"Longevity" is over

#1

A friend of mine, Dr Rick Cohen, who was on my advisory board during my foray into the world of senolytics, has a supplement company. I subscribe to his news letter and it’s quite good, his company is PureClean Performance.

This week his news letter clearly elucidated how I feel about the longevity hype train.

The debate over increasing “Life span” vs “Health span” rages on and some people get pretty worked up over it. I’ve mentioned a few times, the Life spanners rely on the hype for funding and should they ever admit that increasing human life span from the current limit of 115 to 120 is not going to happen any time soon, their funding may well dry up. Many of those research efforts will bear fruit and benefit us by increasing our health span but increasing human life span? not likely in my children’s, children’s life time. I’ve said this before, eliminate the top 4 causes of death in the aged and that will be a truely wonderful thing to accomplish. But it won’t increase life span beyond the current max.

Here is the letter.

longevity_is_over.pdf (183.0 KB)

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#2

Leave philosophy for the Greeks. I consider aging solved when lab mice no longer die outside of accidents.

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#3

Personally, I’m more interested in slowing or reversing visible signs of aging, including preventing or reversing various kinds of disease (which all goes under the “healthspan” rubric). However, I suspect extending human lifespan will follow a trajectory similar to what we see in AI – e.g. experts thought just a few years ago that it would take until about 2050 until we’d see systems that can

Perform as well as the best
human entrants in the Putnam competition—a math
contest whose questions have
known solutions, but which
are difficult for the best young
mathematicians.

Yet, here in 2025 we already have models that can perform as well as the very best humans at that exam using just natural language, without even needing to formalize it into Lean to verify! [well, the International Math Olympiad in any case, as both OpenAI and Google Deepmind produced such models; but Lean-verified versions for Putnam success have been demonstrated, and the pure natural language models that did well on IMO probably could do the same for Putnam.] In fact, there are even open source models that can do well at the exam (though, I believe most such systems require Lean).

Why did they think it would take until 2050? I’d guess their thinking was something like, just look at how varied and complicated the reasoning is for these problems… way, way, way more complicated than Chess or Go… millions of times more complicated… there’s just no way it’s all going to come together in the next decade… in fact, I’d even bet money it won’t happen!

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#4

We are still not at AGI yet and no one knows whether the current approach will get us there. But it’s highly likely that in the 24 years until 2050 we’ll get there.

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#5

And the models we have in 2025 can already do stuff like this:

https://x.com/karpathy/status/2005067301511630926#m

I was inspired by this so I wanted to see if Claude Code can get into my Lutron home automation system.

  • it found my Lutron controllers on the local wifi network
  • checked for open ports, connected, got some metadata and identified the devices and their firmware
  • searched the internet, found the pdf for my system
  • instructed me on what button to press to pair and get the certificates
  • it connected to the system and found all the home devices (lights, shades, HVAC temperature control, motion sensors etc.)
  • it turned on and off my kitchen lights to check that things are working (lol!) I am now vibe coding the home automation master command center, the potential is !:fire:. And I’m throwing away the crappy, janky, slow Lutron iOS app I’ve been using so far. Insanely fun :smiley: :smiley:
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#6

That’s no fun :frowning: LoL!

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#7

Completely agree about the longevity stuff , based on what I’ve seen so far. And I don’t even think this position
is particularly contreversial.

Yes, I’m genuinely excited about the elimination of these 4 horsemen.

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#8

First, biology is not the same as a machine, which is what AI is.

Moore’s law on CPU transistor density has held true - doubling every 18 - 24 months

How long is the doubling of biological science? back in the 80’s it was every 13 years. Also it varies by field of research DNA research goes in sprints some times faster than Moore’s law other areas of biology still lag way behind due to a variety of factors like safety

Second, there are several hard stops with human ageing that very few seem to acknowledge, because “it” is way too difficult to solve, so those hard stops are not being worked on due to the extreme level of difficulty. Which translates into cost, over many years of research.

I’ve discussed this with people like Alex Zavoronkov (the AI drug discovery master) on one of those hard stops and he gave up the discussion, as have several others.

They have no time to waste on something that appears to have no solution. When they can solve something that will shortly result in an FDA approved therapy or drug.

If “they” don’t acknowledge the hardest things related to extending human life beyond the limit of 115 - 120, they keep their funding and the investors are happy.

The progress in solving cancer is now on a high speed train, so many great therapies now and many more in the pipeline. But when will all cancers be solved?

