[HN Gopher] Anti-ageing protein injection boosts monkeys' memories
___________________________________________________________________
Anti-ageing protein injection boosts monkeys' memories
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 153 points
Date : 2023-07-04 13:18 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| oogabooga13 wrote:
| The best anti-ageing cure that works now might be an optimized
| diet, exercise, and sleep routine. No protein injections
| required!
| yrds96 wrote:
| And expose your skin to the sun for few minutes. Vitamin D is
| important too.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Luckily, my wife just made me a rhubarb cake.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27692562/
| vonnik wrote:
| More benefits of Klotho in model organisms:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6335176/
| optimalsolver wrote:
| These glimpses of powerful, future anti-aging treatments is why
| AGI research must not be slowed down under any circumstances.
| Immortality is in sight.
|
| I have to say, it's annoying to have been born before radical
| life-extending technology becomes available, but late enough in
| the timeline to consider it an actual possibility.
| jliptzin wrote:
| You will never find yourself in a timeline in which you're not
| alive. Perhaps you've already died in all the other timelines;
| this is the one where you live long enough to benefit from
| life-extending technology and eventually immortality.
| derbOac wrote:
| Although I agree antiaging interventions need to be pursued
| completely -- I'm aware of arguments against them but am not
| sure there's any serious opposition to them? -- there are
| systemic physical reasons to think there might be hard limits
| on age.
| penjelly wrote:
| > AGI research must not be slowed down under any circumstances.
| Immortality is in sight.
|
| wow. So progress at any cost? Seems misguided to me
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Nick Harkaway (world-class author, son of John Le Carre)
| explores this idea in his highly-entertaining, extremely well-
| written, and thought-provoking novel, Titanium Noir. Highly
| recommended!
| TriNetra wrote:
| We're already immortal, just that this body made up of ever-
| changing physical elements isn't.
|
| We should also strive to reach to a state where we realize
| experientially our true nature of eternal, pure consciousness,
| and then we can manufacture whatever body we would need just
| like our mind manufacture new worlds, objects and different
| bodies for us in dreams during sleep.
| achow wrote:
| How to know whether 'Consciousness' is just an output of
| ever-changing physical element too - in this case flow of
| energy in neurons.
|
| These flow of energy changes the states of neurons and sum
| total of that is perception of the 'world' which we think is
| the consciousness.
|
| Corollary - Due to the quantity and 'quality' of each neuron
| in each individual, the perception of the world or the
| reality would also vary for each individual.
| rbanffy wrote:
| While the patterns engraved in the past cannot be changed,
| they also cannot be easily retrieved and my own perception
| of self ends when there is no longer a brain changing my
| "state vector".
| pointlessone wrote:
| We need to counterbalance that with a chance of extinction. /s
| idopmstuff wrote:
| I really improved my lifestyle (exercise, diet, etc.) once I
| realized that right now, living longer has whatever the
| opposite of diminishing returns is. Each year that I live
| doesn't just give another year, it also gives me whatever
| additional time that life extension technology comes up with
| that year. It's plausible that the value of some extra year is
| infinite, because that's when we get to the point of
| immortality. I hate running, but given that math I feel
| compelled to get up and put on my running shoes.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| However much you exercise your body becomes less efficient at
| producing and absorbing any number of amino acids and
| proteins, including arginine, creatine, taurine, etc. It's
| not unreasonable to supplement exercise with safe anti aging
| regimes, and it's absurd to have an anti aging regime without
| improved diet, regular mixed exercise, etc. There's no reason
| to willfully ignore the science, which says aging comes with
| an inexorable decline in various crucial amino acids, etc,
| and that exercise/diet improves the entire system. Doing a
| sensible and safe total system regime that optimizes along a
| typical decline curve has all sorts of benefits, including
| the ability to better take advantage of exercise and diet,
| but also reduces systemic dysfunction due to imbalances in
| the availability of basic building blocks like amino acids,
| minerals, etc, that can be difficult to get in sufficient
| quantity from the best of diets for an aged person.
|
| TL;DR these aren't mutually exclusive and are synergistic
| approaches
| nathias wrote:
| cheer up, we will be the last to die
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's an interesting concept that, just a couple generations
| down the road, there will be relatively few people who have
| experienced aging and the death that comes with it.
|
| I remember in Cocoon, one of the most touching scenes is
| between a husband who just lost his wife and an alien captain
| who just lost a friend for the first time in his multi
| millennium life. The alien's empathy towards the tragedy of
| human condition drives him to offer immortality to the old
| humans he befriended. And all of them accept, with the
| exception of the one who lost his wife.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| I didn't see a single reference to AI in the article, so what
| does AGI have to do with anything?
| optimalsolver wrote:
| See, there's this prospective thing called AGI that would
| hypothetically carry out scientific research much faster than
| humans.
|
| You can get started by reading the following article:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
| rhyme-boss wrote:
| So any safety concerns that would lead to slower development
| should be cast aside because your life is more important than
| future lives?
| Tor3 wrote:
| Not particularly interested in immortality, but I sure could do
| with some restoration of my memory.. which used to be nearly
| photographic but is now more like now here, now gone with the
| wind.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| I'm half way through a year of not drinking alcohol. I cannot
| tell you what it had done for my memory.
|
| I think I'll drink beer again someday but the increased
| memory has really made me question whether I actually will if
| presented with it.
|
| Not sure if you drink or not but if you do, I'd recommend
| trying it. For me it was an unexpected benefit.
| Tor3 wrote:
| I basically stopped drinking much of anything alcoholic
| many decades ago, for no particular reason. No interest, I
| presume. In general a healthy lifestyle as well, so my
| reduced memory function seems to be purely an age issue,
| not that I feel particularly old.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Immortality in this universe is a physical impossibility, and
| even if it were medically possible, it is easily lost.
| rubyfan wrote:
| Wouldn't modern medicine would be considered "radical life-
| extending technology" to people living 200 years ago?
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-...
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Modern medicine is a relatively small factor for increased
| life spans.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| I wonder if this would be true in all cultures though?
| Australian Aboriginals lives incredibly healthy lifestyles
| and had access to an abundance of incredible foods.
|
| I don't know if they'd live as long as people today but I'd
| be surprised if many didn't at least go till at least 70+?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Most adults lived to about 60 in most places and times. 70+
| is not noteworthy.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Most adults lived to about 60 in most places and times."
|
| Medieval European burials at least tend to cluster way
| lower than that. In the Dark Ages, skeletons of people
| older than 60 are rather uncommon (like 1:30), in the
| High Middle Ages, they become somewhat more common, but
| still less than 1:10.
|
| Of all the population groups, the clergy was by far the
| most long-lived in pre-modern times. A nonviolent line of
| work, plus almost guaranteed supply of food.
|
| Even in the 18th century in fairly developed Britain,
| only about 70 per cent of adults (18+) celebrated their
| 40th birthday.
