
We’re tackling aging - exratione
http://www.calicolabs.com/
======
justboxing
I hope they undertake work in Geriatrics. According to several articles I've
read on NYTimes and other places, Geriatricians is sort of a dying
specialization within the medical field.

"Geriatrics is one of the lower-paid medical specialties, in part because
virtually all its patients are on Medicare, which pays doctors less than
commercial insurers." Source:
[http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/even-fewer-
ger...](http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/even-fewer-
geriatricians-in-training/)

------
hashtag
I've always been confused by Calico as a company. Are they part of Google or
an independent company funded by Google. They seem to be sharing office space
at one of Google offices and there are obvious ties but is working for Calico
independent i.e. none of the Google benefits and perks or is it suppose to be
a division of Google

~~~
btian
It's a separate company, not Google.

~~~
varelse
It's a boondoggle in the making. Solving ageing is hard, and it's going to
require fresh ideas, not throwing insane amounts of money at the same old,
same old.

The Scumbag 2nd law of thermodynamics is a really harsh mistress (Solved
ageing? Die of cancer anyway etc.).

But hey, the digerati elite are showing touches of grey and most of them
wouldn't have any better use for their money anyway once they've got the
mansion, the yacht, the jet, and the mistress(es) half their age.

~~~
chc
Are you suggesting cancer is a necessary consequence of the way heat transfer
works? I have trouble believing that.

~~~
varelse
No I'm suggesting that the body is a complex system and if you solve one
component of the problem, another component ultimately fails until you run out
of components (hint, just like software)

Every time a cell divides, it has a chance of turning malignant. Live long
enough and one of those cells will win the cancer lottery and take you down if
you don't catch it in time. Many forms of cancer are symptom-free long enough
for this to happen (pancreatic for example) and we do not yet have the
technology to easily detect this until it's late in the game.

And that's just one way to go. Then there are aneurisms and all sorts of other
odd bodily defects that will eventually manifest.

Ageing is tough. That said, eat right, exercise, and get enough sleep, and
you'll stand the best chance to max out your time clock.

~~~
melling
Yeah, if man were meant to fly... Every generation has a few people like you.

Anyway, some people like to work on tough problems. No one said it's going to
be easy or that progress won't come slowly. There are 7 billion people on the
planet. If you can help with early detection of pancreatic cancer, for
example, you will impact many lives.

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LukeB_UK
That white text against the tree rings is pretty much unreadable...

~~~
jqm
Yes it is.

I had to squint and blow up the screen. Then I scrolled down a bit to get a
better view and it was gone.

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kika
I actually think that IBM just did more to fight aging than any aging science
can do in the foreseeable future. Biological cells are "designed" for failure,
they can not live forever (except in some simplest forms). What would happen
eventually, I think, is this: biological aging research will progress until
some practical limit and we will live until like 150 years or something, then
we will dump backup to some future S3 and restore from there to ever advancing
neuro-chips. So if I were Larry I'd invest billions into neurophysiology,
developing means to actually do this backup. The first restore would be to
device the size of the Google datacenter, drawing megawatts of energy and with
the run rate of $10.000/hour. That's okay, we've been there before and we'll
fix it rather quickly. What's really interesting is what would happen next:
let's say I died, my last backup was restored into some device and it costs a
mere $5000/month to support. Of course I need to work to earn these money. I
don't need sleep, I don't feel tired, I'm directly connected to the Internet
(I don't need to type into Google, I _know_ everything Google knows) and I
have 250 years of experience developing, hm, C++ applications for, hmmm,
Windows. Now, what are the chances for a mortal, organic fresh grad to get a
job (even if he can connect to Google directly too)?

~~~
loup-vaillant
Three things.

First, I have been to a conference a year ago when the researcher claimed to
have restored senescent cells back to a "young" state. This kind of things
completely bypasses any "programmed to die" scheme, and gives hope for actual
biological immortality.

Second, I call the future you outlined a "Hansonian dystopia", with rich
people running at a faster rate than poorer people, and mass
duplication/murder in the name of productivity. I'd rather avoid those
drawbacks.

Third, if we ever get to full blown mind uploading, we will probably have de-
novo AI to contend with, and the intelligence explosion that it will likely
imply. At this point, we can throw out just everything we know about economics
and politics, and pray the AI is programmed for our own good (lest it turns
Skynet and kills us all in 5 seconds —if we're lucky).

Oh, and one last thing: backup is already an option right now: it's called
cryonics. It's not exactly reliable (no one has been revived yet), but that's
a genuine cause for hope (unlike joining your hands and look up the sky).

