> The notion that somehow aging is “special” and therefore shouldn’t be regulated like “normal” diseases is not convincing. The same argument could be made about any number of other conditions. For example cancer – for years we’ve been told it’s not one disease but hundreds of diseases, and therefore we need to think about it differently. And yet, cancer medications including personalized therapies such as CAR-T seem perfectly capable of getting approved within the existing framework of the FDA.
This seems to miss the main point about regulation that the longevity researchers face. Aging is not recognized as a disease by the FDA, so aging treatments are not allowed to have the same treatment and development pipeline.
To 'be regulated like “normal” diseases' is in fact what many longevity companies would benefit from.
There's no need for the FDA to recognize aging itself as a disease to get a therapy through clinical trials. If you have a working aging-prevention or aging-reversal therapy, pick one of many age-associated diseases like arthritis or osteoporosis. Run a trial showing that it successfully and safely treats that specific condition. Once it's approved for any condition it can be approved off-label for other conditions by a willing physician.
> Aging is not recognized as a disease by the FDA, so aging treatments are not allowed to have the same treatment and development pipeline
This is valid but immaterial
criticism. There are no treatments reaching their clinical endpoints in a rigorous way. The FDA isn’t blocking anything because nothing has made it to its level. That makes complaining about the FDA putting the cart before the horse at best and a red herring for certain personalities at worst.
The reason it is causally related is that if you were to not push the pedal at any of those instances, the car would move slower than if you were to push it faster.
There's also a causal effect from biking to showering, although there are a few other things in the causal path such as getting sweaty. If you walked home instead of biking, you might avoid the shower. So biking does cause you take a shower.
> if you were to not push the pedal at any of those instance
That's the key to it IMHO. There has to be isolation for identifying causal relationships. Science is the work to be sure you're measuring the thinnest partial derivative.
I'd generalize it to "All else being equal"
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On another note, I believe there are classes in causality, arranged in a hierarchy. If you're studying the 'physical' class (level 0), you'll end up with causators in the same level or higher ('system' class, level 1).
In our case the 'all things being equal' has to take account of an instance of a higher class (the human 'system' regulating the fuel input with the pedal)
The level 2 would be system of systems; for example processes like the Darwinian evolution.
It's precisely this 'at any of those instances' and 'path' of causations that aren't sitting comfortably with me; primarily the first, but when it interacts with the latter and things are related by physics and derivatives w.r.t. time say, it's not any of more a causal factor than any other input?
If all we mean by 'x causes y' is that 'y is a function of (perhaps among other things) x', then.. fine?
I made up these phrases to give a simple explanation instead of causal inference terms, and they are probably not good terms, so sorry for the confusion.
If I describe it in more standard vocabulary, 'at any of those instances' refer to doing interventions (such as randomized controlled trials).
A buyback does not trigger a taxable event, unlike a dividend. So the tax deferred value of buybacks is compounded over the years, which can be significant.
Yes, I'm surprised more HN folk don't call out #1. To be clear, the author is purporting that lower performance on an IQ test when doing another task means multitasking implies that a lower IQ. This seems crazy to me, but maybe I've been multitasking too much.
I have a SpiffChorder [1] built by Greg Priest-Dorman. It has 7 keys (three for thumb). I can write at about 40-50 wps and code in emacs reasonably, but it is slower, so I only use it when I am eating something or have one hand busy. Greg mentioned having two keyboards in each hand should be faster than a single traditional keyboard, but I never tried that.
Another tooth restorative product that is hard to find in the USA is CPP-ACP (Recaldent). Apparently there are some regulatory issues with this product as well. It's available in the USA as MI Paste, and in other countries as Recaldent gum. I was interested in this for a while as it seems promising and you can feel the anti-plaque slickness effect, but on the other hand, the research tends to be in lesser-known journals, which is suspicious to me.
Recaldent gum used to be widely available in the US. I was a big fan of the trident gum variety, which had recaldent and was sweetened with xylitol.
It was a solid product but it just disappeared one day. And unfortunately the shelf life for that gum was a bit worse than usual, so hoarding isn’t a great strategy.
I think last time I was able to get it was around 2010.
Edit: something is going wrong in American regulation of dental products. I should not have to illegally buy smuggled toothpaste and gum from Europe and Canada in order to maintain my dental health. I don’t understand how that makes anyone safer and regulators haven’t said why Americans are at risk in a way that Europeans aren’t.
This is indeed cool. A lazier and less efficient solution for those that don't want to take apart the computer is synergy (https://symless.com/synergy and https://github.com/symless/synergy-core) which lets you share keyboard/mouse and clipboard over multiple computers.
Can you expand on why you think it's weird and wrong to charge for software?
I'm not a developer and I first discovered Syngerg about 10 years ago when I was working physical infrastructure and physical security in a data centre, and used it across my work provided Windows desktop and my personal (BYOD) Macbook Air.
If I recall correctly I was able to use it for free initially, but as soon as I discovered I could pay for it I did.
In the specific case of Synergy, because it was originally open source and free. The people using the name Synergy now have sort of hijacked it. Synergy originated at SGI.
Isn't often heard around HN that it's ok to charge for Open Source software ? If you don't want to pay for it, you're free to choose not to, but if others want to pay, what's in it for you?
BTW the parts of Synergy that were Open Source are still Open Source, so you're free to download those and build them yourself if you so choose.
They don’t make it very easy to do so - my understanding is that’s essentially what Barrier is (making it easy to use the open source parts of Synergy).
The natural follow up question is "Are Hacker News Comments Bullshit?". It seems easier to post GPT-3 comments than create a blog, so I wonder now if it exists, but what percentage it's at.
The other side to this is that it may also be time to upgrade your eyes (with glasses, by getting your eyes checked). It's more likely this is true if you don't think it's time to upgrade your HD monitor.
Somehow I went for years without realizing that I just needed glasses. I could read everything before, but after getting the glasses everything was suddenly unnaturally crisp.
This seems to miss the main point about regulation that the longevity researchers face. Aging is not recognized as a disease by the FDA, so aging treatments are not allowed to have the same treatment and development pipeline. To 'be regulated like “normal” diseases' is in fact what many longevity companies would benefit from.