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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

#391

Post by garciasn »

abricot wrote: post #375
melling wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president of the United States is almost 80. Bernie Sanders is 83. The Stones are still touring, … Ed Thorpe is well into his 90s. Here’s an interview with him at 89. Seems quite healthy: https://youtu.be/CNvz91Jyzbg?si=VNj61A256ZOBM977 This 10 minutes deals directly with fitness and longevity: https://youtu.be/dzCpUbkC1dg?si=LqV-tUFyxyYMW0qC

Mentioning the president is a bit like saying the pope is old. They are both selected/elected old.

I don’t care at all about the pope; they’re meaningless entities.

The President, however, especially when Congress is forced to toe their line, is. No president should be permitted to be more than 20 years older than the median age of the general population when they’re done leading the country. In this case, they shouldn’t be more than 58y old when their 8y term is up. This way, they and their progeny need to live with the decisions made for at least ~20y after they’re out of office.

There’s a reason there is forced retirement in some industries and government groups. Why the fuck we don’t enforce similar rules on the president I’ll never know.

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

#392

Post by pfortuny »

nabla9 wrote: post #233
brabel wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What theory says that human lifespan has no limits with technology assistance? Anything involving replacing biological systems with artificial ones is not really extending human lifespan, it’s replacing human life with something else.

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.

You know what a chaotic system is, don't you? That goes for a simple double pendulum.

There is no "full understanding" of a complex system.

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

#393

Post by melling »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #380
melling wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president of the United States is almost 80. Bernie Sanders is 83. The Stones are still touring, … Ed Thorpe is well into his 90s. Here’s an interview with him at 89. Seems quite healthy: https://youtu.be/CNvz91Jyzbg?si=VNj61A256ZOBM977 This 10 minutes deals directly with fitness and longevity: https://youtu.be/dzCpUbkC1dg?si=LqV-tUFyxyYMW0qC

People thought the President had died just yesterday because of how rapidly his health has declined since taking office in January. Bernie Sanders, for example, has had multiple health emergencies over the past few years. Using a few famous people as examples is hardly a reliable metric. My aunt is still alive at 103 and will likely make it to 104 if nothing changes. She has fewer health problems than other family me…

I’m not sure what we’re arguing here.

I responded to someone who said that people in their 70s are already in decline.

How many good years after 70 did she have?

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a friend and his 80-year-old wife. I would’ve never guessed she was 80.

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

#394

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

Levitz wrote: post #353
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…

This is incoherent babble. Not in a figurative or metaphorical way, you are not making sense and this kind of discourse is exactly what ensures that the far right will occupy most governments in Europe in some 10-20 years time, which I'm absolutely not looking forward to. >America integration doesn’t exist. This premise > The American strategy has always been leave people alone to keep living in their own culture. Co…

There are no contradictions where you pretend they are. You can’t claim something doesn’t make sense because you have nothing to oppose to it. Nice try in your last paragraph anyway.

Most European countries can fail at the same things while not having a shared culture identity. I have pointed you towards one example.

Same about America. This is not a contradiction. America purposefully doesn’t integrate people because there is nothing to actually integrate them into. America taken as a whole is from my point of view not a nation. It is a collection of groups often with little in common forming a country but in tension about how it should work. Some subgroups in the USA could arguably be considered nations with shared identities but certainly not the federation.

I will hasard you actually are the problem.

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

#395

Post by Kinrany »

ACCount37 wrote: post #231
Kinrany wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aging itself is not a disease, it's just stuff falling into disrepair over time. Age-related illnesses shouldn't be dismissed with "they're just old" of course but there's no reason to expect a single cause. Other than passage of time itself.

Cancer is "stuff falling into disrepair over time" too. Get enough faulty cells with DNA damage and one of them is going to make itself a problem. The only way to avoid cancer is to have something else kill you before you get it. That's not a reason to say that cancer is somehow "not a disease". It obviously is. We don't want cancer. We fund efforts to research cancer and funnel money into better cancer treatments, a…

Cancer at least has a shared mechanism at the level of human biology.

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

#396

Post by jandrewrogers »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #347

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 mobi…

My own observation is that a lot of decline happens because people stop living and start coasting to the grave, and that can happen decades earlier than 70.

My great-grandfather was physically very active into his 90s, still running his businesses, working in his orchards, and generally being surprisingly productive. He was mentally sharp too; I remember him teaching me about the physics of vacuum energy at length. Seemed like he could go on indefinitely. Then his wife died and he died less than a year later.

I always have him as my model for what I want to be like when I am old. He was still in the game until he wasn’t.

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

#397

Post by Davidzheng »

wongarsu wrote: post #373
bradley13 wrote: post #359

Genetics required. Natural evolution has zero interest in old people, so there has been no evolutionary pressure to extend lifespan. Possibly even the opposite. We could apply that pressure, either through selective breeding over generations, or through direct genetic modification. Maybe we aren't quite there yet, but it won't be long. Experiments on insects with selective breeding have easily tripled lifespans. How…

In modern society there is little evolutionary pressure to extend lifespan, but that's a very recent phenomenon. If my parents watch my kids and do the cooking so I have more time to hunt or work the field that improves the survival chances of my children, and my children share 25% of their DNA with their grandparents. The grandparents living a long productive life is good for the survival of their grandchildren, and…

Not an expert by any stretch of imagination. But it seems to be that not only is there almost no selection pressure on increasing lifespan, bc of medical advances in healthcare there's also less evolutionary pressure on reducing diseases and infertility (i guess there should still be substantial health related evolutionary pressure from sexual selection) in modern society. Why shouldn't we expect long term deterioration of fitness of genome similar to the deer in Yellowstone before reintroduction of wolves?

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

#398

Post by bheadmaster »

sherburt3 wrote: post #389
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…

Yes very illogical to hope that life will get better when my analysis proves the opposite. Bazinga!

> very illogical to hope

Hope is a feeling of expectation of positive outcomes, therefore illogical by definition.

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

#399

Post by pyth0 »

sherburt3 wrote: post #389
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…

Yes very illogical to hope that life will get better when my analysis proves the opposite. Bazinga!

Why do you believe that extending human life will make “life better”?

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

#400

Post by stevejb »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #390
inglor_cz wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is precisely why I don't find that much value in articles such as "New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely". Declaration such as: “We forecast that those born in 1980 will not live to be 100 on average, and none of the cohorts in our study will reach this milestone." is too self-confident. Their youngest cohort is born in 2000. It is impossible to predict how longevity t…

To be fair, the study authors explicitly say that their forecast only holds, “In the absence of any major breakthroughs that significantly extend human life," and, "The findings of this study are not intended to be interpreted as evidence in favor or against a biological age limit to human life."

Isn't that completely circular then? E.g. "if there are no technologies which change $X, then we predict that $X will stay the same."
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