26 ms·

The fight to cheat death is heating up

175 points by edward 10y ago

pessimizer 10y ago
Of course it is, the baby boomers are dying. 10-15 years from now, they'll all have left their positions of authority, and the fight to cheat death will cool down again.
- jfoutz 10y ago
  I'm not so sure about the cool down, but i think you're exactly right about the baby boomers. Nobody wants to die. I don't think many baby boomers are connecting the anti-aging dots directly. But that large, wealthy, aging group of people are certainly spurring a ton of research. Take this pill to not die is the ultimate killer app. I don't think it's going to work out. I think a lot of money will go to snake oil, but hopefully something good will come of it.
  - k-mcgrady 10y ago
    >> "Nobody wants to die." I do. Living for ever, or even much longer than our current life expectancy doesn't appeal to me at all. I like my life, but I also like that someday it will end. Back when I was religious (I'm not now) the idea of heaven or eternal life seemed strange to me as it was 'the goal' yet not something I wanted and the idea that I had to 'live forever' was quite worrying. I'm curious if I'm in a minority on this. It's probably important to point out I don't want to die anytime soon but the idea that I continue living for longer than another 80 years for example is not appealing.
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    - fma 10y ago
      If you were in some parts of Africa, your life expectancy would be 50...Why does current life expectancy matter? As long as you still maintain quality of life and can be happy, why die? I think as soon as you are not happy and have no contributions to society, then there's less reason to increase life expectancy.
      - k-mcgrady 10y ago
        >> "Why does current life expectancy matter?" It doesn't - I was using it as an approx. number instead of putting a specific age. What I meant was living into my 80's is sufficient for me.
    - chc 10y ago
      It's hard to say if I'd actually like to live, say, a thousand years — neither I nor anyone else has experienced even a fraction of that, so who knows what it's like? I certainly don't want to die in the next few decades, but that's what's likely to happen. The life expectancy for a male in the US is about 75 years. I'm almost halfway there, but I don't feel like I'm halfway done living. Assuming you're still kinda young, do you really expect to hit 40 and think, "Bring on the decrepitude and death"?
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      If living forever were the default, would you choose to intentionally kill yourself?
      - happyslobro 10y ago
        It would be the last new experience, after everything else had been done to death...
        kaybe 10y ago
        It's not like people haven't done it before, or does it not count if you get a revive after 30 minutes without any brain activity?
        happyslobro 10y ago
        It only counts if you don't know that there is a revive available ;)
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Hell - in a world where living forever is the default, you can always kill yourself if and when you get bored.
      - duaneb 10y ago
        There are many situations where it would make sense to intentionally let yourself die. Are your neighbors starving? Maybe let the younger generations eat instead of you.
        JoshTriplett 10y ago
        If we can successfully cure death, I don't think we'll have a shortage of people willing to fund the spread of that cure universally. And once we have it, perhaps all remaining deaths will start to seem sufficiently tragic and avoidable that we'll do something about those, too. My reaction to your scenario is not "better die then", it's "better work faster and solve the problem then".
    - abraham_s 10y ago
      I too share the worry of living forever. I am still religious but I wonder what will you do if you live forever.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      I wonder where that comes from, too. You're definitely not the only one - I've seen plenty of people expressing similar opinions here on HN. That said, for me the idea of eternal life seems very appealing. There are so many things I'd like to do, so many areas of knowledge I'd like to explore, etc. that it would take me 10 lifetimes and it still would not be enough. I'm nearing 30, which means that I'm almost halfway through life. Life feels too short.
      - godshatter 10y ago
        I agree. I'm 50, and am in no way conceivably done living. Just the programming projects I want to do in the short term will take me a couple of decades to accomplish. If I knew I could stay at a reasonable level of health for another 100 years minimum, I'd tackle some harder problems that could take much longer. Also, as a spectator in this world of ours, I'd like to see what happens, good and bad, over the next century or two (or more).
    - landryraccoon 10y ago
      How old are you now? It's very easy to say you're not scared of dying when it's a distant, abstract concern that you aren't really confronted with. Some people, upon becoming terminally ill, suddenly realize that dying is a much bigger deal for them than they thought, now that it's an imminent possibility.
      - k-mcgrady 10y ago
        >> "How old are you now? It's very easy to say you're not scared of dying when it's a distant, abstract concern that you aren't really confronted with." That's the odd thing - I'm definitely scared of dying. I don't want to die - now. But I can definitely see a tipping point. I guess it maybe depends on how happy you are with your life. If I was financially secure and could spend my life doing what I liked 100% of the time then maybe there isn't a reason not to keep living. Otherwise I just feel like eventually I'll get exhausted overcoming one challenge after the other.
        AstralStorm 10y ago
        It is not like this kind of longevity would be impossible to opt out of. Why not try it first instead of dissmissing it out of hand?
        k-mcgrady 10y ago
        It might be quite hard to opt out of unless society vastly changes it's views on dying. I brought this up in another comment. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12272372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12272372
    - farresito 10y ago
      I, like you, would probably not sign a paper where it stated that I would live eternally, but I'm sure we both agree that having the choice to live for as long as we want (or rather, choosing when we want to stop living) is a pretty good choice to have. I think that's what most humans would want.
      - k-mcgrady 10y ago
        I do agree it's a good choice to have. Would we be given that choice though? I could be stricken with an incredibly painful disease tomorrow and have zero quality of life - and even if I wanted to die (and couldn't do it myself) nobody would be allowed to help. Now we're talking about a perfectly healthy person wanting to die. There's also your question of responsibility to others (young children for example) and whether or not you're making a rational decision or one clouded by temporary mental illness. Society will need to change massively before we have the choice to die when we want (assuming eternal life).
        farresito 10y ago
        I agree with you. It's actually a pretty interesting point of view, because I've thought about it too. Once we have enough knowledge to cure aging completely, we will probably have enough knowledge to cure depression and the likes. I support anti-aging research, but I agree that there are quite a few points that need to be discussed.
    - DennisP 10y ago
      So maybe anti-aging for you just means you die at age 100 by falling off a cliff you're free climbing, instead of languishing for a decade in some crappy nursing home.
tantalor 10y ago
"hotting up"? http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hot-up http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hot-up
- mc32 10y ago
  It's the trend against declension so instead of using "heating", you use "hotting", or instead of total "spending", total "spend". For many it sounds like it's more modern and young. But there are times when using the base word introduces collision with other meanings.
  - morley 10y ago
    "Hotting up" appears to be a quirk of British journalism, not necessarily a "trend." Not exactly modern and young when the first usage was in 1923 by P. G. Wodehouse. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10wwln-safire-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10wwln-safire-t.h...
  - charlesism 10y ago
    Interesting. My mental association is quaint and old. Where I live, it's the elderly who use the expression "hotting up;" generally in relation to food.
  - mabcat 10y ago
    Declension is for nouns, inflection's the more general term
chollida1 10y ago
A few weeks ago I wrote, what I thought was a simple comment about how I use fasting/calorie restriction that ended up getting 210 votes and causing a lot of differing opinions as to its health benefits. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188577 Aubrey De Grey is someone who has done alot of work in this area and I recommend watching his TED talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_a... Like almost all science in this area, nothing is really proven to work yet.
- deleted 10y ago
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- mikegedelman 10y ago
  You mentioned potentially lower cancer risk, is there any other reason you fast 6pm - noon next day? I've done intermittent fasting before, which is basically the same as what you said you do every day, but not sure if you call it that. Like, do you feel better during the day? I did it just to help lose weight, but would be interested in doing it again if there are other possible benefits.