CVD?? not so much.

And there are things that are not a hard stop, just old fashioned pain and agony related to aging.

Arthritis?? no “cure” in sight. Extend my life span to 150 as an arthritic cripple? not interested.

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#9

I’d be perfectly fine (with it) if I died at 110 as long as I’m able to walk around the block and still drive my car at 105. And that is possible with what we have and what we know today IMO.

Anyone hoping to live past 120 is living a bit of pipe dream IMO.

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#10

To make the discussion concrete, can you name the main ones?

#11

And that is the health span argument.

Human life span is limited, we cannot increase it, but as you hope, health span is being increased and that is the train you are on :slight_smile:

Some argue the semantics of life span and longevity, that we have already increased “expected life span” with clean air, water, abundant food, health care, etc.

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#12

I could but I’ve already beaten my “dead horse” here several times :slight_smile:

I’d rather see what others can bring to the table on this one.

#13

Generally speaking, maybe, but in reality still not there. You can live on top of a mountain (plenty of clean air), you can drink of that crystal clear stream of snow melt water, and eat the freshest food there is, and have your annual doctor checkups, yet still drop dead at 80. The magic (on being healthy at 100, or 105) lies on exercise and preventative medicine which already exists IMO. One area which is still a bit of a wild card is the cancer issue. while there is things one can do to help, there is still no sure way of preventing that sucker. So, to that end we might need a bit of luck also. As far as the rest of old age maladies they are all preventable IMO. One just needs discipline, exercise, proper nutrition and a lot of small dose medications LOL (and some supplements probably).

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#14

I might remember you talking about the extra cellular matrix and/or elastin?

Anything else?

#15

I think it was elastin, telomerase activators without cancer and some things that need to be replaced that the body only produces once. VDPHL01 can potentially help you produce more elastin in certain parts of your body since it is basically just extended-release oral minoxidil. Telomerase activators we only have things that work in-vitro but probably not in-vivo.

#16

Unfortunately, any attempt to even suggest an approach right now and then to try to confidently promote it will be easily picked apart and ridiculed for being “naive” and “unrealistic”. Hundreds of reasons why it should fail will be drawn up with but a moment’s thought. However, I do believe the methods that are eventually used – whatever they may be – would seem chimerical to us today, e.g. what I describe here (little sub-millimeter robots):

(Though baby steps in this direction are here now: The Everything Technology and Longevity Thread - #214 by starspawn0 )

…

I believe completely new methods will be used because existing ones like using pharmaceutics seem too messy and imprecise a tool.

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#17

There is no rest until we prove that an intervention reverses the damage of aging and/or stops the process of aging.

I’d say with the current tools available we have reached the limit of longevity, but we are always getting new tools.

I’m confident that at least one thing from the Xprize is going to be a gamechanger, and that will change the paradigm and give people new avenues to research and encourage investors like never before.

Just that alone gives me hope for the future, but then we have independent science going on with Pump Science and the Million Molecule Challenge.

There are a lot of reasons to have hope.

When can we rest and live fully? Whenever we want but right now in this moment before we discover the next breakthrough how much do you want to “live”. By “live” do we mean do harmful damaging things like consume alcohol and other recreational drugs to enjoy the moment more?

There is nothing wrong with being more social if that’s what you mean by live, and that is proven to be healthy.

“No one wants to be the experiment.” doesn’t seem to be the case here haha. I am an insane N of 1 experiment.

I think we’re making good progress with the limited amount of resources and manpower we currently have and are one major breakthrough away from a dramatic escalation in manpower and resource investment which will truly put us into the all out war on aging. Whether that brings us to longevity escape velocity or not is a question we can only answer once the majority of people are on board.

Philosophically there is no reason why most people wouldn’t be supportive. For all of the strange cope rebuttals like overpopulation, immortal dictators, etc. No one wants to die (except a few suicidal people), no one wants to suffer, no one wants to age beyond their prime, no one wants their loved ones to die, no one wants their pets to die, people love high performance, people love excellence, people hate the diseases that aging causes, etc.

I still have faith in Aubrey de Greys prediction of RMR or the equivalent leading to a massive explosion in the longevity fields popularity and funding.

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#18

:point_up_2:

(Extra characters)

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#19

It’s like going to Mars perhaps not in our life time but we have to try!

#20

It’s like going to Mars made it happen in our lifetime but we need to try