i came to somewhat of an epiphany in 2008: given the inevitability of death, the only task worth accomplishing is finding some way to achieve immortality. and, i could go through a history of this, from eating the hearts of your enemy to drinking the blood and eating the flesh of the god-man in the christian ritual (it's kind of the same thing) and beyond. we've always known this.

i did not merely come face-to-face with the futility of existence, i realized the only way past it was to conquer it. and, so i set myself upon a goal of finding a way to eliminate mortality.

the question of chemistry is something that arose, but in the end i rejected it in favour of a process of shape-shifting that i believe is beyond the computational limits of my life-time. it was around 2010 that i decided that this is a poor bet, and i'm better off enjoying the life i have than wasting it chasing something beyond it. but, it was always with the view that the cutoff is likely very close (somebody 5-10 years younger than me may live to see it...) and with the understanding that i could even be wrong.

but, i don't think that the chemical approach is likely to work. i understand that biological aging is a chemical process and that it follows that you just need to reverse the chemistry in order to reverse the aging. but, it places the issue in a kind of a vacuum. a treatment like this may keep people's organs alive indefinitely, but it wouldn't reverse skeletal damage and it probably won't reverse dementia. so, you can live to be a thousand years old in a wheelchair, and have no memory of the last 900 years.

so, you can talk about replacing skeletal tissue with metal and finding ways to stop your brain from decomposing. but, you're going to get to some point at the end where you just can't do it anymore.

if you're serious about this, you need to separate the mind from the body and allow it freedom to roam. and, we will not be able to do this with conventional computers due to the prevalence of np problems.

that doesn't mean i'm going to avoid the stuff. but, it's not the answer i sought - and it's not the answer you seek, either.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/harvard-scientists-pinpoint-critical-step-in-dna-repair-cellular-aging/