I want to distinguish between longevity and immortality: I believe that longevity refers specifically to increasing human healthspan whereas immortality is the meta cause area which includes longevity (and other cause areas related to not dying) underneath its umbrella but itself [immortality] is specifically: the overall effort to eliminate every possible cause of death (e.g. another germane cause area that isn’t longevity could be human mind uploading or mind backup & restore capabilities or indestructibility related body modifications, and more). Part of that distinguishing will involve mapping out other coherent cause areas underneath immortality.
This makes sense. We can actually distinguish three concepts:
Immortality: living forever, an unlimited or extremely long expected lifespan.
Longevity: decreasing the death rate
Anti-aging: decreasing the death “acceleration” that occurs as an organism ages
Naked mole rats don’t appear to live as long as humans, so they have lower longevity. However, there is some research showing that naked mole rats don’t seem to age, meaning that they are no more likely to die at age 35 than they were at age 3.
An organism could in theory be extremely short-lived, while also not aging. We could imagine a bug that has a 50% chance of dying every day, but always has the same 50% chance per day of dying. By contrast, an American’s life expectancy is 78 years of age, but their chance of dying increases year by year once they’re past early childhood. I’d like to understand
Best of luck with your research! I’m in a biomedical engineering graduate program and am interested in anti-aging, but haven’t researched the subject as I haven’t had time. Let me know if you have biology related questions however!
Thank you! Right now it seems like I’ll be doing more organizing than research, but I intend to increase the research I do over time. Organizing in this space (i.e. community building for immortality studies & related things) seems like a comparative advantage for me at the moment relative to other actions.
A minor quibble because I agree with the three concepts you mentioned and how you used them, but I think increasing healthspan covers what you referred to as anti-aging. To increase a human’s healthspan, one must necessarily decrease that “acceleration” and also do a few other things: rejuvenation biology, preventative medicine, holistic care (better diets, better & more exercise, etc.).
This makes sense. We can actually distinguish three concepts:
Immortality: living forever, an unlimited or extremely long expected lifespan.
Longevity: decreasing the death rate
Anti-aging: decreasing the death “acceleration” that occurs as an organism ages
Naked mole rats don’t appear to live as long as humans, so they have lower longevity. However, there is some research showing that naked mole rats don’t seem to age, meaning that they are no more likely to die at age 35 than they were at age 3.
An organism could in theory be extremely short-lived, while also not aging. We could imagine a bug that has a 50% chance of dying every day, but always has the same 50% chance per day of dying. By contrast, an American’s life expectancy is 78 years of age, but their chance of dying increases year by year once they’re past early childhood. I’d like to understand
Best of luck with your research! I’m in a biomedical engineering graduate program and am interested in anti-aging, but haven’t researched the subject as I haven’t had time. Let me know if you have biology related questions however!
Thank you! Right now it seems like I’ll be doing more organizing than research, but I intend to increase the research I do over time. Organizing in this space (i.e. community building for immortality studies & related things) seems like a comparative advantage for me at the moment relative to other actions.
A minor quibble because I agree with the three concepts you mentioned and how you used them, but I think increasing healthspan covers what you referred to as anti-aging. To increase a human’s healthspan, one must necessarily decrease that “acceleration” and also do a few other things: rejuvenation biology, preventative medicine, holistic care (better diets, better & more exercise, etc.).