13 replies to this topic

[Guest]

Some of you might have heard from the Manhattan Beach Project meeting, quoting this articel:

http://www.centuryci..._to_Aging/25407

The conference opened with entrepreneur and futurist Ray Kurtzweil, who explained, “We are very close to the tipping point in human longevity. We are about 15 years away from adding more than one year of longevity per year to remaining life expectancy.”

What great news! And if this is the realistic scenario, we might wittness escape velocity within less than 10 years in the ideal case!

I suggest organising a huge party now and preparing for the post-aging era instead of promoting the now unneseccary efforts to hasten the research. However, I wonder why no other news outlet reported about this information? very, very strange... ha! dumbasses! They will be so suprised, when they wake up in 10-15 years seeing aging being stoped in humans!


hmm... just discovered that they speak of "Ray Kurtzweil", ie it seems to be not Kurzweil himslef, but maybe a close relative. That changes everything - we have to fight aging again! Dammit!

Edited by TFC, 24 November 2009 - 11:09 PM.

[niner]

The conference opened with entrepreneur and futurist Ray Kurtzweil, who explained, “We are very close to the tipping point in human longevity. We are about 15 years away from adding more than one year of longevity per year to remaining life expectancy.”

What great news! And if this is the realistic scenario, we might wittness escape velocity within less than 10 years in the ideal case!

Well, I'm not sure that an over-optimistic prediction should be made more optimistic, but the Manhattan Beach Project is pretty interesting. It's worth a look just to see what they are up to. The site seems aimed at the non-expert general public, albeit a public with a little bit of scientific literacy. A little bit, but not much. The science there is pretty thin. I didn't see the word "Singularity" there, but they allude to it in their discussion of the "law of accelerating returns". A webcast of their conference will be available on Nov 27th at the site. The MBP appears to be sponsored by the Maximum Life Foundation, run by David Kekich. There appears to be a sort of venture capital operation associated with it that is focused on LE companies.

[atp]

Some of you might have heard from the Manhattan Beach Project meeting, quoting this articel:

http://www.centuryci..._to_Aging/25407

The conference opened with entrepreneur and futurist Ray Kurtzweil, who explained, “We are very close to the tipping point in human longevity. We are about 15 years away from adding more than one year of longevity per year to remaining life expectancy.”

What great news! And if this is the realistic scenario, we might wittness escape velocity within less than 10 years in the ideal case!

I suggest organising a huge party now and preparing for the post-aging era instead of promoting the now unneseccary efforts to hasten the research. However, I wonder why no other news outlet reported about this information? very, very strange... ha! dumbasses! They will be so suprised, when they wake up in 10-15 years seeing aging being stoped in humans!


hmm... just discovered that they speak of "Ray Kurtzweil", ie it seems to be not Kurzweil himslef, but maybe a close relative. That changes everything - we have to fight aging again! Dammit!

escape velocity means that remaining lifespan is prolonged a year every year.

the only problem is the word "every".

i think already this year the expectation of lifespan is prolonged by far more than a year if you use the tools, technology and knowledge discovered this year. probably even up to 5 years.

why? because in this year, the role rapamycin and spermidine for anti aging is discovered. furthermore we have made amazing progress in key technologies, i.e. stem cell research and human gene therapies this year.

if progress continues with the speed of 2009 then we have already reached the escape velocity. the only problem is to maintain the velocity.

the following fact of rapamycin is already a strong indication that the year 2009 holds the definition of escape velocity

http://www.nature.co...ature08221.html

but there is another strong discovery which supports my assumption that the year 2009 holds the definition of escape velocity

http://www.imbb.fort.../Spermidine.pdf

Edited by atp, 27 December 2009 - 07:19 AM.

[atp]

of course there were far more discoveries in 2009 which help to rise the probability to live longer.

for example

http://www.springerl...258l37164t2095/

many people ignore these facts.
i think the first person who will live more than 1000 years is alive already today and uses nearly every fact which comes from science today.

[AgeVivo]

I clearly imagine that we can increase lifespan by more than one year during a few years (e.g. with the mouse lifespan tests currently being done by the ITP and Spindler's lab), but I hardly imagine that it will be so every year. I'd rather see some improvements within the next 50 years, and then nothing until real breakthroughs. The question is when those breakthroughs will come: within the next 50 years too? within the next 100 years? within the next 200 years? later? In a word I am very suspicious about 'escape velocity soon'.