- electriclove 10y ago
  Can you please describe how you do your 3 day fast? There were similar questions to your comment on the prior HN thread that were likely missed and went unanswered. Thank you!
- bduerst 10y ago
  In case anyone was wondering what the "Seven ways we age" are and doesn't want to sit through a TED video, you can find them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types_of_aging_damage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types...
- js2 10y ago
  The BBC documentary Eat, Fast and Live Longer by Michael Mosley also discusses the benefits of fasting: https://vimeo.com/103656060 https://vimeo.com/103656060
tantalor 10y ago
Who wrote this? There is no byline.
- chollida1 10y ago
  See this.... http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/economist-explains-itself-1 http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec... The Economist’s writers are always anonymous.
astazangasta 10y ago
It's appalling that something like this, which would fundamentally alter what it means to be human in a profound and everlasting way, can be so casually described and is being pursued with relatively little debate. I guess we'll have plenty of time to debate our folly after the immortal/vampire class has put the leashes on us for a few half-centuries.
- pilom 10y ago
  Oh but how much fun is it to contemplate? How does love, war, work, retirement, achievement, purpose, etc. change once you can live forever? Or once some subset of humanity can live forever? If you were nearly immortal how long would you mourn the death of a non-immortal spouse? Would you work an additional 5 years before retirement on the off chance that they figure out how to make you immortal between now and then? How would you treat a person who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you couldn't afford? How would that treatment affect inflation? How would immortals affect inflation? There is so much awesome material here for science fiction writers!
  - astazangasta 10y ago
    I fully intend to write this science fiction, but the fact that this COULD be reality (and I think the biology is tractable) should be sparking some sort of policy debate. There is actual capital flowing into these ventures... Speculative fiction is ten years behind where the money is.
    - __jal 10y ago
      As frequently happens, Bruce Sterling was there. Pick up a copy of _Holy Fire_.
    - surlyadopter 10y ago
      Drew Magary beat you to it. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal (It's a good read)
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ZeroFries 10y ago
We should focus on reducing suffering, not on creating arbitrarily long life-times. When suffering is low enough that death-anxiety is the greatest source of human angst, then work on immortality.
- kaybe 10y ago
  Looking at the bigger picture, too many people are doing utterly useless or even harmful stuff. If you're reassigning efforts, you should start there.
- rayalez 10y ago
  Why not work on both at the same time?
- ggreer 10y ago
  Considering that age-related illnesses are responsible for 100,000 of the 150,000 deaths each day[1], I think working on aging is a very effective way to reduce suffering. Also, I hope readers notice that nobody makes this criticism when someone works on a new mobile app, another static site generator, or My Little Pony fanfiction. It's an excellent example of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics.[2] 1. http://www.sens.org/files/pdf/ENHANCE-PP.pdf http://www.sens.org/files/pdf/ENHANCE-PP.pdf 2. https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
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pallavsharda 10y ago
This article illustrates superbly what Bill Gates said "We tend to overestimate the impact of changes that will happen in 2 years, and underestimate those that will happen in next 10 years"
reasonattlm 10y ago
The fascinating thing about the transition of aging research from mere investigation to the possibility of intervention is that many researchers don't even want to talk about extending life, but only a small expansion of healthspan. This lack of ambition, and refusal to engage with the large body of evidence that suggests we can do far better, is why we need organizations like the SENS Research Foundation and Methuselah Foundation, working to make the better option happen. It is possible and plausible to extend healthy life and overall lifespan indefinitely by implementing the approach of repairing the cell and tissue damage that causes aging. Yet all too much of the rhetoric and effort in the scientific community still goes towards tinkering with the operation of metabolism to slightly slow the pace at which damage accumulates - a clearly far inferior approach, that can at best produce only marginal outcomes. All of the technologies and approaches mentioned in this article are marginal, ways to only modestly slow the damage of aging from accumulation. They are very limited in what they can achieve - adding five to ten years to life would be an enormous, unlikely success for any one of these. Calorie restriction we know doesn't add more than that to human life spans, since we have plenty of examples to look at. Metformin data is all over the map in animal studies, just as contradictory and half-refuted as sirtuins. The transfer of young plasma to old individuals doesn't extend life in animal studies; it is pretty unlikely to have the desired effect in humans - that isn't the same thing as parabiosis. Human Longevity Inc is a personalized medicine company in fancy clothing, doing nothing that will greatly extend life, but rather looking for incremental gains in ordinary medicine. And so on. Sadly journalists typically don't distinguish between the potential value and outcome of different approaches to aging - it is all the same to them, just a flat list. So they pull five or ten items from the larger list to populate their articles, and mark them all equivalent. That's something of a problem when the differences are in fact enormously important and the expected outcomes are night and day when comparing approaches that repair damage versus approaches that do not repair damage. If there is to be significant progress towards healthy life extension in our lifetimes, the better strategies, those involving damage repair, must gain far greater support. This means the SENS list: senescent cell clearance, mitochondrial DNA damage, clearing metabolic waste like amyloid, lipofuscin, and cross-links, and so on.
rhodri 10y ago
Death makes space for new life, and new strategies. It's a key part of the evolutionary process, and thus of life itself. Yet another sign of the desperate egocentrism of a generation alienated from what it means to live.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  >Yet another sign of the desperate egocentrism of a generation alienated from what it means to live. I disagree. Fear of death is a cultural constant that almost every religious/spiritual movement in history has tried to assuage, either through the promise of an eternal afterlife or a belief in some pan-consciousness that we are all part of (i.e. eternal life).
- machinelearning 10y ago
  I find it amusing how you make an extraordinary claim as though its obviously true, and then criticize life extension as "desperate egocentrism". How exactly is death directly responsible for new strategies? And how is it a "key part of the evolutionary process"? If there are no known answers to these questions, it is absurd to think they are true.
- fma 10y ago
  Trees can live for hundreds, even thousands of years.
  - remontoire 10y ago
    Which is exactly why we are cutting those egotistical bastards down and sitting on them.
- saulrh 10y ago
  Evolution is an awful optimization process. It's only effective in real life because it's had literally billions of years to work. Intelligently-guided directed optimization is vastly superior and we should prefer it whenever possible, if only for reasons of practicality and efficiency. For example, look at the development of flight: biological evolution took probably a few billion years to evolve things like pteranodons and archaeopteryx; we landed on the moon in about seventy years. Evolution is amazing, sure. It's also evil, bad, and wrong, even without getting into ethical issues. Don't do it. (speaking of ethical issues: http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/ http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/)
okreallywtf 10y ago
I read The Dying Man by Damon Knight when I was a teenager and it had a profound affect on me at the time in regards to thoughts about immortality (it would be interesting to read it again, it would probably seem less significant now). It is not at all dystopian which puts it out-of-style but it paints an interesting picture of a far-future where the population has settled and immortality is essentially the norm. I recommend picking it up as a quick short read. Personally I find myself being more cynical about these kinds of things because I think all reality this will not be a good thing in the near future for all but a very small set of people who will (without changes to the system) be able to maintain wealth and control for generations and further imbalance our already imbalanced world. My real hope is that this increased understanding can lead to increased quality of life for all people if not widespread immortality, but given our ability to disregard the suffering of other people already it seems unlikely. Those of us living in the first world will probably continue to lead longer, more comfortable lives at the expense of or disregarding that of the rest of the world.
- nugget 10y ago
  Forget achieving immortality - if we manage to extend average lifespan to even 120 years of age then almost all of our socioeconomic systems break down and we have to more or less rebuild society from the ground up.