~~~
kika
1\. I remember that research, but it deals only with "programmed self-
destruction". To completely fix the mortality problem we'd need to redesign
the human organism from the ground up, which might not be feasible. Kind of
"second system syndrome".

2\. Right, having attained technological immortality, rich people could
completely isolate themselves from the poor, getting richer and richer (in the
broad sense of the word - more experienced, more advanced in studies, etc) and
poor would lose even the theoretical path into this "rich bubble". You can't
"rather avoid the drawbacks" by stopping progress, you'll have to use the
progress to avoid drawbacks, but I do not see how.

Cryonics is not a backup. Backup implies working restore procedure. Cryonics
is like removing platters from the hard drive with a screwdriver and putting
them into file cabinet somewhere in someone's basement, hoping that they would
be just okay. Yeah, possible.

~~~
loup-vaillant
2\. Friendly AI seems to be a solution. Depends what will happen. Either we
will have an intelligence explosion, and the "winner takes all" scenario that
it implies —in which case all we have to do is ensure the first AI is Friendly
—yeah, piece of cake… Or, we won't have intelligence explosion, and I don't
see how to avoid the Hansonian outcome either.

(Those interested in guessing what is more likely to happen may be interested
by the Yudkowsky-Hanson debate.)

Cryonics: agreed. I wouldn't bet my life on it if I could help it. Cryonicists
often say that cryonics is the second worst thing that can happen to you (just
after certain death).

------
gordon_freeman
so if Calico is independent company funded by Google then what would Google
gain by it? I mean how does this relate to Google's mission to "organize the
world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Is it a long term strategy to increase the age of humanity so they search
more, use more of android, and earn Google more revenue because their search
business is saturating? or is there a truly altruistic motive behind funding
Calico? Seeing on their website an executive with title VP of Business
Development seems interesting and just wonder how would he benefit Google
through Calico's business.

~~~
turing
First, I would guess that part of the reason Calico is a separate company
instead of just a team within Google is that they _don 't_ fit within Google's
central mission. Second,I don't know if there really needs to be an altruistic
motive; is Larry's concern for his own health and the health of those he cares
about not enough?

~~~
fred_durst
_> Larry's concern for his own health_

People died to make room for Larry. For him to try and cheat the system when
it's his turn is the ultimate act of disrespect. So no, that isn't good
enough.

~~~
xaa
Er, they died because they had no choice.

They probably wouldn't have chosen to do so if they had a choice. Larry, and
others working on this problem, want to give people a choice in the matter.

~~~
fred_durst
A choice to screw over the generations that come after them.

~~~
xaa
Don't you think that many of the world's problems: global warming, pollution,
war, and so on, might be pursued a little more energetically if people knew
they were going to be around for 500 years rather than 80?

~~~
xaa
(Can't reply directly)

I'm extremely interested in understanding your perspective. See, I not only
publicly support this, but as an aging researcher, I spend my days, nights,
and weekends (right now, in fact) working towards this goal.

I do so because I believe that, in a world full of Bad Things, death is pretty
unambiguously the worst of them. Every time someone dies, a wealth of unique
life experience and personality is lost, permanently. Forget Larry, I don't
want to see my friends, family, and neighbors die. I don't know you at all,
but I don't want you to die. And yes, I don't want to die myself either.

If you think that extending life is selfish and wrong, then to be logically
consistent, wouldn't the Red Cross and hospitals and so on be evil
organizations? What principle could we possibly use to establish when
someone's life has been "too long"?

