New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

But who says that's the endgame? Presumably an advanced enough medical technology could remove the internal byproducts of aging, and get your cells to stop dying / running out of steam / going cancerous. Obviously we have no idea how to do that, and maybe we never will, but it seems plausible.

We also know germ line cells can give rise to new organisms which can give rise to germ line cells in an unbroken chain effectively forever.

This is quite far from making a human immortal but it shows that there appears to be nothing in physical law or intrinsic to biology that prohibits it. Therefore it is possible.

Star travel and terraforming Mars are also possible. Possible does not imply anything about difficulty. We don’t really know if radical life extension or borderline immortality are fusion hard, quantum computing hard, or starship hard.

Hope is a feeling of expectation of positive outcomes, therefore illogical by definition.

Anyone who says "we will have within this generation technology to extend your lifetime indefinitely" is lying just as much as the priest who says he knows God exists is lying[1]. I would say it's more likely that the scientist liar is accidentally right, than that the priest is; that doesn't make either of them people you should trust.

At the current stage of technology, belief on this process is basically based only on hope. Belief in this is essentially religious.

[1] possibly they both believe they are saying the truth, so you could argue they are wrong rather than lying. They are still both standing on the same grounds.

Yep, here is the documentary: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3804810/

What does this have to do with a soul? The comment was about people treating life extension as a religion based on faith more than evidence.

Nothing to do with the soul, or heaven, or anything else.

(Context: I am firmly an atheist, but I also disapprove of the people who want to live forever. I think that's selfish and childish. People should get to grips with the reality of their mortality and make peace with that.)

Declaration such as:

“We forecast that those born in 1980 will not live to be 100 on average, and none of the cohorts in our study will reach this milestone."

is too self-confident. Their youngest cohort is born in 2000. It is impossible to predict how longevity technology will look in 2070 or 2080, and yet the authors make such bold statements.

The word forward escape is borrowed from author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which as I understand it means just doing what you like and is good for you both as opposed to doing what you like but is bad for you aka vices which he refers to as backward escapes.

Science has helped reduce mortality at birth and manage or even eliminate a lot of diseases like malaria, HIV, small pox, polio and many more. Also for burns, broken bones and accidents. And continues to. I advocate vaccines. I myself took the Anti Covid shot 3 times. And use medicines and supplements regularly.

There’s another side to it though.

At what point do I just take an Adderall that’s prescribed to me? Or a pain killer? Rather than trying preventive lifestyle cures? We need a way to tell when to apply what but IMHO in practical life what gains ground is what serves the providers more rather than the beneficiaries. An interesting example is that Anaesthesia was a more quickly adopted invention than Anti-Septic. Even though the latter is more important for the safety of patients. But the former makes life easier for docs, hence it was adopted much faster.

There is a place for both and knowing when to apply which is key. You cannot trust HCPs using allopathy aka science backed by academia in every case cause they’re motivated by self interest and aren’t perfect! Even people like Gabriel Weinberg have acknowledged this in his book Super Thinking when touching upon inefficiencies in healthcare and academia.

I believe that to be able to trust science more we need to save science from p-value manipulation by self-interest groups…

This video by Veritasium also talks about how the accuracy of most published research is contestable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q

I don’t think this is an easy problem to solve or has ever been

That's just assisted suicide with extra steps.

> people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values

No culture should nor can stay stagnant. But if we allow in people who do not share or wish to share a majority of our cultural values, which vary a lot between European countries as well, then we deteriorate what made our countries lucrative destinations for these people faster than we can maintain it.

It’s not complicated. Why are all those people coming here if all cultures are equal?

As an outside that has visited your large continent a fair few times, yeah, you guys are pretty monocultural.

I know that such a statement is just literal nonsense to y'all and quite unbelievable.

And yes, you all have a different flag, and a different language.

But the day-to-day details are very similar.

Every day y'all wake up at pretty much the same time, everyone eats a light breakfast of some pastry or another and a lot of caffeine and nicotine. Then off to work on pretty much the exact same road in the same little cars. 10 rolls about and y'all fuck off to grab an espresso (Yes UK, you too, the tea thing is BS, you love coffee, we all see it) and a cigarette. You raff about for 30 min. Then back to work for a bit. Lunch rolls on by and it's carb and protein time for the men and salads for the women. By this I mean potatoes and something with a french sauce. More caffeine and nicotine. The afternoon is then set for either sleeping, or pretending not to (I love this about y'all). Work fucks off at about 4-5 depending, nothing on Fridays though. You all then fuck off to a place to get more nicotine and then alcohol or a few hours. Dinner comes after round 2-3, more carbs and meat this time, maybe pasta. Half cocked, you all end up in the same small homes. (yes, yes, but everyone is like this too!. No, you all do it the same way at the same pace, all of you.)

