20 ms·
Scientist David Sinclair on why we age and why he thinks we don’t have to (2019)
- jyu 6y agoArticle is dated Nov 9, 2019
- judge2020 6y agoOf course, the money behind actual de-aging and things like replicating a consciousness is entirely funded by rich people in their quest to live forever. If this tech ever goes ‘production’, it’ll take billions of dollars to do and thus only be something the ultra rich and their families will be able to afford. Part of this is being done by the Alphabet (Google) subsidiary Calico[0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company)
- nlavezzo 6y agoJust like jet plane rides, air conditioning, cell phones, etc. were only for the rich and powerful initially. Capitalism encourages efficiencies which drive prices down over time.
- falcolas 6y agoI'm fairly certain it's the efficiencies of scale, not capitalism, that makes previously experimental products affordable. Capitalism, all other things disregarded, would just keep the price high so long as the demand is high and the supply low.
- sdfin 6y agoBut would also welcome and allow competition if any businessman wishes to enter a profitable market.
- falcolas 6y agoOne merely has to look at speculative fiction to see that the upsides in letting this technology become available to everyone are non-existant to those who help fund its creation. A monopoly around this technology would form faster than DeBeers could say "Wow" - legal or not. Human nature plus immortality is not a pretty thing to think about.
- sdfin 6y agoDo you believe that in a communist country something different would happen?
- philipkglass 6y agoIf a cure is invented in Country X and monopolized, every other country in the world has an incentive to replicate it by some combination of espionage and reverse engineering. If it can be invented at all, what makes you think that it can be used without other parties figuring out how to copy it? The atomic bomb was duplicated within 4 years.
- tsimionescu 6y agoThis is not about countries, it is about the rich and powerful vs the rest of us. Do you think the rich in the US would steal the secret of eternal youth from the rich of China and just give it to everyone? Or just keep it for themselves?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ben_w 6y ago
- rowanG077 6y agoSo what you are saying you are anti-progress? Almost everything is first paid for by the rich. That's not a bad thing.
- falcolas 6y agoAnti-aging technology is a bit of a game changer; it would effectively create automatic oligarchies, because the rich and powerful would never die and pass on their power. There is effectively no reward for the rich to make this technology broadly available. There's every incentive to keep their workforces and consumers ignorant and short-lived.
- benlivengood 6y ago> There's every incentive to keep their workforces and consumers ignorant and short-lived. This was also the attitude in the 1700s and 1800s there were several revolutionary wars to fix it. Anti-aging treatments won't stop bullets.
- yowlingcat 6y agoNot to mention stakes and, ahem, garlic.
- ALittleLight 6y agoThe rich and powerful create oligarchies now. Even if the problem would be worse with anti-aging I'd trade not-dying for more powerful oligarchs. I think it might make things more egalitarian. A hard working genius born to poverty only has 80 years to work their way into the upper echelons. Removing senescence means such people will have more time to rise to elite positions and demonstrate track records of competence and merit. I don't agree that anti-aging would be restricted to the richest. One simple reason is that anyone with the know-how could make vast wealth by making anti-aging available to the masses.
- coliveira 6y ago
- BobbyJo 6y agoNearly all R&D is funded by "rich" people. The fact that this is too tells you nothing about how democratized it will be down the road. That entirely depends on the method of action the end product and whether or not it's scalable. If it is, money can be made selling it to everyone. If it isn't, then only people that can afford it will get it. That's how limited resources work.
- coliveira 6y agoMost R&D is funded by governments around the world, coming from the pockets of the population, not from the the rich. Unfortunately, the very rich are the ones putting most of the results of this research in their pockets.
- BobbyJo 6y agoNot true. At least not true for drug research in the US: https://www.drugcostfacts.org/public-vs-private-drug-funding https://www.drugcostfacts.org/public-vs-private-drug-funding
- coliveira 6y agoYou are pinpointing a specific area where there is private interest in investing due to the high commercial potential of drug patents. The large majority of research areas benefit little from private investment.
- BobbyJo 6y agoI figured that was the area most closely aligned with the subject: Drugs/Therapies to reverse aging.
- bpiche 6y agoYou just summarized Bruce Sterling’s cyberpunk book “Holy Fire”
- paganel 6y agoIn the Middle Ages the rich people of the time were donating almost all their wealth to the Church on their dead-beds because they were afraid of eternal death, nowadays rich people throw a lot of money on bogus stuff like the one described in here hoping that they would actually get to live forever but in the end they'll still die (and I suspect the Middle Age rich guys' souls still didn't get to live forever on account of there not being anything after physical death).
