14 ms·

Is Aging Inevitable?

80 points by evo_9 5y ago

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NL807 5y ago
Yes, because of entropy. edit: I don't understand why my comment is so controversial. We are all subject to the laws of thermodynamics. DNA, proteins, cells, and body structe is basically matter in low entropic state. Its interaction with the environment will inevitably lead damage or erosion of said structures, a basic process of entropy increasing in the system. Nobody is exempt from this process.
- briefcomment 5y ago
  Do you think we have the least entropy when we are born, or when we're at peak physical and mental performance, like mid 20's to mid 30's?
  - vlovich123 5y ago
    The question seems poorly worded but I’ll do my best guess here. As long as you are gaining weight/height, you should be decreasing the entropy of the system around you. Your body’s entropy should be increasing in absolute terms but staying the same/decreasing as a percentage of your overall body.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      Growth without order is cancer. It's a form of entropy, not extropy. Extropy is measured as the increasing signal to noise ratio in a system, not how much space it occupies. The systems least prone to entropy are often the most compact. This is also why it's astonishing that elephants defy entropy by not getting cancer at the same rate per cell as smaller mammals.
      - vlovich123 5y ago
        Most human beings don’t experience growth in childhood as cancer.
        noduerme 5y ago
        Most growth in childhood is making order out of chaos and reducing noise, so it's extropic. The point was that continued growth is not always a sign of reduced entropy.
- Strilanc 5y ago
  Entropy maxing out is more of a 10^100 year problem than a 100 year problem.
  - NL807 5y ago
    Completely miss the point there. The basic principle behind entropy is that any ordered system will eventually become disordered over time and reaches equilibrium. Some systems go easily disordered within within a human lifetime, or even in seconds. For example, add milk to you coffee and watch it become diffused. In the context of a human body, the coded information in our DNA, the structured cell walls in our body, are states of matter that is low in entropy. They will eventually get damaged due to interactions with other matter around us. The damage in this case will manifest itself as "aging".
    - anonydsfsfs 5y ago
      How is GP missing the point? They're arguing about the timescale of entropy, not the basic principle. You're right that ordered systems eventually become disordered, but "eventually" can mean 10^100 years, and you haven't provided any evidence to the contrary.
      - NL807 5y ago
        Isn't the second paragraph not self explanatory?
        anonydsfsfs 5y ago
        No, it doesn't say anything about timescale. That's what GP was arguing.
    - tripledunit 5y ago
      your body is getting damaged constantly and it is repairing the damage constantly. You are able to do this - in terms of entropy - because you are not a closed system, you are eating food and breathing air. Entropy is not an insurmountable problem for an animal unless it stops eating and breathing, just as entropy is not an insurmountable problem for an electric refrigerator unless it stops receiving power
- deleted 5y ago
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- jacobsimon 5y ago
  I’d recommend reading this article[1] which goes into more depth than the article here with a detailed critique of the entropy theory. 1. https://link.medium.com/CGktsSNhcib https://link.medium.com/CGktsSNhcib
- ajross 5y ago
  I suspect you're being downvoted because you're simply wrong as a matter of physics. Your body isn't a closed system. Entropy is a global variable, it's entirely possible to have subparts of a system (often called things like "engines" or "HVAC systems") experience net decrease in measured entropy just by moving energy around. And your body does that every day. The overwhelming majority of all identifiable entropy transfer in an organism happens as part of "metabolism", not "aging". That the engine doesn't work forever may very well have a thermodynamic expression, but "because of entropy" is basically missing the point.
- gcanyon 5y ago
  Entropy applies to any closed system, and we are far from closed. We take in external energy every single day, and reply on external order with every breath. There is zero reason to think that over the time frame of hundreds to thousands of years that entropy is the limiting factor on human survival.
- ethn 5y ago
  Entropy is a condition where a system becomes more chaotic over time when energy isn't added to a system. Otherwise life itself wouldn't occur due to entropy, life is precisely possible because energy is added to a system to prevent entropy.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Humans eat and poop, so they're not closed systems. Entropy doesn't apply until the stars start running low on fuel.
patorjk 5y ago
> As we extend human lifespan, there is an urgent need to move toward sustainable agriculture and to adopt energy-efficient technologies. I wonder if we'll reach a point where someone's life can be saved but doctors will choose not to if that person is of a certain age - because of the impact on the planet. It seems like a grisly future, but if it were possible to live to 200 or 300, the population could get out of control pretty fast. edit: This is getting a lot of downvotes - if you downvote can you please explain why? I'm not advocating for this, I simply thought it was an interesting possibility.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  By the time anyone is 200, much less 300, assuming we have truly managed to cure ageing, I don't think we're going to be worrying about the impact on this particular planet. There's a whole universe out there to spend the next centuries of your life seeing.
  - patorjk 5y ago