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| This was likely due to the population density and
| sanitation conditions of city living causing infectious
| disease related deaths, no?
|
| I imagine the risk of contracting fatal diseases in a
| rural setting was much less.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Crop failures were a major factor in mortality.
| Subsistence grain farmers in pre-modern times could
| expect a crop failure once in 5-7 years, sometimes back
| to back.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| If 70% of 18 year olds make it to 40, then so long as 5/7
| of them can survive another 20ish years, you have "most"
| people making it to 60. If we're cool with a +/- 5 years
| on the "about 60" figure I think this tracks just fine.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Nevertheless, that was the 18th century in
| industrializing Britain, which was becoming a lot more
| efficient at agriculture etc. From many aspects, it was
| already a fairly modern society, with an emerging
| literate middle class etc.
|
| _Even then_ the mortality was still quite high compared
| to today.
|
| And most agricultural societies before that were
| regularly swept by famines, which disproportionately took
| the young and the aging ones.
|
| When judging historic lifespans, we tend to judge by the
| famous people. Cardinals, popes, kings, emperors. The
| population average was way, way lower, and the bones from
| churchyards tell the real story.
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| AFAIK, it's a bit misleading. Much of that increase is due to
| a decrease in infant mortality and childhood related
| illnesses.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Maybe we can apply the anthropic principle to feel a bit better
| about it. I.E. we observe the universe to be the way it is
| because if it were any different, we wouldn't be here to
| observe it.
|
| We could be alive now because it's the statistically most
| likely time for most humans to be alive, right between the time
| it took us to slowly explode in population and the time we
| implode and make ourselves extinct. Otherwise we'd more likely
| live further in the future since if we continue growing then
| there's vastly more humans that will live then. We could very
| well be living in the best time ever, full stop. Food for
| thought.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| I used to be more worried about an anthropic argument that we
| are living in end times. (If population growth is exponential
| then you are most likely to be born near end times)
|
| But, most people have already died https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.ni
| h.gov/12288594/#:~:text=Assuming%2.... And population growth
| is shrinking. So I think we're safe
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well the variance on it is definitely huge by human
| timespan standards, but I think it's not entirely unlikely
| that most humans that have ever lived will live between
| something like 1700-2200 AD. Could be 1700-3500 as well if
| we're lucky.
|
| It's also entirely possible that ancient Greeks had a
| discussion like this and decided that they'll all be dead
| soon, and couldn't have been more wrong, so the error bars
| are obviously massive when dealing with only an arbitrary
| fraction of the distribution.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| I think we are still too early. Better to be just a few years
| old right now.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| > I have to say, it's annoying to have been born before radical
| life-extending technology becomes available, but late enough in
| the timeline to consider it an actual possibility.
|
| (Justin Timberlake) "Cry me a river"
| flatline wrote:
| Alchemy promised similar goals by more mystical means. Taoist
| practices for life extension go back thousands of years. They
| would have seemed like actual possibilities to someone living
| then, too. Just providing some perspective. Medical
| technologies certainly hold promise, but it may well be another
| 1000+ years before a meaningful breakthrough occurs. Or it may
| never.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Alchemy promised similar goals by more mystical means.
| Taoist practices for life extension go back thousands of
| years._
|
| Neither of these were based on the scientific method, a
| proven process for discovery and knowledge refinement.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Animal models do not always, and in fact quite often not at
| all, translate over to humans.
|
| We all know this, but it is worth bringing it up on a
| regular basis.
| holoduke wrote:
| Can you name a 'model'? Not sure what you mean?
| q845712 wrote:
| "animal models" is a fairly standard phrase in research:
| When people research depression, alzheimers, cancer,
| etc., they generally start with mice and work their way
| up through monkeys before coming to human trials. For
| many conditions there's specific "lines" of mice that
| have been bred or even genetically modified to exhibit
| those conditions in a reliable or extreme way. Depression
| is particularly challenging since you can't ask an animal
| how it's feeling, and frankly nearly all animals used in
| laboratories are understimulated, removed from their
| natural habitat, and probably a little "depressed". (see
| e.g. the "rat park" studies
| (https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-
| park-tea...) that showed that rats were much less likely
| to self-administer cocaine if they were in an environment
| that let them have a more enjoyable/fulfilling/natural
| life otherwise.)
|
| So anyway "animal models" just means "an animal
| mice/rats/monkeys/etc. that we have decided has enough of
| the same symptoms of the human disease that we can use it
| to study treatments of that disease", and it's fairly
| common for something to work in mice but fail in monkeys,
| or even to work in both mice and monkeys but not work or
| have very undesirable side-effects in humans. (side note:
| one of the least discussed things in pharma is how they
| source the first humans for trialling a new treatment,
| which does carry non-trivial risk to the human "guinea
| pigs" - it's generally people who are poor and
| desperate.)
| anjel wrote:
| Thalidomide tested harmless in murine models but was a
| famously potent teratogen when tested in pregnant humans.
| 1
|
| 1 https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/studies-thalidomides-
| effects-ro...
| rbanffy wrote:
| At _some_ point stuff gets tested in humans.
| flatline wrote:
| Science is not magic. It has produced some magical results
| but it is just one way of obtaining knowledge. I have seen
| nothing in my casual perusal of the age extension
| literature that makes me think it's any more than modern
| day alchemy, hoping for some magical compound that grants
| immortality, from trace evidence of beneficial properties.
|
| I think age extension is likely possible, and that it will
| require continual rewriting of the human genome to regress
| cellular aging, fight cancer, and repair damage to the
| brain and vascular systems - and all other organs, really.
| It will require a stupendous technological investment and
| infrastructure and require much better knowledge of the
| human brain and cognition than we have today. Certainly
| nowhere in the next 100 years, we do not even know the
| causes of or have effective treatments for common forms of
| dementia, and our cancer treatments are frankly barbaric.
| otikik wrote:
| Immortality for the extremely wealthy perhaps. The rest of us,
| at best, will have just enough to keep being productive, until
| we are no longer needed.
| imtringued wrote:
| Now you get to rent your youthful body for a low fee of
| 5000EUR per month. [0]
|
| [0] Cancelling the subscription may result in accelerated
| aging and immediate organ and heart failure.
| osigurdson wrote:
| What if becomes super cheap?
|
| I think immortality would be bad for humanity, but ~40 more
| productive years would be beneficial. Currently we take 25
| years of preparation in order to work 35.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The you'll see wealth inequality skyrocket as rich people
| enjoy wealth compounding for an additional X years.
| bradlys wrote:
| If most people can live forever, they'll rebel against
| the conditions they live in. I suspect the rich would
| actually perish.
|
| A lot of life now is ordained on the idea that we don't
| live forever and we can't see change in our lifetimes...
| but if the lifetime is forever - well, I'm gonna fight to
| make it better immediately cause then I have forever to
| enjoy it.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Seems rather backwards to me. Insurrection doesn't take
| very long and the stakes are much higher when you have
| immortality.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Unless we get rid of capitalism as well. Or, at least,
| force these people to pay taxes that prevent the
| accumulation of wealth and its undue influence in
| politics.
| Bloating wrote:
| What happened before capitalism?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Hard. While capitalism may be an established societal
| practice, accumulation of wealth and power is also the
| natural state of things. You need an incredibly cohesive
| society to prevent that, the likes of which humanity has
| never seen imo.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Humanity has never seen a lot of things that are now
| ubiquitous. Have hope.
