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What Happens When the Average Lifespan is 150 Years?
First time accepted submitter Macgrrl writes "It was reported today in The Age newspaper that scientists believe they will have a drug within the next 5-10 years that will extend the average human lifespan to 150 years. Given the retirement age is 65, that would give you an extra 85 years, meaning you would probably have to extend the average working life to 100 or 120 years to prevent the economy becoming totally unbalanced and pensions running out. That assumes that the life extension is all 'good years', and not a prolonged period of dementia and physical decline. Would you want to live to 150? What do you see as being the most likely issues and what do you think you would do with all the extra years?"
I'd spend all my time hitting those 80 year old cheerleaders!
Well, you can't have such a sysyem without legalized euthanasia. Or you need a lot of homeless shelter.
I would refine my skills at posting flame bait on /.
I think I would spend the next 165 years practising addition
Spend all my medicare on pvp games and frag the bejesus out of everyone for the next 90 years.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
... are going to get interesting
the retirement age is 65. Don't expect that to last.
65 + 95 = 150?
When the average age is 150 the average speed limit will be 15mph.
The weather channel will become a 3D channel on cable and out perform the major networks.
Dick Clark will be hosting New Year shows still.
Starbucks will be sold to a bingo-chain.
No one will ever be able to walk on anyone elses lawn ever again.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
given the current food technology and energy resources, this seems impossible. The economy is bound to suffer. What we need is management technology and not prolonging life.
... Ask me again in 300 years.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Can you imagine humans living longer and the birth rate of longer lived humans? What kind of impact would our planet experience from this?
As extreme as this is, Google -> Star Trek's Mark of Gideon
Those people held the views similar to the anti-abortion crowd and look where it got them ultimately. I'm not trying to start a flame war about things but it's a serious issue with longer lived humans who can't even get off their own world to spread themselves out more.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
The wear and tear on the body is such that even if you can increase the lifespan to a theoretical 150 years you wouldnt be very healthy for the last 90 or so years. You also need something that adresses the wear on the body. Our hearts arent made for 150 years of use and we build up various plaques and toxins in our bodies as time goes by. Even if we all lived under controlled and ideal circumstances the last seven decades would be pretty much seven decades of being eighty.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
Call them category 1 put them in medical camps. Doesen't anyone watch torchwood?
Would I want to live 150 years? Yes.
What would I do with the extra time? Same things I do now. Work, travel...you know, live.
I wonder if it would extend fertility. Maybe you could have a family and raise children to adulthood then separate, find a new partner and do it again.
Only the Rich would have access to the drug at first. And that invites all sorts of pessimistic thoughts. Their money will be hoarded for longer, not benefiting the system. They'll probably try to argue the average life expectancy is up therefore we should cut everyone's social security benefits... RIAA/MPAA and ilk will argue we now need longer copyright terms -- patent holders will do the same...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey
You labor your earlier years on stupid jobs. Now that you have more time, you can live cheaply to vest seed money into ventures that give small returns. Work smart, industrialized, automated, not manual labor. People will go to libraries more instead of government-forced education and government-accredited indoctrination.
Of'course, increased life-span puts people at odds with the military, because everyone will be well-studied to choose who will rule over them. I wouldn't be surprised if this so-called life-extension "drug" becomes confiscated by military as being a possible war-time weapon such as to deprive people of their nutrition so that the adversary doesn't live as long. In the United States, it's not only foreign fores but domestic so-called "enemies" in which the War Powers Act and the Trading With The Enemy Act was applied against American State Citizens (prior to 14th Amendment US citizenship status). Even George Washington the so-called savior of the 13 Colonies did his damndest to put-down Colonists from founding their own Free State even though they owed no debt to warrant their partition in the United Colonies.
Going back to the drug for non-military use, I would figure tha tit tampers the metabolism and re-engauges the sex drive to not trigger from the gravitational pull of the moon because everyone that does that sort of activity all become wrinkled and old from their body being depleted of nutrition after committing The Act. Just the hormonal response of reproductive activity is deadly that people pass-out.
you would probably have to extend the average working life to 100 or 120 years to prevent the economy becoming totally unbalanced
I hate to break it to you, but having 65 as a retirement age has ALREADY made the economy totally unbalanced.
Remember that the 65 retirement age was designed for a time when most people only lived to 50! If you made it to 65 you deserved a reward for actually surviving that long. Now almost everyone makes it to 65 and our Social support systems are taking up 50% (or more, depending on your country) of our GDP. Our economy all over the globe is in shambles trying to support a number of people the various welfare states were never designed to handle.
Frankly we need to raise the retirement age to 80 NOW. Make the boomers work for another 25 years or retire on their own money. But us Gen X and down shouldn't be paying for it. When people start living to 150 (or longer) you can bump it to first 100, then 125.
Assuming we haven't decided by then that the government just isn't properly equipped to take care of people in that manner and cancelled all the welfare programs. Or have slipped into a global social collapse and fallen back to 50 year lifespans and steam technology.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
A guy like Steve Jobs probably accomplished the most when he felt his time was severely limited. Stephen Hawking seems to have a similar motivation. I even find it hard to really put everything into a project when the deadline is still far away. If people think they are going to live twice as long, they'll probably just procrastinate 4x as much.
