Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 90 posts

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

#31

Post by ez77 »

Udo wrote: post #21

It's important to make a distinction medically between pushing as many as people as possible towards the high-age end of that curve on one hand and scaling the entire X axis on the other. The first one is what we're currently doing with modern medicine, and it boils down to debugging the most common causes of premature death. The second one is completely separate from this and way harder to tackle because it involves…

if we ever want to move on from this weird intermediary half-state between nature and intellect

I don't know if I follow correctly. Do you feel that solving the life extension puzzle is tantamount to intellectual nirvana? I'd say there is still plenty more to talk about (say [1] and [2], for example), and arguably deeper from a strictly intellectual viewpoint. In fact, I'd say that the fact that I happen to be mortal or not does not tackle any of classical intellectual conundrums.

Then again, the subject of life extension meets with so much hostility it's actually easy to argue that we as a culture are not ready for this yet.

I'm not sure about life extension, but effectively ending retirement would be met with hostility! But then again, we're getting both things (end of retirement/pensions and the resulting unrest) without indefinite life extension.

[1] http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

[2] http://www.claymath.org/millennium/

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

#32

Post by api »

Udo wrote: post #21

It's important to make a distinction medically between pushing as many as people as possible towards the high-age end of that curve on one hand and scaling the entire X axis on the other. The first one is what we're currently doing with modern medicine, and it boils down to debugging the most common causes of premature death. The second one is completely separate from this and way harder to tackle because it involves…

We now know that human biochemistry is the result of an evolutionary process which when faced with a problem consistently comes up with the worst possible solution that is still workable. It's 3 billion years worth of crufty spaghetti code, literally.

As someone educated in theoretical biology and learning theory, I object to this kind of characterization of the evolutionary process. There is no evidence for a superior magical learning algorithm that would have done better-- see the no free lunch theorem. This characterization also lacks respect for the difficulty of many-dimensional optimization problems on non-fixed fitness landscapes, which is what evolution has to deal with. (Mathematically, the problem tackled by natural evolution is effectively infinite-dimensional. By comparison, the problems tackled by human engineers are toy problems.)

It would be more accurate to say that evolution, when faced with a problem, finds a working solution. There is no way to know how close or how far that working solution is from a theoretical optimum, since the theoretical optimum is non-computable. (If it were straightforwardly computable, evolution would find a gradient to ascend and discover it rapidly.)

"Life doesn't work perfectly. It just works."

That being said, it is likely that our mortality represents a hard compromise between the survival value of longevity, adaptations to prevent cancer (many of which have aging side effects, like telomeres), and the species-scale (or selfish-gene-scale) survival value of getting oldsters out of the way to make room for the next generation.

The fact that humans can live substantially longer than is merely necessary to reproduce is due to the fact that we're a K-selected species rather than an R-selected species. (Cicadas, for example, are an R-selected species. Dolphins, Elephants, and Humans are K-selected.)

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

#33

Post by Retric »

AngryParsley wrote: post #12

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.

That's not strictly true, you are more likely to die at age 2 than 10. And even if you have a ~50% chance of dieing at 100 there are people who make it to 120 or so.

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

#34

Post by demallien »

ciupicri wrote: post #29
Ruudjah wrote: post #3

Genesis 6:3 3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. AFAIK, all people in recent history ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment If this is true, [i]Men[/i] still did not exceed 120 years by 128,99 days. Interpreting the bible is hard, determining as literal and figure of speech is the hard part.

Speaking of the Bible, Adam lived 930 years ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam ) and if I remember correctly Eve also lived nine hundred years.

Pfft. Martin Silenus does better than that in Hyperion. Of course, the age of fictional characters doesn't really have much impact on the debate about the maximum possible age of a human being, does it now...

