Things like strokes or cumulative CNS damage primarily affect older people, so genetic fixes to those problems would have very little evolutionary selection pressure on their side.

It's also possible that genetic/biological means of turning on CNS regeneration in higher mammals would require a complexity that has not had time to evolve yet. Just because we evolved to the point of human-level intelligence doesn't mean we are perfectly evolved by any stretch of the imagination. It means we are, in a sense, a minimum viable biological entity that can acquire our level of intelligence.

I'd caution against randomly flying across cities. There's probably a very good reason why we don't naturally do that.

Just pointing out that this is a weak argument.

You might wait for a few flights over an empty field first though.

Many people were injured or killed trying to invent flying machines until we finally got it right.

Many many people have already died of brains issues. On the order of 5% of everyone who has lived ever. Esp in the last 2 centuries which from some counts is more than ever lived before.

Your simile would be apt if people not getting to the other side of the city were dying or having greatly decreased quality of life (alzheimers, stroke).

> he is saying medicine is a bad idea

When did he say that? I don't want to put words in his mouth but I would guess more research needs to be done to ensure there are no side effects or unintended consequences... similar to what is done when medicine is developed.

that is literally the only thing he said in his post. no one is randomly doing that in medicine - that's what nature does, and it's called evolution. he claims literally the opposite. what no one is saying is "no research should be done."

the treatment being talked about falls in the medicine category. he is cautioning against it because the body doesn't do that already. let me rephrase that:

I caution against the use of cephalexin when your appendix bursts. if it was safe, the body would produce its own antibiotics.

I caution against neuron regeneration when your nerves are damaged. If it was safe, the body would regenerate its own nerves.

I caution against taking daily finasteride. If it was safe to not have ass cancer, your body wouldn't have ass cancer. thankfully in evolution, bald people don't reproduce as much, so someone bald and with ass-cancer won't pass on his opinions to the world as long as these awesome scientists.

The chunk I’m worried about probably can’t get much worse (it’s dead).

If the rest of your system has adapted to assume that a certain address space is non-executable, suddenly making it executable might cause a bit of a headache.

If it's adapted once surely it can adapt again?

I remember reading an article on neuroplasticity into old age. And people with extremely high neuroplasticity had better cognitive function throughout their lives however were much more likely to have dementia in old age. It's probably similar I'd guess.

Medicine is all about doing things that we don't do naturally. If we did it naturally we wouldn't need doctors.

Depends. Could be good long term, I suppose, but might require a long hospital visit even in the case of a good outcome. Enough for evolution to prune it.