Longevity research had been fun to follow, but I’d caution newcomers to take everything with a grain of salt.
The field of longevity influencers has exploded recently, with increasingly confident claims extrapolated from preliminary research and hypotheses.
Some of the longevity influencers, including some of the people in the list above, have significant financial interests in promoting their theories and methods. This ranges from selling educational materials to speaking engagements and even promoting supplements. As is typical with cutting edge research, the confidence of certain claims tends to be exaggerated when a financial conflict of interest becomes involved.
A few years ago the longevity world was all about resveratrol after some promising early research, though later research suggests that resveratrol isn’t quite as miraculous as it was initially promoted. We’re currently going through a similar cycle with NR/NMN supplements like Niagen.
There may be some promising developments in this area, but I wouldn’t rush out to spend money on expensive supplements that haven’t been tested at high doses long term in humans just yet. Longevity influencers like to talk about the potential upsides, but they rarely admit the unknown potential downsides.
I think it not interesting news that "substance X extends the life of rats", or "substance Y might extend the life of yeast."
Humans are exceptionally long-lived animals that live for about 4x as many heartbeats as other mammals. It is one thing for treatments to give animals some of the resilience to aging we have, it's another to extend the frontier of human lifespan.
Agreed. And the low hanging fruit has already been plucked: improving infant mortality, basic hygiene. My grandparents all lived well into their 80s/are still alive. Realistically speaking, I doubt I'll do much better.
Even if let's say, the average longevity does not change, it would still be a game changer if you could be as healthy in your 80s as in your 70s. Agree that nobody wants to live to 100 while being strapped to a hospital bed the whole time.
You nailed it. I find it funny how people believe a simple molecule made from a dozen atoms is somehow the elixir of immortality, as if aging is a simple biological process that we can flip off with a single switch.
If we want to take aging seriously, we need to first appreciate the problem. It reminds me how people used to think there was "the cure" for cancer.
Personally, I have a hard time guessing which of "extend the life of the human organism to, let's say, 500 years" or "read out the living brain state of a human being and simulate it in a computer" is going to be easier. With full knowledge of how hard the second may be, if indeed it is possible at all.
I wouldn't be surprised there's a few "One Weird Trick to Extend Your Life by Five Years"s yet to be found, but to solve aging I expect to be much harder. It wouldn't surprise me much that the simplest "solution" to aging could end up being the brain simulation thing anyhow, because fixing up the biological organism across hundreds of years is simply that hard.
If there are a few of those weird tricks I definitely expect a period of excessive optimism where people conclude we're just another couple of such tricks away from the solution, when instead they are simply the first steps on a very long path.
> Personally, I have a hard time guessing which of "extend the life of the human organism to, let's say, 500 years" or "read out the living brain state of a human being and simulate it in a computer" is going to be easier.
The latter is probably closer. We can already induce extended periods of apoxyia in animals by replacing blood with cold saline without brain damage so a similar procedure should be possible to keep healthy brain tissue intact while scanning it. The necessary fidelity of the simulation is what we don't know yet.
Keeping a human being alive for 500 years means knowing how to do roughly the same thing to bodies in order to accomplish the major periodic surgeries necessary to replace failing/injured parts including healing the brain itself, so probably represents a harder technical threshold.
However brain simulation isn't on a par with life extension. with brain simulation you still die. You're just replaced by something extremely similar to you with all your memories. There's a distinct break in continuity. At that point i can just create clones of my consciousness, the original consciousness does not want to stop existing.
Scenario 1: You go to sleep, they copy the info, you wake up in a new, young body. "Wow! This is great. When this body gets ten years older, I want to do that again!" They turn off the old body as you do your happy dance.
Scenario 2: Same as 1, wake up in new body, etc. But they also wake up the old body. "Hey, I thought I was going to be in a new body!" They point at the young "you" doing a happy dance. "We just wanted to show you that it worked. Congratulations. Now lie back so we can deactivate you." The other one stops his happy dance: "Let's forget about that update ten years from now."
> You're just replaced by something extremely similar to you with all your memories.
That happens every night I go to sleep and a fair portion of my atoms get swapped out by normal metabolic processes. My neural network changes as I'm unconscious or dream. I don't even remember all my dreams, but wake up with new thoughts/ideas sometimes.
We're always some delta from ourselves the previous day. I'm very different from the me of 10 years ago. The jump to a brain simulation may be a large change, but I could also tweak the things that didn't feel quite right or match with what I used to be like.
The difference is that you cannot meet face to face with the delta you from before you went to sleep, thus all rights and privileges reside within one continuous body through time. It depends if you are comfortable with having an extremely similar copy or multiple extremely similar copies inherit all your rights and privileges.
That could get complicated fast. Imagine ten thousand copies of your brain, all with different ages, experiences, and opinions, deciding what to do with your money, how to educate your children, what kind of relationship you want with your spouse.
Romance could get complicated for monogamous people. Polyamorous partners would negotiate new agreements about duplicates. Marriage as an institution would probably dissolve due to impracticality; it would be equivalent to a series of divorces and remarriages with each duplication, and two-partners-per-marriage would be a weird constraint.
Resource constraints are certainly an issue; the fairest way seems like pre-allocating a subset of resources to each duplicate who in turn can do the same. Societal restrictions on creating a duplicate with too few resources would prevent effective slavery or abject poverty.
I find it funny how people believe a simple molecule made from a dozen atoms is somehow the elixir of immortality
We've absolutely been here before with vitamins, both the fact that they're simple molecules and part where we over-promise what they can do. (Example: vitamin C mega-dosing)
> I find it funny how people believe a simple molecule made from a dozen atoms is somehow the elixir of immortality
That's a weird statement to make, while in the largest part of the 20th century, most medicinal advances were made using small molecules. Aspirin is a very potent drug that had dozens of actual applications at least, yet remains a very simple molecule.
Agree, I feel like the best way to feel great and age well is not taking thousands of pills, but through classic healthy steps, not really sexy but they have worked well for many: get enough sleep, eat healthy, exercise alot, avoid stress.
Looking at long life proponent Ray Kurzweil, he takes one million dollars of vitamins and supplements yearly and looks alot older than his age. He seems to be wearing a wig lately which makes him appear a bit younger but I think his supplement regime is big waste of money.
Recent research hasn't produced any convincing evidence that NR/NMN supplements will extend life. However there may be some other small health benefits for certain people.
The field of longevity influencers has exploded recently, with increasingly confident claims extrapolated from preliminary research and hypotheses.
Some of the longevity influencers, including some of the people in the list above, have significant financial interests in promoting their theories and methods. This ranges from selling educational materials to speaking engagements and even promoting supplements. As is typical with cutting edge research, the confidence of certain claims tends to be exaggerated when a financial conflict of interest becomes involved.
A few years ago the longevity world was all about resveratrol after some promising early research, though later research suggests that resveratrol isn’t quite as miraculous as it was initially promoted. We’re currently going through a similar cycle with NR/NMN supplements like Niagen.
There may be some promising developments in this area, but I wouldn’t rush out to spend money on expensive supplements that haven’t been tested at high doses long term in humans just yet. Longevity influencers like to talk about the potential upsides, but they rarely admit the unknown potential downsides.