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$6.96B was raised by private longevity companies in 2022
- tifik 4y agoFirst time hearing the term 'private longevity'. Doesn't sound quite right to me. Sort of implies there is some kind of 'public longevity'. Wouldn't 'personal longevity' make (slightly) more sense? Edit - I'm an idiot, ignore me. It's clearly not 'private longevity' but 'private companies [that deal with longevity]'
- askafriend 4y agoThe company is private. They are working on longevity. The company is not working on "private longevity" I think you're reading the phrase wrong.
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- JamesBarney 4y agoI think they're referring to private companies.
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- petters 4y agoPrivate companies, not private longevity
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- a123b456c 4y ago'private' modifies 'longevity companies' not 'longevity'
- thesuperbigfrog 4y agoI think 'private' refers to 'company' and the companies' business model / focus area is 'longevity'. So they are 'private companies' (private ownership) in the longevity business.
- drBonkers 4y agoYou’re not an idiot, the title has a typo. As it reads, your first interpretation is correct. If they wanted “private” to modify “companies” (rather than longevity) it should read: “…raised by private, longevity companies”.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoEnglish certainly allows you to have a string of adjectives that modify a single noun without the use of commas. The phrase is simply ambiguous, but there is no typo.
- whymauri 4y agoDoes anyone know these companies or if they are promising? AI for drug discovery also boasts lofty fundraising numbers but a lot of the field is fluffy.
- strangattractor 4y agoSee Dr David Sinclair https://sinclair.hms.harvard.edu/people/david-sinclair https://sinclair.hms.harvard.edu/people/david-sinclair Also Dr Andrew Huberman has interviewed him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9IxomBusuw&t=6692s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9IxomBusuw&t=6692s
- inglor_cz 4y agoSinclair is good at promotion (and self-promotion), but I would like to mention two other brilliant scientists who are not. The first is Gregory Fahy, who works on thymus rejuvenation, and actually has a bunch of people (not mice), whose epigenetic clocks have turned back a bit, together with some improvements in physiology which indicate that the rejuvenation, albeit modest, was real. The second is Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who works on cell rejuvenation using Yamanaka factors. He was already able to pull this off in living rats without killing them - a major success given that the Yamanaka factors aren't exactly safe.
- csdvrx 4y agoSuper interesting pointers! Do you have a list of readings to catch up with what's being done?
- epicureanideal 4y agoI am watching the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation, based in Los Gatos. I think they’ll be a part of the important improvements.
- melling 4y agoFound this FT article with some additional information The paywall let me through so hopefully others can also view: https://www.ft.com/content/649b0446-698c-4363-82ad-0be5b5faa68f https://www.ft.com/content/649b0446-698c-4363-82ad-0be5b5faa...
- overtomanu 4y agopaywall removed URL https://12ft.io/proxy?&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F649b0446-698c-4363-82ad-0be5b5faa68f https://12ft.io/proxy?&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%...
- alexb_ 4y agoSo what happens if we eliminate aging? Would we be doomed to work until the end of time, forever being in a state where you don't have enough money for the infinite retirement?
- Dudeman112 4y agoYou can always just off yourself if you don't like the life you have Those of us who actually like the life they live would at least have the option of continuing that life
- irrational 4y agoSeriously, the older I get the more I look forward to Resting in Peace. No more taxes, no more mortgage or rent, no more bills, etc. I'm not trying to hurry the process, but I'm not going to be sad when my time is up.
- boc 4y agoLeast depressed HN user. But seriously, life should be fun. If it's not I'd encourage you to think about how you can make a change, even if it's just your mindset.
- wwwhizz 4y agoI'm not depressed in the slightest myself, but I just don't see why we try to keep all people alive, all the time, at all cost. Yes, I'm exaggerating a bit, but at some point life ends, and I'm fine with that. If I have had a nice length of life (lets say something like 70 years), and am no longer happy, healthy or capable of taking care of myself, don't save me next time I need saving (in order to live longer).
