ACXLW Longevity (special guest speaker) 9/2/23
Hello Folks!
We are excited to announce the 41st Orange County ACX/LW meetup, happening this Saturday and most Saturdays thereafter.
Host: Michael Michalchik
Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests)
Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place
(949) 375-2045
Date: Saturday, Sept 2, 2023
Time: 2 PM
This Saturday we are fortunate to have a special guest speaker, Professor Michael Rose, one of the leading researchers in the world on the evolution of aging and scientific strategies for health and life extension. His experiments and analysis point towards a heterodox approach to human life extension that has immediate implications on lifestyle and that provides a new scientific paradigm to develop advanced life extension technologies.
Please read the following outline of his research and approach to healthy long life, and bring your questions, comments, and criticisms for the presentation and lively discussion that will follow.
This link is the summary:
https://55theses.org/the-55-theses/
The full text starts on this web page and continues on linked pages in the sidebar:
https://55theses.org/2011/03/18/thesis-1/
Or, if you want the 55 theses on evolutionary strategies for aging and commentary, a full-length PDF is here:
https://michaelroses55.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/55-theses-explained-final.pdf
A 20 minute audio is available here:
https://youtu.be/vd6Dm978dbg?si=_X6noVVrCKw9T-tD
Embracing the power of evolution to stop aging | Dr. Michael Rose
Walk & Talk: We usually have an hour-long walk and talk after the meeting starts. Two mini-malls with hot takeout food are easily accessible nearby. Search for Gelson’s or Pavilions in the zip code 92660.
Share a Surprise: Tell the group about something unexpected that changed your perspective on the universe.
Future Direction Ideas: Contribute ideas for the group’s future direction, including topics, meeting types, activities, etc.
Here is a summary from Claude 2:
Aging as a Decline in Adaptation
Aging reflects a progressive decline in adaptation due to weakening natural selection after the onset of reproduction, not inherent biochemical deterioration. Some organisms exhibit no senescence, demonstrating that aging is not inevitable.
Experimental Evolution of Aging
Shifting onset of reproduction in fruit flies quickly changes lifespan and aging rates, demonstrating the malleability of aging by altering natural selection.
Role of Natural Selection in Patterns of Aging
Comparative biology reveals correlations between ecological mortality factors and aging rates, evidencing the role of natural selection in shaping aging.
Human Aging in Evolutionary Context
Humans likely evolved slow aging due to reduced extrinsic mortality from tools, hunting, and sociality attenuating the age-dependent decline in the forces of natural selection.
Impact of Agriculture on Human Aging
Agriculture initially decreased health but populations adapted genetically to cereal and milk diets, primarily during high selection pressure juvenile phases. Older adults retain poor adaptation to agriculture.
Cessation of Aging
There is a late-life cessation of aging where mortality/fertility plateaus due to negligible natural selection. Some populations may exhibit early cessation, investigable with hunter-gatherer lifestyles and medicine. Experiments shifting cessation of reproduction alter timing of aging cessation in flies, demonstrating it is evolvable.
Antagonistic Pleiotropy
Trade-offs between early reproduction and late survival due to antagonistic pleiotropy of genetic variants accelerate senescence. Natural selection favors sacrificing later health for early fertility due to asymmetric forces of natural selection declining with age.
Evolutionary Basis for Life Extension
Evolutionary experimental research provides the strongest framework for understanding the plasticity of aging rates and cessation. Mainstream molecular damage theories inadequately explain aging. Aging should be understood as an evolvable decline in adaptation amenable to genetic and environmental manipulation.
It seems to me that one of the trickier parts of this issue is that you don’t know what you don’t know. You’ve got the places in your emotional landscape that you’re used to visiting, and that’s where your attention naturally goes when you try to do a self-assessment. Reminds me a bit of something I learned in adolescence that when you’re playing hide and seek, people are really bad at remembering to look up; I’ve even had a friend that eluded police chasing him in the park by simply getting out of immediate few and then climbing up into the foliage of a tree. He saw the police walk right underneath him.
How do you break outside of the familiar? I think there are several, at least.
Don’t hold yourself back from floundering around. Babies engage in Fairly random motions in order to learn how their body works. It’s a kind of search routine even if it does seem haphazard and pointless. A true random walk may not be optimal but it does tend to cover unfamiliar ground eventually.
Put yourself into situations that are unfamiliar and don’t shut yourself off from them. You don’t necessarily have to pick the most unpleasant or aversive things that you’ve never done. But there should be good and bad novelty, and probably a whole lot of just weird. Give yourself a little bit of time in the new place so that you know What feelings emerge after your initial wariness to new situations.
Spend quiet time with yourself, meditation or other reflective times and simply concentrate on feelings. Abstract emotions and just feelings in your body and look for the small things oh, the things that you would normally ignore and let them emerge. They may be the tip of an iceberg.
Look to those times in your life that you seemed to have a diminished range of emotions compared to what people are supposed to have in those situations. If you don’t know what people are supposed to have in those situations oh, you probably should read more classic fiction from a variety of authors. I suggest both male and female authors because for whatever reasons it seems that there are different parts of the emotional spectrum that get covered. A lot of the Nobel prize-winning authors are quite good explorers of The Human Condition. For me, I’ve enjoyed Hermann Hesse and Doris Lessing oh, a lot of people like William Faulkner and James Joyce.