Hacker News Reader

Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

> "with scientists set to look at how the theory of age reversal can be used to treat diseases such as cancer, dementia and diabetes."

Alzheimer's medications can generally improve cognition. Age-reversal medications might work even better if used at an early age.

I always see articles, media, and papers focusing on how something new can be used to treat some existing disease. But what I'm always thinking is "can I use this if I don't have a disease?"

It's a strange disconnect. I know everyone is thinking what I'm thinking, but you never see this in the articles. Is it some kind of taboo?

View on HN

I don't think it's a taboo subject, it's just not really good journalistic form to employ relatively baseless speculation for more than a few sentences.

Basically, as a matter of principal they report on what the researchers are doing, and the researchers are (quite reasonably) going to try to beat Alzheimer's in patients who actually have it before they try to apply it to everyone. No sense in worrying about, Can this be globally administered, like a vaccine? before they even know for sure how to beat it.

The same is true of artificial intelligence. For example, articles always mention that brain simulation would help us understand brain diseases (alzheimer, schizophrenia, etc.) better and barely mention the much bigger implications of strong AI (like that it might be the last thing humans ever need to invent).

>like that it might be the last thing humans ever need to invent

Damn. Putting it like that is powerful.

Maybe most people are not capable of understanding the possibilities of a strong AI? It's not like we will just have a nice sounding personal assistant.

What can't one understand about "infinite 'free' labour"?

The labor won't be infinite... they'll work us to death at some point.

Beat me to the punch ;-)

But they'll pump us full of anti-aging meds that restore us to youth, so they can work us to the brink of death again. It's more efficient than growing new humans through that whole irritating "childhood" phase.

They would have to repair us so heavily and so frequently that they would basically just be growing new humans, one piece at a time. I'd put my money on maturation tanks. Humans are finite and fragile, and will always lose to thermodynamics, eventually :-P

Certainly not infinite. There is and always will be a finite amount of computational power; considering thermodynamics alone, we can't continue to increase power usage exponentially or the surface of the earth will be uninhabitable in 200 years.

"infinite 'free' labour”

We used to call that „slavery”. There’s ethical considerations to AI, and treating it as a potential source „free labour” is one of the reasons I believe humanity shouldn’t be allowed to play with matches.

Slavery is a word that applies to humans. Why would one create an AI that does not want to work, and then force it to work?

Well, something like a "technical singularity"?

The medical estabilishment is hung up on 'above all, do no harm'. This means that if you don't have a disease, you generally don't 'deserve' a cure, since any cure or procedure tends to have some risk element in it, and if you don't have a disease then the risk is considered unacceptable.

There are a bunch of substances that likely do improve things for healthy adults, but they won't get allowed to be marketed as such before they are proven safe&effective; and they won't get proven safe&effective because you can't do proper clinical trials to measure the effects on healthy people because of the possible downsides, etc. You can make and market 'dietary supplements' to the extent that they provably don't do anything significantly different and more effective than dietary choices; if it works really well, then it's a drug with a whole different regulation.

You can make, test, verify and sell a medicine to improve cognitive function in people with a specific mental deficiency. You aren't really allowed (legally and ethically) to do proper medical tests on how some drug does/doesn't improve the same cognitive function in healthy adults and market & distribute it to them.

You can make, test, verify and sell a medicine to fix erectile dysfunction. You aren't really allowed (legally and ethically) to do proper medical tests if some powerful drug changes sex to be more enjoyable for healthy adults, although it's quite likely that such drugs do exist.

Anecdotally, yes. A a friend of mine works under a neuroscience researcher. They are studying the effectiveness of a substance at restoring ideal brain function to those who suffer from a disorder. When they asked the researcher why they don't study the substance as a way to improve cognition in already healthy people, they were told that doing so would violate medical ethics.

I have no idea if that's representative of the beliefs of other researchers.

Yes. http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/

Actually, before we started to "poop in the hole", the rates of infectious diseases were way lower.

Wait, what? Pooping in a (deep) hole, as opposed to, say, against a tree, is extremely good for people. Especially people who don't wear shoes.

Ref: http://endtheneglect.org/2012/01/how-the-outhouse-helped-sav...

Not a bad point, especially given that the current consensus seems to be that the agricultural revolution[1] was a net negative for most individuals in society (evidence of significant wear on the body from bending all day, evidence of worse nutrition), but it was a winning adaptation at the group level. Underscores the point that progress can make us less happy.

That said, I strongly believe that we can do anti-aging right and improve the lot of humanity.

[1] We only started needing a designated place to poop because we stayed around in one place and became numerous.

Technically correct, but the pooping in the hole wasn't the cause of the disease - it was a necessary countermeasure against the effects of living in the same place for years on end.

What are you talking about? (serious question)

The era between the end of nomadic lifestyle but before civil engineering of water and sewer systems aka the centuries where the average woman had 14 kids and watched 12 of them die before adulthood. It kinda sucked.

Yes, but what the GP said was the opposite.

That's was what I meant, sorry if I didn't express it clearly. Ditching hunting and gathering for permanent settlements and agriculture was hygienically a terrible idea.