| [deleted]
| soco wrote:
| So what if this becomes super cheap? Would dental
| treatments or insulin or whatever other basic medication
| become affordable too? Because otherwise that's a hell of
| immortality being offered to the masses...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Even on a forum where really smart people congregate, the
| "everywhere is America" syndrom is easily seen - even
| though Americans only constitute about 4 per cent of the
| world population.
|
| Where I live, no one struggles to buy insulin. And if
| there is any kind of anti-aging treatment available, I
| don't doubt it will be offered to the general population
| without much ado. Compared to the rising cost of the
| pension systems in aging populations, treatments like
| that would be probably "dirt cheap".
| osigurdson wrote:
| I also live in a "cheap insulin" location. However, I'm
| pretty sure the Americans ultimately subsidize a lot of
| drug discovery. Even better would be to have stronger
| humans that require no healthcare.
| osigurdson wrote:
| With more productive years it seems like a reasonable
| conclusion would be that wealth would generally increase.
| Of course I have no idea what actual age extension would
| look like, but it seems pointless to extend the 80s or
| 90s. More years like 30s would be ideal.
| q845712 wrote:
| but there's a premium on our youth -- The people who
| complain that it's harder to find a job in their 50s and
| 60s can't _all_ be wrong or mistaken. I feel like we like
| to imagine that these treatments would extend our 20s and
| 30s, but what if they extend our 60s instead?
| osigurdson wrote:
| That is kind of what I am saying. I think it would be
| better if we had 25 years of preparation, followed by 75
| productive years followed by 25 years of retirement. The
| current 25,35,15 split isn't very efficient.
|
| Ageism might still exist but significantly pushed back.
| zachthewf wrote:
| Most people I know in their 60s would way rather be in
| their 60s than dead
| blagie wrote:
| They can't all be wrong or mistaken, but there can be a
| very strong sample bias.
|
| I can go into a longer diatribe here, but the short story
| is:
|
| 1) Most people have a hard time finding jobs at any age.
| Recent college grads can't all be wrong. :)
|
| 2) There is always a strong reversion to mean
|
| 3) Most of the people in their 50s or 60s whom I hear
| complaining were an outlier for employability for their
| age group in their 20s and 30s (e.g. straight out of
| Stanford).
|
| Most older people I know are /very/ employable, and don't
| complain. Another pathway:
|
| - Finish a state college. Have a very hard time finding a
| first job.
|
| - Work up the career ladder, and build up a resume,
| reputation, and track record.
|
| - Much easier time finding jobs in their 50s and 60s than
| straight out of college or early career.
|
| Some of this also has to do with bust/boom cycles. People
| who entered the workforce during recessions had a hard
| time finding a job in their 20s, and then found things
| comparatively easy. People who entered during a boom
| cycle are the opposite.
| [deleted]
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Think of rich people as beta testers.
| ben_w wrote:
| It's in the interest of the rich for the poor to be the
| beta testers.
|
| When anti-aging becomes real rather than fantasy, there are
| going to be _so many_ mutually incompatible conspiracy
| theories.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Can you reason through the gloom? Unless immortality comes
| with built in invincibility, I don't see how it would not
| have to be democratized pretty much immediately to avoid
| civil unrest of the outmost proportions.
|
| Also I don't see what would be to gain to not do it for those
| in power.
| otikik wrote:
| Just look at what we let them get away with now.
|
| I'm sure a lot of people would _defend_ the arrangement.
| "Of course Elon Musk can have inmortality and you don't.
| He's a genius".
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Ironically, Musk is a longevity skeptic himself.
|
| Bezos would be the guy, spending billions on Altos Labs.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| I am sure most would not.
| p1esk wrote:
| Is there anything in terms of healthcare that is only
| available to billionaires today (not available to middle
| class)?
| davidcbc wrote:
| Not going bankrupt
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Again, not everywhere is America. In fact, most of the
| world isn't America.
|
| Don't judge the prospects of the entire humanity by the
| pathology that is called the US healthcare system.
| pinguin3 wrote:
| Only if they don't live. Doing anything in life has risk:
| flying, driving etc
| DennisP wrote:
| People in their twenties have an annual chance of dying of
| about one in a thousand, so effective anti-aging would give
| an expected lifespan of about a thousand years.
|
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
|
| Based on the rates of various types of accidental deaths,
| you could extend that quite a bit by avoiding dangerous
| drugs and and living in an area where you're unlikely to
| get shot. If we figure out really safe self-driving cars,
| that'll make a big difference too. In much of Europe you
| can already get the same effect by taking public transport
| everywhere. Air travel is quite unlikely to kill you.
|
| https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-
| mortalit...
|
| Put all that together and a 10,000-year expected lifespan
| looks pretty achievable.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| And some cells do not reproduce (neurons, etc), so you have
| to keep them in good shape, except this is impossible. For
| example 1/3 people are infected with Herpes virus which
| stays in their neurons.
|
| In addition some cells reproduce only a few times, often
| only during youth.
|
| And there is sometimes involution like in thymus.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| Great, so we can look forward to having presidents who are
| 200yo instead of 100yo?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Pet peeve:
|
| Defeating aging does not make anyone immortal!
| DennisP wrote:
| But it does get you to a lifespan of several thousand years,
| as long as you're reasonably careful. I posted sources in
| another comment here.
| rbanffy wrote:
| True. One can still die of disease or accidents. That's why
| so many stories about immortal humans also have them making
| backup copies of their minds.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| I'm surprised at how much scrolling I had to do in order to
| find this "little" problem.
| palebluedot wrote:
| Very good point. And with very long lifespans (thousands of
| years), all of those low-probability events that may cause
| accidental death (airplane crash, getting hit by a car
| crossing the street, violence, etc.) may really start to add
| up to a not-so-low probability of at least one of them
| happening within your extended lifespan.
| yeknoda wrote:
| Immortal is not eternal
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean sure, but only if all other health problems are also
| solved, not to mention society which is already struggling
| under the pressure of an aging population - causing retirement
| ages to increase, employment under elderly increasing, and
| health care systems like the NHS or the US system to crumble to
| the point of people dying while waiting to be seen by a GP or
| being referred to A&E to sit and wait for hours waiting for
| underpaid and overworked staff for something a GP should be
| looking at.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > is already struggling under the pressure of an aging
| population
|
| Wouldn't making them healthier increase their economic output
| at the same time it'd decrease their cost to the healthcare
| system?
| DennisP wrote:
| The health problems that kill the most people are
| consequences of aging. People in their twenties have only
| about a one in a thousand chance of dying each year, and a
| lot of those deaths are avoidable. Avoid dangerous drugs,
| live in a safe area, and take public transport, and you'll
| likely live for thousands of years if you maintain the
| biology of a 25-year-old. (Sources in another comment I
| posted here.)
|
| If that were an option, I'd be happy to forgo social
| security. If everyone were biologically young, there'd be a
| lot less for a healthcare system to do.
