9 ms·

Ageing is not an inevitable fact of life

80 points by d_a_robson 11y ago

melling 11y ago
The BBC has a few interesting articles on aging. Here's another: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140520-the-girls-who-never-age http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140520-the-girls-who-never... If you read these articles, you're left wondering if there's some existing genetic solution waiting to be found that'll add a healthy 50 years to our lives.
- wobbleblob 11y ago
  If I could only live to be 80, but as healthy as I am now, I'd sign for it
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    Exercise. It's not "as healthy as I am now", but it makes a big difference. Anecdotal evidence, but my 73 year old father still rides his bike over mountains (and shot his best ever golf score last month). He does complain that he wishes he had the body of a 60 year old ;-) My wife's uncle has to be pushing 90 and still runs 2 km every day. If you just keep going, it's amazing what you can accomplish even in the later stages of life. Obviously this is survivor bias, but if you look after yourself and have a bit of luck, there's no reason you can't be healthy enough to enjoy life well past 80.
    - wobbleblob 11y ago
      I do a minimum of 5-10 hours a week of aerobic exercise (mostly cycling), to make time for more, I'd either have to quit my job or board the kids somewhere. I also have some anecdotal evidence. My father was always an avid cyclist as well, until his hip joint wore out. He had to give it up, and in the space of a year turned into an old man. I'm sorry, unless something else kills you in your prime, it will happen to all of us sooner or later.
    - PepeGomez 11y ago
      Or maybe they are able to do that because they didn't age as much as the average person...
sanxiyn 11y ago
Re: the title. What are inevitable facts of life?
- williamhpark 11y ago
  I prefer the original title of the article: "The secret of living to 200 years old". Does what it says. Not sure why it was changed.
- user9756 11y ago
  Death? I mean, if you will not die, you could die? And taxes of course.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Well, until now (and in the foreseeable feature) death is one of them.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Well, there's the laws of physics, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics pushing the arrow of time forwards. Beyond that, not much is actually inevitable: people just prefer to rationalize anything awful as Inevitable because this gives them a comforting sense of metaphysics.
  - azatris 11y ago
    2nd law of thermodynamics only applies on macroscopic scale. So not really inevitable. Plus, the laws of physics are based on a set of axioms, which don't necessarily have to be true.
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      >Plus, the laws of physics are based on a set of axioms, Well no. They're based on empirical observations.
- kitd 11y ago
  Well, the good news is that there's still taxes.
mandelken 11y ago
Funny they don't mention the hydra, an amazing little creature, almost(?) immortal: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/absurd-creature-of-the-week-hydra/ http://www.wired.com/2015/02/absurd-creature-of-the-week-hyd...
- s_dev 11y ago
  Lobsters and some jellyfish are functionally immortal as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii
  - fsloth 11y ago
    Smithsonian magazine disagrees on the immortality of lobsters: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dont-listen-to-the-buzz-lobsters-arent-actually-immortal-88450872/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dont-listen-to-... Although, since they will eventually die of energy depletion from growing too large, if they actually stopped growing they might go on ... a lot longer?
    - creshal 11y ago
      > Although, since they will eventually die of energy depletion from growing too large, if they actually stopped growing they might go on ... a lot longer? If humans stopped ageing they'd go on a lot longer, too. But as long as they can't it's a hypothetical scenario in both cases.
      - kaffeemitsahne 11y ago
        Maybe it's because I'm not a lobster, but halting growth to keep energy requirements low seems like an easier problem.
  - reasonattlm 11y ago
    A few years back researchers found a way to measure lobster age, something that had been a challenge until then: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/lobster-age_n_2215990.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/lobster-age_n_22159... So give it a few more years and there should be some firm data on how negligibly senescent they actually are. Much of the present situation was a lack of good data.
skarap 11y ago
Not only it is an inevitable fact of life, it (and death) is the single most important attribute of life. Especially in the case of humans aging and death limit the amount of damage one single person can do. I'm not saying it's absolutely impossible to change. Just that it shouldn't.
- nabla9 11y ago
  What I suspect is true but obviously can't prove: Person with completely healthy brain at age 200 would not be well functioning human being in the society. When we grow we gain experience. That experience shows as habits, perceptions, attitudes and thought trains that makes functioning in the society easy. We learn to see the world trough the past experience. All this turns from asset to liability when society where you live changes beyond the global parameters our cognition settles into. In other words: Our 'mental posture at large' is path dependent and it gradually settles into some state and becomes less malleable over the years. We can still learn new things and change our thinking, but internalizing the changes becomes increasingly harder in the core level. We don't even want to try to change certain notions because our identity is tied to our 'core beliefs'. Society where people (especially rich and powerful people) would live 200s would be some kind of dystopia of geriatric thinking. Young wold have to kill the old or stage revolutions from time to time.
  - kaffeemitsahne 11y ago
