I keep up semi-regularly with publications on life extension research, so when I came across the Nintil Blog, from Balaji Srinivasan, I was in for a treat, because it’s probably the most comprehensive aggregation of discoveries with original commentary on this subject throughout the web.
I read first his primer post- ‘What is Aging?’, and thought it worth the usual download for high level takeaways here. I hope you enjoy, try not to think of the inevitability of death along the way. (:
So what is it?
Ha- we don’t exactly know. Scientifically, there’s no such thing as ‘aging’ as we use it colloquially. There are 2 main things happening over our lifetimes that contribute to our gooey definition:
Damage accumulation in our bodies over time
Age associated increase in mortality as a result of demographics
When thinking of attacking #2 above, a question arises whether aging is merely the amalgamation of the infinite spectrum of diseases that will eventually arise because of #1. So this leads many in the field to instead target the root causes of #1 while leaving disease research in it’s separate own domain.
The author of the article however has the gall to propose a biological definition I’ll riff off of for the rest of this write-up:
Aging: The systematic drift of an organism away from (a state defined as) healthiness.
Let’s start with the need for ‘systematic’. There are a number of underlying processes at work in your body that are moving you away from health by design. These are things that happen semi-uniformly in everyone like telomeres shortening on our chromosomes or gene specific things like how your body responds to inflammation. A bulk of present research is focused on alleviating and changing these inherent processes, however, it’s a bit like whack-a-mole and for now, an illusive target.
Aging != Time
The reasoning for the inclusion of ‘(a state defined as)’ is because if we’re going to tackle aging, we need to establish a baseline. Aging is relative to some semblance of a constant environment. Being hit by a bus or contracting malaria don’t exactly qualify as ‘aging’, so these cases need to be omitted by the definition.
The other fun reason there’s a need to establish the healthiness constant in the definition is because not all time related growth an organism undergoes is negative. In his article, José takes the opportunity here to talk about things like accumulation of memories or height and similar positive changes over time.
If We Achieve Radical Longevity, Then What?
I think that an infinite runway poses an existential risk. There may be an opportunity in that scenario for something like what Eric Weinstein describes in his talks on the subject, the opportunity for broader cross disciplined mastery. A master chemist-biologist, a master mathematician-artist, etc. This new dual or even triple master class may bring about more innovation than we've ever seen or way accelerate the unearned power accrued under the guise of science that's hinted at by Ian Malcolm’s character in Jurassic Park.
“We are witnessing the end of the scientific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains in power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power. Because things are going very fast now... it will be in everyone's hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators. And that will force everyone to ask the same question - What should I do with my power? - which is the very question science says it cannot answer.”
— Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park | Movie Clip
At best, I think that a subset of longer living humans could promote something like a Wisdom Class- a larger population of people who have seen the tides of time and the rhymes of history and who can speak to ways to prevent history from repeating itself in negative ways, people who can teach the lessons of history speaking from experience rather than recorded knowledge which is all to easy to forget when barred against an intransigent minority's, 'Well no, we need to do x now and it's different than 19{##} because {Y}! Viva la revolution!'
I was studying Biomedical Engineering before I dropped out of college to focus full time on my start-up and contracted work. (More on that here.) My aspiration was and in many ways still is, to make a meaningful contribution to the study of radical longevity or- life extension research. If you have novel thoughts on the subject, reach out to me on Twitter @BenAnderson421.
Next Week, I’m going to talk about a time my rectangle couldn’t tell me where to go.
Live well.
-Benjamin Anderson