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

#341

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:35 PM UTC

4gotunameagain wrote: post #132

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…

> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. You cannot discount the destabilising potential of immigration, and the lowering of societal trust it comes with. As we saw multiple times, integration is the edge case and not the rule. It will be especially harder to integrate people the way the demographic pyramid is looking right now in "developed" countries. I would also question the desire…

[deleted]

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

#342

Post by r_singh » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC

ggm wrote: 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…

The problem is that mistrust is at its highest that it has been. Science and evidence have been used as political tools in the recent past... and it has started becoming clear to more and more people. Either that or to protect financial interests of some legacy chaebol... so people are losing faith.

In my country people both believe and have some evidence that those that live in an orderly fashion, learn to be emotionally detached and focus most of their energies on flow states and forward escapes end up living longer than those who don't and living beyond 100 is not really difficult if one lives a healthy balanced life as prescribed by Yoga philosophy from the get go.

I'm gonna stick my neck out and say that if life's goal is living, like it should be — and not endless economic growth or an endless compulsion on the hedonic treadmill — it isn't hard to live beyond 100.

When life's goal is living every aspect of it from family, to children to rest get the love and attention they deserve and economic outcomes and status games do not dictate life. But for that to happen one needs to realise that the most precious thing they own is their energy and will. And must learn to see which activities increase their leverage and which ones don't. When one lives that way, the most contrarian thing is that you can achieve a lot more than by chasing because you start to intrinsically do rather than chase — the latter being much more expensive energy wise. I understand if this gets too esoteric for HN. But it's what I believe to be true and is also IMHO the reason why many high performing individuals seem to be unaffected by illnesses even at old age because their energy is continuously and exponentially directed in virtuous cycles and not disturbed easily by external happenings. You are energy and can be understood and defined entirely mathematically. Yoga means union with the universe's synchronicity. It originates from Sankhya Philosophy which simply means counting all energy.

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

#343

Post by westmeal » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #331

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only one of those options seems financially practical, unfortunately.

It's funny to say this when there in fact is wealth but is mostly tied up in assets owned by rich douchebags and trust fund kids. Financially practical is just a nonsense word considering money isn't even tied to anything anymore either.

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

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Post by strken » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

sdeframond wrote: post #292

ACCount37 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't scale. If you could put "sleeping well, eating well and exercising" into a $0.25 once a week pill and make that available to everyone, it would work. As is, it doesn't. We want solutions that can be scaled and rolled out broadly, and "basic healthy lifestyle" ain't it.

Why not? What is not scalable about it, specifically ? I mean, sure, it doesn't scale as well as a magic pill as a business . But is certainly is O(n) with the number of people involved.

Just considering one component, what is stopping good sleep? Here's a random list of what I can think of:

- noise pollution

- lack of fitness

- stimulant use during the day

- inability to manage a clean, nice sleeping environment

- obesity and sleep apnea

- a partner who can't sleep

- heat or cold in your bedroom

- mental illness

So, just from that list, we see that we'd need to overhaul housing quality so everyone has quadruple glazing and an air-conditioner, stop them chugging coffee, get them help with their laundry, fix their fitness and cure their obesity (which are themselves caused by poor sleep), and get them into therapy.

That sounds hard! Also, we're already working on a lot of it, but it's generally difficult or impossible to fix all of those problems.

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

#345

Post by paulryanrogers » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:46 PM UTC

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…

> It’s not complicated. Why are all those people coming here if all cultures are equal?

Because they're coming from resource poor countries to those which are richer? Or from regimes that have been captured by an oppressive minority. Or because their nation is being attacked by an aggressive neighbor (or distant empire)?

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

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Post by swat535 » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:48 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #286

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…

> 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. By the time you think suicide is the better option, you are often already in a managed and locked down environment in which it is difficult to impossible to commit suicide in an acceptable manner. Believe me I know it.

"Suicide in an acceptable manner" sounds as like an oxymoron.

Why would you care that it's "acceptable" by society which you will no longer take part of ? If your concern is pain, then perhaps that is your mind telling you NOT to end your life and seek therapy instead.

Assisted suicide only makes sense in situations where the person is in extreme chronic pain and no palliative care or treatment can be provided, which is rather rare.

We should not be encouraging or celebrating suicide, it takes away innocent lives, especially younger ones. If you ask the survivors, many of them are glad they didn't go through with it.

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

#347

Post by lemoncookiechip » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:49 PM UTC

I find it a tough sell to add another 20 years to life expectancy, considering that by the time you reach 70, most people are already in decline (some worse than others), and the drop from 70 to 80 tends to be steep for many. Those who make it past 80 into their 90s or even 100s often aren’t living particularly fulfilling lives, if you can even call it living at that point.

Losing your vision, your hearing, your mobility, and worst of all, your mind, doesn’t sound very appealing to me.

So unless we find a way to both live longer and to decliner slower, I just don't see the point for the majority of people who will unfortunately live lonely worse lives.

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

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Post by Levitz » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:50 PM UTC

Earw0rm wrote: post #200

makingstuffs wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this! A few Pakistanis moving in down the road doesn't stop British people practicing British culture. The reason they don't can be summarised as laziness and ignorance. "The pub got turned into a mosque", maybe it did but it wasn't because the Moors invaded fgs. A successful pub gets to carry on being one - if it's not successful, maybe that's because people stopped using it.

>A successful pub gets to carry on being one - if it's not successful, maybe that's because people stopped using it.

And pray tell, how does the influx of a muslim, non-alcohol-drinking population, influence this?

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

#349

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #331

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only one of those options seems financially practical, unfortunately.

If this is true (and I don't think it is), then we need a fundamental, radical overthrowing of the social order, and a lot of work put into constructing a new one. Any system where putting people to death is more "practical" than giving them fulfilling lives must be destroyed, and replaced. (It may be more effective to destroy and replace the system gradually – "reform" – since revolutions tend to have too many moving parts for Blanquists to keep track of, the situation has to be pretty bad before a popular revolution becomes likely, and the world's so interconnected now that foreign powers will take advantage of the malleability of a society undergoing revolution, likely to the detriment of the locals.)

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

#350

Post by Vinnl » Sun, Aug 31, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #230

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…

> assisted suicide is a lot better than artificially prolonging suffering at great cost for as long as possible. I beseech you to contemplate how badly this might be abused, and how monstrous the consequences could be. Even now MAID in Canada and other forms of assisted suicide in Europe have arguably gone way too far.

I'm not familiar with MAID, but AFAIK I live in the European country with the most liberal euthanasia policy, and hardly anyone here thinks it's gone too far, let alone way too far.