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I've never really understood why people consider aging to be a problem. I'm not sure if we as a civilization have been able to deal with overpopulation, at leas

I've never really understood why people consider aging to be a problem. I'm not sure if we as a civilization have been able to deal with overpopulation, at least looking at currently-overpopulated areas. Personally, I would rather have an optimal life - one where I don't have any diseases or ailments, so I can live life to the fullest, all the way up until death. So IMO, currently incurable or intractable things like cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, dementia, are more important. If fixing 'aging' can fix these issues, or if an aging fix is a side-effect of these issues (please enlighten me since I know nothing about aging research) then I would be fine with that - but would still be worried about overpopulation, whether it's the rich or both the rich and poor.

kayhi 9y ago
They are trying increase the optimal years let’s say 20-40 years now to 20-100 years.
chii 9y ago
overpopulation isn't a problem, if energy and resource extraction can continue via stella means (rather than tax the planet's environment). For example, dyson swarms for energy, and there's plenty of space on mars/titan/spaceships. If people are able to live 'forever', may be there's more incentive to invest in these technologies.
tonygrue 9y ago
As you speculate, some lines of research address aging by keeping you young. Your DNA is kept young, and as a side effect your muscles are kept young and the ability to quickly recover from injury is restored, like a 20 year old, instead of a 60 year old. I assume this strategy would also protect you from a number of diseases related to DNA aging. Of course, I also assume it wouldn't be a cure all, and we'd still need to address wear and tear in multiple ways. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323141340.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323141340.h...
reasonattlm 9y ago
Aging is the same cell and tissue damage that causes the age-relates diseases you mention. The only difference between aging and disease is how much damage you have, how far the cascade of cause and effect and secondary consequences has progressed. "Aging" is subclinical "age-related disease". There are few root cause forms of damage, but the cascade is as complex as our biochemistry, so there are any number of fatal endpoints and horrible declines along the way. The only plausible near-future way to remove age-related disease is to periodically repair the damage that causes aging. Nothing else is going to work. Consider this when thinking about living life to the fullest all the way up until death: if you are so healthy (meaning lacking in damage) that you don't suffer age-related disease, what are you going to die from? Your mortality risk is a function of the load of cell and tissue damage you currently bear. The only way to prevent age-related disease is to have a low load of damage, and consequently a low rate of mortality. Given today's accident and murder rates, an ageless human undergoing comprehensive damage repair every decade or so would live for 1000 years or more before encountering a fatal happenstance. If you live much past a century from now, I'd have to imagine other technological options opening up that make that number seems small. On overpopulation, it seems pretty clear from the research carried out on this topic that agelessness will not result in problematically large populations. Wealthy regions are already declining in population growth, and poor regions decline as they become wealthier. The poor are being lifted up rapidly. See, for example, Demographic Consequences of Defeating Aging: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/ It also seems fairly clear that what people call overpopulation now would be better described as some mix of kleptocracy, war, other bad governance, and endemic poverty that in many cases is being addressed at a fast rate in comparison to past history. Given the long list of regions that have lifted themselves up from peasant farming to technology industries and wealth since the 1950s, one has to look at those that haven't succeeded in this, and ask why: it certainly doesn't correlate with number of people.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