    This assumes we can live in space indefinitely without any problems or that settling other planets won't be a problem. Both of those could be great filters.
  - dragosmocrii 5y ago
    Imagine this hypothetical discussion is discovered and read by someone in 10,000 years from now, when living over 300 years is already a reality and the normal. What a feeling to realize that the things you now take for granted, were at one point simply out of reach. I wonder if we have specific examples of such recorded discussions of things that today are a reality.
    - xvector 5y ago
      Future societies will definitely look back at the "age of death" with complete horror. How could humans accept aging while at the same time desperately clawing for life when death came near? How could they move the world and spend trillions fighting COVID while not even spending a billion fighting aging? People will shake their heads in fascination and perhaps a feeling of disgust at our obvious shortsightedness. In the future, even a single death will be a very significant event, similar to how we might see a high-mortality catastrophe like 9/11 today.
pmoriarty 5y ago
"Over several decades, Vaupel has been the optimist of demography, telling us that somewhere in the world, human lifespan is always continuing to increase, as it has done since 1840, at the rate of about 1 year of new lifespan for every 4 years that passes. For the first 130 years of this advance, the improvement in lifespan was predominantly about preventing infant mortality and combatting infectious disease. But since about 1970, lifespan improvements have continued to benefit the elderly." But what kind of life is it? Many elderly have lived miserable, hopeless lives, and when they age not only do they suffer bodily infirmities, but they're desperately lonely as for many of them all of their friends and family have died, or they've been abandoned by their families, they have no one to support them, and suffer from mental issues like dementia and depression on top of that. Little wonder that so many of the elderly commit suicide. Not to discourage anti-aging research, but if I had to prioritize I'd choose focusing on eliminating poverty, improving social safety nets, and building stronger communities. Improving mental health and helping people to live healthier lives while they're young so their bodies aren't in horrible shape by the time they're old would also make for good priorities.
- sologoub 5y ago
  While I agree those will yield a saner society and are worthy causes to focus one (personally, I still can’t get over the fact that you have to be at least a $50M+ net worth individual in US to truly not have to ever worry about medical-related bankruptcy - it won’t happen to most, but that fact that it can, short of a huge fortune, is just mind-boggling to me). The deeper driver for this loneliness is how fractured family and community ties have gotten over the last 50 years. When growing up outside of US, it was u thinkable that my elders could be left alone without much contact. It seems to be the norm here and thinking to my eventual future, I really don’t know what it will hold.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Having visited nursing homes many times, what is going on in there can barely be considered living, even though many of the inmates linger for years in it. I say linger because that's what it looks like. I'd rather die before being placed in one.
pedalpete 5y ago
Anti-aging and longevity are two different things. My parents haven't stopped aging, but they are living longer than any of their parents did. not only are they living longer, they are living better. We work in the sleeptech space, and sleep degrades as we age, beginning in late 30s. This degradation of sleep is closely linked to degenerative brain disease such as Alzheimer's and dementia. By improving sleep we aim to improve cognitive function longer in life, and improve immune system as well. So yes, aging is inevitable, but I believe so is extending the human lifespan.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on ‘sleeptech’? Are you doing more than simply monitoring sleep quality?
  - pedalpete 5y ago
    No, sleep monitoring isn't helpful for most people, what do you do with the data? We're focused on improving the neurological functioning of your brain during sleep. We talk a bit about it on our (very fluffy) website https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co - and link to the research on the "how it works" page. We put up the website before we really understood our target market, and even the long-term impact, so we'll be updating it as we get closer to launching. We're working on improving comfort so we can properly get into trials.
    - irrational 5y ago
      I’ve never dreamed (to the best of my knowledge, but I doubt it, I’m 50 years old and I think by now I’d have some inkling if I dreamed at night). Do you have any data on longevity of non-dreamers?
      - pedalpete 5y ago
        Everyone dreams, you just don't remember your dreams. Though we're interested in REM, it isn't our focus atm...and yes, you dream in non-REM sleep, but those sorts of dreams are different. REM (dream sleep) is thought to be connected to resolving emotional stresses. I haven't seen any research on the reduction of REM sleep and the impact. Sorry.
croes 5y ago
Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794018 FYI "the author also believes that, "it is difficult to escape the inference that powerful people and organizations have engineered this pandemic with deadly intent," believing that Bill Gates' TED talk indicated that he knew that COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) was coming. He thinks that the pandemic was planned to profit the pharmaceutical industry, and that vaccines are sometimes maliciously manufactured to induce infertility." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794425
- blooalien 5y ago