It's all the same sports (football), the same seasons, the same lives. Yes, you all think that your life is so different for your neighbor, but I'm telling you, the pace, the styles, the food, the drinks, the drugs of choice, the houses, the children, Europeans may not be brothers, but you are very close cousins. The rest of the world think you all mad that you hate each other so much when you're living in the same house, acting the same way. It's the same Euopean culture.

I agree with this. Far too many European countries have no optimistic or even productive outlooks on the future, instead seeming to trade in a form of pessimistic reductionism. Eat less, do less, be less.

However:

> it's no wonder that immigrants wouldn't want to buy into your culture

Then why do they stay as long as they can drain resources? I would never move to a country I don't respect, let alone stay to drain resources and give nothing back. That mentality is alien to me. That isn't to say every immigrant is a drain on resources, but the ones that do not buy into the culture, do not buy into the vision (or lack thereof), and do not contribute -- why are they here? Simply because despite all of that it's better than where they came from? If so, we're doing both ourselves and them a disservice by not denying them entry, because both parties end up miserable.

That's fair and I think it's mostly true. At the same time, comparing "Europe" as a monolith compared to the US doesn't make a lot of sense, the history, languages and religions aren't shared for many countries, contrary to the US. We can circle back to saying it was and is a lack of vision from the EU to not have been more aggressive in creating this culture.

> I'll enjoy your aesthetic traditions and take your free social welfare, but I'll keep my own culture and values, thank you very much.

From what you wrote, I can somewhat understand this standpoint but this creates strong segregation between communities that aren't healthy and it sounds like a breeding ground for conflict as well.

I will keep it short because I value my time but here some things you might want to ponder:

- America integration doesn’t exist. The American strategy has always been leave people alone to keep living in their own culture. There is no actual American identity. The only things American have in common in the shared trauma of slavery and the civil war, and the founding myth which is why they remain so prevalent in the US modern discourse. Meanwhile, people will happily talk about "race" culture, half the country would be happy to slaughter the other half and culturally linked riots are a thing.

- Europe has a cultural entity doesn’t exist. The UK is different to France which is different to Germany or Danemark. Most of these countries immigration come from former colonies who already understand these countries social norms.

- Access to social welfare is severely limited to immigrants. Most of the system drain comes from people who were born in the country, not immigrants. Take any economic studies, you will see than immigration is a net positive in every European country. These are country where the population is aging fast. We simply need the immigrants to prop up the work force.

- Integration is a false issue. Most of the problems in France for example come from second generation immigrants who actually went through the French education system. The problem is mostly economic.

- The way Islam has been managed is an issue in itself. People deserve to be able to practice their cult freely and in good condition but most European countries have refused to take charge of the question. France for example left far too much space to extremist countries like Saudi Arabia. When most of your imams have been trained in the worst possible interpretations and mosques are financed by countries you shouldn’t want anything to do with, you have a major issue. There clearly is space for better solutions here.

- Plenty of political parties in Europe have strong visions for the future. Some of them are linked to social justice and preserving the environment, things you obviously dislike. The fact you can’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist however.

And I have every right to want you out of country and my taxes not to be wasted on the likes of you.

I don't have enough cruelty in me to demand that someone should stay in Sudan and try to "fix" what's happening there.

But more importantly wealthy countries shouldn't depend on there being poor countries where women still have "too" many children but rather we should fix our own problems so we want and can have sufficient young people of our own (not said in a nazi way).

And we should also redistribute wealth so there aren't any poor countries to exploit for natural resources, crops and people.

But even if I were an immigrant to the US from Venezuela or any of the tens if not hundreds countries that the US destabilised, I would indeed think of the majority of US's population as complicit. The people that are against such acts seem to always be the minority.

We need to remember that our bodies are evolutionarily optimized for getting to childbearing years, and then living long enough to get our children to a point where they can be independent. After that there are really no evolutionary pressures keeping us around.

Untangling all that and re-engineering ourselves (biologically) to overcome that is probably a pretty monumental task; starting from scratch with something simpler (and perhaps non-biological) might be easier, with sufficiently advanced technology.

Aging isn't even recognized as a disease yet, and it well should be. Once it gets at least the same kind of focus cancer or heart disease does now? Then we'll talk about how it's "impossible to fix".

