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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

2. https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com (be sure to follow the links to research papers and read the comments)

3. I also made a playlist with videos and lectures on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLvA7pB41pDk27XOjqbXi...

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I'm sorry but this is extremely weak none of this brings it anywhere close to 99%. This is youtube, a blog and reddit. Seriously.

So? There are links to real research papers written by real scientists.

Why do you think we can cure aging when we haven’t solved or even made any progress tackling much simpler problems like Alzheimer’s?

They are not "much simpler" — they're direct consequences of aging. It's like trying to put a fresh coat of paint on a car that has almost rusted through. It makes more sense to address the root cause than its many consequences.

Grishka needs to read more widely on this topic. Start with Caleb E. Finch’s magisterial book “Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome” (University of Chicago Press, 1990). Or read my review with Michael Hook: “Genetic Cartography of Longevity in Humans and Mice: Current Landscape and Horizons”.

Just do a text string search. It is on PubMed Central and free.

Imagine the misfortune of being 80 years old when humanity finally figured out how to do this.

I think the worst would be discovering that we can cure old age but only in utero, thus the next generation will be the immoral ones but we will all die eventually.

The worst would be discovering we can cure old age, but only for people rich enough to pay for the extraordinarily expensive treatment...

No, imagine the fortune because you'll now have your body reverted to a younger age.

Touche.

If it's possible do you know why evolution didn't figure out how to do this? Seems like it would be a good adaptation

This one is easy. First of all, evolution only cares about the species as a whole, so the survival of an individual, especially after they've produced their offspring, doesn't matter much. Second, in the wild, animals will be killed by predators much more quickly than they'd die of old age, so all the mutations that only manifest negatively in older age have never had a chance to be selected against.

Besides, the whole premise of evolution is that older generations die.

(disclaimer: I'm a software developer, not a biologist, but I'm fascinated by biology)

You got it in reverse: evolution only "cares" about the individual

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Queen:_Sex_and_the_Evo...

Lol. I usually read HN to follow tech trends. This thread in hilariously uninformed. It is as shaky as me writing a critique of database engines would be.

On this specific subthread: yes the individual is the level of selection (mainly) but Dawkins has renewed interest in the sequence variant as the ultimate unit of selection. We are protoplasmic bags of gene variants, some of which make it to the next generations.

Evolution optimizes for reproduction, not long life. Long life is likely not very beneficial to reproduction and a large population of older members is a drain on resources. At least, it was until we got to the Information Age.

Sometimes long life is key to reproduction, for example old turtles are bigger and safer from predators (before humans came) and have more offsprings than younger ones (yearly and in total). Turtles can grow very old because there is reproduction advantage to that.

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