- throw1234651234 6y agoThere is no concrete reason to believe immortality through tech won't happen in the next 100,000 years. They eventually will live forever. This isn't like a speed of light limit, at least none that we know of.
- gowld 6y agoOf course there is. Humanity is likely destroy civilization and/or its environment within the next 100,000 years, assuming a meteor doesn't take us out.
- mkl 6y agoAt first. See Peter F Hamilton's excellent Commonwealth Saga for a society where in 200-300 years the unfathomably rich are the super-rich of today, but where rejuvenation is so well-developed that it's government-provided for everyone, and immortality is just expected. The super-expensive start of the technology is covered in the short and less good Misspent Youth, which isn't really part of the main story. They get around the population explosion problem with portals to other habitable planets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_F._Hamilton_bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_F._Hamilton_bibliography
- rorykoehler 6y agoThat's not a given. Stem cell treatment could be the ticket and it only costs ~5-20k USD today for treatment.
- scpedicini 6y agocough altered carbon cough
- chadlavi 6y agoScientist... believes... something here doesn’t add up. In science either you have evidence or you’re just bullshitting.
- noodlenotes 6y agoOn the contrary, any scientist that says they're 100% confident doesn't know what they're talking about. "Belief" is as good a word as any to describe how we look at probabilities, weigh evidence, and come to the most likely conclusion.
- chadlavi 6y agoI agree completely on the first point, but belief is also something people have about fairies and yetis. “Have compelling evidence that” seems like a good term to me.
- toomanyrichies 6y agoI think a middle ground would be that it's fine to start with a belief about how something might work (also known as a hypothesis), after all that's the first step in the Scientific Method. But crafting a hypothesis without a subsequent experiment to prove or disprove it is just wasted breath. As the adage goes, claims that are made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- crpatino 6y agoCorrect. Your point being?
- jackpirate 6y agoI downvoted you because it's perfectly possible to "believe" something because there is evidence for it. Plenty of scientists will say they "believe" in evolution, for example.
- LinuxBender 6y agoThis is not a great article. It leaves out Dr. Sinclairs work, further developing discoveries by Dr. Yamanaka specifically around the four transcription factors (Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-myc), turning any cells back into pluripotent stem cells. More important, leaving c-myc disabled, the cell reverts to a younger age. This is what Dr. Sinclair has been working on recently, to completely reverse macular degeneration. He has been able to regrow damaged optic nerves all the way from the eye back to the brain. Here is a talk he did at Google [1] He briefly talks about the ethics of this here [2]. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nXop2lLDa4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nXop2lLDa4 [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4tsELrQfFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4tsELrQfFQ
- Beefin 6y agoisn't he all about resveratrol as well?
- LinuxBender 6y agoThat was his area of focus about a decade or so ago. It turned out not to be as exciting as many thought it would. There are some benefits to TransResveratrol, but not what people were hoping for. Here is an interview with Dr. Rhonda Patrick and he talks about longevity genes. [1] I believe he covers TransResveratrol here. He also talks about reversing the Horvath Clock and reversing damage to optic nerves. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DtWqzalEnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DtWqzalEnc
- Fluid_Mechanics 6y agoI too get all my medical advice from the Joe Rogan podcast
- ianai 6y agoYou can get it from his books too. I listened to his audio book which was good. Learned quite a bit.
- OneGuy123 6y agohttps://embryo.asu.edu/pages/alexis-carrels-immortal-chick-heart-tissue-cultures-1912-1946 https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/alexis-carrels-immortal-chick-h... It seems that in perfect conditions cells can live forever. Obviously a few cells are very different than an entire organism where a small thing going wrong can compound exponentialy over time. But in theory it does seem that cells can live forever if you remove contaminants and provide required nutrition.
- coldcode 6y agoIndividual cells might live forever, but as of today organisms do not. Optional implies you (as a person) have a choice, but you do not.
- hungryforcodes 6y agoAging is just another disease. Seen in that way it will be a choice, much like dying of tuberculosis or hepatitis c is. There are cures for them now. There is no reason to think aging and cancer (which seem related), are any different. Progress will give us the options.
