14 ms·

I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. (Note that for those who discuss this semi-regularly, that

I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. (Note that for those who discuss this semi-regularly, that's understood to be very different than seeking a cure for any particular age related disease, which usually we attempt to address when it's too late.). There are groups like https://www.levf.org/ https://www.levf.org/ doing some early work like Robust Mouse Rejuvenation (in mid-life for mice) to try to figure out how to help us all live much longer. https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-study-1 https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-stud...

sangnoir 4y ago
> I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. Faced with their own mortality, a bunch of aging billionaires and multimillionaires tend to pour money into longevity research. I'd be very upset if governments increased spending on fighting senescence today, instead of lower-hanging fruit .
- yreg 4y ago
  When Elon was asked why longetivity research didn't pick his interest as worthy of an investment, he said: >It is important for us to die because most of the time people don't change their mind, they just die. If you live forever, we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    The opposite could also be true though. Longer lifespans permit more people gaining education, working more years, saving more money with a longer term vision, and rising to be a new economic upper class. Short lifespans make that a very difficult to coordinate multi generational project. There are also solutions like term limits, or generational tenure limits or something that could help reduce any negative effects without needing to continue unnecessary loss of life.
    - XorNot 4y ago
      Or alternatively, a stratum of leadership class who actually worry about problems coming 100 years down the line because they fully expect to be effected by them.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - yreg 4y ago
      I'm all for longetivity, but I admit what he said has substance. It's not (only) about old people having short term vision/not enough time for reeducation. 25 or 30 year old people are already very often set in stone and unable to change their views and they have most of their life ahead of them.
      - scotty79 4y ago
        Why not die at 30 then in the spirit of societal progress? This argument is philosophical i.e. worthless. We will actually have to win with death to answer the question if it's good or not. It's not something you can figure out without doing it.
        twiddling 4y ago
        We could have blinking red lights in our palms for that occasion
        telotortium 4y ago
        Raising children (and later, grandchildren) is the obvious answer.
        scotty79 4y ago
        Why not grand-grand-children? Current point looks like optimum, but it's really arbitrary and imposed only by external constraint of length of human life.
  - otikik 4y ago
    There’s always a tweet
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    I'd argue he doesn't care about ageing because he's 51. What till he's 75 and see if he still holds that view.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    Maybe old people living longer would make us finally create some mechanisms of power rotation instead of just patiently waiting for old power to die. Mechanism that could be applied way earlier than old ossified out of touch rulers die now. And applied more merit based.
    - lovich 4y ago
      Why would we make such a mechanism instead of the currently entrenched powers just further solidifying their hold on society?
      - scotty79 4y ago
        Out of necessity? I know we live in times when elites seem secure. But it wasn't always so and it won't be always so. It is so right now only because of how good modern common people have. But it's going away now. And if security of elites depend of well being of others it's sort of self-regulating system albeit way too slowly. There's also pressure from the other side. The longer living elites means it will get crowded at the top, so elites might be open to some means of culling their numbers.
  - neuronic 4y ago
    This wisdom was already the topic of cartoons, books and movies 30+ years ago. If you attach 'Elon Musk' to a quote it immediately becomes relevant to some gullible people, it's truly amazing. To add some good mood, I stole a comment from reddit [1] which describes one of millions of media dealing with this question: > In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series, immortality is fine if you're born that way. It's only if you accidentally obtain it after an accident with a few rubber bands, a liquid lunch, and a particle accelerator is it a bad thing that you are not equipped to deal with and so decide to insult everyone in the universe in alphabetical order. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tpzb4e/immortality_is_always_portrayed_as_something_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tpzb4e/immortality_i...
    - yreg 4y ago
      1. The statement you quote is not the same idea. 2. Even if it was, it doesn't make the "wisdom" any less relevant. There's no shortage of relevant wisdom in Douglas Adams' writing. 3. I intentionally quoted Elon specifically, because it is a relevant reply to the parent comment about billionaires pouring money to longevity research.
  - gonzo41 4y ago
    It'll be interesting to see if he holds that view over the longer term.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Wonder how long he'll stick to that line. I can almost see that Twitter poll he'd currently use to rationalize the change of mind: "Should I try to not die? [ ] yes [ ] no" But for the time being, nice to see him stating something I don't disagree with.
  - userulluipeste 4y ago
