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There's an old quip that the greatest correlation for a country to have supercentenarians is them not issuing proper documentation at birth 120 years ago. So y

• tkiolp4 5y ago
  I don’t think the point of living beyond 100 years old is the years that come after you are 90 (pretty bad years), but that one has more “nice” years to live. Example: - average person who dies at 80. Middle point in his life at 40. At 20 the person has already lived a 1/4 of his life. - imagine a supercentenarian who dies at, for the sake of examples, 120. This person at his 60s is like the average person at his 40s! If we consider that for the average person his “sweet years” end at 35, a supercentenarian’s sweet years end at 51!
  • reverend_gonzo 5y ago
    I beg to differ. In my opinion, life doesn’t really start until you’re 25 or so, maybe even 30. The first 18 years are generally spent at home, following other peoples rules, and learning how to get by. The next few years you get your independence and start finding your place in the world. If you went to college, then you enter the workforce and are probably getting by, still finding your footing. Then the real fun starts. I just turned 40, and feel like I’m finally hitting my stride.
    • slfnflctd 5y ago
      A significant percentage of kids are also hampered in their development while growing up by abuse, miseducation or neglect, so they may need even more time to recover from this and 'find their footing'. Many 25 year olds are still processing childhood trauma and playing catch up with their less disadvantaged peers.
    • BayAreaEscapee 5y ago
      I retired shortly after my fortieth birthday, and it's been a godsend! My worst day of retirement was better than my best day of working or education.
    • snowwrestler 5y ago
      This is a great viewpoint emotionally, but physically you can’t do at 50 what you could do at 25. There’s a reason pretty much every sport (even golf!) has a “masters” class for older players.
      • markb139 5y ago
        I’m in my 50’s and I’m a much better golfer than I was in my 20’s. Partly club technology has enabled me to hit the ball more consistently and partly I now don’t try and hit the cover off the ball each shot :)
        • xeromal 5y ago
          I don't think the post is talking about golf. If you look at physically demanding sports, most players don't last past 40 unless they're an incredible athlete.
          • rembicilious 5y ago
            This only applies to professional athletes. Plenty of older people play sports as talented enthusiasts.
            • xeromal 5y ago
              I actually see that as the other way. If humanity's best athletes and most incredibly gifted people physically can't make it, who can?
      • gratalis 5y ago
        This is incorrect or at least incorrectly stated with respect to the word "you". I didn't start running regularly until my late 40's and I loathed nearly every step for the first year but my fitness and enjoyment levels slowly improved especially after discovering trail running. I started participating in ultra trail races after a couple years and found a wonderful community of people enjoying an activity all around me I didn't even know existed. Now, 10 years later, I'm the fittest I've ever been and far more fit than the vast majority of 25 year olds. Am I going to win races against people half my age who are in peak fitness for their age group? No, of course not. But I can physically do far more at 57 than what I could do at 25 with respect to running. Many people can alter the course of their health trajectories at nearly any age but it requires consistent effort and often ignoring the messages of vested societal interests telling them otherwise.
  • usrusr 5y ago
    That's quite an assumption. Plenty of examples exist of people with decay starting later than average that eventually went through a short "off-ramp" earlier, plenty of examples of people who experienced significant decay very early but then dragged it out very long, seeing their "still seemed so young ten years ago!" peers disappear one by one.
• tomxor 5y ago
  > with life seldom being worth living after 90. I really wish we'd start investing in breaking this. I'll happen at some point What does that end up looking like though, Logans Run? :D I can't see a voluntary version of it working because of the very psychological issue you mention, we are inherently self preserving creatures in all but the most unbearable conditions. The other thing with these very personal choices, is that you just don't know until you get there - how do you or I really know if life is not worth living after 90, personally? we haven't experienced it. I remember my Grandfather, when he was younger, specifically saying he'd rather die than live with a certain disease he saw some other people getting - which wouldn't seem like an unreasonable opinion to most people. Yet after gradually developing the very same disease later in life he certainly was not of the same opinion while he was still lucid... That stuck with me, it's easy to speculate about things you haven't personally experienced, and easy to be wrong about your own state of mind in that situation.
