Living to 120 is becoming an imaginable prospect::undefined
Who the hell wants to do that?
In good health obviously.
im imagining someone rotting from 90-120 but still conscious then making this news story
im joking tho i only read the headline
When we can live to 150, I’ll believe we can live to 120 in good health. In reality I’m watching 80yo people around me deteriorate into shells of their former selves.
Sure, and 50 years ago people un their sixties looked like they just saw the grim reaper.
Maybe, though I think that’s a bit overstating it. 50 years ago, leading men in romance movies were sometimes 50+
Lead, smoking, post war trauma… all less of an issue in today’s generations. What are the big longevity extenders for the next generation? I don’t think projections are very good.
The projection is that we’ll repair the damage regular living does to us (basically metabolism).
And I disagree with you, it will help us better than penicillin or what ever other progress that made us live longer and healthier in the past.
Most problems are based largely on aging, it’s because our body wears out. Very few people get cancers, heart attacks, alzheimers or die from simple infectious diseases in ther twenties.
The theory exists since a couple of decades and althought being challenged thoroughly no cracks has been found up to today at least, we can repair the damage done and cure ageing, and today funding is there.
On a side note, senolytics and some other first gen treatments are probable for say in ten years or earlier (some experimental stuff already exist too), if they roll back your age just by a meager 10 years when you’re 60, it’s 10 years of research and new treatments that you can have access to and so on.
I see… anti aging.
Well, if that technology ever actually lands, then I agree with you, it will be momentous.
However, we’ve been 30 years away from being able to slow/stop/reverse aging for the last 30 years. It’s like fusion. It’ll be facking great if it happens, but no one should talk about it like it’s a sure thing.
Well 30 years ago was when it all started (basically Dr de Grey shaking up gerontology, and the subsequent book Ending Aging), and the first ten years he fought all the problems in old academia and funding research himself. The next 10 was more fighting the “deathists” and trying to get at least some seriously funded adventures on the road and now ten years after that we have bio gerontologists not only wanting to push forward but they also can without jeopardizing their careers, lots of well funded biotech startups (rich people did finally get it) and the first treatments (Dasatinib + Quercetin was the first one IIRC, which can be had over the counter. It’s a senolytic and removes senescent cells) actually exists.
Now we need ways to assess the effectiveness of those treatments in humans (better ways than trying and waiting for 30 years), and see if they actually do rejuvenate, and that’s one another tricky question that lots of people are working on right now, so for me the future is bright.
I do
Why?
I would want to too, but not on this planet with these people and the very uncertain future.
Why? There’s so much to experience! If I could stay healthy, age more slowly or not at all, it would be great to try and experience as many good things as possible.
Oh you were talking about living longer if you were in a utopia or something close to it. Ok yeah I agree with you there, but unfortunately that’s not reality xD
I doesn’t have to be a utopia, it just has to be better than this.
And just in case you didn’t know, aging has been reversed in mice and the existence of biologically “immortal” species (“immortal” jellyfish) means it’s possible to achieve the same in humans.
It’s hypothetically possible that we could hack biology enough to become functionally immortal, but do you really want that? Considering the impact 90 year old Senators are having I’m just imagining an ever more out of touch gerantocracy. Imagine young people being born into a world where no one ever retires or dies, and their opinions are fixed based on what they experienced 100 years ago. Change is good.
Change is good indeed. Maybe if people didn’t think “eh, I can fuck up the world as I won’t be alive to live with the results” they might care a little more. Also, if were able functionally immortal, traveling to a new star system would be well within our possibilities.
I think people are confusing “people want to live to 120” with “people want to be 120.”
Actually being 120 would probably be awful. But seeing the year 2130 might be truly wild. On a basic level, it’s the same as wanting to live to see tomorrow.
What age do you want to die at?
This is actually a really interesting question, personally never. Not like heat death of the universe never but I don’t feel like there’s a point in theoretical forever young immortality where I would want to die, there’s always more shit to do and I’ve never felt like I need to up my game or something. I’m curious what you guys think though
About the same. I should up my game though.
The age where I can no longer do things that I like to do, code and workout.
Cause life’s nice :)
Me
Me
Me
Is this the sign up? I’m in
Just give me something for the pain and let me die
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Whatever makes you live to 120 will probably improve the quality of life at 80. And if you are bored of it, take a trip on the euthanasia coaster.
Who thinks that is even remotely desirable?