  Anyone with a deep interest in science knew that some "pandemic" was coming. We've seen it before, and therefore knew it was possible, and we've had scientists warning us for ages now that the more we invade and destroy the natural systems of the planet that sustain us, the more chance there is that we end up releasing or coming in contact with some new (novel) viruses and diseases we've not seen before. Humanity chose the "business as usual" approach to all warnings we were given by those in a position to know something about it, and now we're all paying the price of that willful ignorance.
axaxs 5y ago
God, I hope so. And glad the research suggests it. I've been downvoted a billion times for my opinion, but I hold steadfast. Nothing is meant to live forever. The one equalizer we all have is we all end up in a pine box(figure of speech). The last thing the world needs is a 500 year old Bezos.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  Arguably even Bezos doesn't really need 500 years, unless some magic happy pills pop up I can't see how that won't turn into a miserable existence eventually.
- axiom92 5y ago
  >And glad the research suggests it. The article is actually arguing against aging being inevitable (in the article, "My answer may be right or wrong" and below). The author also links to a blog titled "Age reduction breakthrough"~[1]. [1] https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/05/11/age-reduction-breakthrough/ https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/05/11/age-reduct...
  - axaxs 5y ago
    He admits it's a minority opinion, though. It seems based on a little research and a lot of theory, for the time being. I actually like the entropy comment a lot. Cancer seems to be the great equalizer. The biggest things we can do today to extend life reliably are a) cure cancer, b) lab grow vital organs, and everything that goes along with that, and c) clear arteries. That would by far extend our lives, without looking to theories and such.
- deleted 5y ago
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- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  One day, death from aging will be as much of an anachronism as half of children dying before the age of five, as they did throughout human history until the 19th century, is today. In almost any case where someone is dying, both them, and their loved ones, are devastated by the unfolding tragedy, and go to incredible lengths to prevent that outcome. There is nothing more human than to work to prevent death, and no outcome more inevitable, if the human race can survive long enough, than to provide people with biological immortality. A 500 year old Musk or Bezos will be building out space colonies for us to live in and funding the development of ever more advanced and affordable spacecraft to help us get there. I also don't think biological immortality will lead to individuals remaining the wealthiest in the world for ever. In the rapidly evolving economy of the modern age, every generation will see new entrepreneurs disrupt the old guard and become the new top players. This has more to do with the advantage of having a fresh prespective, than aging making the previous generation feeble.
CTDOCodebases 5y ago
Why doesn’t anyone see death as a feature not a bug? Our environment is always changing so is it wise to throw away the opportunity to adapt?
- xvector 5y ago
  We can adapt without dying, thank you very much. In fact, traditional death-based evolution is probably hindering our adaptation more than it helps, since it takes a few hundred thousand years to do what we can now accomplish in just a few decades.
- edrxty 5y ago
  Not to get political but have you seen the makeup of the US Congress? The world is ruled by octogenarians that never seem to die.
  - xvector 5y ago
    Not really an argument against curing aging, but rather an argument for age limits or age-based representation.
- CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  We've already thrown out evolution, which isn't a huge deal because our environment is changing far too quickly for it to be helpful. But even if none of that were the case, arguments that death is a positive and should be kept around have a huge burden to meet. When your argument is "we should murder everyone who will ever exist because X," then the value X had better be pretty fucking huge.
mullingitover 5y ago
Mortality is absolutely a feature of evolution. Sticking around after you reproduce and helping your offspring is great, but beyond some point you've done what you can to improve the viability of your offspring and are just competing with them for resources.
- xvector 5y ago
  Just because it's a feature of evolution doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop it. Evolution does not care about how you or your offspring feel. Literally the only thing evolution cares about is achieving cancerous growth at all costs. I don't think that's a worthy goal.
  - thebradbain 5y ago
    *Achieving exponential growth until we as a species reach our environment’s resource limit, and then a plateau, not a crash; Evolution’s “goal” then is to try to ensure the survival of the species. https://www.britannica.com/topic/exponential-growth https://www.britannica.com/topic/exponential-growth
    - xvector 5y ago
      Indeed, survival of the species with no regard to the happiness of the members therein. I think we can do better ourselves at this point, which would be in itself arguably part of evolution.
- cartoonworld 5y ago
