Anti-ageing protein injection boosts monkeys’ memories

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02214-3

by mfiguiere • 3 years ago

181 229 3 years ago

These glimpses of powerful, future anti-aging treatments is why AGI research must not be slowed down under any circumstances. Immortality is in sight.

I have to say, it's annoying to have been born before radical life-extending technology becomes available, but late enough in the timeline to consider it an actual possibility.

pointlessone• 3 years ago

We need to counterbalance that with a chance of extinction. /s

nathias• 3 years ago

cheer up, we will be the last to die

rbanffy11• 3 years ago

It’s an interesting concept that, just a couple generations down the road, there will be relatively few people who have experienced aging and the death that comes with it.

I remember in Cocoon, one of the most touching scenes is between a husband who just lost his wife and an alien captain who just lost a friend for the first time in his multi millennium life. The alien’s empathy towards the tragedy of human condition drives him to offer immortality to the old humans he befriended. And all of them accept, with the exception of the one who lost his wife.

Tor32• 3 years ago

Not particularly interested in immortality, but I sure could do with some restoration of my memory.. which used to be nearly photographic but is now more like now here, now gone with the wind.

ChatGTP6• 3 years ago

I'm half way through a year of not drinking alcohol. I cannot tell you what it had done for my memory.

I think I'll drink beer again someday but the increased memory has really made me question whether I actually will if presented with it.

Not sure if you drink or not but if you do, I'd recommend trying it. For me it was an unexpected benefit.

moffkalast3• 3 years ago

Maybe we can apply the anthropic principle to feel a bit better about it. I.E. we observe the universe to be the way it is because if it were any different, we wouldn't be here to observe it.

We could be alive now because it's the statistically most likely time for most humans to be alive, right between the time it took us to slowly explode in population and the time we implode and make ourselves extinct. Otherwise we'd more likely live further in the future since if we continue growing then there's vastly more humans that will live then. We could very well be living in the best time ever, full stop. Food for thought.

dmarchand903• 3 years ago

I used to be more worried about an anthropic argument that we are living in end times. (If population growth is exponential then you are most likely to be born near end times)

But, most people have already died https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12288594/#:~:text=Assuming%2.... And population growth is shrinking. So I think we're safe

ldjkfkdsjnv• 3 years ago

I think we are still too early. Better to be just a few years old right now.

dumpsterdiver• 3 years ago

I have to say, it's annoying to have been born before radical life-extending technology becomes available, but late enough in the timeline to consider it an actual possibility.

(Justin Timberlake) "Cry me a river"

flatline2• 3 years ago

Alchemy promised similar goals by more mystical means. Taoist practices for life extension go back thousands of years. They would have seemed like actual possibilities to someone living then, too. Just providing some perspective. Medical technologies certainly hold promise, but it may well be another 1000+ years before a meaningful breakthrough occurs. Or it may never.

JumpCrisscross• 3 years ago

Alchemy promised similar goals by more mystical means. Taoist practices for life extension go back thousands of years.

Neither of these were based on the scientific method, a proven process for discovery and knowledge refinement.

otikik2• 3 years ago

Immortality for the extremely wealthy perhaps. The rest of us, at best, will have just enough to keep being productive, until we are no longer needed.

osigurdson9• 3 years ago

What if becomes super cheap?

I think immortality would be bad for humanity, but ~40 more productive years would be beneficial. Currently we take 25 years of preparation in order to work 35.

optimalsolver4• 3 years ago

Think of rich people as beta testers.

jstummbillig2• 3 years ago

Can you reason through the gloom? Unless immortality comes with built in invincibility, I don't see how it would not have to be democratized pretty much immediately to avoid civil unrest of the outmost proportions.

