
Ask HN: How would you solve mortality? - mastef
Which current and future technologies would benefit fixing the human &#x27;robot&#x27;, and why is it currently not feasible?<p>E.g. would you approach it from the &#x27;immortal jellyfish&#x27; perspective, from cell regeneration, &#x27;transporting&#x27; into an earlier version, transfer of the mind, etc.?
======
MrLeftHand
May I ask why we need to battle mortality? People tend to forget our body's
limitations and that all the extra years add to the end, not in the middle.
Not to mention the implications it might have on reproduction. People wont
want to have children and slowly our numbers will decline. Also this will
bring up an issue depriving ourself's of new Isaac Newtons, Einsteins and all
the other bright mind and great people who would have been born and now they
aren't. We always forget that strength lies in diversity. And lastly, do we
really want to give immortality to people who do not contribute anything to
our society? How do we determine who is worth the while to live for hundreds
of years? And how will we convince the other parts of society that this is
beneficial for all of us? Too many questions on a human level which are
ignored, or it looks like they are ignored...

Instead of spending all our time in the shadow of mortality why not we just
step out in the light and enjoy life in its brief moment and make the most of
it?

Don't get me wrong, I would like to live forever, but it might have greater
risks for mankind then the benefits it holds.

~~~
mastef
a) mortality deprived us of the Isaac Newtons, Einsteins and all the other
bright minds already

b) why would there even be a discussion on 'who deserves' to be immortal? is
there currently a discussion on who deserves to live based on what they
contribute to society? crime would still be crime, and dealt with as it's
always been dealt with

c) let's distinguish between mortality based on aging and mortality based on
other unforeseeable causes ( violence, accidents, etc. )

d) mortality currently binds us to our solar system, and humanities' possible
ultimate demise

e) we are at a stage where human evolution has stopped. the way to push it
forward is now through our own means

my question was rather related to the technical issue - as it is a technical
issue. not if it's desireable or not; that's besides the point and has to be
dealt with separately

~~~
MrLeftHand
a)I understand it's a technical question. But as with every technical
question, we have to ask what the changes will be on society.

b)Mortality gives way to other minds to step forward like Stephen Hawking and
others. Would have been such a good thing to have an immortal Isaac Newton for
a millennia? Would have he realised the the laws of physics outside of earth's
standards. Could have an immortal Einstein refine his theories and change his
mistakes and adapt to newer findings? Could have had a Stephen Hawking any
chance to share his knowledge beside immortal Einsteins and Newtons?

c)It is a discussion about who deserves it. As for expensive treatments which
aren't affordable by anyone in our society right now. We all now this. These
treatments or solutions won't be free of charge. Only the rich will afford it.
You know, money talks...

d)It's not only mortality that binds us to earth. It's our whole biological
build up. Which fits only the life on earth. What about the warp drive, worm
holes, etc... These aren't good enough for humanity to reach for the stars?

e)Also we don't have any clue about what effects it will have on the human
body to live on another planet.

f)It is silly to say that evolution has stopped for the human race. We are
biological creatures which can adapt to its surrounding as any other. But
having immortality and not producing offsprings will actually lead to an
evolutionary dead end. Having no genetic mutation will prevent the species to
create natural immunity against diseases etc...

g)I only wanted to point out that maybe it is not the best thing to cheat
death. It is natural. It's not a disease. Stop treating it like one.

As I said. As we are concerned about A.I., so should we concerned about this
as well. Logic dictates to examine a possible solution from every angle as
possible. Not to put ourselves and the whole humanity into a dead end.

~~~
mastef
a) that's not how technology works, that's not how progress is decided.
somebody goes out there and makes it

b) that's just an ignorant way of thinking. similar to the poster below who
wouldn't want to live with an older generation of people because of their
ignorance - which just shows his ignorance; it's not up to you or us to decide
how long people should live or playing out 'what if' scenarios and wondering
if humanity is better off because somebody died. it's pointless

c) any technology that is available to rich people becomes with the progress
of time more affordable and available to the masses

d) if you die before you reach the next solar system, what's the point of
starting the flight? see the fermi paradox and the great filter. mortality
could be one of the great filters for interstellar expansion

e) that's... completely besides the point of this discussion

f) we are currently at the state quite complacent and well-adjusted to our
environment. no big hardships, no predators - we're the dinosaurs now. what
different strain of the homo sapiens would have to evolve now randomly to
surpass the current strain? dinosaurs didn't evolve into highly intelligent
beings, although they've been around millions of years

g) that's a complacent and dangerous "it's always been this way". cells
stopping to reproduce themselves are a malfunction, and it can be technically
solved; the same way as we can repair robots, machines or other electronics

mostly fears, complacency and wrong assumptions. taken into account, but not
useful as they act as distractions and take attention from the topic - which
was the technological hurdles of fixing the human robot

