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

lafollette.wisc.edu

211–220 of 535 posts

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

#211
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

100% I often say to people that the reason for the UK’s loss of culture is not immigration but the fact that we, as British people, stopped being British in pursuit of the ‘American dream’. Somewhere along the line we stopped looking to our own previous generations (which include European nations as, you know, we’re Europeans) for cultural identity and started following Hollywood as our cultural oracle. Generations o…

What British values do you think have been abandoned in favor of American values?

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

#212
post #124

Is it just genetic? On my father’s side, people typically live to 100 at a minimum and are perfectly healthy mentally and physically right up till a week or so before they die. My grandmother is 103 and can still lives alone in her house and can walk unassisted, has a memory sharp as anything, and so on. Maybe look at long lived families and figure out what is different about them?

Maybe living the blue zone [1] lifestyle? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_zone

I'd be cautious of Blue Zones, they're potentially not actually a real thing and more of a statistical construct.

https://www.science.org/content/article/do-blue-zones-suppos...

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

#213
post #2

What about quality of life adjusted life years? I don’t want to live to 100 and be miserable for the last 30 But if you can get me 90 years where I feel like a spring chicken until 89, then that’s just fine.

I’d rather be alive engulfed in flames than dead.

I’m wondering if you’ve ever felt debilitating acute pain. I had nerve pain in the past to where my leg felt like it was on fire. It was then I understood how people get addicted to pain killers. I was able to address the problem and I’ve been fine for many years, but it hurt more than any pain I’ve ever had - and I have had many from sports.

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

#214
post #191

Remarkable hostility and strange circular logic from some people posting here. Clearly belief outstrips evidence. If research suggests there's an observable asymptotic trend, public health dollars at the very least might be better spent on quality of life as much as quantity. The posts saying an atom of oxygen is potentially infinitely long lived (ignoring radioactive decay?) As a "proof" that life extension has no l…

Radical life extension within our lifetimes has become secular religion substitute. It’s driven more by hope and faith than by scientific fact.

While a lifespan has no limits in theory if technology is advanced enough, the belief that it can be achieved by a living person is based on hope rather than evidence.

- Possible in our lifetime.

- Affordable to the faithful.

You remove these two, and the faithful lose their interest in discussing the matter.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global investment in cancer research (not treatment) between 2016 and 2020 came in just under $25 billion [1]. That means someone like Elon could have financed basically all cancer research around the globe for a decade. Instead he bought twitter. And remember that the Forbes billionaires are not the most wealthy people in the world. They are just the ones living in countries with public company accounting. There is…

That's consistent with what I said, yes. Two decades of this kind of research spending add up to $100 billion. And most billionaires are closer to $5 billion rich than to $500 billion rich. It would sure be nice to have an infinite money glitch billionaire who cares a lot about funding anti-aging research and lobbying for anti-aging efforts, the way Musk cares about space exploration and trolling people online. We're…

The point is if anti-aging didn't have this edgy image in billionaire circles, there would be more than enough money to go around. If everyone agrees that we should get on this like we do certain other diseases, we could certainly tap into a lot of resources.

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

#216
post #32

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.

You're not dreaming big enough. "Accept death, it's beautiful" is cope. It's not beautiful. It's suboptimal horror. I find it offensive that so many "universe experiencing itself" entities willingly accept a return to dust. Our sun dies, and with it everything on this planet will become metal inclusions in a decaying solar body. You know what doesn't matter in light of that? All other perspectives. Every other concep…

You are not alone in this. Though I would say it is absolute horror, not just suboptimal one.

Practically speaking, I have no idea what I _personally_ can do except of accepting the inevitable.

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

#217
post #124

Is it just genetic? On my father’s side, people typically live to 100 at a minimum and are perfectly healthy mentally and physically right up till a week or so before they die. My grandmother is 103 and can still lives alone in her house and can walk unassisted, has a memory sharp as anything, and so on. Maybe look at long lived families and figure out what is different about them?

Maybe living the blue zone [1] lifestyle? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_zone

a familial history of shoddy record keeping?

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The problem in Europe is not immigration, the problem is there being no European country with a vision of the future for immigrants to buy into. Aesthetic Traditions ≠ Culture. Traditions are just one aspect, but as Nietzsche wrote about the death of God, traditions are not a substitute for values. America for hundreds of years has offered a shared vision of the future and values to immigrants of every backgroun…

> the only vision of the future being offered is one of impending doom and urbanist intellectual memes I agree with this. Far too many European countries have no optimistic or even productive outlooks on the future, instead seeming to trade in a form of pessimistic reductionism. Eat less, do less, be less. However: > it's no wonder that immigrants wouldn't want to buy into your culture Then why do they stay as long a…

>I would never move to a country I don't respect, let alone stay to drain resources and give nothing back.

Hey, good for you. But there are many societies where making a living without working is something to be proud of. I know because I live in one.

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

#219

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.

I wonder if I would really like to pour billions of taxpayer money into aging when we are not even able to live a basic healthy lifestyle.

Sleeping well, eating well and exercising does work. Science about this is well-established. So why arent we?

It would not raise the life expectancy to 100 years but it would considerably reduce the health burden on the economy.

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just compare the effort and the investment that goes into fighting aging with what goes into fighting cancer. You can't rely on billionaires to fix everything for you. The kind of research effort that would be required to make meaningful progress against aging would likely demand hundreds of billions, spent across decades. Few billionaires have the pockets deep enough to bankroll something like this, or the long term…

Bill Gates has enough money for effective longevity research. Longevity research isn't even particularly expensive. The actual problem is that you would have to do selective breeding and genetic modification of humans the same way we do it with plants and animals. It is primarily an ethical problem.

Not necessarily. We already have drugs that can hit "genetic disease" targets in adults, and we can modify adult genomes to a minor degree.

Sure, it would be nigh impossible to do something like cram "genetic resistance to cancer" into a grown adult with current day tech, but there are other surfaces to attack in longevity.

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