The fact that we haven’t is a strong suggestion that the genes modify aging but only so much, and that even an extremely lucky favorable genetic makeup cannot overcome the fundamental damages that put hard limits on lifespan. I think this also means that epigenetic reprogramming may get us to age 120, but that it will be hard to get much beyond that with reprogramming alone.
Yes, in many cases that’s true, e.g. bats.
They’re both solvable at least to a significant extent, we just don’t have the technology yet. I agree that the finding that more than half of aging is determined by genes isn’t inherently bad, because that’s something that can be modified.
Yes, and I think that brick wall suggests some sort of biological ceiling, most likely accumulation of damages to long-lived structures. Damages that cannot be fully repairable by genetically controlled repair systems.
I mostly agree. 10-20 interventions seem like the minimum to overcome aging to a large extent, and we will likely need many more to get closer to full control.
Regarding nanomachines, I’m optimistic about them, but still very cautious. They will likely enable us to fix damages we can’t fix today, but they are not some magic solutions. They are still bound by physical constrains, in particular by size limits. The smallest theoretically possible nanomachines are still very large compared to many molecular damages and therefore may not be able to fix all such damages. But a lot depends on what you mean by a “machine”.