  Meh, I disagree. It is not a feature of evolution, it is completely accidental. Evolution doesn't give a damn about any of that at all. All that it is doing is selecting for survival and reproduction. Things find a niche that allow them to survive and reproduce, if they only need to live days like a fly, or a hundred years like some lobsters, turtles, birds, and even hundreds or possibly thousands like some trees[0] are able to do, they will go ahead and do that. What happens is old ones that become weakened die from predation, or reduced hunting capacity, or some kind of senescence from something like molting, cell division, disease or injury. Typically, reproduction can happen relatively quickly so there isn't much selection pressure towards extremely long lives in general. Some things are able to live incredibly long, but that again is mostly an accident. Either for or against, evolution doesn't favor anything but enough, after that--its gravy. The thing about humans is that we are the ultimate generalist in the evolutionary kingdom. We can work in any niche, we could probably live on a scorching Venus in small numbers for a while--who knows? Communication has allowed us to find survival traits in the knowledge of our elders, stories, and later in societies and writing and large scale organization. Now that we have evolved science and soon, if we slide through the filter, post-industrial technology, we might just find that our selection pressure leads up to increased lifespans, or at least the possibility. We certainly have the urge here and there ... Perhaps it would enable us to colonize extrasolar planets, or maybe gain a perspective of scale that allows us to break free of the local minimum of the economics that is fossil fuel usage, planetary destruction events, knowledge transfer, or just plain ole' happiness, if living a long time somehow turns out granting us that. Can always pull the plug (in the space suit's oxygen tank or perhaps space-narcotic micro-drip injector) if it turns out to be terrible. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees
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tasty_freeze 5y ago
I wonder how many of the people cheerleading for indefinite lifespan technology also believe in heaven. I'm curious how they explain the desire to live a long time in this imperfect world when heaven awaits. Of course, if they think they are hell-bound, then there is nothing to explain.
- aerosmile 5y ago
  That can be easily answered - just look at the decline of Christianity (and other global religions) in the Western World [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Christianity_in_the_Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Christianity_in_the...
  - tasty_freeze 5y ago
    The link says Christianity is on the decline in terms of the percentage of adherents, and in many geographies in absolute numbers. My question was: of the group of people who believe in heaven and also want indefinite life on earth, how do they reconcile those two ideas? The article has no bearing on that. Even if there was one person who believed in heaven, if they also wanted unlimited life on earth, I'd be interested to hear why they believe both.
    - aerosmile 5y ago
      This would be a personal opinion so take it for what it's worth. I doubt that on a relative basis we have as many people left today who are as convinced in the concept of heaven as compared to a thousand years ago. Just think of all the instances where you would give someone a choice to denounce their religion or get burnt alive, and people chose the latter. Comparing that on a relative basis, I think fewer of those choices would be made today. As to why, a thousand years ago you didn't really have a strong counterthesis to the Intelligent Design thesis. As the Evolutionary principles became better understood and more accepted, religions have had to shift their position a bit (initially the Earth was the center of the universe, etc). Long story short, even if people do believe in heaven, they wouldn't mind having a small hedge, just in case.
janmo 5y ago
Biological life can't escape death, but future artificial life forms will.
ivan_gammel 5y ago
His suggestion seems to be to stop trying, but this is far from obvious. One possible explanation of aging is that natural selection forces living organisms to die if they are no longer capable of reproduction or compete for resources with those who can reproduce. For modern human the right balance was determined by evolution hundreds of thousands years ago in a very different environment. We do not know yet which age is now sustainable for nature, but we are powerful enough to adjust the environment, thus natural constraints of human age shall no longer apply. But the selection criteria can give us a hint on what science must focus on to reach longevity: it is female well-being, female fertility age and aging processes that increase competition for resources (i.e. keeping people at work as much as possible). Of course, if we are going to reproduce and live longer, we also need to develop sustainable economy and use resources of our planet wisely.
jhoechtl 5y ago
Ginkgo biloba, the maidenhair tree, shows no apparent signs of senescence. The tree is eventually dying because for a tree it's impossible to escape from environmental changes like land-slides, lightnings striking it's canopy. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/how-ginkgo-biloba-achieves-near-immortality https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/how-ginkgo-biloba-ac...
Isinlor 5y ago
The word the author seems to look for is "evolvability" [0]. > Evolvability is defined as the capacity of a system for adaptive evolution. Evolvability is the ability of a population of organisms to not merely generate genetic diversity, but to generate adaptive genetic diversity, and thereby evolve through natural selection. In changing environment organisms have to be able to quickly adapt. You can compare organisms like Greenland Shark with lifespans of up to 400 years with a common mouse. Mice will go trough some 100-1000 generations in lifespan of a Greenland Shark. Which one is more likely to adapt to changes in the environment induced by humans and which will go extinct? Anthropocene extinction event will eliminate a lot of life forms with long lifespans, many are already gone, and previous extinction events probably did it too. BTW - This is a falsifiable hypothesis in a fairly simple simulation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability

