbu...
| drBonkers wrote:
| What do you make of all that in the last link?
|
| At a cursory glance, it seems like the biohackers may simply be
| poisoning themselves on "fission" days and riding the rebound--
| eventually habituating to the fission supplements (a la arsenic
| eaters) so they feel less bad on the fission days (which they
| attribute to mitochondrial repair).
| tysam_and wrote:
| Thanks for taking a gander! It is a very curious thread
| indeed (especially as you go deeper and deeper into its
| depths). Might I ask what makes you feel it is poisoning?
|
| It is safe doses of well-known supplements (and works for
| other swaps in their classes -- like apigenin, sulfuraphane,
| etc).
|
| Curious to hear though the thoughts on the poisoning line.
| drBonkers wrote:
| > Might I ask what makes you feel it is poisoning?
|
| I definitely didn't mean to imply that I _necessarily_
| believe its poisoning. Apparently the neurotic and anti-
| interventionist in me reared its head when reading the
| thread.
|
| I didn't recognize any of the supplement names, and so I
| didn't realize they all had reasonable safety profiles
| (individually?).
|
| I think my point still stands though. From what I saw, the
| outcomes were deemed positive as a function of subjective
| reports of well-being, without controls. It seems plausible
| the protocol is having any range of effects (from negative
| to null to positive)-- I just didn't see anything other
| than placebo-uncontrolled anecdata.
|
| This is not to discount their efforts! I am truly
| interested in the subject.
| tysam_and wrote:
| I think these are very good points! I understand what
| you're saying better now. :) <3
| api wrote:
| The reason why anti-aging is hard is that humans are already
| very long lived for a large high metabolism mammal. As a result
| it's likely that evolution has already picked most of the low
| hanging fruit in humans. We're already optimized for decent
| longevity.
|
| This is why you see so many promising longevity studies in mice
| that don't replicate in humans. Mice are _not_ particularly
| long lived compared to humans, so it 's much easier to extend
| their life spans.
| safety1st wrote:
| So in the science of fitness, there's a lot of woo, but there
| are a few really clear wins. One such example in weight lifting
| is supplementing creatine. It's well researched, fairly
| inexpensive, the performance improvements are significant and
| well documented, and it's very safe with side effects being
| mild and rare. Once you're actually doing the exercise and
| nutrition part more or less right, it's hard to argue against
| supplementing creatine. It's used by the vast majority of
| professional bodybuilders and most experienced weight lifters.
|
| Is there anything similar in the science of anti-aging? Where
| (A) The body of research is large, well established, and mostly
| uncontroversial; (B) The benefits and safety profile are good;
| (C) The majority of people who are serious about this stuff use
| it/take it/do it.
| [deleted]
| Parmenidea wrote:
| Do you give any credence to the reports that creatine can
| cause hair loss? It seems like one study found a link, but
| nobody has tried to directly replicate it since. Anecdotally,
| Reddit is filled with stories of people claiming it caused
| hair loss, though I'm sure there are a ton of confounding
| variables.
| shagymoe wrote:
| Anecdotally, creatine makes me angry and a little unhinged.
| I've found evidence of other people complaining about this
| but it's not considered a known side effect. YMMV
| xiphias2 wrote:
| By far the most important thing in anti aging that checks all
| boxes is excercise and getting nutrition right (no excess
| fat).
|
| Most of the interesting stuff happens when you focus on just
| A part: Yamanaka factors are both super powerful, established
| as reversing the probably most important hallmark of aging
| and super dangerous (causes cancer) at the same time.
|
| What's promising is the pace of research: in 20 years there's
| a good chance to have real safe anti-aging available, but we
| still need to survive until then.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| What's wrong with excess fat as opposed to excess calories
| in the form of other macronutrients?
| tysam_and wrote:
| I really appreciate this comment a lot. Feels like it hits
| the nail on the head.
|
| I've seen some of the discussion about/around the Yamanaka
| factors and it feels like an anime plot point, honestly. I
| need to look more into them and understand them a bit
| better. They're the ones implicated in stem cells returning
| back to pluripotency, right (and then the long deep dive
| about DNA damage/repair/what the heck is happening in the
| disparity between repairing damage for reproduction vs the
| everyday repair, etc...)?
| xiphias2 wrote:
| You're half right, they are only resetting epigenetics
| (for example DNA methylation that is important in cell
| specialization), not DNA.
|
| Altos Labs being funded is both a blessing and a curse,
| because it funded the best researchers in this area with
| hundreds of millions of dollars (5-10x their salary in
| what they were making as university professors), but
| since it was founded, there are much less publications
| available.
| [deleted]
| timmg wrote:
| > By far the most important thing in anti aging that checks
| all boxes is excercise and getting nutrition right (no
| excess fat).
|
| Do you mean "don't eat excess fat" or "don't have excess
| fat on your body"? It's not clear to me from the context.
| inciampati wrote:
| Second probably.
| ben7799 wrote:
| I think the important thing is to concentrate on the diet
| and exercise and not sit around living an unhealthy
| lifestyle and hoping to get on one of these drugs that is
| possibly not that great anyway or has some serious side
| effects you could end up with.
|
| It's pretty obvious older people who have kept their
| fitness (cardio & strength, not just one of the two) up and
| their weight down their entire lives have profoundly higher
| quality of life.
|
| That requires a totally different lifestyle from the
| standard "geek lifestyle" though.
| tysam_and wrote:
| Very much so, I think it's about healthspan rather than
| lifespan for many people.
|
| Hopefully we can improve that. Many people would be much
| more okay with feeling great up until an old age, have a
| few weeks of infirmity, and then pass away rather than
| the multiple decades of gradual decay that we have now.
|
| Not that that's necessarily entirely realistic or
| possible, but it would be nice, if it is a possible thing
| indeedy.
| tysam_and wrote:
| Creatine for brain health is unbelievably good too IIRC
| (don't quote me on it though, please! ;P)
|
| One of the hard parts of aging stuff is how nonlinear it is.
| A lot of the good drug treatments seem to be short
| term/cyclical, along with significant lifestyle
| modifications.
|
| In addition to what the other commenter said, I've heard of
| OMAD and having a strong community/having a purpose or
| something to do as another strong factor in longevity, in the
| 90-100+ year olds in Japanese community for example. I can't
| remember if OMAD was correlated to that community or a
| different study, however.
| GordonS wrote:
| Can you say some more about brain health, like how much
| creatine to take, what the expected benefits are, please?
| tysam_and wrote:
| Here is a good article, I think my favorite part is the
| paragraph containing reference #146:
| https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/5/921
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Metformin.
|
| Research in humans suggests that metformin can impact
| mortality. A meta-analysis published in 2017 that included 53
| different studies concluded that metformin reduces all-cause
| mortality and diseases of aging, independent of its effect on
| diabetes.
|
| Also, combinations of Metformin, rapamycin and resveratrol,
| and NMNs.
|
| Davis Sinclaire is probably the leading expert on those, now.
