5 ms·

The body can be considered as a system of many redundant components, with aging as the result of progressive unrepaired damage to those components. This is a mo

The body can be considered as a system of many redundant components, with aging as the result of progressive unrepaired damage to those components. This is a model that works very well. For further reading, you might look at the application of reliability theory to aging: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/05/applying-reliability-theory-to-aging.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/05/applying-reliabil... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_theory_of_aging_and_longevity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_theory_of_aging_and... Once you start to think along the lines of damage and repair, you inevitably end up in the SENS camp. It's the logical place to be. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/11/the-engineers-viewpoint-treat-change-as-damage.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/11/the-engineers-vie... Bodies are complex systems and all complex systems can be prolonged in their period of prime operation by sufficiently diligent incremental repair. Developing a toolkit to do that for humans is the point of SENS the research program, with the point of SENS the advocacy program being to help people understand that the scientific community well understands in detail what needs repairing. For more on the biochemistry of damage-that-causes-aging, explained for laypeople, you might look here: http://www.sens.org/sens-research/research-themes http://www.sens.org/sens-research/research-themes

hallman76 15y ago
We need to "gamify" this research. Farmville carrot-growers could be solving humanity's greatest problem! (I'm totally serious)
- quizbiz 15y ago
  So whats the first step? An open source engine on github?
- itmag 15y ago
  http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8684955-gamers-create-scientific-recipes http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8684955-game...
- possibilistic 15y ago
  I'm a computational biochemistry student, and I don't think this is possible. We can gamify protein folding because this is a well-understood, well-characterized problem. What we don't have the slightest clue about is how to restore original cell state, eg. rid cells of aggregate intracellular waste, repair non-trivial DNA damage, restore the extracellular metabolome, etc. I think we should stop funding/granting scholarships to liberal arts majors. Let them become STEM majors.
  - ebiester 15y ago
    There are really intelligent people out there who could never pass a calculus class, much less thermodynamics. Do you want them in your program taking up all the time of the teacher, stopping those proficient in math from getting the education they deserve?
    - timwiseman 15y ago
      It seems people get better at what they practice. I suspect anyone (barring genuine mental disability of some kind) could master calculus and thermodynamics if they were sufficiently motivated.
    - pm90 15y ago
      this is exactly what happens in most Indian engineering Universities, unfortunately...believe me, you never, ever want to be in that situation
    - hessenwolf 15y ago
      No there aren't; that's daft. What are you basing that on? Sure, it might be less easy for some than others, and less motivating, but if they can learn A, they can learn B and vice versa.
      - ebiester 15y ago
        I'm basing it on both my time as a math tutor for Pima Community College and on people I have known. People like my mother who, if she can quantify the data she can effectively do algebra, but as soon as X and Y appear she shuts down. She cannot make the jump to the abstract thinking of math, and it curtailed her ability to go back to college. It didn't help that her math teacher in 9th grade told her that she would never be good at math, much like many women from poor backgrounds. (I have no study, only the experience in tutoring on how many women said that a teacher told them not to bother, and could never make it over that hump.) Now you say that it's merely psychological for them and that they could. I'm telling you that for as much work as some of these people I tutored put in, they had a mental block that they simply could not overcome, fighting their way to a C in college algebra so they could get to where they're going. I can give as an example my boyfriend, who can speak and teach two languages better than most people here can in their native language, and is a promising Ph.D candidate in his program. He worked for a month straight (with my help) to raise his GRE math to a minimum score. His limit may be calculus, but certainly not higher math, and not upper level sciences. Yet I have seen this man wake up, read, write, sleep, and repeat for weeks straight. He's a gifted writer and academic, but even if he could muddle through (say...) managed information systems, he'd never be more than mediocre because his brain simply does not work that way. (He still asks for help with his Mac.) Square peg, round hole. It doesn't benefit those who have a passion for the sciences to put him and dozens of others in the same class, wearing down the professor because they struggle to grasp concepts that future scientists understood in fifth grade.
- eurleif 15y ago
  Unless we're just talking about adding an aspect of fun to research so existing scientists enjoy their work more (or tend to pursue it more eagerly, etc.), a necessary but insufficient condition for gamification is simplicity; and if we can find a way to break complex research down into tasks that are simple enough for almost anyone to complete, why not just underpay people on Mturk to do it and skip having to make it fun?
- tripzilch 15y ago
  Not living to (say) 150 is humanity's greatest problem?? And you're serious?? Ever stop to think of world hunger? Malnutrition still is the global leading cause of mortality in the world. And you're arguing to crowdsource a solution to aging which is supposedly "humanity's greatest problem" because us first-worlders can't live to 150, because having their genes fortified (or whatever) most certainly is not going to do much good for those that simply can't get enough nutrients. This is only a problem to that tiny privileged part of humanity that has no worries whatsoever about the two lowest levels of the Hierarchy of Needs. And you must be well aware which side of the fence you're on, how many there are suffering on the other side, and you have the gall to pose THIS as humanity's greatest problem? No. I don't easily use a "but the starving kids in Africa have it so much worse" argument, except in this case it's directly relevant. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against longevity research, cancer research or any kind of medical advances but at least they don't fucking claim they're solving a greater problem than fucking World Hunger.
  - reasonattlm 15y ago
    Aging kills something of the order of 100,000 people every day, about twice as many people as all other causes put together: hunger, violence, accidents, etc. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outrage-1.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outra... The majority of those deaths are amongst the poor. Aging also causes great suffering for hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. The majority of those people are also poor - the poor suffer far more greatly than the wealthy because of degenerative aging due to their comparative lack of access to what palliative treatments do exist. If not for aging, the poor might have a far better chance of bettering their lot in life - they'd have no imposed time limit on working their way out of poverty, no need for large families to support them in their old age, and so forth. So your hair shirt view of the world is completely wrong. Aging is the greatest problem, and like all universal problems falls most heavily on the poor.
    - DennisP 15y ago
      That's an interesting point about large families...birth rates would probably fall pretty dramatically. Another potential benefit is that really long-lived people might take a longer-term view on other problems. It'd probably change the global warming debate pretty significantly, for example, if everybody right now had a life expectancy of a thousand.
marchdown 15y ago
Thank you for outlining the problem and digging up links to introductory articles. This make it much easier to wrap the head around.