80 points by evo_9 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Yes, because of entropy. edit: I don't understand why my comment is so controversial. We are all subject to the laws of thermodynamics. DNA, proteins, cells, and body structe is basically matter in low entropic state. Its interaction with the environment will inevitably lead damage or erosion of said structures, a basic process of entropy increasing in the system. Nobody is exempt from this process.

briefcomment 5y ago
Do you think we have the least entropy when we are born, or when we're at peak physical and mental performance, like mid 20's to mid 30's?
- vlovich123 5y ago
  The question seems poorly worded but I’ll do my best guess here. As long as you are gaining weight/height, you should be decreasing the entropy of the system around you. Your body’s entropy should be increasing in absolute terms but staying the same/decreasing as a percentage of your overall body.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Growth without order is cancer. It's a form of entropy, not extropy. Extropy is measured as the increasing signal to noise ratio in a system, not how much space it occupies. The systems least prone to entropy are often the most compact. This is also why it's astonishing that elephants defy entropy by not getting cancer at the same rate per cell as smaller mammals.
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      Most human beings don’t experience growth in childhood as cancer.
      - noduerme 5y ago
        Most growth in childhood is making order out of chaos and reducing noise, so it's extropic. The point was that continued growth is not always a sign of reduced entropy.
Strilanc 5y ago
Entropy maxing out is more of a 10^100 year problem than a 100 year problem.
- NL807 5y ago
  Completely miss the point there. The basic principle behind entropy is that any ordered system will eventually become disordered over time and reaches equilibrium. Some systems go easily disordered within within a human lifetime, or even in seconds. For example, add milk to you coffee and watch it become diffused. In the context of a human body, the coded information in our DNA, the structured cell walls in our body, are states of matter that is low in entropy. They will eventually get damaged due to interactions with other matter around us. The damage in this case will manifest itself as "aging".
  - anonydsfsfs 5y ago
    How is GP missing the point? They're arguing about the timescale of entropy, not the basic principle. You're right that ordered systems eventually become disordered, but "eventually" can mean 10^100 years, and you haven't provided any evidence to the contrary.
    - NL807 5y ago
      Isn't the second paragraph not self explanatory?
      - anonydsfsfs 5y ago
        No, it doesn't say anything about timescale. That's what GP was arguing.
  - tripledunit 5y ago
    your body is getting damaged constantly and it is repairing the damage constantly. You are able to do this - in terms of entropy - because you are not a closed system, you are eating food and breathing air. Entropy is not an insurmountable problem for an animal unless it stops eating and breathing, just as entropy is not an insurmountable problem for an electric refrigerator unless it stops receiving power
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jacobsimon 5y ago
I’d recommend reading this article[1] which goes into more depth than the article here with a detailed critique of the entropy theory. 1. https://link.medium.com/CGktsSNhcib https://link.medium.com/CGktsSNhcib
ajross 5y ago
I suspect you're being downvoted because you're simply wrong as a matter of physics. Your body isn't a closed system. Entropy is a global variable, it's entirely possible to have subparts of a system (often called things like "engines" or "HVAC systems") experience net decrease in measured entropy just by moving energy around. And your body does that every day. The overwhelming majority of all identifiable entropy transfer in an organism happens as part of "metabolism", not "aging". That the engine doesn't work forever may very well have a thermodynamic expression, but "because of entropy" is basically missing the point.
gcanyon 5y ago
Entropy applies to any closed system, and we are far from closed. We take in external energy every single day, and reply on external order with every breath. There is zero reason to think that over the time frame of hundreds to thousands of years that entropy is the limiting factor on human survival.
ethn 5y ago
Entropy is a condition where a system becomes more chaotic over time when energy isn't added to a system. Otherwise life itself wouldn't occur due to entropy, life is precisely possible because energy is added to a system to prevent entropy.
adrianN 5y ago
Humans eat and poop, so they're not closed systems. Entropy doesn't apply until the stars start running low on fuel.

patorjk 5y ago

> As we extend human lifespan, there is an urgent need to move toward sustainable agriculture and to adopt energy-efficient technologies. I wonder if we'll reach a point where someone's life can be saved but doctors will choose not to if that person is of a certain age - because of the impact on the planet. It seems like a grisly future, but if it were possible to live to 200 or 300, the population could get out of control pretty fast. edit: This is getting a lot of downvotes - if you downvote can you please explain why? I'm not advocating for this, I simply thought it was an interesting possibility.

