What makes you say that anti aging isn’t possible then? Of course the task is insane and huge but after enough research and understanding of aging as a process wouldn’t it be possible to then eventually reverse it? Similar to a cure for cancer, which must exist
As it turns out, a cure for cancer as a whole does not exist. And the cures that do exist do not necessarily eradicate that given cancer for good, nor provide any real protection against other types of cancer.
The person above is telling you (correctly) that the human body is not built to last forever. Take a look at how diffetent organs work and fail in different, often entirely distinct ways, and all the myriad combinations of such hits that different individuals inevitably experience over their unique lives, and you have something that is fundamentally unsolvable.
Even if we make a cyborg body thats similar to human body, it is still monumental challenge to optimise it for longevity without sacrificing something.
You could theoretically be a brain in a jar but who the hell would want that?
No offense OP, but what's your angle here? Like what are you doing on this sub? Is it a purely curiosity or are you getting pulled into some shady investment scheme?
Because while the question of "will anti-aging be solved" is interesting, you asking about cancer in this way is pretty clear that you're quite in over your head. I'm not trying to be rude or condescending - everyone has to start somewhere with learning and knowledge and it's great that people are interested. But it just seems that the questions and the way you're asking it points towards something more than curiosity.
I think I absolutely am out of my depth and that’s also equivalent to being over my head. I ask out of curiosity of both the topic and just people’s thought processes because I find both interesting. I appreciate the responses people have but I also don’t understand why as scientists a lot of ppl like to use absolutes such as “impossible” or “never” when a lot of scientific discoveries we’ve made even recently all contained some that were viewed as impossible. So I want to understand that thought process if that’s fair
Well first off I'd say you have to be extremely careful about reading headlines and you need to differentiate who is actually doing the science vs. who is selling the science. Strong words make for a great narrative to sell.
Most good scientists would hesitate to use word "impossible" unless it's something that defies the laws of physics. It's usually not a question of "can it happen" but more of a question of "to what extent". For example, can we cure cancer? Yes actually, but only to the extent of some very specific cancers using very specific treatment methods, and only on a person-by-person basis. Debatable if you would even call that "curing cancer" but anyone promising more than "very specific" is probably lying.
The truth is that despite our advancements in biology, we still know very, very little. And knowing is not enough. First you don't know what you don't know. Then what you know needs to become what you understand. What you understand, you need to apply. What you apply you need to validate. What you validate you need to scale. Every step is just as hard as the last one. Now imagine that you need to do this for everything you don't know.
Someone else commented about solving hair loss and it's a great example. Even if our best science can't even cure hair loss, do you really expect to be able to solve aging?
I do not expect aging or revival to be solved at all within this lifetime I can assure you this much. Unless somehow AGI actually does come true in the next 5 years which again I doubt it will I don’t think so. But I also like putting my thought process out there which is that yes we don’t know what we don’t know but given enough time and technological advancements I seriously doubt there’s much we would NOT be able to do in the future. The only thing I can imagine genuinely being impossible is stopping the sun from blasting us all to death 5 billion years from now.
I mean sure if you wanna say with enough time and technology we can do anything it's hard to argue against that. But I don't think that's really the point here, is it?
Fair point. I suppose the better argument I should make then that is more arguable is that I genuinely believe we will see progress in anti aging, maybe not revival within this lifetime. That does not equate to me claiming it’ll happen in this lifetime. But I really do think that in 20-30 years we will look back and say that some were scams(we all know this already though) but some really did lead us to a promising direction
Cancer proves my point. We know have a HUGE amount of both different types of cancers and approaches for treating them. It is clear that there is no cure for cancer because there are dozens of distinct general cellular dysfunctions that cause cancer of cancer, each of which has dozens of specific instances in different cancers. Then there are complex interplays between those causes, so literally millions of combinations. Then there are our therapeutic tools, which are usually limited in effectiveness.
Progress is possible, and indeed, many (but not all) cancers can be managed for a few years, if not more. But it is incremental and slow, and won’t ever be complete.Â
I think aging research (and note: I study a neurodgenerative disease) is at best like this. Incremental inprovents for particular diseases, bc if you’ve seen one disease you’ve seen one disease.
The idea of a sweeping “cure” (even a set of cures) for aging just doesn’t fit with the vast vast number of cascading failures that must be addressed.Â
Ohhh I see that makes sense. I’m assuming you work within biotech as well. What if instead of addressing the diseases though we settled for something such nanobots or even uploading our minds to a digital world? Are either plausible? Also a quick add on is have we defined cancer as incurable or just something we cannot cure right now?
My overall point is biotech ca. 2024 cannot deliver the massive anti-aging gains you'll here promised in podcasts, given all that we know about the biology of aging.
Sure, so maybe aging isn't a biology problem. Maybe its a materials problem, which can be fixed by nanobots coordinated in extreme detail by a vastly powerful AI. In theory, possible. In practice, that's probably 50-100 years or more away. Our AI and computers are not powerful enough to coordinate trillions of nanobots, but also, those nanobots currently don't exist at the size and complexity needed for "cellular rejuvanation", and even if they did... you run into our huge gaps in understanding (due to fantastic complexity) of what the biology of rejuvanation actually would be. So decades if not centuries away, we'll be dead then. And the very idea of a body kept alive by swarms of nanobots coordinated by a powerful AI gets you into the philosophy of "transhumanism"... the merger of humans and technology, and all kinds of dark ethical/philosophical considerations (ex: what if the AI gets hacked, or comes to hates humans, so it decides to use those nanobots to keep you alive but in horrendous pain forever, and you have absolutely no ability to stop them?)
Maybe aging is an information problem, fixed by mind uploading. In order to even consider uploading a mind, you need tools for mapping neurological states in almost atomic detail, for an entire nervous system, and the AI to integrate that map into a representation of the mind. Decades away, probably centuries, if not millenia, due to the staggering molecular complexity of neurons and the brain. But even worse, an almost theological question: is a mind upload "you"? Is it seemlessly transferring your subjective experience, or is it just making a copy, with no relationship to who "you" are? But even worse... mind uploading is almost certainly going to be so invasive that it would destroy the brain tissue (our best tools for mapping neurons litterally scan a thin layer, then burn it away, then repeat the scan and burn).
Would be awfully tragic for you to be literally killed by the mind upload, while a (likely imperfect) copy with no subjective experience itself computes on for millenia.
So once you set aside biotech as a solution for aging, you really enter into philosophy, and even theology.
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u/ALeeWriter 25d ago
What makes you say that anti aging isn’t possible then? Of course the task is insane and huge but after enough research and understanding of aging as a process wouldn’t it be possible to then eventually reverse it? Similar to a cure for cancer, which must exist