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| The earth has a carrying capacity of less than one billion
| people if those people have a USA level of consumption. How
| would we deal with this problem if people stopped dying or had
| their lifespans increased dramatically?
| blagie wrote:
| Why do you think the Earth has a fixed carrying capacity?
|
| As with Moore's Law for decades, there have been many similar
| predictions in the past, and they fell by the wayside as
| technology, output, and productivity improved. At some point,
| Moore's law gave way to more gradual increases, and the same
| may happen here, but we have no idea how or when.
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| I'd say human contributed greenhouse gas emissions are the
| main limiting factor for the earth's carrying capacity for
| human lives. We're already experiencing many more severe
| climate related weather events and the problem is only
| going to get worse each year.
| DennisP wrote:
| We have multiple power sources that don't release
| significant greenhouse gases.
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| We do, but they only contribute a small portion of the
| world's energy. It will take a long time to get to a
| point where most energy generated is renewable, and by
| that point, the climate is going to be a much much bigger
| problem.
| DennisP wrote:
| That's a big problem for the next several decades, but by
| the time longevity tech is mature enough to significantly
| affect populations, either we'll have converted to non-
| carbon energy or longevity tech will be pretty much
| irrelevant anyway.
| blagie wrote:
| I'm not sure:
|
| - We might be sitting at a 500M population after the
| [climate / pandemic / AI / nuclear / system collapse /
| etc] apocalypse.
|
| - We might be sitting on a terraformed Mars (or in
| bubbles under the ocean)
|
| - We might be sitting in glass domes in the middle of an
| increasingly climate-hostile Earth
|
| ... and so on. We're very bad at predicting the future;
| it's hard to pick from thousands of (individually highly
| unlikely) possibilities.
| JackFr wrote:
| Well, that really speaks to your worldview and your ideas on
| the meaning and purpose of life. Why is that a problem?
|
| Is the purpose of life hedonic consumption, where there seems
| to be no other point than racking up a high score? Is there
| something more?
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| I'm actually for us -- especially in the west -- to
| significantly reduce our carbon footprint and consumption.
| My personal consumption habits are well-below the average
| in the west. I think hedonistic consumption is a hollow
| pursuit. But, I understand that most people will not
| voluntarily reduce their consumption habits.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| There's so much unused space on Earth, and people still make
| this ridiculous comment.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| If people could live for ~ 500 years, the preservation of the
| Earth would turn into a much more important. Anyone who is
| alamost 100 would have cause for concern about climate change
| immediately.
| ben_w wrote:
| The difference between an AI which helps speed up medicine
| development by simulating drug safety, and one which finds tens
| of thousands of deadly neurotoxins, is a single "min" -> "max"
| or equivalent.
|
| (And that was something that happened about a year ago
| already).
| rbanffy wrote:
| Assume that someone will always be using the best tools
| available (some illegally) for the most nefarious purposes.
|
| With that in mind, the moral thing is to use the very best
| tools available to at least counter those efforts.
| mellavora wrote:
| The problem with immortality is how does society create room
| for the next generation?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That's were going multi-planetary is attractive.
| sjcsjc wrote:
| These maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
| DennisP wrote:
| Yep. Go with that and the solar system has room for
| trillions of people.
|
| If we invent practical fusion power by then, we can also
| spread out into the Oort Cloud.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Just make it a choice, immortality or have children.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I have to mention this book:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Tomorrows
| rbanffy wrote:
| Or have one every few decades, with plenty time to assess
| what worked and what didn't.
| soligern wrote:
| Or a better choice of one child per immortal couple.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| Ask China how that worked for them... Too many men, too
| few women.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Each generation gets a moon to terraform.
| firstplacelast wrote:
| People living longer makes the world worse.
|
| Maybe there's an economic system that would not do this, but
| currently most people's lives are not improved with increased
| longevity across the board.
|
| It's one of the reasons I left my job in pharma. The constant
| circle jerk about making the world better + comparative low pay
| when so few could afford a condo on their own salary. Whose
| lives are we making better? Certainly not the lives of the
| people I see every day.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| Oh yes please. I look forward to being kept alive forever by a
| machine god with incomprehensible motivations.
|
| Lol jk I still don't want to age and die to be honest
| rbanffy wrote:
| The only difference from our current most likely future is
| the immortality part, so why not?
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| I was thinking of more of a "i have no mouth and yet I must
| scream" or a black mirror "white Christmas" scenario
|
| Edit: to be clear I would still take the immortality like
| 100%
| kypro wrote:
| Please stop. Not all of us want a future where everyone is an
| immortal, useless consumer ruled over by AGI gods or the select
| few who own them.
|
| I don't think we've yet learnt that technological progress
| today comes with much more risk and is not an automatic good.
| The atomic bomb probably should have woken us up to this, but I
| worry we'll need to learn this lesson the hard way eventually.
|
| For example, a forest fire in California isn't a big deal in
| the context of global ecosystem, but if that forest is your
| world then it's everything. The invention of fire might come at
| the risk of burning down a forest or two, but it doesn't come
| at the risk of burning down the entire Earth. If fire did come
| at that cost humans wouldn't have made it.
|
| AGI doesn't just have the ability to make you a useless
| immortal meat bag as you apparently desire. It also has the
| ability to provide the intelligence and knowledge needed so
| that every human on Earth can create create a civilisation
| destroying virus if they so choose.
|
| I know it's weird, but I like the present. We have problems,
| but all in all it's a great time to be alive. I'm not immortal,
| but I think that's okay.
|
| We should be more careful about seeking to make radical changes
| which could destabilise the progress we've made.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Speak for yourself. I'd take immortality without thinking
| twice.
| leke wrote:
| Planet of the apes beginnings
| yes_man wrote:
| Regarding the immortality talk around the topic. I am not an
| expert and this is not an informed argument, but intuitively
| feels this whole "anti-ageing by chemical cocktails" cannot be
| sustainable forever. There must be a price for injecting
| increasing quantities of proteins to the body to turn back the
| clock. Imagine a headline from 1893 about discovery of meth:
| "Japanese scientists invent an injection that cures humans from
| the need to sleep". It turns out there is a price for messing
| with the system.
|
| So I do not believe any immortality of the human body by these
| synthetic interventions is possible. Kicking the can down the
| road certainly and would be nice to live healthy longer.
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is unlikely that anti-aging will rely on chemical cocktails
| forever. The entire field is still fairly new, somewhere where
| aviation was in 1908 or so.
|
| I would guess that the really efficient anti-aging
| interventions will rejuvenate _cells_ , including stem cells.
|
| Interestingly, Dr. Gregory Fahy has some positive results with
| rejuvenation of the thymus in humans (not in mice). It seems
| that a well-functioning immune system is a must for longer
| life.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think aging exists because it enables/speeds up evolution.
|
| There are a few organisms that don't seem to age at all.
| They're very marginal, but prove it's possible.
| [deleted]
| yowzadave wrote:
| Once a person is past child-rearing age, there is little
| evolutionary advantage for a longer lifespan--so perhaps it's
| just a trait that hasn't been prioritized by evolution?
