5 ms·

Think Again: Global Aging

42 points by m0th87 16y ago

orangecat 16y ago
It is blindingly obvious to me, and apparently to hardly anyone else, that curing aging should be a top priority of governments and researchers for both economic and humanitarian reasons. About time for another donation to SENS...
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  How is "curing aging" necessarily going to help? If, tomorrow, we magically doubled everyone's life expectancy, the age distribution of the population would remain exactly the same. The X axis (time) would just be twice as long. There might be a short-term blip of excess births as we all get used to the new equilibrium. That is sort of how we ended up with an excess of old people today. But since the magic that doubled our life expectancy probably didn't also double our food, oil, and fresh water supplies, we'd soon see birthrates drop to maintain equilibrium. But why settle for doubling? Why not make humans immortals? Oops! Now you have abolished children! Sell that Toys R' Us stock. Or is the idea that our Philosopher's Stone will enable us all to live the healthy lives of twenty-year-olds up to age 150, at which point everything collapses at once and we die in one instant, like the wonderful one-hoss shay? Um, good luck with that. In summary: changing the nature of life expectancy will change the nature of our demographic weirdness, but is unlikely to produce anything less complicated.
  - jodrellblank 16y ago
    Curing aging doesn't necessarily mean changing lifespan, although that's usually taken as a given, but what it really means is not degenerating with passing years. In that case - even if people still live roughly 65-90 years, the age distribution of the population stops being such a matter of importance. If, at 80 you still feel and heal like a 50 year old there's much less problem with a) who is going to work and b) who is going to look after you, since you can work and you don't need anyone to look after you. And isn't that the main concern of this kind of examination of age distribution? That is sort of how we ended up with an excess of old people today. Excuse me? "excess"? But since the magic that doubled our life expectancy probably didn't also double our food, oil, and fresh water supplies, we'd soon see birthrates drop to maintain equilibrium. Yes, and that would be fine. Why not make humans immortals? Oops! Now you have abolished children! What do you mean "oops"? Also, people would still die from other causes. In summary: changing the nature of life expectancy and changing the nature of aging are different things. Anti-aging research isn't supposed to be focused on the "surviving 90 times round the sun" bit, but on the "chronic disease, weakness, and disability" that comes with it.
  - orangecat 16y ago
    Why not make humans immortals? Sounds good. Oops! Now you have abolished children! Several possible solutions come to mind. A ridiculous solution, which would still be a tremendous improvement over the status quo, would be to institute a Logan's Run policy where you get 100 years of good health and are then painlessly euthanized. But really, I think concerns like that are analogous to the doomsayers 120 years ago who predicted that given current trends New York would be waist-deep in horse manure by 1950. More likely, I would expect a temporary drop in the birth rate, while we get serious about colonizing space (which we should do regardless, on the egg/basket principle). In summary: changing the nature of life expectancy will change the nature of our demographic weirdness, but is unlikely to produce anything less complicated. Things would be different, yes. And given that right now aging is responsible for an impending fiscal train wreck, as well as incalculable suffering and destruction of human potential, we badly need something different.
    - lliiffee 16y ago
      Actually, even if no one dies, we can still all have children without creating infinite population, as long as we have, on average, less than 2 per couple (1 per person). For example, if we have 1 billion people who suddenly all become immortal, and each couple has, on average 1.8 children, we asymptote towards a world with 10 billion immortals. Everyone could have offspring, though the actual number of young people would be continuously decreasing... If $p0$ is the starting population, and $a$ is the number of children per person (number per couple divided by two), we have p = p0 * sum_{i=0...inf} a^i = p0 / (1-a)
- rubashov 16y ago
  That sounds like a horrible idea. Can you imagine if half the senate had been in office over 60 years? They'd still be fighting about the Civil Rights act. Cronkite still reading the news. The same NYT and WSJ editorial staffs for many decades. The same scientists and writers getting all the speaking engagements, more or less forever. At least right now these people eventually get old and go away. We'd be stuck in a horrible stasis without that.
  - orangecat 16y ago
    Suppose you lived in a race of near-immortals which had all the problems you're imagining, and you get appointed to a task force to address them. Would your recommendation really be to create a pathogen that slowly cripples everyone's bodies and minds over several decades until it eventually kills them?
- wlievens 16y ago
  That's like saying colonizing Mars should be a top priority to combat overpopulation.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
I kind of like Longman's data but have never understood his sense of panic. It's as if he's stuck in some kind of time bubble in which the world doesn't suffer from a massive economic depression and a sizable excess of industrial capacity. We have 10% unemployment in the USA, our jobs growth rate is so anemic that we're projected to take decades, plural decades, to recover to full employment, and productivity keeps going up. Thanks, but I'll wait until -- at the very least -- all my unemployed friends are fully employed in caring for the elderly before I start worrying about a shortage of humans.
