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Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

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Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#11

Post by jacques_chester »

glimcat wrote: post #9
jacques_chester wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any book composed of random fantasy elements, written by hundreds of authors, it is pretty much inevitable that some bits will, merely by chance, be correct. Genesis is the same book that puzzlingly fails to mention the big bang, for example.

In the beginning, there was light. On second thought, do we have to count "the beginning" as the moment of the singularity or as the time when the universe became transparent to photons? Gonna end up with a holy war over that one. Wait, it's all good. You start out with a dark and formless void, then you get your "fiat lux" afterwards. The Bible was right again!

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Oops, there's water before there's light. Better retcon that sucker.

Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#12

Post by AngryParsley »

Mortality rates follow a Gompertz curve. This blog post explains it pretty well: http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-w...

There are many suspected specific reasons for why this is (telomeres shortening, mtDNA mutations, protein cross-links, etc), but it boils down to this: accumulating damage accumulates faster as self-repair mechanisms are damaged by accumulating damage.

Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#13

Post by lelele »

jacques_chester wrote: post #11
glimcat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the beginning, there was light. On second thought, do we have to count "the beginning" as the moment of the singularity or as the time when the universe became transparent to photons? Gonna end up with a holy war over that one. Wait, it's all good. You start out with a dark and formless void, then you get your "fiat lux" afterwards. The Bible was right again!

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Oops, there's water before there's light. Better retcon that sucker.

> 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Big Bang.

Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#14

Post by jacques_chester »

lelele wrote: post #13
jacques_chester wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Oops, there's water before there's light. Better retcon that sucker.

> 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The Big Bang.

Evidence suggests that energy preceded matter -- ie that light preceded earth, heaven and water.

Look, the Bible is an anthology of twisted fairytales that's been an absolute bonanza of story fuel for the western tradition. But it's not exactly replete with reliable scientific information.

Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#15

Post by glimcat »

lelele wrote: post #13
jacques_chester wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Oops, there's water before there's light. Better retcon that sucker.

> 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The Big Bang.

The Universe is about 13.75 Gyrs old while Earth is about 4.54 Gyrs old.

Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#16

Post by JoshTriplett »

Diminishing returns. If you address some of the top causes of death, you can significantly increase lifespans. If you address some of the smaller causes, you can somewhat increase lifespans. However, in the limit you need a solution that doesn't just solve individual problems one by one. Biologically, "fixing" telomeres would probably address many of the nonspecific "died of old age" cases that we don't fully understand yet, though I doubt that alone would fix the general problem.

More importantly, we need people to care, and for some insane reason people don't. How do we manage to not treat this as pretty much the most important unsolved problem in humanity? (Mostly, I suspect, due to a combination of perceived futility and ingrained cultural problems.)

Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#17

Post by glimcat »

jacques_chester wrote: post #14
lelele wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The Big Bang.

Evidence suggests that energy preceded matter -- ie that light preceded earth, heaven and water. Look, the Bible is an anthology of twisted fairytales that's been an absolute bonanza of story fuel for the western tradition. But it's not exactly replete with reliable scientific information.

I'm actually rather fond of certain portions of Leviticus which describe diagnostic rituals.

Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#19

Post by glimcat »

scotty79 wrote: post #18

I have a riddle for you that I came up with few years ago: Given as little as you need to make this problem solvable and nontrivial calculate how often (on average) oldest human in the world dies.

Either once or about six times a year (guestimating from Google) depending on how you want to interpret that.

It depends on whether you want the oldest person as an individual or as a class. Good riddles shouldn't be forked.

Re: Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

#20

Post by jacques_chester »

glimcat wrote: post #17
jacques_chester wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence suggests that energy preceded matter -- ie that light preceded earth, heaven and water. Look, the Bible is an anthology of twisted fairytales that's been an absolute bonanza of story fuel for the western tradition. But it's not exactly replete with reliable scientific information.

I'm actually rather fond of certain portions of Leviticus which describe diagnostic rituals.

I like how detailed the builder's specs for the tabernacle are. Paaaaages and paaaaages of expensive building materials. "The curtain tassels should totally be gold-plated platinum. PS my brother gets all the juicy cuts of lamb, God only likes the organs to be burnt".

Meanwhile, explicating the meaning and purpose of the Ten Commandments in all the thousands of odd corner cases -- including big ones like war -- are left as an exercise for the reader.

Wow have we gotten off-topic. Sorry HNers.

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