Also I don't see what would be to gain to not do it for those in power.

pinguin3• 3 years ago

Only if they don’t live. Doing anything in life has risk: flying, driving etc

imtringued• 3 years ago

Now you get to rent your youthful body for a low fee of 5000€ per month. [0]

[0] Cancelling the subscription may result in accelerated aging and immediate organ and heart failure.

midoridensha6• 3 years ago

If it's technological and not limited by some natural scarcity of components, there's no reason for this to be the case, just like everyone these days can afford a smartphone that looks like sci-fi to someone from the year 2000.

mellavora• 3 years ago

The problem with immortality is how does society create room for the next generation?

moffkalast3• 3 years ago

Each generation gets a moon to terraform.

sjcsjc• 3 years ago

These maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder

ericmcer• 3 years ago

Just make it a choice, immortality or have children.

BiteCode_dev• 3 years ago

That's were going multi-planetary is attractive.

dmarchand903• 3 years ago

Oh yes please. I look forward to being kept alive forever by a machine god with incomprehensible motivations.

Lol jk I still don't want to age and die to be honest

rbanffy11• 3 years ago

The only difference from our current most likely future is the immortality part, so why not?

rubyfan• 3 years ago

Wouldn’t modern medicine would be considered “radical life-extending technology” to people living 200 years ago?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-...

Contusion35326• 3 years ago

AFAIK, it's a bit misleading. Much of that increase is due to a decrease in infant mortality and childhood related illnesses.

ChatGTP6• 3 years ago

I wonder if this would be true in all cultures though? Australian Aboriginals lives incredibly healthy lifestyles and had access to an abundance of incredible foods.

I don't know if they'd live as long as people today but I'd be surprised if many didn't at least go till at least 70+?

BurningFrog4• 3 years ago

Modern medicine is a relatively small factor for increased life spans.

Contusion35326• 3 years ago

The earth has a carrying capacity of less than one billion people if those people have a USA level of consumption. How would we deal with this problem if people stopped dying or had their lifespans increased dramatically?

JackFr• 3 years ago

Well, that really speaks to your worldview and your ideas on the meaning and purpose of life. Why is that a problem?

Is the purpose of life hedonic consumption, where there seems to be no other point than racking up a high score? Is there something more?

ChatGTP6• 3 years ago

If people could live for ~ 500 years, the preservation of the Earth would turn into a much more important. Anyone who is alamost 100 would have cause for concern about climate change immediately.

blagie3• 3 years ago

Why do you think the Earth has a fixed carrying capacity?

As with Moore's Law for decades, there have been many similar predictions in the past, and they fell by the wayside as technology, output, and productivity improved. At some point, Moore's law gave way to more gradual increases, and the same may happen here, but we have no idea how or when.

wheelerof4te2• 3 years ago

There's so much unused space on Earth, and people still make this ridiculous comment.

derbOac• 3 years ago

Although I agree antiaging interventions need to be pursued completely — I'm aware of arguments against them but am not sure there's any serious opposition to them? — there are systemic physical reasons to think there might be hard limits on age.

TriNetra• 3 years ago

We're already immortal, just that this body made up of ever-changing physical elements isn't.

We should also strive to reach to a state where we realize experientially our true nature of eternal, pure consciousness, and then we can manufacture whatever body we would need just like our mind manufacture new worlds, objects and different bodies for us in dreams during sleep.

achow• 3 years ago

How to know whether 'Consciousness' is just an output of ever-changing physical element too - in this case flow of energy in neurons.

These flow of energy changes the states of neurons and sum total of that is perception of the 'world' which we think is the consciousness.

Corollary - Due to the quantity and 'quality' of each neuron in each individual, the perception of the world or the reality would also vary for each individual.

idopmstuff• 3 years ago

I really improved my lifestyle (exercise, diet, etc.) once I realized that right now, living longer has whatever the opposite of diminishing returns is. Each year that I live doesn't just give another year, it also gives me whatever additional time that life extension technology comes up with that year. It's plausible that the value of some extra year is infinite, because that's when we get to the point of immortality. I hate running, but given that math I feel compelled to get up and put on my running shoes.