    Society would adapt. What's with the contempt for rich people in debates like this? Being mad at rich people for living longer is no less silly than being mad at them for having cars, mobile phones, personal computers back in the day.
    - sfilipov 11y ago
      I believe it is. Being rich and powerful means you'll most likely want to remain such. You would act in the best of your own interest. Ageing has been the absolute guarantee that even the worst of human beings (dictators, criminals with a lot of power) will eventually lose their power thus stop damaging society as a whole.
astazangasta 11y ago
This is wrong. Whales live longer because they are bigger. Larger animals have slower metabolisms and consequently longer lifespans. See this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15855403 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15855403
- debacle 11y ago
  Whales also live longer because it's evolutionarily advantageous for them to live longer (they have a long, fragile reproductive cycle). There's little need for a fruit fly to live 100 years and historically it doesn't seem that there has been a great need for humans to do the same, either.
- DennisP 11y ago
  But the article also mentions the naked mole rat, which is about the size of a mouse but lives ten times longer, and Brandt's bat, which weighs as much as a sugar cube but lives 40 years.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    Not sure about the mole rat, but bats cheat by shutting down their metabolism (basically hibernating) most of the time.
    - kolev 11y ago
      Why do people try to boost their metabolism (or demise) these days then? I strongly believe that being physically lazy (i.e. not expending much energy and keeping metabolism slow), but mentally active, and walking 30-45 minutes a day is the healthiest lifestyle one could have (if they can afford it).
      - astazangasta 11y ago
        Because heart disease is the main killer, and obesity and poor vascular fitness resulting from inactivity are major risk factors. Plus people want a tight ass.
x5n1 11y ago
death and taxes next on list of problems to be tackled by scientists.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
BoppreH 11y ago
Just three days ago The New York Times published a piece about immortality through cryonics: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/cancer-immortality-cryogenics.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/cancer-immortality-cryo... Now BBC publishes an anti-aging piece. They feel like "submarines", paid/encouraged pieces to promote a certain point of view. Yudkowsky, is that you? I'm all for it and I'm glad someone is doing this, but curiosity is killing me.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Yeah, a big PR push for these anti-aging concepts and technologies has been underway since a year or so before Calico was announced. The idea is that people need to be primed and gradually brought around to believe that these impossible things are worth chasing.
- meeper16 11y ago
  Try Google/Calico Labs, Genentech, Aubrey de Grey, Peter Thiel/SENS.org, Craig Venter/Human longevity, GenoPharmix, The Buck Institute, Berkeley Labs, Cynthia Kenyon, Brin, Page, Jack Ma, AOL 2.0.zuckerberg and the list goes on... this is real and it's happening. “What controls aging? Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon has found a simple genetic mutation that can double the lifespan of a simple worm, C. elegans. The lessons from that discovery, and others, are pointing to how we might one day significantly extend youthful human life.” — http://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_kenyon_experiments_that_hint_of_longer_lives http://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_kenyon_experiments_that_hin... “Google Launches New Company, Calico, to Extend the Human Life Span” - http://goo.gl/2LgUKd http://goo.gl/2LgUKd “The Race To Extend The Human Lifespan Is Heating Up: Google & Craig Venter Leading the Pack" - http://goo.gl/xrHWgv http://goo.gl/xrHWgv “For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking. Arthur Levinson is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn’t have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results.” - Apple CEO Tim Cook “Ten years ago, we thought aging was probably the result of a slow decay, a sort of rusting. But Professor Kenyon has shown that it’s ... controlled by genes. That opens the possibility of slowing it down with drugs.” — Jeff Holly, Bristol University Also see, "The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences honors transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life. The prize was founded in 2013 by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang." https://breakthroughprize.org/Prize/2 https://breakthroughprize.org/Prize/2 Real space travel is not solved until aging and extending human life for a bit is solved. This is why I admire companies and individuals in this area over any other area. It's simply the most innovative accomplishment that can be done in the history of humankind and with the largest rewards.
scotch_drinker 11y ago
"They live a lot longer than human beings, yet they are living in the wild, without going to the doctor or any of the perks of human society.." Followed by: "By studying these whales and other extraordinarily long-lived creatures, de Magalhaes and colleagues hope we can find new medicines that will similarly slow down the human body’s decay and delay death." Has to be one of the most ironic things I've seen lately and that's saying something. We are studying organisms that live long lives without medical intervention in hopes of creating medical interventions to keep humans alive longer. Take more pills, go to the doctor more, pay more money for "health". At some point, surely we will begin to question what it means to be alive. I'd love to live longer but not at the expense of quality of life and taking pills for the rest of my life is lower quality in my view.
- Mz 11y ago
  Maybe human understanding will evolve and we will start studying these things in order to better understand the lifestyle that gets them this result rather than how to make a pill to replicate some piece of the chemistry. Great comment. Thank you for making it.