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| No, not at all. In more advanced social species, there is an
| evolutionary advantage to older individuals helping their
| young.
| boringg wrote:
| Interesting thought.
| TimPC wrote:
| I think this is clearly false for humans. I think it is
| unquestionable that kids do better when parents have actively
| involved grandparents in their lives. Raising a kid without a
| support network is overwhelming, and even more so in modern
| culture where so many kids are raised in single-parent homes.
| If you measure success of a lineage over time, having the
| grandparents die off before they get grandkids would have
| significant adverse effects.
| delecti wrote:
| Grandparents sure, but great grandparents? Great great
| grandparents? I think at a certain point additional
| surviving generations would be either a neutral or even net
| disadvantageous change for the greater population. Assuming
| 20 years per generation, there wouldn't be a huge pressure
| to live longer than 60-70. We clearly didn't evolve to
| naturally live forever.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| The village/community would be the most successful support
| model.
| chessgecko wrote:
| Is immortality a genetic advantage? I'd imagine it could create
| a lot of infighting.
| TimPC wrote:
| I bet societies without immortality progress faster than
| societies with immortality socially. A large portion of
| opinion change occurs intergenerationally with old views
| dying off, some people change their opinions on major values
| over time but far fewer people do than we like to think. I
| think for example it would be far harder to get things like
| gay marriage passed if people born in 1000 AD were still
| around today.
| boringg wrote:
| I think the definition of progress is a key consideration
| here.
| echelon wrote:
| > There must be a price for injecting increasing quantities of
| proteins to the body to turn back the clock.
|
| Cancer.
|
| So many cell death pathways are to guard against cancer.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Nevertheless, humans aren't that much optimized against
| cancer.
|
| The really big mammals such as elephants and whales seem to
| be very cancer-resistant. So many more cells to go haywire
| and still they only suffer cancer at a low rate compared to,
| say, mice. Or even us.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, I mean life expectancy has made great strides in the past
| 100 odd years worldwide; what we see is a higher occurrence on
| things like cancer and heart disease or other diseases that
| become more and more likely with age. There's the pressure on
| the health care / social systems as well, which is partially
| compensated now by having people work longer - either by
| raising the retirement age, or having no state pension so that
| the elderly are forced to keep working for longer.
|
| But your point also stands, treatments like this, IF they
| become commonplace, may have far-reaching effects that we can't
| oversee yet.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Hello to Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett sitting on
| the SCOTUS bench in 2060 or 2070 or possibly even 2100.
|
| Many of our political systems are based on the expectation
| that people grow frail and retire earlier than they actually
| _already do today_. The US Senate is becoming a geriatric
| institution that would put Brezhnev 's politburo of 1980 to
| youthful shame.
| Teever wrote:
| So what are you saying, that we shouldn't have
| technological innovation because our governments have
| stagnated?
|
| Or are you saying that we need to have governmental
| innovation concurrent with technological innovation?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The latter. The institutions need to adapt, much like
| they did adapt to instant communication and the printing
| press before.
| [deleted]
| ddgflorida wrote:
| We can hope.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| On the political scale, I am fairly to the libertarian
| (not religious) right, but personal ossification is bad
| regardless of its political flavor.
|
| Moderate term limits (e.g. no more than 25 years in
| public offices in your lifetime) should certainly be at
| least tested.
| gumby wrote:
| Though I would very much like to live a lot longer, the society
| I would live in would be somewhat suckier because of it. The
| consequences have been extensively explored in the literature
| for the last 3,500 years at least.
|
| Failing that, making QoL a square wave would be a massive win.
| etothepii wrote:
| Would they duck for those of us alive today? We (those of us
| alive today) would like be the absolute masters of the
| universe.
| someplaceguy wrote:
| While I agree in principle and I am also not an expert by any
| means, I think it should be possible to inject a finite amount
| of substances that eventually cause a change to the composition
| of the human body to make it functionally immortal, in theory.
|
| I think this can be reasoned from three observations:
|
| 1. That it is possible to change the DNA of the cells of a
| living organism by injecting substances in said organism (as
| evidenced by genetic advances in recent decades?).
|
| 2. That the DNA of an organism has an extreme amount of control
| over the composition of said organism (as evidenced by the
| amount of diversity in all DNA-based organisms and species and
| also by the known fact that changes in the DNA of an organism
| also change how it evolves).
|
| 3. That biologically immortal species already exist (e.g.
| hydras?).
|
| That said, I'm pretty sure we're extremely far away from
| achieving this (unless we can create superintelligent AIs
| soon).
| zug_zug wrote:
| No idea why you're downvoted. The idea that the human body has
| the formula for immortality 99% right and it just "forgot" to
| make enough of protein X which has no downsides seems
| hopelessly naive to me.
|
| Just look at existing health interventions, like HGH, and see
| all the side-effects and risks associated with it.
| dempedempe wrote:
| I think they're being downvoted for the meth comment. I agree
| with everything OP and you said, but the meth example is a
| bit hyperbolic - the downsides to meth consumption would
| surely be felt much sooner than any theoretical downsides of
| the protein mentioned in the article.
| Teever wrote:
| Now make the same argument about proteins and other nutrients
| in general.
|
| Like, 'The idea that the human body has the formula for
| living 99% right and it just 'forgot' to make enough of
| protein X...' and if we just eat enough, often enough...
|
| Our bodies weren't designed to work in this environment. They
| just came to work well enough in an environment like this.
| That means that there are issues with them, and that they
| eventually fail. That doesn't mean that we can't overcome
| these issues like we have overcome others with the use of
| technology.
|
| Anti-aging is like any other technology that we use. It
| modifies us or our environment for a desired purpose. Is any
| technology flawless? No. Have they revolutionized our lives
| and made how the average human lives almost inconceivable to
| humans from 100kya? Totally.
|
| Are we on the cusp of technological developments that will
| make how we live further unrecognizable. Totally.
|
| IVG, artificial wombs, anti-aging/age-reversal, lab grown
| organs, automatic limb generation (like a salemander). Are
| all coming and will irrevocably change the human condition.
| And some of these things are coming in the next decade.
|
| Maybe you're right, and we can't have an infinite life span,
| but I bet we could double life/healthspan, and I think that
| is coming very soon.
| wpietri wrote:
| Do you have any evidence for your imaginations of how
| people lived in the past?
|
| My understanding is that a healthy old age in the past was
| rarer, but that we've not really changed the limits, just
| improved the median experience. See, e.g.:
| https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-
| is-n...
|
| > Are we on the cusp of technological developments that
| will make how we live further unrecognizable. Totally.
|
| I too like science fiction. But we've been "on the cusp of"
| a lot of those things for quite a long time. I think that's
| more indicative of what people who are afraid of death want
| than a cold-eyed analysis of current tech and rates of
| progress.
| mlyle wrote:
| > My understanding is that a healthy old age in the past
| was rarer, but that we've not really changed the limits,
| just improved the median experience.
|
| Even if your premise is true: there's still a _whole lot
| of room_ to improve the median experience.
|
| And I don't think it's really true, but it's hard to say
| exactly. Part of the reason why we have people make it to
| 110 now versus that not happening a couple centuries ago
| is that we have more people and thus more rolls of the
| dice, but it's not the entire reason.
