Laura Deming: Self-Education and the State of Longevity

[@InquilineKea]

IMPORTANT QUOTE: "I would not start in the field of aging first - that is the worst possible place to start. it took me a very long time to like reverse all the damage that *that* did". [It's impt that if you google "biophysics of aging" you get practically nothing". There like, needs to be a better guide to learn biophysics/physical cell biology that's more motivated by information-theoretic/complex systems level OR single-unit-cell-interaction level]. Also, much of the new work is going to be built independently of all the high-N papers that have been published (using new datasets! like all the new chromatin datasets). Keep in mind most biologists don't know math well so there's a bias towards less mathy/theoretical papers getting higher citation counts. It's also interesting that Laura notes that there are VERY few people who are as aggressively curious about all the importantt factors thatt she's curious about [including all the social factors] (and not about pedantic things like some people who spend their ENTIRE lives obsessing over the area do). Being curious about the limiting factors (lack of momentum/financial direction in the direction of aging while ALSO being super-aware of the super-high levels of momentum/financial direction that go to other areas allows you to develop more realistic models of how aging would evolve if you redirected those flows towards aging). There's a sense in which pretty much MOST of the ways that people enter the field of aging come from highly suboptimal routes that don't explore the first principles (you can major in physics first, but even physics is often taught in a highly substandard fashion - even Laura herself majored in physics and didn't seem to like it very much and it seems like the better way is to ask ALL the questions yourself and come up with all the first principles from these questions and then learn from there] As number of aging papers increases, this still doesn't mean we have a better understanding of the MECHANICS or narrative [the field "explodes" in number of papers if not insight]. There are still some people who summarize the field BETTER the more high-N papers come out (simply b/c they are fast readers and always somehow pick out JUST the right quotes to fetch out even if they don't read the entire book [I've noticed that Laura often mentions on twitter that she's skeptical of the optimal path towards reading books OR papers - like not reading them cover-by-cover]). It's clear and obvious that Laura is SUPER-unschooled (not many have the confidence OR courage to unschool themselves as aggressively as she or michael faraday ever did) and HAS to do everything her own way (define things her own way) in the face of constant social pressure to the contrary (even the helpful kind of social pressure), and that maybe a better way of learning would be to define all your questions/what you have difficulty on and then get others/the Internet to help fill you in on what you're weak on [even some of the questions she asks on twitter are surprisingly basic, but important despite being basic and something you'd think you would have learned in a physics education but didn't - I face a similar issue]. Evidently she is starting too dominate the narrative around aging, whicch kind of shows the lack of resourcefulness/imaginattion of everyone before her (though she also stands on the shoulders of THESE giants!) Also notice that Laura talks A LOT to Jose Ricon and Adam Marblestone - both who did not come from within the field of aging (Ricon is a super-outsider from economics, and Adam Marblestone comes from physics and his ENTIRE phd thesis came out of first-principles work that he thought up of even though he wasn't doing what he was supposed to be doing during his phd!) - these are the rare examplles off peoople who are as **broadly** curious as she is that they're not people within the field of aging FYI - anyone reading this - feel free to contact me ([e-mail]) if you want to think of how to strategize how you can make the *most* impact in the field of aging (fwiw I was never sure I could write smg original so I ended up asking ZILLIONS of questions everywhere without putting a coherent whole, but I now definitely have a sense of what words I *can* put to that coherent whole that can hopefully reshape narrative/momentum flows). I'm an perennial outsider who has kind of observed everything from the sidelines, and it appears we need A LOT of roles to make a difference, regardless of whether or not the role is technical (even Laura is not being a technical scientist right now, and her going this route seems to have become far higher impact than the impact most scientists have => you have to also account for all the wasted effort that happens in suboptimal paths and helping reduce unnecessary effort doing tasks - like formatting PDFs - can do a lot more right now than working in a single project directed around aging). Obviously we need people of both types (those who define narrative/momentum flows AND those who do the technical work), but it does appear that there is a wider range of people who can define narrative/momentum flows than would be otherwise aware of the thing. ALSO CHECK MY PROFILES www.quora.com/profile/Alex-K-Chen and twitter.com/InquilineKea/status/1375692103074906113

[@PaulConroy63]

Question for Laura: apart from studying pure biology as a background, before moving to aging research, would you recommend studying medicine also?

[@bigbobabc123]

I hold a job working very close to power on health policy in a major European country. How can I best impact ageing policy?

[@InquilineKea]

THIS IS POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT KZbin VIDEO EVER, AND ONLY 1083 VIEWS???? #importantthreads #akcnarrative #thielfellows

[@derekabel7123]

[33:30] 'Is there an optimal stress level'. Great question! Thank you.

[@hyperontic]

Well said, it's in the nature of this field to work outside segregated academic currents due to its highly interdisciplinary nature.

[@unilyy]

stop interrupting laura!!

[@anthonylawrence5842]

Totally uninformative generalisations delivered at too fast a pace.