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The assumption that everything can be “fixed” is one I will never understand. It’s so obvious when studying organisms in all their shapes and forms how everythi

The assumption that everything can be “fixed” is one I will never understand. It’s so obvious when studying organisms in all their shapes and forms how everything is a tradeoff, and nothing can be stable. The fundamental truth of the universe is change. Senescence is a tradeoff to ward against cancer earlier in life. Eventually it will lead to cancer as a side effect, but optimally something else has failed before then. You can’t patch it out completely without breaking something else.

nojs 1y ago
This is a catch-all dismissal that you could make about any medical innovation throughout history. There are a lot of things we can fix, and we’ve had a lot of success so far in doing so.
- simianparrot 1y ago
  It’s not. We never fix anything in medicine: We treat and prevent. Removing the appendix prevents or treats acute appendicitis, but it also has a tradeoff in terms of removing a gut biome reservoir. This isn’t me dismissing the incredible improvements to our way of life modern medicine has brought. In essence it’s given everyone access to the same potential standard of living as was reserved for kings and nobility in the past — and then some. But you can’t fully fix aging. You can’t infinitely improve standard of living.
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    Not if you throw your hands up and never try! Aging isn't even recognized as a disease yet, and it well should be. Once it gets at least the same kind of focus cancer or heart disease does now? Then we'll talk about how it's "impossible to fix".
    - baq 1y ago
      Aging is a disease in the same way children are parasites. Fix one, fix the other.
    - simianparrot 1y ago
      That’s a naive take on what senescence is. Look it up. You can stop it, but be prepared to then have to figure out how to deal with all the side effects it prevents. And then you can fix those but be prepared to deal with those side effects. And so on. My point isn’t to stop researching and understanding and even treating, but it’s that life is a balance of tradeoffs. Looking at it as if energy is a universal currency that can be traded for every other function is a fundamental misinterpretation of everything we understand about biology.
      - ACCount37 1y ago
        There is no physical or biological constraint that says "senescence absolutely has to happen". In some species, it doesn't seem to happen at all. In others, it happens extremely slowly. Clearly, there are massive longevity gains left on the table - ones we'll never pick up if we keep whining about "life" being "a balance of tradeoffs".
        simianparrot 1y ago
        And in those species there's other constraints that weigh up for it. I'm not sure which ones you're thinking of, but in every single one I know of there's other tradeoffs. And if there's some without them, I'm pretty sure we just haven't discovered them yet. I find it peculiar that you interpret my statements as "whining". I specifically wrote: > My point isn’t to stop researching and understanding and even treating, but it’s that life is a balance of tradeoffs What's whiny about that? Modern medicine has for a while been in a position of treating symptoms of symptoms of symptoms, often of its own making. That doesn't mean we should stop treating symptoms! But it means we have to look at the bigger picture and stop thinking everything is a "problem" to be "fixed", and work harder to understand why things work the way they do, and what the costs of altering them truly are. Sometimes fixing one thing isn't worth the tradeoffs in other areas.
        ACCount37 1y ago
        There is no "fairness enforcement" in life, and biology is no exception. The closest we get is conservation laws, and those do not forbid living healthily well into your 500s. You're out looking for "tradeoffs" that may not be there, or may not be worth caring about. There is no "balance of tradeoffs" in everything. There isn't an Authority on Biology that says "if you get good X then you must take bad Y to keep things fair for everyone". There are just shitty local minima you get stuck in unless you manage to climb your way out. Do you want to get 50% less cancer, or to live to 120? The answer is "yes". You can have both. Nothing forbids you from having both. Is it easy to get both? No. It's not easy to get even one of those. But nature barely even tried. Humans can do better than that.
  - Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1y ago
    I'm a resident doctor and profoundly disagree. And I fail to see how you define words so that "fixing" and "treating" are not at least overlapping, if not similar.
  - krageon 1y ago
    What is your end goal with this opinion? Just getting everyone to stop looking, because "you can't"? It's okay if you want to die, but I think I draw the line at demanding others want it too.
ACCount37 1y ago
Everything can be fixed. There are just things we figured out how to fix, and ones we didn't yet. The only real, fully enforced tradeoff is "energy is always required to keep the lights on". And it's not like humans are strapped for energy.
Revisional_Sin 1y ago
Okay, sure. But it seems reasonable to expect we can keep improving the tradeoffs.
djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
Aren't there already large long-living animals like elephants that basically don't get cancer?
- simianparrot 1y ago
  Their average life expectancy is around 70 years, and yes, cancer is rarer in elephants, potentially due to the species having extra copies of the TP53 gene. Cancer is also a result of many other factors of which humans are more exposed to than elephants typically are, environmental and pollution being a major one, and food ingredients being another. A life expectancy of 70 years for a human isn't that great; in 2024 in Europe it was 79 years for males and 84 years for women, and that's with all the contributing cancer risk factors in society as mentioned earlier. A more interesting species might be immortal jellyfish, but the simplicity of the organism might be a contributing factor in why it works the way it does.
speedylight 1y ago
The only reason aging can’t be reversed is because we don’t know how to do it, but that doesn’t mean that it is inherently impossible to achieve. The only things that are impossible to do are the ones that break the laws of physics.

