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Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

theguardian.com

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Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#71

Post by walterbell »

chubot wrote: post #52
zw123456 wrote: post #8

I too would like to live forever, but one problem I see is that if you just extend peoples physical age but their minds become frozen in time, then all progress stops. It is well known that as people age their neural plasticity degrades and they loose the ability to learn anything new. I have observed this with my Dad who is 84. If people lived to be 1000 but their neural plasticity was gone by 120, we would still ha…

It would be pretty interesting if you had more than 3-4 generations at a time (say a generation is 30 years, then 3 x 30 = 90). I think the significance of a generation is as you say: in human terms, it seems the vast majority of your personality and outlook is formed by age 30. If people lived to be 1000 years old, then you would have 33 different generations at once. At the very least, those 33 different generation…

> ... Imagine if there were 32 other generations to comprehend: you would have to be an expert in history to even relate to people.

This already exists, since history often repeats itself as cyclical philosophy/law overlaid on technology fashion. Social groups have varying technological and cultural capacity for intergenerational memory and finance.

As media technology for influence/advocacy/propaganda has become commoditized, what may appear as non-deterministic weather patterns of techno-socio-political fashion, could also be viewed as intergenerational economic warfare. Albert Brooks novel 2030 covers some of these themes in a future dystopia.

Imagine if 32 generations were concurrently using the same words, to represent very different questions, goals, values. Imagine if one generation was unknowingly influenced by 32 past generations, all advocating to be memetically reborn. Imagine if 32 possible-future generations were advocating for the opportunity to come into sequential or concurrent existence.

> ... You would probably see different generations fighting for policy that favors them.

Historically, such fighting has been more physical than informational. The web, with sites like HN, move that balance towards the latter. If a corporation or foundation is immortal, how does the identity of that corporation change over time as constituent humans are gradually swapped out?

Here is a recent summary of policy advocacy using intergenerational financial capacity to influence single-generation humans, "..this book illuminates how elite consultants have adopted grassroots advocacy tactics for paying clients. Rather than being dismissed as mere 'astroturf', these consultants' campaigns should be seen as having real effects on political participation and policymaking", http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IO0E69E/

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#72

Post by reasonattlm »

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #24

I can't believe no one thinks this is a terrible idea. Of course I , selfishly, would love to live longer but doing so on a large scale is almost guaranteed to be a disaster. While we're at it why don't we just solve aging, provide infinite food supply, and eliminate predation for deer. That would be a great idea right? No way that would have any negative side effects, right?

Everyone who thinks that curing aging is a terrible idea should, in detail, outline the problems they foresee being worse than more than 100,000 painful, drawn-out deaths every day, along with a continuing population of hundreds of millions suffering continually from the most terrible and limiting conditions.

http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

"Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain where the dragon-tyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed."

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#73

Post by xefer »

chubot wrote: post #52
zw123456 wrote: post #8

I too would like to live forever, but one problem I see is that if you just extend peoples physical age but their minds become frozen in time, then all progress stops. It is well known that as people age their neural plasticity degrades and they loose the ability to learn anything new. I have observed this with my Dad who is 84. If people lived to be 1000 but their neural plasticity was gone by 120, we would still ha…

It would be pretty interesting if you had more than 3-4 generations at a time (say a generation is 30 years, then 3 x 30 = 90). I think the significance of a generation is as you say: in human terms, it seems the vast majority of your personality and outlook is formed by age 30. If people lived to be 1000 years old, then you would have 33 different generations at once. At the very least, those 33 different generation…

I've always wondered if the average human lifespan is somehow implicitly factored into interest rates. If people lived to 1000+ years old, a small investment made early in life could potentially balloon into incredible wealth given even relatively conservative investments. Obviously political and financial stability could have huge impacts too. I have to imagine multi-century-long held accounts would have an impact

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#74

Post by VLM »

angrybits wrote: post #23

This scares the hell out of me from a retirement planning perspective. If I outlive my savings, what then?

You could argue, fairly successfully, that the existing medical system is oriented around extracting all money from people before and shortly after their death. Its a very common problem at this time. So at least its not unknown ground.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#75

Post by jqm »

elorant wrote: post #51

I don’t want just to live longer, I want to live longer while in a relatively good shape. Because if we are to live 30 years more with the physique of a 90 year old man then what’s the point. If on the other hand I could have the physique of a 70 year old man while I’m 100+ that sounds like a good deal.