~~~
MrLeftHand
a) the more we venture further into the unknown the more cautious we can get,
and we should get. Even, if you say, that's not the way it is. It might be
better. Not saying it IS better, but might be...

b) I just proven my point. Humans are ignorant bastards. You can't deny the
fact that this will create massive problems in society.

c) Yeah, but during that time, wars will erupt and kill millions who already
could have been saved. Lose money, lose the greed out of humanity and
everything bad. Then we can talk about free immortality for everyone.

d) We are soooo far away from proper interstellar travel with technology, that
putting a handful of people in a tube and sending them far away while the rest
of us dies here whilst they're travelling. I still think we will find answers
regarding how fast can we travel. What about huge colonisation ships, on which
people can live for generations? The great filters are mostly speculations.
Some stuff we look back on and go, 'Hey that was a filter. Thank god we
survived it!'. And there are always more answers for one problem. Oh and you
forget there might be another issue. Living in space during the venture. That
is hard for the human body, even if you live forever. So unless you change
into robot, which is not as good, because solar winds, radiation, etc... What
if we let humans evolve into space life?

e) Maybe, maybe not...

f) That is silly again. Over the years much has changed in our body. Just go
and have a look at old castles, houses in Europe. A few hundreds of years ago
the people were much shorter. Our body structure changes and adapts, but so
does everything else in us. We are still evolving as we speak. Maybe the
environment for the dinos was a bit harsh. Humans couldn't have evolved in
that. Not to mention live. That's why being a dino was they way to go. A lot
of people agree that it is a freak accident, that we have such a calm few
thousand years without any huge issues in climate and vegetation. Now it is
better, because we can shape our surrounding. Of course this spirals down into
us killing everything that moves and has meat, fur, tusks, whatever... Mother
nature is not stupid, there was a reason why the dinos couldn't evolve but
still they were the dominant species. And it would be foolish to say they
didn't. Not every dino lived in the same prehistoric age at once. They evolved
from each other. Only an alternative history would know what would have
happened, if dinos remain here.

g) Ok, than why do we have organisms which live basically forever and we're
not one of them? And why aren't these immortal creatures not the true rulers
of Earth by now? I'm not a biologist, but I do see a relation here between the
necessity of death and evolution. As we mix our DNA we create better and
better offspring. Immortality kills the need for offspring.

This is not off-topic. It would have been off-topic for me to comment: ' Hey
what about vanilla flavoured ice-cream? How the hell they do it!?'

Anyway I enjoy this argument. It wont hurt you get a bit out of your comfort
zone. Sorry if I annoyed you in any way.

Oh and I would love to have a cyber-brain as they have it in the Ghost In The
Shell world. If my body dies I could still transfer my brain into something
else. Like a big robot or something, or just a jar. Maybe creating this kind
of hybrid solution would be the answer. If we can continue with our current
body to evolve, but have our brain picked out if we want to... Maybe that
would help. And the human robot doesn't need fixing, it is good as it is and
what it will evolve into. Stepping outside of it might be a better solution
then fixing.

------
ChrisGranger
I think it's something of a tragedy that sentient life-forms die before
they're ready to do so, before they've crossed off the last item on their
bucket list, so to speak.

Sure, "immortality" in humans would present a variety of potential problems,
but new technologies often do. Should we not have created cars, planes,
nuclear power, etc. because of the risks we foresaw? Let's deal with the
issues as they arise, rather than use them as an excuse not to try in the
first place.

How would I approach the problem? "All of the above." Follow all plausible and
ethical courses of action to see where they lead. It's too early to tell which
method(s) will be effective, but if something is physically possible in this
arena I expect we'll try it sooner or later.

------
honza-xxx
use baculovirus to serially and temporally express telomerase and keep the
telomere count between 3000-8000 for all cells in the human body. Then figure
out some way to flush out senescent cells

~~~
mastef
Apparently there's some work happening now with mice, to activate a gene that
selectively eliminates senescent cells ( from Google ) - but gene manipulation
after birth is unfeasible, isn't it? What other ways could there be?

RE: Baculovirus, have you seen any attempts at this?