  - api 10y ago
    Hey on the bright side it's not like any of our existing socioeconomic systems are great. Last I checked we did not live in a utopia.
    - Swizec 10y ago
      Not utopia compared to what? My great grandmother had to have 8 kids so that she could have 4 or 5 adult children. That was less than 100 years ago. My grand parents were the children of subsistence farmers without running water or electricity. They went to high school, worked in factories, and could get broadcast TV in their living room. Electricity and running water became a base default. My parents work in an office pushing papers around. Even the society of their youth seems alien in its antiquatedness of both social mores and amenities. I get paid to think things and can reasonably expect to live essentially disease free until my 70's. Achieving 90 in relatively good health and vitality doesn't seem out of the question. Seems pretty utopic to me. What not-utopia are you talking about? EDIT: Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo Over the past 200 years, the difference between 1st world and 3rd world has all but vanished. We still have a ways to go, but no utopia is perfect. Even in the movies.
mulcahey 10y ago
Relevant reading from philosopher Nick Bostrom: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
Pxtl 10y ago
Related comic: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/8/1556848/-Cartoon-Millennial-lament http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/8/1556848/-Cartoon-Mi...
Joof 10y ago
So if nobody dies, how do we deal with evolution in the case that we need it. What about brain plasticity? Young brains learn new concepts well and use those experiences to create new ideas and innovations. We should try to fight aging, but if that succeeds there are a lot of other societal problems that need to be solved as well.
- aantix 10y ago
  tDCS appears to help with Neuroplasticity.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  So if nobody dies, how do we deal with evolution in the case that we need it? It needs to be seen that having older people around isn't a hindrance to evolution, but rather a great assist to it -- precisely because they have so many memories, and so many of the positive qualities (patience, forbearance... and a general lack of vanity) that naturally come with being around the planet for so long. Which those of stuck in (seemingly) lively, energetic younger bodies can greatly benefit from.
  - GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
    >It needs to be seen that having older people around isn't a hindrance to evolution, but rather a great assist to it ... That seems rather unlikely. "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." -Max Planck
    - AstralStorm 10y ago
      He could have been wrong too. Because he was still alive. ;-)
  - Joof 10y ago
    I mean the kind where we swap genes. A lower birthrate doesn't help much. Genetic engineering exists, but we can't change how our bodies have already developed quite so easily. I think occasional increases in brain plasticity may be more useful to change society itself (assuming you can get people to do something that alters their brains). That may not be necessary of course.
bhewes 10y ago
Seems like this will be a growth technology field. Though I am making the assumption that developments will also apply to more then just the elderly. An example would be keeping a larger percentage of the population in peak or near peak mental and physical health for longer.
johnward 10y ago
I guess I don't understand the desire to live forever. Do people really want suffer through daily life for eternity? Disclaimer: I barely make it through a week without thinking about not wanting to live though.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  There really is so much beauty (and yes, meaning) out there to experience, comprehend, and enjoy. And there are so many kind, brilliant, fascinating people (and other living entities) to experience and share notes on it all with. Despite all the inevitable hassle and suffering and messiness. So yes, I'd say it's worth it. You don't have to try to stretch it out indefinitely, time-wise, if that's not your thing. I think the key to our journey through all of "this", whatever it is, is to treat it as if it is, in fact, infinite (or rather timeless), even though our conscious experience of it happens to be stuck on a one-way track which makes it seem (to our primitive minds) like it's finite.
  - ZeroFries 10y ago
    But why do you need to experience that beauty through one particular consciousness track, experienced through one particular mind (even this statement is incorrect, because if you define a person as a particular configuration of matter, then you are a new mind each time-interval)? Make way for new configurations, for more brilliant, fascinating minds.
    - Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
      If you are speaking in terms of spiritual experiences, you can of course be having any kind of those and nothing can really be argued about it, because they are subjective. If, however, you are making an objective claim about "past lives" and reincarnation - there is no solid evidence for it. 99% of "past life memories" examples are in the form of "I had a family and we had a house" (omg, that sounds like our dead relative, you must be him reincarnated), or in a form of an obviously imagined past life of a historic figure, with details which have been read in history books by the individual claiming to experience the said past life. And interestingly they always seem to read about the historic figure first (giving their subconscious mind the change to soak up that knowledge (in this life though)), and "experiencing a past life" only after. So to answer your question - because you only get one particular mind, and that's it. This is what science shows us. Whether you "feel like" you are "one with all other minds" is just a subjective experience. It's not physical reality.
davidf18 10y ago
Curiously, just today I was researching the public health efforts in the Finnish town of North Karelia which is known in public health as a place that started reducing heart attacks beginning in the early 1970's and saw an article referencing Blue Zones. The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426211929/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426211929/ https://communities.bluezonesproject.com https://communities.bluezonesproject.com From the first Amazon review of the book, written by a woman: "I first ran into my own "Blue Zone" when I hiked up a mountain near Zermatt, Switzerland to a village that was only accessible by hiking or cable car. A 102-year old woman dashed past me, UPHILL ON ICE, in felt boots, while I was (in my 40's) trying to struggle up the incline with the assistance of two ski poles. Later, I found her, running the local inn and making strudel, which was the most delicious I've ever had. She was making the strudel that day, because her OLDER sister was taking a nap."
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paulcole 10y ago
Before being diagnosed with a chronic disease, I was very interested in life extension. Now, I really couldn't care less about living a long time and try to enjoy the life I have-- inconvenient and frustrating though it may be. In a way it's funny. Now I think about how I plan to shorten my life when/if the need arises rather than extending it at all costs.
visarga 10y ago
I don't think that "I" from 10 years into the future is the same as the "I" from 10 years ago. The accumulation of small changes is like a "small death" that comes every day. We forget most of everything, we are thrust in different situations, and those situations make ourselves effectively different because they trigger our abilities in a different way. Fighting death is more about the immortality of the body. The mind is recycled much sooner. The "I" is created by the mind anew every moment. Even sleep is like a mini-death, because we "don't exist" for a short time, then we continue existing again. But, of course, if we actually get to cheat death and live forever, a new kind of life opens up. If we can back up our minds and then upload them into a young body or in a virtual reality, then we can also be more like a character in a game. We could have many "lives", we could have "save checkpoints", we could restore from previous points, or fork and create more of us. In fact life would not be the same as it was during "linear life". Would a meta-life such as this be the same as immortality? I don't think it would. It would be a completely different thing altogether.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  Or you know the universe is a simulation and you and I are already temporary characters.
  - austinjp 10y ago
    The notion of our reality being an emulation feels analogous to the "we're first; we're few; we're fucked" notion of whether there's alien life. Someone has to create the emulator, if an emulator indeed exists (at any given time). Maybe that will be us.
    - coupdetaco 10y ago
      Sure, but that doesn't mean we live in base reality. Simulations running simulations!
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oli5679 10y ago
In the UK, your chance of death within the year crawls from approx 0 to 5% between 0 and 80 but then climbs rapidly to 30% by 100 and >50% by 110. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html The recent 100 years of medical advances have lead to massive life expectancy gains (1/4-1/3 year per year in the developed world) but has had no noticeable impact on the age of the oldest living humans or mortality rates of centurions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_... Based on this, I think there's a good case for pessimism when speculating whether any living human will live to 150+.