80 points by d_a_robson 11y ago

The BBC has a few interesting articles on aging. Here's another: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140520-the-girls-who-never-age http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140520-the-girls-who-never... If you read these articles, you're left wondering if there's some existing genetic solution waiting to be found that'll add a healthy 50 years to our lives.

wobbleblob 11y ago
If I could only live to be 80, but as healthy as I am now, I'd sign for it
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Exercise. It's not "as healthy as I am now", but it makes a big difference. Anecdotal evidence, but my 73 year old father still rides his bike over mountains (and shot his best ever golf score last month). He does complain that he wishes he had the body of a 60 year old ;-) My wife's uncle has to be pushing 90 and still runs 2 km every day. If you just keep going, it's amazing what you can accomplish even in the later stages of life. Obviously this is survivor bias, but if you look after yourself and have a bit of luck, there's no reason you can't be healthy enough to enjoy life well past 80.
  - wobbleblob 11y ago
    I do a minimum of 5-10 hours a week of aerobic exercise (mostly cycling), to make time for more, I'd either have to quit my job or board the kids somewhere. I also have some anecdotal evidence. My father was always an avid cyclist as well, until his hip joint wore out. He had to give it up, and in the space of a year turned into an old man. I'm sorry, unless something else kills you in your prime, it will happen to all of us sooner or later.
  - PepeGomez 11y ago
    Or maybe they are able to do that because they didn't age as much as the average person...

sanxiyn 11y ago

Re: the title. What are inevitable facts of life?

williamhpark 11y ago
I prefer the original title of the article: "The secret of living to 200 years old". Does what it says. Not sure why it was changed.
user9756 11y ago
Death? I mean, if you will not die, you could die? And taxes of course.
coldtea 11y ago
Well, until now (and in the foreseeable feature) death is one of them.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Well, there's the laws of physics, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics pushing the arrow of time forwards. Beyond that, not much is actually inevitable: people just prefer to rationalize anything awful as Inevitable because this gives them a comforting sense of metaphysics.
- azatris 11y ago
  2nd law of thermodynamics only applies on macroscopic scale. So not really inevitable. Plus, the laws of physics are based on a set of axioms, which don't necessarily have to be true.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    >Plus, the laws of physics are based on a set of axioms, Well no. They're based on empirical observations.
kitd 11y ago
Well, the good news is that there's still taxes.

mandelken 11y ago

Funny they don't mention the hydra, an amazing little creature, almost(?) immortal: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/absurd-creature-of-the-week-hydra/ http://www.wired.com/2015/02/absurd-creature-of-the-week-hyd...

s_dev 11y ago
Lobsters and some jellyfish are functionally immortal as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii
- fsloth 11y ago
  Smithsonian magazine disagrees on the immortality of lobsters: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dont-listen-to-the-buzz-lobsters-arent-actually-immortal-88450872/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dont-listen-to-... Although, since they will eventually die of energy depletion from growing too large, if they actually stopped growing they might go on ... a lot longer?
  - creshal 11y ago
    > Although, since they will eventually die of energy depletion from growing too large, if they actually stopped growing they might go on ... a lot longer? If humans stopped ageing they'd go on a lot longer, too. But as long as they can't it's a hypothetical scenario in both cases.
    - kaffeemitsahne 11y ago
      Maybe it's because I'm not a lobster, but halting growth to keep energy requirements low seems like an easier problem.
- reasonattlm 11y ago
  A few years back researchers found a way to measure lobster age, something that had been a challenge until then: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/lobster-age_n_2215990.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/lobster-age_n_22159... So give it a few more years and there should be some firm data on how negligibly senescent they actually are. Much of the present situation was a lack of good data.

skarap 11y ago

Not only it is an inevitable fact of life, it (and death) is the single most important attribute of life. Especially in the case of humans aging and death limit the amount of damage one single person can do. I'm not saying it's absolutely impossible to change. Just that it shouldn't.

nabla9 11y ago
What I suspect is true but obviously can't prove: Person with completely healthy brain at age 200 would not be well functioning human being in the society. When we grow we gain experience. That experience shows as habits, perceptions, attitudes and thought trains that makes functioning in the society easy. We learn to see the world trough the past experience. All this turns from asset to liability when society where you live changes beyond the global parameters our cognition settles into. In other words: Our 'mental posture at large' is path dependent and it gradually settles into some state and becomes less malleable over the years. We can still learn new things and change our thinking, but internalizing the changes becomes increasingly harder in the core level. We don't even want to try to change certain notions because our identity is tied to our 'core beliefs'. Society where people (especially rich and powerful people) would live 200s would be some kind of dystopia of geriatric thinking. Young wold have to kill the old or stage revolutions from time to time.
- kaffeemitsahne 11y ago
  Society would adapt. What's with the contempt for rich people in debates like this? Being mad at rich people for living longer is no less silly than being mad at them for having cars, mobile phones, personal computers back in the day.
  - sfilipov 11y ago
    I believe it is. Being rich and powerful means you'll most likely want to remain such. You would act in the best of your own interest. Ageing has been the absolute guarantee that even the worst of human beings (dictators, criminals with a lot of power) will eventually lose their power thus stop damaging society as a whole.