Average life expectancy is, what, 75 years? I’m 31, so rough estimate, I have 44 years left, and that’s not nearly enough time to conquer the galaxy
Your goals are both legal to aspire to, and possible.
That’s life expectancy from birth. Once you’ve made it to your 30s it’s probably more like 85
Average life expectancy in the US is ca 80, a few years above that in most of Europe, and highest in Japan, Macau, Hong Kong, at 84-85 years (this is across everyone - typically there’s a 3-4 year spread between men and women, so e.g. Hong Kong is 83.2 for men and 87.9 for women)
After seeing my parents lose mobility as they age, I don’t know why I’d want to live even longer with a broken body.
I work in hospice and see a variety of conditions. Some people in their 60’s with significant mobility issues that are chronically exhausted, but then there’s the patients in their 90’s who just recently started cutting back on social events and activities due to injury/illness.
Seeing these differences was why I started roller skating (again) at 49 and increased other activities to keep my ass moving and challenge my coordination and balance. I want to get everything I can out of this life.
You can’t control how or even if you will arrive at old age but you can swing the odds dramatically in your favor by the choices you make when you are younger. Eat healthily, avoid hard drugs and tobacco, drink alcohol only in moderation and get plenty of excercise that consists of four categories: resistance (aerobic), VO2 max (anaerobic), strength and stability.
Soon it will be possible to cling to the broken shell of what you once were, a mere vessel for arthritis pain and bittersweet memories of a time when you used to be able to walk to the bathroom. Hooray!
Healthy people with good genes that have relatives who are mentally fit up to thier last days. And people who think that all the money being dumpped into longevity by billionaires will increase the amount of time people in general can maintain a decent quality of life. And then me, who is curious about how the world changes over long periods of time and just wants to be there to see it. And maybe see a breakthrough that somehow keeps us alive even longer. Death is so final.
I see the quality of life people have when they start approaching 100, and lemme tell you I wouldn’t want an extra 20 years of that. Living in the US sucks for healthcare, you’re gonna be miserable if you live that long.
And it sucks because usually when your that old you can’t do much besides sit. Sucks that are body’s don’t last long.
You need to learn more about what a blue zone is.
Or you could share this weird esoteric knowledge that other people don’t know about but you do.
Obviously he’s talking about hockey, and means blue lines - it’s to help with calling off-sides
So instead of being a prick like the person you’re actually replying to I’ll answer you. Blue zones are areas where the population regularly reaches over 100. The point they’re making is the people over 100 in those areas usually seem to be doing pretty well, moving, some even run, and die suddenly (things just happen to turn downhill very fast when you’re that old, nothing sinister implied)
Well If you’re posting here you have access to internet too.
And that’s as far as I’m willing to help you without a ‘please’ and ‘ thank you’.
Please eat a dick
Thank you😘
And you can huff farts. 😘
Let’s see if we make life expectancy consistently go up again before we start talking about 120. I could just as easily see it fall to 60 before going up to 120.
But why would you want to
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I’ve not been enjoying the last 30 all that much, I don’t think I want another 90 or nearly that far even
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My dad died a few days ago. In the last months he told me more than one “I could use three lives to do all that I’m interested in”.
I’m sorry for your loss
Sorry for your loss
Because a world in which people live to 80 tend to live well till 65, And a world in which people can live to 120 might open up the possibility of living well to 90.
Stretching out life expectancies tends to stretch out the length of quality time too.
We should just die at 30 again huh?
I’m 30 now, having a hard time looking at the next 40-50 and thinking I want that. Definitely not 90
Are you suicidal? Longer life does not mean living as a cripple, we can extend our health if we research more. And exercise and lower calorie diet seems to improve health a lot. A 70 year old who exercises and eats lightly will be healthier than a 30yr who eats like an American and drives without walking much.
…for the ultrarich.
Yeah the quality of my Healthcare is decreasing
Living that long would break the economy. I’m retired on a fixed income, and my planning was based on living no longer than age 90. After that, my savings will be depleted, I will live on social security alone. When I imagine young people having another 30 years to pay for social security per person, it’s just broken. We would need to work until age 95 instead of 65. What would be the point?
Think we should moved towards post-scarcity first…
Man, if only we had some sort of military funding to divert to social programs…
We spend as much as the top 10 countries combined on defense.
Infrastructure - dangerously old Healthcare - non-existent Education- death spiral Social health - All measures worse every year
Don’t know, we tried nothing and are out of ideas thanks to the vice grip of lobbies and bribes Eisehower himself warned about.
We would not.