- duncan_bayne 10y ago
  "I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years" - Wilbur Wright "It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere." - Thomas Edison "There has been a great deal said about a ... rocket shot from one continent to another, carrying an atomic bomb and so directed as to be a precise weapon ... I say, technically, I don't think anyone in the world knows how to do such a thing. and I feel confident it will not be done for a very long period to come. I think we can leave that out of our thinking. I wish the American public would leave that out of their thinking." - Dr. Vannevar Bush Edited: what I meant by the above is that humanity has a solid track history of mis-estimating the pace of progress in new fields.
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  - krastanov 10y ago
    But mis-estimation goes both ways. Most academics were very optimistic about early general AI, for instance.
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
micky_25 10y ago
Reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
- hacker42 10y ago
  That's just an appeal to nature. Just because something was an evolutionary necessity (and that is not even clear in this case) it does not follow that that thing should actually be desirable for us. A plausible explanation of aging is for example the evolutionary shadow: From the perspective of your genes you don't matter (much) after you've successfully passed on you genes to the next generation. Thus there is no evolutionary pressure for longevity. The programmed cell decay of aging might be a way of multicellular organisms to fight cancer.
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  - Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
    There is another aspect for which the longetivity could be selected by the evolution, besides passing on the genes: it's passing on the knowledge. As a social species, in the development of humans it's not only the biological structures that are important (the body itself), but the informational, social structures. A tribe which works well socially (helping each other, keeping together etc.) will survive much better and longer than a tribe of individualists, and yet even better than individuals living on their own. A big part of actually keeping a tribe structure alive is the knowledge than elders constantly pass on to the new generation. And that does not stop after the genes are passed. Additionally, there seems to be some (deeper, philosophical) knowledge that is very hard to acquire before a certain age. It just takes that long to collect enough experience to be able to connect certain high level concepts. It's very likely that a tribe with longer-living monkeys (metaphorically) would have more of these wise elders that have acquired the knowledge and could pass it on better to the rest, than a tribe with monkeys that would die off fast after making babies. But this still would only mean that the evolution would not kill you off directly after passing on the genes, but instead some time afterwards, after you've already learned all important things about life and were able to quickly teach them to the new generation. It would still kill you off either way.
AWildDHHAppears 10y ago
With obesity at 66% (in the United States) I think the average life expectancy will start going down. 1900/day isn't very extreme. It's what I do on days I don't go to the gym (and 2200/day on days I do go). And I'm not underweight either--I'm within the healthy BMI range. People just eat too much food!
- adrenalinelol 10y ago
  66% is overweight OR obese[1]. Being overweight doesn't pose as many health-risks as being obese.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    Heck, obesity correlates well with life expectancy but that's probably because sickness causes weight loss.
mohn 10y ago
The discussion of calorie restriction (CR) brought to mind a piece by NYmag reporter Julian Dibbell on his experience trying out CR for two months: http://nymag.com/news/features/23169/ http://nymag.com/news/features/23169/ On the sillier side, I recommend "Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart. It's an entertaining novel with themes of life extension and near-future dystopian technology. Anyone who liked the "please drink a verification can" greentext will probably enjoy it.
grondilu 10y ago
Whatever life is worth living for, I don't think it requires eternity.
- pjscott 10y ago
  How long does it require? And might the answer, perhaps, be higher than 78.8 years? Or maybe higher than 200? How about 1000?
  - grondilu 10y ago
    To put it simply, I don't feel like the current human lifespan is too short.
tvural 10y ago
Longevity research is interesting because you could theoretically get to a point where one year of research extends people's lives more than one year. Then the people who avoided car accidents and the flu could live indefinitely, which is much more of a transformation than people living to 120. Will we live to see this happen? The optimistic view is that longevity research is very under explored right now, and there may be some significant low-hanging fruit. Also, if AI or nanotechnology live up to their hype quickly enough, they could significantly accelerate research. More pessimistically, I see at least three major obstacles: (a) Medical research sucks as it is, and longevity research is inherently time-consuming. There are ways to ease this, like testing treatments on mice first, but I don’t see an easy way around the need to apply the test to humans and wait many years to see the results. (b) The human body is hard to understand and manipulate - we haven’t cured cancer yet, despite all our effort. (c) Until people’s attitudes about death change (or those people die and are replaced by people with different attitudes), longevity research will continue to attract much less attention than it deserves. Most people have psychologically committed themselves to doing nothing about death. They accept it will happen to them with 100% certainty, but they deny it will happen to them anytime soon, so they ignore it.
- Salgat 10y ago
  It's scary to think of what life would be if you are immortal, but can still die from an accident. Makes you wonder if you ever want to leave the house until society becomes safer.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    The trouble is, your house is a death trap too. Heck, the whole planet is. Typically, mobility and active approach to such immortality brings better results.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ue_ 10y ago
I'm surprised there's no mention of Buddhism here. To accept death as a natural process, to realise that every being is subject to birth, old age, sometimes sickness and death, to constantly remind oneself of death leads to, in many ways, a more fulfilling life. Clinging to youth, good looks, being alive itself - these are all causes of suffering, as there is nothing permanent. People wanting to "cheat death" are attempting to find refuge in impermanence. But there isn't any to be found. What is changing is unsafe. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't take medications or life-saving surgeries, as those aren't done with the intention of permanence in mind. Buddhism says that superior to "cheating death" is in fact fully comprehending death, the unsatisfactory nature of our lives and the fact that the self cannot be found in any of these passing phenomena. To realise this puts an end to birth and therefore death. But in the context of here and now, our suffering is reduced. The search for youth only causes suffering. Desire is a root of suffering.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  Without hope, we should indeed accept. Let's make the most of what we have. Death is not like that. It is not clear we couldn't find ways to double or triple our lifespan. It is not clear reincarnation (of the non-imaginary kind, mind uploading) is utterly impossible. It is not clear we couldn't find ways to keep our lives interesting for a very, very long time. Simply put, this is not hopeless. Yes, desire is a root of suffering. But it is also a root of progress. I'd rather not cut that root just yet.
rxlim 10y ago
Are there any benefits from fasting without calorie restriction? e.g. fasting for 23 hours then eating all recommended calories?
- exclusiv 10y ago
  I'm curious on this too but I'm thinking of doing a Belgian monk fast though which allows beer of course. :) Lost weight and drink solid beers? Nice! I found a post about this experience [1] which also has a few bits of research [2] linked as per your question. One of the articles says "Water-only fasting should only be done in a specialized clinic" and "certain types of very low calorie diets, and particularly those with high protein content, can increase the incidence of gallstones in women at risk" So perhaps the Belgian monks know what they are doing with the calories and low protein in the beers! [1] https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/monk-style-beer-fast-diet.306185/ https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/monk-style-be... [2] https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-to-slow-aging/ https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-... and http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131%2815%2900224-7 http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131%2815...
apatters 10y ago
At this point I can recall reading starry eyed articles about future life extension technologies 10-15 years ago. My question is simple: what products have been brought to market that can be classified as "life extension" and are we certain they work? Is there actually anything out there yet which is as effective as good old diet and exercise?
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175 points by edward 10y ago