astazangasta 11y ago

This is wrong. Whales live longer because they are bigger. Larger animals have slower metabolisms and consequently longer lifespans. See this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15855403 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15855403

debacle 11y ago
Whales also live longer because it's evolutionarily advantageous for them to live longer (they have a long, fragile reproductive cycle). There's little need for a fruit fly to live 100 years and historically it doesn't seem that there has been a great need for humans to do the same, either.
DennisP 11y ago
But the article also mentions the naked mole rat, which is about the size of a mouse but lives ten times longer, and Brandt's bat, which weighs as much as a sugar cube but lives 40 years.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  Not sure about the mole rat, but bats cheat by shutting down their metabolism (basically hibernating) most of the time.
  - kolev 11y ago
    Why do people try to boost their metabolism (or demise) these days then? I strongly believe that being physically lazy (i.e. not expending much energy and keeping metabolism slow), but mentally active, and walking 30-45 minutes a day is the healthiest lifestyle one could have (if they can afford it).
    - astazangasta 11y ago
      Because heart disease is the main killer, and obesity and poor vascular fitness resulting from inactivity are major risk factors. Plus people want a tight ass.

x5n1 11y ago

death and taxes next on list of problems to be tackled by scientists.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

BoppreH 11y ago

Just three days ago The New York Times published a piece about immortality through cryonics: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/cancer-immortality-cryogenics.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/cancer-immortality-cryo... Now BBC publishes an anti-aging piece. They feel like "submarines", paid/encouraged pieces to promote a certain point of view. Yudkowsky, is that you? I'm all for it and I'm glad someone is doing this, but curiosity is killing me.

cryoshon 11y ago
Yeah, a big PR push for these anti-aging concepts and technologies has been underway since a year or so before Calico was announced. The idea is that people need to be primed and gradually brought around to believe that these impossible things are worth chasing.
meeper16 11y ago
Try Google/Calico Labs, Genentech, Aubrey de Grey, Peter Thiel/SENS.org, Craig Venter/Human longevity, GenoPharmix, The Buck Institute, Berkeley Labs, Cynthia Kenyon, Brin, Page, Jack Ma, AOL 2.0.zuckerberg and the list goes on... this is real and it's happening. “What controls aging? Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon has found a simple genetic mutation that can double the lifespan of a simple worm, C. elegans. The lessons from that discovery, and others, are pointing to how we might one day significantly extend youthful human life.” — http://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_kenyon_experiments_that_hint_of_longer_lives http://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_kenyon_experiments_that_hin... “Google Launches New Company, Calico, to Extend the Human Life Span” - http://goo.gl/2LgUKd http://goo.gl/2LgUKd “The Race To Extend The Human Lifespan Is Heating Up: Google & Craig Venter Leading the Pack" - http://goo.gl/xrHWgv http://goo.gl/xrHWgv “For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking. Arthur Levinson is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn’t have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results.” - Apple CEO Tim Cook “Ten years ago, we thought aging was probably the result of a slow decay, a sort of rusting. But Professor Kenyon has shown that it’s ... controlled by genes. That opens the possibility of slowing it down with drugs.” — Jeff Holly, Bristol University Also see, "The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences honors transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life. The prize was founded in 2013 by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang." https://breakthroughprize.org/Prize/2 https://breakthroughprize.org/Prize/2 Real space travel is not solved until aging and extending human life for a bit is solved. This is why I admire companies and individuals in this area over any other area. It's simply the most innovative accomplishment that can be done in the history of humankind and with the largest rewards.

scotch_drinker 11y ago

"They live a lot longer than human beings, yet they are living in the wild, without going to the doctor or any of the perks of human society.." Followed by: "By studying these whales and other extraordinarily long-lived creatures, de Magalhaes and colleagues hope we can find new medicines that will similarly slow down the human body’s decay and delay death." Has to be one of the most ironic things I've seen lately and that's saying something. We are studying organisms that live long lives without medical intervention in hopes of creating medical interventions to keep humans alive longer. Take more pills, go to the doctor more, pay more money for "health". At some point, surely we will begin to question what it means to be alive. I'd love to live longer but not at the expense of quality of life and taking pills for the rest of my life is lower quality in my view.

Mz 11y ago
Maybe human understanding will evolve and we will start studying these things in order to better understand the lifestyle that gets them this result rather than how to make a pill to replicate some piece of the chemistry. Great comment. Thank you for making it.