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The Island Where People Forget to Die

nytimes.com

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Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#21

Post by jeremysmyth »

meric wrote: post #9
visakanv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds identical to the opening chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers! [1] 'What Wolf slowly realized was that the secret of Roseto wasn't diet or exercise or genes or the region where Roseto was situated. It had to be the Roseto itself. As Bruhn and Wolf walked around the town, they began to realize why. They looked at how the Rosetans visited each other, stopping to chat with each other in Italian on the…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect Wow, that is patriarchal oppression and stifling familial roles.

No, that is you taking your agenda and layering it on top of a situation where it doesn't actually fit.

Oppression and stifling social norms cause the very same stress that these guys appear to have managed to avoid. It appears that they've found their own norms that, to a naive observer, look stifling or oppressive, when the net effect is that the average level of social comfort actually increases. Call it "traditional gender roles" or "acceptance of social inequality" if that fits your particular bias, but you cannot take such a value judgement and call it "oppression".

Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#22

Post by kayoone »

chroma wrote: post #17

Let's assume every claim in this article is true. Let's say that if you follow a certain diet, move to a certain island, make certain friends, and have certain genes, you will live to the age of 100. So what ? Best case, you get an extra decade or two of life. This may seem amazing, but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old . Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witt…

People accept it because it is how nature works. How many animals are slaughtered every second to support our lifestyles ? How many resources are extracted from the last corners of the earth to enable the lifes we have? Why isn't that immoral or insane ?

You sound like a 25 year old who thinks he is too important to die and that we should fix nature to enable endless life. Isn't that immoral or insane ? It will eventually happen and i would probably take the chance as well, but i am also aware that it is a very narcissistic thing to wish for.

Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#24

Post by sdoering »

chroma wrote: post #17

Let's assume every claim in this article is true. Let's say that if you follow a certain diet, move to a certain island, make certain friends, and have certain genes, you will live to the age of 100. So what ? Best case, you get an extra decade or two of life. This may seem amazing, but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old . Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witt…

> but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old. Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witted[1], and unattractive.

I have seldom read such an amazing load of (sorry, to say it this way) bullshit and disdain of the old/being old.

I am in my thirties and I really am in awe the live, the doings, the stories of a lot of elders around me.

Sorry, but how young are you?

Getting older and eventually dying is imho, what defines our humanity. Granted, we have learned to extend live by a reasonably amount and have also, in a lot of cases, learned to lengthen it in a way, that gives people a lot of life-quality during their elder years.

In former times, being 40 to 50 meant you were frail, old, broken by hard work, and so on. Now, in most cases, that happens probably in your 70ies.

Anecdotal: Looking at my stepfather, who is helping us renovate our home and being 78, I wonder, how I will ever be able to do that much, when I am his age. Or my slightly younger stepmother.

By the way, he rides his bicycle for 4.500 miles every year, just for fun...

> If you doubt this, consider that practically any old person would be willing to give up all of their material possessions to inhabit the body of a 20 year-old.

Oh yeah, I really doubt this - I know a lot of older people and most of them would not want this trade in.

You are arguing from a very dangerous standpoint, as you argue, that cognitive decline makes live unworthy (and with that every old person). Thinking your argument through you arrive very fast at a point, where we have to get rid of older people, as their lives are "ineffectual life", I really feel only contempt for this race for efficiency, when it is used to divide people into categories like worthy/unworthy or lives in effectual/ineffectual.

Sorry, but I have to take a stand here, as your inhuman comment is the most upvoted here, standing on top. For me, that stains the whole of this community.

So now, let the downvotes beging. ;-)

Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#25

Post by meric »

jeremysmyth wrote: post #21
meric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect Wow, that is patriarchal oppression and stifling familial roles.

No, that is you taking your agenda and layering it on top of a situation where it doesn't actually fit. Oppression and stifling social norms cause the very same stress that these guys appear to have managed to avoid. It appears that they've found their own norms that, to a naive observer, look stifling or oppressive, when the net effect is that the average level of social comfort actually increases . Call it "traditi…

I'm glad my sarcasm is well taken.

Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#26

Post by adrianN »

kayoone wrote: post #22
chroma wrote: post #17

Let's assume every claim in this article is true. Let's say that if you follow a certain diet, move to a certain island, make certain friends, and have certain genes, you will live to the age of 100. So what ? Best case, you get an extra decade or two of life. This may seem amazing, but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old . Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witt…

People accept it because it is how nature works. How many animals are slaughtered every second to support our lifestyles ? How many resources are extracted from the last corners of the earth to enable the lifes we have? Why isn't that immoral or insane ? You sound like a 25 year old who thinks he is too important to die and that we should fix nature to enable endless life. Isn't that immoral or insane ? It will event…

Sustainable lifestyle is something we need to achieve anyway. Even with people dieing as they do now.

Death, and worse, the frailty that currently comes with old age, should never be acceptable. Old age is a disease and we should use a lot of resources to try and find a cure.

Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#27

Post by noiv »

chroma wrote: post #17

Let's assume every claim in this article is true. Let's say that if you follow a certain diet, move to a certain island, make certain friends, and have certain genes, you will live to the age of 100. So what ? Best case, you get an extra decade or two of life. This may seem amazing, but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old . Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witt…

Even if there is a "solution" to aging there will be none to accidents. People not leaving their house to avoid dying in the streets sounds like human culture coming to a standstill.

Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#28

Post by CervezaPorFavor »

chroma wrote: post #17

Let's assume every claim in this article is true. Let's say that if you follow a certain diet, move to a certain island, make certain friends, and have certain genes, you will live to the age of 100. So what ? Best case, you get an extra decade or two of life. This may seem amazing, but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old . Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witt…

> Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witted[1], and unattractive

That perspective seems self-centred.

As long as he can still be a source of joy to people around him and makes the world a better place in his own way, I'd say it's a life worth living.

Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#29

Post by b6 »

meric wrote: post #25
jeremysmyth wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is you taking your agenda and layering it on top of a situation where it doesn't actually fit. Oppression and stifling social norms cause the very same stress that these guys appear to have managed to avoid. It appears that they've found their own norms that, to a naive observer, look stifling or oppressive, when the net effect is that the average level of social comfort actually increases . Call it "traditi…

I'm glad my sarcasm is well taken.

Ah, I'm sorry I didn't catch it. Poe'd! :\

Re: The Island Where People Forget to Die

#30

Post by ddebernardy »

sdoering wrote: post #24
chroma wrote: post #17

Let's assume every claim in this article is true. Let's say that if you follow a certain diet, move to a certain island, make certain friends, and have certain genes, you will live to the age of 100. So what ? Best case, you get an extra decade or two of life. This may seem amazing, but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old . Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witt…

> but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old. Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witted[1], and unattractive. I have seldom read such an amazing load of (sorry, to say it this way) bullshit and disdain of the old/being old. I am in my thirties and I really am in awe the live, the doings, the stories of a lot of elders around me. Sorry, but how young are you? Getting…

Spot on. Just writing to add that a hypothesis that may explain part of why you get "lower levels of cognitive performance" as you age, is that you've quite a few more data points in mind to draw on (consciously or not) when processing new information.
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