Monthly Archives: October 2016

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Don’t try to extend your life span, instead, improve your health span

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Dr. Vijg, an expert on aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, says humans will never get older than 115. The paragraphs below are from this New York Times article.

New York Times 06 October 2016, Science section

Some of those improvements have come from quitting smoking and having better diets. Antibiotics and drugs for chronic disorders like heart disease have also helped. But all of the improvements of modern life, Dr. Guarente and others argue, have not turned back the underlying biological process of aging.

Based on his own experimental research, Dr. Vijg describes aging as the accumulation of damage to DNA and other molecules. Our bodies can slow the process by repairing some of this damage. But in the end it’s too much to fix.

“At some point everything goes wrong, and you collapse,” Dr. Vijg said.

The best hope for our species is not to extend our life spans, Dr. Vijg argues, but to lengthen our years of healthy living — with healthy habits and perhaps drugs that can repair some of the cellular damage that comes with time.

“There’s a good chance to improve health span — that’s the most important thing,” Dr. Vijg said.

You know how…. the old standards do work. Watch your diet, do regular exercise, beware of stress (perhaps meditate) and visit your doctor at least annually.

“Your experiences today will influence the molecular composition of your body for the next two to three months, or, perhaps, for the rest of your life. Plan your day accordingly.” – Steve Cole

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Some thoughts from October 2016

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Random quotes from magazines.

Nature 20 October 2016 World View

It’s worth noting that a conscious superintelligent AI might actually be less dangerous than a non-conscious one, because, at least in humans, one process that puts the brakes on immoral behaviors is ‘affective empathy’: the emotional contagion that makes a person feel what they perceive another to be feeling. Maybe conscious AIs would care about us more than unconscious ones would.

There is a chance that the first superintelligent AI will be the only one we will ever make. This is because once it appears – conscious or not – it can improve itself and start changing the world according to its own values.

Science 21 October 2016 Science Lessons for the Next President

As the world warms, its oceans are swelling by an average of 3.2 millimeters a year; they have risen by nearly the height of a playing card since 1993. Some 40% of this increase stems from the physical expansion of water as it heats. The rest is mostly caused by melting mountain glaciers and retreating ice sheets in Greenland.

Because of regional geology, ocean currents, and shifts in gravitational pull caused by changes on Earth’s surface, such as the melting of massive ice sheets, the ocean does not rise evenly everywhere. Much of the East Coast is sinking as Earth’s mantle continues to adjust in complex ways to the disappearance of weighty ice age glaciers. …. These forces mean East Coast sea levels are rising at double the global rate, and at triple the average in Virginia and many points north.

Just a quote

“People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.” – Pedro Domingos in his 2015 book The Master Algorithm

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Fall, Snow, Fall

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Fall, snow, fall; sunlight wither and die
Away to warmth geese fly
Fire crackle in the hearth
Snow drifts on the sleeping earth
As cold blows by, an icy branch quakes
My wet tongue catches falling flakes
The buffeting wind speaks to my soul
As my frostbitten toes rest by hot wood coal

by Jamie
September 2016