Curing aging does indeed need to address degenerative diseases as well, and quite a bit of anti-aging research looks into those as well. For example, the Methuselah Foundation and Methuselah Fund are working with Leucadia (https://www.leucadiatx.com/ https://www.leucadiatx.com/), which has a credible cure for Alzheimer's in progress. SENS and Methuselah are also working with Oisin Biotechnologies, which has technology to carefully target specific cells; in addition to working for senescent cell clearing, it can also serve as a component of a cancer treatment, precisely targeting cancerous cells. So yes, anti-aging research can and will be comprehensive, covering aging itself, age-related degeneration, and the conditions that become increasingly prevalent if you manage to avoid dying of something else before they strike. As for overpopulation, that's been specifically researched and considered too. Among many other things, if you compare birth rates to life expectancy and mortality rates, you'll find them inversely proportional; people have more children when life feels more fleeting (to improve their chances), and vice versa. And even if that weren't the case, we'd deal with it. Meanwhile, 150,000 people die every day. That needs to stop. That's not a price worth paying for anything.
- cryoshon 9y ago
  i'm a proponent of the SENS approach myself, but nobody else asked yet, so i will: what if 150,000 people dying per day is the cost of mankind's ability to progress with each generation? especially in science, progress occurs as the old guard dies...
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    Making people's lives better is by far the most important goal of science. Look at it this way: if we were currently in the state where nobody died, ever, who would choose to start murdering a hundred and fifty thousand people every day in the name of "progress", or in the name of anything? And in any case, who's to say we wouldn't gain massively in progress by not losing the most experienced minds, and instead benefiting from their experience? Or by letting people study longer because they have all the time in the world?
    - 9y ago
rl3 9y ago
>So IMO, currently incurable or intractable things like cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, dementia, are more important. Classic false dilemma fallacy. Those diseases already receive far more funding than generalized anti-aging research. There's no reason we can't work on both in earnest. Moreover, barring any sort of miracle cures or quick-fix hacks—any scenario where humanity realizes technological progress sufficient to master the human body, is one where we can probably make short work of any overpopulation concerns.
joefourier 9y ago
Compare the rate and causes of death of people aged 18-35 to people age 70+. How many 18 year olds die of dementia, heart disease, Parkinson's, even the flu, compared to those aged 70 and up? By curing or even just slowing down aging, you would drastically reduce the initial chance of contracting a large amount of age-related diseases. That's not getting into the non-morbid negative effects of aging: reduced mobility, slower cognition, memory problems, etc. Concerning overpopulation, in all major Western countries, we currently have fertility rates below replacement - if it weren't for immigration, our population would be declining. With immortality,
orangecat 9y ago
If fixing 'aging' can fix these issues, or if an aging fix is a side-effect of these issues That's true practically be definition. A "cure" for aging would mean that people who are 60 years old would have the same health profiles as people who are 20. Which means much less susceptibility to serious diseases and much improved quality of life. (And saving trillions in medical expenses as a side effect).
paulsutter 9y ago
> intractable things like cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, dementia are more important [than aging] It’s impossible to solve aging without solving these age related diseases, does that help?