nojs 1y ago

This is a catch-all dismissal that you could make about any medical innovation throughout history. There are a lot of things we can fix, and we’ve had a lot of success so far in doing so.

simianparrot 1y ago
It’s not. We never fix anything in medicine: We treat and prevent. Removing the appendix prevents or treats acute appendicitis, but it also has a tradeoff in terms of removing a gut biome reservoir. This isn’t me dismissing the incredible improvements to our way of life modern medicine has brought. In essence it’s given everyone access to the same potential standard of living as was reserved for kings and nobility in the past — and then some. But you can’t fully fix aging. You can’t infinitely improve standard of living.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  Not if you throw your hands up and never try! Aging isn't even recognized as a disease yet, and it well should be. Once it gets at least the same kind of focus cancer or heart disease does now? Then we'll talk about how it's "impossible to fix".
  - baq 1y ago
    Aging is a disease in the same way children are parasites. Fix one, fix the other.
  - simianparrot 1y ago
    That’s a naive take on what senescence is. Look it up. You can stop it, but be prepared to then have to figure out how to deal with all the side effects it prevents. And then you can fix those but be prepared to deal with those side effects. And so on. My point isn’t to stop researching and understanding and even treating, but it’s that life is a balance of tradeoffs. Looking at it as if energy is a universal currency that can be traded for every other function is a fundamental misinterpretation of everything we understand about biology.
    - ACCount37 1y ago
      There is no physical or biological constraint that says "senescence absolutely has to happen". In some species, it doesn't seem to happen at all. In others, it happens extremely slowly. Clearly, there are massive longevity gains left on the table - ones we'll never pick up if we keep whining about "life" being "a balance of tradeoffs".
      - simianparrot 1y ago
        And in those species there's other constraints that weigh up for it. I'm not sure which ones you're thinking of, but in every single one I know of there's other tradeoffs. And if there's some without them, I'm pretty sure we just haven't discovered them yet. I find it peculiar that you interpret my statements as "whining". I specifically wrote: > My point isn’t to stop researching and understanding and even treating, but it’s that life is a balance of tradeoffs What's whiny about that? Modern medicine has for a while been in a position of treating symptoms of symptoms of symptoms, often of its own making. That doesn't mean we should stop treating symptoms! But it means we have to look at the bigger picture and stop thinking everything is a "problem" to be "fixed", and work harder to understand why things work the way they do, and what the costs of altering them truly are. Sometimes fixing one thing isn't worth the tradeoffs in other areas.
        ACCount37 1y ago
        There is no "fairness enforcement" in life, and biology is no exception. The closest we get is conservation laws, and those do not forbid living healthily well into your 500s. You're out looking for "tradeoffs" that may not be there, or may not be worth caring about. There is no "balance of tradeoffs" in everything. There isn't an Authority on Biology that says "if you get good X then you must take bad Y to keep things fair for everyone". There are just shitty local minima you get stuck in unless you manage to climb your way out. Do you want to get 50% less cancer, or to live to 120? The answer is "yes". You can have both. Nothing forbids you from having both. Is it easy to get both? No. It's not easy to get even one of those. But nature barely even tried. Humans can do better than that.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1y ago
  I'm a resident doctor and profoundly disagree. And I fail to see how you define words so that "fixing" and "treating" are not at least overlapping, if not similar.
- krageon 1y ago
  What is your end goal with this opinion? Just getting everyone to stop looking, because "you can't"? It's okay if you want to die, but I think I draw the line at demanding others want it too.

ACCount37 1y ago

Everything can be fixed. There are just things we figured out how to fix, and ones we didn't yet. The only real, fully enforced tradeoff is "energy is always required to keep the lights on". And it's not like humans are strapped for energy.

Revisional_Sin 1y ago

Okay, sure. But it seems reasonable to expect we can keep improving the tradeoffs.

djrj477dhsnv 1y ago

Aren't there already large long-living animals like elephants that basically don't get cancer?

simianparrot 1y ago
Their average life expectancy is around 70 years, and yes, cancer is rarer in elephants, potentially due to the species having extra copies of the TP53 gene. Cancer is also a result of many other factors of which humans are more exposed to than elephants typically are, environmental and pollution being a major one, and food ingredients being another. A life expectancy of 70 years for a human isn't that great; in 2024 in Europe it was 79 years for males and 84 years for women, and that's with all the contributing cancer risk factors in society as mentioned earlier. A more interesting species might be immortal jellyfish, but the simplicity of the organism might be a contributing factor in why it works the way it does.

speedylight 1y ago

The only reason aging can’t be reversed is because we don’t know how to do it, but that doesn’t mean that it is inherently impossible to achieve. The only things that are impossible to do are the ones that break the laws of physics.