Optimus Bot and the Future

Throughout human history, civilizations have adopted relations of production that have enabled them to harness the full development of whatever technologies (productive forces) were available at the time -- from slave labour through to industrialization-- to produce things to meet material needs/preferences.  

I believe this historical trend will also (/already does) apply to robotics and the AI revolution.  Autonomous bot would, in effect, be the next "indentured servant" class for populations that have abated/ transcended the historical reliance on patriarchy and child labour. 

Cheers, 

Colin

Study on the “Illusion of Information Adequacy”

Interesting PLOS One study finds that, "because individuals rarely pause to consider what information they may be missing, they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation".  Helps to explain why the echo chamber of social media is dominated by so many overconfident pundits armchair theorizing about complex policy topics. The abstract:

How individuals navigate perspectives and attitudes that diverge from their own affects an array of interpersonal outcomes from the health of marriages to the unfolding of international conflicts. The finesse with which people negotiate these differing perceptions depends critically upon their tacit assumptions—e.g., in the bias of naïve realism people assume that their subjective construal of a situation represents objective truth. The present study adds an important assumption to this list of biases: the illusion of information adequacy. Specifically, because individuals rarely pause to consider what information they may be missing, they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation. Participants in our preregistered study (N = 1261) responded to a hypothetical scenario in which control participants received full information and treatment participants received approximately half of that same information. We found that treatment participants assumed that they possessed comparably adequate information and presumed that they were just as competent to make thoughtful decisions based on that information. Participants’ decisions were heavily influenced by which cross-section of information they received. Finally, participants believed that most other people would make a similar decision to the one they made. We discuss the implications in the context of naïve realism and other biases that implicate how people navigate differences of perspective.

Cheers,

Colin

Nature Aging Analysis on Radical Life Extension

Nature Aging has an excellent analysis piece on the future trends of life expectancy.  A sample:

We found that, since 1990, improvements overall in life expectancy have decelerated. Our analysis also revealed that resistance to improvements in life expectancy increased while lifespan inequality declined and mortality compression occurred. Our analysis suggests that survival to age 100 years is unlikely to exceed 15% for females and 5% for males, altogether suggesting that, unless the processes of biological aging can be markedly slowed, radical human life extension is implausible in this century.

Cheers, 

Colin

Obituary for Hayflick in Nature Aging

Cell aging researcher Leonard Hayflick (1929-2024) has passed and Nature Aging has a nice obituary here.   

While I never met him in person, last year we did share some email exchanges when he messaged me about the terminology of geroscience and biogerontology.  And his research on, and advocacy for, research on the biology of aging has influenced my own research.  This article is one of my favorite papers of his, which I often cite.  

A sample from the obituary:

Len’s most notable discovery was his demonstration of the finite replicative capacity of normal human diploid cell strains. Len remarked that he was unaware at the time of the prediction of August Weismann in the late 19th century that “death takes place because a worn-out tissue cannot forever renew itself, and because a capacity for increase by means of cell division is not everlasting but finite” (personal communication with M.D.W.). But he was, however, quite aware of the then-prevailing consensus that cultured cells — if provided the proper conditions for growth — would proliferate endlessly. This view was supported by research that demonstrated the long-term continuous passage of cells in vitro, including the tumor-derived HeLa cell strain and chick heart-derived cells (which had been shown to continuously proliferate for up to seven years in culture, during which time the authors Carrel and Ebeling calculated that if all cells produced during this expansion had been retained, the total mass of the cells would have exceeded the mass of the sun1).

Cheers,

Colin 

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Metformin and Brain Aging

Nature news has an interesting piece on this study which examined the impact of metformin on the brain aging of monkeys. Encouraging findings. 

A sample from the news item:

A low-cost diabetes drug slows ageing in male monkeys and is particularly effective at delaying the effects of ageing on the brain, finds a small study that tracked the animals for more than three years1. The results raise the possibility that the widely used medication, metformin, could one day be used to postpone ageing in humans.

Monkeys that received metformin daily showed slower age-associated brain decline than did those not given the drug. Furthermore, their neuronal activity resembled that of monkeys about six years younger (equivalent to around 18 human years) and the animals had enhanced cognition and preserved liver function.

Cheers, 

Colin 

New Book!

 

Feels great to hold the finished product!

Cheers, 

Colin

The Genetics of Reproductive Longevity

Nature news has this interesting piece on two studies on the age of onset of menopause.  Some (rare) genes are implicated in premature menopause.  A sample:

One factor that could trigger that early menopause is the accumulation of DNA mutations in a person’s eggs. Such mutations can trigger the repair of the eggs’ DNA — or they can cause the eggs to self-destruct. The eggs’ response to DNA damage is key in determining egg number, says Murray. “And it’s egg number that determines your reproductive lifespan.”

Mutations can also increase cancer risk, and variants in four of the genes that the team uncovered were linked not only to early menopause but also to a higher risk of cancer.

...The team found that women who carried common DNA variants that previous research had associated with earlier age at menopause were more likely to pass mutations that had arisen in their eggs to their offspring.

The two studies mentioned in the news piece are here and here.

Cheers, 

Colin