You dirty bastard!

As asked in the poll the 125 year limit may be achieved by one or two lucky (or unlucky, depending on the point of view) individuals for purely statistical reasons. For all we know lifespan is genetically encoded. All advances so far improve on the quality of life, aka healthy aging, but don't move the goal post. I can see two paths to move the limit: genetically modifying humans, or finding a way to replace cells, tissues or organs with fresh ones. The second path will be a bit hard to implement with the brain, as replacing even individual cells will mean wiping out information... who needs 1000 year old babies?

The more important question is what is the point of living longer? As somebody already pointed out there already is too many of us on Earth.

Just yesterday I tested ChatGPT on questions for molecular genetics exam I plan to give students this week. ChatGPT has a decent chance at a B grade. Answers are very well written. If only reproduction of well established knowledge is required the answers are excellent most of the time (except when it tries to "volunteer" information that the question is not asking for specificaly). In followup questions that aim to clarify details or logic it fails very quickly and in a way that is very similar to a liar that has been caught or a student that is trying to mask that they don't know the answer: it starts providing verbose, repetitive and circuitous answers that pile on flaws. The reasons are two fold: algorithm based on associations that has no means of distinguishing fact from fiction, and reliance on information that has been repeated multiple times on the internet.

Whether it will undermine education depends on how people in education adapt to it. I have been transitioning to take home open-book exams for my students because I feel it is impossible to know everything and is more important to be able to find, critically review and synthesize information. This was until know slow process because it requires a lot more work both in the way we teach and the way we test. It is much easier to run the multiple choice exam conveyor. I guess I will be forced to move faster now, and perhaps modify the exam to add verbal Q&A sessions with the students (more work ....). Other faculty are reacting by moving to tightly proctored exams or looking for tools that would detect AI generated answers.

Are you suggesting to go straight to human trials without evidence that the drugs can be safe and effective? Is giving money to people somehow makes experimenting on the ethical? What kind of ethics is that?

The article you cite is BS. Here is a quote from the article describing its premise:

The statement that subtle differences between species outweigh the similarities between them is patently false. They claim "growing body of evidence" but fail to cite a single reference. The lie is mixed with a half-truth, that clinical trials fail because of the subtle differences between species. This is indeed the case in some trails, but it is far from being a main cause for clinical trail failure. The logic appears to be: differences between species create problems with clinical trails, hence we have to test only on humans. This is insane. Mammals, including mice and primates, are extremely similar to humans in 99% of their physiology, pathology and genetics. As we go along we learn more about the subtle differences and incorporate that in the trial process. Tests in animals are used to demonstrate that the drug has an effect and can be safe before moving it to human trails. There are two key ethical tenants when doing human trails. First, you need to have evidence that the benefit outweighs the risk. The second is that you need to receive informed consent from the subject. Informed means that the person knows and understands the risks.

How can you ethically give a drug to humans without the evidence gathered in animal trials? What is the plan now? We skip animal trials offer, some cash to a bunch of poor people, preferably in a country that we can't get brought to court, and we go straight to human trials safety and ethics be damned. The result will be that more people will die in trials and more quack treatments will be pushed to desperate patients

So they are making quicklime? Some tech bro's have come up with a process that everyone else new for thousands of years. Making quicklime requires a lot of heath, which traditionally was from burning charcoal or coal. How do they heat their limestone? We must be running out of original ideas for new tech scams. This is decidedly lower tech compared to crypto.

This, and it is also a major outlet for narcissism. So Elon may be onto something by asking users to pay. I bet there will be enough narcissists and "conflictual minded individuals", needing to satisfy their urge to cover the bills. I would suggest instead of fixed payment to have a cost scale with matching "perks" that make the users feel proportionally more important. Who knows, this may even be the "holy grail" business model that finally will treat the users as actual clients rather then a product (Nah, just joking. Internet users will always be the merchandise).

As a public suervice here is the original article in Cell and here is the PR-announcement from Stanford .

It is very nice and extensive work. TLDR skipping over 90% of the work: Identified ~160 common microbial species from human gut; managed to get cultures of about ~100 from them to construct a "microbiome" version 1; put the version 1 "microbiom" in mice that were stripped from their own microbiomes and showed that it works.; finally fed the mice human s*it and found another 15 species filled niches in the version 1 of the microbiome to produce version 2.

This is very significant work that has immediate practical impact for cancer patients, patients who have been treated with extensive antibiotic therapy, or patients with certain nasty intestinal infections like recurring Clostridium that may be lethal. There has always been the possibility to give these patients "fecal transplants" but these are very risky, because you cannot guarantee that you not going to give the patient something even nastier. Now with well define microbiome, you know exactly what you are giving the patient and it should be possible to it safely.

What will be the jobs of the future:

1. Neuro lawyer (win in court by manipulating the brains of the jury)

2. Drone swarm whisperer (Want to swarm someone you don't like? Drones buzzing your property? Call the drone whisperer!)

3. Brain engineer (custom brain designs and upgrades)

4. Mars dictator (Once we become an interplanetary species)

5. COBOL code maintainer (Still cheaper on the quarterly budget than rewriting the code base)

6. Mega farmer (people will still need to eat, and Bill Gates is buying up the farmland)

7. Drinking water purveyor

8. Religious cult leader (oldie but goodie)

9. Provider of custom grassroots political movements

... any other ideas?

... Space Cowboy Neal

That line is correct. The Weinberg's "hallmarks of cancer" a generic features that a blob of cells typically needs to exhibit in order to be called a cancer. They are not rules. They are also so generic that they completely mask the bilogical diversity and complexity that leads to each one of them: "sustained proliferation signaling", "activate invasion and metastasis", "resist cell death"... If anything the hallmarks of cancer are misleading, because they create the impression that we are doing with a very simple problem. The problem in finding cure for cancer is not that we do not understand it. We understand it well enough to know that for many cancers cure mey not be possible and that every cancer will need a different treatment.