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We May Not Have to Age So Fast
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoI loved the annoying app installation prompt, the irrelevant stock ticker, and the survey nag that pushed the actual article title down below 85% of the page. I also loved only being allowed to read the first five sentences of this article because I have not sent money to this website. Why are people allowed to link to paywall sites on HN? How is this different from linking directly to someone’s patreon or PayPal donation page, with a clickbait title to get them there? I demand that all WSJ links are banned from HN immediately along with the accounts that shared them. People need to learn not to do this.
- HenryKissinger 7y agoDNA has a half life of 521 years. Even if a human could be maintained at a biological age of ~30 indefinitely, would the natural decay of his DNA not kill him in the long term?
- ISL 7y agoIf replicated and properly check-summed that half life could be extended by many orders of magnitude.
- earthboundkid 7y agoOn a long enough timescale, you’d either die in an accident or get depressed and kill yourself just randomly within a few hundred years. The oldest wooden houses are only one thousand years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkjub%C3%B8argar%C3%B0ur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkjub%C3%B8argar%C3%B0ur The human body is way more delicate and less likely to survive. Even with extreme motivation, no human will see the death of our Sun, let alone the heat death of the universe.
- tempestn 7y agoIt depends; if you could hypothetically buy yourself a few hundred years, that might be long enough for other techniques to preserve consciousness. Brain state backups, say. Not saying that will happen, but it's not inconceivable.
- kiba 7y agoI don't really think brain state backup as extending your life.
- tempestn 7y agoNot on its own, but it would be the final piece in living effectively forever, since it could protect against accidents that would eventually take out even people who never aged or got sick. Unless you mean that a copy of your brain would not longer be 'you'. In that case I just disagree. We don't know the level of fidelity required, but it seems extremely likely to me that if my brain were copied to a sufficient level of precision, whatever that level might be, the copy would continue my subjective experience.
- markyc 7y ago> the copy would continue my subjective experience. it may, but it wouldn't be "you". "You"'d experience death, and something else will exist independent of "you", but with most of the same features and memories.
- tempestn 7y ago"I" am my thought patterns and memories. It would be me as much as I'm still me when I wake up each morning.
- codeisawesome 7y agoI agree with this - but Altered Carbon had this interesting couple scenes where more than one copy of a dude exists. What’s “you” in that event? If we can guarantee teamwork of the clones, we have a new status symbol - else we have created some severe ego/identity problems.
- ricree 7y agoThe wood in houses is dead and no longer able to repair wear and decay. There are known trees whose ages easily exceed a thousand years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees#Individual_trees_with_verified_ages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees#Individ...
- hamandcheese 7y agoAlso, humans have a tendency to remove themselves from harms way. Trees, alive or dead, don’t enjoy such an advantage.
- earthboundkid 7y agoInteresting. The clonal trees aren't much like humans (disconnected, mostly in suspended animation), but other trees make a good point of comparison.
- GarrisonPrime 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
- meddlepal 7y agoIs to be human to be a fleshy meat bag? If the only thing that is actually human about us is our consciousness and we can figure out how to extract that into a digital device then I don't see why there's theoretically any time limit to our existence other than the ability to procure materials. I think this is generally where our species is heading..., we are going to continue to further blend ourselves with technology.
- monkeycantype 7y agoI like the idea of a fleet of nanobots that transparently and progressively replace defective neurons with API endpoints, until ultimately I get a chat message, "Hi MonkeyCanType, just wanted to let you know you've been 100% software for two years now. Would you like to chat about your options for printing a new body? We currently have specials on fire engines and triceratops."
- nscalf 7y agoI can buy the accident thing on a long enough time scale, even though I would imagine that emergency medicine would improve over time so it would have to be increasingly more severe of a problem. However, the “get depressed and kill yourself” argument holds no weight to me. Depression is a common thing, but such severe depression that you have suicidal tendencies is not in the cards for most humans. Humans are extremely flexible, and it really seems like some people don’t have naturally severe depressive episodes even with strong external tendencies. Beyond that, I can say that depression is often combated, in some of the less extreme cases, by recognizing it incoming and developing tools to keep yourself from spiraling. I’ve dealt with depression, and have had plenty of external things start a spiral. After many years of dealing with it, I have learned how to prevent it from getting overwhelming. I really don’t see the end of an indefinitely life occurring via suicide, assuming you’re not in isolation or alienated, or some crazy circumstance.
- nitrogen 7y agoassuming you’re not in isolation or alienated That seems like a big assumption over centuries.