    I'm just confused about why he didn't followed his train of thought further (i.e. first principles thinking) on that. As I see it, people don't change their mind mainly for two reasons. One is that no compelling new information reaches them, and the other is that as people age, they have to be more conservative on their own diminishing energy, which affects them in multiple ways (avoiding the challenge of their current beliefs, which can be tiresome and not that necessary compared to someone younger that has to find out more about the world in order to grow and gain competence; or increasingly limiting the circle of people that is one's idea exchange medium, which can devolve into something where politeness becomes more important than other things; etc.), then there is just the custom of leaving the elderly be as their change is not worth the cost. (On the last one it's not only the elderly, as many aspects that people give up on attempts to "fix" each other starting from much earlier ages.) Now, if only that aging and age related energy decay could be solved, there would be an entirely new game, looking for a new homeostasis! ...or maybe one has to be young enough to be curious enough about something like this?
  - obiefernandez 4y ago
    I hope he changes his mind about Twitter soon
  - throw7 4y ago
    This conversation reminds me of "The Elflord and the Mayfly": https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353
- concordDance 4y ago
  What lower hanging fruit are governments currently spending on? Giant militaries? Healthcare for those last few months of life?
  - Twisell 4y ago
    Comprehensive worldwide healthcare plan to successfully fight pandemic events comes to my mind. PS: Oh sorry I understood that as a question of what would be useful, not what is actually spent.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      You were on the right track: I'm gp, and I meant there are other lower-hanging fruit that government ought to tackle ahead of senescence.
    - throwuwu 4y ago
      Why do you think all countries and their citizens would want you to impose your healthcare system on them?
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > What lower hanging fruit are governments currently spending on? I meant what lower hanging fruits governments ought to spend on. However, since you asked, here are some of the things governments are currently spending on, but could bear improvement: eradicating preventable diseases, ensuring kids get good nutrition, better tracking, and hopefully prevention of e. coli/salmonella outbreaks, funding basic research into improving outcomes for patients, reducing profiteering off the products of publicly-funded research, medical pricing transparency, better organ donor policies (universal opt-out)
    - the__alchemist 4y ago
      This is a (common) fallacy that could be applied to any funding or focus decision. It reduces to "Why focus on X when Y is more important?". You could use your same examples here as an argument for why not to support space exploration, or environmental conservation, for example.
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  Not sure about anyone else but if I was a billionaire researching it I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone if possible.
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    Seems like some are fairly open about it. I recall hearing about some trying blood transfusions for example.
hoseja 4y ago
Imagine if they succeeded. Instant breakdown of society. So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't.
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  > So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't. Yikes! That's a scary conspiracy theory! (Note that I don't agree it would cause a breakdown in society.)
- stanete 4y ago
  It doesn't seem to be happening that way. Current research doesn't seem to aim at indefinite life extension but at some decades more of healthy life. The current goal of most companies and foundations is to make 90 the new 50. So it seems that it will happen gradually.
- JadeNB 4y ago
  > Imagine if they succeeded. Instant breakdown of society. So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't. My comment comes across as semantic nitpicking, but I don't mean it that way; I just think I'm not understanding what you mean by reasoning "by induction" here. I am a mathematician, so am most familiar with induction in its technical mathematical sense, which I assume isn't what you mean. More generally, my dictionary says that induction is "the inference of a general law from particular instances". For that to be what you mean here, you would need to infer that "someone makes sure they don't" (meaning, I assume, "they don't succeed in curing death by aging") in general from the fact that someone has done so in particular cases. Is that what you meant? If so, who and when? Or is my dictionary wrong, or are you using some other sense of 'induction'?
  - spuz 4y ago
    If you replace "induction" with "implication" then the comment is probably closer to what the poster meant.
    - hoseja 4y ago
saiya-jin 4y ago
I would actively pay to fight such a movement. The world is full, yes it can be fuller but we are seriously cracking whole ecosystem and one of main reason is simply the amount of people living on this planet. If you prolong life say 2x it means Earth has 2x the population long term just due to this. Lets focus on serious issues hindering our growth as a race and not some vanity fears of few rich and powerful who think they are oh-so-special while they are not. Death is good on so many levels - equalizer that removes most horrible tyrants like Stalin who would easily burn whole world just to be immortal and stay on top. If you are a normal decent person you can't even comprehend mindset of such sociopaths and their eternal greed. Don't think there are few people like that in a generation, rather few millions, just with fewer options. Death also makes whole nations eventually forget wrongs on the past, otherwise we would still be hating mongols and huns and romans and swedes and british and slavers and germans as nazis etc. If for nothing else, just to remove threat of semi-eternal planetary dictator death is great. My grandparents from my dads side both died few months ago aged 94 and 95. They saw all their friends, neighbors and colleagues die decades ago, and they were witnessing same starting to happen to kids of those close people. They were both depressed from this, gradual loss of everything that has any long term meaning plus decline of everything health-related. It sucks to be the last living guy from say group of friends, you think you would find tons of solace in the fact you are still alive but thats not how reality on the ground looks like. People just wait for death to come and many prefer it comes soon.