Aging Is a Communication Breakdown | Hacker News Reader

Aging Is a Communication Breakdown

nautil.us

134 pointsdnetesn27 comments

Translating problems across domains alert (!).

This article got me thinking. Oncology research sounds like live-debugging the race conditions of a millions-year-old, self-mutating program with billions (trillions) of lines of source code... And to top it all off, it's written in a language whose syntax is elusive.

If you're lucky, you can sometimes observe some aspects of its execution, but always at the cost of context-depriving tunnel vision, and only with a really expensive and proprietary IDE.

If that analogy's anywhere close to the mark, I can't imagine the patience of the people doing this research; bravo, sincerely.

With that analogy, this article suggests that researchers have attached an information-theory-backed meaning to a previously-observed pattern in the observed life cycle of our cells. The black box is revealing itself, with deliberate observation, to be an increasingly intricate and beautifully-designed grey box. Every lumen of that box is hard-fought, and must be super rewarding!

Nature's one heck of an engineer :)

It's always fun when people frame any given problem as an engineering problem. I'd enjoy seeing the reverse: an engineering problem framed as an artistic or literary problem, for example.

I would recommend Kafka's short story "The Great Wall of China"

Read italo calvino!

Not sure which thread I first saw this suggestion, but it was only about 2-3 weeks ago; I bought all of their books, and I've been very satisfied. So, thank you to all HN goers who make this recommendation! It is solid.

Interesting, I'll start with "Invisible Cities". Thanks!

Invisible cities is wonderful, I'm excited for you.

And speaking of invisible cities, I came across this really neat project a little while ago:

https://github.com/mewo2/deserts/raw/master/novel.pdf

If I remember correctly (don't have the time atm to dig into it again) the project had first trained one net to generate images, then had another one trained on invisible cities to create the descriptions for the images. The above pdf is the output.

This is amazing. Such a perfect example of using engineering in service of art. Thanks for the recommendation.

[Edit] Here is some context for the link you provided: https://procedural-generation.tumblr.com/post/138688390613/t...

Also recommended: Einstein's Dreams, by Alan Lightman. A literary exploration of relativity.

While not exactly the same thing Paul Graham wrote about hacking and painting and the similarities.

http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

In software, while everything seems massive and endlessly complex, the moment you spot your first little bug or fix it, all that complexity and mystery goes into the background. It's like a little door opens, showing you where you can go next.

The same story applies with everything from oncology to astrophysics to music to cooking to anything you can think off.

Woah, I had similar thoughts while reading this. But I believe this reduces the hard bound line that people believe exists between extroverts and introverts. May be some people are naturally hard wired but what if it is just a state of mind used to justify understanding why they lack communication with either human or machine. What if we actively tried debugging running humans?

“Nature is more complex than we previously thought.“

The human ego is a hell of a thing...

I’ve concluded (for myself) that triggering autophagy is the easiest, free thing I can do every day to cull bad cells in my body that may lead to cancer/speed up aging.

Autophagy pathways are disrupted in senescent and cancer cells otherwise autophagy would already have happened. Some way to avoid or fix that disruption might be an approach to fight cancer but even then, there are many more things going wrong in the body with increasing age. E.g. telomere shortening which is obviously a greater threat the more autophagy there is in your body. Aging is one of the most complex diseases that exist, maybe the most complex disease. Research on preventing and curing age is very welcome, but there isn't a single simple thing that can cure it. The cure for it will very likely be more complex than any other cure we've ever developed for any medical condition to this day.

I’m not suggesting autophagy cures aging, but there’s at least plenty of studies on genetically similar species that shows fasting can extend average lifespan.

So does decent, affordable (or "free"), healthcare. On balance I'll take NHS over autophagy.

Randomised controlled trials disagree. Healthcare spending has amazingly small effects on outcomes.

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

An early paper with interim results from the RAND HIE concluded that health insurance without coinsurance "leads to more people using services and to more services per user," referring to both outpatient and inpatient services.[5] Subsequent RAND HIE publications "rule[d] out all but a minimal influence, favorable or adverse, of free care for the average participant"[6] but determined that a "low income initially sick group assigned to the HMO... [had a] greater risk of dying" than those assigned to fee-for-service (FFS) care.[7] The experiment also demonstrated that cost sharing reduced "appropriate or needed" medical care as well as "inappropriate or unnecessary" medical care.

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

Approximately two years after the lottery, researchers found that Medicaid had no statistically significant impact on physical health measures, but "it did increase use of health care services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain."[4][5]

And frankly, that pisses me off. Getting older sucks...and I am just in my early 40's.

I agree, but there are cells that we do not want to die, because if they die they will not be replaced (they do not divide and there is no stem cell regenerating their pool): * Neurons * Retina cells and probably many others.

Another thing is cells that are dying are rising inflammation to the point it could trigger auto-immune diseases.

I run in the morning before eating breakfast with the theory that it triggers autophafy. I’d be curious if I’m wrong.

It triggers catabolism certainly. So as a result, apoptosis inducing metabolic pathways will be triggered.

You are a much fitter person for your morning run than without it - good skills. Ditch the fags and booze and you might live to tomorrow.

You are still curious.

How do you trigger autophagy?

Fasting is one way. Look in Google scholar. One example below.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.4161/auto.6.6.12376

Fasting has been suggested (shown?) to induce autophagy after you've been doing it for several days.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. Consult a doctor or nutritionist before changing your diet.

Rather like bit rot.

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