scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/3fj1ce.md

## [MK][BST][HSF] Munchkining tricks for choosing your age?

* Author: u/DataPacRat  *Amateur Immortalist**
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3fj1ce/mkbsthsf_munchkining_tricks_for_choosing_your_age/
* Score: 7

* Created: 2015-08-02T17:58:21

### Post:

After an apocalypse, the mysterious AIs left behind some piles of nanotech here and there, some of which aren't even lethal. One has been discovered to be a bit controllable - and can rebuild your body at whatever age you tell it to. How many ways to munchkin this can you think of?

(It works on any animal that's been tried. It seems to successfully stuff adult minds into baby-sized skulls. There is a minimum age, for humans, of about minus one month. There appears to be some sort of limit based on how much spare biomass has been absorbed by the nanotech. There's something approaching a 1% error rate, in that the requested age isn't the one that's applied. The nanotech appears to be fixed to a site. Other transformation nanotech tends to be much less accommodating and pleasant.)

### Comments:

> **u/None** [+14]  (19 hours later)
> 
> [deleted]

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+4]  *Amateur Immortalist* (a day later)
>> 
>> (I'd give you more than one up-vote if I could. :)  )
>> 
>> > Hard to go on the run or make a breakout when you're a 5 year old.
>> 
>> Why pick 5? It's even harder to escape when you're minus four weeks old, and dependent on an umbilical cord for survival.
>> 
>> > In times of famine I de-age members of the community
>> 
>> Is there any particular reason to wait for a famine to start? Why not apply some of the ideas you've mentioned for livestock, and determine at what age humans put on the most weight per year, and generally have people stay at their age of fastest growth?
>> 
>> > What happens to a pregnant animal when it is aged?
>> 
>> Complications. The nanotech doesn't induce births (or youthen a pregnant animal beyond what can carry its young). As long as the 1% error odds don't pop up, then a fetus is only aged to roughly minus one day, plus or minus some, depending on how long a fetus can safely remain unborn. There will have been a few cases where immediate caesarian sections were necessary to protect [the health](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postterm_pregnancy) of both the mother and post-third-trimester offspring, but so far, no cases of mothers pregnant with toddlers-or-older.
>> 
>> > A foetus?
>> 
>> While it's younger than the equivalent of an eight-months human pregnancy, the nanotech seems perfectly willing to age or youthen it, to the point of returning to single-egg stage (and possibly even putting it back in the ovaries). If a fetus is ever aged past that point, the nanotech won't youthen it beyond that point again.

>>> **u/FuguofAnotherWorld** [+2]  *Roll the Dice on Fate* (a day later)
>>> 
>>> Glad to be of help.
>>> 
>>> 1. Five mainly so they could feed themselves and take care of themselves without requiring excessive manpower. Three would probably work just as well. I'm not really.. sure how foetus incarceration would work, but wouldn't it be really awkward for the mother? Especially if she starts feeling protective.
>>> 
>>> 2. Humans are inefficient at adding biomass compared to animals. If you've got spare food, better to feed it to animals if biomass is the goal. Plus teenaged humans are rebellious at least partly because of hormones. 
>>> 
>>> So you could inseminate a cow for example, age both to term, then do the birth, then age the calf and de-age the mother for extremely rapid husbandry? Allowing you to change species extremely quickly?
>>> 
>>> Well that's even better. Run hornets through a few thousand generations until they instinctually defend humans and attack anything else in a particular area around the hive, and give them massive stingers. Then use them as a defensive/warning measure against rampaging abominations (I'm assuming you have those). If the particulars of Hornet farming make that impractical, do it with type of bug. Like a wasp, or a scorpion.

>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (a day later)
>>>> 
>>>> > I'm not really.. sure how foetus incarceration would work, but wouldn't it be really awkward for the mother? 
>>>> 
>>>> Say that after the occasional oddball 1% accident, and some further experimentation, it's learned that the nanotech is able to manage cross-species gestation, as long as the sizes are reasonable. So if you wanted to put your prisoners inside goats, that could probably be made to work.
>>>> 
>>>> > Plus teenaged humans are rebellious at least partly because of hormones. 
>>>> 
>>>> Mua ha ha. :)
>>>> 
>>>> > So you could inseminate a cow for example, age both to term, then do the birth, then age the calf and de-age the mother for extremely rapid husbandry?
>>>> 
>>>> Almost, yes; the nanotech doesn't really add new information into an aged-up brain, so the rapidly-aged calf might barely know how to breathe, let alone stand, let alone breed. But if you're going for rapid species modification, that's probably a tolerable state for the intervening generations, as long as you aren't too worried about the lack of any selection pressure on the species' mental abilities.
>>>> 
>>>> > rampaging abominations (I'm assuming you have those)
>>>> 
>>>> There are monsters aplenty, yes.
>>>> 
>>>> > Run hornets through a few thousand generations until they instinctually defend humans and attack anything else in a particular area around the hive, and give them massive stingers.
>>>> 
>>>> The rapid breeding is simple enough; how do you figure breeding for that sort of trait could be done?