| He is professor of genetics at Harvard.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=bRWT7hVgwuM
| tysam_and wrote:
| It looks really promising. However, there are some growing
| concerns I believe that link it with mitochondrial
| dysfunction as well, if I recall correctly. Hopefully
| that's not the case, but it's a developing story. (It does
| reduce exercise output as well if someone is an athlete and
| cares about hat, but since it does mimic exercise in a way
| on a cellular level, that's to be expected I guess). :'(
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| There's always exceptions in popular medicine. No doubt a
| small minority of people get no benefit, or may even be
| mildly harmed by the medicine. But Metformin, in
| particular, is one of the most popular drugs in the
| world, and it's strong safety profile is well
| established. "All-cause mortality is lower in people on
| Metformin". So, I don't think there will be any big
| surprises found in its safety, but maybe we'll find that
| a certain minority of the population aren't suited for
| it.
| phkahler wrote:
| Mitochondria need proper care too. I take iodine and
| magnesium for asthma (which is cured) and I hear iodine
| is also go for mitochondria, which might explain why it's
| good for so many things.
| safety1st wrote:
| This one is really interesting, thanks. I think it's the
| closest any mentioned substance comes to passing the
| "creatine test" (for whatever that test is worth; I just
| made it up).
|
| (A) The body of research is, in general, large and
| uncontroversial.
|
| (B) The safety profile is good. The benefits for diabetics
| are certainly large. Probably no drug has been studied for
| anti-aging effects as extensively as creatine has been for
| fitness applications, so I'm not sure anything can fulfill
| that criteria. But it seems like the present research on
| metformin supports a variety of positive effects for non-
| diabetics with more on the way.
|
| (C) I wouldn't know whether the majority of people who are
| serious about anti-aging use it but it does get mentioned a
| lot.
|
| Pretty positive endorsement overall!
| loeg wrote:
| Worth pointing out that Metformin has a host of unpleasant
| and common side effects. E.g., here's 40% of type 2
| diabetics not adhering to the prescribed dosing protocol: h
| ttps://joppp.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40545-022-
| ...
|
| > A number of studies assessing adherence to diabetes
| medications in patients with type 2 diabetes have reported
| that metformin has the lowest adherence rates when compared
| with other OAAs.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Is it known what the mechanism is for metformin's effect
| on longevity?
|
| If it's due to its ability to reduce blood glucose
| levels, then berberine may be another way to get a
| similar effect.
|
| Berberine stimulates glucose transport through a
| mechanism distinct from insulin
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002604
| 950...
|
| Efficacy of Berberine in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2410097/
|
| It also lowers cholesterol
|
| Berberine is a novel cholesterol-lowering drug working
| through a unique mechanism distinct from statins
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nm1135
|
| But pure berberine is not absorbed very well in the
| intestines, so you need to buy a good formation for it.
|
| Enhancement of sodium caprate on intestine absorption and
| antidiabetic action of berberine
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20237966/
|
| Amorphous solid dispersion of berberine with absorption
| enhancer demonstrates a remarkable hypoglycemic effect
| via improving its bioavailability
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24607213/
|
| The best thing might be to cook with barberries:
|
| https://thecaspianchef.com/2020/01/18/zereshk-polo-
| saffron-b...
| m463 wrote:
| Eating a calorie-restricted diet (fasting must be part of
| this).
| snvzz wrote:
| Intermittent fasting and eating keto rather than carbs.
|
| Health aside, it is hard to stress how much better I feel
| on ketones, relative to carbs.
| scythe wrote:
| >Is there anything similar in the science of anti-aging?
| Where (A) The body of research is large, well established,
| and mostly uncontroversial; (B) The benefits and safety
| profile are good; (C) The majority of people who are serious
| about this stuff use it/take it/do it.
|
| The sodium/potassium ratio, and particularly keeping it
| smaller. The top answer right now is "nutrition", but that's
| a hairball, and the Na/K is a bright spot that gets left out
| of the discussion precisely because it is much less
| controversial than the endless debate over macronutrients and
| staples. The sodium/potassium ratio has effects on:
|
| hypertension: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111
| /j.1440-1681....
|
| stroke/CVD: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/7/e011632.short
|
| bone density:
| https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/87/5/2008/2846608
|
| chronic kidney disease:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6047877/
|
| and even such seemingly unrelated conditions as depression: h
| ttps://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.14814/phy..
| .
|
| and age-related cognitive decline: https://www.sciencedirect.
| com/science/article/pii/S258979182...
| Woberto wrote:
| But where can we get potassium from?? I feel like when I've
| looked, it's harder to come by than other vitamins/minerals
| scythe wrote:
| In general, potassium is found in fruits and vegetables.
| It has to be spread throughout the day, because high
| quantities of potassium at once have a laxative effect.
| The highest concentrations are found in some vegetable
| concentrates -- the densest source in your cabinet is
| probably tomato sauce. It is present in milk and yogurt
| but not in cheese.
|
| Potatoes and other starchy vegetables like squash and
| plantains have significantly more potassium than grains,
| but it's not necessary to completely give up grains. I
| usually put a 50/50 potassium/sodium ("Lite") salt on the
| oatmeal or grits I make for lunch (work requires speed),
| but I don't bother with it otherwise.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| There may be better anti-aging drugs that have yet to be tested
| or discovered, but Rapamycin currently has the best data
| backing it up. It is the only drug which has consistently
| increased both median and maximum lifespan across organisms,
| for both males and females, across many trials. It has also
| been shown to increase lifespan when given to organisms after
| they have reached their middle age, which is not common.
|
| The Interventions Testing Program (ITP) by the NIH, which has
| been testing substances for their effects on lifespan for over
| 15 years, is regarded as the gold standard for testing possible
| lifespan increasing substances. Rapamycin has outperformed
| every other substance they have tested, by a wide margin. There
| is only one other substance they have tested that has shown a
| median and maximum lifespan increase, for both females and
| males, that being acarbose. The greatest lifespan increase
| observed in any of the trials was seen with the combination of
| rapamycin and acarbose.
|
| All of the substances that NIH ITP have tested with their
| results listed, as well as the interventions they are testing
| now: https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/dab/interventions-
| testing-p...
|
| List of the substances they have tested with charts showing the
| relative increase in lifespan:
| https://phenome.jax.org/projects/ITP1
| reducesuffering wrote:
| They're recommending Nicotinamide Riboside which has been
| implicated in increasing cancers.
|
| My heuristics researching supplements, nootropics, longevity,
| are that the lab-created substances are more often than not,
| new and poorly studied, leading to eventual realization of more
| harm than they treat. Most recent, to me, was Alpha-GPC causing
| strokes.
| xk_id wrote:
| That's not very accurate. It wasn't implicated in actually
| causing cancers. Tumour cells happen to have a high demand
| for NAD+, and NR provides them with that. So, if you already
| have tumours, NR will accelerate their growth. However also
| if you have had cancer recently and even if there are no more
| detectable signs, it is still possible for some tumour cells
| to be present; in that case NR is also risky. But if you are
| healthy, NR is not a carcinogen and any risk of stimulating
| the odd tumour cell is probably offset by the benefits NR
| provides to the immune system.
| tysam_and wrote:
| This is an excellent direct summarization of NR<->Cancer.
| Thank you for sharing this, I greatly appreciate it. <3 :)
|
| Not everyone needs NR necessarily (or any of the other
| forms), but it does seem to get more important as we get
| older and our ability to manufacture NMN goes down (IIRC
| that's the main target that's limited here?)
