We will be able to live to 1,000 • Hacker News Board

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#51

Post by tyree731 » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:07 PM UTC

gte910h wrote: post #12

tyree731 wrote: post #7

Life expectancy has increased a good amount in the past 50 years, raising by ~8.5. That is to say, for the exponentially increasing abilities of modern medicine, we have increased linearly in life expectancy. Maybe there is some breaking point, such as a universal cure for cancers and/or the end of heart disease, but regardless it seems like a huge leap to go from ~78 to ~1000 in life expectancy.

Much of life expectancy gains though are for the area south of 70. Much of SENS research hold's promise for the area north of 70. That's what's exciting. Especially if that we can live a healthy older age, even if it's not any longer. (Truthfully, some cancer research benefits older people, as cancer has a much higher incidence as you age, however, much research out there is for middle of life diseases). If my grandm…

That is sort of what I'm getting at I guess. We haven't progressed much further than what was possible thousands of years ago.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#52

Post by tyree731 » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:07 PM UTC

elidourado wrote: post #9

tyree731 wrote: post #7

Life expectancy has increased a good amount in the past 50 years, raising by ~8.5. That is to say, for the exponentially increasing abilities of modern medicine, we have increased linearly in life expectancy. Maybe there is some breaking point, such as a universal cure for cancers and/or the end of heart disease, but regardless it seems like a huge leap to go from ~78 to ~1000 in life expectancy.

Let's say that life expectancy is now increasing at a rate of 2 years per decade. If you want to live to 1000, you just need to increase that to 10 years per decade. You don't have to go from 78 to 1000 all at once.

Very true.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#53

Post by FlorinAndrei » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:10 PM UTC

jules wrote: post #11

MikeCapone wrote: post #2

We might or might not defeat the diseases of aging anytime soon, but if you want to help the people who are trying to make it happen, consider donating to the SENS Foundation (money goes directly to research): http://www.sens.org/ Sadly, because aging isn't considered a disease by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, there is actually very little research being done on it if you take into consideration the fact that…

Before donating you should ask yourself whether Aubrey de Grey is a crackpot or not. I'm not sure myself. Can somebody shed some light on this?

I don't think there's any debate on the fact that, given enough time, research will eventually figure out how to stop and reverse the changes brought by aging.

The debate is - whether this can be done soon, as opposed to 10000 years from now.

I certainly wish that AdG was right. But is he? I'm not sure. Maybe he is (yay!), maybe not.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#54

Post by JulianMorrison » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:11 PM UTC

jules wrote: post #11

MikeCapone wrote: post #2

We might or might not defeat the diseases of aging anytime soon, but if you want to help the people who are trying to make it happen, consider donating to the SENS Foundation (money goes directly to research): http://www.sens.org/ Sadly, because aging isn't considered a disease by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, there is actually very little research being done on it if you take into consideration the fact that…

Before donating you should ask yourself whether Aubrey de Grey is a crackpot or not. I'm not sure myself. Can somebody shed some light on this?

He sounds like a crackpot when his theories are misrepresented. He's not saying "here's how I'll make you live to 1000". He's saying "If we solve this list of things, medical science will be able to give you on maybe another 30 healthy years of lifespan - and by doing this I can convince the world that ageing is so important, we will use those 30 years figuring out how to give you the next 30, and so on".

Edit: for what it's worth, the 1000 year figure is something that was calculated by estimating the chances of a person with the health characteristics of a young adult dying of any reason other than age - about 1 in 1000 per year, or an average of 1000 years life. That's just an average though - after early die-off of careless people, you might reasonably expect a 200-year-old to easily outlive 1000. And of course during that time technology won't have stood still - 1000 years ago, it was the dark ages.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#55

Post by rosser » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:11 PM UTC

rauljara wrote: post #18

When my intro to genetics teacher in college explained to us how aging in cells worked, he told us that one of his professors had explained to him that a "cure" for aging was about 10 years away. But that had been more than ten years earlier. My professor said that he had recently talked to that same professor again. The new ETA: about 10 years. This is one of those problems that seems easy to solve in principle, but…

So we're perpetually closer to curing aging than we are to energy-positive fusion? If only they were reversed, we'd be able to support the population explosion in millenarians before they got here...

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#56

Post by mechanical_fish » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:13 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #39

Can I bet on the opposite side of this? I bet that nobody who is 60 now will live to 1000. Don't get me wrong, I would like to live to 1000... but I would be pretty surprised if my kids live past 150. I will be surprised if I live to 100. It's sad to think about, but our bodies wear out over time (cosmic rays and whatnot), and we don't have the technology to repair them efficiently yet. People still die from the flu!

A fun exercise for a high school class: Get some basic mortality tables off the Internet. Now, tell me -- to first order, of course -- all the causes of death we'd have to eliminate in order for, say, 25% of the population to live to be 1000.

What I really want to know is what common everyday activities we'd all have to give up. I bet motorcycling and scooter-riding are right out, but what about, say, swimming? Horseback riding? In a world where life expectancy is ten times longer, is everything an order of magnitude more dangerous?

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#57

Post by sardonic » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:13 PM UTC

I can't believe no one has called out the bogus math in the article:

"If you are a reasonably risk-aware teenager today in an affluent, non-violent neighbourhood, you have a risk of dying in the next year of well under one in 1,000, which means that if you stayed that way forever you would have a 50/50 chance of living to over 1,000."

If you assume 1/1000 chance of death in a year, and 1000 years (1000 trials), your probability of living to 1000 is only 37%, not 50%. I don't know if I would trust the scientific analysis of someone who doesn't understand basic binomial probability.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#58

Post by JulianMorrison » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:14 PM UTC

gte910h wrote: post #40

jules wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before donating you should ask yourself whether Aubrey de Grey is a crackpot or not. I'm not sure myself. Can somebody shed some light on this?

He's looking for cures to issues that are real problems. If you fix any of the problems, even partially, they show great promise for helping older people to be decrepit, even if they don't actually extend lifespan. His hope is curing these types of damage will cause humans to functionally stop aging, but curing these types of damage are useful in and of themselves : Cell loss, tissue atrophy Nuclear [epi]mutations Mu…

In fact, the SENS foundation is ignoring some of those - because medical research is already attacking them as problems in their own right.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#59

Post by FlorinAndrei » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:15 PM UTC

rauljara wrote: post #18

When my intro to genetics teacher in college explained to us how aging in cells worked, he told us that one of his professors had explained to him that a "cure" for aging was about 10 years away. But that had been more than ten years earlier. My professor said that he had recently talked to that same professor again. The new ETA: about 10 years. This is one of those problems that seems easy to solve in principle, but…

"I think there's a reason complicated life evolved so that it would age. The standard reason given is that eventually errors in replication accumulate and cancer results. I.e. we age to avoid cancer. But that is a ridiculous reason."

Exactly. Any justification along those lines falls flat on its face when you realize it should also apply to the sperm and egg. Yet it doesn't apply in that case.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#60

Post by joubert » Fri, May 21, 2010, 8:15 PM UTC

rmorrison wrote: post #4

I don't see how humanity could handle something like mass distribution of a magic treatment that allowed people to live to 1,000. The world would quickly get over crowded, resources would dry up, world wars would follow, and who knows what else.

I bet that cure would be so expensive only a few people could access it.