The extra amount you need as life expectancy increases diminishes with each extra year. E.g. let’s assume (for each of calculation only; you can just scale it up linearly) that you need 10k/year on top of social security to live off in retirement. If your savings is 100k, and you only get a 5% return every year, you’ll run out after about 15 years. Hence a typical lifetime annuity bought at age 65 will be around that in the US because it matches up with current US life expectancy (it won’t deviate much elsewhere).
So that’s for living to roughly 80. Here’s how it’ll play out as you approach 120:
85: ~20% more 90: ~38% more 95: ~52% more 100: ~62% more 105: ~70% more 110: ~77% more 115: ~82% more 120: ~86% more
As you can see, the curve flattens out. It flattens out because you’re getting closer and closer to have sufficient money that the returns can sustain you perpetually (at a 5% return, which is pretty conservative, at $200k, you can perpetually take out $10k, and no further increase in life expectancy will change that).
Now, that of course is not in any way an insignificant increase, but if we assume 40 working years, $100k is about $850/year additional investment + compounding investment return at 5%. $186k is around $1550/year compounding.
But here’s the thing, if you work 10 years longer, you grow it disproportionately much, because you delay starting to take money out, and you need less, while you get the compounding investment return of ten more years, and that drives down the yearly savings you need to make back down to around $850/year.
So an increase of 40 years of life expectancy “just” requires 10 more years of work to fully fund it assuming the same payment in during the later years. But here’s the thing: Most people have far higher salaries towards the end of their careers, even inflation-adjusted, so most people would be able to fund 40 more years with far less than 10 extra years of work.
(Note that if you already were on track for your pensions to last you to 90, if you were pre-retirement now, you’d “only” need about 35% extra savings to have enough until 120, because you’d get returns from a higher base, so the extra savings or extra years of work needed over what you managed would be even lower)
These all work on averages btw. - due to differences in health, this is where we really want insurance/state pensions rather than relying on individual contributions.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t problems to deal with. Especially if the life expectancy grows fast enough that it “outpaces” peoples ability to adjust. But it’s thankfully not quite as bad as having to add another 30 years of work.
Most of our financial advice for retirement has a hidden assumption that there is a large number of working age people helping not just social security, but also the stock market. A standard retirement portfolio will have a mix of t-bonds, stock market holdings, and a few other sectors.
We’d be looking at a scenario where there are a lot of small investors (a few million dollars is small on this scale), but proportionately fewer workers making use of that investment.
A US Millennial working today is going to need to be a 401k millionaire to retire with something comparable to their current standard of living. Most are going to fall short of that before we even talk about adding on extra life span.
The numbers I gave are entirely independent of social security. They presume a far below average stock market return. You’re right they’ll need to be a 401k millionaire, and per the numbers I gave, to achieve that will take around ~9k/year in pension investments if they intend to retire at 65. A lot obviously can not afford that, especially not early in their career, and will need to compensate accordingly later in their career to the extent they want.
But that wasn’t really my point. My point is that the number of extra years - irrespective of your current pension situation - you need to work in order to maintain the same financial outlook is far lower than the number of additional years of retirement you can cover. Whether or not you’re able to get to a sufficient pension level in the first place is a separate issue.
To how the stock market will fare, the big challenge there is whether or not automation will keep up or not, and frankly I think the biggest social upheaval over the next century will not be that it can’t keep up, but that automation will outpace the proportional decline in the potential labour pool.
You might want to look at the Trinity Study of retirement portfolios. The general rate of withdrawal is lower than what you’re quoting here. Closer to 4% or lower. Though this is giving way in some quarters to a sliding system, where you live it large in good return years, and frugaly in bad years.
But again, this all overlooks how that depends on a proportion of working people feeding stock market returns.
The general rate of withdrawal need to be lower if you have a portfolio that is very conservative. That may make sense when you’re saving for you yourself and have a low risk tolerance, but it’s not needed. That people feel worried enough to do that, though, is a good argument for insurance/state run pension schemes, because they an inherently pay out more since they can smooth out the risks and pay toward the maximum averaged returns.
Things will need to change like a guaranteed basic income. We’ve been moving towards this eventuality for the last 5 decades or so.
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Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think working till very late age is a bad thing. I don’t expect to be sitting on my ass whole day long by the time I get to retirement age. What I do think is a bad thing is if by that time I am financially struggling to get by.
The problem is we’re not fixing the economy at the other end. People work later because they’re healthier, and that could be good… but that means more people to do the same amount of work, increasing unemployment.
