I'm actually a little surprised at the framing here. I didn't realize anyone thought we could overcome aging. I thought the goal was to live longer, but not to completely overcome aging. That sounds somewhat foreign to me. Is that a commonly reasonable goal for folks?
That is to say, I'm not clear that "beating aging" is what is required for "long life." Is that definitionally required and I'm just being dense?
I'm assuming this is a tiered discussion? In that nobody thinks we should freeze aging at baby stages for someone. Such that we would still want some aging, but would then try and fix a point where all aging can be stopped?
> That is to say, I'm not clear that "beating aging" is what is required for "long life."
Ageing is not a perfectly understood process, so what it would mean to overcome aging wasn’t clear, and there was some hope decades ago that maximum human lifespans would just keep going up indefinitely as medicine slowly eliminated the various causes of death.
But now this research concludes what has been suspected for a while - that even under perfect conditions the average human lifespan isn’t going to hit 100. Even if you eat and exercise well and have the best medical treatment, and avoid all the other things that might kill you, ageing will get you.
The medical term for this is “mortality compression”, the idea that as we remove all the ways people die early, the ages of death for everyone end up being squashed up against a limit.
It will take significant breakthroughs in technology (probably some combination of gene therapy, cancer treatments and nanotechnology) to actually stop, or reverse aging.
I think this somewhat makes sense. Just going on the discussion, I was missing that this is using "aging" as shorthand for "the degenerate effects of aging." I'm assuming the growth effects of aging would be more "maturing" or some such.
I still think calling this "defeating aging" is an odd framing. But it makes sense in the standard context here.
It's the bit of life where you can dress yourself and control your bowels that most people would like to extend. I think nobody gets into longevity research hoping they'll be able to dodder around a nursing home with a walker for 25 years instead of 15.
But you could do that by extending the bit of your life where you can do those things. Not necessarily turning off aging?
As I said down thread, this could just be a potato/potahto thing? If this is just definitionally beating getting frail, then that makes sense. But I don't know that I could pin down an age that I would want to freeze progress at. Nor do I think I expected that there would be a general age to freeze aging at. Let me keep my strength longer, but I expect I will be/look/appear older and older the older I get.
Now, granted, I'd be delighted if I have the same strength my 90 year old grandfather in law did. In his 70s, I'm pretty sure the only thing I could beat him at was a race. Lifting things or doing manual work outside, and he was far beyond what I was in my 30s.
> but I expect I will be/look/appear older and older the older I get.
I have a suspicion that something is being miscommunicated between you and many others here. (I admit that I might be wrong. But hear me out.)
It sounds like you are thinking about the visual signs of aging. Like wrinkling of the face, or salt-and-pepper hair. That kind of thing. And sure, there is a lot of vain people who would like to stop that from happening.
But in general the aging people want to defeat is not the wrinkled face. It is things like our immune system demonstrably going to crap as we turn older. Or losing muscle mass. Or becoming senile. Or our bones becoming more fragile.
For young people the flue is basically an inconvenience (by and large). But as we age things like seasonal flue becomes huge issues. People's immune system used to work for decades without a hitch, and then suddenly it decides to crap out. Why?
I can also put it into a more mathematical framework. If maybe that helps? Imagine plotting the probability of a human dying in their x'th year assuming that they have survived before x-1 years. If you plot this now you would see a sort of bath-tub like curve. There is some chance a newborn dies in their first few years of life due to birth defects. Because of that the first few years have a higher probability of death. Then the plot plateaus, and the probability remains basically constant low number for multiple decades. People can still die due to violence, or accidents, or random health issues, but the chance of that doesn't really change much from year to year. And as you approach the other "side" of the bath-tub you see that the probability starts climbing again. And this climb is quite rapid. By the time you are 100ish (plus minus a few years) you have fairly good chances of dying in any given year. And then around 105ish you have about even chances of dying or staying alive in each year. And then we don't have anyone who ever lived to 130.
On this kind of plot if we were to defeat aging what you would see is that the plateau remains constant. That is the chances of a 35 year old dying in the next year where the same as the 135 year old dying in the next year.
Right, this is what I meant with the potato/potahto thing. To me, wrinkled face, graying hair, more hair, etc. are all things that are part of aging.
Which is why I balk at the framing of "defeating aging." We want to defeat the decline that comes with advanced age. But this doesn't necessarily mean we have to freeze the clock at some age, as it were. May be that that is the way it happens.
I think it is just a difference in how you view it? I'd expect ancient person to be noticeably ancient. Not necessarily frail, but just as an old tree has signs of aging that younger trees don't necessarily have. Not that they stopped aging entirely.
So, if you limit aging to "getting frail," I am fully there. But there are other things that happen as you age.
I honestly thought the whole point was beating aging. Whether that's longer life or cancer or whatever. The point is to stay 20-40 forever, from what I can tell.
But, by the time you hit 20-40, you have already done a ton of aging?
Fair that I don't expect to be as strong in my 60s as I am now. Or when I hit 70+. If I get that far. Light weight training is plenty to get to be in good physical shape, though? Get to where you can do 10-30 pushups and run a continuous mile, and you are probably doing fine?
But this gets to my question, essentially? Is "aging for the elderly" different than "aging for the middle aged?"
So, what does it mean to "beat aging in a medical sense?" If it is just definitionally to not have any of the bad effects of aging, then sure. Of course I would want that. What are the names for the good things that are generally along for the ride with aging?
Going back to my earlier quip, if you could turn off aging for babies/toddlers, how would that be a good thing?
This may somewhat surprise you, but I would ask the same for people in the 30s. 40s even, at this point. Freezing someone at that age doesn't sound appealing to me. At all.
So the heart of my question is why do we view "defeating aging" as the same as "living longer?" Or is this something where the target age that people would want to be generally coalesces on a common number?
"Aging" in the context of "defeating aging" refers to the phenomena of declining metabolism and deteriorating genetic data.
Wrinkling skin, graying hair, loss of muscle mass and bone density, loss of mental acuity, decline of libido, late-life diseases (eg: cancer, Alzheimer's, type-2 diabetes), and so on.
It's scientifically proven that our bodies spend enormous amounts of energy up into our 20s when we reach sexual maturity and then glide through on momentum through our 30s into our 40s when we are raising our children.
Once we're in our late 40s to early 50s we're done spawning new life and our bodies throw in the towel, starting the slow but inevitable deterioration culminating in death.
It's that whole physical process that we as a species want to overcome, we want to defy being just machines for spawning more machines. Life is fucking evil.
Growing wiser from more and more life experiences is also part of aging, but it's not what we refer to when we say "defeat aging".
This makes sense, though I still find the framing odd. I don't mind that I look older now that I'm, you know, older. Defeating aging feels like it would be to find a way to be forever young. Extending life doesn't feel like it would need that.
Obviously, we need some way to not completely lose genetic data and such. If there is a "throwing in the towel" moment, as it were, find a way to prevent that. But living forever doesn't equal forever young, to me. Mayhap I'm just too old for that to have meaning anymore? :D
That is to say, I'm not clear that "beating aging" is what is required for "long life." Is that definitionally required and I'm just being dense?
I'm assuming this is a tiered discussion? In that nobody thinks we should freeze aging at baby stages for someone. Such that we would still want some aging, but would then try and fix a point where all aging can be stopped?