- mistermann 16y ago
  Most of the elderly do not have enough money to be cared for, and the social security trust fund is empty. Considering the number of jobs that have moved overseas, and the malinvestment that has occurred in the last 10 years, I'm amazed that the unemployment rate is only 10%. (Actually, it isn't....so many people have fallen out of the categories considered unemployed, it is an artificially low number...the real number is likely somewhere between 15% and 20%). And if all the young people are in jobs caring for the elderly (for which no one has the money to pay for), who will grow food, build houses, manufacture goods? China? Well, it's worked so far I suppose.
  - gjm11 16y ago
    > the social security trust fund is empty. The social security trust fund contains something like $2.4 trillion. Current projections are that if nothing changes then it will continue growing until 2025 and not be empty until 2042. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund . All that stuff you've been told about how Social Security was bankrupt, and "reform" was urgently needed, and so on? None of it was true. I shall refrain from speculating here about the motives of the politicians and pundits who said it.
    - mistermann 16y ago
      $2.4 trillion what? Government debt. T-bills. This is not wealth, but obligations to be paid by future generations of workers. Heck, they could have $25 TRILLION in the SS trust fund, and it would be the exact same thing, the number is meaningless.
aristus 16y ago
Think again again? The article leads off with an old, wrong prediction caused by extrapolating then-current population trends indefinitely. The rest of the article is based on extrapolations of the current population trends indefinitely...
Kenw00t 16y ago
Reminds me of http://www.demographicbomb.com/ http://www.demographicbomb.com/
bluesnowmonkey 16y ago
His only ideas for reversing population loss are government intervention, abandonment of women's rights, and making children a good investment. I'd like to suggest a fourth course of action: do nothing. We are not an endangered species. If we need more people, we'll make them. There is nothing in the universe that people like more than making more people. If they're declining to do so, they probably have good reasons.
jessriedel 16y ago
Eventually a few cultures which promote large families (e.g. Mormons) will come to dominate and reverse this trend. Anyone have the data to estimate how long this will take to happen? Trivial example: If an initial fraction f (with 0 < f < 1) of the population has a large growth rate of 5%/year and the rest of the population has a small negative growth rate of -1%/year, then the population as a function of time t in years is N[f(1.05)^t + (1-f)(0.99)^t]. For f = 1%, it takes less than a century for the growers to dominate the shrinkers: http://i.imgur.com/kv3KZ.png http://i.imgur.com/kv3KZ.png (blue is with f = 1%, red is f = 0%).
- bh42 16y ago
  I think education, wealth, urbanization, the pill, the boob tube, condoms, all the reasons for below replacement fertility can be seen as a virus which attack the reproductive system. A few people are partially or fully immune. (You don't have to be Mormon to be well off, educated and absolutely need to have 4+ kids) and over time their numbers will come to dominate. I hope we've colonized space by then.
- zeteo 16y ago
  Indeed. What a lot of these population-rate-below-replacement analyses are missing is that the dynamics vary significantly among population sub-groups. And one variable that is consistently associated with large families is strength of religiosity - e.g., see http://www.blume-religionswissenschaft.de/pdf/ReproductiveReligiosityBlume2009.pdf http://www.blume-religionswissenschaft.de/pdf/ReproductiveRe... (PDF; p. 119, fig. 8.1) Note that people who attend church/temple every week are well above replacement rate. The evolutionary race is on: those religious groups who manage best to transmit their "grow and multiply" gospel to their children will dominate demographics, and consequently politics, within our lifetimes.
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    > one variable that is consistently associated with large families is strength of religiosity I've never understood this. A preference for large families seems logically unlinked to the primary evolutionary benefit of religious beliefs as I understand them: the cooperation level that is feasible when there is a powerful, omnipotent god to punish norm-violators. Yes, religions which incorporate ideals about large families will tend to spread, but the same can be said about non-religious cultural memes. And, in fact, shouldn't secular humanism (which stress the worth of people independent of their service to a god) be more compatible with large-family ideals than traditional religions (which stress duty to god over duty to self and others)? EDIT: I read quickly though the paper you linked. It doesn't seem to answer my question. Rather it assumes the link between religion (belief in a judging god) and large-family ideals, and then arrives at the natural conclusion that religions are evolutionary advantages. Or did I read it wrong?
Groxx 16y ago
>As for Japan, one expert has calculated that the very last Japanese baby will be born in the year 2959, assuming the country's low fertility rate of 1.25 children per woman continues unchanged. Bah. They won't last that long. We all know the world's going to end in 2012, by similar mental functions.
brudgers 16y ago
Life expectancy is a somewhat crude tool for prediction. In the US over the past 20 years, quality of life as a function of age has become an important area of study. HALE (Health Adjusted Life Expectancy) may be a better predictor of future geriatric needs. http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/4/1/14 http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/4/1/14