Until we stop demonising non-work and that’s going to be hell for those stuck on it. Get some level of basic income so it’s a valid choice. Meanwhile in the UK our govermnent is appealing to the boomers by announcing increased punishment of the unemployed… We’re a long way from fixing the issues.
What happened to having hobbies? Working and languishing till death are not the only two possible options.
My work is a hobby, so there’s that
This. I’m already retired and I’m plenty busy doing what I like with my time.
Oh, I do look forward to living through the climate wars and AI ascendancy. Amazing prospect.
No shit. Depending on how things are going in the next 10-15, I might retire way early, do as much bucketlist type stuff as possible until the money runs out, and then check out early. I probably have enough to live for 5 or 10 years if I move somewhere with a lower cost of living, and better that than working until I’m 75 while the world burns.
Perhaps you are half joking or not, but I used to think like this in my younger years. I spent a heck of a lot of time in my 20s and 30s doing all the bucket list stuff. Bunch of sex, drugs, traveling, wild adventures, starting a company, etc. Having gone through that I can tell you that I am much happier now than I was when I thought all those bucket list items were going to make me happy. Sure, they felt good and some were amazing, but it wears off and before you know it you’re chasing the next thing again.
A while ago I came across a nice, although a somewhat simplistic, equation that said that happiness equals the number of things you have divided by the number of things you want. I find that wanting less is a much easier route to increase that metric than getting more. Easier said than done though, but I found that silent meditation retreats do the trick for me.
I’m 39, and my bucket list mostly involves traveling to historical sites and trying lots of different food, so I don’t think we’re particularly comparable.
We don’t need to be compatible for the point to stand
A middle aged person saying, “I would rather retire young and do things that are important to me before those things are no longer possible, instead of spending another 30 years working my ass off hoping I’m financially and physically capable of doing anything at the end and that the world isn’t literally on fire” is hardly the same as a 20-something doing a bunch of drugs, but sure. Silent mediation. That’ll solve global warming and capitalism.
Have you ever considered asking a question or are you only just interested in misrepresenting what I said?
My retirement plan is a bullet
My mantra.
I’m not interested to 70 let alone 120. What a nightmare.
Aw c’mon! Just think, at ninety you could be hiking the Appalachian trail with a Camelbak tactical colostomy bag and a keen sense of wonder
How are we supposed to afford paying pensions that long if people retire before 70?
By properly taxing companies and rich individuals? Besides, those leaving to 120 would most likely be among the richest of us. Do they really need a pension at all?
That’s just not happening.
It should be though, we need to demand change rather than just saying “oh they’ll never do it” and giving up.
Sorry, but if one can dream of properly taxing companies and rich individuals, there’s plenty of other shit to fix with that money first.
Making living until 120 sustainable is not on the list, or very, very low on it.
That’s the neat part, you will now work until you’re 85
If political leaders can work into their 80s, you can also.
Their work amounts to sitting in a hearing non-coherent and voting yes when an aide tells you to. Real people on the other hand spend all day actively doing work for pennies.
Should have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.
Universal basic income. Make work optional.
If work is optional then who is paying that income?
I would advise to look up some information yourself. You can either read about the pilots and their results or find a video if you prefer that format.
And these final things to consider:
- optional != won’t be done
- work isn’t just one definition: housework is unpaid for example but it is still work
- UBI doesn’t mean all expenses are paid for, it’s “basic” - luxury goods like iPhones aren’t “basic”
- it’s a complex issue, inform yourself with pro and contra sources
By fully funding them. The return from a lifetime annuity bought at 65 is just marginally higher than a reasonable expected safe return from the same investment. (A lifetime annuity pays out on the basis that the provider needs to guarantee an income until you die, so if it returns so much that it eats too much into the capital, it’ll be unprofitable for the provider). At the margins, the expected remaining life years of someone at 65 in a developed country is long enough that you can’t safely offer that much more without eating away too much at the capital too quickly.
God damn it LET ME LIVE FOREVER LET ME LIVE FOREVER LET ME LIVE FOREVER I’m sick of lying in bed every night scared of the nothingness of death
Immortality really just means that the odds of you dying by accident becomes 100%.
Not if I live in a geodesic dome sealed off from outside harms until the heat death of the universe, and hopefully by then we’ll have warmed up the universe so I can continue with immortality
Have a look at the seventh jhana. Maybe it’ll help.
seventh Jhāna, defined as infinite nothingness
😨😨😨😨
I’m with you bud :/
Man imagine how fucking boring it’d be after only a few hundred years.
