6 ms·

The future of old: If you’re 30 now, what can you expect at 80?

45 points by wallflower 16y ago

alphaoverlord 16y ago
Summary: Advances in medicine has increased the life expectancy of Americans. As a greater proportion of people live longer, there will be stresses on our economy and healthcare system and society's expectations/perceptions of the elderly will change. We cannot predict the future, but much medical research is being done and we hope that can address problems associated with aging. No offense, but this article doesn't say anything insightful or novel about aging other than rehashing what is relatively obvious.
- tspiteri 16y ago
  No offense, but this article doesn't say anything insightful or novel about aging other than rehashing what is relatively obvious. I find myself saying this quite a few times too. But sometimes I wonder, is it because of such articles that these things are relatively obvious?
  - treeface 16y ago
    Perhaps to the uninitiated, but I think any reasonably-informed person can keep up with at least the latest headline-grabbing advances in medicine. A highly generalized technological vector, one could say, is not too difficult to glean from the day-to-day news, but the distance between now and the realization of any sort of major advance is always difficult to determine.
BasDirks 16y ago
"Demographers predict that by 2030, average life expectancy will have climbed past 80" In most European (and a couple of Asian) countries, average life expectancy is already above 80. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
kiba 16y ago
I believe the future of old people will be old people rejuvenating to a younger biological age, preferably when we're in our prime.
- chc 16y ago
  That's not the foreseeable future, though. We don't even have any lines of research that could plausibly lead to that end AFAIK. Greatly prolonging youth (i.e. slowing age-related damage rather than actually reversing it) seems likely to come much earlier, and even that is a ways off.
  - bradly 16y ago
    Actually testosterone and other hormone therapies are very effective at making older people feel like they did in their prime.
    - adrianwaj 16y ago
      Stallone would agree with you: http://news.celebritywonder.com/2008/01/24/Sylvester_Stallone_Praises_Testosterone.html http://news.celebritywonder.com/2008/01/24/Sylvester_Stallon... Would you want to overclock your body in an isolated area, in what would seem an artificial way?
    - chc 16y ago
      LSD is very effective at making people feel like they're purple clouds. Making people feel good is not a bad thing, but it isn't the same as actually changing their biological age.
  - kiba 16y ago
    Our ability to fight aging is greatly dependent on people's willingness to spend , the intellectual resources that we pour into it, and the speed at which innovation happens. (hampered or speed up by political institutions)
reasonattlm 16y ago
You should expect that you have the opportunity, between now and 2061, to meaningfully contribute to the development of rejuvenation biotechnology that will be able to repair the biological causes of aging - to prevent frailty and increased mortality in the old, and reverse those problems where they already exist. There are plenty of projects to support now: http://www.fightaging.org/take-action/ http://www.fightaging.org/take-action/ And more will arise in the years ahead.
- russell 16y ago
  Since I am a long ways past 30, I hope you guys get it done a lot sooner than that.
  - Mz 16y ago
    It can already be done. I'm doing it now. I've had a hole in my left lung close and decades-old scars itch like new ones and visibly shrink. I have less gray hair than I had ten years ago. But a) you won't believe me and b) even if you did, you would reject the things I have done to accomplish this. My next amazing feat: Figure out how to shut up about this health stuff and do something that actually makes money. Peace. Edit: I take it the downvotes suggest a few folks don't believe me. Please enlighten me if this assumption is incorrect. Thank you.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - jpulgarin 16y ago
      Elaborate.
      - Mz 16y ago
        I was bed-ridden for about 3.5 months the first part of 2001. In May 2001, I was diagnosed with "atypical cystic fibrosis". After a lifetime of being treating like a hypochondriac and months of being denied treatment while doctors referred me for more testing and said things like "we can't find anything physically wrong with you, would you like to speak with a psychiatrist?", the first thing I was told after being diagnosed was "People like you don't get well. Symptom management is the name of the game." In other words, doctors were all too happy to consign me to a slow and torturous death. Since doctors were not helping me and I had largely been on my own in dealing with my health already, I continued working on the problem myself. I gradually got healthier by throwing out all my worldly possessions in order to break the cycle of contamination (this piece is heavily objected to by other folks who are dying of cystic fibrosis) and I did enormous research into what nutritional deficiencies I had, how to effectively treat them, and so on. I made drastic dietary and lifestyle changes. I have a diagnosis of a genetic disorder with a life expectancy of around 36 or 37. I will be 46 in one month. (I sometimes joke that 'in human terms, I'm the equivalent of an octogenarian'.) People routinely think I am in my thirties and I am healthier than I have ever been. I live without a car and me and my oldest son (who has the same diagnosis) walked 8 miles both yesterday and the day before to further the healing process. It isn't news that exercise, eating right and so on can delay the aging process and is generally good for one's health. Most people don't bother to explore the degree to which that can now be leveraged with the vast amounts of information readily available online. Peace. PS: There is a website, though that might die when my web-hosting expires later this month (I'm broke and don't know how to pay for it). For now, it's here: http://healthgazelle.com/ http://healthgazelle.com/
