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

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

#321

Post by ecb_penguin »

ben_w wrote: post #245
nabla9 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Radical life extension within our lifetimes has become secular religion substitute. It’s driven more by hope and faith than by scientific fact. Did someone prove mice have souls that go to heaven or hell while I wasn't looking? For all the limits of research that only works in mice and doesn't generalise to humans (I'm *not* going to plan with the assumption of radical longevity) it's not quite as bad as taking eve…

> Did someone prove mice have souls that go to heaven or hell while I wasn't looking?

What does this have to do with a soul? The comment was about people treating life extension as a religion based on faith more than evidence.

Nothing to do with the soul, or heaven, or anything else.

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

#322

Post by baq »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #221
joelthelion wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, we are paying an extremely high cost for letting God go on with His Slow Tormentous Cooking of Souls before Consumption, and things are only going to get worse, given the demographic expectations. Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech? It's controversial, but I think it would be tremendously beneficial to our society if we accepted that death is (currently) inevit…

But then how would you justify the healthcare racket?

Ah, the good old ‘your medical bill is my dividend’ retirement plan.

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

#323

Post by XorNot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94
adastra22 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two points: (1) Yes we do have an example: us. Why is a baby’s cells young and healthy, and not the age of the parents? Dormant eggs are not the answer as you’d still get accumulating damage over time. Turns out there are mechanisms for cellular reprogramming which rejuvenates cells. There are mechanisms for making ages cells indistinguishable from young cells. We just haven’t fully harnessed this capability on thera…

> No physical law prevents restoring tissue to healthy young state. We just haven’t developed the tools to do so (yet) You’re speculating too far beyond what we know to speak so definitively. Plenty of biology and even thermodynamics suggests there may be limits. That doesn’t prove they exist. But it’s in the same category as saying there are no know physics which prohibit time travel or transcending the human condit…

You can't invoke thermodynamics, because thermodynamics doesn't work that way - the Earth is not a closed system. The sun continuously imparts a stupendous amount of energy to the planet, sufficient to allow the entire biosphere to continuously replace itself.

Thermodynamics is not a limit on an intelligent agent reconfiguring atoms on Earth for the next several billion years.

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

#324

Post by jeffhwang »

e-topy wrote: post #249
lm28469 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main causes of death in the US are literally sloth and gluttony, none of your points adress that. If people wanted to live long the single most effective thing they can do is exercise and eat clean, apparently the vast majority of people simply don't care.

European here. I've been to the US and holy mother of Jesus, you put sooooo much sugar into everything. I had to buy 'European' bread because your normal bread made my gums hurt, and even then that was the sweetest bread I've ever eaten. Seriously, when your one large oreo shake has 2600 calories, no wonder your obesity rate is 35% and isn't slowing. Driving to the toilet instead of walking also doesn't help. Then yo…

Is this hyperbole or do Americans actually drive rather than walk to toilets? Not being hostile, genuinely curious.

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

#325

Post by a_imho »

joelthelion wrote: post #180
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…

> So, we are paying an extremely high cost for letting God go on with His Slow Tormentous Cooking of Souls before Consumption, and things are only going to get worse, given the demographic expectations. Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech? It's controversial, but I think it would be tremendously beneficial to our society if we accepted that death is (currently) inevit…

It's controversial, but I think it would be tremendously beneficial to our society if we accepted that death is (currently) inevitable and that past some point, assisted suicide is a lot better than artificially prolonging suffering at great cost for as long as possible.

I hold the opposite view on this issue. While I firmly believe that everyone should have the freedom to make their own choices about their lives, my primary concern is that certain groups and especially governments are actively promoting assisted suicide. Even if it's merely coincidental, I find the underlying incentives perverse, for lack of a better word. Admittedly drawing from a Hollywood sci-fi perspective, I would much prefer that, instead of programs like MAID, people were offered options such as cryopreservation.

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

#326

Post by [deleted] »

jeffhwang wrote: post #324
e-topy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European here. I've been to the US and holy mother of Jesus, you put sooooo much sugar into everything. I had to buy 'European' bread because your normal bread made my gums hurt, and even then that was the sweetest bread I've ever eaten. Seriously, when your one large oreo shake has 2600 calories, no wonder your obesity rate is 35% and isn't slowing. Driving to the toilet instead of walking also doesn't help. Then yo…

Is this hyperbole or do Americans actually drive rather than walk to toilets? Not being hostile, genuinely curious.

[deleted]

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

#327

Post by wizzwizz4 »

brabel wrote: post #270
nabla9 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had full understanding of human cell and how they contribute to homeostasis, you could reprogram the cell to rejuvenate them endlessly without turning into cancer (many cancers have unlimited lifespan). You would also need to find ways to remove all cruft that gradually accumulates even in healthy body, like heavy metals etc.

How do you know that you could? That’s the question! If we did understand biology perfectly it may be that we would then prove no organism can live forever and reproduction is the only way.

Reproduction is not physically special. If it is physically possible to create a new organism with a longer lifespan than its parent (which it is), then it is physically possible to extend the lifespan of an existing organism. This may be impractical, but we cannot prove that no organism can live ≈forever, because it's not a physical impossibility. (Assuming a source of power remains present: it looks like the universe won't last forever, so we can trivially assert that no organism can live forever.)

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

#328

Post by wizzwizz4 »

VonTum wrote: post #300
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of ways for you to end your life. You do not have to involve government or society. You do not require sanction or assistance. The only people who might require assistance and sanction are those who are so catastrophically ill that they cannot function independently at all. But MAID has already killed people who were able-bodied! (And some for stupid or trivial reasons: https://care.org.uk/news/2024/10…

> However, lobbying efforts have steadily pushed for broader access and eligibility...British legislators have to consider how easily assisted dying can be expanded, how easily abuses can go undetected. Wait, how exactly does one "abuse" MAID? People being so deep in poverty and addiction that they opt for MAID as an option isn't a symptom that it's "too easy" to access it, but rather that _society_ is failing them.…

The argument is that society should not put resources into things like assisted dying programmes: they should put resources into making life worth living for people who would otherwise take the assisted dying option.

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

#329

Post by Earw0rm »

zksijdjd wrote: post #303
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really have to read again and again the same fantasies the far right spew out continuously here in France on Hacker News? It’s so easy to factually disprove, it’s kind of boring. I will keep it short because I value my time but here some things you might want to ponder: - America integration doesn’t exist. The American strategy has always been leave people alone to keep living in their own culture. There is no…

[flagged]

Has any country succeeded medium-term in increasing its birth rate? AFAIK quite a few have tried, but if people don't want to have babies, it's difficult to change their minds about that - short of allocating a pretty big chunk of a country's economic capacity towards the pursuit of raising children.

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

#330

Post by aradox66 »

kelnos wrote: post #277
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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; sta…

Arguably there are some evolutionary advantages to the presence of elders in social species with cultural transmission but your point stands
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