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

However much you exercise your body becomes less efficient at producing and absorbing any number of amino acids and proteins, including arginine, creatine, taurine, etc. It’s not unreasonable to supplement exercise with safe anti aging regimes, and it’s absurd to have an anti aging regime without improved diet, regular mixed exercise, etc. There’s no reason to willfully ignore the science, which says aging comes with an inexorable decline in various crucial amino acids, etc, and that exercise/diet improves the entire system. Doing a sensible and safe total system regime that optimizes along a typical decline curve has all sorts of benefits, including the ability to better take advantage of exercise and diet, but also reduces systemic dysfunction due to imbalances in the availability of basic building blocks like amino acids, minerals, etc, that can be difficult to get in sufficient quantity from the best of diets for an aged person.

TL;DR these aren’t mutually exclusive and are synergistic approaches

ChatGTP6• 3 years ago

I didn't see a single reference to AI in the article, so what does AGI have to do with anything?

optimalsolver4• 3 years ago

See, there's this prospective thing called AGI that would hypothetically carry out scientific research much faster than humans.

You can get started by reading the following article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

yeknoda• 3 years ago

Immortal is not eternal

Cthulhu_2• 3 years ago

I mean sure, but only if all other health problems are also solved, not to mention society which is already struggling under the pressure of an aging population - causing retirement ages to increase, employment under elderly increasing, and health care systems like the NHS or the US system to crumble to the point of people dying while waiting to be seen by a GP or being referred to A&E to sit and wait for hours waiting for underpaid and overworked staff for something a GP should be looking at.

rbanffy11• 3 years ago

is already struggling under the pressure of an aging population

Wouldn’t making them healthier increase their economic output at the same time it’d decrease their cost to the healthcare system?

DennisP9• 3 years ago

The health problems that kill the most people are consequences of aging. People in their twenties have only about a one in a thousand chance of dying each year, and a lot of those deaths are avoidable. Avoid dangerous drugs, live in a safe area, and take public transport, and you'll likely live for thousands of years if you maintain the biology of a 25-year-old. (Sources in another comment I posted here.)

If that were an option, I'd be happy to forgo social security. If everyone were biologically young, there'd be a lot less for a healthcare system to do.

ben_w3• 3 years ago

The difference between an AI which helps speed up medicine development by simulating drug safety, and one which finds tens of thousands of deadly neurotoxins, is a single "min" -> "max" or equivalent.

(And that was something that happened about a year ago already).

rbanffy11• 3 years ago

Assume that someone will always be using the best tools available (some illegally) for the most nefarious purposes.

With that in mind, the moral thing is to use the very best tools available to at least counter those efforts.

chrisweekly• 3 years ago

Nick Harkaway (world-class author, son of John Le Carre) explores this idea in his highly-entertaining, extremely well-written, and thought-provoking novel, Titanium Noir. Highly recommended!

rhyme-boss• 3 years ago

So any safety concerns that would lead to slower development should be cast aside because your life is more important than future lives?

BurningFrog4• 3 years ago

Pet peeve:

Defeating aging does not make anyone immortal!

rbanffy11• 3 years ago

True. One can still die of disease or accidents. That’s why so many stories about immortal humans also have them making backup copies of their minds.

wheelerof4te2• 3 years ago

I'm surprised at how much scrolling I had to do in order to find this "little" problem.

DennisP9• 3 years ago

But it does get you to a lifespan of several thousand years, as long as you're reasonably careful. I posted sources in another comment here.

palebluedot• 3 years ago

Very good point. And with very long lifespans (thousands of years), all of those low-probability events that may cause accidental death (airplane crash, getting hit by a car crossing the street, violence, etc.) may really start to add up to a not-so-low probability of at least one of them happening within your extended lifespan.

kypro• 3 years ago

Please stop. Not all of us want a future where everyone is an immortal, useless consumer ruled over by AGI gods or the select few who own them.

I don't think we've yet learnt that technological progress today comes with much more risk and is not an automatic good. The atomic bomb probably should have woken us up to this, but I worry we'll need to learn this lesson the hard way eventually.

