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DevX101

Bold take to proclaim we'll figure out interstellar travel before we figure out how to prevent muscle atrophy.

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also bold take to proclaim we'll still have human bodies before moving up kardashev scale

We are human bodies.

Replace it one cell at a time. Ship of Theseus awaits to set sail.

Bodies are processes, like chemical reactions or baseball games, not "objects." No problem.

objects undergo processes. atoms in your body are replaced over a period of hours-years.

Is a tornado an object or a process?

Is a thought an object or a process?

does a thought occur in a vacuum?

is there a lot of tornadoes in a vacuum?

Just one big one, afaik. I’m no vacuum engineer though

Homo sapiens is subject to speciation just like every other animal.

Then there's cyborgs...

>98% of humans born in first-world countries reach adulthood and have the chance to reproduce. This number will asymptotically approach 100% as we ascend. Is speciation possible in such circumstances?

Speciation would happen over hundreds or thousands of years. I doubt the notion of first world countries will outlast that time frame, even more so the 100% reproduction opportunity.

Isolated populations could come from space colonies, geographic isolation from war or extreme climate events, rich people with exclusive genetic upgrades, cyborg implants that make it possible to only reproduce with other cyborgs. Just off the top of my head.

If you're less patient, give it enough time the old fashioned way and homo sapiens as they are today would eventually not be able to reproduce with their descendants. Genetic drift.

Amen.

also bold take to proclaim, that humans will be required for teleoperation...

One of the lead SETI researchers wrote about this and how biological life might just be a transitory phase.

I think realistically we have to reduce our body mass by 99% if we want to go interplanetary, much less interstellar. It's extremely expensive to drag around 70kg of meat and minimizing weight is key to making solar sails work.

We definitely don't need to reduce it for interplanetary travel.

Sure, let's remove 70kg. That'll get the ship moving...not.

You’re missing the fact that most of the weight of a spaceship is to support that 70kg and accelerate the whole thing. Watch this discussion about getting to Alpha Centauri.

https://youtu.be/uZN5xjoS6TU?si=05xuUdWsWADrZY-i

that's a fun thought experiment, but not at all practical

The mass of the actual meatsacks inside the spaceship is barely anything compared to the rest of it. A true step forward would be to rengineer ourselves to be way smaller. Santi-like.

That’s what I mean, reduce us and the entire ship can be reduced too. We can’t go interplanetary with humans as evolved today. Solar sails can only push a very small payload.

> reduce us and the entire ship can be reduced too

You may enjoy "Gentle Seduction" by Marc Stiegler [1].

TL; DR Leave the meat part in place and project your consciousness through offboard sensors.

[1] http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html

I think we’ll just probably convert ourselves into data and beam ourselves across space at the speed of light and install ourselves into machines deployed at various sites.

Quantum/Jump/Warp drives and portals?

Copy, not convert. The copies will be the ones exploring the new worlds while the originals continue their mundane life.

That’s just short term thinking. Imagine being a copy, you will know no difference.

Except I'd be the one left behind, so I'd really know the difference, and if my copy was good, it would also know it's the copy and the original was left behind.

I kind of suspect that working out suspended animation would be easier than trying to shrink humans. You can save a lot of mass by minimizing the amount of space you need via keeping the humans dormant for the entire trip and while also reducing food and water needs. Tightly pack them in, surround them with cargo to help with radiation shielding, and keep them hibernating for the entire trip.

Embryos are small, and data is free.

We know how already: exogenous testosterone (or other, more anabolic hormones), but that has downsides like left-ventricular hypertrophy, masculinization in women, and (usually reversible) infertility.

Yes, yes, it's safe to presume GP means "figure out muscle atrophy without the well-known terrible side effects of current treatments" from even a mildly charitable reading of his comment.

This is the easiest part. Our bodies are not good for this task, so only frozen gametes should travel to be "assembled" on destination. End of the problem

It's not just steroids and replacement testosterone.

I recall certain classes of drugs that make mice into muscle-bound warriors, I believe using a different pathway then steroids.