Compare it to being obese, wich can happen very young and is in part determined by how you are fed when you are a baby/child.

Those will give you an entire life. Living while being healthy is an entirely different life than surviving while being unhealthy.

I mean, sure, it doesn't scale as well as a magic pill as a business. But is certainly is O(n) with the number of people involved.

I am not against trying to "solve aging", but I don't think we should think of it as just a disease, and there should be more plans on how to deal with the sudden "infinite" number of humans. While I may want to live forever, I would definitely not enjoy that in all circumstances.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...

The actual problem is that you would have to do selective breeding and genetic modification of humans the same way we do it with plants and animals. It is primarily an ethical problem.

The President, however, especially when Congress is forced to toe their line, is. No president should be permitted to be more than 20 years older than the median age of the general population when they’re done leading the country. In this case, they shouldn’t be more than 58y old when their 8y term is up. This way, they and their progeny need to live with the decisions made for at least ~20y after they’re out of office.

There’s a reason there is forced retirement in some industries and government groups. Why the fuck we don’t enforce similar rules on the president I’ll never know.

Here’s one from 3 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34985088

You can always ask the AI:

Politics & World Leaders • Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) – Former President of South Africa, died at 95. • George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) – 41st U.S. President, died at 94. • Jimmy Carter (1924– ) – 39th U.S. President, currently 100 (as of 2024). • Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (1900–2002) – Died at 101. • Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921–2021) – Died at 99.

Arts & Entertainment • Kirk Douglas (1916–2020) – Actor, died at 103. • Olivia de Havilland (1916–2020) – Actress, died at 104. • Betty White (1922–2021) – Actress/comedian, died at 99. • Norman Lear (1922–2023) – Television writer/producer, died at 101. • Tony Bennett (1926–2023) – Singer, died at 96.

Science & Literature • Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) – Philosopher, died at 97. • Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) – Nobel Prize–winning neurologist, died at 103. • Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) – Architect, lived to 91. • Maya Angelou (1928–2014) – Poet and author, died at 86 (not 90s, but close). • Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) – Science fiction author, died at 72 (not 90s).

Business & Other Notables • David Rockefeller (1915–2017) – Banker/philanthropist, died at 101. • John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) – Oil magnate, died at 97. • Iris Apfel (1921–2024) – Fashion icon, died at 102.

I responded to someone who said that people in their 70s are already in decline.

How many good years after 70 did she have?

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a friend and his 80-year-old wife. I would’ve never guessed she was 80.

Idk if we should study age as a disease but we surely should study the delusions of techno solutionists

Though it would be nice if they had the option of choosing that for themselves, instead of being told that they don't really want long lives and that they should kneel before biology. Whether they're content with 100 years or 100'000 years, that should be up to them.

Or, as others pointed out, if at least whatever amount they're gonna be around for was more dignified and they had a better quality of life, instead of their bodies slowly wasting away.

Utter bollocks.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

This doesn't help overall. Mixing two roughly equally broken things just yields the mean of the two. But the trick is that roughly 60 to 70% of conceptions will not survive to birth. This rejection sampling is ultimately what makes children younger.

If you had a population of single cells that didn't undergo this rejection sampling at some point, entropy and Muller's ratchet would actually age the entire population and kill it.

The only truly troubling one is the brain, and we're very much not sure if it actually is one or for example, suffers degradation from the degradation of the body its attached to - likely both - but we also know that the brain is not a static structure, and so replacement or rejuvenation of key systems would definitely be possible (certainly finding any way to protect the small blood vessels in the brain would greatly help with dementia).

If not, the point in doing that is the enormous amount of suffering you create while thrashing against an inevitability.

That is not to say you should take naps and wait patiently for death, but it's a line to walk.

What is the oldest known living individual for each of these species, and for how long are they alive?

You’re speculating too far beyond what we know to speak so definitively. Plenty of biology and even thermodynamics suggests there may be limits. That doesn’t prove they exist. But it’s in the same category as saying there are no know physics which prohibit time travel or transcending the human condition into a state of pure consciousness. Like, sure, there aren’t, but to use your analogy, ancient Romans didn’t know about the speed of light.

> but that says nothing of artificial selection or bioengineering

Feel free to be specific. Start from here and describe your revelation about my “confusion”:

>> Humans are a special case because we don’t operate only on biological imperatives so you could make immortal humans

Natural life o overwhelmingly selects for well defined, limited lifespans. Engineered human life likely won’t see any natural pressure but rather societal pressure to set a well defined, limited lifespan.