42 points by m0th87 16y ago

It is blindingly obvious to me, and apparently to hardly anyone else, that curing aging should be a top priority of governments and researchers for both economic and humanitarian reasons. About time for another donation to SENS...

mechanical_fish 16y ago
How is "curing aging" necessarily going to help? If, tomorrow, we magically doubled everyone's life expectancy, the age distribution of the population would remain exactly the same. The X axis (time) would just be twice as long. There might be a short-term blip of excess births as we all get used to the new equilibrium. That is sort of how we ended up with an excess of old people today. But since the magic that doubled our life expectancy probably didn't also double our food, oil, and fresh water supplies, we'd soon see birthrates drop to maintain equilibrium. But why settle for doubling? Why not make humans immortals? Oops! Now you have abolished children! Sell that Toys R' Us stock. Or is the idea that our Philosopher's Stone will enable us all to live the healthy lives of twenty-year-olds up to age 150, at which point everything collapses at once and we die in one instant, like the wonderful one-hoss shay? Um, good luck with that. In summary: changing the nature of life expectancy will change the nature of our demographic weirdness, but is unlikely to produce anything less complicated.
- jodrellblank 16y ago
  Curing aging doesn't necessarily mean changing lifespan, although that's usually taken as a given, but what it really means is not degenerating with passing years. In that case - even if people still live roughly 65-90 years, the age distribution of the population stops being such a matter of importance. If, at 80 you still feel and heal like a 50 year old there's much less problem with a) who is going to work and b) who is going to look after you, since you can work and you don't need anyone to look after you. And isn't that the main concern of this kind of examination of age distribution? That is sort of how we ended up with an excess of old people today. Excuse me? "excess"? But since the magic that doubled our life expectancy probably didn't also double our food, oil, and fresh water supplies, we'd soon see birthrates drop to maintain equilibrium. Yes, and that would be fine. Why not make humans immortals? Oops! Now you have abolished children! What do you mean "oops"? Also, people would still die from other causes. In summary: changing the nature of life expectancy and changing the nature of aging are different things. Anti-aging research isn't supposed to be focused on the "surviving 90 times round the sun" bit, but on the "chronic disease, weakness, and disability" that comes with it.
- orangecat 16y ago
  Why not make humans immortals? Sounds good. Oops! Now you have abolished children! Several possible solutions come to mind. A ridiculous solution, which would still be a tremendous improvement over the status quo, would be to institute a Logan's Run policy where you get 100 years of good health and are then painlessly euthanized. But really, I think concerns like that are analogous to the doomsayers 120 years ago who predicted that given current trends New York would be waist-deep in horse manure by 1950. More likely, I would expect a temporary drop in the birth rate, while we get serious about colonizing space (which we should do regardless, on the egg/basket principle). In summary: changing the nature of life expectancy will change the nature of our demographic weirdness, but is unlikely to produce anything less complicated. Things would be different, yes. And given that right now aging is responsible for an impending fiscal train wreck, as well as incalculable suffering and destruction of human potential, we badly need something different.
  - lliiffee 16y ago
    Actually, even if no one dies, we can still all have children without creating infinite population, as long as we have, on average, less than 2 per couple (1 per person). For example, if we have 1 billion people who suddenly all become immortal, and each couple has, on average 1.8 children, we asymptote towards a world with 10 billion immortals. Everyone could have offspring, though the actual number of young people would be continuously decreasing... If $p0$ is the starting population, and $a$ is the number of children per person (number per couple divided by two), we have p = p0 * sum_{i=0...inf} a^i = p0 / (1-a)
rubashov 16y ago
That sounds like a horrible idea. Can you imagine if half the senate had been in office over 60 years? They'd still be fighting about the Civil Rights act. Cronkite still reading the news. The same NYT and WSJ editorial staffs for many decades. The same scientists and writers getting all the speaking engagements, more or less forever. At least right now these people eventually get old and go away. We'd be stuck in a horrible stasis without that.
- orangecat 16y ago
  Suppose you lived in a race of near-immortals which had all the problems you're imagining, and you get appointed to a task force to address them. Would your recommendation really be to create a pathogen that slowly cripples everyone's bodies and minds over several decades until it eventually kills them?
wlievens 16y ago
That's like saying colonizing Mars should be a top priority to combat overpopulation.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

I kind of like Longman's data but have never understood his sense of panic. It's as if he's stuck in some kind of time bubble in which the world doesn't suffer from a massive economic depression and a sizable excess of industrial capacity. We have 10% unemployment in the USA, our jobs growth rate is so anemic that we're projected to take decades, plural decades, to recover to full employment, and productivity keeps going up. Thanks, but I'll wait until -- at the very least -- all my unemployed friends are fully employed in caring for the elderly before I start worrying about a shortage of humans.