~~~
fred_durst
_> Every time someone dies, a wealth of unique life experience and personality
is lost, permanently._

\- Every time a person dies, their life is passed on through those they have
connected with and influenced. Their influence on the world does not end, only
their opportunity to see its effect. And most importantly, gives room for
someone to do even more with what they have accomplished.

 _> death is pretty unambiguously the worst of them._

\- Death may be better described as one of the scariest of them. When you are
dead you feel no pain. You don't even know you are dead. Certainly, we miss
those in our life who have passed away, but they live on in our hearts and
dreams for the remainder of our lives.

 _> I don't know you at all, but I don't want you to die. And yes, I don't
want to die myself either._

\- I'm sure most people don't want to die. That's part of what makes life so
important. What makes us try to make every moment count. There is so much life
someone can live in 65 years. Do we really need more?

 _> What principle could we possibly use to establish when someone's life has
been "too long"?_

\- When you start to try and reverse or disable aging as opposed to attempting
to cure disease.

I don't want to invalidate your work, but are you sure we really need this as
a society? Or maybe we instead need to focus on making the time we have better
for everyone?

~~~
xaa
First, there's no way you could offend me by anything you say. You've already
done me a great service by explaining your views. I've met people with similar
views before, but usually they're reluctant to describe them at length.

I agree that traces of people remain after their death -- genetically, in
their children, and in the memories of those who knew them. But those traces
fade quickly, and for all but the most famous, virtually disappear in a few
centuries. And surely you agree that a memory is a poor substitute for a
person -- I'd rather be able to talk to my dad or neighbor than have even the
fondest memories of them.

We both seem to agree that improving the quality of people's lives, as well as
the quantity, is extremely important. Aging is far from the only problem
society faces. Tackling inequality/poverty, political dysfunction, war,
ignorance, and other problems are also extremely important goals, and I
greatly respect people who work on them. I also recognize that curing aging
will introduce new societal problems even as it solves others (e.g., rising
health care costs).

I think where we differ is that I think these other problems can be solved as
well, and I believe that curing aging will, on balance help society more than
it harms it. Consider how our scientific progress is retarded when our best
scientists die or lose their mental acuity later in life. I've already alluded
to the fact that people seem to ignore problems ranging from global warming to
the national debt because "I'll be dead before it becomes a problem."

I have several responses to your concern that if people stop aging, we won't
have room for future generations. First, it is well known that wealthier
people and countries have a lower birth rate, so by solving poverty, the birth
rate will decrease. Second, even if people don't age, they can still die from
accidents or disease. Also, I think eventually humanity will expand to the
stars, although we are far from it now.

Massive societal change is coming, from many sources, whether or not aging is
solved (although I make no claims about when). Technology is going to put many
people out of work. AI will eventually be created. Methods will be developed
to improve human intelligence, enhancing technological development but
increasing wealth inequality. Even if none of these developments occur, there
is still an increasing centralization of wealth and power in developed
countries.

It is hard to know how curing aging would interact with these trends, except
to say that I think people would be more circumspect about societal decisions
if they knew they would have to bear the long-term consequences. I think the
demand for religion would decrease, which would have positive effects on
geopolitical stability. Living longer would also give people more time to get
educated, which would help with the electoral ignorance that is at the root of
so many problems in the US.

Finally, your proposed principle for determining the "correct" lifespan is not
a new one:

> When you start to try and reverse or disable aging as opposed to attempting
> to cure disease.

The NIH takes a similar view. The problem is that almost all major diseases
(diabetes, heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, to some extent cancer)
are all diseases of aging. Young people don't (usually) get them. It may well
be that to "cure" these diseases, we will have to solve the underlying problem
-- that is, aging.

Also, consider that it is just genetic happenstance that our species max
lifespan happens to be 120. Why should it not be 15 or 60 or 240? Letting
evolution decide our lifespan is certainly the simplest method, but it seems
fairly arbitrary.