- s7atic 6y agoThere are many organisms that appear to be able to live for exceedingly long times (and perhaps indefinitely). Disregarding unicellular organisms, there are, for example, species of jellyfish that appear biologically immortal [1]. There are also examples of trees (or, rather, root systems) that have lived for extremely long times [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)
- guerby 6y agoFunny that your [1] page doesn't mention the greenland shark : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark "The oldest of the animals sampled, which also was the largest, had lived for 392 ± 120 years and was consequently born between 1504 and 1744" Listed here though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organis...
- cblconfederate 6y agoanti aging is probably going to have a lot of unknowns and surprises along the long road. In the mean time, brain-machine interfaces and the transfer of conscious processes outside the brain seem like a more feasible road to immortality
- krapp 6y agoWhatever we "transfer" our "conscious processes" into isn't going to last forever, either.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoEh, okay, so technically not immortal because the sun will still die. I'm happy to settle for a "only" a couple millennia of life. More than I get now.
- krapp 6y agoI think you're being incredibly optimistic if you believe it's possible to build a machine both complex enough to house a fully simulated human consciousness and robust enough to last billions or even thousands of years. Bits rot, things break down, and it tends to happen to technology more quickly in most cases than to the human body. The more complex technology is, the faster it fails. We measure the life cycle of our most modern tech in months, not centuries. The idea that you're going to surf the universe in an immortal, inviolate android body untouchable by aeons of time is closer to a religious hope than likely reality.
- mbeex 6y agoAnd people stop dying on this sphere, for which we still have no escape or distribution plan (into space).
- krapp 6y agoThey still die. "Uploading" is a copy operation, but the flesh and blood human and their flesh and blood brain still dies. Whether the copy counts as equivalent to the original is a philosophical matter. But as far as biology isn't concerned, you haven't eliminated death, you've just moved the goalposts on life.
- dkarl 6y agoI'm not interested in reading an entire book about "cutting-edge science." That's too big a commitment to learn about a bunch of optimistic guesses that will mostly not pan out. Give me a book about stuff we have some real confidence about. Maybe I'm not the intended audience for this book any more? I feel like when I was younger I felt like I had all the time and energy in the world, and I devoured this stuff, but now I'm tired and stretched and for me this kind of writing falls into a no-man's land between "zero-effort entertainment" and "applicable to/stretching me for life."
- solarengineer 6y agoHave you explored this tiredness? I recently began sleeping when ever I felt tired, disconnected from stressful colleagues, and generally brought down my stress levels further by not signing up for more than what I can handle. I’ve concluded that Low stress + adequate sleep + good food Together are like NZT for me. I’m no longer tired and I can think better than I can remember during the past 15 years.
- p2detar 6y agoInteresting. May I also ask how many hours of sleep per day do you get on average?
- solarengineer 6y agoI range from between 7 hours to 8 hours. I’m still coming to terms with getting triggered when I encounter certain colleagues, so I wake up at night. I know by elimination process that the trigger during the day reflects into a wake up at night. For the past three weeks, I’ve been sleeping without interruptions ( waking up suddenly) until today, having encountered a problem person yesterday and flew into a minor rage at certain recollections of unfair actions by them.
- dkarl 6y agoI think the difference is a growing awareness of the limitations of my life and potential, coupled with a growing appreciation of the boundless things I could do to learn, enjoy myself, and improve my life and others'. I think when I was younger I just saw something fun and exciting and went for it. As the years have gone by, the sheer number of things that I have identified as fun as exciting has become so overwhelming that "fun and exciting" seems utterly unhelpful for narrowing down the possibilities. I can also look back now and see how many things that I was sure I would do in my life haven't happened yet. Plus, like another commenter pointed out, life obligations keep mounting up.
- nradov 6y agoAging might be optional but malignancy is mandatory. If you live long enough eventually cancer will kill you.
- suby 6y agoMandatory for now. Given enough time, I believe mankind will effectively cure all disease.
- coldtea 6y agoGiven enough time it's also possible manking will regress or kill itself or plateau. We haven't made any deals with the universe for limitless progress... Not that you said we did, but many kind of think like that's the case, for hand wavy reasons, like "the sky is the limit", "human ingenuity is limitless", etc...
- tshaddox 6y agoIt’s pretty obvious and (I think) uncontroversial that humanity could cause its own demise or fail to prevent external causes (like large celestial object impacts). What does seem controversial is the claim (which I adhere to) that it is also possible for humanity to solve every problem that they meet.
- wadkar 6y agoSomething along the lines of “the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you”
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago> Given enough time What are you even talking about? Humans have existed something like 200,000 years. In 500,000 years from now (or less), evolution will have changed us into something entirely different.