wilschroter 16y ago
I think the concept of a highly enabled, connected, and active senior class has a lot more impact than people are considering. The points made about a society that financially cannot retire are powerful because it forces us to adapt a much longer view on our career objectives (which is always healthy).
russell 16y ago
The article succumbs to the fallacy of predicting the future from current trends. To give you an example, here are some things that didnt exist 50 years ago that were life and culture changing. Personal computers, the internet, cell phones, most of the interstate, networking, cable, computer games, CDs, personal electronics, google, twitter, medical imaging, nearly all heart surgery, gene sequencing, financial oligopolies, media domination, civil rights, gender equality, terrorism, airport searches. Missing predictions: AI, flying cars, nuclear power too cheap to meter, fusion power, colonies on the moon and mars and of course, flying cars. My point is that 50 years from now is going to be way different from what we imagine.
- lkozma 16y ago
  To be fair, many things that exist today would have been considered AI back then. Part of the problem with AI, as John Neumann observed it already is that if you can formulate precisely enough what you want, you are already on the way to solving it so it is a shifting definition to some extent. Otherwise totally agree with your point, it's amazing how most science fiction of the past missed things like the internet.
  - maratd 16y ago
    To be fair, many things that exist today would have been considered AI back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - russell 16y ago
    I am amused at how wrong SF authors often get the details of every,day future things. In Stranger in a Strange Land, set around 2000(?), one of the characters mentions a mobile phone the size of a brief case. Or in recent David Weber novel, the heroes get through customs, because the agents hadnt received their photos. In the year 4000 something. I will admit that with a 2000 year advance in security the book would have been a lot shorter.
undef 16y ago
I'm about 30 and all I know of future is that I don't know. But one thing I'm rather certain about: the world will be significantly poorer in 50 years. And that I'll be totally dependent of my children, since it's unlikely I'll ever see one cent of my pension.
- hexis 16y ago
  "And that I'll be totally dependent of my children, since it's unlikely I'll ever see one cent of my pension." Have you considered saving money in addition to your ephemeral pension?
- tokenadult 16y ago
  But one thing I'm rather certain about: the world will be significantly poorer in 50 years. That's the one thing I would most resolutely bet against among predictions about the future fifty years from now. I've been hearing predictions of a poorer world to come throughout my more than fifty years of life, and they have consistently been proved wrong. I may not have total buy-in to the views of the author I cite below, http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-how-prosperity-evolves http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-how-... but he is on the right track about the long-term historical trend, which is increasing worldwide prosperity. That's a trend I have observed in all the countries I have lived in or visited, on two continents.
  - undef 16y ago
    We agree to disagree when it comes to mid-term, tens of years of development. I'm just expecting current trends to continue for a couple of decades more, until we solve ongoing energy crisis. I'm sure that occurs in less than 50 years; however at that point we'll probably still be rebuilding. Long term looks good, when we're talking about over 100 years.
giardini 16y ago
A catastrophic war. Possibly several if you're lucky enough to survive.
benarent 16y ago
I'm happy to see this article discussed on Hacker News, I joined a startup in Jan, but before I was working as an Interaction Designer at the http://www.trilcentre.org http://www.trilcentre.org . Working at TRIL made me realise the fragility of old age, I reviewed many ethnographic studies into the aging process. It made me realize that even a small event could result in drastic ageing. For example many fallers struggle to regain independence after even the smallest fall. This can lead to social isolation, which has a knock on affect to cognitive ability. All ageing research pillars are interlinked, if your interested you can read about TRIL's here http://www.trilcentre.org/tril-research/research-themes.html http://www.trilcentre.org/tril-research/research-themes.html I personally developed http://jive.benarent.co.uk http://jive.benarent.co.uk | http://www.bett.ie http://www.bett.ie , 2 years prior to the iPad launch.. and while I think the iPad is very accessible, there is a lot of opportunity in apps and other services. There is a huge opportunity for startups, Anyone here working in this area? *Alzheimer and Dementia are the elephants in the room. At a recent conference the Alzermers presenter noted that the cost of Alzermers is more expensive than 'cancer'.
squidsoup 16y ago
I think the only reasonable prediction we can make is that the world is going to be even weirder in 50 years.