First of all I wouldn't expect it to be available to everyone. My guess it will be very expensive and only a handful of people will actually benefit from it.
Get out there and breed if you want to make a difference.
You're obviously new here.
While life expectancy has been consistently increasing in the modern era from 30 to almost 70 now, maximum life span has really not changed at all and stays at about 120 years. This true both for humans and laboratory rats, scientist are having difficulty increasing the maximum life span.
We are going to need a medical break-through in order to push 150 years, but it is a good thought experiment, I just don't see it changing dramatically this century.
What we need is management technology
AKA Death Panels.
See, this drug is yet another way of extending copyright. All they have to do is keep the authors alive for another whole lifetime and they can keep their game rolling without much additional change.
Okay, I joke a bit, but I can totally see such therapy restricted to the very rich and powerful to keep them in office and power. As it stands, the world cannot afford to have more old people than it already has.
I would certainly not like to live 150 years. 70 years is enough time on this god awful speck of dust.
You call it wasting and procrastinating.
I call it living.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
In this world? Within this society?
No way, really
Gravitational pull of the moon? Are you suggesting that a woman's monthly period is caused by the moon's orbit like how it is strong enough to effect the tides of the sea? I've never thought of anything like that before, and can't test the theory of life without a moon because I wasn't among the privileged astronaughts to re-enact the moon landing from a sound stage on a moonless Mars. The girls in Venusville might have something to say though. For a good time, ask for Melina.
I was born when my dad was 25. I had my children at 28 and 30. If my kids wait 'til 30 too, before having theirs, I can expect to bounce their babies when I'm 60+, and their babies babies when I'm 95+, and their babies, babies, babies when I'm 130, if I live that long.
I'm 51 now. I don't look a whole lot different than I did at 30. I have as much energy, and I'm in better shape. Eat right, exercise, have an active social life, don't get sick; how long will I live anyway without the drug?
Oh, and how was the research on the drug funded? (Nope, didn't read TFA.) If the research was funded with grants payed for by my taxes, I expect that drug to be inexpensive. But even if it's inexpensive, I'm not sure I'm interested in having it.
I'd have to (live to 150) for all of the thing that should be
in the public domain are returned to the public domain...
The main thing is quality of life. Extra years of infirmity, dementia and living in some kind of care facility would be no advantage.
Extra years of good health would be. Not just to the individual, but to society. Training someone in a lot of professions is expensive. The decades of experience leave on retirement and have to be replaced.
Stagnation won't be a big problem, IMHO. Though you'll have people around for longer, new people will be coming into a given workplace, just at a slower rate. New ideas will still be around, and frankly, most people aren't doing research science, but things that are existing skill based rather than innovation based. Slashdot is a bit of an anomaly compared to the rest of the world as it has a high prevelance of knowledge workers.
Expect various pundits to say it's horrible and that no one should want to live that long. Of course, when they'd make the decision for themselves I suspect a lot would take the anti-aging drugs and then rationalize it somehow.
As far as impact on population, it'd be some, but not as big as you'd think. If you don't have a low enough reproductive rate, you'll still overpopulate even with current life spans.
... that around 90~95 I would be going to a new seniors' retreat that they call "Carrousel".
Vol~
Who's going to want to work at Foxcomm for a hundred years? We've got to kill off predatory politics and economics first.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I plan to keep moving. I'll find something I can do to keep active, maybe get into politics and run for congress. That way I could be senile, old and still get payed.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If I ever retire, it'll be because I'm sick, not because I've decided not to work any more. Even ignoring the economy, I like my job. In fact, I've liked almost every job I've ever had, no matter which industry. If it weren't for bad managers, I'd leave out the 'almost'.
Sure, I'd like to have more time at home, but I've found I'm happier when I've got an external purpose for a good portion of my time. I don't mind working on other people's dreams, so long as I'm being productive.
So if I live to be 150, I expect most of those years will be happy, productive ones.
However, I expect all too many people would simply see it as another 85 years that they HAVE to work at a job they hate.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
One nessecary consequence, would be a lowering of real (as in inflation-adjusted) interest-rates. (including rates of return on stock)
Long-term is everything in investment - and with that long a lifespan, it becomes *much* easier to reach a point where you can live from interest alone, while still having many decades ahead of you. But that means a smaller fraction of the population actually contributing, which is only possible if productivity grows to match.
You currently need on the order of a million dollars to be able to live from interest alone (2-3 if you want to live comfortably), at 5% interest, you get a million by saving $100 a month for 75 years. Leaving you to spend the other half of your life doing nothing productive.
The news will start with "I remember when... ".
The good old days will be 140 years ago, instead of just 60. Btw, people were much friendlier in the good old days, and also worked a lot harder.
Sherry sales will explode, and sherry will outsell beer.
Helping grannies cross the street becomes a full-time job.