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I think you're assuming the body doesn't form small tumors
| and destroy them naturally.
|
| If something else is helping the tumors grow faster than
| the body can kill them naturally - then it's going to
| result both more severe tumors AND more tumors in general
| (as we discover them, since we usually don't know about
| tumors that form and get destroyed by the body naturally).
| xk_id wrote:
| Covered in the last sentence.
| thewataccount wrote:
| IIRC isn't NAC similar? It's not carcinogenic itself, but
| the benefits it provides also extend to the cancer cells?
| garganzol wrote:
| NAC is a glutathione precursor. It is both anti- and pro-
| cancer. It is anti-cancer in a sense that glutathione
| reduces the risk of getting cancer in the first place. It
| is pro-cancer in a sense that it reduces the power of
| immune response due to reduction of the amount of
| produced ROS, which may theoretically lead to a faster
| cancer spread.
|
| So yeah, they both are kind of similar in that dimension.
| garganzol wrote:
| Cancer thrives on any kind of NAD source, not specifically
| Nicotinamide Riboside. Even milk poses a risk of increased
| tumor growth (it contains NAD, a lot of it). But it only
| applies to those who have the ongoing oncology in the first
| place, so... blaming NR for causing cancers is probably a
| misfire.
| tysam_and wrote:
| Like all things, it's about balance. In this case, NR was
| recommended as a cheaper alternative to NMN, I believe,
| though one can take Nicotinamide and Ribose separately IIRC
| (ribose is expensive either way, lol. Tastes great though, a
| very, very fancy sugar indeed).
|
| As far as cancer goes, basically half of the solutions here
| will cause cancer. That doesn't mean they're bad. Anything
| involving the body is extraordinarily nonlinear, so
| extrapolation is extremely hard in a variety of
| circumstances. You can find a study involving almost
| everything you consume and take linking it to a variety of
| things, it's just whether or not it's relevant to people in
| the doses and in the duration that they take them.
|
| Especially on the cancer side of things, that's just a very
| delicate matter to be handled. Cleaning things up in theory
| should reduce the risk of cancer overall, even if ingredients
| on their own at some dose could cause issues.
|
| A lot of these compounds have been around for or have been
| studied for 40-50 years or so. Some of the long-term effects
| are harder to pinpoint, but I'd be careful in seeking too
| much caution (in the same way I'd encourage someone not to go
| headlong throwing stuff into their bodies for no good
| reason). It's really easy to find nonlinear red lights for
| almost anything in medicine, in my (albeit limited) personal
| experience.
| analognoise wrote:
| This sounds like the chemical reasoning of homeopathy to
| me.
| tysam_and wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| I can give an analogous example.
|
| Lengthening telomeres is a naive strategy some chase for
| longevity. You can think of telomeres as aglets for DNA
| -- they shorten as you get older. So inhibiting that
| shortening is good, right?
|
| Well, that does extend life, in a way, but it also slows
| down DNA repair and makes that a harder thing to access,
| because now damaged DNA has longer end-caps on it too.
|
| So of course a few years after the whole "Just take
| telomere lengtheners!" headline wave, another headline
| wave of "Telomere lengtheners actually can worsen aging!"
| is a decent followup to expect (something like this
| happened IRL IIRC).
|
| You can make a similar analogy with stem cells and a
| limited stem cell pool (do you deplete the pool early,
| assuming it no longer regenerates at this point, for a
| boost of apparent vitality, or ration it over the course
| of a lifetime?)
|
| Homeopathy on the other hand assumes a bizzare, quantum-
| like "memory" in molecules that has not been shown to be
| accurate by science, but excels as being a placebo
| effect.
|
| These are quite different phenomena. It's another way of
| saying "the dose makes the poison", though in this case,
| it's "the dose has varying and highly state-dependent
| effects within a strongly chaotic dynamical system".
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I think most people would agree that taking carcinogens
| will more likely reduce your lifespan than the possibility
| of significantly extending it.
|
| For now, I'd rather bet on very clean air, very clean
| water, fasting, organic vegetables, green tea, omega 3 fish
| oil, well monitored sleep, and lots of exercise for
| longevity.
| tysam_and wrote:
| That does feel like an overly simplistic argument. Once
| again, lots and lots of things feed cancer, it's not as
| simple as that. There's also a big 'might' clause, which
| means it's something that's going to take time to
| understand. For example, IIRC, the role that NR might
| play in cancers is that it's a very accessible food
| source for them. However, compared to other factors, this
| might fade into the woodwork, especially if for example
| it's used as part of a protocol that lowers the chance of
| cancer (or at the very least, all-cause mortality) longer
| term. Ideally, at least.
|
| Maybe an analogy to communicate the concept is that it is
| like putting a car up on jacks and taking out parts to
| repair another part. It's possible that it is not where
| you are long-term, or ideal to do extremely frequently,
| but it's important to keep the thing maintained and
| running.
|
| That said, I agree very much on your last sentence as one
| of the best "simple" routines to get bang for the buck.
| My thoughts would be weight lifting specifically,
| chamomile tea at night (apigenin is something else), as
| well as some broccoli sprouts for NRF2 in there. Other
| than that I think that's probably the index fund-like
| strategy to longevity, so we're definitely on the same
| page there. :D :thumbsup:
| voldacar wrote:
| Is there anything in the works that can break down lipofuscein
| or advanced glycation endproducts? Those always seem under-
| discussed.
| tysam_and wrote:
| I try to keep up with the AGE breaker development, I thought
| there were at least one or two labs/companies trying to
| develop them.
|
| I think IIRC that the crosslink breakers (referring to AGE
| above for those OOTL) mainly struggle from delivery being
| difficult? Because many of the AGEs we care about can end up
| in some bizzare, hard-to-reach places? I think?
|
| I don't think this is directly related but there was one
| therapy for cellulite that just had an enzyme that dissolved
| collagen. I just learned that they (sadly, in the long run
| for the research field in that area) had to shutter that
| after only two years or so, apparently due to the bruising
| and discoloration of skin long term
| (https://investor.endo.com/news-releases/news-release-
| details...). I guess I can only feel so bad as they were
| marketing pretty heavily to people who were rich enough to
| pay for the cosmetic surgery out of pocket, and were as well
| in a category of middle-aged "luxury" buyers (from the
| official website -- I don't think the wayback machine will
| show the pictures [warning, very butt focused], but perhaps
| for the better, the saved version has the desktop and mobile
| transcript. Confetti for a medical drug advertisement
| website. Incredible: https://web.archive.org/web/202101241426
| 05/https://www.qwo.c...)
|
| Lipofuscein I'd love to learn about, I have not heard of that
| before.
| voldacar wrote:
| Interesting stuff, glad to see that the research is
| continuing in this area. I'm thinking about experimenting
| with topical alagebrium just to see if it does anything. I
| recall a study in mice that found a very significant effect
| on skin wrinkles in aged animals.
|
| And it's lipofuscin, I mistyped it. Basically oxidized junk
| molecules that never seem to get broken down and just
| accumulate within the cell with age. Interestingly,
| piracetam seems to have a positive effect on this in rodent
| brains.
| [deleted]
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I can't tell if this Turnbuckle protocol is going to be one of
| the most revolutionary things I've read or going to be like
| when Napoleon Dynamite puts on Uncle Rico's time machine from
| the internet and shocks himself.
| tysam_and wrote:
| Likely if it works, it'll be one piece of the puzzle.
