Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

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Having no inflammation at all is a very bad thing. Too much inflammation is also a very bad thing. Hypothetically, there's an optimal level of inflammatory response. Evolution doesn't necessarily guarantee that, at least when it comes to a single mouse.

An individual organism surviving for the longest amount of time is not necessarily optimal at the species level. It could be that mice (for instance) have a bit too high of an IL-11 response, but there's either no evolutionary pressure against it or there's some species-level value to it.

Above all, since only one interleukin was targeted in the research, we can't assume that all inflammation is bad and that no inflammation is ideal.

On a related note, I wonder if there's anything commercially available that can suppress IL-11. Currently, I'm taking phycocyanin extracted from spirulina, which is supposed to suppress COX-2 and IL-17, but I don't see any research confirming whether it has an effect on IL-11. Would be cool if I've unwittingly begun extending my lifespan. :D

> An individual organism surviving for the longest amount of time is not necessarily optimal at the species level.

Though it can be argued that among social, intelligent creatures, living grandparents holds value for the species. Humans and orcas both seem to benefit from them in many ways.

I would imagine that if humans were immortal, the centralization of wealth and power under a few families would be even more extreme. Which is probably not good for the vast majority of humans.

Even if you were right, I'd still chose that society over death. I am not convinced though, wealth seems to dissipate over long periods (e.g. most billionaires today did not inherit their wealth).

I mean, it's pretty hard to predict what such a society would look like, but it's plausible you'd just be a slave from birth until death (because poor slaves don't get the immortality pill).

> I am not convinced though, wealth seems to dissipate over long periods (e.g. most billionaires today did not inherit their wealth).

The single most reliable predictor of wealth BY FAR is being born into wealth. And arguably, it dissipates because it gets decentralized as it gets split up between heirs as it passed down to future generations which are typically less ambitious and focused on maintaining that power and wealth.

Imagine if Ghengis Khan, Stalin, Mao, Rothschild, Rockerfeller, all of the kings/royals/despots/dictators were immortal and still running the world - I don't think most people would want to live in that world.

> The single most reliable predictor of wealth BY FAR is being born into wealth.

I highly doubt that. I would guess that income and age would be much better predictors for example.

> I don't think most people would want to live in that world.

I would, if the other option was death.

Regardless, I doubt any of them would still rule the world had they not died of old age. Regimes survive despite the death of their rulers and fall while their rulers are still alive.

> I highly doubt that. I would guess that income and age would be much better predictors for example.

I'm talking about predictors of wealth for a new person. The age and income are both zero. If you have their income - you probably have their wealth already as well - nothing to predict.

And for the record, coming from wealth is the strongest predictor of future wealth. [0][1]

> I would, if the other option was death.

But you have no choice/option in my hypothetical scenario - you're born a slave and you die...

> Regardless, I doubt any of them would still rule the world had they not died of old age.

Really.... ? Why? All of the people I mentioned, maintained and grew their wealth/power their entire life up until their death. Having power/wealth is just a huge advantage if you're trying to gain/maintain power/wealth.

[0] https://www.ctpublic.org/education/2019-05-15/georgetown-stu... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/29/study-to-succeed-in-america-...

> I'm talking about predictors of wealth for a new person.

That's almost a tautology then. If you only know one thing about someone, that's also necessarily the best predictor for anything about them. However, it doesn't tell us much about whether wealth does concentrate over time.

> Really.... ? Why?

Because regimes change all the time despite rulers being alive. The death of a ruler by old age rarely triggers regime change, they just get succeeded by someone else. It's usually another event that triggers regime change (peaceful and violent revolutions, war, etc.). Immortal rulers wouldn't be immune to those events.

The biggest cause of regime change seems to be the succession of power and the fears around change occurring during succession of power. A ruler dying through old age is a common source of regime change in history as people with varying interests start vying for that position and ensuring the new ruler holds their same interests.

It's the exception rather than the norm. Rulers are typically just replaced by their successors.

I mean, I gave you multiple examples of some of the most powerful people that ever lived, none of which fall into this category you call the 'norm'. You just completely ignored that and continued with your baseless fantasy.

Upon his death, Genghis Khan was succeeded by his son. Mao was succeeded by Hua Guofeng, vice chairman of the CCP. Stalin was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

And the power was less centralized after each of these deaths.

> If you only know one thing about someone

You can know a great deal about someone at birth, such as race, gender, country of origin, eye color etc. Yet you can accurately predict someone’s wealth at age 60 by looking at their parent’s wealth even though a babies income is generally 0.

Further wait until someone’s 10 and you can measure IQ, grades, etc and parents wealth is still #1. Wait even longer and high school GPA still isn’t nearly as useful.

