There are plenty of low-quality discussions. No doubt. I hardly participate in the supplement and nootropics discussion because the relevance to life extension and actual rejuvenation is minimal.
Would you care to point out a forum or a discussion you consider to be of higher quality?
Mark's Daily Apple(well, the research and nutrition threads really) and Mind and Muscle
The focus just seems to be less scattered over at these forums. Plus, the discussions are far more active and thorough.
I agree that Mark's Daily Apple and Mind & Muscle are good quality sites. In some cases, more strictly moderated, while Longecity allows more free flowing conversation.
One thing to remember is that we have a clear goal and mission at Longecity. It was somewhat of an accident of history that we ended up with such prolific supplements and nootropic forums. That was not the idea from the beginning, but we have a strong free speech ethic here and allow people to discuss what they want to discuss.
When I interviewed Mark Sisson recently, he did not have much of an opinion on radical life extension - Longecity does. Mind & Muscle is great if you want to experiment with muscle building supplements and brain stimulants, but not if you are serious about rejuvenation technology.
The best thing that Longecity does is raise money for research, the supplement and noos discussions are secondary. The supps forums have been better and worse quality through the years and are very popular, but it is not the mission of this non-profit. I would trade 10,000 supplement and noos posters for 100 serious researchers in these forums any day. Many former "high quality" posters have said all they need to say, have developed healthy regimens and have moved on to more important things like curing the disease of aging.
In my most recent podcast with Justin Rebo, he says about the same thing. He says we need more people doing the actual research, the hard work to cure aging, not more people popping pills.