|
| It's not all that hard to try to be honest. Some people have
| reported absolutely massive changes, some small, some little
| to none. One or two said decrease but there seemed to be
| maybe some valid external factors for that.
|
| That's about the distribution one could expect if
| mitochondrial damage was at play and there was an effective
| solution for it. Not everyone is going to respond well,
| likely the older the better if it actually is doing what it
| says on the tin.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| That's about the distribution one could expect for placebo
| too.
| tysam_and wrote:
| Could be. Longecity I've found to be an odd mix of people
| who are rather combative about whether things work or not
| and who are way too in-depth (in a good way) about their
| personal experiences about what worked or not.
|
| At the very least, it's intriguing and out of all of the
| thousands of pages of medical literature I've read over
| the past half decade or so it's been one of the more
| interesting sagas to follow.
| drBonkers wrote:
| I have an intuition that if we are to find a solution it
| is more likely to first sprout from fringe
| experimentation, such as from Longecity, than the
| academy.
| starchild_3001 wrote:
| Many of us know and follow rapamycin's story. There are some Drs
| in USA who're willing to prescribe it for longevity. I do hope
| some billionare will be willing to spend a few million on it to
| test it in clinical trials. Surely one of the most promising
| molecules out there, and very little sides when dosed
| intermittently.
| kurthr wrote:
| There are quite a few studies ongoing in '22 and '23.
|
| https://www.rapamycin.news/t/rapamycin-clinical-trial-update...
| cornholio wrote:
| From the article, this molecule sounds like a big hammer that
| you can pound cell reproduction with, affecting a wide range of
| systems in unpredictable ways. Whereas what we need are
| precision watchmaker tools and a diagram of the watch.
|
| On thing I think is well established about aging is that it's
| not a single factor disease that you can "cure" by removing a
| well defined cause. Rather, it's a pervasive accumulation of
| entropy in various systems from various causes that evolution
| had no ability to correct, so that slowing aging down and
| reversing it involves a massive amount of tinkering with the
| watch.
| amts wrote:
| The anti-aging effects of rapamycin support the opposite of
| "pervasive accumulation of entropy" theory - which is that
| aging is a distorted development program, rather than random
| accumulation of entropy.
|
| The definition of "random" implies by default that lack of
| information or knowledge on the object in question is
| primarily due to cognitive (and hence measurement)
| limitations of its users, rather than something being 100%
| objectively ingrained in reality.
| tysam_and wrote:
| It has so many immunity-related side effects IIRC.
|
| Lowering the drawbridge and opening the gate lets a lot of
| things happen/go in, both good and bad.
|
| I've heard that it's oftentimes a trade between two extremes,
| cancer or...well to be honest I've completely forgotten the
| second one. Huh.
| schmichael wrote:
| Sorry for the meta-commentary but...
|
| HN's anti-aging obsession is _wild._
|
| I get zero anti-aging content from any other news source, user
| submitted or otherwise, and yet without fail it seems like
| there's at least one anti-aging article a week on HN. Any other
| topic I find on HN I run into elsewhere: space, JavaScript,
| crypto, lisp, etc etc. Only on HN do I regularly see anti-aging
| "news" promoted.
|
| The discussions are all about the same: it's a scam! It's worth a
| shot! More research is needed! Anti-aging is unnatural! Anti-
| aging is a biological imperative!
|
| idk it must have fans to get so consistently upvoted, but I do
| not get the appeal.
| djmips wrote:
| We all want to live long enough to witness the singularity.
| <wink>
| bowsamic wrote:
| To me it just signals a lack of emotional maturity
| thriftwy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouble_with_Lichen
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Thanks for that, never heard of it before - there is a 90 min
| radio adaptation archived here:
|
| https://archive.org/details/john-wyndham-trouble-with-lichen
| jimbob45 wrote:
| To be fair, the other most likely source you'd receive anti-
| aging news from, r/science, is hands down the worst moderated
| community on the internet and I wouldn't put it past them to
| bury such news by their own whims.
| George83728 wrote:
| I regularly see anti-aging discussion/news here and on 4chan's
| /sci/ board (aka the flat earth and electric universe debate
| forum.) Make of that what you will.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Do you see more discussion of anti-aging on HN than you see
| discussion of major diseases?
|
| I don't see more of it. And I think it's fair to talk about
| aging as much as cancer, for example. They're both very
| difficult fights to claw back months or years, but we can
| figure out how to slow the progress and cure specific
| instances.
|
| If we could extend life expectancy by two years that might beat
| covid in impact. Isn't that worth significant research and
| discussion?
|
| It's not just people idly wanting to live a million years.
| snvzz wrote:
| >And I think it's fair to talk about aging as much as cancer,
| for example.
|
| I agree with the underlying argument, but I must note: Cancer
| gets more likely with age, and the mechanisms that enable it
| are considered one of the (few) groups by which aging is
| characterized.
|
| All these groups are co-morbid, so any progress in un-doing
| the damage of aging will also help with cancer.
| dsco wrote:
| You think anti aging obsession is wild here? Wait until you see
| the anti crypto obsession
| Gigachad wrote:
| Go out on the street and ask the average person what they
| think about crypto and NFTs.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| There are a lot of men in tech with lots of money, engineering
| expertise that they believe will carry over to biology, and a
| fear of becoming old and irrelevant.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Ding ding ding.
| timwaagh wrote:
| I don't know man my parents just spent the first few years of
| their early retirement caring for my grandma who is now in the
| final phase. It's not like you just won't be there one day. It
| also costs others a lot of time and effort, money et cetera.
| rsynnott wrote:
| The odd thing is, HN is also obsessed with early retirement.
| You'd think people would've learned the lesson of One Foot in
| the Grave.
| bawolff wrote:
| HN has always had some science content not just tech. Articles
| about fusion and batteries get promoted here often. If all your
| other sources are pure software focused it would make sense you
| dont see aging there.
|
| As for the actual topic. Lots of people talk about fear of
| death, and i am sure that plays a part. For me though, i think
| its interesting because people have been trying to increase
| longevity since forever and haven't succeded yet. There is
| something fascinating about a problem everyone has tried to
| solve but still isn't solved.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The median lifespan is ~77 years but some people live to
| ~115. That's quite a difference. Some of that may be genetics
| but not all of it. The median person who dies at 95 is doing
| something different than the median person who dies at 60.
| The least we can do is find out what.
|
| And maybe if we do, someone could live to be 130, or still be
| in good health at 95.
| henearkr wrote:
| How are you going to learn all the essential Javascript
| frameworks in time if you die before you reach your first few
| centuries of age?
| db48x wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdCB9yE9Hcc
| xarope wrote:
| There's a mindset amongst hackers that you can hack yourself,
| hence the popularity of life hacks, discussions of all sorts of
| drugs. I think it's up to each individual to decide whether
| they want to go that route and experiment with themselves or
| not...!
| cornholio wrote:
| It's a valid topic of discussion around here because people
| are educated enough to consider medical anti-aging as a
| plausible thing, whereas in other demographics you would be
| ridiculed as an idiot with a God delusion.
|
| But anti-aging in general is a topic permeating our entire
| society, from non-stop commercials to "rejuvenating"
| cosmetics and dead-sea-mineral-spas, to the boom of plastic
| surgery, to the fad diets promising a long healthy life, if
| we look around _everybody_ talks about it one way or another
| because nobody wants to get old.
