
Ask HN: Why aren't more people trying to cure ageing? - pathpath
We know it could be possible, in theory. So why aren&#x27;t more people trying to?<p>Disclaimer: I&#x27;m trying to (sort of), and I know there are a lot of initiatives. I&#x27;m just curious to why there isn&#x27;t more, given what&#x27;s at stake.
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FiatLuxDave
When asking why more people aren't working on something that's high-risk &
high-reward, it's best to look not at the goal itself, but rather how working
on that goal is rewarded for the participants. For example, I spent almost a
decade working on nuclear fusion. In theory, the reward for success would be
very high. However, the reward for a small success isn't amazing (basically
running a long-term research project, similar to a tenured professorship). And
very few people who work on fusion get to that point. Most end up as
frustrated post-docs, trying to compete for limited funding with researchers
who have been established for decades. A lot of people leave once the personal
cost gets bigger than the stars in their eyes.

So, because a successful long-term research project needs good human capital
more than almost anything else, it helps to have:

1) Good rewards for small successes. This could be easy for life extension
research if the intermediate step of "add 1 year" is rewarded well and the
reward is public (so people know the reward is there).

2) An allied industry which provides jobs for "failures", from which they can
regather strength before jumping back in. Silicon Valley has done well because
failed software startup founders can work at a big software company for a
while before jumping back in. Fusion suffers from the fact that once you get a
job in another industry, jumping back in is difficult. I don't know if
medicine is so specialized that this is a problem for aging cures.

3) A popular perception that the goal is achievable. Fusion does better at
this than curing aging. This ties back into the "reward small goals" in point
1; publicly achieve small goals and the big goal doesn't look so impossible.

Good luck! We all hope you are able to contribute to an aging cure!

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gkapur
1\. Most/many drugs have side effects. A “cure” for aging would have to have a
very weak side effect profile as it’s not a terminal disease in the short run.
2. Clinical trials for aging would take a long time to run and be quite
costly. 3. People are trying to cure this and quite a bit of money has been
put into curing manifestations of aging (think all the Alzheimer’s companies
or Unity Biotechnologies.) it’s also just really hard science...

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tenken
What is at stake ... ?

Certainly we know by now Earth's resources aren't infinite ... So I pose to
you what could come from Pandora's box should choose to open it.

Wisdom an Experience come from aging, where do we go, and how do we grow, if
that aspect of life becomes irrelevant?!

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pedalpete
But we are also currently attempting to be multi-planetary, and though Earth's
resources may be finite, perhaps the solution to living forever is using less
resources (doubtful, but can't we cross that road when we get to it)?

We shouldn't try to create an electric self-driving car because it might kill
somebody, but people are being killed by non-self-driving cars, so are we
really any worse off?

If the limit of Earth's resources means that we will run out and some of us
who would live longer will die earlier than we'd hope...well, we're already
doing that.

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iamsupercereal
Cure death? Or cure the debilitating diseases that occur in later life?