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  You cite "Stalin bad" but Stalin only killed about 40,000/week for 30 years. You're talking of personally paying to support the deaths of everyone at the current world-wide all-cause death rate of 1,000,000/week, forever. Surely in some way that makes your plans infinitely worse than Stalin's? Imagine all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, all the veil of mourning and tears, the darkness your plans will cloud the surface of the Earth with. All the sobbing parents, grieving siblings, depressed grandparents and grandchildren. All because you don't want to bother inventing an orbital ring or an arcology tower or society where suicide by choice is the accepted way out. > "removes most horrible tyrants like Stalin" "we" could still kill him; immortal or ageless doesn't necessarily mean invincible.
psychphysic 4y ago
There's a decent amount of research but it's hard! Most of it is on fruit flies and mice then takes a life time to test on humans! What we do know is that being fit and exercising with some semblance of healthy eating helps people live a lot longer. But no one wants to do it.
- jorvi 4y ago
  > What we do know is that being fit and exercising with some semblance of healthy eating helps people live a lot longer. No, abstaining from things like alcohol and smoking mostly does that. Exercise and healthy eating markedly improves quality of life at old age, but it doesn’t extend it by huge amounts.
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    See people don't want to even believe healthy eating and exercise long life expectancy! For what it's worth obesity accounts for about 5-10 year shortening. Not dissimilar to smoking.
    - jorvi 4y ago
      Obesity is something else than median ( = control group) living. Sport is good for you. Extreme sports markedly cuts short average life expectancy and late quality of life. With your logic, that makes sports bad. Edit: actually, I guess it depends on where you live. In America, obesity probably is the median..
      - psychphysic 4y ago
        I'm not trying to invent some new science here. Just what I've read in journals.[0] There is this weird defense of obesity and being sedentary in western culture it's just inexplicable. Interestingly we've just had the first case of manslaughter by obesity trial going on in the UK [1]. The mum has admitted manslaughter the dad is going to trial. Over death of their 16yo girl. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-018-0210-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-018-0210-2 [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64045049.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64045049.amp
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
One shouldn't put money into "curing death by aging" without fixing society first; while birth rates exceed death rates, the world fills up and drains natural resources etc etc. There's a ton of problems that need resolving if living longer is to be a thing.
- endtime 4y ago
  If aging is cured then the elderly could be fully productive.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    At the cost of less elderly who'll miss out on being reproductive die to all the spots already being taken. Achieving immortality would be robbing from your descendants what your ancestors bestowed.
    - endtime 4y ago
      I was responding to a specific point to which your response seems irrelevant. If my kids, or their kids, or their kids, etc. ever wanted me to die in order to "bestow" them with something...well, too bad. I wish my grandparents, and their parents, etc. were alive today.
      - usrusr 4y ago
        Space on earth is finite. And even if add more hypotheticals like us becoming an interstellar species (actually I'd wager that's less unlikely than overcoming aging), in absence of aging exponential breeding would eventually outpace even the fastest space frontier colonization imaginable.
        datavirtue 4y ago
        Yeah, and if you go from 100 year lifespan to 300 years and survive the societal collapse, would you be happy then? What about in 300 years? Eventually all the atoms we know and love will decay and "disappear."
dghughes 4y ago
A recent article mentioned how leprosy can regenerate livers or maybe other organs, nerves, vessels etc. It does it so it can infect it again. Pretty close to human regeneration if the kinks are worked out. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63626239 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63626239
tejohnso 4y ago
Aubrey de Grey is the only person I'm aware of who seems to be considering the disease of aging seriously and passionately. He seems to be single handedly pushing the issue forward with multiple foundations and papers. I suppose there are others but like you I don't understand why there isn't more focus and media attention on the root causes of aging, the ultimate killer.
- tashoecraft 4y ago
  There are now plenty of scientists pushing for aging to be classified as a disease, rather an inevitability. It is becoming much more mainstream and has seen lots of money flowing to it.
ladyattis 4y ago
Yeah, I'd just rather have medicine make my finite life less painful thanks without the need for opioids (not saying being a bit stone is bad, just that too much will make life not worth living). Like being able to still walk around without a cane and clean and dress myself by the end would be nice. Not asking for olympic athlete level capability, just decent mobility with not much pain or senility.
- throwuwu 4y ago
  That’s actually the point of most longevity research. Figuring out how to keep people healthy for as long as possible. That may eventually lead to effective immortality but the first step is the prevent senescence.