| decremental wrote:
| Such an educated audience. And brilliant too. Other
| demographics can't hold a candle to how smart and also cool
| HNers are.
| analognoise wrote:
| You forgot attractive; nothing but raw sexual energy from
| this bunch.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| I do not get why you do not get the appeal. Do you want to die?
| silisili wrote:
| Not OP, but my opinion is that I want to die when I'm
| supposed to, and I want everyone else to also. Time is the
| great equalizer, and the well to do's should not be able to
| purchase more.
|
| The last time I wrote this opinion, I was met with everything
| from 'just kill yourself' to 'quit trying to control my
| life.'
|
| Funny bunch here.
| snvzz wrote:
| That's fine, you and your ilk can get old on your own,
| suffer from the degradation of health and consequently
| quality of life caused by aging, and eventually die from
| old age, we won't stop you.
|
| The rest of us will support the relevant research, and use
| the results to remain young or to be young again, possibly
| lasting for millennia.
| account-5 wrote:
| Sounds like hell on a dying planet where more people keep
| coming and no one leaves.
|
| (Dying from the point of view of being about to sustain
| human life)
|
| Unless of course we have magically conquered space travel
| too.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Unless of course we have magically conquered space
| travel too.
|
| If everyone sticks around, they can help solve the
| problem. If people don't die, maybe they'll be forced to
| care for the planet instead of spoiling it for the next
| group.
| account-5 wrote:
| Lot of ifs and maybes there. And a lot of faith that the
| human race can actually pull together to do that.
| snvzz wrote:
| It beats giving up on mankind from the get-go.
| silisili wrote:
| I have a feeling we'll both be worm food by 80 or 90. The
| difference being my ilk had a better appreciation for
| time, while yours thought they'd live forever.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Do you really think it makes that much difference, day to
| day?
|
| Because if better appreciation just means you're on the
| right side of an argument that very rarely comes up, then
| your life quality is the same.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Contrary to the person you're responding to, I think it
| does make a large impact on the day to day. It's going to
| drive very different philosophies of life. One obvious
| embodiment of this would be on fertility. One who
| ignores, let alone denies, their own mortality is going
| to, on average, a different perspective on fertility than
| somebody who accepts their own imminent mortality. And
| these sort of things can often sort of snowball into
| impacting many other issues in life, in very significant
| ways.
| silisili wrote:
| Day to day, not at all. Just more generally. How many
| times have we heard 'I wish I'd visited my X more before
| they died.' Timelines and sense of mortality force you to
| think about such things.
|
| It's definitely not about taking solace in winning some
| inane argument. I won't be celebrating my death, nor
| yours, as some kind of win.
| snvzz wrote:
| You think the problem of aging cannot be resolved?
|
| Aging has long been characterized. We understand in which
| ways degradation happens, and no new ways have been found
| for several decades. There aren't that many; They can be
| tackled, one by one.
|
| We have an assortment of tools today that weren't
| available a mere 20 years ago, and it is our moral
| imperative to do this research.
|
| There's more people suffering from aging and the
| conditions it does cause than any other health issue. All
| of us will eventually degrade, suffer and perish if
| nothing is done about it.
|
| Improving the quality of life of our aging population by
| supplementing the shortcomings of metabolism (and thus
| un-doing aging) is the target.
|
| Longevity would be a byproduct of this.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The dying part bothers me less than the aging. I'd be fine
| dying at the "normal" age, but I'd rather do so with a
| healthier body than my grandparents.
|
| And telling other people when they should die is sorta
| messed up. Ignore these anti-aging medications, should
| people be cut off other medicines at a certain point?
| What's the difference?
| silisili wrote:
| I've had all these arguments before, that I don't care to
| have again.
|
| > And telling other people when they should die is sorta
| messed up
|
| I'm not telling other people when to die! I'm thinking
| more of a societal contract. Which in fairness, seem less
| and less these days.
|
| Like, if I go to the back of a queue, and see you going
| to the front, and request you go to the back... I'm not
| trying to control your life. I'm just asking you to
| acknowledge and respect that we live in a society.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >I've had all these arguments before, that I don't care
| to have again.
|
| The arguenent of "I don't want to need help going to the
| bathroom/eating?" Or "I don't want to have effectively a
| two minute memory?" They're pretty solid arguments to me.
|
| >I'm not telling other people when to die!
|
| No, you want society to agree with you when people should
| die. This societal contract already does not exist. Maybe
| it'd be nice if it did, but you'd still need to answer
| the question of "should I stop this person from taking
| medicine because it's time for them to die?"
| glerk wrote:
| Our ancestors probably also had to put up with people like
| you trying to prevent them from making fires because night
| is the great equalizer and everyone should sleep when it's
| dark or some other nonsense.
|
| I feel miserable just trying to imagine why a person would
| think this way. I'm grateful I don't have this kind of
| psychology.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >Time is the great equalizer, and the well to do's should
| not be able to purchase more.
|
| The entire medical (and dental) profession is all about
| keeping you from dying when you're "supposed to". You're
| supposed to die in your teenage years of a tooth infection,
| or in your 30s or 40s of cancer, or any random age of an
| injury.
|
| People in rich countries live much longer (and healthier)
| than people in poor countries because of access to modern
| medicine.
|
| So apparently you think people shouldn't have access to any
| medical services?
| Nursie wrote:
| You're entitled to have opinions about your own life. When
| you start using your values to try to decide how long I
| should live mine... this is why you get hostile reactions.
|
| > Time is the great equalizer
|
| Yes, totally, we all get to live exactly the same amount of
| time, so it's perfectly fair. Also that fixed term life
| deal is the perfect amount of time by definition, so we
| should never, ever try to change it.
| silisili wrote:
| Yes, your reaction was covered under the 'quit trying to
| control my life' clause. Not sure what else is being
| added here.
| Nursie wrote:
| > Not sure what else is being added here.
|
| A challenge to your assumption that there is an implied
| system and that said system is somehow fair in its
| current state. It's nonsense.
| silisili wrote:
| Would you agree that for every year added to your life, a
| year should also be added to all those in third world
| countries?
|
| My main argument is against the wealthy buying time that
| others cannot. This is why I'm not against say,
| penicillin and such.
|
| If you feel that is a bad argument, please explain why.
| If you feel it's fair, then I think we may agree. I'm not
| against humanity living longer, I'm against some select
| few doing so.
| Nursie wrote:
| I don't disagree with that at all, in principle.
|
| "I should get to live longer and everyone else can rot"
| would be a particular sort of evil.
|
| However what I don't agree with is going from there to
| "unless everyone can have it, noone can". An awful lot of
| medicine is not (yet) available to everyone in the world,
| and while I think it should be, and we should work
| towards every last human being having access to free,
| socialised healthcare of the highest quality, you won't
| find me calling for denying cancer treatments to those in
| wealthy nations because other nations can't foot the
| bill.
| silisili wrote:
| Well, the other side of the coin is whether those folks
| even want to live longer.
|
| We have gotten so used to being generally blind to
| essentially slave labor to support our lifestyles. Is it
| fair if we double our lifespan while those stuck in
| poverty making our products don't, or perhaps don't even
| want to?
| Nursie wrote:
| I don't think very much is fair about anything in that
| picture, but I also don't think we should hold back
| advances or treatments while we work that out, nor do I
| think that it's particularly useful to relate those two
| phenomena specifically, you could as well say "Is it fair
| we use jet-skis while those stuck in poverty making our
| products have such a poor quality of life? Is it fair to
| use iphones while those stuck in poverty making the
| iPhones have such a poor quality of life?", and to be
| honest I'm slightly inclined to say "no" to that last
| one...
|
| Significant longevity treatment is likely to be highly
| disruptive to our society in many ways, but I don't think
| that we should either fall for the fallacy that we can
| accurately predict those ways, nor succumb to the idea
| that we won't or can't adapt positively.
