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Comment by thatguysaguy | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea whether his stuff will work but I'm glad people are trying wacky stuff to find out.

There is a very weird lack of interest in slowing down or reversing aging in the scientific/medical community in general. To me it seems like it should be a top priority. Life is extremely short and extending our lives shouldn't be a terribly hard feat given there are plenty of biologically immortal and long lived organisms all over our planet.

We have so much lower hanging fruit to tackle first that doesn’t even require research: what’s the point in extending your miserable life a couple more miserable years? Adding a decade on to your life of extreme privilege is worthwhile, but for the majority of people on earth, simply getting them on to a nutritious diet would do far more for their quality of life and their lifespan than slowing down aging ever could. So much human suffering is a result of policy, not lack of scientific understanding.

Slowing down aging is like going to space: it’s a fun complicated problem for nerds to think about but it is utterly meaningless to the quality of 99% of lives on earth.

There is no sharp line between "slowing down aging" and common-sense things like diet, sleep, exercise, etc. It all exists on the same spectrum.

>simply getting them on to a nutritious diet would do far more for their quality of life and their lifespan than slowing down aging ever could.

That in itself is a scientific claim that needs to be supported by evidence. How are we going to get that evidence if we aren't doing the research? We also don't have a good definition of exactly what a "nutritious diet" is. The idea that we shouldn't be be investing in health and longevity research is anti-intellectual and short-sighted, in my opinion.

> That in itself is a scientific claim that needs to be supported by evidence.

That experiment has been running for the entire human existence. Richer people live longer and better lives.

It doesn't need evidence because it's common knowledge. Protein = health.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6562018/

> Lifespan and metabolic health are influenced by dietary nutrients. Recent studies show that a reduced protein intake or low-protein/high-carbohydrate diet plays a critical role in longevity/metabolic health. Additionally, specific amino acids (AAs), including methionine or branched-chain AAs (BCAAs), are associated with the regulation of lifespan/ageing and metabolism through multiple mechanisms. Therefore, methionine or BCAAs restriction may lead to the benefits on longevity/metabolic health. Moreover, epidemiological studies show that a high intake of animal protein, particularly red meat, which contains high levels of methionine and BCAAs, may be related to the promotion of age-related diseases.

There are dozens of essential nutrients. You only need about 15% of your calories to come from protein. Protein = health is laughably simplistic and incomplete. Also, the only reason we know what protein is is because we did the scientific research in the first place.

So you think we should extend humans life so they can spend more hours on the couch eating junk food?

30% of the worlds population is currently 'severly food insecure' (starving) [1].

Dont you think the priority first should be sorting out enough food for the existing population? When 100% of the world is fed properly and well, and we have surplus food, then maybe extending life should be come a scientific priority.

[1] - https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-h...

I'm not sure why you would infer from my post that I'm not in favor of solving world hunger or that I'm encouraging people to have unhealthy diets. My point is that figuring out how to solve food scarcity is a scientific problem, as is figuring out how to improve people's diets. Eating a healthier diet slows down the aging process and increases lifespan. There isn't a sharp distinction between the two problems, and we can make progress in both. The idea that we shouldn't be doing scientific research on one area until all problems are solved in another, especially when the areas are related, is deeply mistaken.

> Slowing down aging is like going to space: it’s a fun complicated problem for nerds to think about but it is utterly meaningless to the quality of 99% of lives on earth.

Except that aging is the causative factor behind Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, AMD, and a battery of other illnesses

so they are not illnesses at all? just mere aging?

They're illnesses for which age is the biggest contributing factor of whether you'll get sick, and how sick you'll get. Nearly every disease affects you more severely the older you are.

Wouldn't that make these illnesses incurable?

Not sure what makes alzheimers an illness and wrinkly skin not an illness.

The article is about trying to cure aging. That includes both Alzheimer's and wrinkly skin.

Article is about slowing the rate of aging not 'cure aging' .

