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New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

lafollette.wisc.edu

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Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#151

Post by hamandcheese »

dsign wrote: post #118

I was walking on the street the other day. It was fine summer, and I saw so many elderly walking outside. All of them were using one type of aid or another; some even had a social worker at their side. As I saw them, I was thinking that my 63% marginal tax was paying for it, while I part with 25% of my income after taxes to pay my mom’s pension. That monetary cost is nothing, I would gladly pay it for the rest of my…

> Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech?

Won't that just make the problem worse?

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#152

Post by nojs »

simianparrot wrote: post #148

The assumption that everything can be “fixed” is one I will never understand. It’s so obvious when studying organisms in all their shapes and forms how everything is a tradeoff, and nothing can be stable. The fundamental truth of the universe is change. Senescence is a tradeoff to ward against cancer earlier in life. Eventually it will lead to cancer as a side effect, but optimally something else has failed before th…

This is a catch-all dismissal that you could make about any medical innovation throughout history. There are a lot of things we can fix, and we’ve had a lot of success so far in doing so.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#153

Post by simianparrot »

oezi wrote: post #149
simianparrot wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. Unchecked immigration of people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values leads to a monoculture that is terrible for everyone. Multiculturalism doesn’t work when everyone’s culture is equal everywhere. And unless it wasn’t obvious, I firmly believe in multiculturalism, but I believe we (here in Europe in particular) have…

As another European I don't understand your argument because Europe has seen so much internal migration over the hundreds of years that it is weird to argue it is leading to monoculture. Also unchecked migration to Europe is down to 200.000 people per year so less than 0.1% of population.

I include poor vetting and integration as unchecked immigration if that wasn’t obvious. And do note that I wrote

> people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values

No culture should nor can stay stagnant. But if we allow in people who do not share or wish to share a majority of our cultural values, which vary a lot between European countries as well, then we deteriorate what made our countries lucrative destinations for these people faster than we can maintain it.

It’s not complicated. Why are all those people coming here if all cultures are equal?

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#154

Post by Der_Einzige »

psalaun wrote: post #141
picafrost wrote: post #136

I admire the human belief that the improvement of technology and our living standards will be infinite. It will be a bitter moment if we finally realize the plateau we've been stuck on is not temporary and all future gains will be marginal.

And it even might be a rather short (in length, not height) peak we won't ever reach again. Nowadays I don't see a single reason to believe that children won't be put back to work in western societies in 200 years, unless massive hypothetical innovations are made to replace depleting oil and keep the very high productivity per capita we've been enjoying for decades.

How can you think this in a world where AI is making miracles happen?

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#155

Post by georgemcbay »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #11

I wonder if as a species we can ever get more comfortable with death. We’re built not to be I realize, and we should never be for those that are young but I feel like we should be ok with living 80ish or more years and then clocking out. That being said, I’m not cool with the idea of dying when good, but when I’m in a major depressive episode, the idea of immortality is terrifying.

In my experience (with both my age peers and people a generation older) as a 52 year old most people who aren't sociopathic narcissists just naturally get more comfortable with the idea of their own death with age.

Not like they long for it or whatever, but anxiety about it goes down, acceptance of it goes up.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#156

Post by simianparrot »

nojs wrote: post #152
simianparrot wrote: post #148

The assumption that everything can be “fixed” is one I will never understand. It’s so obvious when studying organisms in all their shapes and forms how everything is a tradeoff, and nothing can be stable. The fundamental truth of the universe is change. Senescence is a tradeoff to ward against cancer earlier in life. Eventually it will lead to cancer as a side effect, but optimally something else has failed before th…

This is a catch-all dismissal that you could make about any medical innovation throughout history. There are a lot of things we can fix, and we’ve had a lot of success so far in doing so.

It’s not. We never fix anything in medicine: We treat and prevent. Removing the appendix prevents or treats acute appendicitis, but it also has a tradeoff in terms of removing a gut biome reservoir.

This isn’t me dismissing the incredible improvements to our way of life modern medicine has brought. In essence it’s given everyone access to the same potential standard of living as was reserved for kings and nobility in the past — and then some.

But you can’t fully fix aging. You can’t infinitely improve standard of living.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#157

Post by 9dev »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #154
psalaun wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it even might be a rather short (in length, not height) peak we won't ever reach again. Nowadays I don't see a single reason to believe that children won't be put back to work in western societies in 200 years, unless massive hypothetical innovations are made to replace depleting oil and keep the very high productivity per capita we've been enjoying for decades.

How can you think this in a world where AI is making miracles happen?

Which miracles has it enabled yet other than human-sounding chatbots and humongous capital investment sums?

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#158

Post by 9dev »

picafrost wrote: post #142
9dev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This realisation is by definition wrong, or coincidence. You can’t know the future, so you’ll never know whether something will eventually come around and change everything.

I think this is a great point. It's not a robust counter-point, but Gödel's incompleteness theorems come to mind. We do know there are limitations to formal systems, we think there may be limitations to computational complexity. Maybe we haven't developed the tool set to make similar claims about biology (or maybe such tools cannot exist) or technology in the abstract. But these may also come in the future.

Fair enough. If we reach a point where we’ve discovered all fundamental truths of the universe and no more knowledge is helping towards solutions we need, then yes, that may imply awareness of the plateau; I’ll give you that. It also seems fantastically far away, so much so that it seems an exercise in futility to speculate about it.

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#159

Post by ACCount37 »

simianparrot wrote: post #156
nojs wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a catch-all dismissal that you could make about any medical innovation throughout history. There are a lot of things we can fix, and we’ve had a lot of success so far in doing so.

It’s not. We never fix anything in medicine: We treat and prevent. Removing the appendix prevents or treats acute appendicitis, but it also has a tradeoff in terms of removing a gut biome reservoir. This isn’t me dismissing the incredible improvements to our way of life modern medicine has brought. In essence it’s given everyone access to the same potential standard of living as was reserved for kings and nobility in…

Not if you throw your hands up and never try!

Aging isn't even recognized as a disease yet, and it well should be. Once it gets at least the same kind of focus cancer or heart disease does now? Then we'll talk about how it's "impossible to fix".

Re: New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

#160

Post by simianparrot »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #132
dsign wrote: post #118

I was walking on the street the other day. It was fine summer, and I saw so many elderly walking outside. All of them were using one type of aid or another; some even had a social worker at their side. As I saw them, I was thinking that my 63% marginal tax was paying for it, while I part with 25% of my income after taxes to pay my mom’s pension. That monetary cost is nothing, I would gladly pay it for the rest of my…

> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. You cannot discount the destabilising potential of immigration, and the lowering of societal trust it comes with. As we saw multiple times, integration is the edge case and not the rule. It will be especially harder to integrate people the way the demographic pyramid is looking right now in "developed" countries. I would also question the desire…

I appreciate you being honest, but I also don't want people like you to immigrate to my country. How are you so sure of the role our old people played in your reasons for emigrating? Even if you're in the US and from a country the US has actively destabilized, how many of the people on welfare -- old and/or infirm -- were instrumental in the actions that led to the destabilization of your country? How many of these people had any active choice?

This is why we need strong vetting of immigrants.

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