|
| > But we've been "on the cusp of" a lot of those things
| for quite a long time.
|
| I haven't felt like we've been very close. But now, I
| think we have a reasonable chance of a couple therapies
| that each buy few years of QALY for the entire population
| in the next 30 years, and when you look 50 years out
| maybe you even stack several of these things.
| wpietri wrote:
| There's room to improve the median experience, sure.
| Maybe not a whole lot, though. And I'm not sure people
| making it to 110 is positive; I'm interested in actually
| living, not a couple decades of being warehoused.
|
| > I haven't felt like we've been very close.
|
| I'm not saying _you personally_ felt like that. I 'm
| saying that that the "sci fi things are just around the
| corner" routine is perennial. AGI and robots and flying
| cars have been coming soon for longer than most people
| have been alive.
|
| I also note that "couple therapies that each buy a few
| years" is a major retreat from the point I was actually
| adressing which was life made unrecognizable by
| salamander limbs, etc.
| mlyle wrote:
| > And I'm not sure people making it to 110 is positive;
| I'm interested in actually living,
|
| Centenarians don't do so badly in a lot of quality of
| life measures. They actually have a lower level of
| dependency, on average, than those in their late 80s.
|
| But in any sense, this is why I mentioned QALYs (quality-
| adjusted life years).
|
| > AGI and robots and flying cars have been coming soon
| for longer than most people have been alive.
|
| I think this misstates what most people have felt was
| imminent. Occasional luminaries feeling that flying cars
| were close (e.g. Ford), and breathless media pieces does
| not a consensus view make.
|
| In any case, this whole line of argument ("Lots of people
| have believed this forever@!(!") even if it were true,
| would not be a great argument against assessing the
| current prospects as pretty good.
|
| > I also note that "couple therapies that each buy a few
| years" is a major retreat from the point I was actually
| adressing which was life made unrecognizable by
| salamander limbs, etc.
|
| 3 years of QALY for the population would likely look like
| 30% of the population getting some crazy-ass therapy that
| adds _many_ years of QALY, and many other people dying
| too soon or having other ailments that are not addressed.
|
| Alternatively it could come from finding something
| unexpectedly cheap and broadly helpful that you could
| treat a very large percentage of the population from and
| that most people benefit and get 5 years.
| wpietri wrote:
| When I point out your handwaving, I am not looking for
| more handwaving in response. My impression stands. I
| think you, like many, are indulging in technoutopian
| wishful thinking.
| mlyle wrote:
| > When I point out your handwaving, I am not looking for
| more handwaving in response.
|
| ??? You seemed to broadly agree with the one and only
| comment that I made, and then I offered some nuanced
| disagreement to your statement. And then you have this,
| frankly, hostile response.
|
| It's really rich for someone with this in their profile:
|
| > than people being respectful and/or standing behind
| their words.
|
| Exercise some respect. We're talking about assessing
| probabilities of distant events on multi-decade horizons.
| It's going to be hand-wavy, just like your dismissal of
| the prospects is hand-wavy (it's unlikely because
| allegedly people were too optimistic about flying cars??)
|
| > I think you, like many, are indulging in technoutopian
| wishful thinking.
|
| Well, the horizon I pointed out is long enough that I've
| got relatively poor prospects of benefitting from it
| myself...
| TimPC wrote:
| Double lifespan sounds like a nightmare if we don't
| dramatically change all of society first. I don't think
| it's possible to make that work unless we're talking about
| raising a retirement age to something like 130. In that
| case you better be actually be roughly halving aging so
| that a person can still work at 130, not adding a bunch of
| low quality years to life.
| Teever wrote:
| It would be great if we could hit the pause button and
| 'fix' society exactly the way we want it, but that isn't
| how it works, so we'll have to roll with the
| technological innovations and adapt society as they come.
| mullingitover wrote:
| There's a simple recipe for ultra-long life that's
| guaranteed to work, and would work via the traditional
| mechanisms of evolution: progressively raise the
| childbearing age for a group of people over many
| generations. Start by only allowing childbirth at age 30
| or so, then every few generations you raise it more. It
| would take time, but eventually you could have people
| living for centuries. It would have the advantage that
| society would slowly and naturally adapt to it as
| longevity increased.
| thereticent wrote:
| Good luck "only allowing" a common result of sex under a
| certain age but well above sexual maturity. Somehow I
| have my doubts about implementation.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Good luck with your eugenics project. Society rejected
| the notion quite a while ago.
| mlyle wrote:
| Aside from the eugenics nature of it, this is an
| experiment we're gradually trying naturally.
|
| High-SES people are having children at later ages and are
| mostly having children with each other. If there's
| selection effects to be reaped, we'll witness them.
|
| But I suspect we won't, because not enough people die
| before these later childbearing ages to affect things
| much. Neither do a great enough fraction die before said
| later children reach adulthood, and high-SES children
| have prospects of reproducing affected less by loss of a
| parent, anyways.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Note that I'm not saying it should be done, just that
| this is how evolution can accomplish it. It should go
| without saying that breeding humans like cattle is wildly
| unethical.
| tenpies wrote:
| > Double lifespan sounds like a nightmare if we don't
| dramatically change all of society first.
|
| See I'm not worried because odds are this won't be a
| simple intervention. It won't be "take this pill daily to
| 2X your lifespan". It will likely be an incredible effort
| that takes constant discipline and daily commitment. And
| most people simply are incapable or unwilling to do that.
|
| I expect only fraction of a percent to maybe do the work
| necessary, and even then, it will come at a huge personal
| expense.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| Alternative/fun sci-fi plot: The aliens who sped up our
| evolution by artificially limiting our lifespans did so via
| relatively sloppy means and there is in fact an "off" switch
| waiting on some grad student to stumble upon
| gumby wrote:
| Some alien crashed on this planet about 4.5 Gy ago so made
| some proteins and nucleic and released them on the planet.
|
| Once it started recombining the alien went to sleep or
| maybe to play some video games while waiting for this
| process to develop space flight and send some probes that
| the alien's buddies might encounter and read the message
| encoded in the DNA: "Hey, could you please swing by and
| pick me up? My ship got a flat and I don't have a spare"
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Human evolution doesn't care about life after prehistoric
| child-rearing. It has no reason to optimise for longevity.
|
| HGH has deleterious health effects when abused. But it can
| also make you a famous movie star living a life of luxury
| whose children will never have to work. Our personal goals
| have very different parameters to what defined our evolution.
|
| There are also other things that the human body benefits from
| but can't make itself. Creatine, essential amino acids,
| essential minerals and vitamins.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'd disagree that evolution doesn't care about longevity.
| There could be survival benefit to have grandparents around
| to help take care of kids while the parents are hunting or
| whatever. But after a point, it's a negative, as the young
| would have to spend disproportionate resources caring for
| and feeding the elderly who don't really provide any value
| anymore.
|
| The old of all species die and make room for the (hopefully
| larger) generation of the young.
| etothepii wrote:
| This is not true if all creatures, Human Fish, Lobsters
| etc.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. It's as foolish to me as somebody thinking they can
| keep a classic car going forever if they just use a better
| motor oil.