Agreed, although I'm holding out for 30 year old physique.

I would rather live 60 years in a 30 year old body/mind than 120 years in an 80 year old body/mind.

From my perspective, aging is a more serious problem to be solved then death.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#76

Post by reasonattlm »

davesque wrote: post #54

I just hope such medical advances would be available to everyone and not just a privileged few who can afford it.

The most likely form of longevity assurance technologies will be infusions. Think about the cost of, say, TNF inhibitors today. It is a mass-produced biologic that a bored technician runs into you through an IV, and is $5-8K per procedure last time I looked.

The really expensive medicine today is either experimental (new technologies still in development) or requires the attention of a lot of highly trained staff for some time (surgeries, chemotherapies).

But the mature longevity assurance technologies of tomorrow will not be individualized, since everyone ages due to the same root causes. They will be mass produced infusions of nanoparticles, gene therapy vectors, drugs to break down metabolic byproducts, that sort of thing. Factories will make them in bulk, and clinical assistants will inject a program of these things into individual patients once every ten to twenty years. Since everyone will benefit, the individual cost will drop with the massive scale of sales and delivery.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#77

Post by jqm »

landryraccoon wrote: post #29
angrybits wrote: post #23

This scares the hell out of me from a retirement planning perspective. If I outlive my savings, what then?

If people lived forever, why would they ever retire? I imagine you'd take a 5 year sabbatical every 20 years or so and you'd probably even head to school a bunch of times to change careers if you got bored of centuries of the same vocation.

Who is going to hire you? Try getting a job at 62 right now.

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#78

Post by ChuckMcM »

And if you thought it was hard to get hired in tech at the age of 50, wait until you try at 100 :-)

On a more serious note, it is going to be a huge financial disaster if folks "suddenly" start living to 120. There are many many things which have nominal lifespans "baked in" and if that changes gradually the algorithm can be adjusted gradually but if it changes suddenly, that results in insufficient money collected to pay out promised payments.

When you get to a certain age (varies by individual) you start talking to or consulting retirement advisors. Those advisors will ask you something like "when do you want to retire?" and "what sort of net income do you want?" and they will take your expected lifetime (say 100) and tell you when you can stop working such that paying out at that rate will exhaust your savings when you hit 100. But if you roll with that plan and at 75 get a treatment that extends your life to 120, well that is something of a problem right?

Re: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’

#80

Post by dllthomas »

andyrj wrote: post #18
zw123456 wrote: post #8

I too would like to live forever, but one problem I see is that if you just extend peoples physical age but their minds become frozen in time, then all progress stops. It is well known that as people age their neural plasticity degrades and they loose the ability to learn anything new. I have observed this with my Dad who is 84. If people lived to be 1000 but their neural plasticity was gone by 120, we would still ha…

Anything other than your speculation to back up your belief in individuals neural plasticity having anything to do with the social advances you mention? Young people have not had a great record of voting. So those changes you are attributing to neural plasticity are likely brought about by those old frozen minds you mention, and less so the young plyable ones if you ask me. But everyone has a right to an opinion I su…

"Anything other than your speculation to back up your belief in individuals neural plasticity having anything to do with the social advances you mention?"

You seem deeply confused. If those changes happened entirely because old people changed their minds, then individual neuroplasticity has a tremendous amount to do with the changes mentioned. On the flip side, in a world with no neuroplasticity at all, we would only see change when people are born with different views.

"Young people have not had a great record of voting. So those changes you are attributing to neural plasticity are likely brought about by those old frozen minds you mention, and less so the young plyable ones if you ask me."

"Young people" and "old people" are not static sets. Imagine a world where young people change their mind frequently until 25, when they stop changing their mind and start voting. You would never see the mind of any individual over-25-year-old change, but the distribution of views in the over-25 population would still change as people enter and leave that population. If social change requires support of some proportion of that population, stopping people from leaving it will slow social change.

I have no strong opinion about just how much our world resembles that one, but your reasoning does not support your claim here. There is some evidence that neuroplasticity tends to decline as people age.

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