sangnoir 4y ago

> I'm absolutely shocked that more money and time is not spent researching how to cure death by aging. Faced with their own mortality, a bunch of aging billionaires and multimillionaires tend to pour money into longevity research. I'd be very upset if governments increased spending on fighting senescence today, instead of lower-hanging fruit .

yreg 4y ago
When Elon was asked why longetivity research didn't pick his interest as worthy of an investment, he said: >It is important for us to die because most of the time people don't change their mind, they just die. If you live forever, we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  The opposite could also be true though. Longer lifespans permit more people gaining education, working more years, saving more money with a longer term vision, and rising to be a new economic upper class. Short lifespans make that a very difficult to coordinate multi generational project. There are also solutions like term limits, or generational tenure limits or something that could help reduce any negative effects without needing to continue unnecessary loss of life.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    Or alternatively, a stratum of leadership class who actually worry about problems coming 100 years down the line because they fully expect to be effected by them.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - yreg 4y ago
    I'm all for longetivity, but I admit what he said has substance. It's not (only) about old people having short term vision/not enough time for reeducation. 25 or 30 year old people are already very often set in stone and unable to change their views and they have most of their life ahead of them.
    - scotty79 4y ago
      Why not die at 30 then in the spirit of societal progress? This argument is philosophical i.e. worthless. We will actually have to win with death to answer the question if it's good or not. It's not something you can figure out without doing it.
      - twiddling 4y ago
        We could have blinking red lights in our palms for that occasion
      - telotortium 4y ago
        Raising children (and later, grandchildren) is the obvious answer.
        scotty79 4y ago
        Why not grand-grand-children? Current point looks like optimum, but it's really arbitrary and imposed only by external constraint of length of human life.
- otikik 4y ago
  There’s always a tweet
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  I'd argue he doesn't care about ageing because he's 51. What till he's 75 and see if he still holds that view.
- scotty79 4y ago
  Maybe old people living longer would make us finally create some mechanisms of power rotation instead of just patiently waiting for old power to die. Mechanism that could be applied way earlier than old ossified out of touch rulers die now. And applied more merit based.
  - lovich 4y ago
    Why would we make such a mechanism instead of the currently entrenched powers just further solidifying their hold on society?
    - scotty79 4y ago
      Out of necessity? I know we live in times when elites seem secure. But it wasn't always so and it won't be always so. It is so right now only because of how good modern common people have. But it's going away now. And if security of elites depend of well being of others it's sort of self-regulating system albeit way too slowly. There's also pressure from the other side. The longer living elites means it will get crowded at the top, so elites might be open to some means of culling their numbers.
- neuronic 4y ago
  This wisdom was already the topic of cartoons, books and movies 30+ years ago. If you attach 'Elon Musk' to a quote it immediately becomes relevant to some gullible people, it's truly amazing. To add some good mood, I stole a comment from reddit [1] which describes one of millions of media dealing with this question: > In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series, immortality is fine if you're born that way. It's only if you accidentally obtain it after an accident with a few rubber bands, a liquid lunch, and a particle accelerator is it a bad thing that you are not equipped to deal with and so decide to insult everyone in the universe in alphabetical order. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tpzb4e/immortality_is_always_portrayed_as_something_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tpzb4e/immortality_i...