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| It doesn't bother me.
|
| Every single one of my ancestors for the last 3.5 billion
| years has died. It is part of existence.
|
| 50, 60, 100 more years? Great! Then I can pile on knee, hip,
| back, and wrist regeneration surgeries. Then extensive
| therapy to keep my brain from degrading. Also new teeth and
| corneas. Oh and the heart is going to need a lot of work if
| it starts beating for twice as long as it was designed to.
| Plus constant maintenance for the skin as it soaks up an
| entire second lifetime's worth of UV.
|
| Just a never-ending cycle of expensive, likely painful, time-
| consuming all-consuming patches on the body to delay the
| inevitable.
|
| Just kill me already.
|
| Maybe eventually they'll find a path to immortality.
|
| That would be even worse. I imagine the joy would drain out
| of sunsets if you've seen a billion of them, with them being
| as noteworthy as every time your eye blinks.
| Gigachad wrote:
| What if its not constant patches and repair work, but
| something that slows the degradation entirely so you end up
| with less health issues up until the point you get cancer
| and die anyway. But you enjoyed more of that time fitter
| and healthier.
| powerapple wrote:
| I would be very happy if my body can stay young and not
| necessarily live longer. That's what anti-age means right?
| Not pro-long your life necessarily, but to live younger, so
| I don't have to care about my knee problem when exercise.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >50, 60, 100 more years? Great! Then I can pile on knee,
| hip, back, and wrist regeneration surgeries. Then extensive
| therapy to keep my brain from degrading. Also new teeth and
| corneas.
|
| >Just a never-ending cycle of expensive, likely painful,
| time-consuming all-consuming patches on the body to delay
| the inevitable.
|
| So I take it you never visit a doctor or dentist? After
| all, going to the doctor to get that mole checked for
| cancer, or getting your teeth drilled to prevent an
| infection that kills you is unnatural.
| vidarh wrote:
| Anti-aging by necessity also means solving the common
| causes of death and your body falling apart, not just
| letting them happen but somehow preventing them from
| killing you.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's more about "die young, as late as possible" than live
| forever
| Nursie wrote:
| > I imagine the joy would drain out of sunsets if you've
| seen a billion of them, with them being as noteworthy as
| every time your eye blinks.
|
| So you can imagine that rather than see another sunset,
| you'd die?
|
| You can imagine a state of being where you become so jaded,
| so incurious, that nothing can pique your interest any
| more, that interpersonal relationships would be better off
| terminated with biological death than continued, that
| learning, travel, discovery all lose their meaning and
| value?
|
| Honestly, as with many of these comments, I feel it says
| more about your present life than those who would like to
| live longer or indefinitely.
|
| And I certainly know people in their 70s who are not ready
| to settle down and be fitted for a coffin yet, even if
| their bodies are starting to seriously disagree. I don't
| imagine they would turn down the chance of a few more
| decades of relative fitness.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I don't think I'm important enough for it to matter, and I'm
| fairly sure the fact I will die is a significant component of
| what makes the brief time I have so valuable.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Is your life more valuable the briefer it is?
| ptsneves wrote:
| If 1/x where x is the current age, then yes. I say it as
| a joke but makes me think why more mundane experiences on
| my childhood stuck more than profound ones on later life.
| heroiccocoa wrote:
| An enormous amount of resources are wasted on treating
| specific, often rare, individual age-related conditions
| that doesn't efficiently transfer to other conditions.
| Clearly, people are hurting and it'd a net positive to
| society to treat the single underlying cause, and save the
| resources expended on everything else, for an equal if not
| improved overall health outcome.
|
| Even if you don't consider yourself important to the world,
| surely you are important to yourself. At least I as an
| atheist consider my limited time alive here-- conscious and
| healthy-- to be infinitely valuable to me _personally_ as
| it 's really all that I have. And I think if your life
| isn't valuable to you in the same way, there's something
| wrong. Hence, extending it is a worthwhile goal.
|
| Longevity research is difficult and it's not as if a
| breakthrough improving our lifetime by an order of
| magnitude is around the corner. So, I see little risk in
| ambitious research that'll probably only yield humble
| results anyway, at least until we're reaching 200 years
| old.
| justinclift wrote:
| > surely you are important to yourself.
|
| Depends on how depressed a person is I guess. ;)
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| > Even if you don't consider yourself important to the
| world, surely you are important to yourself. At least I
| as an atheist consider my limited time alive here--
| conscious and healthy-- to be infinitely valuable to me
| personally as it's really all that I have.
|
| I agree with this completely, so long as it doesn't
| actually cause problems for younger people born into the
| world. At the moment it's arguably a good thing that we
| die and let new generations have their shot at things.
| I'm only 37 and already excited to see what people in
| their teens manage to accomplish before I die. By the
| time the they're full swing and doing cool stuff, I'll
| probably be looking for my keys for a car I haven't owned
| for 20 years in a bingo hall. No one will need more of
| me.
|
| Fundamentally though I believe our time is rarely spent
| as well as it could be, and fixing that might be best to
| come first. Should I live longer if I don't cherish it?
| Should I want more days when I've admittedly wasted many?
| Perhaps the best thing I could do is learn to use the
| time I have to its fullest.
|
| And of course, I go to great lengths to protect my health
| and lifespan -- I want to live as long as I reasonably
| can, and I want to be able to enjoy it. I don't think for
| a second that I should prolong that to any degree which
| begins to hinder the opportunities and possibilities of
| younger people, though. Maybe that sounds crazy. I just
| don't think I matter more than another person, just like
| me, wanting all the same opportunities in their own life.
| I guess I don't believe old people should be in the way
| of young people fully living their lives.
|
| As long as that's not happening, sign me up. Until then
| I'd like to learn to use my time more wisely. On the
| Shortness of Life totally transformed how I think about
| longevity and lifespan extension in general. It seems to
| pale in importance compared to the practice of living
| better to begin with.
| ptsneves wrote:
| For me the anti aging, immortality thing is funny because I
| think it has been solved for most species: it is called
| reproduction. Actually surviving is reproducing.
|
| If anti aging proponents spent as much time trying to
| reproduce and making sure their offspring were fit to
| continue their bloodline with good education it seems to me a
| good outcome. That is why the education of my children is
| important: the imprint of intellect self after I imprinted my
| bodily self in their genes.
|
| One could argue, but "hey ptsneves your children are not you
| thus you will unavoidably going to be eliminated from
| existence". And I say, "it is ok and part of physical
| existence. I accept it."
|
| Evolution found it worthwhile to have sexual reproduction,
| meaning clones are a bad fit for eco system disturbances.