~~~
fred_durst
Those are valid points. I'll only address one point below, because I see a lot
of your reasoning as being that all technological advancement is a net good,
which I feel is often the divide between those who are for and against anti-
aging.

As for passing on to others. Its not memories or genetics. It's inertia. As we
go through life we set other things in motion. Our interactions with each
other and the world around us causes changes in direction and speed.
Everything we do sets something else into motion, infinitely unique from what
would have happened without us. No matter how small the action.

------
exratione
Disappointingly, but expectedly, the stub website for Calico further
reinforces the point that they are not likely to soon take any path that will
produce meaningful results for human longevity. They are following the
Longevity Dividend [0] approach in essence, which at the high level aims to
increase understanding of the intersection of genetics, metabolism, and aging
to produce ways to slow aging gently. Ambition here is to aim for an increase
of 7 years of life expectancy over the next two decades, a figure given a
couple of times by Jay Olshansky. Examples of research include work on
sirtuins, that has consumed a billion dollars and produced nothing of use, and
other attempts to produce caloric restriction mimetic drugs. The near future
in the Longevity Dividend vision is basically more of the same: vastly
expensive attempts to alter the operation of metabolism in order to slow down
aging.

Genetics is hot, and it is easy to raise funds for nowadays. See the launch of
Venter's Human Longevity Inc, for example. But I see this in connection with
work on longevity as looking for the keys under the lamp, because that is
where the light is, not because it is where you are likely to obtain results.
The comparative genetics of human longevity should be irrelevant to work on
aging: we all age because of the occurrence of the same forms of cellular and
molecular damage. Outside of rare mutations, genetics has nothing to do with
that - the same damage happens to everyone. The target should be repair of
that damage, not trying to expensively slightly slow the pace at which it
arrives.

That the metabolic manipulation approach to treating aging has such popularity
despite the lack of results is a mystery. The other way, the repair approach,
has the same lack of results - but that is because next to no money is heading
in that direction. We have the early demonstration that targeted removal of
senescent cells extends life in accelerated aging mice [1], for example, and
ample reason to believe it is beneficial for ordinary individuals, but it took
philanthropic funding to move that research forward at all. Institutions want
to see standard issue drug development and manipulation of metabolism because
it is the mainstream of medicine and the expected thing: the round peg for the
round hole of regulation. This has nothing at all to do with whether it is the
best path forward.

This all further points to the fact that if we want to see meaningful results
in longevity science, measured in years of health gained for people who are
already old, then we need to produce results that demonstrate the futility of
the mainstream path taken by Google, the sirtuin researchers, and Human
Longevity Inc, etc, and deonstrate that repair approaches can do far more for
far less money. The senescent cell targeting is probably the closest work to
that point.

Based on what I've seen of Calico to date, I'm expecting it to be a more
publicized version of the Ellison Medical Foundation as an initiative: an
extension of work already taking place at the NIA and in companies like Human
Longevity Inc, and something that fails to step outside that box. It will
produce general benefits in terms of data and knowledge, and absolutely fail
to meaningfully extend human life. This will continue until someone changes
the approach to this work to focus on repair of the causes of aging [2] rather
than metabolic tinkering to slow aging. The latter is a slow road to marginal
end results that can do next to nothing to help the people who grew old
waiting for them to arrive.

[0]: [https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/10/advocating-
the-l...](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/10/advocating-the-
longevity-dividend-view.php)

[1]:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10600](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10600)

[2]: [http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-
research](http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research)

~~~
dannyr
This comment and some of the others show the ugly side of HN.

Judging a company just based on a web site. Also the company is still very
young that it should be given time to prove itself.

mindless contrarianism

~~~
jebus989
This guy is an Aubrey de Grey fanboy who shows up in every ageing related
thread shilling for SENS, wouldn't worry about it.

~~~
th0br0
Interesting point. Wonder where the downvote comes from? Googling the nick +
sens leads to quite a lot of SENS-related comments.

~~~
kybernetikos
I downvoted because an enthusiasm for SENS is irrelevant to the accuracy or
otherwise of the points made, and commenting on it doesn't add to the
conversation.

------
JacksonGariety
maybe we should just leave aging alone?

~~~
raldi
Why?

~~~
JacksonGariety
It is the fundamental process of life and is natural and beautiful.

What could be more amazing than transcending death?

How about transcending our own desires to control nature. Maybe learning to
leave things be? _That_ would be a real feat.

~~~
vbuterin
Okay how about I'll send you a contract to transfer all of your property to me
and then you'll be free to spend the rest of your life in the Amazon
rainforest. If you get malaria, don't worry, it's natural. Just learn to leave
things be.

Exactly the same argument applies here.

------
closetnerd
I don't think theres much point to anti-aging if we can't understand what it
even means for the brain to age.

As children, we have billions of neurons more than we do when we reach
adulthood and everyday after that we loose something like 10k neurons a day.

Which is a scare because as people age, they become more rigid in general
perspectives and beliefs. Its already hard enough bringing about change such
as accepting gay people into our society and avoiding wars waged by old bitter
people.

~~~
coldcode
Please, this stupid stereotype has to die. People of all ages can be stupid
and ignorant and pigheaded and whatever negative you want to throw out. If you
read history this has always been the case. But the worst idiocy is thinking
whatever age you are is superior to any other. You can find "proofs" by
looking at some narrow slice of any age group to demonstrate whatever you
think is true and I can show exactly the opposite with another. There is no
way to lump an entire grouping of people and say they are all the same, young
or old or whatever. I'm sorry people's attitudes aren't boolean they are
floating point.

~~~
closetnerd
You've seriously misunderstood what I was saying. Its not a matter of
stupidity, its a matter or rigidity.

As you mature, specially through puberty, you experiment with many different
personalities. You gauge your environment and try to figure out the type of
person that will be most successful in your environment. All of these
personalities are represented by competing neural networks especially in your
prefrontal cortex.

But obviously exploring different personalities, characteristics, ambitions,
and developing different interests has to slowly be focused and narrowed into
something that you can pursue with full confidence. Biologically, this is one
of the reasons that when you loose a neuron you don't ever get it back. And
the growing age till just after puberty is the fasted period in which your
brain sheds neurons that pertain to competing networks that don't pan out as
well. There after, neuronal loss averages out to a steady constant but a rate
which contributes to a fairly significant loss of the number of neurons for
todays life expectancy.

Now if it wasn't already immediately obvious to you, the number of neurons is
very directly correlated with intelligence. It isn't the only factor but it
definitely is a hugely important factor in terms of capacity of intelligence.

> But the worst idiocy is thinking whatever age you are is superior to any
> other.

I must say, that perhaps an even worse idiocy is when someone quickly reads
something and responds brashly without actually bothering to think.

It isn't a matter of superiority. Its a matter of evolution. Certain
advantages rest with certain age groups. Yes is a fact that the capacity for a
young adult absorb completely new material is very likely higher than someone
of a much older senior. However, a much older senior has the advantage of
experience which allows him her to gauge new material as something worth
wasting time over.

But as cultures evolve, as philosophies change, age (and by "age" I hope I've
already made clear that I'm referring to effects of age on total neuronal
loss) makes it difficult to change at the same pace. Do you think its just
chance that a younger person brought up with the same strong cultural exposure
as his/her equivalent senior end up having much easier time accepting new
cultures, ideas, peoples?

Just because you believe "people of all ages can be stupid and ignorant and
pigheaded and whatever negative you want to throw out" doesn't address the
serious problem of needing to understand how the brain ages. Its biological
fact that neuronal cells, unlike other cells in your body, ARE NOT replaced by
new neurons (though there is some evidence of very slow neurgensis in various
parts of the brain). And its important for you to understand why that is
because its servers a very important function. Biology didn't anticipate such
long life expectancy on its discourse of evolution.

> I'm sorry people's attitudes aren't boolean they are floating point.

What on gods green earth are you on about there?

