New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by bigmattystyles » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #15

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.

> I feel like we should be ok with living 80ish or more years and then clocking out. Some people would very much prefer if their consciousness wouldn't have an end date, after which they'll never experience or think anything and will just cease to exist.

Maybe, but I feel like most would eventually reach same conclusion as the (majority of) protagonists in the good place…

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

#22

Post by varelse » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:56 PM UTC

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

#23

Post by close04 » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #4

There is no physical/chemical/biological reason you can’t live indefinitely with the health and vitality of a 25-35 year old. Aging isn’t a law of nature.

Physical/chemical maybe not, but biologically there might be strong reasons to not allow a complex organism to live forever. Evolution might be accounting for a lot of the reasons leading to the death of the individual organism. For one it would stimulate evolution itself and also alleviate the inevitable resource pressure.

A species that lives forever must adjust to reproduce relatively slowly to not overwhelm the local environment. A species that lives short lives will reproduce at much higher rates. So at any time the fewer “immortal” individuals would be vulnerable to competition from the many “mortals”, or to predators.

Humans are a special case because we don’t operate only on biological imperatives so you could make immortal humans but with implications we can’t even think of now. Maybe our limitation will not be biological but societal.

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

#24

Post by varelse » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

czhu12 wrote: post #5

I don’t want to be that guy but isn’t this kind of an obvious result? The main claim is that life expectancy improvements in the past century are mostly due to decreases in childhood mortality. During the Roman period, the average life expectancy was only 22-25 years old because so many babies were dying prematurely. If you could make it past the age of 10, then you were expected to make it to about 50, which almost…

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

#25

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

tokai wrote: post #8

adastra22 wrote: post #4

There is no physical/chemical/biological reason you can’t live indefinitely with the health and vitality of a 25-35 year old. Aging isn’t a law of nature.

It out of my wheelhouse but isn't telomeres a physical/chemical/biological reason we can't live forever?

I believe the argument would go "there's no fundamental reason we can't fix telomeres".

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

#26

Post by tristramb » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

tristramb wrote: post #18

adastra22 wrote: post #4

There is no physical/chemical/biological reason you can’t live indefinitely with the health and vitality of a 25-35 year old. Aging isn’t a law of nature.

But that doesn't mean that it will be economically feasible.

And I wouldn't expect it to be, given that were are the product of billions of years of an evolutionary process that has relied on 'scrap and rebuild from scratch' as a mechanism to control errors.

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

#27

Post by jebarker » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

conception wrote: post #19

SoftTalker wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd then that every living thing ages and eventually dies?

This is not true and easily countered by any sort of investigation. Lobsters, flatworms, immortal jellyfish and hydras are all believed to be immortal. In fact we know how to live forever, control our telomeres. We know it works because cancer exists. We just can’t control it but controlled cancer is effectively immortality.

Is it true that those creatures are believed to be immortal or we’ve just never seen one die of natural causes?

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

#28

Post by ALittleLight » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

This looks pretty trivial. Obviously modern gains in life expectancy were from removing things that killed us in early age. This says nothing about future gains in life expectancy which may come from biological/medical interventions that reduce senescence.

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

#29

Post by echelon » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

czhu12 wrote: post #5

I don’t want to be that guy but isn’t this kind of an obvious result? The main claim is that life expectancy improvements in the past century are mostly due to decreases in childhood mortality. During the Roman period, the average life expectancy was only 22-25 years old because so many babies were dying prematurely. If you could make it past the age of 10, then you were expected to make it to about 50, which almost…

That's 100% on the mark. Infants aren't dying anymore.

Real longevity is hard science and we're still at the punch card phase of biology.

Wake me up when we can make headless, full body monoclonal donors for human head transplants. Antigen free / HLA neutral so immunosuppressants are a thing of the past. That'll cure every cancer except brain and blood, cure every other injury, and increase health span of everything but the brain.

The tough problems:

- religious ick and luddite ick

- artificial gestation

- deactivating the brain stem without impacting development

- keeping the body physiologically active and developmentally normative

- head transplants that preserve spinal cord function

- lots of other ancillary issues with changes to pulmonary and immune flux.

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

#30

Post by AstroBen » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

meindnoch wrote: post #9

cronelius wrote: post #3

bryan johnson has entered the chat

I have this feeling he's going to die way earlier than he would have if he just lived a normal life.

I mean he's just marketing eating well, sleeping and exercising.. how on earth would that make him die way earlier?