Can the power of thought stop you ageing? | Hacker News Reader

Can the power of thought stop you ageing?

news.bbc.co.uk

No.

But people are willing to believe the wildest nonsense in order to avoid confronting the fact that work is required to achieve a desired end.

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Addendum 1: If you want to stop aging, fund SENS research to the tune of a billion dollars over ten years. http://www.sens.org. Full stop, end of story.

Addendum 2: stress is known to accelerate the erosion of telomeres (or accelerate whatever process of aging is associated with shorter telomeres), so in that sense patterns of thought that translate into physiological changes do seem to accelerate aging to some degree. Like all such metabolic issues, it isn't any worse/better than what you can do to yourself with diet and exercise.

Addendum 1: If you want to stop aging, fund SENS research to the tune of a billion dollars over ten years. http://www.sens.org. Full stop, end of story.

I'm baffled that this never comes up when we're discussing spiraling health care costs. The vast majority of health care dollars are spent trying (and ultimately failing) to treat conditions that are the direct result of aging. Even a billion dollars a year on research like what SENS is doing is cheap if there's any possibility of success. And that's not even accounting for the massively increased quality of life that would result, or the economic benefit of people remaining productive their entire lives.

FWIW, I've joined the cause to donate $100 to SENS once 10,000 people sign up: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/297361.

You might have to deal with euthanasia, stopping people having kids, or sharing wealth more widely if people live longer though.

While we're playing with the human body's regulatory mechanisms, we can just make ovulation happen only once per year.

And?

(I think we should deal with euthanasia and suicide anyway as a matter of fairness, and population growth if it becomes a serious issue).

And these topics are not cleanly dealt with by society at the moment. I agree that we should deal with these areas better. If we as a society can't agree that terminally ill people should be allowed to die in peace, then I don't think there's any cause for orangecat to be baffled that we don't fund anti-aging research as much as we should. You don't get a billion dollars unless you can have a sensible discussion about the necessary consequences of the research.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7166200/...

If you want to stop aging, fund SENS research to the tune of a billion dollars over ten years. http://www.sens.org. Full stop, end of story.

What if the research doesn't turn up anything we can do? Or, worse, what if it shows that stopping aging requires exercise, adequate sleep, eating vegetables, and refraining from excessive sex, drugs, and rock and roll?

That question shows that you didn't read http://www.sens.org.

What needs to be done - exactly what biotechnologies are needed - is established, known, and in some cases within a few years of being trial-ready (e.g. replacement of mitochondrial DNA).

This has been demonstrated with human subjects and long-term follow-up?

Aubrey de Grey is younger than I am, but looks older

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey

and his work has been subjected to a good bit of scientific criticism,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Grey_Technology_Review_contr...

so why should huge amounts of my taxes be directed specifically to his organization, rather than to the usual variety of government-overseen funding agencies, to fund projects that compete on the basis of good science

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

to show what the real trade-offs are of various treatments?

I understand your criticisms, and I agree money should be placed into places likely to bear fruit, but are you really pulling the taxes card? Would you rather have huge portions of your taxes go toward trying to kill people, or toward trying to save people? (I know that's a somewhat unfair question, but take just a bit away from military spending and you have a lot to work with.)

That is a bit off-topic, but I guess to respond to what you said in relation to what I said above, the peer review in military research is brutally frank. If the technology doesn't work, you may die because the enemy kills you while you are still young. Yes, there are examples of waste and boondoggles in all tax-supported programs (and plenty of privately supported programs), but as a voter and a citizen I would want more evidence from objective sources before deciding to pile billions of dollars into a speculative research program.

What's so great about SENS? Aren't there lots of other research programs on this?

The experimental group also exercised more, by not relying on walking sticks etc.

It's been shown that the deterioration of bone density in the elderly can be reversed by simple strength training: inactivity is partly the cause of infirmity.

http://www.naturalnews.com/010528_strength_training_bone_den...

This is really very key here. A study in China trying to figure out why two identical towns, right next to each other seemed to have radically different health profiles on their elderly eventually came to the conclusion that it was because one of the towns had a a modern road while the other was still paved with cobblestones. The difficulty of walking on the cobblestones kept the population substantially healthier. There are even some experimental retirement homes in Japan designed around this idea. Instead of trying to make everything easier, and allowing the population to grow weaker in response. The entire home is designed to challenging. Things like short door frames so people have to duck.

Nothing can stop you from aging.

Eating right, getting out more, and generally taking care of yourself can put a <1.0 coefficient on a lot of it though.

If this becomes mainstream thinking, fashion will show the weirdest side effects...

A placebo should do the trick.

Probably more than most people imagine ;-)

Not even if you're Deepak.

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