bpodgursky 5y ago
By the time anyone is 200, much less 300, assuming we have truly managed to cure ageing, I don't think we're going to be worrying about the impact on this particular planet. There's a whole universe out there to spend the next centuries of your life seeing.
- patorjk 5y ago
  This assumes we can live in space indefinitely without any problems or that settling other planets won't be a problem. Both of those could be great filters.
- dragosmocrii 5y ago
  Imagine this hypothetical discussion is discovered and read by someone in 10,000 years from now, when living over 300 years is already a reality and the normal. What a feeling to realize that the things you now take for granted, were at one point simply out of reach. I wonder if we have specific examples of such recorded discussions of things that today are a reality.
  - xvector 5y ago
    Future societies will definitely look back at the "age of death" with complete horror. How could humans accept aging while at the same time desperately clawing for life when death came near? How could they move the world and spend trillions fighting COVID while not even spending a billion fighting aging? People will shake their heads in fascination and perhaps a feeling of disgust at our obvious shortsightedness. In the future, even a single death will be a very significant event, similar to how we might see a high-mortality catastrophe like 9/11 today.

pmoriarty 5y ago

"Over several decades, Vaupel has been the optimist of demography, telling us that somewhere in the world, human lifespan is always continuing to increase, as it has done since 1840, at the rate of about 1 year of new lifespan for every 4 years that passes. For the first 130 years of this advance, the improvement in lifespan was predominantly about preventing infant mortality and combatting infectious disease. But since about 1970, lifespan improvements have continued to benefit the elderly." But what kind of life is it? Many elderly have lived miserable, hopeless lives, and when they age not only do they suffer bodily infirmities, but they're desperately lonely as for many of them all of their friends and family have died, or they've been abandoned by their families, they have no one to support them, and suffer from mental issues like dementia and depression on top of that. Little wonder that so many of the elderly commit suicide. Not to discourage anti-aging research, but if I had to prioritize I'd choose focusing on eliminating poverty, improving social safety nets, and building stronger communities. Improving mental health and helping people to live healthier lives while they're young so their bodies aren't in horrible shape by the time they're old would also make for good priorities.

sologoub 5y ago
While I agree those will yield a saner society and are worthy causes to focus one (personally, I still can’t get over the fact that you have to be at least a $50M+ net worth individual in US to truly not have to ever worry about medical-related bankruptcy - it won’t happen to most, but that fact that it can, short of a huge fortune, is just mind-boggling to me). The deeper driver for this loneliness is how fractured family and community ties have gotten over the last 50 years. When growing up outside of US, it was u thinkable that my elders could be left alone without much contact. It seems to be the norm here and thinking to my eventual future, I really don’t know what it will hold.
WalterBright 5y ago
Having visited nursing homes many times, what is going on in there can barely be considered living, even though many of the inmates linger for years in it. I say linger because that's what it looks like. I'd rather die before being placed in one.

pedalpete 5y ago

Anti-aging and longevity are two different things. My parents haven't stopped aging, but they are living longer than any of their parents did. not only are they living longer, they are living better. We work in the sleeptech space, and sleep degrades as we age, beginning in late 30s. This degradation of sleep is closely linked to degenerative brain disease such as Alzheimer's and dementia. By improving sleep we aim to improve cognitive function longer in life, and improve immune system as well. So yes, aging is inevitable, but I believe so is extending the human lifespan.

germinalphrase 5y ago
Can you elaborate on ‘sleeptech’? Are you doing more than simply monitoring sleep quality?
- pedalpete 5y ago
  No, sleep monitoring isn't helpful for most people, what do you do with the data? We're focused on improving the neurological functioning of your brain during sleep. We talk a bit about it on our (very fluffy) website https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co - and link to the research on the "how it works" page. We put up the website before we really understood our target market, and even the long-term impact, so we'll be updating it as we get closer to launching. We're working on improving comfort so we can properly get into trials.
  - irrational 5y ago
    I’ve never dreamed (to the best of my knowledge, but I doubt it, I’m 50 years old and I think by now I’d have some inkling if I dreamed at night). Do you have any data on longevity of non-dreamers?
    - pedalpete 5y ago
      Everyone dreams, you just don't remember your dreams. Though we're interested in REM, it isn't our focus atm...and yes, you dream in non-REM sleep, but those sorts of dreams are different. REM (dream sleep) is thought to be connected to resolving emotional stresses. I haven't seen any research on the reduction of REM sleep and the impact. Sorry.