For example, a forest fire in California isn't a big deal in the context of global ecosystem, but if that forest is your world then it's everything. The invention of fire might come at the risk of burning down a forest or two, but it doesn't come at the risk of burning down the entire Earth. If fire did come at that cost humans wouldn't have made it.

AGI doesn't just have the ability to make you a useless immortal meat bag as you apparently desire. It also has the ability to provide the intelligence and knowledge needed so that every human on Earth can create create a civilisation destroying virus if they so choose.

I know it's weird, but I like the present. We have problems, but all in all it's a great time to be alive. I'm not immortal, but I think that's okay.

We should be more careful about seeking to make radical changes which could destabilise the progress we've made.

rbanffy11• 3 years ago

Speak for yourself. I’d take immortality without thinking twice.

lo_zamoyski3• 3 years ago

Immortality in this universe is a physical impossibility, and even if it were medically possible, it is easily lost.

erikpukinskis2• 3 years ago

Great, so we can look forward to having presidents who are 200yo instead of 100yo?

firstplacelast• 3 years ago

People living longer makes the world worse.

Maybe there’s an economic system that would not do this, but currently most people’s lives are not improved with increased longevity across the board.

It’s one of the reasons I left my job in pharma. The constant circle jerk about making the world better + comparative low pay when so few could afford a condo on their own salary. Whose lives are we making better? Certainly not the lives of the people I see every day.

penjelly• 3 years ago

AGI research must not be slowed down under any circumstances. Immortality is in sight.

wow. So progress at any cost? Seems misguided to me

jliptzin• 3 years ago

You will never find yourself in a timeline in which you're not alive. Perhaps you've already died in all the other timelines; this is the one where you live long enough to benefit from life-extending technology and eventually immortality.

leke• 3 years ago

Planet of the apes beginnings

vonnik• 3 years ago

More benefits of Klotho in model organisms:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6335176/

yes_man• 3 years ago

Regarding the immortality talk around the topic. I am not an expert and this is not an informed argument, but intuitively feels this whole ”anti-ageing by chemical cocktails” cannot be sustainable forever. There must be a price for injecting increasing quantities of proteins to the body to turn back the clock. Imagine a headline from 1893 about discovery of meth: ”Japanese scientists invent an injection that cures humans from the need to sleep”. It turns out there is a price for messing with the system.

So I do not believe any immortality of the human body by these synthetic interventions is possible. Kicking the can down the road certainly and would be nice to live healthy longer.

Cthulhu_2• 3 years ago

Yeah, I mean life expectancy has made great strides in the past 100 odd years worldwide; what we see is a higher occurrence on things like cancer and heart disease or other diseases that become more and more likely with age. There's the pressure on the health care / social systems as well, which is partially compensated now by having people work longer - either by raising the retirement age, or having no state pension so that the elderly are forced to keep working for longer.

But your point also stands, treatments like this, IF they become commonplace, may have far-reaching effects that we can't oversee yet.

inglor_cz12• 3 years ago

Hello to Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett sitting on the SCOTUS bench in 2060 or 2070 or possibly even 2100.

Many of our political systems are based on the expectation that people grow frail and retire earlier than they actually already do today. The US Senate is becoming a geriatric institution that would put Brezhnev's politburo of 1980 to youthful shame.

zug_zug5• 3 years ago

No idea why you're downvoted. The idea that the human body has the formula for immortality 99% right and it just "forgot" to make enough of protein X which has no downsides seems hopelessly naive to me.

Just look at existing health interventions, like HGH, and see all the side-effects and risks associated with it.

newZWhoDis• 3 years ago

Alternative/fun sci-fi plot: The aliens who sped up our evolution by artificially limiting our lifespans did so via relatively sloppy means and there is in fact an “off” switch waiting on some grad student to stumble upon

Teever3• 3 years ago

Now make the same argument about proteins and other nutrients in general.

Like, 'The idea that the human body has the formula for living 99% right and it just 'forgot' to make enough of protein X...' and if we just eat enough, often enough...

Our bodies weren't designed to work in this environment. They just came to work well enough in an environment like this. That means that there are issues with them, and that they eventually fail. That doesn't mean that we can't overcome these issues like we have overcome others with the use of technology.