  - yreg 4y ago
    1. The statement you quote is not the same idea. 2. Even if it was, it doesn't make the "wisdom" any less relevant. There's no shortage of relevant wisdom in Douglas Adams' writing. 3. I intentionally quoted Elon specifically, because it is a relevant reply to the parent comment about billionaires pouring money to longevity research.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  It'll be interesting to see if he holds that view over the longer term.
- usrusr 4y ago
  Wonder how long he'll stick to that line. I can almost see that Twitter poll he'd currently use to rationalize the change of mind: "Should I try to not die? [ ] yes [ ] no" But for the time being, nice to see him stating something I don't disagree with.
- userulluipeste 4y ago
  I'm just confused about why he didn't followed his train of thought further (i.e. first principles thinking) on that. As I see it, people don't change their mind mainly for two reasons. One is that no compelling new information reaches them, and the other is that as people age, they have to be more conservative on their own diminishing energy, which affects them in multiple ways (avoiding the challenge of their current beliefs, which can be tiresome and not that necessary compared to someone younger that has to find out more about the world in order to grow and gain competence; or increasingly limiting the circle of people that is one's idea exchange medium, which can devolve into something where politeness becomes more important than other things; etc.), then there is just the custom of leaving the elderly be as their change is not worth the cost. (On the last one it's not only the elderly, as many aspects that people give up on attempts to "fix" each other starting from much earlier ages.) Now, if only that aging and age related energy decay could be solved, there would be an entirely new game, looking for a new homeostasis! ...or maybe one has to be young enough to be curious enough about something like this?
- obiefernandez 4y ago
  I hope he changes his mind about Twitter soon
- throw7 4y ago
  This conversation reminds me of "The Elflord and the Mayfly": https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353
concordDance 4y ago
What lower hanging fruit are governments currently spending on? Giant militaries? Healthcare for those last few months of life?
- Twisell 4y ago
  Comprehensive worldwide healthcare plan to successfully fight pandemic events comes to my mind. PS: Oh sorry I understood that as a question of what would be useful, not what is actually spent.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    You were on the right track: I'm gp, and I meant there are other lower-hanging fruit that government ought to tackle ahead of senescence.
  - throwuwu 4y ago
    Why do you think all countries and their citizens would want you to impose your healthcare system on them?
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > What lower hanging fruit are governments currently spending on? I meant what lower hanging fruits governments ought to spend on. However, since you asked, here are some of the things governments are currently spending on, but could bear improvement: eradicating preventable diseases, ensuring kids get good nutrition, better tracking, and hopefully prevention of e. coli/salmonella outbreaks, funding basic research into improving outcomes for patients, reducing profiteering off the products of publicly-funded research, medical pricing transparency, better organ donor policies (universal opt-out)
  - the__alchemist 4y ago
    This is a (common) fallacy that could be applied to any funding or focus decision. It reduces to "Why focus on X when Y is more important?". You could use your same examples here as an argument for why not to support space exploration, or environmental conservation, for example.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Not sure about anyone else but if I was a billionaire researching it I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone if possible.
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  Seems like some are fairly open about it. I recall hearing about some trying blood transfusions for example.