- cj 4y ago(You may already know this) but at least in the US, it's common for older patients to put a DNR (do not resuscitate) order on their medical file, making it so life saving measures won't be taken near/at end of life. Most commonly this means that CPR can't be performed.
- rqtwteye 4y agoThere are a lot of hucksters in this area but I think some of the investments will produce good results. It’s definitely better to pour VC money into longevity research vs “Uber for X” or blockchain.
- mountainriver 4y ago100% the blockchain isn't needed for much, but longevity and AI are actually really useful to humans
- abraxas 4y agoThe whole blockchain ecosystem is basically an instantiation of Bostrom's Paperclip Maximizer running on a hybrid human/machine topology.
- willmorrison 4y agoCan you explain more what you mean?
- jack_pp 4y agoI think he's saying it took a life of its own and its incentives are destructive to mankind. I disagree but I can see how you could make the argument, supposing you think bitcoin has no use / value and that smart contracts are just a fad. But maximalists have their own arguments regarding the use of blockchain and while a lot of the rhetoric isn't believable I do think blockchain tech will be +EV in the future even if most don't believe it already is.
- abraxas 4y agoBasically it is a purposeless algorithm that saps resources for useless computations, that is only interesting insofar as it can sometimes perform sophisticated optimizations albeit in pursuit of a trivially useless goal. Zoom out and think of the entire blockchain algorithm at a level above the incentives of a singular agent. It's very much like having a superhuman Paperclip maximizer that has a invented amazing techniques of say, iron ore extraction but this localized advance is squandered in pursuit of an absurd goal of creating the maximum possible volume of paperclips. Of course there is not a single agent on earth who pursues bitcoin mining with the goal of wasting energy and compute resources but it is the aggregate end result. Bostrom similarly argues the the objective function of a complex system such as an AGI may drift entirely from its original intent leading it to optimize for things we absolutely do not desire and this malignant drift is an emergent property. The similarities to blockchain are uncanny.
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- CobrastanJorji 4y agoIf one of these private logetivity companies hasn't already taken the name "The Howard Foundation," I will be sorely disappointed.
- nullc 4y agoI'd think both the connection with eugenics and the lifestyle of Lazarus Long would be exactly the image of longevity improvements that they'd be trying hardest to avoid!
- Existenceblinks 4y agoDo they have report of which sectors? I can't find it on the article.
- morpheos137 4y agoWhy do people want to live longer? It is a young man's dream.
- feoren 4y agoBefore the comments come in talking about whether we actually want to cure aging, let me present my favorite argument I've seen on the topic: Imagine the situation were reversed: nobody is aging, and we're worried about Earth's limited resources. Your proposed to solution is to kill everyone over a certain age!?
- candiddevmike 4y agoNot everyone, only the folks that paid less
- wilg 4y agoMy opinion on the topic changed significantly after watching these great videos: - Why Age? Should We End Aging Forever? - Kurzgesagt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoJsr4IwCm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoJsr4IwCm4 - How to Cure Aging – Kurzgesagt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjdpR-TY6QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjdpR-TY6QU - Why Die? - CGP Grey - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C25qzDhGLx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C25qzDhGLx8
- Nihilartikel 4y agoYou get 200 years but then you're contact bound to hop on the first colony ship to Mars...
- elmomle 4y agoI think this argument presupposes that biological life had found some healthy, deathless equilibrium; it's hard to imagine what that would look like, since we what we have is a system where death is a vital part of all that we see--it is required, in a most basic sense, to rejuvenate the greater system. This isn't to say that "therefore we should all accept the inevitability of death"--just that we should consider carefully whether, in ending (or forestalling) death, we might improve the lot of the individual at the expense of the greater whole (society, other life on the planet, etc.). Another thought--what if avoiding death ends up taking exponentially more resources as one gets older, and society becomes a superorganism oriented around keeping a small number of egos alive for as long as possible, where capacity to age becomes the ultimate expression of power?