|
| Evolution also found it fit to restart the cycle from scratch
| even if it meant an individual would lose experience or
| ecosystem optimality. This is to protect again local optimae
| , which is a great path to extinction.
|
| The extent of these 2 premises is such that the apex predator
| on earth reproduces sexually and has a limited life span.
| Maybe that is survival bias but I think there are good
| causation ideas behind them.
|
| With the above if I really want to be immortal and have my
| legacy preserved robustly I should use the current system:
| reproduction with a good emphasis on descendant upbringing
| and according to my experience. Again, even if I am great in
| my current eco system I do not presume this experience will
| work with eco system disturbances, so I accept evolutionary
| bargains and have children with a partner I believe will
| fulfil my bodily destiny the most resilient way possible.
|
| I even wanted to start a religion where propagation of one's
| self through dedication to offspring and community is
| central. I am tired of a society ruled by geriatric
| concerns[1]. (I say this as mostly a joke of course, I have
| more than enough work raising my children much less dabbling
| in other peoples lives)
|
| Ps: none of what I wrote invalidates improvements on
| longevity. It is just that we already have a basic system for
| propagation in time.
|
| [1] I know extremely young demographics make for crappy
| countries and quality of life.
| emptyfile wrote:
| [dead]
| freehorse wrote:
| This question/answer is the standard fallacious response to
| anybody talking against the anti-aging current.
|
| Some people may indeed prefer to die, some people may be
| religious or whatever, but most people doing the criticism
| just give extremely low prior probability to not dying due to
| some technological/medical advance (during their lifetimes at
| least), so they consider obsessing with something that is
| virtually impossible for the hope that it will happen a waste
| of time, of the finite life they have.
|
| Then it boils down just to whether one is curious about it,
| or is curious about any other X subject.
| jones6ofMont wrote:
| [dead]
| an-honest-moose wrote:
| It's not about not wanting to die. It's about death being
| inevitable. Everything dies, or breaks down, or decays.
| That's just how the universe works.
|
| The best you'll get is extended life, and that's never going
| to be enough - there's always going to be someone trying to
| push that limit out a little further. IMO, what matters more,
| and what some folks here have brought up, is more healthy
| years. I think wanting to be fitter and healthier in old age
| is pretty uncontroversial, but the problem is that it gets
| rolled up with immortality, because getting to say "We
| conquered death" would be way sexier than saying "We extended
| good living by a decade or two (and that's being
| optimistic)".
|
| Immortality has been, and always will be, a fantasy. Better
| that those resources go to something more productive, like
| healthcare.
| carlmr wrote:
| Death is the evolutionary proof that sometimes you need to
| shut down legacy systems because maintenance has become
| painful, the system has accumulated too many workarounds,
| and a rewrite is in order.
| Nursie wrote:
| > Everything dies, or breaks down, or decays. That's just
| how the universe works.
|
| Sure, that's entropy, but that's only necessarily true at
| the level of the whole system, energy inputs can and do
| reduce local entropy.
|
| > The best you'll get is extended life
|
| Sounds good, let's start there. 'True' immortality may or
| may not be a pipe dream, but it doesn't matter if it is.
| Almost nobody is talking about living absolutely forever,
| but looking at ways in which greater longevity can be
| achieved. I'd bite your hand off for another couple of
| decades on top of whatever my current 'allocation' might
| be, I don't give a crap if we've "conquered death" or not,
| but if we can find ways to give the average person more
| time, that seems like a win.
|
| > Better that those resources go to something more
| productive, like healthcare.
|
| How is this not healthcare?
|
| There seems to be this backlash against any talk of life
| extension, that other things matter more, that it's somehow
| frivolous, or just morally wrong to seek to live longer. It
| feels to me entirely arbitrary as we already use all sorts
| of interventions to help people live longer, and to be
| healthier for more of that time. This is good and wise and
| virtuous. But some folks seem to have this weird switch in
| their heads when extending life gets mentioned, that
| suddenly they're uncomfortable and the whole thing is not
| to be discussed by preference.
|
| And I wonder if it's because they don't want to admit to
| themselves or others that they are terrified, but have
| rationalised away their fear as "meant to be, can't be
| changed". Such talk of extension makes them uncomfortable.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Your post is a good example on how even highly educated
| people need more education, how communication is an
| important thing in science and how framing changes
| perception of everything.
|
| Anti-aging science is basically the most audacious
| preventative program out there. It is not really about
| "immortality" (even if this level of success were to be
| reached, one can always kill themselves, no biology will
| give you immunity to fast flying bullets), but an attempt
| to prevent or at least delay onset of a host of chronic
| diseases that are synonymous with aging.
|
| "but the problem is that it gets rolled up with
| immortality"
|
| Then don't contribute to that problem by insinuating that
| anti-aging is something different from healthcare. It is
| not, it is literally about extending healthspan, at least
| at this point. Rejuvenation means making people live longer
| by improving their metabolism etc.; how it is _not_
| healthcare in the best sense of the word (protecting
| _health_ instead of treating already extant _diseases_ )?
|
| "Everything dies, or breaks down, or decays."
|
| And yet you can keep your room tidy for long decades even
| if the entropy of the universe as such increases.
|
| We have a lot of self-repair mechanisms, that is why we
| live longer than our relatives like dogs and mice. "The
| universe" does not dictate to us whether to get cancer or
| not; some species (like whales) seem to be very resistant
| to cancer and it is absolutely thinkable that we could
| acquire this ability too, if we happen to learn enough
| about metabolism. Etc. etc.
|
| Human death at 80 isn't a result of laws of physics, any
| more than murine death at 2,5. It is a case of biological
| dysregulation that can possibly be fixed or at least
| improved, much like we improved other things about
| ourselves. Few of the HN crowd would proclaim wearing
| glasses to fix your vision to be unnatural. What we are
| looking for in anti-aging are "glasses for the body".
| nhinck2 wrote:
| Yes, immortality sounds horrible.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Do you want to die earlier rather than later, and/or in
| worse health condition than possible?
|
| That's what anti-aging is.
| thr-nrg wrote:
| [dead]
| jack_pp wrote:
| > Do you want to live forever, Harry?"
|
| > "Yes, and so do you," said Harry. "I want to live one
| more day. Tomorrow I will still want to live one more day.
| Therefore I want to live forever, proof by induction on the
| positive integers. If you don't want to die, it means you
| want to live forever. If you don't want to live forever, it
| means you want to die. You've got to do one or the other...
| I'm not getting through here, am I."
|
| It would be interesting to see how society will change when
| we can make ourselves permanently healthy. Maybe people who
| want to die will start taking extreme risks like sky-diving
| or Russian roulette but the above quote stands imo. If you
| don't want to live any more sounds to me like you have a
| psychological problem. I don't mean that 80 year olds, that
| have a dozen physical problems and struggle to do anything
| and therefore want to die because life is unbearable, have
| a psychological problem but if you're young, healthy and
| still find no pleasure in living then maybe you should see
| a therapist. Maybe the psychological part of living forever
| needs to be solved too
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| that proof assumes the desire to live will remain
| constant over time but it will not. parts of the human
| body will decay and over time the will to live will drop.
