• @HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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    217 days ago

    Aging sucks. I think with the tremendous computing resources presently wasted on vapid AI slop and endless fart videos, we could instead use it for anti-aging research.

    • @exasperation@lemm.ee
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      76 days ago

      anti-aging research.

      I mean, there’s plenty of anti aging research going on. It’s just that aging isn’t any one thing. At the genetic level, telomeres are getting shorter and mutations are accelerating. In cells, certain metabolic waste products accumulate, and the cells experience increased oxidative stress.

      At the tissue level, you see blood vessels stiffening up, accumulating calcium deposits in the vessel walls themselves, and arterial plague within the vessels. Conversely, bones lose strength and lose calcium, and muscles and joints and tendons and ligaments deteriorate in strength and range of motion. Skin loses elasticity. Plaques and other abnormalities form in the brain and throughout the nervous system. The endocrine system undergoes changes as the hormonal balance of people changes in late adulthood (most notably menopause in women).

      Each of these effects of aging is being investigated, researched, and potentially treated. Dermatologists can make old skin look younger, or at least slow down the rate of apparent aging. There are pills that give 60 year old men the boners of a 20 year old. Some hormone therapies reverse some of the age-related decline in particular hormone levels. Each treatment treats its own thing, reversing or stalling one tiny aspect of aging.

      And they’re continuing to work on it. There’s plenty of research being done, with lots and lots of funding behind it.

    • @WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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      46 days ago

      Let’s just say that even if you where immortal, there is still the issue of your “soul” aging. In other words, you know you are old, and you won’t enjoy playing Pokemon Platinum in the same way.

      Society will also increasingy isolate you in various ways.

      • @HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        Fear mongering nonsense. Did anyone feel that way when infant mortality went way down?

        You’ll have other people the same “old” as you to hang out with. Many people say they “feel 25” inside, well guess what, now we can make your body align with that.

        We already have “anti-aging” compared to how people aged, say, two hundred or two thousand years ago.

        Besides, “immortality” is an absolute, you can always choose to unalive yourself if you feel so strongly about Pokemon Platinum. No Greek-style tragedy of the “immortal” who can’t kill themselves.

        Seems to me there is a lot more in life that can be enjoyed with a few extra centuries.

        Or even better, a Logan’s Run style of extended youth for your “allotted” four score and ten, then poof! Carousel. No aging, no senescence, no frailty, sickness, disease, waning sense and shrinking brains, just extended 20-something for 60 years, then ZAAP!

        I’ll take that over the meandering aging nonsense of how I’m supposed to revel in my aging carcass.

        PS: There is no soul. Just complex patterns in a vat of neurons.

        • @WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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          26 days ago

          Ok. All that just to tell you I’m 29, and get asked occasionally what grade I’m in. I’d know. I can already see all the anti-aging interventions, but I feel like I missed out on something permanently. Like nothing can make up for that fact.

          And that is why I’m going to compensate by being a glorious warrior. I have nothing else left.