hallman76 15y ago

We need to "gamify" this research. Farmville carrot-growers could be solving humanity's greatest problem! (I'm totally serious)

quizbiz 15y ago
So whats the first step? An open source engine on github?
itmag 15y ago
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8684955-gamers-create-scientific-recipes http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8684955-game...
possibilistic 15y ago
I'm a computational biochemistry student, and I don't think this is possible. We can gamify protein folding because this is a well-understood, well-characterized problem. What we don't have the slightest clue about is how to restore original cell state, eg. rid cells of aggregate intracellular waste, repair non-trivial DNA damage, restore the extracellular metabolome, etc. I think we should stop funding/granting scholarships to liberal arts majors. Let them become STEM majors.
- ebiester 15y ago
  There are really intelligent people out there who could never pass a calculus class, much less thermodynamics. Do you want them in your program taking up all the time of the teacher, stopping those proficient in math from getting the education they deserve?
  - timwiseman 15y ago
    It seems people get better at what they practice. I suspect anyone (barring genuine mental disability of some kind) could master calculus and thermodynamics if they were sufficiently motivated.
  - pm90 15y ago
    this is exactly what happens in most Indian engineering Universities, unfortunately...believe me, you never, ever want to be in that situation
  - hessenwolf 15y ago
    No there aren't; that's daft. What are you basing that on? Sure, it might be less easy for some than others, and less motivating, but if they can learn A, they can learn B and vice versa.
    - ebiester 15y ago
      I'm basing it on both my time as a math tutor for Pima Community College and on people I have known. People like my mother who, if she can quantify the data she can effectively do algebra, but as soon as X and Y appear she shuts down. She cannot make the jump to the abstract thinking of math, and it curtailed her ability to go back to college. It didn't help that her math teacher in 9th grade told her that she would never be good at math, much like many women from poor backgrounds. (I have no study, only the experience in tutoring on how many women said that a teacher told them not to bother, and could never make it over that hump.) Now you say that it's merely psychological for them and that they could. I'm telling you that for as much work as some of these people I tutored put in, they had a mental block that they simply could not overcome, fighting their way to a C in college algebra so they could get to where they're going. I can give as an example my boyfriend, who can speak and teach two languages better than most people here can in their native language, and is a promising Ph.D candidate in his program. He worked for a month straight (with my help) to raise his GRE math to a minimum score. His limit may be calculus, but certainly not higher math, and not upper level sciences. Yet I have seen this man wake up, read, write, sleep, and repeat for weeks straight. He's a gifted writer and academic, but even if he could muddle through (say...) managed information systems, he'd never be more than mediocre because his brain simply does not work that way. (He still asks for help with his Mac.) Square peg, round hole. It doesn't benefit those who have a passion for the sciences to put him and dozens of others in the same class, wearing down the professor because they struggle to grasp concepts that future scientists understood in fifth grade.
eurleif 15y ago
Unless we're just talking about adding an aspect of fun to research so existing scientists enjoy their work more (or tend to pursue it more eagerly, etc.), a necessary but insufficient condition for gamification is simplicity; and if we can find a way to break complex research down into tasks that are simple enough for almost anyone to complete, why not just underpay people on Mturk to do it and skip having to make it fun?
tripzilch 15y ago
Not living to (say) 150 is humanity's greatest problem?? And you're serious?? Ever stop to think of world hunger? Malnutrition still is the global leading cause of mortality in the world. And you're arguing to crowdsource a solution to aging which is supposedly "humanity's greatest problem" because us first-worlders can't live to 150, because having their genes fortified (or whatever) most certainly is not going to do much good for those that simply can't get enough nutrients. This is only a problem to that tiny privileged part of humanity that has no worries whatsoever about the two lowest levels of the Hierarchy of Needs. And you must be well aware which side of the fence you're on, how many there are suffering on the other side, and you have the gall to pose THIS as humanity's greatest problem? No. I don't easily use a "but the starving kids in Africa have it so much worse" argument, except in this case it's directly relevant. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against longevity research, cancer research or any kind of medical advances but at least they don't fucking claim they're solving a greater problem than fucking World Hunger.
- reasonattlm 15y ago
  Aging kills something of the order of 100,000 people every day, about twice as many people as all other causes put together: hunger, violence, accidents, etc. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outrage-1.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outra... The majority of those deaths are amongst the poor. Aging also causes great suffering for hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. The majority of those people are also poor - the poor suffer far more greatly than the wealthy because of degenerative aging due to their comparative lack of access to what palliative treatments do exist. If not for aging, the poor might have a far better chance of bettering their lot in life - they'd have no imposed time limit on working their way out of poverty, no need for large families to support them in their old age, and so forth. So your hair shirt view of the world is completely wrong. Aging is the greatest problem, and like all universal problems falls most heavily on the poor.
  - DennisP 15y ago
    That's an interesting point about large families...birth rates would probably fall pretty dramatically. Another potential benefit is that really long-lived people might take a longer-term view on other problems. It'd probably change the global warming debate pretty significantly, for example, if everybody right now had a life expectancy of a thousand.

marchdown 15y ago

Thank you for outlining the problem and digging up links to introductory articles. This make it much easier to wrap the head around.