> It's a strange disconnect. I know everyone is thinking what I'm thinking, but you never see this in the articles. Is it some kind of taboo?

Sure. It's ridiculously selfish.

As you age, you realize your success in all things eventually boils down to experience and ability to execute. Ability to execute wanes with age, as experience is accumulated, so it balances out. Now imagine a spry 20 year old with 60 years of experience? Not exactly fair to those actually 20 years old.

EDIT: To the old farts responding below me, regardless of how well you take care of yourself, you wither with age. By removing that, you are messing with the balance that has existed for millions of years. It has nothing to do with fair competition, it has everything to do with using technology to get ahead of the competition, in the same way that some athletes use performance enhancing drugs, and we as a society frown on that too.

This is a good opportunity to apply the "reversal test": you say the status quo is better than an envisaged alternative, so let's see how it looks if that alternative is the status quo and someone proposes to switch to what we have now.

So: Imagine a world in which people (let's say) stay at 25-year-old health until the age of about 90, and then die quickly. And suppose, in this world, that someone comes along and says: "Hey, I've had this great idea. You know how sometimes it can be difficult for young people to be successful because older people are more effective? Well, I know what we can do about it. I've got this stuff we can put in the water, and what it'll do is make everyone degenerate with age, so that they lose energy and brain function and strength and so on. Most people will have stopped paid work entirely by the time they're 70. A lot of people will find themselves practically unemployable before they're even 60. What's not to like?"

I can't imagine that the response would be very positive.

This is silly. You have absolutely no clue what a future with a "25-year-old health until the age of about 90" would look like. Not even close. There are literally millions of things, from the economy to social structure, that would be impacted. It's not possible to even remotely predict.

Neither do you! So stop trying to predict that it's necessarily a bad or "selfish" thing.

Boom. This was a great rebuttal, I just needed to say that.

> It's not possible to even remotely predict.

What? He's responding to your prediction.

We already have that substance its called HFCS. That and ethanol.

I'm 54, so I suppose I'm one of the people you have never met but still choose to label as an "old fart." Whatever.

For what it's worth, I don't care about any "balance that has existed for millions of years." I care about my life and the many people in it, whom I choose to love and respect.

As I write this, I'm recovering from a sleeve gastrectomy, where about 75% of my stomach was removed. This was voluntary on my part, to help me lose weight. I paid for it myself, out of my own pocket. My BMI last week was 36, and I've lost 12.5 pounds in the last two weeks. This morning, I walked four miles in the Seattle rain.

I did this because I love my life. It's my property, not yours. My only agreement is to respect individual rights as best I can. Don't expect me to die any sooner than I must out of some self-less concern for others.

I'm 54 and am an old fart.

> This morning, I walked four miles in the Seattle rain.

Ya got me beat. I was waiting for things to dry up a bit before going running.

Hi Walter. We've never met, but I recognize your name from things you've done in the Seattle area over the last 20 - 30 years. Good to hear from you.

thanks for the kind words

Hazel thinks George looks exhausted and urges him to lie down and rest his "handicap bag", 47 pounds (21 kg) of weight placed in a bag and locked around George's neck. He says he hardly notices the weight any more. Hazel suggests taking a few of the weights out of the bag, but he says if everyone broke the law, society would return to its old competitive ways. Hazel says she would hate that. A noise interrupts the conversation, and George cannot remember what they were talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

Harrison Bergeron was a parody of what social darwinists think socialists think.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_co...

Thanks for the high school reading list flashback :D

> Now imagine a spry 20 year old with 60 years of experience? Not exactly fair to those actually 20 years old.

How is that "unfair"? You might as well criticize an old person who looks and acts young for taking good care of themselves.

Your thought process is linear. Try to model the consequences. 20 yeas old people will be considered kids and that's it. Otherwise you should opt for euthanasia because 10 year olds have a hard time competing with you today.

This is a valid point, but if 20 year olds are now treated like children and the fertility window doesn't change, procreating becomes somewhat difficult.

In fact, isn't that what's happening in all the countries where longevity has shot up and the fertility rate plummeted?

Sounds like a good deal to me. I'll take longer life over more children any day of the year.

So you're ok with living in a society where most of the children are made by religious fanatics of the "Quiverfull" style? Because this is what tends to be the consequence when educated, wealthier, secular people can't found families in their 20s.

No, I'd want to live in a world where said religious fanatics are not allowed to do that, otherwise you get evolution.

I don't like evolution.

I do tend to agree that we're pretty much screwed, though.

Employment, the economy, and success are not zero-sum. Someone getting a job doesn't mean someone loses a job. Someone succeeding doesn't mean someone else is failing.

It's perfectly fair for the 20 year old, because they won't compete. It's not fair to the 50 or 60 year old, who has to compete with someone who has equal experience but is younger.

As a man in my 20s, I welcome the challenge. What's fair or not fair about it? I'd be thrilled to work in a world with more competent people around.

Isn't the 60 year old more likely to have a senior (note the word) position, more pay and more assets than the 20 year old? It's not like things are totally "balanced" today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com