Everything ends, and if it didn’t the thing in question would lose all value.
You sit awake scared of the nothingness of death, do you ever contemplate the nothingness before life? You are what the universe is doing in the here and now, like the crest of a wave in the ocean. The oceans waves, while the universe ‘peoples’.
I will never get this attitude. If you were born in the 1800s would you call today boring? There is just so much to experience and we always have new things being invented. If I had infinite time I would still never run out of things I want to do.
That talk that “death is what makes life worth living” feels like a coping mechanism people invented to make peace with mortality. Everything that makes life worth living only happens while we are alive. The only thing that makes long lives so tragic is death itself.
Funny, what you wrote sounds to me like a coping mechanism in itself haha.
Which is cool, like 90% of what we humans do is in some way a coping mechanism for our own mortality. We are all still going to die though, accept it or rage against it, it makes no difference in the end.
In what way? I don’t deny that I’m going to die, I don’t think this kind of life extension medical technology will become widely available quick enough and affordably enough to help me. But I also don’t romanticize the prospect. It’s one of those common mundane tragedies that happen every day.
Frankly, sounds like you are trying to Uno Reverse Card me but I don’t even get what point you are trying to make. What, is just cherishing life a coping mechanism now?
Can a common mundane thing not still possess some beauty? And even in having beauty or not, must we judge it to be good or bad?
I’m not trying to do anything except talk shit on the internet. But yes, absolutely! It can be a coping mechanism, and there are definitely people who try to live to the fullest in the hopes that if they do it enough they’ll be able to forget their own impermanence.
I mean, I spent most of my life trying not to die so it seems pretty bad to me. I can’t exactly contemplate it like the falling leaf. I can see what you mean by how momentous it is but even if you can find beauty in it… it’s in someone else’s. You cannot really witness your own death to regard it as beautiful or horrible or anything.
Yeah there are people who fill their lives with noise not to think about their own mortality but I don’t think that’s my case. We are talking about it right now. I don’t seek all my experiences as a checklist for death either. I won’t be the one keeping track. I won’t be the one remembering.
Death is the cessation of self, and as much as I don’t fool myself into thinking I’d be immortal, I’d like to have as lengthy a self as I am afforded. Everything I cherish, I can only do so because I am. I can’t see death as bringing meaning to anything. More like the ultimate meaninglessness. How could people define themselves by something which, as far as we understand, they won’t even get to experience themselves?
I suppose there is spiritual belief, but even then it’s ultimately unknown. However people believe they may exist past their deaths, it won’t be like this.
But really, I feel really skeptical when people talk about the beauty and meaning of death because, if they truly believed that, wouldn’t they be more proactive about it? Though that’s pretty unhealthy to consider. Far from me to convince anyone they really truly see death as so wondrous.
These things that you cherish, would you still cherish them if you knew you could have them forever and never lose them? Or would they just become permanent things you get used to being there?
Happiness is only possible thanks to the sadness that contrasts it - without the suffering, is there really pleasure?
The way I look at it, life and death cannot be seperate things because one implies the other. Death has as much meaning and beauty as say, the fact that it rains - its something that happens, no more and no less.
Buddha teaches that the self, the ego, is merely an illusion - a very fun one, it’s true, but an illusion regardless. It’s the ego that attaches judgement to things, and this attachment is what leads to suffering. Someone who greatly cherishes life is therefore likely to fear death, and suffer because of it. The man who seeks only happiness is forever disappointed.
Also to respond to your example - yeah, I reckon seeing civilization repeating the same dumb patterns every hundred years would get boring fast. “Oh, facism is on the rise again, better grab the popcorn”.
In my country there are people who are still alive who lived during a military dictatorship and I cannot imagine of all things that they would be bored by its resurgence. The ones I hear speaking in the media seem livid if anything.
I could see someone ending their immortal life out of desperation, but boredom? Only if they completely give up on themselves and the world. Even that sounds like a treatable form of depression.
And that’s not even bringing up all the technology and arts that advance every day. In the most mundane sense I could think of several franchises I’m constantly waiting on the next entries, without mentioning all that I haven’t yet tried and ones that haven’t even been invented that I might like.
Just in time for the world to suck
*If you’re rich
I think all the proposed medication to slow aging is cheap. Although I can unfortunately imagine some horrible world where the prices go up just because people want it and the patent stops other companies making it. (Can we just like not have patents last longer than 5 years)
Maybe in some ultra rich country, certainly not in the declining West though.