>>>>> **u/FuguofAnotherWorld** [+2]  *Roll the Dice on Fate* (a day later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> >The rapid breeding is simple enough; how do you figure breeding for that sort of trait could be done?
>>>>> 
>>>>> It would take a while, and probably be quite painful. You'd need to have different species in an area they could access, then only breed from that ones that prioritise attacking other species than humans. Then you'd need to iterate until they no longer attack humans at all. It would take bloody ages and involve a lot of people getting stung.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Other potential methods involve covering humans in don't-attack pheremones, then slowly reducing the level of pheremones and breeding from the ones that continue not attacking humans until the levels are so miniscule that you can spray someone once and have it work for weeks.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'll be honest, the whole hornets thing is slightly dubious. It may or may not actually be possible. Someone with more knowledge of bugs would have to step in.
>>>>> >Say that after the occasional oddball 1% accident, and some further experimentation, it's learned that the nanotech is able to manage cross-species gestation, as long as the sizes are reasonable. So if you wanted to put your prisoners inside goats, that could probably be made to work.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Doesn't that have a rather large risk of miscarriage killing your prisoners? Also, for a 10 year sentence they'd need to run that 1% chance 120 times, which is rather poor odds. To say nothing of sensory deprivation sending the inmates mad. There's a reason solitary is used as punishment. Solitary with no lights or possibly even a sense of touch would be hell.
>>>>> 
>>>>> If food is *that* much of a concern you may as well just call it a death sentence, and de-age em for the meat.

>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (a day later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > the whole hornets thing is slightly dubious. It may or may not actually be possible
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> At least narratively, it's the sort of project that somebody might submit an application to use some time with the nanotech for, even if they don't end up with anything useful.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > a rather large risk of miscarriage
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> (Technical pedantry: As we're dealing with fetuses in the late-30's-weeks instead of pre-20, the preferred term seems to be 'stillbirth' rather than 'miscarriage'.)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Fair enough - those are all good reasons not to set your prisoner's ages to the minuses. Do you have any thoughts on sending them through the nanotech to end up somewhere between 0 and 1 year of age, with or without an option to age them back up after a certain length of time?

>>>>>>> **u/FuguofAnotherWorld** [+2]  *Roll the Dice on Fate* (a day later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> >Fair enough - those are all good reasons not to set your prisoner's ages to the minuses. Do you have any thoughts on sending them through the nanotech to end up somewhere between 0 and 1 year of age, with or without an option to age them back up after a certain length of time?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> You'd need to wetnurse them and change their nappies, and babies require feeding every few hours. Plus they're really fragile and freeze to death or overheat comparatively easily if you're not careful. And they have special dietary requirements. Can't feed em on just grain or meat. You know how new parents look about 6 months in? All haggard and like they haven't slept since the dawn of time? All the jail guards/nurses would be like that. Plus, the screaming of babies is basically programmed to be really annoying and un-ignorable. Your guards/nurses would not be happy bunnies, and you'd need a lot more of them to keep all the inmates fed/changed/healthy/warm. Plus the inmates would suffer mental deterioration from being unable to turn pages to read or use their voices to talk. It would not be an effective way to rehabilitate people.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On the flipside you'd save on space. Maybe food as well depending on if more guards/nurses eat more than the difference between how much babies and 5 year olds eat.  I wouldn't use it for people you want to still be useful members of society afterwards though. Maybe as some kind of particularly horrible punishment for people who society has decided deserve a fate worse than death. Basically solitary confinement except also with a complete loss of dignity. Personally, I think fates worse than death are immoral and inefficient but who knows that a post-apocalyptic society would decide.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> If I were to be an inmate in such a system, being turned into a baby would make me resentful in a way that just being a kid wouldn't.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> TL:DR I don't think the benefits outweigh the downsides.