[atp]

I clearly imagine that we can increase lifespan by more than one year during a few years (e.g. with the mouse lifespan tests currently being done by the ITP and Spindler's lab), but I hardly imagine that it will be so every year. I'd rather see some improvements within the next 50 years, and then nothing until real breakthroughs. The question is when those breakthroughs will come: within the next 50 years too? within the next 100 years? within the next 200 years? later? In a word I am very suspicious about 'escape velocity soon'.

in my opinion the term escape velocity is misleading for anti aging.

there will be never a point were we can relax and say that we have cured aging.

for cars we have already reached the escape velocity. we have the technology to repair a car such that it has the state as a new car.
but nevertheless, millions of cars 'die' every year. why? because it is very timeconsuming and costs a lot of money.

if you do not use the knowledge and technology aging will always kill you. there is no escape velocity in the same way as in spaceflight. there will be no pill which you must eat and then aging is cured forever.
it is the same as with cars. if you want to keep your car new you have to do something. there is no point where you can relax forever.

aubrey de grey suspects that anti aging will become easier and easier. every success will give us more time to fight against still unsolved phenomena of aging. so we get more and more time which means that it will become easier and easier.

probably in longterm he is right.

but i think, in 2009 we had a strong success in anti aging but it has not become easier to solve still unsolved phenomena of aging. ok, perhaps we have won up to 5 years this year. not bad, at least.

Edited by atp, 27 December 2009 - 10:07 PM.

[atp]

I clearly imagine that we can increase lifespan by more than one year during a few years (e.g. with the mouse lifespan tests currently being done by the ITP and Spindler's lab), but I hardly imagine that it will be so every year. I'd rather see some improvements within the next 50 years, and then nothing until real breakthroughs. The question is when those breakthroughs will come: within the next 50 years too? within the next 100 years? within the next 200 years? later? In a word I am very suspicious about 'escape velocity soon'.

i think breakthroughs will be known as real breakthroughs only a very long time after the discovery.

is the idea of calorie restriction a breakthrough? maybe. we don't know the effect for maximum lifespan in humans.

is resveratrol a breakthrough? maybe too.

rapamycin, spermidine,...

if we change genes which cause age related damage, will this be a breakthrough? perhaps there will be other sideeffects after corresponding gene therapies which will shorten lifespan instead of extending it.

so in my opinion perhaps we already have breakthroughs which are sufficient to live long enough to reach the moment where the "stable escape velocity in progress" arise.
but even if this point is reached in just 10 years we will not know that the moment has come. perhaps this moment is already today.

it will need at least 100 years after the breakthroughs to recognize whether these are really breakthroughs.

the first person who will become 1000 years old must be a very disciplined person, who uses a lot of new knowledge and technologies in anti aging. this person must be ready to take many risks by following hints from studies with animals which are not yet proven to hold for humans.

Edited by atp, 28 December 2009 - 05:56 AM.

[CerebralCortex]

....it will need at least 100 years after the breakthroughs to recognize whether these are really breakthroughs...

You see right there I know you're just musing and if I may add rather pessimistically. Pretty much the only thing stopping therapies and fruitful research right now is money! Also you're failing to take into account other technological developments. How about watching this which describes rather brilliantly the computer science will impact on medicine/biology. Have you even heard of the concept of the technological singularity?

Edited by CerebralCortex, 28 December 2009 - 01:36 PM.

[atp]

....it will need at least 100 years after the breakthroughs to recognize whether these are really breakthroughs...

You see right there I know you're just musing and if I may add rather pessimistically. Pretty much the only thing stopping therapies and fruitful research right now is money! Also you're failing to take into account other technological developments. How about watching this which describes rather brilliantly the computer science will impact on medicine/biology. Have you even heard of the concept of the technological singularity?

i am not pessimistic about technological developments. i even believe that we could already have some breakthroughs which we still can not see as breakthroughs.

how old can a human beeing become if he uses every hint of science just of today? perhaps 150 but nobody knows.

we have no way to measure the current velocity in anti aging so we are not able to recognize immediately when it happens that we reach the escape velocity.
perhaps we have reached it already in 2009.

if a person dies from aging with the age of 80 then we see the consequences of the past 80 years.
if we want to know the consequences of our knowledge in medicin of today than we have to wait an awful long time.
but of course that does not mean that progress is slowly. i just want to say that we have a great latency in measuring the progress in anti aging.

Edited by atp, 28 December 2009 - 01:51 PM.

[CerebralCortex]

I understand what you're saying but why would it need to take a hundred years to see the effects? Would ever increasing power in computer modeling not get rid of the need to wait that long? Or am I missing your point. Do you agree with what was said in the talk I suggested?

[atp]

I understand what you're saying but why would it need to take a hundred years to see the effects? Would ever increasing power in computer modeling not get rid of the need to wait that long? Or am I missing your point. Do you agree with what was said in the talk I suggested?

the problem is the confidence you can have in new discoveries at the moment when they are made.
this year we have discovered that rapamycin prolongs lifespan in mice.
but what does that mean for humans? in pharmacy we need 10 years to bring a new drug to market. you can use computers to develop drugs but you have to use animals and humans for final tests.
to prove that computer can simulate the effects of a new drug right we will need a proof that it really does.
the only proofs in biologcal science are experiments with real life.
thus we will need 100 years to be sure that a certain therapy is good to keep a human alive for 100 years.

of course you can do smaller studies with simple animals. or you can use biomarkers and extrapolate to the future.

but these are no proofs. you can use it and i would even recommend to do so. but this is necessarily accompanied with risk.

when we have reached the escape velocity there will be plenty of scientists who do not trust the theories or the experiments which are available at that moment.

calorie restriction or resveratrol is good example of today.
some scientist think that this has big impact for prolonging lifespans in humans
other scientists think, that there is no big significance for lifespan.
we have to wait decades with real human experiments until everybody really knows what we can expect from these approaches.

or think about vitamin c.

there are already thousands of publications and studies on vitamin c.
we know this vitamin more than 100 years.
but still there is a big controversy on how much vitamin c is the right dosage.
some say 100mg per day others say even 10 g a day.