- tasty_freeze 4y agoResearch is great -- I'm all for that -- but I'm less certain about actually turning this into a product just yet. As an analogy, it is like a weekend cyclist spending $10,000 on a high end bike to save a pound or two off their bike, meanwhile they are 30 pounds overweight. It would be better to lose that weight (for cycling performance and for many better reasons) before trying to buy cycling performance at $10,000/lb. Getting back to the point, people imagine it would be great to live 500 years, perhaps longer. Ask yourself: are you maximizing your current life? If you are currently unhappy, bored, sick, lonely, feeling like you are trapped in a certain lifestyle, why would you want an extra 400 years of that?
- adamisom 4y agoThat's a good point. At the same time, more chances (to discover an electric life) is better. But your point really matters because however long you live, youth will only be a fraction of that (and I do expect that one's relatively-unencumbered and energetic years are better... if used well--thing is, older people usually aren't so dumb, they use their years better, which is why their self-reported happiness is higher).
- SilverBirch 4y agoWell this strikes pretty directly at the heart of the whole longevity argument. There was an article on HN the other day about Bryan Johnson and how he was spending millions a year, eating exactly 1977 vegan calories per day, taking a dozen pills every day, doing 1 hour of high intensity training, and as a result some tests showed that he was scoring like an 18 year old. It's all a bit... self-defeating? You're going to live forever spending your entire life.... trying to live forever? Living a long life isn't necessarily living a good life, and wasting the time you have in order to get more time.... maybe stop doing that and just get on with doing the stuff that you want to do given the time. Having said that, on your analogy, it's a great business selling $10,000 bikes to rich idiots...
- nluken 4y agoI think these startups look at aging like a disease and want to treat it in a way that doesn't necessarily require an incredible amount of effort from people. Somewhere between nothing and spending all your time just to extend your time.
- treve 4y agoThere's a strange amount of posts on HN related to 'longevity'. It feels more than coincidental, and I don't see much about the topic anywhere else. Are people disproportionately afraid of old age and death here?
- adamisom 4y agoI think people here are disprortionately conscious, which leads to greater awareness that terrible things are terrible.
- timoth3y 4y agoPromising longevity to the wealthy has been an effective way to raise money for thousands of years.
- unity1001 4y agoMuch better than that wealth being hoarded more and more without doing anything. Its amazing how even the ultra rich who hoard dozens of billions act as if they will live forever, hoard their wealth without investing it in anything tangible but using it to hoard even more wealth, then rapidly decline in health in their later years without their wealth doing them any good. With such investments, at they can make life longer and better for themselves and the humanity at the same time, putting that wealth into a tangible good use. Humans take a long time and a lot of investment to bring up and educate. Any singular human lost is a loss for humanity due to the creativity and resourcefulness that even the dumbest members of human race have are invaluable. If everyone lived longer and healthier, we could be living in a much better paradigm then our current one that is still stuck somewhere in between late 20th century and the start of 21st century. The progress we can make is indescribable. We can live longer, and if we look at the other species in our planet, we !should! be living much longer: There are tortoises that live centuries. There are sharks who live centuries. Even cetaceans can live well over a century. Higher mammals living in very hard, hostile conditions live 70 years or longer like elephants. The biology of this planet basically says that living long is the norm for complex organisms. We humans are the exceptions to that, by living a ~70 years on average and living the last 2 decades of it with declining capacity. The problem is with our civilization and the way we live - not with biology itself. ... There is absolutely no benefit to anyone in the hoards of imaginary wealth of this planet amassing more useless hoards of imaginary wealth by sitting in investment tools. If even a fraction of that wealth is actually put to use, everything can change.
- rchaud 4y agoInterested to know how much of this capital is going into basic public health initiatives (preventative health) vs what I imagine are extremely expensive treatments to stretch out one's life (acute treatment). 100 bucks says it's the latter. I therefore eagerly await a VC-subsidized BBaaS (Blood Boy as a Service). Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-LSbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-LSbo