  • radu_floricica 5y ago
    Uh, I meant it the opposite way :) Unaliving yourself at 90 is a personal choice which I of course support, but I'm mostly talking about making sure we can live healthy lives over the current limit. The psychological issue is that even though we as individuals cling to life (sometimes too much), trying to rouse support for life extension sometimes feels like urinating in public.
    • tomxor 5y ago
      whoops, I guess I misinterpreted what you meant by "breaking this".
• kiba 5y ago
  There will be people who comes out to say we shouldn't do this because it means dictators will live longer or that old people will remains in power longer, as if old people are a blight on society. I would consider it good news if old people had to live with their decisions and problems they created instead of leaving it to the next generation.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    They'd still leave the problems to the next generation. The next generation just wouldn't be in charge.
    • bluefirebrand 5y ago
      This is something we've basically already witnessed with how society is operating right now. The people inheriting the problems we started making 40 years ago before they were born even, still have very little say.
      • jacquesm 5y ago
        Yes, and if people are able to live forever I don't think that would be a change for the better. The 'haves' would at some point become aware that the 'have nots' have the potential to threaten them if they manage to live just as long, and I'm pretty sure I know how that would end.
  • radu_floricica 5y ago
    Change of generation is a thing that used to stump me. It's a valid problem, from older people having weird political choices to scientific research counting on fresh blood (yes it does). Until relatively recently when I switched to believing that there's actually a biological cause for this: sub-clinical forms of dementia. We just get old and lose capacity for meaningful change. We keep functioning, but the decisions we make are based on what we already learned about the world 20-40 years ago. Which means it's fixable. I don't want a world where I replace my father and am replaced by my children. I want a world where my father starts acting like a valedictorian again, but with a life of experience behind it.
• camillomiller 5y ago
  Please explain to me and try to convince me why we should. I’m serious, I just can’t understand why extending our individual lifespan should be a goal of our age, instead of focusing on making our life much better when it’s more worth living.
  • wussboy 5y ago
    It can, and should, be both.
  • dmd 5y ago
    Suppose, right now, normal life expectancy was 200 years. How would you feel about a new program being rolled out to impose disease and death on everyone over 80?
    • axiosgunnar 5y ago
      Good argument, in the spirit of the reversal test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test
      • BossingAround 5y ago
        > Alfred Nordmann argues that the reversal test merely erects a straw-man argument in favour of enhancement. Yes, basically as a fellow commenter argues. Thank you for the link.
    • usrusr 5y ago
      16 billion people stacked on earth?It's a pointless hypothetical because violence would have prevented that scenario long before. And what grand violence it would be! So much easier sending great-great-grandsons into battle than sons and grandsons.
    • Banana699 5y ago
      This seems fallacious to me, the scenario you describe has zero opportunity cost for being alive till 200, it's free. Assuming no afterlife, you gain nothing by artificially limiting your lifespan to less than half its amount. But in reality, there's opportunity cost to trying to extend your lifespan, it's all the money and attention and other resources that could have gone to improving other much more certain-rewards problems. In other words, your thought experiment is a fully general purpose argument for any investment. It's conclusion is that you should _always_ go for the investment no matter what the opportunity costs. Example (1) - We should expand the data center from 80 servers to 200 servers = Why? our loads are not high, we should instead focus on improving the product - Well imagine if we already had 200 servers in the data center, would you scale it down to 80 Example (2) - We should invest in renewable energy = Why? nuclear power is much more certain and mature - Well imagine if we already had renewables, would you phase it out in favor of nuclear? In both cases, you're completely missing the point of your opponent by the "Imagine if we already had" maneuver, we don't, that's why your opponent is against it, it's a risky investment with uncertain rewards and plenty of same-utility alternatives (in the opponent's view).