Anti-aging is like any other technology that we use. It modifies us or our environment for a desired purpose. Is any technology flawless? No. Have they revolutionized our lives and made how the average human lives almost inconceivable to humans from 100kya? Totally.

Are we on the cusp of technological developments that will make how we live further unrecognizable. Totally.

IVG, artificial wombs, anti-aging/age-reversal, lab grown organs, automatic limb generation (like a salemander). Are all coming and will irrevocably change the human condition. And some of these things are coming in the next decade.

Maybe you're right, and we can't have an infinite life span, but I bet we could double life/healthspan, and I think that is coming very soon.

wpietri9• 3 years ago

For sure. It's as foolish to me as somebody thinking they can keep a classic car going forever if they just use a better motor oil.

In the early days of the automobile, Ford sent people around to junkyards to look at their cars. They were looking for two things. One was obvious; they were looking for things that consistently failed too soon, so they could make them better. The other was to look for things that had a lot of life left in them, so they could make them cheaper. The net result: a car that was great when new, did pretty well for a while, and then had thing after thing going wrong with it, such that it was just time to get a new one.

Evolution is, like Ford, an unsentimental optimizer. I believe bodies are basically the same deal as cars. That's certainly how people talk about getting old; everything starts to wear out at around the same time. Doctors are happy to fight individual problems, but even in the best hospitals, doctors will get to the point where somebody has too many problems, is too medically fragile, for them to treat anything.

And from the perspective of one's genes, that's fine. Like people buy new cars, genes build shiny new bodies so they can continue roving the world. With an infinite supply of new bodies available, why would they make any individual one such that it could last forever? Much better to build cheap and replace every so often. The frequency of "so often" changes for the circumstance, but the pattern doesn't.

devnullbrain• 3 years ago

Human evolution doesn't care about life after prehistoric child-rearing. It has no reason to optimise for longevity.

HGH has deleterious health effects when abused. But it can also make you a famous movie star living a life of luxury whose children will never have to work. Our personal goals have very different parameters to what defined our evolution.

There are also other things that the human body benefits from but can't make itself. Creatine, essential amino acids, essential minerals and vitamins.

ddingus• 3 years ago

I know exactly why. And I agree with our parent commenter, BTW.

The down votes are from people who want to believe. And I won't blame or judge them. It is an ugly, extremely likely truth.

Who wants to die?

Not me, not on current timelines. After a longer time? Maybe. We may tire of the world or something.

But otherwise, yeah. Our condition is amazing! We all get this free ticket to our world, and there is no where near enough time to fully appreciate it.

dempedempe• 3 years ago

I think they're being downvoted for the meth comment. I agree with everything OP and you said, but the meth example is a bit hyperbolic - the downsides to meth consumption would surely be felt much sooner than any theoretical downsides of the protein mentioned in the article.

sheepscreek2• 3 years ago

I think it’s more analogous to our body sustaining damage it can’t reverse on its own. Think about clogged arteries or bad lungs.

Using external intervention (aka surgery), we can already remedy these situations to an extent. The methods aren’t great today (immunosuppressants suck), but soon - we’ll be able to grow organs compatible with our DNA using our own stem cells.

So hypothetically, you can live eternally if you can figure out a way to solve every possible breakdown before the heart stops or neurons start dying.

It’s a bit like keeping a car running forever, and maintaining it without ever turning it off. Will it be a massive engineering challenge? Yes. Will it be expensive? Likely. Is it impossible? No - nothing jumps at me that would make it impossible.

For the heart and lung part, we already have ways to keep the body functioning without a working heart or lungs temporarily[1]. We can even handle failed kidneys[2].

As far as I can see, our biggest challenge is identifying the point where physiological processes stop working, causing irreversible damage. And the biggest unfixable damage is losing your memory (if the respective neurons die). Everything else is akin to changing a tires or batteries or engine.