>>> **u/FeepingCreature** [+2]  *GCV Literally The Entire Culture* (a day later)
>>> 
>>> > While it's younger than the equivalent of an eight-months human pregnancy, the nanotech seems perfectly willing to age or youthen it, to the point of returning to single-egg stage (and possibly even putting it back in the ovaries).
>>> 
>>> Does it ... does it still fit an adult brain in there?
>>> 
>>> What's the earliest you can get without brain damage?

>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+3]  *Amateur Immortalist* (a day later)
>>>> 
>>>> > Does it ... does it still fit an adult brain in there?
>>>> 
>>>> As interesting a thought as that might be, I'm trying to describe a line being drawn at the 8/9ths of a pregnancy mark, a line which can be crossed by making younger fetuses older, but can't be crossed the other way. So you don't have to worry about trying to fit an adult's mind into a blastocyst-or-smaller.

>> **u/AmyWarlock** [+1]  (2 days later)
>> 
>> What's the point of keeping an animal at the age where they have the highest growth rate? They'll go back to their younger body stage when you de-age them won't they?

>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 days later)
>>> 
>>> When an animal is de-aged and made smaller, the pounds it loses don't vanish into thin air - they're stored by the nanotech, as a resource to use when it takes some person or critter and makes them older and heavier. If the nanotech runs out of that reserve, it loses some of its functionality - it can't make anything bigger without the biomass to make it bigger /with/. The point of keeping the livestock at the age where they put on the mass the fastest, is to put as much biomass in the nanotech's reserve as fast as possible, to maximize the uses to which the nanotech can be put. (Such as the rapid breeding proposals mentioned elsewhere in the thread.)

>>>> **u/AmyWarlock** [+1]  (3 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> Ah right, cheers!

> **u/None** [+7]  (10 hours later)
> 
> How does the neural hardware work, in terms of recapturing childhood plasticity for languages and such? I can imagine teams of university-trained students being re-aged to childhood in order to learn certain aspects of their craft more naturally, or even keeping people in extended childhoods in order to produce polyglots.

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (a day later)
>> 
>> > How does the neural hardware work
>> 
>> The nanotech pulls some tricks so that a full set of skills, experiential memories, associations, and all the other parts of an adult mind fit into a smaller skull, and will still be in place once the youthened individual grows back up. Maintaining the person's full mental identity comes at the cost of the advantages that usually come with a younger brain.
>> 
>> That said, there are still a /few/ tricks that can be played with brains. If I'm not mistaken, if a person spends years studying a particular skill, then associated parts of their brain may grow larger than they otherwise would, which is something that can be played with by anyone willing to experiment with letting the nanotech do more to their mind than keep it intact. (And remembering that there's roughly a 1% chance that the nanotech will do something other than what was requested.)

>>> **u/None** [+1]  (a day later)
>>> 
>>> If that 1% is more likely to be funny than lethal or crippling, it's not too significant

>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (a day later)
>>>> 
>>>> Hm... would you be willing to risk having a brain that has the equivalent of years of exercise building a hyper-awareness of your left kneecap?

>>>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+1]  *Carthago delenda est.* (3 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Saying that there's a 1% chance that it will do something other than what was requested is very badly-defined. Why is there a 1% chance it arbitrarily chooses to do something else in the first place? In the OP you say that it's not the age you asked for. And elsewhere in the replies you seem to imply that that 1% of the time there's a uniform distribution over possible ages, at least that it is *just* a distribution over all possible ages. But now here you're saying that it would make arbitrary changes in your brain? You're being inconsistent.

>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 days later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'm trying to be consistent - I just often explain myself badly, and occasionally need to describe my ideas in several ways to get them across.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> When a 1%-chance error hits, and the nanotech decides to age the subject critter-or-person without following the usual standards, it has a number of options open to it. The nanotech might age up the subject as if they were a complete couch potato; or as if they'd spent the intervening years training for marathons; or as if they'd gone everywhere by hopping on the left foot. Each such scenario leads to a somewhat different bodyplan. The extent of the mental changes I suggested were the ones that most closely follow a similar pattern; and, mostly, are ones which are tied to physical development, such as the brain's sensory and motor homunculi.

>>>>>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+1]  *Carthago delenda est.* (3 days later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Then I wouldn't bother with the device at all.