Fair. "Treat aging" then, but I suspect the author of DON'T DIE has bigger plans. Skin and brain health are both areas of focus.

https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/DONT-DIE-by-Zero

> To me it seems like it should be a top priority.

Maybe most people are content with children, the current state of the art against aging communities?

You are an individual. You matter.

Oof. If we defeat aging, we'll have to contend with:

* unbounded population increase * wealth and power directly proportional to age * dictators and other bad people not dying

Not insurmountable but all of those big problems would require massive sociological shifts.

You're choosing to pick the negatives but the potential upsides (even excluding personal desires) are monumentally massive.

How about not having 25% of the population walking around with an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex at any one time, that need 30 years of education before they have the wisdom to do anything halfway useful. How about government policies that operate with a decades long view instead of just one election term. Global ID's would rise massively and decisions would have a far more balanced outlook.

I want reduced aging for humanitarian reasons, but i don't buy your reasoning

> 30 years of education before they have the wisdom to do anything halfway useful

If scidnce advances obe funeral at a time, this probably means science will advance a lot less.

> How about government policies that operate with a decades long view instead of just one election term

Seems unlikely to change. Election terms are 5 years and people already live a lot longer than that.

More importantly, i'd worry about an increase in concentrated power.

> choosing to pick the negatives

Yes of course there are positives. Don't worry, we have never let negative consequences hold back progress before.

But the blind optimism is staggering, and let's get philosophical: what's the ultimate good, objectively? (Subjectively obviously _I_ and _you_ think it's that we get to be around for longer.) But objectively, from a humanity standpoint, is it (1) the most people in existence, (2) the most people to ever have existed, (3) the most consciousness, (4) the most happiness? Etc.

If we start letting people live forever, over a long time, because of resources, fewer people will ultimately exist. We'll also have slower progress because old ideas will live longer. It's very hubristic to think we've peaked, and it's inevitable that the first live-forever generation will put the brakes on progress/change.

I'd say those downsides far outweigh the upsides you've proposed.

> dictators and other bad people not dying

Equally true of trying to cure cancer, or infant mortality, or medicine generally - you're giving healthy years of life to good and bad people alike.

Science advances one funeral at a time, as Max Planck said.

This is why extraterrestrials haven't contacted us. They are afraid that our death cult would spread among them.

Treating illnesses, diseases and injuries should have higher priority, as they impact QOL and mortality much more. Once almost everyone gets to age 80 in health, then we can tackle extending the life span.

More people will get to age 80 if we tackle the causes of aging

> There is a very weird lack of interest in slowing down or reversing aging

Uh. We don't even know why we get heartburn and how to treat it. You comment sounds like, why does my toddler lack interest in reading Shakespeare.

There are many people who completely healed it with a drastic dietary change: going low carb, going full carnivore, going vegan, eliminating junk food.

Still doesn't say anything about what causes heartburn. Why did they have make drastic changes when they were fine eating carbs before heartburn? Why doesn't that work for everyone? How long did this relief last for ppl it works for?

Extending our lives should definitely not be a priority. We already have enough trouble on the horizon with resources on earth provided for an exponentially exploding population. The only thing keeping this in check currently is the elderly dying from disease and old age. If we reverse the aging process, or cure cancer or something similar, this planet will very quickly become a very horrible place to live.

Life doesn't seem short. Heck, humans are some of the longest lived mammals in the world. I suspect people only say life is short because they are counting the days ahead of them and comparing it to the days behind them - not considering the total number of days. I bet very few 10-year-olds would say life is short, but maybe a lot of 60-year-olds would.

Yeah I'm not really sure what to think about him. He gives off serious grifter vibes and at least some of his claims are probably overblown. On the other hand, who is he hurting? He's "experimenting" on himself and making the results available for everyone. He'll sell you some of the stuff he does but the details of his entire regimen are also freely given away for anyone who wants to do it themselves. He's an unusual person for sure.

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