Of course it is, the baby boomers are dying. 10-15 years from now, they'll all have left their positions of authority, and the fight to cheat death will cool down again.

jfoutz 10y ago
I'm not so sure about the cool down, but i think you're exactly right about the baby boomers. Nobody wants to die. I don't think many baby boomers are connecting the anti-aging dots directly. But that large, wealthy, aging group of people are certainly spurring a ton of research. Take this pill to not die is the ultimate killer app. I don't think it's going to work out. I think a lot of money will go to snake oil, but hopefully something good will come of it.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  >> "Nobody wants to die." I do. Living for ever, or even much longer than our current life expectancy doesn't appeal to me at all. I like my life, but I also like that someday it will end. Back when I was religious (I'm not now) the idea of heaven or eternal life seemed strange to me as it was 'the goal' yet not something I wanted and the idea that I had to 'live forever' was quite worrying. I'm curious if I'm in a minority on this. It's probably important to point out I don't want to die anytime soon but the idea that I continue living for longer than another 80 years for example is not appealing.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - fma 10y ago
    If you were in some parts of Africa, your life expectancy would be 50...Why does current life expectancy matter? As long as you still maintain quality of life and can be happy, why die? I think as soon as you are not happy and have no contributions to society, then there's less reason to increase life expectancy.
    - k-mcgrady 10y ago
      >> "Why does current life expectancy matter?" It doesn't - I was using it as an approx. number instead of putting a specific age. What I meant was living into my 80's is sufficient for me.
  - chc 10y ago
    It's hard to say if I'd actually like to live, say, a thousand years — neither I nor anyone else has experienced even a fraction of that, so who knows what it's like? I certainly don't want to die in the next few decades, but that's what's likely to happen. The life expectancy for a male in the US is about 75 years. I'm almost halfway there, but I don't feel like I'm halfway done living. Assuming you're still kinda young, do you really expect to hit 40 and think, "Bring on the decrepitude and death"?
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    If living forever were the default, would you choose to intentionally kill yourself?
    - happyslobro 10y ago
      It would be the last new experience, after everything else had been done to death...
      - kaybe 10y ago
        It's not like people haven't done it before, or does it not count if you get a revive after 30 minutes without any brain activity?
        happyslobro 10y ago
        It only counts if you don't know that there is a revive available ;)
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Hell - in a world where living forever is the default, you can always kill yourself if and when you get bored.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      There are many situations where it would make sense to intentionally let yourself die. Are your neighbors starving? Maybe let the younger generations eat instead of you.
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        If we can successfully cure death, I don't think we'll have a shortage of people willing to fund the spread of that cure universally. And once we have it, perhaps all remaining deaths will start to seem sufficiently tragic and avoidable that we'll do something about those, too. My reaction to your scenario is not "better die then", it's "better work faster and solve the problem then".
  - abraham_s 10y ago
    I too share the worry of living forever. I am still religious but I wonder what will you do if you live forever.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I wonder where that comes from, too. You're definitely not the only one - I've seen plenty of people expressing similar opinions here on HN. That said, for me the idea of eternal life seems very appealing. There are so many things I'd like to do, so many areas of knowledge I'd like to explore, etc. that it would take me 10 lifetimes and it still would not be enough. I'm nearing 30, which means that I'm almost halfway through life. Life feels too short.
    - godshatter 10y ago
      I agree. I'm 50, and am in no way conceivably done living. Just the programming projects I want to do in the short term will take me a couple of decades to accomplish. If I knew I could stay at a reasonable level of health for another 100 years minimum, I'd tackle some harder problems that could take much longer. Also, as a spectator in this world of ours, I'd like to see what happens, good and bad, over the next century or two (or more).
  - landryraccoon 10y ago
    How old are you now? It's very easy to say you're not scared of dying when it's a distant, abstract concern that you aren't really confronted with. Some people, upon becoming terminally ill, suddenly realize that dying is a much bigger deal for them than they thought, now that it's an imminent possibility.
    - k-mcgrady 10y ago
      >> "How old are you now? It's very easy to say you're not scared of dying when it's a distant, abstract concern that you aren't really confronted with." That's the odd thing - I'm definitely scared of dying. I don't want to die - now. But I can definitely see a tipping point. I guess it maybe depends on how happy you are with your life. If I was financially secure and could spend my life doing what I liked 100% of the time then maybe there isn't a reason not to keep living. Otherwise I just feel like eventually I'll get exhausted overcoming one challenge after the other.
      - AstralStorm 10y ago
        It is not like this kind of longevity would be impossible to opt out of. Why not try it first instead of dissmissing it out of hand?
        k-mcgrady 10y ago
        It might be quite hard to opt out of unless society vastly changes it's views on dying. I brought this up in another comment. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12272372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12272372
  - farresito 10y ago
    I, like you, would probably not sign a paper where it stated that I would live eternally, but I'm sure we both agree that having the choice to live for as long as we want (or rather, choosing when we want to stop living) is a pretty good choice to have. I think that's what most humans would want.
    - k-mcgrady 10y ago
      I do agree it's a good choice to have. Would we be given that choice though? I could be stricken with an incredibly painful disease tomorrow and have zero quality of life - and even if I wanted to die (and couldn't do it myself) nobody would be allowed to help. Now we're talking about a perfectly healthy person wanting to die. There's also your question of responsibility to others (young children for example) and whether or not you're making a rational decision or one clouded by temporary mental illness. Society will need to change massively before we have the choice to die when we want (assuming eternal life).
      - farresito 10y ago
        I agree with you. It's actually a pretty interesting point of view, because I've thought about it too. Once we have enough knowledge to cure aging completely, we will probably have enough knowledge to cure depression and the likes. I support anti-aging research, but I agree that there are quite a few points that need to be discussed.
  - DennisP 10y ago
    So maybe anti-aging for you just means you die at age 100 by falling off a cliff you're free climbing, instead of languishing for a decade in some crappy nursing home.

tantalor 10y ago

"hotting up"? http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hot-up http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hot-up

mc32 10y ago
It's the trend against declension so instead of using "heating", you use "hotting", or instead of total "spending", total "spend". For many it sounds like it's more modern and young. But there are times when using the base word introduces collision with other meanings.
- morley 10y ago
  "Hotting up" appears to be a quirk of British journalism, not necessarily a "trend." Not exactly modern and young when the first usage was in 1923 by P. G. Wodehouse. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10wwln-safire-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10wwln-safire-t.h...
- charlesism 10y ago
  Interesting. My mental association is quaint and old. Where I live, it's the elderly who use the expression "hotting up;" generally in relation to food.
- mabcat 10y ago
  Declension is for nouns, inflection's the more general term

chollida1 10y ago

A few weeks ago I wrote, what I thought was a simple comment about how I use fasting/calorie restriction that ended up getting 210 votes and causing a lot of differing opinions as to its health benefits. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188577 Aubrey De Grey is someone who has done alot of work in this area and I recommend watching his TED talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_a... Like almost all science in this area, nothing is really proven to work yet.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mikegedelman 10y ago
You mentioned potentially lower cancer risk, is there any other reason you fast 6pm - noon next day? I've done intermittent fasting before, which is basically the same as what you said you do every day, but not sure if you call it that. Like, do you feel better during the day? I did it just to help lose weight, but would be interested in doing it again if there are other possible benefits.
electriclove 10y ago
Can you please describe how you do your 3 day fast? There were similar questions to your comment on the prior HN thread that were likely missed and went unanswered. Thank you!
bduerst 10y ago
In case anyone was wondering what the "Seven ways we age" are and doesn't want to sit through a TED video, you can find them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types_of_aging_damage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types...
js2 10y ago
The BBC documentary Eat, Fast and Live Longer by Michael Mosley also discusses the benefits of fasting: https://vimeo.com/103656060 https://vimeo.com/103656060

tantalor 10y ago

Who wrote this? There is no byline.