45 points by wallflower 16y ago

Summary: Advances in medicine has increased the life expectancy of Americans. As a greater proportion of people live longer, there will be stresses on our economy and healthcare system and society's expectations/perceptions of the elderly will change. We cannot predict the future, but much medical research is being done and we hope that can address problems associated with aging. No offense, but this article doesn't say anything insightful or novel about aging other than rehashing what is relatively obvious.

tspiteri 16y ago
No offense, but this article doesn't say anything insightful or novel about aging other than rehashing what is relatively obvious. I find myself saying this quite a few times too. But sometimes I wonder, is it because of such articles that these things are relatively obvious?
- treeface 16y ago
  Perhaps to the uninitiated, but I think any reasonably-informed person can keep up with at least the latest headline-grabbing advances in medicine. A highly generalized technological vector, one could say, is not too difficult to glean from the day-to-day news, but the distance between now and the realization of any sort of major advance is always difficult to determine.

BasDirks 16y ago

"Demographers predict that by 2030, average life expectancy will have climbed past 80" In most European (and a couple of Asian) countries, average life expectancy is already above 80. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

kiba 16y ago

I believe the future of old people will be old people rejuvenating to a younger biological age, preferably when we're in our prime.

chc 16y ago
That's not the foreseeable future, though. We don't even have any lines of research that could plausibly lead to that end AFAIK. Greatly prolonging youth (i.e. slowing age-related damage rather than actually reversing it) seems likely to come much earlier, and even that is a ways off.
- bradly 16y ago
  Actually testosterone and other hormone therapies are very effective at making older people feel like they did in their prime.
  - adrianwaj 16y ago
    Stallone would agree with you: http://news.celebritywonder.com/2008/01/24/Sylvester_Stallone_Praises_Testosterone.html http://news.celebritywonder.com/2008/01/24/Sylvester_Stallon... Would you want to overclock your body in an isolated area, in what would seem an artificial way?
  - chc 16y ago
    LSD is very effective at making people feel like they're purple clouds. Making people feel good is not a bad thing, but it isn't the same as actually changing their biological age.
- kiba 16y ago
  Our ability to fight aging is greatly dependent on people's willingness to spend , the intellectual resources that we pour into it, and the speed at which innovation happens. (hampered or speed up by political institutions)

reasonattlm 16y ago

You should expect that you have the opportunity, between now and 2061, to meaningfully contribute to the development of rejuvenation biotechnology that will be able to repair the biological causes of aging - to prevent frailty and increased mortality in the old, and reverse those problems where they already exist. There are plenty of projects to support now: http://www.fightaging.org/take-action/ http://www.fightaging.org/take-action/ And more will arise in the years ahead.

russell 16y ago
Since I am a long ways past 30, I hope you guys get it done a lot sooner than that.
- Mz 16y ago
  It can already be done. I'm doing it now. I've had a hole in my left lung close and decades-old scars itch like new ones and visibly shrink. I have less gray hair than I had ten years ago. But a) you won't believe me and b) even if you did, you would reject the things I have done to accomplish this. My next amazing feat: Figure out how to shut up about this health stuff and do something that actually makes money. Peace. Edit: I take it the downvotes suggest a few folks don't believe me. Please enlighten me if this assumption is incorrect. Thank you.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - jpulgarin 16y ago
    Elaborate.
    - Mz 16y ago
      I was bed-ridden for about 3.5 months the first part of 2001. In May 2001, I was diagnosed with "atypical cystic fibrosis". After a lifetime of being treating like a hypochondriac and months of being denied treatment while doctors referred me for more testing and said things like "we can't find anything physically wrong with you, would you like to speak with a psychiatrist?", the first thing I was told after being diagnosed was "People like you don't get well. Symptom management is the name of the game." In other words, doctors were all too happy to consign me to a slow and torturous death. Since doctors were not helping me and I had largely been on my own in dealing with my health already, I continued working on the problem myself. I gradually got healthier by throwing out all my worldly possessions in order to break the cycle of contamination (this piece is heavily objected to by other folks who are dying of cystic fibrosis) and I did enormous research into what nutritional deficiencies I had, how to effectively treat them, and so on. I made drastic dietary and lifestyle changes. I have a diagnosis of a genetic disorder with a life expectancy of around 36 or 37. I will be 46 in one month. (I sometimes joke that 'in human terms, I'm the equivalent of an octogenarian'.) People routinely think I am in my thirties and I am healthier than I have ever been. I live without a car and me and my oldest son (who has the same diagnosis) walked 8 miles both yesterday and the day before to further the healing process. It isn't news that exercise, eating right and so on can delay the aging process and is generally good for one's health. Most people don't bother to explore the degree to which that can now be leveraged with the vast amounts of information readily available online. Peace. PS: There is a website, though that might die when my web-hosting expires later this month (I'm broke and don't know how to pay for it). For now, it's here: http://healthgazelle.com/ http://healthgazelle.com/

wilschroter 16y ago

I think the concept of a highly enabled, connected, and active senior class has a lot more impact than people are considering. The points made about a society that financially cannot retire are powerful because it forces us to adapt a much longer view on our career objectives (which is always healthy).