|
| death is inevitable. by artificially extending your
| lifespan, you're not becoming immortal. you're taking an
| event that typically comes as a natural part of life and
| is out of your control and forcing yourself to choose
| when it happens. you will have to choose at what point
| your agony is so unbearable that you no longer want to
| live.
|
| people who are unlucky already have to live that hell in
| modern times. i don't think people chasing this fever
| dream have experienced the joy of seeing it play out.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you can't picture yourself giving up an anti-aging
| treatment without "unbearable agony" forcing your hand,
| that's _your_ psychological hangup, not everyone else 's.
|
| A normal person can just decide they're 200 and not
| really enjoying much anymore and have that be the end of
| it.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| i'm arguing against the idea of achieving "immortality",
| not against anti-aging treatments. slowing the
| progression of aging but maintaining the same trajectory
| of life and death is a desirable thing. trying to avoid
| death is not.
| jack_pp wrote:
| Even then, maybe first see a therapist, try some
| psychedelics or whatever. If you've tried everything and
| somehow still see no point in living then yeah.. go
| ahead.
|
| I've been depressed a couple of times in my life and saw
| no point in going further or living but I've talked
| myself out of it by simply saying, hey, if I do this
| relatively small thing and then do this thing that gives
| me pleasure then that's better than literal death. I find
| it hard to believe a person has experienced everything
| there is to experience in 200 or even 1000 years. Our set
| of experiences is what it is because of the short time
| that we have but it doesn't mean it can't evolve to
| accommodate a lifespan of 10x or 100x.
| db48x wrote:
| Your lifespan has already been artificially extended.
| It's nearly twice the maximum of 10,000 years ago when
| most people were nomadic, and about 20-25% longer than
| that of the ancient Greeks, who retired from their
| militia at 65 only if they made it that long.
|
| And most of that life is spent in healthy youth and
| middle age, not in continual decline. Today we expect to
| become elderly in our 70s or 80s, and then die. The
| Greeks became elderly in their 60s or even earlier. Is it
| so hard to believe that in another 100 years people could
| be living to their 90s or 100s before age catches up with
| them?
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| i agree with everything you said. what i don't agree with
| is that you can prove by induction that you want to live
| for eternity.
| jack_pp wrote:
| > parts of the human body will decay and over time the
| will to live will drop.
|
| parts of the human body also evolve and strengthen over
| time, unfortunately evolution also made them decay after
| some point, that's what we're trying to fix.
|
| > you're taking an event that typically comes as a
| natural part of life and is out of your control..
|
| this whole paragraph could apply to any physical problem.
| You were born with XYZ health problem? just accept your
| fate, it's natural. You got bit by a dog? Natural, just
| accept your fate. You got an infection? why even bother
| taking antibiotics, you're just forcing yourself to live
| longer
| ptsneves wrote:
| The choice of death is a very good point. One would argue
| that the difference between a natural death and a death
| sentence is the knowledge and control of your life's
| termination.
|
| If people decide to end themselves that is suicide, and
| if someone else decides it then that is murder. All these
| are morally and ethically much more complicated than just
| dying agentlessly.
| carlmr wrote:
| I personally think it would be so cool to see the world
| evolve over thousands of years.
|
| Maybe we'd be nicer to each other if we lived that long,
| because we know our empire might be on top now, but
| likely not through our lifetime.
|
| But wealth inequality would probably be even worse,
| because by the time one generation dies, they've already
| bought up every piece of land in the world.
| strken wrote:
| "The water isn't boiling yet. In one minute the water
| will still not have boiled. Therefore it will take
| forever to bring this pot to boiling point, proof by
| induction on the positive integers."
|
| I broadly agree with lifespan and healthspan extension on
| the grounds that one should get to choose the time and
| manner of their passing, but that quote is just
| ridiculous and Yudkowsky should have known better.
| jack_pp wrote:
| That quote is from the perspective of an 11-year old. I'd
| say it fits the context and he wrote it well because even
| though it's not an accurate and perfect view it is funny
| bawolff wrote:
| To be honest, i've always wondered how many people would
| actually believe this if given the choice (assuming healthy
| immortality). It always struck me a bit as the sort of
| thing people say to be able to live with the fact they are
| going to die and there is nothing they can do about it.
| Always easier to accept something out of one's control by
| pretending it is what you wanted all along.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Immortality sounds horrible _if and only if_ I 'm the only
| one immortal.
|
| Most people don't want to die. I want to learn more, and
| indulge curiosity for another day. I want to laugh and love
| and see my family forever longer - I don't think I'd ever
| wish to leave my loved ones, and I will unsurprisingly
| mourn their loss. I assume I'm not particularly special in
| any of this...
|
| I think the sudden onset of immortality (especially
| concentrated on the wealthy) will be catastrophic for
| society. Imagine Bezos or a Kardashian or someone
| politically motivated like Murdoch/Soros but _immortal_?
| Imagine them being able to spend (and grow) generations of
| wealth... for generation?
|
| For the rest of us, the cost of an opportunity to be
| immortal will be massive because of course it can be.
| People today save for retirement, but one day they may save
| for immortality - or perhaps take out insane loans to fund
| it. Imagine real estate prices when banks can offer 100y
| mortgages to a class of rich immortal workers? Imagine
| trying to advance in your career when someone can get a
| senior job and work for hundreds of years, especially if
| they need to fund their 100y mortgage or their immortality
| procedure - Millennials already complain that boomers won't
| retire and open up the higher-rung jobs.
|
| Immortality would upend society, and likely exacerbate
| social tensions, but it could also be a great reset in
| social expectations. Maybe it'd encourage _everyone_ to
| take a long-term view of their actions. eg. Climate change
| would impact everyone, so no one would be "too old to
| care".
| [deleted]
| zo1 wrote:
| It's simple. We want trusted individuals and knowledgeable
| debate on the topic, especially for one so controversial. And
| yet, this entire thread is now revolving on your meta
| commentary on the topic. Very disappointing.
|
| It doesn't pop up nearly as us fans would like, and I barely
| see it once a month on here.
| pupppet wrote:
| I mean, HN has more than a few Peter Thiel fans..
| ycombinete wrote:
| There are many avid sci-fi fans here. So it's likely as much to
| do with piqued interest (scientific or philisophical), as it is
| to do with not wanting to die.
|
| Someone who loved reading _Time Enough for Love_ , or
| _Permutation City_ , is probably going to be interested in the
| subject.
| thr-nrg wrote:
| [dead]
| 34679 wrote:
| There's a great Radiolab episode on this topic and the person who
| first isolated it.
|
| https://radiolab.org/podcast/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub
| stephenitis wrote:
| I second this podcast, great vivid storytelling.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| Rapamycin is also being studied as a booster drug to ketamine for
| treatment-resistant depression
|
| https://www.bbrfoundation.org/content/surprising-clinical-tr...
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| The part where a compound first investigated as an antifungal
| improves longevity of fungi wasn't really explored, but eh?
|
| Is it controlling fungi that infect other fungi or something?
| snvzz wrote:
| Tangentially related: Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant[0].
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY
| drBonkers wrote:
| I didn't realize this short was first a textual story [1] until
| years after my first encounter.
|
| [1] https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon
| snvzz wrote:
| Me neither. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
|
| Today, I also learned about xianxia[0] from an unexpected
| place[1].
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianxia
|
| 1. https://hsr.hoyoverse.com/
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