croes 5y ago

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794018 FYI "the author also believes that, "it is difficult to escape the inference that powerful people and organizations have engineered this pandemic with deadly intent," believing that Bill Gates' TED talk indicated that he knew that COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) was coming. He thinks that the pandemic was planned to profit the pharmaceutical industry, and that vaccines are sometimes maliciously manufactured to induce infertility." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27794425

blooalien 5y ago
Anyone with a deep interest in science knew that some "pandemic" was coming. We've seen it before, and therefore knew it was possible, and we've had scientists warning us for ages now that the more we invade and destroy the natural systems of the planet that sustain us, the more chance there is that we end up releasing or coming in contact with some new (novel) viruses and diseases we've not seen before. Humanity chose the "business as usual" approach to all warnings we were given by those in a position to know something about it, and now we're all paying the price of that willful ignorance.

axaxs 5y ago

God, I hope so. And glad the research suggests it. I've been downvoted a billion times for my opinion, but I hold steadfast. Nothing is meant to live forever. The one equalizer we all have is we all end up in a pine box(figure of speech). The last thing the world needs is a 500 year old Bezos.

joelbluminator 5y ago
Arguably even Bezos doesn't really need 500 years, unless some magic happy pills pop up I can't see how that won't turn into a miserable existence eventually.
axiom92 5y ago
>And glad the research suggests it. The article is actually arguing against aging being inevitable (in the article, "My answer may be right or wrong" and below). The author also links to a blog titled "Age reduction breakthrough"~[1]. [1] https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/05/11/age-reduction-breakthrough/ https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/05/11/age-reduct...
- axaxs 5y ago
  He admits it's a minority opinion, though. It seems based on a little research and a lot of theory, for the time being. I actually like the entropy comment a lot. Cancer seems to be the great equalizer. The biggest things we can do today to extend life reliably are a) cure cancer, b) lab grow vital organs, and everything that goes along with that, and c) clear arteries. That would by far extend our lives, without looking to theories and such.
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CryptoPunk 5y ago
One day, death from aging will be as much of an anachronism as half of children dying before the age of five, as they did throughout human history until the 19th century, is today. In almost any case where someone is dying, both them, and their loved ones, are devastated by the unfolding tragedy, and go to incredible lengths to prevent that outcome. There is nothing more human than to work to prevent death, and no outcome more inevitable, if the human race can survive long enough, than to provide people with biological immortality. A 500 year old Musk or Bezos will be building out space colonies for us to live in and funding the development of ever more advanced and affordable spacecraft to help us get there. I also don't think biological immortality will lead to individuals remaining the wealthiest in the world for ever. In the rapidly evolving economy of the modern age, every generation will see new entrepreneurs disrupt the old guard and become the new top players. This has more to do with the advantage of having a fresh prespective, than aging making the previous generation feeble.

CTDOCodebases 5y ago

Why doesn’t anyone see death as a feature not a bug? Our environment is always changing so is it wise to throw away the opportunity to adapt?

xvector 5y ago
We can adapt without dying, thank you very much. In fact, traditional death-based evolution is probably hindering our adaptation more than it helps, since it takes a few hundred thousand years to do what we can now accomplish in just a few decades.
edrxty 5y ago
Not to get political but have you seen the makeup of the US Congress? The world is ruled by octogenarians that never seem to die.
- xvector 5y ago
  Not really an argument against curing aging, but rather an argument for age limits or age-based representation.
CobrastanJorji 5y ago
We've already thrown out evolution, which isn't a huge deal because our environment is changing far too quickly for it to be helpful. But even if none of that were the case, arguments that death is a positive and should be kept around have a huge burden to meet. When your argument is "we should murder everyone who will ever exist because X," then the value X had better be pretty fucking huge.

mullingitover 5y ago

Mortality is absolutely a feature of evolution. Sticking around after you reproduce and helping your offspring is great, but beyond some point you've done what you can to improve the viability of your offspring and are just competing with them for resources.

