The pain of growing older.
I am not a writer nor a content creator. I am also not a biologist nor a scientist. My hope was to avoid all of this, in fear of becoming “that guy”. But if the reasoning is strong you’ll be forced to do it I guess. I am sick and tired of the world we’ve inherited. “We’re sorry, but we don’t have a cure for this. Now go and die.”
I’ve been searching my entire life. Not sure for what exactly, but I’ve always had this restlessness in me. I used to love nature, science, looking up at the sun and down at the worms in the earth. The kid that would ask way too many questions and be told “that’s how the world works”.
I’ve traveled far and wide, lived in different places, experienced new cultures and ways of life. I’ve seen a lot, good and bad. It’s changed me. I’ve lost my spark, re-gained it, to lose it again. I’ve for the first time started understanding the realness of my mortality, the fragility of life.
That we truly grow older. That our parents die. That we die. That we experience suffering from growing older. That the blueprint that held us together in our youth slowly, and then rapidly malfunctions with increasing entropy. And then you’re told “that’s how the world works”. That hurts.
The naivety of youth is almost gone and I’m faced with reality. The way of the world, the way of society. The way of us.
I’ve come full circle.
In my search I, alongside my generation (kids of the 90s), have tried finding that thing to do. That spark. Something worthwhile to spend one’s time on. We’ve called it “passion” and “impact”. We fucked it. Regurgitating superficial and memorised phrases. To feel depression and anxiety when the chatter is gone and it’s you and your mind. I know a lot of you in my generation can relate. As you grow older the chatter changes to money, getting the bag, claiming your bread. The abundance of it or the lack of it. Fiscal flexibility is key in life. But can that be all? Vowing your entire existence to something imaginary as money? To status? Power? It had to be something more.
And in that struggle, in that internal conflict I discovered Michael Levin. I finally felt that spark again. I suddenly understood where I had to place this restless energy, what I had been searching for my entire life. This human had unconventional insights. It woke me up. This was a perspective that changed the way I looked at biology and to be honest, everything. Finally, I knew that we could crack biology and beat entropy. We just looked at it wrong the whole time.
We can and we will beat cancer. We’ll beat cardiovascular diseases, we’ll beat Parkinson’s, we’ll beat fatty livers, we’ll beat dementias. We’ll beat the underlying cause to all of these symptoms — the malfunctioning of our blueprint over stretches of “time”. Our greatest foe, aging itself.
A world without health pain. A world where families never lost their daughters or sons. A world where our parents can come on hikes with us and be excited for life. A world where people stop saying “that’s how the world works”.
Read along and join the movement.
This is a space for anyone who’s interested in understanding a) biology fundamentals b) renaissance research and work currently underway in the space c) connect the dots with adjacent and nonadjacent fields. Ultimately to solve cancer in 365 days.
It’s unconventional, non-linear, non-first principle. I’ll be reading papers by the people on the forefront of this stuff, one of them being Michael Levin. Aiming to connect the dots, fill in the gaps and teach myself biology while walking to my destination. I am not a biologist or a scientist, and for some reason I think it’s good to have an outside perspective peering in.
Forcing myself to post weekly
This is the reason I am doing this through this medium and writing in public as I want to force myself to read, understand, synthesise the data and write in laymen’s terms in the end.
I’ll be posting weekly
I am committing myself to post on Saturdays and Sundays
There will be paper reviews + biology 101, sometimes just biology 101, sometimes utilising data analysis/AI models to run my own simulations, ultimately running my own experiments to validate or invalidate my initial assumptions
By the time in a year from now I want to understand biology on a deeper level than I have at the time of writing. To have solved cancer or be closer to solving it.
Move 37 by AlphaGo
Closing thought. I am always reminded of AlphaGo’s move in Game 2 (move 37) against world champion Lee Sedol back in 2016.
“Michael Redmond noted that AlphaGo's 19th stone (move 37) was "creative" and "unique". It was a move that no human would've ever made…AlphaGo showed anomalies and moves from a broader perspective which professional Go players described as looking like mistakes at the first sight but an intentional strategy in hindsight.[52] As one of the creators of the system explained, AlphaGo does not attempt to maximize its points or its margin of victory, but tries to maximize its probability of winning.[30][53] If AlphaGo must choose between a scenario where it will win by 20 points with 80 percent probability and another where it will win by 1 and a half points with 99 percent probability, it will choose the latter, even if it must give up points to achieve it.”
Remembering our goal, there is a lesson we can takeaway from AlphaGo.