|
| In the early days of the automobile, Ford sent people around
| to junkyards to look at their cars. They were looking for two
| things. One was obvious; they were looking for things that
| consistently failed too soon, so they could make them better.
| The other was to look for things that had a lot of life left
| in them, so they could make them cheaper. The net result: a
| car that was great when new, did pretty well for a while, and
| then had thing after thing going wrong with it, such that it
| was just time to get a new one.
|
| Evolution is, like Ford, an unsentimental optimizer. I
| believe bodies are basically the same deal as cars. That's
| certainly how people talk about getting old; everything
| starts to wear out at around the same time. Doctors are happy
| to fight individual problems, but even in the best hospitals,
| doctors will get to the point where somebody has too many
| problems, is too medically fragile, for them to treat
| anything.
|
| And from the perspective of one's genes, that's fine. Like
| people buy new cars, genes build shiny new bodies so they can
| continue roving the world. With an infinite supply of new
| bodies available, why would they make any individual one such
| that it could last forever? Much better to build cheap and
| replace every so often. The frequency of "so often" changes
| for the circumstance, but the pattern doesn't.
| gumby wrote:
| > Evolution is, like Ford, an unsentimental optimizer.
|
| I certainly won't argue with this position, but note that
| evolution is a peephole optimizer, rather than trying
| newton's method, much less trying to optimize with a goal
| in mind. It does seem most people draw the wrong conclusion
| from the ape-to-man drawing (e.g.
| https://www.kindpng.com/picc/m/408-4084640_evolution-ape-
| to-... )
|
| It's a random walk: each set of die rolls is continually
| tested on local (i.e. contemporary) conditions. You may
| have superior lifespan but live where people commonly die
| in floods. Only broad signals (e.g. ambient temperatures
| ranging between -10 and 40 C) really determine widespread
| attributes.
|
| So what? Well 300 My of human evolution has included
| feedback loops uncommon and later unknown to other animals:
| speech, writing, and the social structures they afforded;
| hygene and other medical intervention; etc, and they do
| feed back into evolution even at the slow rate at which
| humans reproduce. Now we can (poorly) do genetic
| intervention, it's quite possible to subject humans to more
| rapid evolutionary pressure (most of it likely driven by
| fashion), with an attempt to move to goal-directed rather
| than peephole optimization.
| wpietri wrote:
| I agree with what you said, but I don't see how it
| relates to the question of whether the sort of silver
| bullets the forever-young crowd want actually exist.
| ddingus wrote:
| I know exactly why. And I agree with our parent commenter,
| BTW.
|
| The down votes are from people who want to believe. And I
| won't blame or judge them. It is an ugly, extremely likely
| truth.
|
| Who wants to die?
|
| Not me, not on current timelines. After a longer time? Maybe.
| We may tire of the world or something.
|
| But otherwise, yeah. Our condition is amazing! We all get
| this free ticket to our world, and there is no where near
| enough time to fully appreciate it.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I assume there is already a black market for klotho injections?
| zug_zug wrote:
| PSA - If you think you're never going to die, you're wrong and
| you are in emotional denial and talk it over with a therapist or
| something.
|
| The human body is a machine with so many failure modes that we
| don't even remotely understand all the ways you can die. The idea
| that we'll find 1 magical variable (telomere length or some
| protein) that can be fixed and ALL the changes of aging (from
| growth, sexual development, menopause, brain shrinkage, skin
| wrinkles, bone density loss) will go back to exactly perfect AND
| any other ways you can die will all be prevented (car accident,
| cancer, diabetes, etc) is just about zero.
|
| For example the human brain in constantly losing brain cells
| (which don't grow back obviously). Many body cells don't regrow
| at all[1]. I'm sure there are many other mechanisms in the human
| that never evolved to the point of >100 year reliability.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_cell
| moneywoes wrote:
| On the bright side is there anything we can do to limit this
| loss of brain cells?
|
| I guess my grand parents suggestion of eating almonds isn't
| viable..
| kiba wrote:
| There's never going to be a single treatment for aging, but
| there's an intervention everyone knows theycan take to slow
| down the inevitable decline until medicine improves to the
| point it can aid in in slowing and then reversing the decline.
|
| Mostly, it involves exercise of various kinds.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > The idea that we'll find 1 magical variable (telomere length
| or some protein) that can be fixed and ALL the changes of
| aging...
|
| Agree with this, but on the other hand: the idea that the body
| is "a machine" that comes out of the factory in "new" condition
| and slowly degrades by wear, accidents and corrosion is also a
| wrong analogy. The body doesn't just degrade because of
| entropy. Bodies bootstrap themselves to some pristine state and
| can return to it, after injuries or illness, for tens of years.
| The ability to restore an optimal state is just lost, it's not
| something that needs to be invented again.
| jbm wrote:
| Thank you for your efforts. Sadly, despite the image of
| rationality, the delusional thinking you infer to is widespread
| in industry.
|
| I've had a manager telling me that aliens were going to offer
| us the secrets of immortality and "zero point energy", while
| another one seriously claimed that "We will develop time
| travel, and we will all rescue each other at the end of our
| lives in a chain of immortality". These are the more extreme
| examples, but the wishful thinking component is common. What is
| also common is that most of these people never spent time in a
| university biochem or genetics class.
|
| If the idea of chemically-induced immortality gives one
| comfort, sure, I am irrational at times too so I understand.
| However, the complexity and depressing nature of human biology
| and human genetics will relieve you of this wishful thinking if
| you so choose. Feel free to look at reptile regeneration
| models; I did and I'm glad I had the sense to get out before it
| ruined my life.
|
| For those naysayers desperate for their immortality fix,
| perhaps a fresh round of teenage blood transfusions[1] are in
| order?
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/02/could-
| young-...
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Is this how you walk around talking to people? Get off your
| pedastal, mate. It comes across as rude, take a day off. Nobody
| needs to be informed about your "PSA".
|
| Who hasn't had had someone close to us die?
| zug_zug wrote:
| Yes, I'm rude. And so are you. I don't care whether you like
| it.
|
| I'm a participant in this forum and it's my perrogative to
| get people who post stupid stuff, like attempts at
| immortality, to stop, by downvotes and comments. Moreover
| from MY perspective you should have learned understand this
| forum isn't a place for a friendly speculation with people
| who know nothing relevant on a topic like your local pub.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Do you think your comments are effective? People don't
| generally react well to someone telling them "your idea is
| stupid, you need to see a therapist".
| zug_zug wrote:
| Yes, I think my comments are effective, but I don't think
| they are pleasant.
|
| It seems like you think it's wrong to give great advice
| that might hurt feelings, if that's what you think then I
| think you're wrong and possibly causing more harm in the
| long term.
| november84 wrote:
| PSA - your comments are never going to stop people from
| posting or commenting.
|
| This forum has many different personalities and
| perspectives. People with soft skills and people with
| almost none.
|
| Work on the soft skills mate. No need to be so abrasive.
| zug_zug wrote:
| You are well aware that every remark everyone says has
| some small impact on those around us, otherwise you
| wouldn't be making such remarks yourself.
|
| Like I said, if you want a forum for jabbering on topics
| you know nothing about with friendly people, I'm sure you
| can find a local pub. I want a forum where inside experts
| who read peer-reviewed studies or have first-hand
| experience give a download, and the rest to hold their
| tongue.
|
| I think you may be in the "the rest."
