if a simple biochemical tweak were always helpful, it'd probably already be that way.
The key question: helpful, for what?
There's no reason to think Evolution has optimized my machinery for longevity.
As for giggles, I'll bet on Kurzweil's predictions over the people in your lab.
The longer you live, and especially the longer you remain healthy, the more evolutionarily fit you are. At least insofar as it doesn't funge against other traits evolution cares even more about, there's every reason to think evolution has optimized your machinery for longevity. We might find the non-helpful side of the tradeoff to actually be beneficial to modern human eyes even if they're horrible evolutionarily, like an ideal one would be "doubles your lifespan, makes you infertile", but there won't be anything evolution would see as a free lun...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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