russell 16y ago

The article succumbs to the fallacy of predicting the future from current trends. To give you an example, here are some things that didnt exist 50 years ago that were life and culture changing. Personal computers, the internet, cell phones, most of the interstate, networking, cable, computer games, CDs, personal electronics, google, twitter, medical imaging, nearly all heart surgery, gene sequencing, financial oligopolies, media domination, civil rights, gender equality, terrorism, airport searches. Missing predictions: AI, flying cars, nuclear power too cheap to meter, fusion power, colonies on the moon and mars and of course, flying cars. My point is that 50 years from now is going to be way different from what we imagine.

lkozma 16y ago
To be fair, many things that exist today would have been considered AI back then. Part of the problem with AI, as John Neumann observed it already is that if you can formulate precisely enough what you want, you are already on the way to solving it so it is a shifting definition to some extent. Otherwise totally agree with your point, it's amazing how most science fiction of the past missed things like the internet.
- maratd 16y ago
  To be fair, many things that exist today would have been considered AI back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- russell 16y ago
  I am amused at how wrong SF authors often get the details of every,day future things. In Stranger in a Strange Land, set around 2000(?), one of the characters mentions a mobile phone the size of a brief case. Or in recent David Weber novel, the heroes get through customs, because the agents hadnt received their photos. In the year 4000 something. I will admit that with a 2000 year advance in security the book would have been a lot shorter.

undef 16y ago

I'm about 30 and all I know of future is that I don't know. But one thing I'm rather certain about: the world will be significantly poorer in 50 years. And that I'll be totally dependent of my children, since it's unlikely I'll ever see one cent of my pension.

hexis 16y ago
"And that I'll be totally dependent of my children, since it's unlikely I'll ever see one cent of my pension." Have you considered saving money in addition to your ephemeral pension?
tokenadult 16y ago
But one thing I'm rather certain about: the world will be significantly poorer in 50 years. That's the one thing I would most resolutely bet against among predictions about the future fifty years from now. I've been hearing predictions of a poorer world to come throughout my more than fifty years of life, and they have consistently been proved wrong. I may not have total buy-in to the views of the author I cite below, http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-how-prosperity-evolves http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-how-... but he is on the right track about the long-term historical trend, which is increasing worldwide prosperity. That's a trend I have observed in all the countries I have lived in or visited, on two continents.
- undef 16y ago
  We agree to disagree when it comes to mid-term, tens of years of development. I'm just expecting current trends to continue for a couple of decades more, until we solve ongoing energy crisis. I'm sure that occurs in less than 50 years; however at that point we'll probably still be rebuilding. Long term looks good, when we're talking about over 100 years.

giardini 16y ago

A catastrophic war. Possibly several if you're lucky enough to survive.

benarent 16y ago

I'm happy to see this article discussed on Hacker News, I joined a startup in Jan, but before I was working as an Interaction Designer at the http://www.trilcentre.org http://www.trilcentre.org . Working at TRIL made me realise the fragility of old age, I reviewed many ethnographic studies into the aging process. It made me realize that even a small event could result in drastic ageing. For example many fallers struggle to regain independence after even the smallest fall. This can lead to social isolation, which has a knock on affect to cognitive ability. All ageing research pillars are interlinked, if your interested you can read about TRIL's here http://www.trilcentre.org/tril-research/research-themes.html http://www.trilcentre.org/tril-research/research-themes.html I personally developed http://jive.benarent.co.uk http://jive.benarent.co.uk | http://www.bett.ie http://www.bett.ie , 2 years prior to the iPad launch.. and while I think the iPad is very accessible, there is a lot of opportunity in apps and other services. There is a huge opportunity for startups, Anyone here working in this area? *Alzheimer and Dementia are the elephants in the room. At a recent conference the Alzermers presenter noted that the cost of Alzermers is more expensive than 'cancer'.

squidsoup 16y ago

I think the only reasonable prediction we can make is that the world is going to be even weirder in 50 years.