Aging

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“”The good Lord lets us grow old for a reason; to gain the wisdom to find fault with everything He's made.

—Grandpa Simpson, Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy

Aging describes physical, psychological, and social changes that take place over time. Aging in humans initially brings benefits, such as being able to get into bars and R-rated movies, but tends to end rather badly, with a deterioration in physical and mental abilities.

It is estimated that 100% of humans suffer from aging, with most cases resulting in death. This unpleasant conclusion motivates efforts to understand and alter the aging process. Also, it's rich territory for those who seek to extend life through religion, pseudoscientific "elixirs of life", and, of course, the cosmetics industry.

That said, for reasons as yet not understood there are a few people who don't seem to age(though epigenetically they still grow old). To put it mildly, said people endure a horrendous existence. All of a sudden it doesn't seem so bad, if it means not being trapped in a child's body and mind forever.

Why do humans physically age?

We don't really know yet, but scientists have provided some theories trying to explain the reasons. Leonard Hayflick, a Professor of Medical Microbiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, proposed an inbuilt life-span for cells. In 2009 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for their work in establishing that telomeres were part of the mechanism that prevented chromosomal deterioration, forming a kind of biological clock. Telomeres decrease in number as the cell ages, over time increasing the likelihood of deterioration.

Not all cells are subject to this biological clock, a failure of this mechanism being a reason why cancer cells can multiply out of control. Cells are split in to two categories in this regard: mortal and immortal. Immortal cells maintain their number of telomeres, while mortal cells have a finite number of divisions.

This limit on cell division is believed to be the reason why humans physically age, and, in their autumn years, deteriorate in physical condition.

Other explanations involve evolutionary theories, such as the disposable soma theory.

Religious explanation

We age and deteriorate because:

• God is powerless to prevent it.
• God can prevent it, but wants us to suffer.
• The Devil did it.

Pick any two.

Anti-aging

Theoretically, aging might be avoidable. Today, anti-aging research is a multi-billion dollar industry. Very rich people are very serious about solving this using the scientific method, and although you can find an absolute plethora of opportunistic quacks, there is a real body of researchers doing genuine work in that field. As of today, there is no known 'cure' for growing old, even though it is being worked on, claims to the contrary should probably be met with a dose of scepticism.

In reality, the increment of life expectancy is slowing down, the maximal average lifespan of a population is predicted to be around 85-87, and it is unlikely that the percentage of people living to 100 years old will ever exceed 15% for females and 5% for males without breakthrough ways that can slow aging. Moreover, despite the impressive developments in computer technology and artificial intelligence in recent decades, the progress of scientific and technological innovation is slowing down in general, especially in medicine, as pointed out by Eroom's law. The progression of computer technology has thus far failed to translate to medicine, which means we should not realistically expect that there will be big breakthrough in medicine in the near future.

Even worse, people who propose to solve each cause of aging, like Aubrey de Grey, may have underappreciated the simple fact that the body is a system, there are immense interactions between different parts of the body, and the interactions between problems caused by different parts of the system can worsen the problem of the whole system in an exponential manner. Therefore, even if each cause of aging is solvable on its own, it does not mean aging itself will be solved. Assuming that aging can be cured or significantly delayed because each cause of aging has a way to solve is a textbook example of the fallacy of composition.

Also, assume the seven causes of aging, as stated by the strategies for engineered negligible senescence proposed by Aubrey de Grey, and assume that each one of them may interact with the other ones, then in theory we need to consider $\mathrm {C} _{1}^{7}+\mathrm {C} _{2}^{7}+\mathrm {C} _{3}^{7}+\mathrm {C} _{4}^{7}+\mathrm {C} _{5}^{7}+\mathrm {C} _{6}^{7}+\mathrm {C} _{7}^{7}=2^{7}-1=127$ ways to deal with aging; considering the 12 hallmarks of aging as proposed more recently, following a similar reason, we would need $2^{12}-1=4095$ ways to deal with aging.

Even assuming the simplest scenario, with the 7 cause theory of strategies for engineered negligible senescence, and assume that scientists on average can discover the solution each year with the assistance of AGI, and assume that each solution needs 10 years to validate and another 10 years to reach the market, and assume that all proposed solution can hit the market on time, then that means we need at least 147 years to beat aging, which means nobody that has been born will see the day in which aging is cured. Not to mention that the actual situation is way much more worse and drug development has a high rate of failure, both of which means the actual time would be much longer.

Now consider that each of the so-called causes in Aubrey de Grey's theory or the more recent proposed hallmarks is a summation of a variety of causes with similar reasons on its own, it is likely that there are much more actual causes of aging, thus the number for actual cures neeeded would only grow exponentially, perhaps to the degree that the number of all actual causes is so large that even the the fastest computer theoretically possible won't be able to deal with it. And there has been research suggesting that aging is a complex process between different causes within a complex network, therefore it is unlikely that solving one or few causes would reverse aging.

So no, even if the singularity is near, it does not mean aging will be cured, not to mention that the singularity itself might be a religion for people who think they are too smart to follow a conventional religion. And so far the only rational way to live forever is still by having children and creations, so that parts of you would still live on the Earth.

In a nutshell, the average life expectancy is highly unlikely to go beyond 85-87 without slowing or reversing aging, and it is also not very likely that aging will be slowed or reversed either. Thus, the most reasonable expectation is that we will all get old and die in a conventional pace.

Is aging even a problem?

Aging is known to be associated with a lot of diseases, like cancer, heart diesease, stroke, diabetes, etc. not to mention the universal signs like the disfiguring sags and wrinkles, whitening and (mostly in males) balding hair, loss of muscle mass, etc. On the other hand, aging itself is not seen as a disease and there have been scientists that have argued against classifying aging as a disease. Despite that, due to aging-related diseases and the loss of look and vitality, aging can look horrendous to some, if not many, and it may make people panic to imagine a future where the street is full of old men and women.

However, it has been pointed out that aging itself may not even be a problem, and the real problem is ageism i.e. our attitudes towards old people. Besides, below are some simple fact about aging:

1. Everyone gets old.
2. Conventional wisdom always tells us that look is not all that important.
3. We gain meaningful experiences that can make life better.
4. Old people can still be healthy despite the aged look and body.
5. Old people can still be open to new concepts and learn new things.
6. Old people can still be productive and contributing to the community.
7. Potential productivity loss caused by an aging population could be compensed with immigration and better productive process like automation.
8. It is not justifiable to hate your parents or grand-parents or anyone just because they are old.
9. Some if not many people already think they live longer than what they want, and there are more people who don't want to live too long than people who want to live forever.

Following these, there are good reasons to believe that aging itself is not even a problem to really worry about, at least on a population level(at personal level, it is really your own business), and a street full of old men and women may not be all that horrible after all.

See also

• Death
• Biology
• Cryonics
• Immortality
• Demographic crisis

External links

• See the Wikipedia article on Gerascophobia.
• Wikia article: “Gerascophobia”.