chollida1 10y ago
See this.... http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/economist-explains-itself-1 http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec... The Economist’s writers are always anonymous.

astazangasta 10y ago

It's appalling that something like this, which would fundamentally alter what it means to be human in a profound and everlasting way, can be so casually described and is being pursued with relatively little debate. I guess we'll have plenty of time to debate our folly after the immortal/vampire class has put the leashes on us for a few half-centuries.

pilom 10y ago
Oh but how much fun is it to contemplate? How does love, war, work, retirement, achievement, purpose, etc. change once you can live forever? Or once some subset of humanity can live forever? If you were nearly immortal how long would you mourn the death of a non-immortal spouse? Would you work an additional 5 years before retirement on the off chance that they figure out how to make you immortal between now and then? How would you treat a person who was immortal because they spent $1 million on a treatment that you couldn't afford? How would that treatment affect inflation? How would immortals affect inflation? There is so much awesome material here for science fiction writers!
- astazangasta 10y ago
  I fully intend to write this science fiction, but the fact that this COULD be reality (and I think the biology is tractable) should be sparking some sort of policy debate. There is actual capital flowing into these ventures... Speculative fiction is ten years behind where the money is.
  - __jal 10y ago
    As frequently happens, Bruce Sterling was there. Pick up a copy of _Holy Fire_.
  - surlyadopter 10y ago
    Drew Magary beat you to it. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10673576-the-postmortal (It's a good read)
  - 10y ago

ZeroFries 10y ago

We should focus on reducing suffering, not on creating arbitrarily long life-times. When suffering is low enough that death-anxiety is the greatest source of human angst, then work on immortality.

kaybe 10y ago
Looking at the bigger picture, too many people are doing utterly useless or even harmful stuff. If you're reassigning efforts, you should start there.
rayalez 10y ago
Why not work on both at the same time?
ggreer 10y ago
Considering that age-related illnesses are responsible for 100,000 of the 150,000 deaths each day[1], I think working on aging is a very effective way to reduce suffering. Also, I hope readers notice that nobody makes this criticism when someone works on a new mobile app, another static site generator, or My Little Pony fanfiction. It's an excellent example of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics.[2] 1. http://www.sens.org/files/pdf/ENHANCE-PP.pdf http://www.sens.org/files/pdf/ENHANCE-PP.pdf 2. https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

pallavsharda 10y ago

This article illustrates superbly what Bill Gates said "We tend to overestimate the impact of changes that will happen in 2 years, and underestimate those that will happen in next 10 years"

reasonattlm 10y ago

The fascinating thing about the transition of aging research from mere investigation to the possibility of intervention is that many researchers don't even want to talk about extending life, but only a small expansion of healthspan. This lack of ambition, and refusal to engage with the large body of evidence that suggests we can do far better, is why we need organizations like the SENS Research Foundation and Methuselah Foundation, working to make the better option happen. It is possible and plausible to extend healthy life and overall lifespan indefinitely by implementing the approach of repairing the cell and tissue damage that causes aging. Yet all too much of the rhetoric and effort in the scientific community still goes towards tinkering with the operation of metabolism to slightly slow the pace at which damage accumulates - a clearly far inferior approach, that can at best produce only marginal outcomes. All of the technologies and approaches mentioned in this article are marginal, ways to only modestly slow the damage of aging from accumulation. They are very limited in what they can achieve - adding five to ten years to life would be an enormous, unlikely success for any one of these. Calorie restriction we know doesn't add more than that to human life spans, since we have plenty of examples to look at. Metformin data is all over the map in animal studies, just as contradictory and half-refuted as sirtuins. The transfer of young plasma to old individuals doesn't extend life in animal studies; it is pretty unlikely to have the desired effect in humans - that isn't the same thing as parabiosis. Human Longevity Inc is a personalized medicine company in fancy clothing, doing nothing that will greatly extend life, but rather looking for incremental gains in ordinary medicine. And so on. Sadly journalists typically don't distinguish between the potential value and outcome of different approaches to aging - it is all the same to them, just a flat list. So they pull five or ten items from the larger list to populate their articles, and mark them all equivalent. That's something of a problem when the differences are in fact enormously important and the expected outcomes are night and day when comparing approaches that repair damage versus approaches that do not repair damage. If there is to be significant progress towards healthy life extension in our lifetimes, the better strategies, those involving damage repair, must gain far greater support. This means the SENS list: senescent cell clearance, mitochondrial DNA damage, clearing metabolic waste like amyloid, lipofuscin, and cross-links, and so on.

rhodri 10y ago

Death makes space for new life, and new strategies. It's a key part of the evolutionary process, and thus of life itself. Yet another sign of the desperate egocentrism of a generation alienated from what it means to live.

marcoperaza 10y ago
>Yet another sign of the desperate egocentrism of a generation alienated from what it means to live. I disagree. Fear of death is a cultural constant that almost every religious/spiritual movement in history has tried to assuage, either through the promise of an eternal afterlife or a belief in some pan-consciousness that we are all part of (i.e. eternal life).
machinelearning 10y ago
I find it amusing how you make an extraordinary claim as though its obviously true, and then criticize life extension as "desperate egocentrism". How exactly is death directly responsible for new strategies? And how is it a "key part of the evolutionary process"? If there are no known answers to these questions, it is absurd to think they are true.
fma 10y ago
Trees can live for hundreds, even thousands of years.
- remontoire 10y ago
  Which is exactly why we are cutting those egotistical bastards down and sitting on them.
saulrh 10y ago
Evolution is an awful optimization process. It's only effective in real life because it's had literally billions of years to work. Intelligently-guided directed optimization is vastly superior and we should prefer it whenever possible, if only for reasons of practicality and efficiency. For example, look at the development of flight: biological evolution took probably a few billion years to evolve things like pteranodons and archaeopteryx; we landed on the moon in about seventy years. Evolution is amazing, sure. It's also evil, bad, and wrong, even without getting into ethical issues. Don't do it. (speaking of ethical issues: http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/ http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/)

okreallywtf 10y ago

I read The Dying Man by Damon Knight when I was a teenager and it had a profound affect on me at the time in regards to thoughts about immortality (it would be interesting to read it again, it would probably seem less significant now). It is not at all dystopian which puts it out-of-style but it paints an interesting picture of a far-future where the population has settled and immortality is essentially the norm. I recommend picking it up as a quick short read. Personally I find myself being more cynical about these kinds of things because I think all reality this will not be a good thing in the near future for all but a very small set of people who will (without changes to the system) be able to maintain wealth and control for generations and further imbalance our already imbalanced world. My real hope is that this increased understanding can lead to increased quality of life for all people if not widespread immortality, but given our ability to disregard the suffering of other people already it seems unlikely. Those of us living in the first world will probably continue to lead longer, more comfortable lives at the expense of or disregarding that of the rest of the world.