xvector 5y ago
Just because it's a feature of evolution doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop it. Evolution does not care about how you or your offspring feel. Literally the only thing evolution cares about is achieving cancerous growth at all costs. I don't think that's a worthy goal.
- thebradbain 5y ago
  *Achieving exponential growth until we as a species reach our environment’s resource limit, and then a plateau, not a crash; Evolution’s “goal” then is to try to ensure the survival of the species. https://www.britannica.com/topic/exponential-growth https://www.britannica.com/topic/exponential-growth
  - xvector 5y ago
    Indeed, survival of the species with no regard to the happiness of the members therein. I think we can do better ourselves at this point, which would be in itself arguably part of evolution.
cartoonworld 5y ago
Meh, I disagree. It is not a feature of evolution, it is completely accidental. Evolution doesn't give a damn about any of that at all. All that it is doing is selecting for survival and reproduction. Things find a niche that allow them to survive and reproduce, if they only need to live days like a fly, or a hundred years like some lobsters, turtles, birds, and even hundreds or possibly thousands like some trees[0] are able to do, they will go ahead and do that. What happens is old ones that become weakened die from predation, or reduced hunting capacity, or some kind of senescence from something like molting, cell division, disease or injury. Typically, reproduction can happen relatively quickly so there isn't much selection pressure towards extremely long lives in general. Some things are able to live incredibly long, but that again is mostly an accident. Either for or against, evolution doesn't favor anything but enough, after that--its gravy. The thing about humans is that we are the ultimate generalist in the evolutionary kingdom. We can work in any niche, we could probably live on a scorching Venus in small numbers for a while--who knows? Communication has allowed us to find survival traits in the knowledge of our elders, stories, and later in societies and writing and large scale organization. Now that we have evolved science and soon, if we slide through the filter, post-industrial technology, we might just find that our selection pressure leads up to increased lifespans, or at least the possibility. We certainly have the urge here and there ... Perhaps it would enable us to colonize extrasolar planets, or maybe gain a perspective of scale that allows us to break free of the local minimum of the economics that is fossil fuel usage, planetary destruction events, knowledge transfer, or just plain ole' happiness, if living a long time somehow turns out granting us that. Can always pull the plug (in the space suit's oxygen tank or perhaps space-narcotic micro-drip injector) if it turns out to be terrible. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees

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tasty_freeze 5y ago

I wonder how many of the people cheerleading for indefinite lifespan technology also believe in heaven. I'm curious how they explain the desire to live a long time in this imperfect world when heaven awaits. Of course, if they think they are hell-bound, then there is nothing to explain.

aerosmile 5y ago
That can be easily answered - just look at the decline of Christianity (and other global religions) in the Western World [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Christianity_in_the_Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Christianity_in_the...
- tasty_freeze 5y ago
  The link says Christianity is on the decline in terms of the percentage of adherents, and in many geographies in absolute numbers. My question was: of the group of people who believe in heaven and also want indefinite life on earth, how do they reconcile those two ideas? The article has no bearing on that. Even if there was one person who believed in heaven, if they also wanted unlimited life on earth, I'd be interested to hear why they believe both.
  - aerosmile 5y ago
    This would be a personal opinion so take it for what it's worth. I doubt that on a relative basis we have as many people left today who are as convinced in the concept of heaven as compared to a thousand years ago. Just think of all the instances where you would give someone a choice to denounce their religion or get burnt alive, and people chose the latter. Comparing that on a relative basis, I think fewer of those choices would be made today. As to why, a thousand years ago you didn't really have a strong counterthesis to the Intelligent Design thesis. As the Evolutionary principles became better understood and more accepted, religions have had to shift their position a bit (initially the Earth was the center of the universe, etc). Long story short, even if people do believe in heaven, they wouldn't mind having a small hedge, just in case.

janmo 5y ago

Biological life can't escape death, but future artificial life forms will.

ivan_gammel 5y ago

His suggestion seems to be to stop trying, but this is far from obvious. One possible explanation of aging is that natural selection forces living organisms to die if they are no longer capable of reproduction or compete for resources with those who can reproduce. For modern human the right balance was determined by evolution hundreds of thousands years ago in a very different environment. We do not know yet which age is now sustainable for nature, but we are powerful enough to adjust the environment, thus natural constraints of human age shall no longer apply. But the selection criteria can give us a hint on what science must focus on to reach longevity: it is female well-being, female fertility age and aging processes that increase competition for resources (i.e. keeping people at work as much as possible). Of course, if we are going to reproduce and live longer, we also need to develop sustainable economy and use resources of our planet wisely.

jhoechtl 5y ago

Ginkgo biloba, the maidenhair tree, shows no apparent signs of senescence. The tree is eventually dying because for a tree it's impossible to escape from environmental changes like land-slides, lightnings striking it's canopy. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/how-ginkgo-biloba-achieves-near-immortality https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/how-ginkgo-biloba-ac...

Isinlor 5y ago

The word the author seems to look for is "evolvability" [0]. > Evolvability is defined as the capacity of a system for adaptive evolution. Evolvability is the ability of a population of organisms to not merely generate genetic diversity, but to generate adaptive genetic diversity, and thereby evolve through natural selection. In changing environment organisms have to be able to quickly adapt. You can compare organisms like Greenland Shark with lifespans of up to 400 years with a common mouse. Mice will go trough some 100-1000 generations in lifespan of a Greenland Shark. Which one is more likely to adapt to changes in the environment induced by humans and which will go extinct? Anthropocene extinction event will eliminate a lot of life forms with long lifespans, many are already gone, and previous extinction events probably did it too. BTW - This is a falsifiable hypothesis in a fairly simple simulation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability