
Aging Is a Communication Breakdown - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/70/variables/aging-is-a-communication-breakdown
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gen220
Translating problems across domains alert (!).

This article got me thinking. Oncology research sounds like live-debugging the
race conditions of a millions-year-old, self-mutating program with billions
(trillions) of lines of source code... And to top it all off, it's written in
a language whose syntax is elusive.

If you're lucky, you can sometimes observe some aspects of its execution, but
always at the cost of context-depriving tunnel vision, and only with a really
expensive and proprietary IDE.

If that analogy's anywhere close to the mark, I can't imagine the patience of
the people doing this research; bravo, sincerely.

With that analogy, this article suggests that researchers have attached an
information-theory-backed meaning to a previously-observed pattern in the
observed life cycle of our cells. The black box is revealing itself, with
deliberate observation, to be an increasingly intricate and beautifully-
designed grey box. Every lumen of that box is hard-fought, and must be super
rewarding!

Nature's one heck of an engineer :)

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alexpetralia
It's always fun when people frame any given problem as an engineering problem.
I'd enjoy seeing the reverse: an engineering problem framed as an artistic or
literary problem, for example.

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mushufasa
Read italo calvino!

~~~
alexpetralia
Interesting, I'll start with "Invisible Cities". Thanks!

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alexanderdmitri
Invisible cities is wonderful, I'm excited for you.

And speaking of invisible cities, I came across this really neat project a
little while ago:

[https://github.com/mewo2/deserts/raw/master/novel.pdf](https://github.com/mewo2/deserts/raw/master/novel.pdf)

If I remember correctly (don't have the time atm to dig into it again) the
project had first trained one net to generate images, then had another one
trained on invisible cities to create the descriptions for the images. The
above pdf is the output.

~~~
alexpetralia
This is amazing. Such a perfect example of using engineering in service of
art. Thanks for the recommendation.

[Edit] Here is some context for the link you provided: [https://procedural-
generation.tumblr.com/post/138688390613/t...](https://procedural-
generation.tumblr.com/post/138688390613/the-deserts-of-the-west-
nanogenmo-2015-travel)

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davebryand
“Nature is more complex than we previously thought.“

The human ego is a hell of a thing...

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randomacct3847
I’ve concluded (for myself) that triggering autophagy is the easiest, free
thing I can do every day to cull bad cells in my body that may lead to
cancer/speed up aging.

~~~
est31
Autophagy pathways are disrupted in senescent and cancer cells otherwise
autophagy would already have happened. Some way to avoid or fix that
disruption might be an approach to fight cancer but even then, there are many
more things going wrong in the body with increasing age. E.g. telomere
shortening which is obviously a greater threat the more autophagy there is in
your body. Aging is one of the most complex diseases that exist, maybe the
most complex disease. Research on preventing and curing age is very welcome,
but there isn't a single simple thing that can cure it. The cure for it will
very likely be more complex than any other cure we've ever developed for any
medical condition to this day.

~~~
randomacct3847
I’m not suggesting autophagy cures aging, but there’s at least plenty of
studies on genetically similar species that shows fasting can extend average
lifespan.

~~~
gerdesj
So does decent, affordable (or "free"), healthcare. On balance I'll take NHS
over autophagy.

~~~
barry-cotter
Randomised controlled trials disagree. Healthcare spending has amazingly small
effects on outcomes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Health_Insurance_Experime...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Health_Insurance_Experiment)

An early paper with interim results from the RAND HIE concluded that health
insurance without coinsurance "leads to more people using services and to more
services per user," referring to both outpatient and inpatient services.[5]
Subsequent RAND HIE publications "rule[d] out all but a minimal influence,
favorable or adverse, of free care for the average participant"[6] but
determined that a "low income initially sick group assigned to the HMO... [had
a] greater risk of dying" than those assigned to fee-for-service (FFS)
care.[7] The experiment also demonstrated that cost sharing reduced
"appropriate or needed" medical care as well as "inappropriate or unnecessary"
medical care.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Medicaid_health_experim...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Medicaid_health_experiment)

Approximately two years after the lottery, researchers found that Medicaid had
no statistically significant impact on physical health measures, but "it did
increase use of health care services, raise rates of diabetes detection and
management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain."[4][5]

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mirimir
Rather like bit rot.