Interstellar travel is not a prerequisite for K1 or K2.

We already know how to prevent it, it’s called anabolic steroids or testosterone. Once I read a study that showed sedentary people on testosterone gained more muscle mass than people actually working out.

Bhasin et. al 2001. If you get in many internet fights about bodybuilding, it's an important part of your repertoire :-)

If you don't get in many internet fights about bodybuilding, testosterone can fix that too.

Yes that’s how you get an enlarged heart and die by 35.

I take it you're talking about people like Dallas McCarver, whose autopsy found his testosterone levels to be extremely elevated [0] because of the number and volume of substances he was taking. If you're just taking base TRT and actually do cardio alongside weightlifting, you'll probably be fine.

[0] https://drmirkin.com/histories-and-mysteries/dallas-mccarver...

Fundamentally the heart is a muscle and anabolic steroids and test stimulate muscle growth in muscles at a cellular level. There’s no way to have one and not the other.

That’s just the tip though. They have all kinds of far reaching effects ranging from curtailing height, significantly reducing IQ, constant skin breakouts, altered moods, hair loss, severe anxiety, paranoia, kidney and liver failure, bone breakages etc, severe and permanent decrease in the testosterone you naturally produce etc.

Great-grandparent comment is talking about supraphysiological doses of test and anabolics, not replacement-level T (TRT). I agree that physiological dose TRT in people with otherwise-low T is safe.

Even more importantly, test causes hair loss.

Sort of. Some fraction of test (natural or exogenous) converts to DHT via 5α-reductase, and some people (not everyone) have DHT-sensitive hair loss.

You may be being facetious but if you’re not I would take hair loss over death any day.

Those are really unpleasant and dangerous to take and basically not an option for half the population though

TRT isn't unpleasant or dangerous to take at all though from any research I've seen. It's sitting in the low testosterone epidemic we have found ourselves in that has health risks and makes you feel very unpleasant indeed.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre-not-t...

My first thought is the study must be capturing what they call “newbie gains” or “diminishing returns”. The sedentary experimental group can gain muscle so fast because they are just starting out on their journey.

Also, it kind of reminds me of the idea that athletes take these as performance enhancing drugs because it helps them in the same way that following a strength-training program would help them.

It isn't just beginner gains. Testosterone and anabolics are really, really effective. (They also have horrible side effects.)

It truly is a wonder therapy with no known side effects. I pair it with Ozempic! /s.

Testosterone is a very broad spectrum way to mess with your whole body.

Much better to do something targeted like reduce myostatin.

You probably know this, but -- while the myostatin area is an interesting subject for research and drug development -- unlike testosterone, therapies are not commercially available (yet).

They'll also tear their ligaments and tendons when they go to use that muscle mass...

This is me. I cycle on and off testosterone (100mg/w for 12 weeks typically) and combine it with light exercise (20-30min of lifting 3x a week). Other than that my only exercise is walks with my dog (typically ~45min). The rest of the time (~12hrs/day+) I'm at my desk. When I'm on testosterone it I definitely see major results, just from that level of exercise.

My perspective on it is it is borrowing from the future. I feel better while on it, but it's just changing what the problem is. I've turned a sedentary lifestyle issue into a hormone issue. There are side effects (ie enlarged heart in the future). I'm using it as a crutch while I have a demanding job that keeps me working for longer hours.

FWIW the research does not show enlarged heart or many of the other negative side effects for people taking TRT at therapeutic, physiological doses (like, your 100mg/week is not supraphysiological for many men with low T). (And if you aren't low T, why take exogenous T? Especially given your concerns about borrowing from the future.) The heart issues and other bad side effects happens when bodybuilders take 200-5000 mg/wk doses.

If you don't mind me asking, what type of major results do you see? Reduced fat percentage? Faster muscle gain?

Why do take T in this manner?

Won't it cause your hormones/sperm/hairline to get messed up?

Shouldn't that be obvious? A lot of untrained men are stronger than a lot of trained women, the deciding difference being their natural testosterone levels, presumably.

Will we even remember what a muscle is at that point?

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