nugget 10y ago
Forget achieving immortality - if we manage to extend average lifespan to even 120 years of age then almost all of our socioeconomic systems break down and we have to more or less rebuild society from the ground up.
- api 10y ago
  Hey on the bright side it's not like any of our existing socioeconomic systems are great. Last I checked we did not live in a utopia.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    Not utopia compared to what? My great grandmother had to have 8 kids so that she could have 4 or 5 adult children. That was less than 100 years ago. My grand parents were the children of subsistence farmers without running water or electricity. They went to high school, worked in factories, and could get broadcast TV in their living room. Electricity and running water became a base default. My parents work in an office pushing papers around. Even the society of their youth seems alien in its antiquatedness of both social mores and amenities. I get paid to think things and can reasonably expect to live essentially disease free until my 70's. Achieving 90 in relatively good health and vitality doesn't seem out of the question. Seems pretty utopic to me. What not-utopia are you talking about? EDIT: Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo Over the past 200 years, the difference between 1st world and 3rd world has all but vanished. We still have a ways to go, but no utopia is perfect. Even in the movies.

mulcahey 10y ago

Relevant reading from philosopher Nick Bostrom: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

Pxtl 10y ago

Related comic: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/8/1556848/-Cartoon-Millennial-lament http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/8/1556848/-Cartoon-Mi...

Joof 10y ago

So if nobody dies, how do we deal with evolution in the case that we need it. What about brain plasticity? Young brains learn new concepts well and use those experiences to create new ideas and innovations. We should try to fight aging, but if that succeeds there are a lot of other societal problems that need to be solved as well.

aantix 10y ago
tDCS appears to help with Neuroplasticity.
kafkaesq 10y ago
So if nobody dies, how do we deal with evolution in the case that we need it? It needs to be seen that having older people around isn't a hindrance to evolution, but rather a great assist to it -- precisely because they have so many memories, and so many of the positive qualities (patience, forbearance... and a general lack of vanity) that naturally come with being around the planet for so long. Which those of stuck in (seemingly) lively, energetic younger bodies can greatly benefit from.
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  >It needs to be seen that having older people around isn't a hindrance to evolution, but rather a great assist to it ... That seems rather unlikely. "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." -Max Planck
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    He could have been wrong too. Because he was still alive. ;-)
- Joof 10y ago
  I mean the kind where we swap genes. A lower birthrate doesn't help much. Genetic engineering exists, but we can't change how our bodies have already developed quite so easily. I think occasional increases in brain plasticity may be more useful to change society itself (assuming you can get people to do something that alters their brains). That may not be necessary of course.

bhewes 10y ago

Seems like this will be a growth technology field. Though I am making the assumption that developments will also apply to more then just the elderly. An example would be keeping a larger percentage of the population in peak or near peak mental and physical health for longer.

johnward 10y ago

I guess I don't understand the desire to live forever. Do people really want suffer through daily life for eternity? Disclaimer: I barely make it through a week without thinking about not wanting to live though.

kafkaesq 10y ago
There really is so much beauty (and yes, meaning) out there to experience, comprehend, and enjoy. And there are so many kind, brilliant, fascinating people (and other living entities) to experience and share notes on it all with. Despite all the inevitable hassle and suffering and messiness. So yes, I'd say it's worth it. You don't have to try to stretch it out indefinitely, time-wise, if that's not your thing. I think the key to our journey through all of "this", whatever it is, is to treat it as if it is, in fact, infinite (or rather timeless), even though our conscious experience of it happens to be stuck on a one-way track which makes it seem (to our primitive minds) like it's finite.
- ZeroFries 10y ago
  But why do you need to experience that beauty through one particular consciousness track, experienced through one particular mind (even this statement is incorrect, because if you define a person as a particular configuration of matter, then you are a new mind each time-interval)? Make way for new configurations, for more brilliant, fascinating minds.
  - Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
    If you are speaking in terms of spiritual experiences, you can of course be having any kind of those and nothing can really be argued about it, because they are subjective. If, however, you are making an objective claim about "past lives" and reincarnation - there is no solid evidence for it. 99% of "past life memories" examples are in the form of "I had a family and we had a house" (omg, that sounds like our dead relative, you must be him reincarnated), or in a form of an obviously imagined past life of a historic figure, with details which have been read in history books by the individual claiming to experience the said past life. And interestingly they always seem to read about the historic figure first (giving their subconscious mind the change to soak up that knowledge (in this life though)), and "experiencing a past life" only after. So to answer your question - because you only get one particular mind, and that's it. This is what science shows us. Whether you "feel like" you are "one with all other minds" is just a subjective experience. It's not physical reality.

davidf18 10y ago

Curiously, just today I was researching the public health efforts in the Finnish town of North Karelia which is known in public health as a place that started reducing heart attacks beginning in the early 1970's and saw an article referencing Blue Zones. The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426211929/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426211929/ https://communities.bluezonesproject.com https://communities.bluezonesproject.com From the first Amazon review of the book, written by a woman: "I first ran into my own "Blue Zone" when I hiked up a mountain near Zermatt, Switzerland to a village that was only accessible by hiking or cable car. A 102-year old woman dashed past me, UPHILL ON ICE, in felt boots, while I was (in my 40's) trying to struggle up the incline with the assistance of two ski poles. Later, I found her, running the local inn and making strudel, which was the most delicious I've ever had. She was making the strudel that day, because her OLDER sister was taking a nap."

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paulcole 10y ago

Before being diagnosed with a chronic disease, I was very interested in life extension. Now, I really couldn't care less about living a long time and try to enjoy the life I have-- inconvenient and frustrating though it may be. In a way it's funny. Now I think about how I plan to shorten my life when/if the need arises rather than extending it at all costs.

visarga 10y ago

I don't think that "I" from 10 years into the future is the same as the "I" from 10 years ago. The accumulation of small changes is like a "small death" that comes every day. We forget most of everything, we are thrust in different situations, and those situations make ourselves effectively different because they trigger our abilities in a different way. Fighting death is more about the immortality of the body. The mind is recycled much sooner. The "I" is created by the mind anew every moment. Even sleep is like a mini-death, because we "don't exist" for a short time, then we continue existing again. But, of course, if we actually get to cheat death and live forever, a new kind of life opens up. If we can back up our minds and then upload them into a young body or in a virtual reality, then we can also be more like a character in a game. We could have many "lives", we could have "save checkpoints", we could restore from previous points, or fork and create more of us. In fact life would not be the same as it was during "linear life". Would a meta-life such as this be the same as immortality? I don't think it would. It would be a completely different thing altogether.

forgotpwtomain 10y ago
Or you know the universe is a simulation and you and I are already temporary characters.
- austinjp 10y ago
  The notion of our reality being an emulation feels analogous to the "we're first; we're few; we're fucked" notion of whether there's alien life. Someone has to create the emulator, if an emulator indeed exists (at any given time). Maybe that will be us.
  - coupdetaco 10y ago
    Sure, but that doesn't mean we live in base reality. Simulations running simulations!
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oli5679 10y ago

In the UK, your chance of death within the year crawls from approx 0 to 5% between 0 and 80 but then climbs rapidly to 30% by 100 and >50% by 110. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html The recent 100 years of medical advances have lead to massive life expectancy gains (1/4-1/3 year per year in the developed world) but has had no noticeable impact on the age of the oldest living humans or mortality rates of centurions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_... Based on this, I think there's a good case for pessimism when speculating whether any living human will live to 150+.

