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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

#161

Post by ACCount37 »

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…

Everything can be fixed. There are just things we figured out how to fix, and ones we didn't yet.

The only real, fully enforced tradeoff is "energy is always required to keep the lights on". And it's not like humans are strapped for energy.

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

#162

Post by londons_explore »

I believe this is mostly due to misdirected healthcare efforts.

I think we could get the average life expectancy up to 100 if we did a better job of all the preventative things:

* Prevent airborne disease by having all indoor spaces getting 50 air changes/filters per hour.

* Prevent waterborne disease by having all tap water RO treated in homes, and by heating all shit up to boiling point before it leaves toilets.

* Large scale animal and human trials of every chemical used in daily life to find those things like a pacifier which gives you cancer 60 years later. It is far better to do an 'unethical' trial of a chemical than the current system of just putting it in all products and going bankrupt later.

* Prevent spread of other diseases like the common cold with daily covid-like lateral flow tests for everyone, with the government bringing you food and paying you to stay home if infected with any spreadable disease.

* Work on many more vaccines and give them out for free to the whole world to eliminate more diseases like we did with smallpox (that vaccine has saved around 800 million lives).

* Dramatically reduced effort on individual treatment (cancer, care homes, etc) by putting a 200% tax on healthcare, and funnelling that money into preventative things so the next generation doesn't get the health issues at all.

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

#163

Post by ACCount37 »

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.

"Get comfortable with death" is the mortal cope.

We should get less comfortable with death, and we should attack the problem until it's solved.

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

#165

Post by ACCount37 »

Aging isn't even recognized as a disease yet, and it well should be.

Very little research currently goes into attacking aging directly - as opposed to handling things that are in no small part downstream from aging, such as heart disease. A big reason for poor "longevity gains" is lack of trying.

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

#166

Post by baq »

ACCount37 wrote: post #159
simianparrot wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Aging is a disease in the same way children are parasites. Fix one, fix the other.

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

#167

Post by orwin »

simianparrot wrote: post #153
oezi wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countrie…

I'm pretty sure US cultural slop destroyed more of my culture in the last 20 years than immigration ever did, and while immigrants are part of the movement for sure (especially English retirees, but also a lot of 2nd/3rd gen migrants from eastern Europe/North Africa), they're not the main driver.

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

#168

Post by grues-dinner »

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?

Only if it can improve life quality rather than length alone.

Of course if we make it so you can live to 200 in the body of a 24-year-old and then suddenly drop dead, the good news is there will be no pensions to pay any more and the bad news is you will drop dead at your 180th year at work.

Which is not to say I would not take that deal. Aging is brutal and I've just about had enough already!

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

#169

Post by simianparrot »

ACCount37 wrote: post #159
simianparrot wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

That’s a naive take on what senescence is. Look it up. You can stop it, but be prepared to then have to figure out how to deal with all the side effects it prevents. And then you can fix those but be prepared to deal with those side effects. And so on. My point isn’t to stop researching and understanding and even treating, but it’s that life is a balance of tradeoffs. Looking at it as if energy is a universal currency that can be traded for every other function is a fundamental misinterpretation of everything we understand about biology.

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

#170

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ACCount37 wrote: post #165

Aging isn't even recognized as a disease yet, and it well should be. Very little research currently goes into attacking aging directly - as opposed to handling things that are in no small part downstream from aging, such as heart disease. A big reason for poor "longevity gains" is lack of trying.

That’s kind of naive. Plenty of people definitely “try”, billionaires would love to live a few hundred more years. We know how aging occurs, there is degradation in DNA, telomeres shorten, and a bunch of other things. The main problem is that biological life simply can’t undergo overhauls like machines do, and we will probably just solve aging by creating successor beings that can.
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