1. Cardiopulmonary bypass machine, or a heart-lung machine 2. Kidney Dialysis

BurningFrog4• 3 years ago

I think aging exists because it enables/speeds up evolution.

There are a few organisms that don't seem to age at all. They're very marginal, but prove it's possible.

chessgecko• 3 years ago

Is immortality a genetic advantage? I'd imagine it could create a lot of infighting.

TimPC4• 3 years ago

I bet societies without immortality progress faster than societies with immortality socially. A large portion of opinion change occurs intergenerationally with old views dying off, some people change their opinions on major values over time but far fewer people do than we like to think. I think for example it would be far harder to get things like gay marriage passed if people born in 1000 AD were still around today.

midoridensha6• 3 years ago

Immortality is a big genetic disadvantage when you want the species to be able to evolve and adapt to its environment. This might have something to do with why most species have limited lifespans.

Humans aren't bound by their environment any more though: they can actively control and change their environment, and their own biology. Humans stopped evolving by natural selection ages ago, so there's no good genetic reason to not explore technological means of extending lifespans.

echelon• 3 years ago

There must be a price for injecting increasing quantities of proteins to the body to turn back the clock.

Cancer.

So many cell death pathways are to guard against cancer.

inglor_cz12• 3 years ago

Nevertheless, humans aren't that much optimized against cancer.

The really big mammals such as elephants and whales seem to be very cancer-resistant. So many more cells to go haywire and still they only suffer cancer at a low rate compared to, say, mice. Or even us.

inglor_cz12• 3 years ago

It is unlikely that anti-aging will rely on chemical cocktails forever. The entire field is still fairly new, somewhere where aviation was in 1908 or so.

I would guess that the really efficient anti-aging interventions will rejuvenate cells, including stem cells.

Interestingly, Dr. Gregory Fahy has some positive results with rejuvenation of the thymus in humans (not in mice). It seems that a well-functioning immune system is a must for longer life.

yowzadave• 3 years ago

Once a person is past child-rearing age, there is little evolutionary advantage for a longer lifespan—so perhaps it's just a trait that hasn't been prioritized by evolution?

boringg2• 3 years ago

Interesting thought.

TimPC4• 3 years ago

I think this is clearly false for humans. I think it is unquestionable that kids do better when parents have actively involved grandparents in their lives. Raising a kid without a support network is overwhelming, and even more so in modern culture where so many kids are raised in single-parent homes. If you measure success of a lineage over time, having the grandparents die off before they get grandkids would have significant adverse effects.

cscurmudgeon• 3 years ago

No, not at all. In more advanced social species, there is an evolutionary advantage to older individuals helping their young.

gumby5• 3 years ago

Though I would very much like to live a lot longer, the society I would live in would be somewhat suckier because of it. The consequences have been extensively explored in the literature for the last 3,500 years at least.

Failing that, making QoL a square wave would be a massive win.

etothepii2• 3 years ago

Would they duck for those of us alive today? We (those of us alive today) would like be the absolute masters of the universe.

someplaceguy• 3 years ago

While I agree in principle and I am also not an expert by any means, I think it should be possible to inject a finite amount of substances that eventually cause a change to the composition of the human body to make it functionally immortal, in theory.

I think this can be reasoned from three observations:

1. That it is possible to change the DNA of the cells of a living organism by injecting substances in said organism (as evidenced by genetic advances in recent decades?).

2. That the DNA of an organism has an extreme amount of control over the composition of said organism (as evidenced by the amount of diversity in all DNA-based organisms and species and also by the known fact that changes in the DNA of an organism also change how it evolves).

3. That biologically immortal species already exist (e.g. hydras?).

That said, I'm pretty sure we're extremely far away from achieving this (unless we can create superintelligent AIs soon).

zug_zug5• 3 years ago

PSA - If you think you're never going to die, you're wrong and you are in emotional denial and talk it over with a therapist or something.