- ggggtez 7y agoThis argument doesn't hold water. This assumes that depression is purely something you must be born with, and you can't get it from environmental factors. The thing is, if you really lived for hundreds of years, society would be radically different. Imagine... You can't get promoted because no one above you ever retires. You can't get an entry level job, because everyone has 200+ years experience! People struggle to work the grind until they are 65 already. But you can't retire, because your death is so far away. You need to keep grinding another 500+ years... That kind of world would likely have a lot of systemic issues with depression.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoIt’d be tough to survive on only 100 years savings.
- pferde 7y ago
- rolltiide 7y agoWe can make our minds feel whatever we want. If you never want to feel lonely or unhappy we can do that. We currently cant keep our minds from becoming dependent on an external source of what it can naturally generate.
- solveit 7y agoI would be happy to dwell on solving that problem for the next few centuries.
- chrisco255 7y agoDo you have a source on this figure? There are trees that live for thousands of years. How does their DNA preserve itself if what you say is true?
- grimgrin 7y ago> By comparing the specimens' ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and so on. > The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of −5 ºC, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years. The DNA would cease to be readable much earlier — perhaps after roughly 1.5 million years, when the remaining strands would be too short to give meaningful information. https://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555 https://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.1...
- aeternum 7y agoThis is assuming a dead cell. Living cells have many DNA repair mechanisms.
- samus 7y agoThat half-life probably applies if the molecular machinery inside each cell does not repair the DNA anymore. DNA repair is a skill that is as ancient as life itself, and thanks to it there are organisms (so far only plants and fungi though) that can live on for thousands of years.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoMost of your cells are replaced every decade [0]. In replication, a fresh copy of DNA is created. [0]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-body-replace-itself-seven-years/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-body-replace-itself-s...
- ramraj07 7y agoMost cells, yes. All? No. Most neurons in your brain will have to last your lifetime, and IIRC some of your stem cells will have to last with the same dna strands for most of your lifetime. However if some bases in the DNA molecule get chemically degraded then error correction mechanisms should kick in and (mostly) correct them.
- viklove 7y agoIf your cells aren't replicating... what do they need DNA for?
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoYour DNA is read during the life of the cell for maintaining cell function, e.g, creating proteins.
- ramraj07 7y agoThe cells DNA is still the source of all information for it's functioning, when a cell has to make new protein it reads the sequence from the DNA first.
- Udo 7y agoOver long enough time scales, replication errors and base pair flips will accumulate, and it's likely these effects will become problematic way before the stated in vitro half life of 521 years. However, since we're talking about technologically enhanced life anyway, this opens the door to employing correction mechanisms that will actively repair such defects in vivo. In the end though, risks keep accumulating, both external and internal to the body. Intelligent biological life without digital backups does not seem to be the right platform for surviving time spans in excess of, say, a few hundred years.
- adrianN 7y agoThe DNA in germline cells has an unbroken chain of replication all the way back to the primordial soup.
- pixelbash 7y agoSeems like solving one would by definition solve the other? Edit, spelling
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/Y4dnR http://archive.is/Y4dnR
- xwdv 7y agoSlowing down aging so that we can live 500 years or so would be fantastic for long term investments.
- wbc 7y agoAuthor of the article, David Sinclair, did a podcast w/ Joe Rogan not long ago in case you want to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGLL77wYxe8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGLL77wYxe8
- snvzz 7y agoAs it's related to the topic: Mandatory reminder that SENS[0] exists. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negl...
- kristopolous 7y agoThe most exciting thing about dramatic age increase, at least for me, would be how potentially transformative the wisdom and intellect of society could be. 140 year old Albert Einstein might have been writing an email, right this second to say, 161 year old Max Planck. As topics become more sophisticated, the time to competency and insight increases. Someone for instance, truly committed to studying the entire corpus of thoughts on political economy, from the Frankfurt school, Chicago school, Stockholm school, Austrian school, Keynsianism, Marxian, Monetarism, New Classical, Public Choice, Georgism, Bachuninism... Each of those are hard and complicated. A sincere dedicated study of all of them would likely take decades. If you had 300 years then not only could you do that, but you could also make meaningful contributions to the field. Imagine public policy by people who were able to dedicate 100 years to its study. 50 or 100 year studies which currently have to be chaperoned across multiple generations of researchers could be done by a single team. The accumulated wisdom that manifests itself in the written word would be far more potent with centuries of accumulations. In a way, genius is a measure of speed and time, the quickness of ones assimilation of the topic. With enough time, the plane of genius might be accessible to nearly all. Other, much longer efforts would be engaged with more frequently. For instance, The art of computer programming, started 51 years ago, would be one amongst a much larger number of works of similar breadth, if taking a century to complete something was feasible for all. The differences this would manifest would be likely as stark as if someone from the 18th century descended upon a modern urban metropolis.
