SCIENCE: 'Ageless' animals might give clues on aging in humans.

[Logan Darklighter]

FASTER, PLEASE: ‘Ageless’ animals give scientists clues on how to overcome the aging process.
I guess the major thing I'm seeing here is that the two major factors in the aging process are the eroding Telomeres and 'free-radicals'.
Now I wonder if emerging nano-tech devices could clean up the body and repair the Telomere's (genetic 'damage') of aging? If so - sign me up!
I don't necessarily need to live forever, but I'd like to retain my youthful appearance and health right up to the end. Seems a bit unfair that just as you're getting a handle on how things work in this world that the "warranty" begins to run out.
One thing I've wondered - how long can we live on in practical terms of mind and memory if our bodies become near immortal?
In one of the earlier Ghost in the Shell works by Shirow, he basically opined (through his characters) that you can't live forever even if your body could because memory storage would outstrip the brain's capacity (or any cyberbrain).
Even now, there's chunks of my early life that I can only dimly recall. Certain things stand out of course. Certain memories stay indelibly with you. But the stuff in-between goes away. You start to lose context. There's relatively little of my life before the age of 10 that I can recall with crystal clarity. Maybe about 20-30% if I'm generous. I know certain things occurred. And when, but often it's almost more a "memory of a memory". Ironically I remember certain TV shows better than my own life during that time!
Thoughts?

[Black Aeronaut]

It's there still. Stuff that I've found in an old weblog I used to keep brings back the memories associated with the journal entrees.

[Sweno]

Extending human lifespan, and extending productive human lifespan (the time which you can be a contributing member of society) are both very cool and very hard problems.
I personally doubt that we will get anything close to nano-machines that will crawl around our cells repairing dna. Merely because we have much better tools at our disposal, Viruses!
We are already getting to the point where custom tailored viruses (virii? whatever) can be used to treat autoimmune diseases and certain types of leukemia. A more general approach rewriting cells to address human aging will only be a matter of time (the important question is: is it going to be soon enough to matter in my lifetime).

I believe that once we are able to fully grock tumors (they seems to have swung too far into the immoral cell zone) we will have a much better idea about how to safely extend telomeres in humans.

If anyone wants to listen to people far smatter than me talk about things like this I would highly recommend Futures In Biotech (especially episodes 65 71 73 and 74)

And as you have pointed out logan it's not a question of storage, it's a question of filtering. Deciding on what to stick in long term storage and how to interconnect that with our brains. That is an entirely separate topic, and something that people are going to be very cautious poking at.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Bob Schroeck]

At least one theory I've seen posits that memory is stored in something analogous to the interference patterns that define a hologram instead of a "computer memory" type model, in which case the potential storage space far outstrips our current needs. And it's not just filtering, it's also indexing and retrieval that're key limiters on human memory.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Ankhani]

In terms of memory, storage is effectively infinite.
Things are still there, but a lot of memory is context and/or sense dependent. Unless you're like the famous HM who could not forget anything, you simply can't recall things that aren't important to you or stimulated by some sort of context. Memory and Consciousness are the two big Black Boxes of Psychology, but the important thing is remembering too much stuff is not good. You remember what you need to, what's important to you right now. If you were distracted by the names of your fourth-grade classmates and what you had for dinner last week, recalling things would be hard to pin down.
---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

[Duane Peters]

Why exactly would I *want* to live longer? I'm diabetic; there's never going to be a cure for that as long as it remains a cash cow for the pharmaceutical companies. I already can't retire until I'm 72; this would of course extend that. I've got cancer in both sides of my family; again, drug company cash cow.
And furthermore, even if this works, what makes you think that the likes of you or I would ever be able to afford it? Hell, I can't afford health insurance now. How many of us have had plastic surgery to make us look like supermodels or movie stars? Maybe a complete set of dental caps to improve and correct your smile? If you can't afford something as trivial as these procedures, how are you going to afford the literal Fountain of Youth?
I'll tell you how..by mortgaging your entire future to the damn drug companies. Not me. I'll take my appointed span and die satisfied, thanks; not leaving my grandchildren and grandchildren's grandchildren (metaphorically speaking) in debt from birth to death.