4 ms·

It's good that big names with big money are investing in fighting aging, but it's not so great that the end result could be an entrenched eternal aristocracy. I

It's good that big names with big money are investing in fighting aging, but it's not so great that the end result could be an entrenched eternal aristocracy. I'm not so sure we have to worry about that just yet, though. I'm a big proponent of research on aging and cures thereof. As far as the article itself, the SV-standard corpulent optimism seems to run strong in Maris, and when it comes to biomedical stuff, it's an indication of ignorance. I read that Maris worked in a lab before he got the gig at Google; that's great, but it means he should know better than to casually bullshit around about living to be 500 years old being a realistic goal because Google is weighing in. Maybe it will be ultimately proven to be a realistic goal, but for the people alive now, reliably getting to 100 or 115 using anti-aging technologies is far more likely than living to be 500. Biomedical research and development is messy, fault-filled, slow, and never truly finished. I guarantee that "disrupting" organic degeneration as a result of accumulated damage is several orders of magnitude more difficult than making a dominant search engine. Gaining a rudimentary knowledge of aging systems beyond what we already have is going to take years, not to mention several paradigm shifts in how aging is considered. That said, I think that science is up to the task-- in particular, private R&D is going to be carrying a ton of weight when it comes to aging research because of how lucrative any product would be. I'm pretty sure that research on aging will have a lot of unintended positive side discoveries, likely relating to cancer and immunology. Hopefully the hype from Google causes more people to pile on their support, getting us there faster. It's going to be a really interesting 20 years-- there's a good chance anti-aging technology could remake society.

dkarapetyan 12y ago
In this case piling on more support will not help. Like most things that require fundamental research for progress quality trumps quantity. By support I'm assuming throwing more people at the problem.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I think it could be useful. It's true that for that kind of problem, you want to throw more money at the best people, no strings attached, and let them keep playing around until they solve it - but all other research you can get will act as a support team. The field of biology is so big and messy, that you'll likely need tons of researchers and algorithms running experiments, sorting through data and writing down the findings, so that the best of the best can have all results they need available to devise a working solutions. TL;DR: make the support T-shaped.
- imgabe 12y ago
  Quantity begets quality. I'd rather give 50 researchers 10 million each than give 500 million to one researcher. It's unlikely a single person is going to solve such a complex problem alone.
- bcheung 12y ago
  That principle (from The Mythical Man Month) applies to team size. If you have multiple independent teams competing they will not have that increased overhead.
angdis 12y ago
This is not merely a biomedical problem ("solving" aging). As others indicate there are societal issues, but one thing that doesn't get mentioned is the new problems that living a long time will uncover. Modern medicine has nearly doubled human lifespan, but we now have disease, like cancer and heart-disease that was effectively unheard of before it. What kinds of new ailments will living to 500 uncover. Will people even _WANT_ to live that long? I'd take the word of an octogenarian with more weight than a 20-something on that issue.
- astazangasta 12y ago
  Counterfactual. An octogenarian in an old man's body might be ready to die. An octogenarian who looks and fucks like a 25 year old? Maybe not.
  - angdis 12y ago
    Perhaps, but I think that if this comes to pass, we're going to have people who look and fuck like octogenarians for more than half their lives.
bcheung 12y ago
One solution to damage clean up is free and available to everyone right now. It's actually more popular with the extremely poor than the affluent. It's called fasting. http://jdmoyer.com/2012/02/01/death-will-eat-itself/ http://jdmoyer.com/2012/02/01/death-will-eat-itself/ https://www.qiagen.com/us/spotlight-pages/newsletters-and-magazines/articles/reviews-online-dna-damage-repair/ https://www.qiagen.com/us/spotlight-pages/newsletters-and-ma...

dkarapetyan 12y ago

In this case piling on more support will not help. Like most things that require fundamental research for progress quality trumps quantity. By support I'm assuming throwing more people at the problem.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
I think it could be useful. It's true that for that kind of problem, you want to throw more money at the best people, no strings attached, and let them keep playing around until they solve it - but all other research you can get will act as a support team. The field of biology is so big and messy, that you'll likely need tons of researchers and algorithms running experiments, sorting through data and writing down the findings, so that the best of the best can have all results they need available to devise a working solutions. TL;DR: make the support T-shaped.
imgabe 12y ago
Quantity begets quality. I'd rather give 50 researchers 10 million each than give 500 million to one researcher. It's unlikely a single person is going to solve such a complex problem alone.
bcheung 12y ago
That principle (from The Mythical Man Month) applies to team size. If you have multiple independent teams competing they will not have that increased overhead.

angdis 12y ago

This is not merely a biomedical problem ("solving" aging). As others indicate there are societal issues, but one thing that doesn't get mentioned is the new problems that living a long time will uncover. Modern medicine has nearly doubled human lifespan, but we now have disease, like cancer and heart-disease that was effectively unheard of before it. What kinds of new ailments will living to 500 uncover. Will people even _WANT_ to live that long? I'd take the word of an octogenarian with more weight than a 20-something on that issue.

astazangasta 12y ago
Counterfactual. An octogenarian in an old man's body might be ready to die. An octogenarian who looks and fucks like a 25 year old? Maybe not.
- angdis 12y ago
  Perhaps, but I think that if this comes to pass, we're going to have people who look and fuck like octogenarians for more than half their lives.

bcheung 12y ago

One solution to damage clean up is free and available to everyone right now. It's actually more popular with the extremely poor than the affluent. It's called fasting. http://jdmoyer.com/2012/02/01/death-will-eat-itself/ http://jdmoyer.com/2012/02/01/death-will-eat-itself/ https://www.qiagen.com/us/spotlight-pages/newsletters-and-magazines/articles/reviews-online-dna-damage-repair/ https://www.qiagen.com/us/spotlight-pages/newsletters-and-ma...