hoseja 4y ago

Imagine if they succeeded. Instant breakdown of society. So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't.

epicureanideal 4y ago
> So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't. Yikes! That's a scary conspiracy theory! (Note that I don't agree it would cause a breakdown in society.)
stanete 4y ago
It doesn't seem to be happening that way. Current research doesn't seem to aim at indefinite life extension but at some decades more of healthy life. The current goal of most companies and foundations is to make 90 the new 50. So it seems that it will happen gradually.
JadeNB 4y ago
> Imagine if they succeeded. Instant breakdown of society. So by induction, perhaps someone makes sure they don't. My comment comes across as semantic nitpicking, but I don't mean it that way; I just think I'm not understanding what you mean by reasoning "by induction" here. I am a mathematician, so am most familiar with induction in its technical mathematical sense, which I assume isn't what you mean. More generally, my dictionary says that induction is "the inference of a general law from particular instances". For that to be what you mean here, you would need to infer that "someone makes sure they don't" (meaning, I assume, "they don't succeed in curing death by aging") in general from the fact that someone has done so in particular cases. Is that what you meant? If so, who and when? Or is my dictionary wrong, or are you using some other sense of 'induction'?
- spuz 4y ago
  If you replace "induction" with "implication" then the comment is probably closer to what the poster meant.
  - hoseja 4y ago

saiya-jin 4y ago

I would actively pay to fight such a movement. The world is full, yes it can be fuller but we are seriously cracking whole ecosystem and one of main reason is simply the amount of people living on this planet. If you prolong life say 2x it means Earth has 2x the population long term just due to this. Lets focus on serious issues hindering our growth as a race and not some vanity fears of few rich and powerful who think they are oh-so-special while they are not. Death is good on so many levels - equalizer that removes most horrible tyrants like Stalin who would easily burn whole world just to be immortal and stay on top. If you are a normal decent person you can't even comprehend mindset of such sociopaths and their eternal greed. Don't think there are few people like that in a generation, rather few millions, just with fewer options. Death also makes whole nations eventually forget wrongs on the past, otherwise we would still be hating mongols and huns and romans and swedes and british and slavers and germans as nazis etc. If for nothing else, just to remove threat of semi-eternal planetary dictator death is great. My grandparents from my dads side both died few months ago aged 94 and 95. They saw all their friends, neighbors and colleagues die decades ago, and they were witnessing same starting to happen to kids of those close people. They were both depressed from this, gradual loss of everything that has any long term meaning plus decline of everything health-related. It sucks to be the last living guy from say group of friends, you think you would find tons of solace in the fact you are still alive but thats not how reality on the ground looks like. People just wait for death to come and many prefer it comes soon.

jodrellblank 4y ago
You cite "Stalin bad" but Stalin only killed about 40,000/week for 30 years. You're talking of personally paying to support the deaths of everyone at the current world-wide all-cause death rate of 1,000,000/week, forever. Surely in some way that makes your plans infinitely worse than Stalin's? Imagine all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, all the veil of mourning and tears, the darkness your plans will cloud the surface of the Earth with. All the sobbing parents, grieving siblings, depressed grandparents and grandchildren. All because you don't want to bother inventing an orbital ring or an arcology tower or society where suicide by choice is the accepted way out. > "removes most horrible tyrants like Stalin" "we" could still kill him; immortal or ageless doesn't necessarily mean invincible.