duncan_bayne 10y ago
"I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years" - Wilbur Wright "It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere." - Thomas Edison "There has been a great deal said about a ... rocket shot from one continent to another, carrying an atomic bomb and so directed as to be a precise weapon ... I say, technically, I don't think anyone in the world knows how to do such a thing. and I feel confident it will not be done for a very long period to come. I think we can leave that out of our thinking. I wish the American public would leave that out of their thinking." - Dr. Vannevar Bush Edited: what I meant by the above is that humanity has a solid track history of mis-estimating the pace of progress in new fields.
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- krastanov 10y ago
  But mis-estimation goes both ways. Most academics were very optimistic about early general AI, for instance.
  - duncan_bayne 10y ago

micky_25 10y ago

Reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."

hacker42 10y ago
That's just an appeal to nature. Just because something was an evolutionary necessity (and that is not even clear in this case) it does not follow that that thing should actually be desirable for us. A plausible explanation of aging is for example the evolutionary shadow: From the perspective of your genes you don't matter (much) after you've successfully passed on you genes to the next generation. Thus there is no evolutionary pressure for longevity. The programmed cell decay of aging might be a way of multicellular organisms to fight cancer.
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- Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
  There is another aspect for which the longetivity could be selected by the evolution, besides passing on the genes: it's passing on the knowledge. As a social species, in the development of humans it's not only the biological structures that are important (the body itself), but the informational, social structures. A tribe which works well socially (helping each other, keeping together etc.) will survive much better and longer than a tribe of individualists, and yet even better than individuals living on their own. A big part of actually keeping a tribe structure alive is the knowledge than elders constantly pass on to the new generation. And that does not stop after the genes are passed. Additionally, there seems to be some (deeper, philosophical) knowledge that is very hard to acquire before a certain age. It just takes that long to collect enough experience to be able to connect certain high level concepts. It's very likely that a tribe with longer-living monkeys (metaphorically) would have more of these wise elders that have acquired the knowledge and could pass it on better to the rest, than a tribe with monkeys that would die off fast after making babies. But this still would only mean that the evolution would not kill you off directly after passing on the genes, but instead some time afterwards, after you've already learned all important things about life and were able to quickly teach them to the new generation. It would still kill you off either way.

AWildDHHAppears 10y ago

With obesity at 66% (in the United States) I think the average life expectancy will start going down. 1900/day isn't very extreme. It's what I do on days I don't go to the gym (and 2200/day on days I do go). And I'm not underweight either--I'm within the healthy BMI range. People just eat too much food!

adrenalinelol 10y ago
66% is overweight OR obese[1]. Being overweight doesn't pose as many health-risks as being obese.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Heck, obesity correlates well with life expectancy but that's probably because sickness causes weight loss.

mohn 10y ago

The discussion of calorie restriction (CR) brought to mind a piece by NYmag reporter Julian Dibbell on his experience trying out CR for two months: http://nymag.com/news/features/23169/ http://nymag.com/news/features/23169/ On the sillier side, I recommend "Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart. It's an entertaining novel with themes of life extension and near-future dystopian technology. Anyone who liked the "please drink a verification can" greentext will probably enjoy it.

grondilu 10y ago

Whatever life is worth living for, I don't think it requires eternity.

pjscott 10y ago
How long does it require? And might the answer, perhaps, be higher than 78.8 years? Or maybe higher than 200? How about 1000?
- grondilu 10y ago
  To put it simply, I don't feel like the current human lifespan is too short.

tvural 10y ago

Longevity research is interesting because you could theoretically get to a point where one year of research extends people's lives more than one year. Then the people who avoided car accidents and the flu could live indefinitely, which is much more of a transformation than people living to 120. Will we live to see this happen? The optimistic view is that longevity research is very under explored right now, and there may be some significant low-hanging fruit. Also, if AI or nanotechnology live up to their hype quickly enough, they could significantly accelerate research. More pessimistically, I see at least three major obstacles: (a) Medical research sucks as it is, and longevity research is inherently time-consuming. There are ways to ease this, like testing treatments on mice first, but I don’t see an easy way around the need to apply the test to humans and wait many years to see the results. (b) The human body is hard to understand and manipulate - we haven’t cured cancer yet, despite all our effort. (c) Until people’s attitudes about death change (or those people die and are replaced by people with different attitudes), longevity research will continue to attract much less attention than it deserves. Most people have psychologically committed themselves to doing nothing about death. They accept it will happen to them with 100% certainty, but they deny it will happen to them anytime soon, so they ignore it.

Salgat 10y ago
It's scary to think of what life would be if you are immortal, but can still die from an accident. Makes you wonder if you ever want to leave the house until society becomes safer.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  The trouble is, your house is a death trap too. Heck, the whole planet is. Typically, mobility and active approach to such immortality brings better results.
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ue_ 10y ago

I'm surprised there's no mention of Buddhism here. To accept death as a natural process, to realise that every being is subject to birth, old age, sometimes sickness and death, to constantly remind oneself of death leads to, in many ways, a more fulfilling life. Clinging to youth, good looks, being alive itself - these are all causes of suffering, as there is nothing permanent. People wanting to "cheat death" are attempting to find refuge in impermanence. But there isn't any to be found. What is changing is unsafe. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't take medications or life-saving surgeries, as those aren't done with the intention of permanence in mind. Buddhism says that superior to "cheating death" is in fact fully comprehending death, the unsatisfactory nature of our lives and the fact that the self cannot be found in any of these passing phenomena. To realise this puts an end to birth and therefore death. But in the context of here and now, our suffering is reduced. The search for youth only causes suffering. Desire is a root of suffering.

loup-vaillant 10y ago
Without hope, we should indeed accept. Let's make the most of what we have. Death is not like that. It is not clear we couldn't find ways to double or triple our lifespan. It is not clear reincarnation (of the non-imaginary kind, mind uploading) is utterly impossible. It is not clear we couldn't find ways to keep our lives interesting for a very, very long time. Simply put, this is not hopeless. Yes, desire is a root of suffering. But it is also a root of progress. I'd rather not cut that root just yet.

rxlim 10y ago

Are there any benefits from fasting without calorie restriction? e.g. fasting for 23 hours then eating all recommended calories?

exclusiv 10y ago
I'm curious on this too but I'm thinking of doing a Belgian monk fast though which allows beer of course. :) Lost weight and drink solid beers? Nice! I found a post about this experience [1] which also has a few bits of research [2] linked as per your question. One of the articles says "Water-only fasting should only be done in a specialized clinic" and "certain types of very low calorie diets, and particularly those with high protein content, can increase the incidence of gallstones in women at risk" So perhaps the Belgian monks know what they are doing with the calories and low protein in the beers! [1] https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/monk-style-beer-fast-diet.306185/ https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/monk-style-be... [2] https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-to-slow-aging/ https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-... and http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131%2815%2900224-7 http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131%2815...

apatters 10y ago

At this point I can recall reading starry eyed articles about future life extension technologies 10-15 years ago. My question is simple: what products have been brought to market that can be classified as "life extension" and are we certain they work? Is there actually anything out there yet which is as effective as good old diet and exercise?

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cyberpichin 10y ago