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

#35

Post by valisystem »

api wrote: post #32
Udo wrote: post #21

It's important to make a distinction medically between pushing as many as people as possible towards the high-age end of that curve on one hand and scaling the entire X axis on the other. The first one is what we're currently doing with modern medicine, and it boils down to debugging the most common causes of premature death. The second one is completely separate from this and way harder to tackle because it involves…

We now know that human biochemistry is the result of an evolutionary process which when faced with a problem consistently comes up with the worst possible solution that is still workable. It's 3 billion years worth of crufty spaghetti code, literally. As someone educated in theoretical biology and learning theory, I object to this kind of characterization of the evolutionary process. There is no evidence for a superi…

I have no authority on the subject, but, the fact that we cannot prove nor properly evaluate solutions that emerge from evolution does not change the fact that the first solution that fits is the one that will be kept. Intuitive reasoning that not work on such a subject, but still, I have hard time to accept that it is the best. The only proper qualifier, as you state, is that it is the existing one.

The same way I am not comfortable with using dynamic verbs when describing evolution. Evolution does not find a solution. It's just that a solution that fits emerges. After producing many dysfunctional living individuals. It's still the only way life can evolve by itself, and I wouldn't dare to say if it is a laborious or great way to sustain ifself.

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

#37

Post by JohnLBevan »

ez77 wrote: post #31
Udo wrote: post #21

It's important to make a distinction medically between pushing as many as people as possible towards the high-age end of that curve on one hand and scaling the entire X axis on the other. The first one is what we're currently doing with modern medicine, and it boils down to debugging the most common causes of premature death. The second one is completely separate from this and way harder to tackle because it involves…

if we ever want to move on from this weird intermediary half-state between nature and intellect I don't know if I follow correctly. Do you feel that solving the life extension puzzle is tantamount to intellectual nirvana? I'd say there is still plenty more to talk about (say [1] and [2], for example), and arguably deeper from a strictly intellectual viewpoint. In fact, I'd say that the fact that I happen to be mortal…

With regards to the retirement problem, that's only an issue because people are still thinking like mortals. Were we immortal I'd expect gap years to replace retirement. Many people would choose to live their lives in cycles, retraining every 50 years for a new job / change of scene, getting to a proficient level, then taking a break for a few years until ready (or out of funds) to retrain & start anew. Once they'd done a few cycles people would likely begin to specialise, picking up stuff they'd touched on in the past & taking it to the next level / mixing it with their other skills. The issues then arising are the capacity of the mind (mind rather than human brain since who knows what form it will have taken by this point). I've assumed that with immortality we maintain physical (if still relevant) and mental fitness, as without those, extending life becomes torturous and pointless, causing people not only to not enjoy their lives, but also to become long suffering burdens on their families, just for the sake of a larger number of sun circuits.

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

#38

Post by shawndumas »

Ruudjah wrote: post #3

Genesis 6:3 3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. AFAIK, all people in recent history ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment If this is true, [i]Men[/i] still did not exceed 120 years by 128,99 days. Interpreting the bible is hard, determining as literal and figure of speech is the hard part.

Not that it matters but... If you take it in context the 120 years are referring to when the flood was scheduled to occur, not the upper bounds on human life. (See Calvin)

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

#39

Post by JohnLBevan »

ern wrote: post #30
chc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeanne Calment, mentioned in the OP, lived to be 122. But yes, I think most people in the field agree that 120 is roughly our shelf life.

Could there be some deeply ingrained idea, possibly derived from Genesis, that leads to dimished care for people as they approach 120, and hence increases mortality? I doubt it, but I wonder if this possibility has been explored.

Fundamentalists working in care homes perhaps? Jeanne was spared for 2 years due to factions forming over whether Man referred to species or gender.

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

#40

Post by ez77 »

JohnLBevan wrote: post #37
ez77 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we ever want to move on from this weird intermediary half-state between nature and intellect I don't know if I follow correctly. Do you feel that solving the life extension puzzle is tantamount to intellectual nirvana? I'd say there is still plenty more to talk about (say [1] and [2], for example), and arguably deeper from a strictly intellectual viewpoint. In fact, I'd say that the fact that I happen to be mortal…

With regards to the retirement problem, that's only an issue because people are still thinking like mortals. Were we immortal I'd expect gap years to replace retirement. Many people would choose to live their lives in cycles, retraining every 50 years for a new job / change of scene, getting to a proficient level, then taking a break for a few years until ready (or out of funds) to retrain & start anew. Once they'd d…

It would make sense to first colonize outer space or, more controversially, sharply control births (or eliminate them altogether), as we would simply run out of space. You need prosperity and an abundance of resources for your cyclic program to work.
Post reply on HN