- fl0under 7y agoI wonder though, after decades of study in numerous fields, how much would you actually be able to remember? No doubt some events in your life might stick around in your mind for a long time, but by your 100th, 300th, whatever year would 50% of it just be a hazy memory? Or maybe this technology could give you super memory, I mean even currently some people are born with the ability to remember tons of information, but often at the expense of other brain facilities.
- kristopolous 7y agoMemory is more structure than stuff, providing foundations of future thoughts. Meaningful insights shape your interaction with the world and change how you interface with reality. the details fade but the evolution of mind's empowering constraints continues on.
- Santosh83 7y agoEven if you manage to digitise yourself (which seems to be the fantasy of many posters here) you're still limited by the ultimate end of the universe.
- adrianN 7y agoThere is a nonzero chance that we're wrong about that and manage to escape the universe.
- Santosh83 7y agoEscape the universe into what? And who are the "we" who will escape trillions of quadrillions of years hence? Time changes us, whether we like it or not. Eternity is an abstract concept that will never be realised. What people desire by all these wishes to extend life is continuity, yet given enough period of change, there won't be much continuity to savour. People imagine they are only their thoughts and memories but those very things are dependent not just on our bodies but also our environments. Given enough change in the latter two then our thoughts and memories will become so discordant that the "you" will no longer be continuous. In effect: death, which you tried so hard to avoid.
- solarengineer 7y agoYour post reminded me of The Last Question by Asimov https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
- pixelbash 7y agoIts true I am not the me I was at 5, or 10, or 15, or 20, or 25. But the observer was there, and the observer very much wants to keep observing.
- SirHound 7y agoQuite different limits
- Udo 7y ago
- jakeogh 7y agoDeath is a huge waste of resources. If we stopped ageing, how long would we live? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19937047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19937047
- robocat 7y agoLiving is a huge waste of resources. Dead people don't use any resources.
- jakeogh 7y agoIt's the most valuable thing we know of.
- LinuxBender 7y agoYou are both correct. Obviously a factor is specific to each individual, as to the cost benefit ratio of that person. Oh, come to think of it, that could be a concern in some countries. Maybe in say, China, if your social score is not high enough, it might be illegal for you to extend your life.
- AlexDragusin 7y agoNo thanks, I love paywalls /s
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmm 7y agoHow are people reading this article? I only read a paragraph before the site asked me to subscribe and pay them money. Surely everyone else isn’t doing that?
- firstfewshells 7y agoTry this https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/we-may-not-have-to-age-so-fast-11572012999 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/we-may...
- adrianN 7y agoClick the "web" link under the article and visit it with a google referrer.
- sho 7y agoI've found this to work beautifully: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoWSJ links should be banned from HN, and anyone submitting them should be banned as well. Surely I would be banned if I linked directly to my Patreon with a clickbait title and claimed you could access my blog article related to the title if you start paying me.
- ptah 7y agoextending life too much could have detrimental effects in terms of evolution as the gene mutations will take longer meaning we can't adapt fast enough.
- sho 7y agoThat is absolutely not how evolution works at all. Mutation, such as it is, occurs at the moment of conception. It's not a very helpful word - "random and imperfect mix of two data sets" is a better way of thinking about it. Anyway, evolution is a very confused concept in modern society. None of the old factors apply any more.
- ptah 7y agoyes people with longer lifetimes will put off having children which means conception events for each generation will have longer time intervals in between
- sho 7y agoAh, fair enough, I didn't think of that. It's still a moot point however. There is no meaningful human evolution anymore in terms of adaptation to anything in nature. Human biological fitness these days, outside hunter gather societies I suppose, is about beauty or intelligence and not a whole lot else.
- radford-neal 7y agoSo, war has now been abolished, so there's no advantage to being healthy enough to run away from the fighting and survive to reproduce? And famine is no longer possible? Being small enough to survive on limited food is no longer of any use? (Or alternatively, being big enough to take other people's food...) And a deadly pandemic is now impossible? So a good immune system doesn't give you any advantage? And an innate tendency to behaviours that reduce the chance of infection won't help you? And the big one... Do all the beautiful and intelligent people now have the same number of children? Or do some have none, and some have ten, for reasons that may well be genetically influenced?