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Comment by abletonlive | Hacker News Reader

This is the mindset of most of the medical field so basically you bought into the status quo. Nothing profound about that. Those that are interested in longevity reject such notions because it leads to very little research in how to prolong life, or see death as a disease worth curing.

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I suppose what I didn’t reveal is that I spent a lot of time before medicine trying to coax cells whether in a culture or some other medium to grow in the way I wanted it to grow. And it was hard. It’s been a while, but if I could recall correctly, cells tended to have a finiteness in their very nature. I think at some subconscious level, I interpreted this as nature’s way of expressing that is how things are designed to be.

I don’t do life science anymore, but deal with computers now. And it’s a whole lot more predictable and malleable. (Heck, it’s easy if I were to compare it to running gels or prepping cell lines.)

But I would be ecstatic if I could witness some science fiction level advancement in this field in my lifetime. I doubt it, but I would be amazed should it happen.

> It’s been a while, but if I could recall correctly, cells tended to have a finiteness in their very nature.

This is known: https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Hayflick_limit

On the other hand, there are 150-year-old tortoises and 200-year-old whales out there. So it's not like there is some finite impossibility to living a long time, other animals have figured it out.

Even better, human species live indefinitely through human cells making new human fetal cells. At it's essence, it's still a chemical transformation process. Some compounds are being converted, old human to new human, which keeps life going indefinitely.

And possibly 500 year old sharks. (Not yet confirmed)

Yeah that. There’s something even more subtle. Experiments run with certain older lines just… failed more. It’s weird. The supervisor would say, “Yeah go to X’s lab and grab theirs.”

Like the reproducibility is contingent on so many factors. Very depressing and tedious.

There’s definitely a lot we don’t know and the knowledge gap is huge. And even if it can be done in the lab, translating some finding to a workable therapeutic is another story.

If you look about it a certain way. At the species level, we've already reached biological immortality.

The trick is to have some cells starting the process over. Sexual reproduction always started from pre-existing cells, rebuilding a full individual.

Using this process to repair all the living cells does not seem impossible.

Our understanding of DNA programming is far from sufficient to enable this kind of project, but I don't see why it could not be possible at some point.

The DNA in the nucleus of a human cell has telomeres, which effectively function as a countdown timer for reproduction. Every cell division drops the timer by one, and when the timer hits zero, the cell enters senescence and stops working so hard. Killing off senescent cells improves quality of life in several aspects.

Then there are transposons, elements of ancient retroviruses embedded in our DNA, that can awaken and spray themselves thousands of times over the cell's genome. Usually, these new inserts don't hit anything important. Usually. Germline cells have mechanisms to suppress this, but most cells undergo this once a month.

You are talking about a lot of damage to repair in an older cell.

No, fuck the older cell, replace everything with new, but slow enough.

Yes, but:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

Ask an oncologist if they feel that is the status quo. 20% of people who get chemotherapy get it within weeks of dying, as if suffering even more will prolong their life. Not all oncologists are like that but many feel harsh treatments which ruin a person's other healthy cells with tons of side effects is worth it for keeping a patient alive just a few months more.

I don't know much about oncology, but it strikes me that they probably don't know with certainty which of the 20% it will be. They have a limited number of interventions that put the patient through hell, and it sometimes works.

There's probably extreme cases with bad metastasis where it's very unlikely that they can be saved, and they can probably tell some of those. But I think not all the time.

Must be a very depressing job to observe this over the years.

>so basically you bought into the status quo. Nothing profound about that

Nothing profound in being scared shitless of it either

Perhaps the disease worth curing even more is the mindset that rejects longevity.

Someday they'll demonstrate existence of an afterlife to the satisfaction of the average consumer and the whole world is gonna do a Homer Simpson.

I mean, it'll flip our whole value system.

Genuinely curious for your perspective- can you elaborate?

I'm into meditation and similar mystic weirdness.

I've seen what appears to be a literal "city of the dead".

No doubt a metaphor. But metaphor appears to be a big part of "reality".

I've also seen what appears to be a "creator of reality".

So ya, it's a weird world.

So the religious fanatics were right all along? I think the afterlife is actually the life after you realise there is no afterlife. Many never reach it.

Well a lot of those guys are just citing other guys. Not the most robust epistemology.

It's pretty hard to dispute the thousands of NDE reports. Similar experiences, descriptions across different cultures and religions. Young children, even the blind since birth all fairly consistently report the same.

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