>>>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 days later)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Do you mean just not using it on yourself, or not using it on anything at all?

>>>>>>>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+1]  *Carthago delenda est.* (3 days later)
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Well, on myself, I suppose. It's way too unpredictable for me to really care about as a thought exercise.

>>>>>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 days later)
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> > way too unpredictable
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> Okay - how far would the 1% error rate have to shrink before you'd consider giving the nanotech a try for any reason? (Eg, you're currently 80 years old in a post-apocalypse society without any organized cryonics groups.) How far before you'd consider using it regularly?

>>>>>>>>>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+1]  *Carthago delenda est.* (3 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> Well, actually, it would depend on what the 1% acted like while aging down, because that's the only direction I'd ever be interested in going.

>>>>>>>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> Alright;
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> When an error occurs that results in a younger age, the only known examples involve the subject ending up at an age other than the desired one. Eg, if someone wanted to drop 20 years, they might just drop 2; or if someone wanted to be de-aged a week, to just before they broke their arm, they might end up back in diapers, or pre-natal. Assuming that the subject isn't inside a womb, then being run through the nanotech again, whether to de-age or re-age, seems to incur the same chance of error as usual.
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> With those examples to build your mental model of, what error rates would you find acceptable for what sorts of usage patterns?

>>>>>>>>>>>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+1]  *Carthago delenda est.* (3 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Well, I would find it worthwhile to go from 20 to 6 in order to begin effective HRT.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (4 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Er... Hostage Rescue Training? Hormone Replacement Therapy? Something that didn't show up in my acronym list?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+1]  *Carthago delenda est.* (4 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The latter. But I doubt the former would hurt, either.

>>>>>>>> **u/ancientcampus** [+1]  *juggling kittens* (9 days later)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I dunno, when you're arthritic and start to feel dementia kicking in, a 1% chance doesn't look too shabby.

>>>>>>>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+1]  *Carthago delenda est.* (9 days later)
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Yeah, well I'm not arthritic yet.

> **u/Sagebrysh** [+2]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (6 minutes later)
> 
> Permanently stay 18 and in ideal physical fitness?

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (12 minutes later)
>> 
>> Why choose 18?

>>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+3]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (2 days later)
>>> 
>>> Wouldn't you want mid to later 20s so you have a fully developed pre-frontal cortex, you know the risk management module that affects insurance rates?

>>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+1]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (15 minutes later)
>>> 
>>> Oh just offhandedly seemed the best. Anywhere between 15 and 25 is probably a pretty good bet.

>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (19 minutes later)
>>>> 
>>>> Okay, you're relatively permanently young, and with a bit of jiggering, gain the benefits of physical exercise... For the 99% of times that you're turned into the age you want, instead of a toddler or senior. What else would you try to use the age-changing thing to do?

>>>>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+4]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (22 minutes later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> rapidly age animals to get their meat to market faster? Lure your enemies close and de-age them into infants or senile seniors? You could probably pull off some tricks involving aging children to optimal 'soldiering' age if you need an army fast? There's probably others I'm not thinking of.

>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (38 minutes later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Now we're starting to cook. :)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > rapidly age animals to get their meat to market faster?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Conservation of mass still exists; for every pound that's added to a creature, a pound of flesh has to have been removed from some other creature. How do you see this issue being solved?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > Lure your enemies close and de-age them into infants or senile seniors?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Depending on how much intel said enemies have gathered on where the nanotech is, certainly a possibility.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > You could probably pull off some tricks involving aging children to optimal 'soldiering' age if you need an army fast?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The nanotech can age their bodies up - their minds will still be, as far as can be told, what they originally were. Adult-bodied child-soldiers may be a bit tricky to integrate into an overall defense plan.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > There's probably others I'm not thinking of. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Almost certainly, which is why I started the thread. :)

>>>>>>> **u/frodo_skywalker** [+6]  (2 hours later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> >Conservation of mass still exists; for every pound that's added to a creature, a pound of flesh has to have been removed from some other creature. How do you see this issue being solved?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> "Pound of flesh" or "biomass"? 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> If the former: different meats are of different quality. A hive of wasps is now several steaks, etc...
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> If the latter, then a small-medium tree is worth a cow. Hell, you don't even need to cut down the trees. Collect several tens of tons of leaves in the autumn, feed you and your family on high quality meat and have lots left over for sale. Start paying people 1kg of beef/chicken/pork/mutton per 50kg of leaves/grass they bring you. Hire people to operate your slaughterhouse. 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Edit: can you clarify the "1% error rate"? What happens in an error; do you get a randomly assigned age within a valid range, or what?

