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Do you have any evidence for your imaginations of how people lived in the past? My understanding is that a healthy old age in the past was rarer, but that we'v

Do you have any evidence for your imaginations of how people lived in the past? My understanding is that a healthy old age in the past was rarer, but that we've not really changed the limits, just improved the median experience. See, e.g.: https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-not-a-modern-phenomenon.php https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-n... > Are we on the cusp of technological developments that will make how we live further unrecognizable. Totally. I too like science fiction. But we've been "on the cusp of" a lot of those things for quite a long time. I think that's more indicative of what people who are afraid of death want than a cold-eyed analysis of current tech and rates of progress.

mlyle 3y ago
> My understanding is that a healthy old age in the past was rarer, but that we've not really changed the limits, just improved the median experience. Even if your premise is true: there's still a whole lot of room to improve the median experience. And I don't think it's really true, but it's hard to say exactly. Part of the reason why we have people make it to 110 now versus that not happening a couple centuries ago is that we have more people and thus more rolls of the dice, but it's not the entire reason. > But we've been "on the cusp of" a lot of those things for quite a long time. I haven't felt like we've been very close. But now, I think we have a reasonable chance of a couple therapies that each buy few years of QALY for the entire population in the next 30 years, and when you look 50 years out maybe you even stack several of these things.
- wpietri 3y ago
  There's room to improve the median experience, sure. Maybe not a whole lot, though. And I'm not sure people making it to 110 is positive; I'm interested in actually living, not a couple decades of being warehoused. > I haven't felt like we've been very close. I'm not saying you personally felt like that. I'm saying that that the "sci fi things are just around the corner" routine is perennial. AGI and robots and flying cars have been coming soon for longer than most people have been alive. I also note that "couple therapies that each buy a few years" is a major retreat from the point I was actually adressing which was life made unrecognizable by salamander limbs, etc.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    > And I'm not sure people making it to 110 is positive; I'm interested in actually living, Centenarians don't do so badly in a lot of quality of life measures. They actually have a lower level of dependency, on average, than those in their late 80s. But in any sense, this is why I mentioned QALYs (quality-adjusted life years). > AGI and robots and flying cars have been coming soon for longer than most people have been alive. I think this misstates what most people have felt was imminent. Occasional luminaries feeling that flying cars were close (e.g. Ford), and breathless media pieces does not a consensus view make. In any case, this whole line of argument ("Lots of people have believed this forever@!(!") even if it were true, would not be a great argument against assessing the current prospects as pretty good. > I also note that "couple therapies that each buy a few years" is a major retreat from the point I was actually adressing which was life made unrecognizable by salamander limbs, etc. 3 years of QALY for the population would likely look like 30% of the population getting some crazy-ass therapy that adds many years of QALY, and many other people dying too soon or having other ailments that are not addressed. Alternatively it could come from finding something unexpectedly cheap and broadly helpful that you could treat a very large percentage of the population from and that most people benefit and get 5 years.
    - wpietri 3y ago
      When I point out your handwaving, I am not looking for more handwaving in response. My impression stands. I think you, like many, are indulging in technoutopian wishful thinking.
      - mlyle 3y ago
        > When I point out your handwaving, I am not looking for more handwaving in response. ??? You seemed to broadly agree with the one and only comment that I made, and then I offered some nuanced disagreement to your statement. And then you have this, frankly, hostile response. It's really rich for someone with this in their profile: > than people being respectful and/or standing behind their words. Exercise some respect. We're talking about assessing probabilities of distant events on multi-decade horizons. It's going to be hand-wavy, just like your dismissal of the prospects is hand-wavy (it's unlikely because allegedly people were too optimistic about flying cars??) > I think you, like many, are indulging in technoutopian wishful thinking. Well, the horizon I pointed out is long enough that I've got relatively poor prospects of benefitting from it myself...

mlyle 3y ago

> My understanding is that a healthy old age in the past was rarer, but that we've not really changed the limits, just improved the median experience. Even if your premise is true: there's still a whole lot of room to improve the median experience. And I don't think it's really true, but it's hard to say exactly. Part of the reason why we have people make it to 110 now versus that not happening a couple centuries ago is that we have more people and thus more rolls of the dice, but it's not the entire reason. > But we've been "on the cusp of" a lot of those things for quite a long time. I haven't felt like we've been very close. But now, I think we have a reasonable chance of a couple therapies that each buy few years of QALY for the entire population in the next 30 years, and when you look 50 years out maybe you even stack several of these things.

wpietri 3y ago
There's room to improve the median experience, sure. Maybe not a whole lot, though. And I'm not sure people making it to 110 is positive; I'm interested in actually living, not a couple decades of being warehoused. > I haven't felt like we've been very close. I'm not saying you personally felt like that. I'm saying that that the "sci fi things are just around the corner" routine is perennial. AGI and robots and flying cars have been coming soon for longer than most people have been alive. I also note that "couple therapies that each buy a few years" is a major retreat from the point I was actually adressing which was life made unrecognizable by salamander limbs, etc.
- mlyle 3y ago
  > And I'm not sure people making it to 110 is positive; I'm interested in actually living, Centenarians don't do so badly in a lot of quality of life measures. They actually have a lower level of dependency, on average, than those in their late 80s. But in any sense, this is why I mentioned QALYs (quality-adjusted life years). > AGI and robots and flying cars have been coming soon for longer than most people have been alive. I think this misstates what most people have felt was imminent. Occasional luminaries feeling that flying cars were close (e.g. Ford), and breathless media pieces does not a consensus view make. In any case, this whole line of argument ("Lots of people have believed this forever@!(!") even if it were true, would not be a great argument against assessing the current prospects as pretty good. > I also note that "couple therapies that each buy a few years" is a major retreat from the point I was actually adressing which was life made unrecognizable by salamander limbs, etc. 3 years of QALY for the population would likely look like 30% of the population getting some crazy-ass therapy that adds many years of QALY, and many other people dying too soon or having other ailments that are not addressed. Alternatively it could come from finding something unexpectedly cheap and broadly helpful that you could treat a very large percentage of the population from and that most people benefit and get 5 years.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    When I point out your handwaving, I am not looking for more handwaving in response. My impression stands. I think you, like many, are indulging in technoutopian wishful thinking.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      > When I point out your handwaving, I am not looking for more handwaving in response. ??? You seemed to broadly agree with the one and only comment that I made, and then I offered some nuanced disagreement to your statement. And then you have this, frankly, hostile response. It's really rich for someone with this in their profile: > than people being respectful and/or standing behind their words. Exercise some respect. We're talking about assessing probabilities of distant events on multi-decade horizons. It's going to be hand-wavy, just like your dismissal of the prospects is hand-wavy (it's unlikely because allegedly people were too optimistic about flying cars??) > I think you, like many, are indulging in technoutopian wishful thinking. Well, the horizon I pointed out is long enough that I've got relatively poor prospects of benefitting from it myself...