mistermann 16y ago
Most of the elderly do not have enough money to be cared for, and the social security trust fund is empty. Considering the number of jobs that have moved overseas, and the malinvestment that has occurred in the last 10 years, I'm amazed that the unemployment rate is only 10%. (Actually, it isn't....so many people have fallen out of the categories considered unemployed, it is an artificially low number...the real number is likely somewhere between 15% and 20%). And if all the young people are in jobs caring for the elderly (for which no one has the money to pay for), who will grow food, build houses, manufacture goods? China? Well, it's worked so far I suppose.
- gjm11 16y ago
  > the social security trust fund is empty. The social security trust fund contains something like $2.4 trillion. Current projections are that if nothing changes then it will continue growing until 2025 and not be empty until 2042. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund . All that stuff you've been told about how Social Security was bankrupt, and "reform" was urgently needed, and so on? None of it was true. I shall refrain from speculating here about the motives of the politicians and pundits who said it.
  - mistermann 16y ago
    $2.4 trillion what? Government debt. T-bills. This is not wealth, but obligations to be paid by future generations of workers. Heck, they could have $25 TRILLION in the SS trust fund, and it would be the exact same thing, the number is meaningless.

aristus 16y ago

Think again again? The article leads off with an old, wrong prediction caused by extrapolating then-current population trends indefinitely. The rest of the article is based on extrapolations of the current population trends indefinitely...

Kenw00t 16y ago

Reminds me of http://www.demographicbomb.com/ http://www.demographicbomb.com/

bluesnowmonkey 16y ago

His only ideas for reversing population loss are government intervention, abandonment of women's rights, and making children a good investment. I'd like to suggest a fourth course of action: do nothing. We are not an endangered species. If we need more people, we'll make them. There is nothing in the universe that people like more than making more people. If they're declining to do so, they probably have good reasons.

jessriedel 16y ago

Eventually a few cultures which promote large families (e.g. Mormons) will come to dominate and reverse this trend. Anyone have the data to estimate how long this will take to happen? Trivial example: If an initial fraction f (with 0 < f < 1) of the population has a large growth rate of 5%/year and the rest of the population has a small negative growth rate of -1%/year, then the population as a function of time t in years is N[f(1.05)^t + (1-f)(0.99)^t]. For f = 1%, it takes less than a century for the growers to dominate the shrinkers: http://i.imgur.com/kv3KZ.png http://i.imgur.com/kv3KZ.png (blue is with f = 1%, red is f = 0%).

bh42 16y ago
I think education, wealth, urbanization, the pill, the boob tube, condoms, all the reasons for below replacement fertility can be seen as a virus which attack the reproductive system. A few people are partially or fully immune. (You don't have to be Mormon to be well off, educated and absolutely need to have 4+ kids) and over time their numbers will come to dominate. I hope we've colonized space by then.
zeteo 16y ago
Indeed. What a lot of these population-rate-below-replacement analyses are missing is that the dynamics vary significantly among population sub-groups. And one variable that is consistently associated with large families is strength of religiosity - e.g., see http://www.blume-religionswissenschaft.de/pdf/ReproductiveReligiosityBlume2009.pdf http://www.blume-religionswissenschaft.de/pdf/ReproductiveRe... (PDF; p. 119, fig. 8.1) Note that people who attend church/temple every week are well above replacement rate. The evolutionary race is on: those religious groups who manage best to transmit their "grow and multiply" gospel to their children will dominate demographics, and consequently politics, within our lifetimes.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  > one variable that is consistently associated with large families is strength of religiosity I've never understood this. A preference for large families seems logically unlinked to the primary evolutionary benefit of religious beliefs as I understand them: the cooperation level that is feasible when there is a powerful, omnipotent god to punish norm-violators. Yes, religions which incorporate ideals about large families will tend to spread, but the same can be said about non-religious cultural memes. And, in fact, shouldn't secular humanism (which stress the worth of people independent of their service to a god) be more compatible with large-family ideals than traditional religions (which stress duty to god over duty to self and others)? EDIT: I read quickly though the paper you linked. It doesn't seem to answer my question. Rather it assumes the link between religion (belief in a judging god) and large-family ideals, and then arrives at the natural conclusion that religions are evolutionary advantages. Or did I read it wrong?

Groxx 16y ago

>As for Japan, one expert has calculated that the very last Japanese baby will be born in the year 2959, assuming the country's low fertility rate of 1.25 children per woman continues unchanged. Bah. They won't last that long. We all know the world's going to end in 2012, by similar mental functions.

brudgers 16y ago

Life expectancy is a somewhat crude tool for prediction. In the US over the past 20 years, quality of life as a function of age has become an important area of study. HALE (Health Adjusted Life Expectancy) may be a better predictor of future geriatric needs. http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/4/1/14 http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/4/1/14