>>>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (3 hours later)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> > "Pound of flesh" or "biomass"? 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> The only way that's been found to replenish the nanotech's reserves is to send someone (or some critter) through and make them young enough to be smaller. The nanotech doesn't seem to bother doing anything to plants. Wasps could work, according to what's known; cut leaves wouldn't.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> > can you clarify the "1% error rate"?
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> A lot can happen to a person when they grow older - different amounts of exercise, or injuries, or food intake, can lead to radically different bodies. For about 2/3rds of that 1%, the 'error' is the nanotech's reconstruction assuming you were a couch potato, or something similarly benign and easily reversible. Many of the remaining errors are, apparently, the nanotech picking an age at random, again with reasonably benign results. Almost all of the remainder involve setting the target prenatal, which is rather awkward for mammals even if a female with a large enough uterus is within the nanotech's range. There are a few individual outliers - eg, a chimerical lifeform having one part of their body rebuilt with the genes from another part, or someone set to old age with a dementia that remained even when their age was brought back to young adulthood.

>>>>>>>>> **u/Gurkenglas** [+3]  (4 hours later)
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> A chunk of cancer tissue that'll grow as fast as its nutrient intake allows?

>>>>>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (4 hours later)
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> That's exactly the sort of off-the-wall idea I was hoping to evoke with this thread. :) (Even if, well, you know, ew. :P :)  )
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> That said... I'm not quite sure how anyone would go about creating such a tissue culture in the first place, let alone how it would be kept alive, so I don't have enough data to figure out how the nanotech would interact with the stuff. Does anyone reading this know of any handy references online?

>>>>>>>>>>> **u/Brutos** [+1]  (6 hours later)
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> A lot of medical research is already (since a few decades) being done on such cells. The most famous cell line are the  HeLa cells. RadioLab once did a great episode about their history and more important the person that was once that biomass. It should be this episode: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91716-henriettas-tumor/

>>>>>>>>>>>> **u/DataPacRat** [+3]  *Amateur Immortalist* (6 hours later)
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> Ah, yes, HeLa. I knew it was a cell line, I'd forgotten it was cancerous.
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> After checking a few quick references, it appears that the effort required to keep an immortal cell line like that alive in a controlled medium, let alone reproducing to the point of adding a full pound of such cells, is moderately significant; at least, in comparison to the amount of resources required to get a goat to add a pound of bodyweight.
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> If someone's goal is to add the greatest amount of organic stuff to the nanotech's reserves for the least amount of effort invested, then as best as I can tell, livestock handily beats out cultivated cancer. (Post-apocalypse, agar is a bit hard to come by; and even if it weren't, putting together a proper growth medium would seem to require a few more human work-hours than letting some goats graze in a field.) But it was certainly worth checking that - and I look forward to any other off-the-wall ideas you, or anyone reading this thread, can propose.

> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+2]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (5 hours later)
> 
> Figure out how to make bona-fide biological computers that slowly increase in size (and thus processing power) and use the machine to make them grow.

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+2]  *Amateur Immortalist* (5 hours later)
>> 
>> In theory, there's some potential there, but in practice... <scratches head> Is there actually any known way to build, say, a half-adder circuit out of organic parts that are part of a living animal, let alone anything as complicated as a Commodore 64's CPU? Or are there any oddball organisms, such as some sort of starfish, whose nervous systems can be tricked into doing computations?

>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+2]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (6 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Well, slime molds are cool, but I admittedly wouldn't be able to tell you how something like this would work. On the plus side, if you use an asexually reproducing animal, aging it is identical to making more of it.

> **u/INeedAUsernameToo** [+2]  (11 hours later)
> 
> Well, the mind goes through different stages and different levels of maturity. Does the machine alter brain structure as well?
> 
> If yes, then you could get young, back to when your brain was more plastic. There is a specific period in your youth when you pick up language very quickly. You'd find core aspects of your personality more malleable. Build habits as a young person, then age back up again.

>> **u/DataPacRat** [+1]  *Amateur Immortalist* (a day later)
>> 
>> Another reply asked a similar question, and I tried to include an answer to this question as well in my response to it.

---