~~~
honza-xxx
Yes, plenty of labs use this regularly on mammalian cells and mice etc. Nobody
has used it clinically though ...

------
DanBC
Improve end of life care and the way people die.

Start making it acceptable for people to talk about death - how they'd like to
die; what they want to happen to their organs or body after their death; what
kind of funeral they want.

It's really important to let your family know how you feel about being hooked
up to machines or how you'd feel about living with dementia or similar.

------
kazinator
Transfer of the mind, definitely. Hardware independence. Plus possibility of
backups. Even if your body is completely vaporized in a blast, you can come
back if there is a backup of you.

Forget immortality through the extension of the biological life of the body;
yonder lies folly.

~~~
mastef
The issue with backups / teleporting / transfer of mind is always the question
if it's just a copy of you living on, or still the same consciousness. E.g. if
you die on the spot, and a copy takes over for you with your memories.

However yes, that would be a much faster approach to space colonisation - it
would remove the need for spaceships.

------
bbcbasic
Reproduction

------
biomimic
[http://calicolabs.com](http://calicolabs.com)

[http://humanlongevity.com](http://humanlongevity.com)

[http://genopharmix.com](http://genopharmix.com)

[http://sens.org](http://sens.org)

[http://buckinstitute.org](http://buckinstitute.org)

~~~
mastef
Do you have any information on their current status and their biggest
issues/blockers?

What I'm wondering about the different approaches is if they could receive
bigger breakthroughs by sharing / crowdsourcing their issues and getting a
wider attraction / reach. E.g. sometimes the answers to a problem lie in
another industry

Like e.g. the fold.it game helped decyphering the crystal structure of an AIDS
causing virus in 10 days, while scientists were battling it for 15 years

~~~
biomimic
See:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V48M5j-6zdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V48M5j-6zdE)

and

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbYgza4NNk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbYgza4NNk8)

To name some of the top roadblocks:

\- Cellular garbage collection

\- Inner-workings of Mitochondria and cell death/apoptosis at the wrong time.

\- DNA repair genes

\- Telomerase production/use

Analyzing genomic pathways associated to these is key. Understanding why the
expression of genes varies or decreases/increases at the wrong time is also
key.

Being able to use Cogntive computing/biomicry/AI/Machine Learning etc to
analyze the hidden connections and relationships between phytochemicals,
genes, proteins, pathways and environment is the next frontier.

We're working on it and could certainly use additional crowdsourcing
approaches.

~~~
mastef
Do you have any specific ideas of a massive road-block that would benefit from
a Mechanical Turk approach? E.g. issues that would require an AI, but if split
into a lot of tiny problems, that could be solved as a whole?

~~~
biomimic
I've been giving this some thought and have some ideas on a few directions we
can go in. For example, cognitive biomimicry/AI can be trained to predict
certain things like answering "What is the capitol of Austria?"

With statistical inference and probability, a system can provide a number of
answers to questions. A crowdsourcing component can be used to rate the
answers the system provides thereby allowing the system to learn via feedback
loops.

Apply this to Life Sciences, molecular biology, genomics/proteomics and we may
have a system intelligent enough to produce new hypothesis in the area of life
extension research or a system intelligent enough to combine two pieces of
knowledge to come up with something new, a discovery or series of discoveries.

I have some other ideas too, look me up at biomimic@gmail.com if you want to
collaborate on these.

------
genopharmix
We've proven we can increase the lifespan of nematodes by what is equivalent
to 300 years in human lifespan. If we can at least make it 150, then we have a
chance at 300 and if we make 300 we have a chance at 500 and so on.

We can then truly solve for space travel and populating other planets and
we'll have lifespans that enable us to travel for extended periods of time - a
Universal requirement for the human species.

~~~
mastef
On a sidenote : It's interesting to see Elon Musk advancing into space travel,
whereas Peter Thiel advancing into trying to defeat mortality. Those seem very
closely related industries that clearly do benefit from each other.

Re: The Nematode lifespan; What happened to the C60 buckyballs diet?
Apparently rats that underwent a specific diet of C-60 fluids had nearly
double the lifespan ( 22-26months vs 42 months )
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961212...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961212003237)

~~~
genopharmix
Exactly. Space travel depends on lifespan. We have to solve for lifespan
first. It's the largest human goal and most impactful.

Yes, we are almost there and I don't think people realize how close we are.
Make the world a better place? How about making the Universe/Multiverse a
better place!