> That's almost a tautology then.

No... it's not? Do you know what tautology means?

> If you only know one thing about someone, that's also necessarily the best predictor for anything about them.

Except it's not the only thing you know about them... so your point is kinda meaningless.

> However, it doesn't tell us much about whether wealth does concentrate over time.

There are soooo many studies supporting this, like the two I linked above, not to mention common sense.

It's like the most basic game theory + common sense - you have X people competing with each other, you give (0.001 * X) of those people massive advantages - who do you think is going to be winning?

Also the Chinese saying that goes "Wealth does not last beyond three generations". There are exceptions to this rule but it is fairly robust.

Part of it is wealth becoming diluted with offspring and secondly being raised in wealth diminishes people value of money until it is too late.

In the United States, the single most determinative factor for lifetime earnings and life expectancy is the zip code you were born in and grew up in, up to age 13 or so.

Largely because it gets split amongst inheritors and they often are less able to manage wealth than the original accumulator of the wealth. Immortalis would not need to split their estate up every so often as death causes to happen now instead they would continue to accumulate more.

banks would not offer such lucrative interest rates if immortality was a publicly known trait

We'd certainly need to change our social system lot.

altered carbon is a great show that deals with this

If they were immortal they'd soon find a way to move beyond this planet, then beyond this solar system. Once that is accomplished there is a whole universe to colonise so I assume that is what would happen. It would be the only way really since the planet would otherwise quickly fill up and 'immortality' would end up a pipe dream due to endless conflict over land and sustenance.

Ah yes, the "vampire spaceship" season of humanity.

That's far from guaranteed.

With an average fertility rate of 1, which is higher than that of many countries including where I live, even complete immortality would lead to an asymptotic population. Since some people will still inevitably die in accidents even if aging is solved, a fertility rate of 1 would be a declining population even with unlimited lifespans.

You're assuming everyone gets the immortality and is de facto benevolent. If you actually look at how the super rich and powerful have acted historically - its much more likely that the few richest/most powerful people would just take control of the earth, reserve immortality for themselves, and keep everyone else as a mortal slave.

I'd rather have the healthy and energy of a 25 year old and live in a world where there are people far richer than me than be a frail 80 year old where at least I know there aren't any trillionaires.

Another thought I had was that revolutions over inequality almost always happen when there's a large youthful population. The old just don't have the energy or the future-focused outlook for big change. Inequality might be less stable if all adults had the health of their youth.

> I'd rather have the healthy and energy of a 25 year old and live in a world where there are people far richer than me than be a frail 80 year old where at least I know there aren't any trillionaires.

That's a very specific scenario, where everything happens to be going great for you. Do you honestly believe wealth inequality has no negative consequences for those at the bottom?

No, I agree that extreme wealth inequality is not desirable. But the question I'm trying to get at is if we can have medicine that will make people live dramatically healthier lives isn't it worth it even if some billionaires get to hold onto their wealth a little longer?

"But if we cure aging won't that mean that the ultra-rich will never go away??" That's what these conversations always seem to devolve into and it seems to miss the bigger picture.

How long does it take for evolution to resolve that presumably long-term unintentional negative outcome?

> Though it can be argued that among social, intelligent creatures, living grandparents holds value for the species.

This is taken to an extreme in Larry Niven's "known space" setting. There's a bunch of interesting stuff I won't mention because spoilers, but imagine a very-humanoid race where the adults are not intelligent, but later they lose the ability to reproduce and gain hyper-intelligence, strength, and a ruthless drive to protect and advance their descendants.

Selection only cares about reproductive fitness of individuals. There is some weak evidence that grandparents can improve their reproductive fitness by supporting the fitness if their progeny. Any species level effects are not important players, although as our technological competence grows, this is likely to change.

>Humans and orcas both seem to benefit from them in many ways.

For a second, I thought you wrote "humans and orcs..." I don't think orcs really value grandparents that much, but who knows: Tolkein might have completely maligned them as mindless monsters when they were in fact just a fast-growing pre-industrial civilization.

Real Orks know as long as you aren't painting yourself red you'll age slower, live longer, but not orkier.

A way to look at this is that death is an evolutionary advantage for the species. Vertebrates have a PVN that control the HPA-Axis. As anything that contributes to the HPA-Axis such as pain, stress, or inflamation increases, the PVN shrinks and it fairly rapidly (evolutionary wise) behaves like a kill switch to the brain. Some pre-Vertebrates can effectively live forever and the mammals that live the longest have different hpa-axis loops. What is wild to realize is that there was probably a creature at some point that wouldn't die from pain until that was connected to this loop.

> Hypothetically, there's an optimal level of inflammatory response.

Surely this is directly dependent on the context of the organism.

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