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It's great how trying to live forever went from being considered impossible to something that Google and many billionaires are investing a lot of money into. I

It's great how trying to live forever went from being considered impossible to something that Google and many billionaires are investing a lot of money into. I think Aubrey de Grey had a lot to do with this by making the SENS approach which has helped properly characterize the types of cellular damage attributable to aging.

Koshkin 9y ago
Anti-aging research has little, if anything, to do with "trying to live forever". It has more to do with "staying forever young", i.e., staying healthy and strong and good-looking until death. Aging increases the organism's fragility and makes it prone to getting ill, and trying to slow down this process is, of course, a meaningful and venerable goal. Living forever, on the other hand, is impossible in principle, unfortunately - for at least two reasons: the limited capacity of our brain and the mean time from birth to a fatal accident being around two hundred years.
- bigleagueposter 9y ago
  If you didn't age you would reduce the risk of fatal accidents.
  - naasking 9y ago
    You simply can't reduce it to zero. Around 200 years, nearly everyone will have at least experienced a near fatal accident, statistically. If you're 40, you probably already know someone who has.
    - D-Coder 9y ago
      That's at current levels of fatal accidents. Some kinds of accidents have already been significantly reduced, others probably will be.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      You are assuming that everyone leads an equally-risky lifestyle when that is clearly not the case. Statistics are useful for large numbers, but can be quite misleading for individuals (especially for people as divergent in behavior as human beings). Just a guess, but I would bet that avoiding drunk driving (or being on the road at times that drunks are likely to be driving), taking care with prescription drug use, avoiding swimming pools, and changing your smoke detector batteries regularly would double that 200 year span, at least. Maybe more.
      - naasking 9y ago
        > You are assuming that everyone leads an equally-risky lifestyle when that is clearly not the case No I'm not. Everyday risks, like slipping in the shower, or getting in a car accident, or falling down the stairs, are common and fatal enough to nearly kill everyone before 200 years old. Certainly risk factors change all the time, and that might get slightly extended, but life is inherently risky.
        Turing_Machine 9y ago
        "Everyday risks, like slipping in the shower, or getting in a car accident, or falling down the stairs, are common and fatal enough to nearly kill everyone before 200 years old." I addressed car accidents (those are going to go way down in the future anyway). Can you show me the actual calculation that demonstrates that "nearly everyone" will die in an accident within 200 years? According to https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm the annual accidental death rate in the U.S. is about 42.6/100,000 population. Now, that's going to go up to some extent in an elderly population (though maybe not that much, since we're positing therapies that keep one healthy into advanced age). Let's double the rate. The annual probability of dying an accidental death would then be 0.000852. That does not appear to be consistent with "nearly everyone" (say, >90%) dying within 200 years.
        naasking 9y ago
        >90% is a little high. Nearly everyone would experience a near fatal accident, as I initially said; many would die by 200 years, not all. If I said nearly everyone would die, blame that on hyperbole due to cellphone access.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > the limited capacity of our brain That's both fixable and already something we have mechanisms to cope with. You already remember the highlights of your life, not every single waking moment. > the mean time from birth to a fatal accident being around two hundred years. I've seen various statistics for that, but in any case, all the more incentive to fix that, too. We don't avoid curing a disease just because other diseases still exist.
  - devinj 9y ago
    Any finite sized brain will eventually repeat itself or halt, is probably the main point. This is probably not something we can work around.
    - JoshTriplett 9y ago
      That's an entirely separate issue, and one to be filed under "problems we'd love to have to deal with". Fairly sure it's lower on the priority list than "heat death of the universe", which we'd also need to deal with.
idlewords 9y ago
There is nothing new about rich people pouring massive resources into promises of immortality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang#Elixir_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang#Elixir_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Yes indeed. Florida got discovered that way I believe.
- narrator 9y ago
  Don't forget Gilgamesh, possibly the oldest work of fiction in existence, has a living forever theme.
untilHellbanned 9y ago
If I had a dollar for every time someone on HN mentioned Aubrey de Grey or SENS in an aging discussion or Haskell or Lisp in a programming language discussion I'd be rich. Like Satoshi rich.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
crystaln 9y ago
I've always thought Aubrey de Grey was a fountain of nonsense hiding behind complexity. He's like the nonsense research paper that gets published because it sounds smart and no one wants to admit they can't understand it.