Edited by atp, 28 December 2009 - 03:30 PM.

[Guest]

Adding to the original statement it should be noted, that Kurzweil - given his age - is probably not talking about lifeextension using what I would label "lifestyle" measures (CRON, sport, supplements etc.) but hard biomedical research such as SENS-like approaches applied in human beings, which can buy him additional years.

So while younger people may take into account the 2009 research progress towards their own "escape velocity", it is doubtful that e.g. people 90+ would say that we are adding already one year to their lifeexpentancy. Unfortunately there need to be many many more breakthroughs and their actual development/assessment into human therapies for applicable SENS. Kurzweil's prediction for sufficiently applicable human(!) SENS in 15 years is more wishful thinking than fact based as even commited lifeextension followers have to admit, given the current state of the project.

Given the not nearly sufficient funding for SENS-research, stemcells being the prominent exception, I would say that people above 50-60 can forget about biomedical lifeextension to life a 1000 years. Even my generation, so 20-30 years old, will have a hard time to reach that state.



Oh, and I heard from the singularity, a nice concept, but IMO the problmen is that even IF creation of a real AI is sucessful anytime soon (note, that it's not just the power of the computers we are talking about! but the fundamental understanding of intelligence and also function of the brain) a computer can't generate knowledge out of nothing. He can run some advanced simulations or solve equations incredibly fast, what makes him a fairly good theoretical physicist. But he wouldn't be able to tell which of the various string theories - if any - is the right one or whether quantum loop theories are the future. In the end an AI does depend on experimental data the same way as a human researcher does. Current limitations of simulations, such as unknown parameters/interactions or principial issues such as the many-body problem, are unsolveable even with IQ-10000000-Computers and infinite calculation power, if the empirical data is insufficient.. Even if all parameters and all laws of physics/chemistry/biosciences etc. would be known you couldn't just run an exact simulation of the world or a small part of it. Experimental investigations for numerical approximations still would have to be done on a large scale, what can be a time consuming and expensive issue, still not leading to "perfect" but "just" sufficiently accurate results for the desired investigation in the best of all cases. Even in the most optimistic cases there will be no real "singularity", so revolutions in science/engeneering every other year, but simple accelerated research (which is a good thing anyway).

Edited by TFC, 08 January 2010 - 04:40 AM.

[niner]

thus we will need 100 years to be sure that a certain therapy is good to keep a human alive for 100 years.

Not if it works when given to older people. If we give it to 80-year olds, and they reliably live another 20 years, then I'd say we would know it worked in 20 years. Even less than that, since we could reliably extrapolate over short periods from survival curves and the patients' current health parameters.

[Elus]

I understand what you're saying but why would it need to take a hundred years to see the effects? Would ever increasing power in computer modeling not get rid of the need to wait that long? Or am I missing your point. Do you agree with what was said in the talk I suggested?

the problem is the confidence you can have in new discoveries at the moment when they are made.
this year we have discovered that rapamycin prolongs lifespan in mice.
but what does that mean for humans? in pharmacy we need 10 years to bring a new drug to market. you can use computers to develop drugs but you have to use animals and humans for final tests.
to prove that computer can simulate the effects of a new drug right we will need a proof that it really does.
the only proofs in biologcal science are experiments with real life.
thus we will need 100 years to be sure that a certain therapy is good to keep a human alive for 100 years.

of course you can do smaller studies with simple animals. or you can use biomarkers and extrapolate to the future.

but these are no proofs. you can use it and i would even recommend to do so. but this is necessarily accompanied with risk.

when we have reached the escape velocity there will be plenty of scientists who do not trust the theories or the experiments which are available at that moment.

calorie restriction or resveratrol is good example of today.
some scientist think that this has big impact for prolonging lifespans in humans
other scientists think, that there is no big significance for lifespan.
we have to wait decades with real human experiments until everybody really knows what we can expect from these approaches.

or think about vitamin c.

there are already thousands of publications and studies on vitamin c.
we know this vitamin more than 100 years.
but still there is a big controversy on how much vitamin c is the right dosage.
some say 100mg per day others say even 10 g a day.

Rapamycin suppresses the immune system and thus would not be viable as a life extension drug. I wonder though, are the mechanisms by which rapamycin extends life well understood? Perhaps we could manufacture a drug that is similar to rapamycine without the immunosuppressive features. Then again, immune system suppression and life span extension may not be mutually exclusive, which would make such a feat impossible.

Anyway, just something to consider.

Edited by Elus Efelier, 08 January 2010 - 05:50 AM.