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Bear in mind that this is an age of change. If you are young, then your life course will not look like that of your parents and grandparents. http://www.fighta

Bear in mind that this is an age of change. If you are young, then your life course will not look like that of your parents and grandparents. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/06/the-transformation-of-retirement.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/06/the-transformatio... Retirement is for the frail and the exceedingly [wealthy+lazy]. There is the probability that you will never be the latter, and if you're young now there's a good chance that you won't be the former either - at least not on the timescale you're thinking of. So planning well for the future requires considerably more thought than just looking at what everyone did during the previous generation or two.

philwelch 15y ago
If you're banking on science fiction life extension technology rather than planning for a time, frighteningly few decades from now, that your eyes, fingers, and mind won't be able to keep up with the demands of work anymore, the odds are still quite against you.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  There is nothing science fiction about continued improvement of modern medicine. The lives of the elderly today are dramatically different from those 2 or 3 decades ago. In another 3 or so decades it will be different still.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    That's speculative, and not really that true. My dad (born 1927) has high blood pressure, and he's on the same no-salt diet his father was on. Some things don't progress. Sometimes technology gets to a local maximum and the next breakthrough is perpetually about 50 years away (i.e. energy production). We won't be the first generation to die of cancer despite spending our youths convinced that they would have cured cancer by then.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      That's a really terrible example. The survival rates of many forms of cancer have dramatically increased in recent years. The only reason we don't have a "the cure" is because if you understand what cancer really is, that is a nonsensical concept.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        Sure, but cancer still remains a leading cause of death along with heart disease. In other words, no one is living that much longer even if cancers earlier in life can be successfully treated. And that has almost nothing to do with the eventual degradation of the mind and sensory organs that nearly everyone experiences in old age.
  - Nick_C 15y ago
    I'm not so sure. For one, most of us know the dangers of extrapolating past the end of data points, so we shouldn't base longevity changes on an extrapolated graph. Secondly, there are signs that longevity has peaked. There was an article a couple of weeks ago that got bandied about in the Australian press (which I can't find now, darn it) that life expectancy is now a little shorter than it was a decade ago. From memory, it was USA data, so perhaps a US reader will remember it.
dhbanes 15y ago
About which article are you commenting?

philwelch 15y ago

If you're banking on science fiction life extension technology rather than planning for a time, frighteningly few decades from now, that your eyes, fingers, and mind won't be able to keep up with the demands of work anymore, the odds are still quite against you.

burgerbrain 15y ago
There is nothing science fiction about continued improvement of modern medicine. The lives of the elderly today are dramatically different from those 2 or 3 decades ago. In another 3 or so decades it will be different still.
- philwelch 15y ago
  That's speculative, and not really that true. My dad (born 1927) has high blood pressure, and he's on the same no-salt diet his father was on. Some things don't progress. Sometimes technology gets to a local maximum and the next breakthrough is perpetually about 50 years away (i.e. energy production). We won't be the first generation to die of cancer despite spending our youths convinced that they would have cured cancer by then.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    That's a really terrible example. The survival rates of many forms of cancer have dramatically increased in recent years. The only reason we don't have a "the cure" is because if you understand what cancer really is, that is a nonsensical concept.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Sure, but cancer still remains a leading cause of death along with heart disease. In other words, no one is living that much longer even if cancers earlier in life can be successfully treated. And that has almost nothing to do with the eventual degradation of the mind and sensory organs that nearly everyone experiences in old age.
- Nick_C 15y ago
  I'm not so sure. For one, most of us know the dangers of extrapolating past the end of data points, so we shouldn't base longevity changes on an extrapolated graph. Secondly, there are signs that longevity has peaked. There was an article a couple of weeks ago that got bandied about in the Australian press (which I can't find now, darn it) that life expectancy is now a little shorter than it was a decade ago. From memory, it was USA data, so perhaps a US reader will remember it.

dhbanes 15y ago

About which article are you commenting?