- adrianN 6y agoSo? If we put some effort into it we might maintain cultural continuity, which is imo what matters more than how our bodies look like (if we still have any). The better rebuttal is that currently it looks like we'll crash the planet's ecosystems and with them technological civilization within the next century or two, long before we've reached the point of curing all disease.
- zepearl 6y agoAdvertisement (0 external references supporting mentioned statements, statements referring to results without providing supporting evidence, etc...).
- coldtea 6y agoThe article is unbelievably shallow... and the book sounds similarly so - if not on the science, on any particular conclusion, deduction or advice...
- vladmk 6y agoLove this belief, if only everyone thought this way too
- jancsika 6y agoOoh, that's sneaky-- I initially misread this headline as the more common construction, "scientists believe." Nice try, HN. You always cease to amaze me. :)
- redvenom 6y agoIf there truly were a way to increase lifespan to 200 or 300, I hope the person who comes up with it destroys the research. Can you just imagine if people could live that long? If people started applying it now, it would make our overpopulation situation even worse. We are not prepared to live that long, either, emotionally or physically. The more we use technology and bioscience to alter our basic physiology and life history, the more trouble we will be in. I seriously hope this never works.
- ben_w 6y agoYou don’t have to get this treatment, if it ever becomes available. Don’t try to stop me from taking it.
- bashwizard 6y agoThere's no "overpopulation situation". It's a matter of over crowding and lack of distrubution of resources.
- redvenom 6y agoAll these replies to my comment may be true, but all of them are actually forgetting the impact we are doing to wildlife and the natural world. So, while we can easily grow and become even more populous, we are just destroying our world at the same time. It's rather sickening.
- ben_w 6y agoThree only reason I have to fear dismantling Mercury to build a Dyson swarm of O’Neill cylinders to live in, complete with wildlife preserves greater in internal surface area than the Earth, is “can human politics work like that?” rather than anything else. You find it sickening? Don’t worry, you probably won’t even notice the new “stars” twinkling around you, even in the unlikely event of self replacing factories on Mercury being developed in an un-augmented human lifetime and therefore you living long enough to know about it.
- pharke 6y ago
- hevelvarik 6y agoI find the title of this submission profoundly disturbing and unworthy of this platform. To me “Scientists believe...” implies a lot more than what this article describes.
- DamnInteresting 6y agoNot that I have any dog in this hunt, but the title is actually "Scientist Believes...". Singular scientist.
- hevelvarik 6y agoI believe it was changed. I could be mistaken but I read it plural.
- known 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...
- ilaksh 6y agoTake a look at https://sens.org https://sens.org. The craziest looking guy still has the best theory on aging.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoTitle is misleading you left out "This" which means specific scientist, we do not know what other scientist think about his believes.
- jiggunjer 6y agoNo.Scientist singular is unambiguous.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoNo. Because we do not know is it "A" or "The", and as name is missing it is more likely it is "A" but we do not know which one.
- grishka 6y agoThere's another branch of aging research that is gaining traction recently and that feels just so much more sensible. Its basic idea is that there's really no "wear and tear" happening, but rather, aging is a programmed process whereby cells deliberately disable their various cleaning and healing mechanisms via epigenetic alterations. This whole thing is controlled by signal molecules in the bloodstream, and there's some kind of feedback loop going on. Here are some links for you to learn more about this: https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/05/11/age-reduction-breakthrough/ https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/05/11/age-reduct... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275360486_Towards_an_Evidence-Based_Model_of_Aging https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275360486_Towards_a...
- usgroup 6y agoIt’d be nice if HN could edit any and all titles that attribute beliefs to “scientists” as a collective. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s a bit sloppy?
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago1. "scientists" does not mean all scientists 2. This time, it says scientist believes (note the singular)
- usgroup 6y agoThe title got changed since I posted the comment (thank you!). “Scientists” doesn’t mean all scientists; I agree. But: “Scientists say the world is flat” “Two scientists high on crack say the world is flat” You’d agree that the latter provides some vital context whilst the two don’t exclude each other.
- slowhadoken 6y agoSeems like accidents and disease are still big hurdles to clear after aging.
- dusted 6y ago"Sounds crazy, right?" No, not really. What sounds crazy is "people have always died of pneumonia, we don't understand the reason, but that's how it's always been, and so that's how it will always be, and even trying to understand why it happens or change it is against nature and crazy talk." Involuntary death is obviously a problem. Sure, overpopulation is too, and there's a conflict, but there may be other solutions than letting people die against their will.