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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

#271

Post by HighGoldstein »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #199
lblume wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, increases in total lifespan have always corresponded to increases in the length of healthy lives. People don't only live longer, they also live without being sick a whole lot longer.

Exactly. It is far more fantastical to imagine such lifespan improvements resulting in a planet of crypt keepers than one of external youth. What magic do you expect would keep such people alive?

Keeping a person _technically_ alive is not that difficult with modern technology. We can circulate blood without hearts, keep the brain-dead "alive", "feed" people intravenously. I don't know the absolute limits of this in practice, but the more autonomy you're willing to sacrifice the easier it becomes to keep a human body alive by artificial means.

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

#272

Post by dillydogg »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #215
ACCount37 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given the current state of the NIH, I'm not sure if we are "getting on this" with any diseases right now. I've seen quite a number of my colleagues end up retiring or stopping their research programs all together at a university that has its NIH funding halted for being politically insubordinate.

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

#273

Post by sothatsit »

simianparrot wrote: post #226
ACCount37 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "fairness enforcement" in life, and biology is no exception. The closest we get is conservation laws, and those do not forbid living healthily well into your 500s. You're out looking for "tradeoffs" that may not be there, or may not be worth caring about. There is no "balance of tradeoffs" in everything. There isn't an Authority on Biology that says "if you get good X then you must take bad Y to keep thin…

> But nature barely even tried. Humans can do better than that. ~3.8 billion years of evolution "barely even tried"? There's hubris and then there's _hubris_. But to repeat myself: I am not saying we shouldn't try. I'm saying we should expect no free lunch, and that the concept of tradeoffs for every alteration is a much healthier mental framework to work off of because _so far_ that's been the one consistent truth i…

If you think evolution was optimising for longevity, then you really haven't thought it through.

For 3.8 billion years, organisms just needed to survive long enough to reproduce. Cancer, heart disease, and other age-related diseases only became significant killers in the last few hundred years. That's nowhere near enough time for evolution to address them. And even then, age-related diseases don't directly influence people's chance of reproducing and passing on their genes.

Conversely, evolution has had millions of years to work on fighting infectious diseases, which have been bigger killers for most of our history.

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

#274

Post by HighGoldstein »

hamandcheese wrote: post #151
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 ?

Conceptually no, unless you specifically target end-of-life fatal ailments for some reason. Extending the healthy lifespan is a pretty reliable way to extend overall lifespan.

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

#275

Post by pembrook »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #266
pembrook wrote: post #206

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…

> I'll enjoy your aesthetic traditions and take your free social welfare, but I'll keep my own culture and values, thank you very much. And I have every right to want you out of country and my taxes not to be wasted on the likes of you.

Which is why socialism is fundamentally incompatible with immigration, and why the US, being a nation of immigrants, is structured the way it is (more individualist). Nobody wants to pay for the new guy to have a luxury first world lifestyle with free healthcare, education and pension.

The more a society adopts socialist policies, the less friendly to immigration it becomes.

Both the US and most large European countries had roughly the same percentage of GDP driven by central government spending (socialism) in the 1960s...roughly 25-30%.

Socialist policies have steadily grown that percentage in both regions, with it happening more dramatically in Europe. The US is now at 35-40%, and Europe at 45-50%.

You can map the slowly rising anti-immigrant backlash in the US (and especially in Europe) to this perfectly.

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

#276

Post by ACCount37 »

DrBazza wrote: post #261
kruffalon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. Not in a sustainable way. Immigration is only viable as long as the countries of origin are so bad to live in so it's "better" to migrate. This is not really a world we want, is it?

Don't forget that the recipient countries of immigrants are brain-draining the countries they're leaving. Arguably those motivated individuals are precisely those that should stay in their country and make it less 'bad'.

That's for them to decide, not you.

I don't have enough cruelty in me to demand that someone should stay in Sudan and try to "fix" what's happening there.

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

#277

Post by kelnos »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #174
baq wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, we’ll just replace ourselves with humanoid robots. Only half joking

You know this is how we will end eventually in the best case. We won’t master our biology, we will simply transcend it by pro-creating offspring that have something better. It’s also a much easier solution than untangling evolved biological systems that are not designed to last for what have been very beneficial reasons (e.g. scientific advances occur via death of the old guard).

I think this is reasonably likely.

We need to remember that our bodies are evolutionarily optimized for getting to childbearing years, and then living long enough to get our children to a point where they can be independent. After that there are really no evolutionary pressures keeping us around.

Untangling all that and re-engineering ourselves (biologically) to overcome that is probably a pretty monumental task; starting from scratch with something simpler (and perhaps non-biological) might be easier, with sufficiently advanced technology.

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

#279

Post by whodidntante »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #207
simianparrot wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Apart from the complex topic of political complicity, I am talking about events and actions that the majority of the local population supported. I would of course have to reveal quite a bit about me in order to be more specific. But even if I were an immigrant to the US from Venezuela or any of the tens if not hundreds countries that the US destabilised, I would indeed think of the majority of US's population as comp…

There are plenty of countries to go to that are not complicit in your home countries issues if your issue is with the US.

Russia and China have well above average lifestyles based on PPP. So do many South American countries, as well as Japan, and South Korea and other Asian countries. Also a number of countries in the middle east.

Yes, I understand the US is a very very bad country. I am also a very very bad person because I am very grateful, proud, and and supportive of this country for providing my family an opportunity to thrive even though it took decades for my "type" to be accepted and not discriminated against. My grandparents fled from other countries to be here, for a better life.

Note that I say "opportunity", because nothing was handed to my grandparents or my parents. They were given opportunity, not a subsidized life. They were also, as many immigrants have been, discriminated against for decades, but never complained or held grudges.

I am a huge believer in immigration, but have zero tolerance for those demanding to be supported or who commit crimes or those that choose to come here and bitch about this country. There are plenty of other places to go to.

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