The human body is a machine with so many failure modes that we don't even remotely understand all the ways you can die. The idea that we'll find 1 magical variable (telomere length or some protein) that can be fixed and ALL the changes of aging (from growth, sexual development, menopause, brain shrinkage, skin wrinkles, bone density loss) will go back to exactly perfect AND any other ways you can die will all be prevented (car accident, cancer, diabetes, etc) is just about zero.

For example the human brain in constantly losing brain cells (which don't grow back obviously). Many body cells don't regrow at all[1]. I'm sure there are many other mechanisms in the human that never evolved to the point of >100 year reliability.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_cell

moneywoes• 3 years ago

On the bright side is there anything we can do to limit this loss of brain cells?

I guess my grand parents suggestion of eating almonds isn’t viable..

kiba• 3 years ago

There's never going to be a single treatment for aging, but there's an intervention everyone knows theycan take to slow down the inevitable decline until medicine improves to the point it can aid in in slowing and then reversing the decline.

Mostly, it involves exercise of various kinds.

laputan_machine• 3 years ago

Is this how you walk around talking to people? Get off your pedastal, mate. It comes across as rude, take a day off. Nobody needs to be informed about your "PSA".

Who hasn't had had someone close to us die?

zug_zug5• 3 years ago

Yes, I'm rude. And so are you. I don't care whether you like it.

I'm a participant in this forum and it's my perrogative to get people who post stupid stuff, like attempts at immortality, to stop, by downvotes and comments. Moreover from MY perspective you should have learned understand this forum isn't a place for a friendly speculation with people who know nothing relevant on a topic like your local pub.

jbm• 3 years ago

Thank you for your efforts. Sadly, despite the image of rationality, the delusional thinking you infer to is widespread in industry.

I've had a manager telling me that aliens were going to offer us the secrets of immortality and "zero point energy", while another one seriously claimed that "We will develop time travel, and we will all rescue each other at the end of our lives in a chain of immortality". These are the more extreme examples, but the wishful thinking component is common. What is also common is that most of these people never spent time in a university biochem or genetics class.

If the idea of chemically-induced immortality gives one comfort, sure, I am irrational at times too so I understand. However, the complexity and depressing nature of human biology and human genetics will relieve you of this wishful thinking if you so choose. Feel free to look at reptile regeneration models; I did and I'm glad I had the sense to get out before it ruined my life.

For those naysayers desperate for their immortality fix, perhaps a fresh round of teenage blood transfusions[1] are in order?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/02/could-young-...

throw310822• 3 years ago

The idea that we'll find 1 magical variable (telomere length or some protein) that can be fixed and ALL the changes of aging...

Agree with this, but on the other hand: the idea that the body is "a machine" that comes out of the factory in "new" condition and slowly degrades by wear, accidents and corrosion is also a wrong analogy. The body doesn't just degrade because of entropy. Bodies bootstrap themselves to some pristine state and can return to it, after injuries or illness, for tens of years. The ability to restore an optimal state is just lost, it's not something that needs to be invented again.

oogabooga13• 3 years ago

The best anti-ageing cure that works now might be an optimized diet, exercise, and sleep routine. No protein injections required!

yrds96• 3 years ago

And expose your skin to the sun for few minutes. Vitamin D is important too.

submeta2• 3 years ago

The thought of everlasting life seems at first glance to be quite enticing, yet the inevitability of death is what gives life its value and meaning. In some ways, this reminds me of a metaphor: a fetus not wishing to leave its mother's womb. The womb is comfortable, familiar, and safe - much like our lives. However, without birth, the opportunity to experience the world in all its beauty and complexity, in all its highs and lows, would remain unrealized.

We find ourselves fearful of death, not because it is inherently terrifying, but due to our limited comprehension of its nature. Our collective fear of the unknown compels us to seek perpetual life as a means to sidestep this uncertainty. Yet, death is as much a part of life as birth, and perhaps our trepidation stems from misunderstanding, rather than the event itself.

In much of life, as with the natural world, there exists a cyclical pattern of transformation - not an abrupt cessation. If we look to Buddhist philosophy, for example, we see the belief that our ego-mind, the part of us that clings to transient moments and shies away from change, is what dreads the idea of letting go. It's this ego-mind that is afraid of losing itself, of losing control.