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > There must be a price for injecting increasing quantities of
| proteins to the body to turn back the clock.
|
| Go read _Flowers for Algernon_
| submeta wrote:
| The thought of everlasting life seems at first glance to be quite
| enticing, yet the inevitability of death is what gives life its
| value and meaning. In some ways, this reminds me of a metaphor: a
| fetus not wishing to leave its mother's womb. The womb is
| comfortable, familiar, and safe - much like our lives. However,
| without birth, the opportunity to experience the world in all its
| beauty and complexity, in all its highs and lows, would remain
| unrealized.
|
| We find ourselves fearful of death, not because it is inherently
| terrifying, but due to our limited comprehension of its nature.
| Our collective fear of the unknown compels us to seek perpetual
| life as a means to sidestep this uncertainty. Yet, death is as
| much a part of life as birth, and perhaps our trepidation stems
| from misunderstanding, rather than the event itself.
|
| In much of life, as with the natural world, there exists a
| cyclical pattern of transformation - not an abrupt cessation. If
| we look to Buddhist philosophy, for example, we see the belief
| that our ego-mind, the part of us that clings to transient
| moments and shies away from change, is what dreads the idea of
| letting go. It's this ego-mind that is afraid of losing itself,
| of losing control.
|
| Yet, Buddhism also teaches us the concept of Anatta, or non-self,
| a notion that suggests that this clinging ego-mind isn't our true
| nature. By holding on so tightly to our lives, we may be
| disregarding the beauty and wisdom inherent in change, in letting
| go, and perhaps, in death itself.
|
| Just as a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, maybe death is not
| an end but a metamorphosis, a transcendence into a different
| state of existence that our current understanding simply cannot
| grasp. After all, every living being encounters death. This
| universality suggests that it holds purpose and significance in
| the grand scheme of life's narrative.
|
| I think, before we leap into the pursuit of eternal life, perhaps
| we should first strive to better understand, accept, and make
| peace with the cycle of life and death.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > the inevitability of death is what gives life its value and
| meaning.
|
| By what mechanism does it do that? How do you conclude that
| life has any meaning or value? What is the value and meaning of
| life according to you?
| submeta wrote:
| I believe the concept of 'meaning' is inherently human
| because we are intrinsically teleological beings. We
| habitually seek meaning, purpose, or goal-orientation in
| every aspect of our existence.
|
| I also believe that the concept of 'meaning' exists only
| within the realm of human consciousness. Outside the human
| experience, the concept of 'meaning' is virtually non-
| existent. For instance, the cosmos doesn't assign 'meaning'
| to celestial events; they simply occur in adherence to the
| laws of physics.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| You sound like a Cartesian dualist. Consider the following:
|
| 1. Why should "human consciousness" have a teleological
| character, while everything else in the universe should be
| devoid of it? This means that "human consciousness" is
| different from the rest of the universe in some intrinsic,
| substantial way. Hence, dualism, and in the Cartesian
| scheme, this division is expressed in the distinction
| between _res cogitans_ and _res extensa_. But then if human
| consciousness (or res cogitans) is distinct, then we can at
| least entertain the possibility of the immortality of
| personal human consciousness as it is not subject to the
| flux of the remainder of the universe in which things pass
| into and out of existence.
|
| 2. What is a law of physics? Where can I find one? Does it
| haunt the universe like a ghost, enforcing obedience to its
| will on otherwise inert "stuff"? That sounds like either
| another consciousness, or a third category of thing. Or it
| is perhaps just a convenient way of summarizing observed
| regularities, regularities that must be accounted for by,
| say, appealing to the the nature of a kind of thing? The
| difference matters, because now we must begin to talk
| telos.
|
| 3. How do you explain efficient causality without final
| causality? How can you account for regularity? If I strike
| a match against a matchbox, I can predictably cause fire.
| Fire is predictably the result, not the manifestation of an
| elephant or a cheeseburger or Beethoven's 9th symphony. The
| match is causally ordered in a way that, when the right
| cause comes along, the effect of fire is achieved. That is
| all that telos is, the ordering of things toward effect or
| _end_. The nature of a thing is realized--actualized--in
| the effecting of what it is ordered toward. (People confuse
| telos with conscious, deliberative purpose, but that is but
| a species.)
|
| 4. What is _meaning_? Do you deny that things are what they
| are, that they are intelligible for what they are? If you
| do, then what business do you have telling us what the
| universe and human consciousness is like? Are you a
| nominalist[0]? If so, what business do you have making
| general statements about the universe and human
| consciousness?
|
| [0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11090c.htm
| guerrilla wrote:
| Well, that partly answers the second question but what
| about the other two? As for the second, how does the fact
| that we seek it and that it is would have to be
| psychological entail that it exists and that we find it?
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| I guess we have to accept that this perspective will be at the
| bottom of such threads.
|
| But this is the conclusion I've come to as well. I used to fear
| death, now I fear wasting my life.
|
| The more I learn about the natural world, the more I can see
| that death is a gift, a mechanism for renewal as well as for
| protecting things which have existed for millions of years.
|
| Nothing I have in my brain is that special, compared to what
| the collective of life has created. I'm happy to give up living
| and become a more background part of what comes next. It's an
| honor. And I hope I can honor it.
|
| It's very interesting to read this thread though and remember
| that so many people see death as a simple black line that might
| just as well be evaded as understood.
| pyth0 wrote:
| I feel similarly to you, and yet there is always such a
| strong negative reaction to this sort of sentiment in anti-
| aging threads. I wonder what people outside the HN bubble
| think of this, since I've always thought that coming to terms
| with death and your own mortality was just a part of growing
| up.
| DennisP wrote:
| Coming to terms with death is a necessary adaption to the
| fact that we're all going to die in a fairly short time. If
| we had an expected lifespan of ten thousand years, then I
| wonder how many people would think that the way to "grow
| up" is to give up 99% of that time, rather than living
| those years and learning whatever lessons they bring.
|
| Perhaps, when the solar system is full of 5000-year-olds,
| they'll marvel that we infants were able to muddle through
| at all.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Buddhism's "solution" is essentially personal suicide. "How can
| I die, if I am not, save in some non-personal sense?" But
| nobody really cares about a "non-personal" survival, making
| this an effectively nihilistic way of dealing with the subject.
|
| (A nice, short summary of various positions you might find
| interesting: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07687a.htm)
| DennisP wrote:
| Perhaps. But if I had the opportunity to investigate those
| concepts by meditating for several centuries, as one part of an
| even longer life, I'm not so sure that'd be a bad idea.
| Buddhism also, after all, includes the concept of Bodhisattvas,
| who don't need to incarnate but choose to do so anyway, out of
| compassion for others.
| pengaru wrote:
| The wikipedia page for klotho has an informative section re:
| anti-aging effects
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klotho_(biology)#Effects_on_ag...
| [deleted]
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