psychphysic 4y ago

There's a decent amount of research but it's hard! Most of it is on fruit flies and mice then takes a life time to test on humans! What we do know is that being fit and exercising with some semblance of healthy eating helps people live a lot longer. But no one wants to do it.

jorvi 4y ago
> What we do know is that being fit and exercising with some semblance of healthy eating helps people live a lot longer. No, abstaining from things like alcohol and smoking mostly does that. Exercise and healthy eating markedly improves quality of life at old age, but it doesn’t extend it by huge amounts.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  See people don't want to even believe healthy eating and exercise long life expectancy! For what it's worth obesity accounts for about 5-10 year shortening. Not dissimilar to smoking.
  - jorvi 4y ago
    Obesity is something else than median ( = control group) living. Sport is good for you. Extreme sports markedly cuts short average life expectancy and late quality of life. With your logic, that makes sports bad. Edit: actually, I guess it depends on where you live. In America, obesity probably is the median..
    - psychphysic 4y ago
      I'm not trying to invent some new science here. Just what I've read in journals.[0] There is this weird defense of obesity and being sedentary in western culture it's just inexplicable. Interestingly we've just had the first case of manslaughter by obesity trial going on in the UK [1]. The mum has admitted manslaughter the dad is going to trial. Over death of their 16yo girl. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-018-0210-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-018-0210-2 [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64045049.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64045049.amp

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

One shouldn't put money into "curing death by aging" without fixing society first; while birth rates exceed death rates, the world fills up and drains natural resources etc etc. There's a ton of problems that need resolving if living longer is to be a thing.

endtime 4y ago
If aging is cured then the elderly could be fully productive.
- usrusr 4y ago
  At the cost of less elderly who'll miss out on being reproductive die to all the spots already being taken. Achieving immortality would be robbing from your descendants what your ancestors bestowed.
  - endtime 4y ago
    I was responding to a specific point to which your response seems irrelevant. If my kids, or their kids, or their kids, etc. ever wanted me to die in order to "bestow" them with something...well, too bad. I wish my grandparents, and their parents, etc. were alive today.
    - usrusr 4y ago
      Space on earth is finite. And even if add more hypotheticals like us becoming an interstellar species (actually I'd wager that's less unlikely than overcoming aging), in absence of aging exponential breeding would eventually outpace even the fastest space frontier colonization imaginable.
      - datavirtue 4y ago
        Yeah, and if you go from 100 year lifespan to 300 years and survive the societal collapse, would you be happy then? What about in 300 years? Eventually all the atoms we know and love will decay and "disappear."

dghughes 4y ago

A recent article mentioned how leprosy can regenerate livers or maybe other organs, nerves, vessels etc. It does it so it can infect it again. Pretty close to human regeneration if the kinks are worked out. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63626239 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63626239

tejohnso 4y ago

Aubrey de Grey is the only person I'm aware of who seems to be considering the disease of aging seriously and passionately. He seems to be single handedly pushing the issue forward with multiple foundations and papers. I suppose there are others but like you I don't understand why there isn't more focus and media attention on the root causes of aging, the ultimate killer.

tashoecraft 4y ago
There are now plenty of scientists pushing for aging to be classified as a disease, rather an inevitability. It is becoming much more mainstream and has seen lots of money flowing to it.

ladyattis 4y ago

Yeah, I'd just rather have medicine make my finite life less painful thanks without the need for opioids (not saying being a bit stone is bad, just that too much will make life not worth living). Like being able to still walk around without a cane and clean and dress myself by the end would be nice. Not asking for olympic athlete level capability, just decent mobility with not much pain or senility.

throwuwu 4y ago
That’s actually the point of most longevity research. Figuring out how to keep people healthy for as long as possible. That may eventually lead to effective immortality but the first step is the prevent senescence.