Yet, Buddhism also teaches us the concept of Anatta, or non-self, a notion that suggests that this clinging ego-mind isn't our true nature. By holding on so tightly to our lives, we may be disregarding the beauty and wisdom inherent in change, in letting go, and perhaps, in death itself.

Just as a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, maybe death is not an end but a metamorphosis, a transcendence into a different state of existence that our current understanding simply cannot grasp. After all, every living being encounters death. This universality suggests that it holds purpose and significance in the grand scheme of life's narrative.

I think, before we leap into the pursuit of eternal life, perhaps we should first strive to better understand, accept, and make peace with the cycle of life and death.

guerrilla2• 3 years ago

the inevitability of death is what gives life its value and meaning.

By what mechanism does it do that? How do you conclude that life has any meaning or value? What is the value and meaning of life according to you?

submeta2• 3 years ago

I believe the concept of 'meaning' is inherently human because we are intrinsically teleological beings. We habitually seek meaning, purpose, or goal-orientation in every aspect of our existence.

I also believe that the concept of 'meaning' exists only within the realm of human consciousness. Outside the human experience, the concept of 'meaning' is virtually non-existent. For instance, the cosmos doesn't assign 'meaning' to celestial events; they simply occur in adherence to the laws of physics.

erikpukinskis2• 3 years ago

I guess we have to accept that this perspective will be at the bottom of such threads.

But this is the conclusion I’ve come to as well. I used to fear death, now I fear wasting my life.

The more I learn about the natural world, the more I can see that death is a gift, a mechanism for renewal as well as for protecting things which have existed for millions of years.

Nothing I have in my brain is that special, compared to what the collective of life has created. I’m happy to give up living and become a more background part of what comes next. It’s an honor. And I hope I can honor it.

It’s very interesting to read this thread though and remember that so many people see death as a simple black line that might just as well be evaded as understood.

pyth0• 3 years ago

I feel similarly to you, and yet there is always such a strong negative reaction to this sort of sentiment in anti-aging threads. I wonder what people outside the HN bubble think of this, since I've always thought that coming to terms with death and your own mortality was just a part of growing up.

lo_zamoyski3• 3 years ago

Buddhism's "solution" is essentially personal suicide. "How can I die, if I am not, save in some non-personal sense?" But nobody really cares about a "non-personal" survival, making this an effectively nihilistic way of dealing with the subject.

(A nice, short summary of various positions you might find interesting: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07687a.htm)

DennisP9• 3 years ago

Perhaps. But if I had the opportunity to investigate those concepts by meditating for several centuries, as one part of an even longer life, I'm not so sure that'd be a bad idea. Buddhism also, after all, includes the concept of Bodhisattvas, who don't need to incarnate but choose to do so anyway, out of compassion for others.

oefnak• 3 years ago

I cannot comprehend people who say things like this... Unless they believe in an afterlife (which is also some kind of immortality).

The only reason to accept death would be if it was inevitable. But if we'd have the chance...

I urge you to read The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

pengaru• 3 years ago

The wikipedia page for klotho has an informative section re: anti-aging effects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klotho_(biology)#Effects_on_ag...

JPLeRouzic3• 3 years ago

Luckily, my wife just made me a rhubarb cake.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27692562/

BurningFrog4• 3 years ago

I assume there is already a black market for klotho injections?

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

There must be a price for injecting increasing quantities of proteins to the body to turn back the clock.

Go read Flowers for Algernon

narrator• 3 years ago

The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. You can already get your genes changed to express more klotho. It's a mid-six figure price tag. They've been doing it for at least a year. Don't tell the muggles.

https://www.integrated-health-systems.com/specialist-areas/k...

JustBreath• 3 years ago

This reminds me of when telomere extension was all the rage in futurology forums... Turns out it's a recipe for cancer.

I can't help but wonder if this wont have a similar result.

Anti-ageing protein injection boosts monkeys’ memories

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