Koshkin 9y ago

Anti-aging research has little, if anything, to do with "trying to live forever". It has more to do with "staying forever young", i.e., staying healthy and strong and good-looking until death. Aging increases the organism's fragility and makes it prone to getting ill, and trying to slow down this process is, of course, a meaningful and venerable goal. Living forever, on the other hand, is impossible in principle, unfortunately - for at least two reasons: the limited capacity of our brain and the mean time from birth to a fatal accident being around two hundred years.

bigleagueposter 9y ago
If you didn't age you would reduce the risk of fatal accidents.
- naasking 9y ago
  You simply can't reduce it to zero. Around 200 years, nearly everyone will have at least experienced a near fatal accident, statistically. If you're 40, you probably already know someone who has.
  - D-Coder 9y ago
    That's at current levels of fatal accidents. Some kinds of accidents have already been significantly reduced, others probably will be.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    You are assuming that everyone leads an equally-risky lifestyle when that is clearly not the case. Statistics are useful for large numbers, but can be quite misleading for individuals (especially for people as divergent in behavior as human beings). Just a guess, but I would bet that avoiding drunk driving (or being on the road at times that drunks are likely to be driving), taking care with prescription drug use, avoiding swimming pools, and changing your smoke detector batteries regularly would double that 200 year span, at least. Maybe more.
    - naasking 9y ago
      > You are assuming that everyone leads an equally-risky lifestyle when that is clearly not the case No I'm not. Everyday risks, like slipping in the shower, or getting in a car accident, or falling down the stairs, are common and fatal enough to nearly kill everyone before 200 years old. Certainly risk factors change all the time, and that might get slightly extended, but life is inherently risky.
      - Turing_Machine 9y ago
        "Everyday risks, like slipping in the shower, or getting in a car accident, or falling down the stairs, are common and fatal enough to nearly kill everyone before 200 years old." I addressed car accidents (those are going to go way down in the future anyway). Can you show me the actual calculation that demonstrates that "nearly everyone" will die in an accident within 200 years? According to https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm the annual accidental death rate in the U.S. is about 42.6/100,000 population. Now, that's going to go up to some extent in an elderly population (though maybe not that much, since we're positing therapies that keep one healthy into advanced age). Let's double the rate. The annual probability of dying an accidental death would then be 0.000852. That does not appear to be consistent with "nearly everyone" (say, >90%) dying within 200 years.
        naasking 9y ago
        >90% is a little high. Nearly everyone would experience a near fatal accident, as I initially said; many would die by 200 years, not all. If I said nearly everyone would die, blame that on hyperbole due to cellphone access.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
> the limited capacity of our brain That's both fixable and already something we have mechanisms to cope with. You already remember the highlights of your life, not every single waking moment. > the mean time from birth to a fatal accident being around two hundred years. I've seen various statistics for that, but in any case, all the more incentive to fix that, too. We don't avoid curing a disease just because other diseases still exist.
- devinj 9y ago
  Any finite sized brain will eventually repeat itself or halt, is probably the main point. This is probably not something we can work around.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    That's an entirely separate issue, and one to be filed under "problems we'd love to have to deal with". Fairly sure it's lower on the priority list than "heat death of the universe", which we'd also need to deal with.

idlewords 9y ago

There is nothing new about rich people pouring massive resources into promises of immortality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang#Elixir_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang#Elixir_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids

mythrwy 9y ago
Yes indeed. Florida got discovered that way I believe.
narrator 9y ago
Don't forget Gilgamesh, possibly the oldest work of fiction in existence, has a living forever theme.

untilHellbanned 9y ago

If I had a dollar for every time someone on HN mentioned Aubrey de Grey or SENS in an aging discussion or Haskell or Lisp in a programming language discussion I'd be rich. Like Satoshi rich.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

crystaln 9y ago

I've always thought Aubrey de Grey was a fountain of nonsense hiding behind complexity. He's like the nonsense research paper that gets published because it sounds smart and no one wants to admit they can't understand it.