kayhi 9y ago

They are trying increase the optimal years let’s say 20-40 years now to 20-100 years.

chii 9y ago

overpopulation isn't a problem, if energy and resource extraction can continue via stella means (rather than tax the planet's environment). For example, dyson swarms for energy, and there's plenty of space on mars/titan/spaceships. If people are able to live 'forever', may be there's more incentive to invest in these technologies.

tonygrue 9y ago

As you speculate, some lines of research address aging by keeping you young. Your DNA is kept young, and as a side effect your muscles are kept young and the ability to quickly recover from injury is restored, like a 20 year old, instead of a 60 year old. I assume this strategy would also protect you from a number of diseases related to DNA aging. Of course, I also assume it wouldn't be a cure all, and we'd still need to address wear and tear in multiple ways. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323141340.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323141340.h...

reasonattlm 9y ago

Aging is the same cell and tissue damage that causes the age-relates diseases you mention. The only difference between aging and disease is how much damage you have, how far the cascade of cause and effect and secondary consequences has progressed. "Aging" is subclinical "age-related disease". There are few root cause forms of damage, but the cascade is as complex as our biochemistry, so there are any number of fatal endpoints and horrible declines along the way. The only plausible near-future way to remove age-related disease is to periodically repair the damage that causes aging. Nothing else is going to work. Consider this when thinking about living life to the fullest all the way up until death: if you are so healthy (meaning lacking in damage) that you don't suffer age-related disease, what are you going to die from? Your mortality risk is a function of the load of cell and tissue damage you currently bear. The only way to prevent age-related disease is to have a low load of damage, and consequently a low rate of mortality. Given today's accident and murder rates, an ageless human undergoing comprehensive damage repair every decade or so would live for 1000 years or more before encountering a fatal happenstance. If you live much past a century from now, I'd have to imagine other technological options opening up that make that number seems small. On overpopulation, it seems pretty clear from the research carried out on this topic that agelessness will not result in problematically large populations. Wealthy regions are already declining in population growth, and poor regions decline as they become wealthier. The poor are being lifted up rapidly. See, for example, Demographic Consequences of Defeating Aging: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/ It also seems fairly clear that what people call overpopulation now would be better described as some mix of kleptocracy, war, other bad governance, and endemic poverty that in many cases is being addressed at a fast rate in comparison to past history. Given the long list of regions that have lifted themselves up from peasant farming to technology industries and wealth since the 1950s, one has to look at those that haven't succeeded in this, and ask why: it certainly doesn't correlate with number of people.

JoshTriplett 9y ago

Curing aging does indeed need to address degenerative diseases as well, and quite a bit of anti-aging research looks into those as well. For example, the Methuselah Foundation and Methuselah Fund are working with Leucadia (https://www.leucadiatx.com/ https://www.leucadiatx.com/), which has a credible cure for Alzheimer's in progress. SENS and Methuselah are also working with Oisin Biotechnologies, which has technology to carefully target specific cells; in addition to working for senescent cell clearing, it can also serve as a component of a cancer treatment, precisely targeting cancerous cells. So yes, anti-aging research can and will be comprehensive, covering aging itself, age-related degeneration, and the conditions that become increasingly prevalent if you manage to avoid dying of something else before they strike. As for overpopulation, that's been specifically researched and considered too. Among many other things, if you compare birth rates to life expectancy and mortality rates, you'll find them inversely proportional; people have more children when life feels more fleeting (to improve their chances), and vice versa. And even if that weren't the case, we'd deal with it. Meanwhile, 150,000 people die every day. That needs to stop. That's not a price worth paying for anything.

cryoshon 9y ago
i'm a proponent of the SENS approach myself, but nobody else asked yet, so i will: what if 150,000 people dying per day is the cost of mankind's ability to progress with each generation? especially in science, progress occurs as the old guard dies...
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  Making people's lives better is by far the most important goal of science. Look at it this way: if we were currently in the state where nobody died, ever, who would choose to start murdering a hundred and fifty thousand people every day in the name of "progress", or in the name of anything? And in any case, who's to say we wouldn't gain massively in progress by not losing the most experienced minds, and instead benefiting from their experience? Or by letting people study longer because they have all the time in the world?
  - 9y ago

rl3 9y ago

>So IMO, currently incurable or intractable things like cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, dementia, are more important. Classic false dilemma fallacy. Those diseases already receive far more funding than generalized anti-aging research. There's no reason we can't work on both in earnest. Moreover, barring any sort of miracle cures or quick-fix hacks—any scenario where humanity realizes technological progress sufficient to master the human body, is one where we can probably make short work of any overpopulation concerns.

joefourier 9y ago

Compare the rate and causes of death of people aged 18-35 to people age 70+. How many 18 year olds die of dementia, heart disease, Parkinson's, even the flu, compared to those aged 70 and up? By curing or even just slowing down aging, you would drastically reduce the initial chance of contracting a large amount of age-related diseases. That's not getting into the non-morbid negative effects of aging: reduced mobility, slower cognition, memory problems, etc. Concerning overpopulation, in all major Western countries, we currently have fertility rates below replacement - if it weren't for immigration, our population would be declining. With immortality,

orangecat 9y ago

If fixing 'aging' can fix these issues, or if an aging fix is a side-effect of these issues That's true practically be definition. A "cure" for aging would mean that people who are 60 years old would have the same health profiles as people who are 20. Which means much less susceptibility to serious diseases and much improved quality of life. (And saving trillions in medical expenses as a side effect).

paulsutter 9y ago

> intractable things like cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, dementia are more important [than aging] It’s impossible to solve aging without solving these age related diseases, does that help?