Talks at Google
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2020–2021
55:14 · 2.2M views · Oct 10, 2019
Harvard geneticist David Sinclair discusses his book Lifespan at Google. He covers the biology of aging, lifestyle interventions and possible future ways to slow or reverse it.
Shared as the author's own hour-long overview of his aging research, though some commenters doubt that the book's claims hold up.
3 comments from Hacker News
Seems like many people are new to this concept and feel skeptical so here are some useful resources: * Kurzgesagt: How to Cure Aging – During Your Lifetime? (7:20) [LINK] * Kurzgesagt: Why Age? Should We End Aging Forever? (6:48) [LINK] * Why we should cure ageing (11:30) - Heads up, it's a book intro [LINK] * Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old (Book, not yet released in the US) [LINK] * Lifespan: Why we age and why we don't have to (book) [LINK] * Google talk: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To (55:13) - By the author of the book this video Edit: * If you wish to contribute to this kind of research make sure to check out SENS: [LINK]
This is not a great article. It leaves out Dr. Sinclairs work, further developing discoveries by Dr. Yamanaka specifically around the four transcription factors (Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-myc), turning any cells back into pluripotent stem cells. More important, leaving c-myc disabled, the cell reverts to a younger age. This is what Dr. Sinclair has been working on recently, to completely reverse macular degeneration. He has been able to regrow damaged optic nerves all the way from the eye back to the brain. Here is a talk he did at Google [1] He briefly talks about the ethics of this here [2]. [1] - this video [2] - [LINK]
"At another point in the discussion, a man spoke of some benefit X of death, I don't recall exactly what. And I said: "You know, given human nature, if people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing. But if you took someone who wasn't being hit on the head with a baseball bat, and you asked them if they wanted it, they would say no. I think that if you took someone who was immortal, and asked them if they wanted to die for benefit X, they would say no."" [0] [0]: [LINK] There's no (physics based) reason we have to die, just like there was no reason for all the deaths in child birth in early human history. It's a failure of our current capabilities. I don't know if any of the claims in Lifespan [1] hold up, but if they do stopping aging may be easier than people previously thought. Either way - I'm hoping we figure it out sooner rather than later. [1]: this video