Well, let's see: we'll have a rapid increase in population from lagging deaths, increased fertility rates, so i'd say overpopulation will become a huge problem (Malthus, anyone?). We'd need to rapidly update our infrastructure to deal with such issues, completely overhaul our planning and laws to deal with such issues, whether it be social security and welfare policies to retirement planning, to incarceration.
Then, of course, there could be the psychological issue - we've seen this before: the guy becomes old and all his loved ones die as time progresses (Interview with the vampire, twilight - hey, don't judge - etc...). how would one cope with losing his friends/loved ones how either could not afford or would not want such medication? Not to mention humans have not been designed to live that long, so that merits the question: how long until you get sick of life? would you want to extend your life to a point where suicide might be a better option, rather than living another 30 years?
Sorry, but I'm not sure how i can see this working out for the better
What about lack of upward mobility? All my life I've been told I'm being held back because of the huge cohort of baby boomers who will eventually retire and then my generation gets to shine. Its finally starting to happen, slowly. What happens socially when the retirement age goes from 60 to 120, meaning I/we have to sit thru another 60 excruciatingly boring years?
Another problem is if you thought income inequality was bad, wait until you see balance sheet inequality. So a college degree used to mean an extra average of $25/yr income (used to, now it just means unemployment plus student loans instead of just unemployment, and the receptionist and your realtor are now required to have English degrees or MBAs). Over 40 working years that delta adds up to lets say a million bucks. Over 100 years, it adds up to 2.5 million bucks. So I'd expect the education bubble to explode upwards even more.
Another problem is no nation has more criminals than the USA. Do they get treatment? Should a 20 year old murder who got life meaning a 60 year sentence be released at 80, or not medicated so he dies at 80, or held until he's 120 or ? Another problem is the goal of the prison industrial complex is to make, say, 3% of the population felons per decade. If people only live as adults for maybe 50 years, that means 15% of the population dies after being imprisoned and they never work inside the legit economy again. What happens when people live to 150, that means 45% of the population gets felonized.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Bullsh*t
This. One drug isn't going to solve all the problems of aging. As I understand it (i.e. very, very roughly), there are nearly a dozen sub-problems we need to solve to lick the aging problem, and each of them is pretty hard. Like what the hell do we do about telemeres?
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Let's call it Life Supply and sell it in two versions: An expensive version injected directly into the blood veins with no side effects, and a cheap pills version, that has the unfortunate side effect that it turns you into a zombie after death. The profits can be used to construct walled cities for the rich and powerful. Safe from the zombie apocalypse ... until some terrorist blow up the walls and let the dead rabble in.
I would do my best to stay healthy and hope for medicine and robotics to improve so any organ that fails can be replaced.
Then 100 years from now, in the year 2111 someone will come up with a way to get our lifespan up to 250.
Why die at all when we can continue to live in a robot-body that for all practical purposes is indistinguishable from our current body ?
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
What we need is management technology
AKA Death Panels.
Don't worry, ObammaCare has that covered.
And I think we'd see a huge increase in suicides of the over-70s. 35-45 years of work drives a lot of people to despair already, doubling that would push them over the edge (it sure would with me)
That's before even considering that thought of the extra time just being spent dealing with age related illness. Nobody is going to want to spend 70 years (half their life!) basically dying.
If I could keep my physical shape and my marbles I would see running out of things to do to keep busy as a problem. To combat that I would expect to see 95 year olds going back to University, and people having extremely varied careers like being a doctor, then an engineer, then taking 10 years out to lay bricks. The question I would have is would it work? Given that the one thing I would like to do in my life is to explore another planet and the technology to do that is centuries away, would I feel fulfilled with my life? I'd like the chance to find out!
I would spend all my extra years working on mind uploading technology. I want to live for a very long time, uploaded into a spaceship exploring the universe. When your mind is software you can just alter your perception of time and fast forward through all the boring parts.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Creatures studies show that lifespan is closely linked to heartbeat, even for humans.
One could interpret this as a whole: we have a burning rate that leads us to a 120 years maximum lifespan. If any drug were to extend it to 150, one would have to live like a turtle...
The children of today are almost ridiculously healthy, althletic, well fed and grow like weeds. Well, about half of them are; the other half are chubby and underdeveloped because their parents feed them processed crud and let them watch TV all day.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the new-style healthy kids live a lot longer than the junkfood kids; the figure of 100 is often quoted. I wonder if the two groups will diverge and create an effectively split society some time in the next 30 years.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
Because the average lifespan we observe now is something that the people born 60-80 years ago can be proud of :) We do not have the numbers for the people born 40 years ago. We do not have any numbers for the people born 10 or less years ago. I suspect that (thanks to our lifestyle, food industry, environment, global problems etc) the effective lifespan, i.e. what we will have to deal with in next 30-40 years will probably raise for a while and then will start dropping. I do not think that the people born 10-20 years ago will probably live, on average, less than the people born 60-40 years ago.
I can't imagine living under the status quo for another 35 years, much less 110. This business of semi-feudalistic society with wage serfdom and self-styled lords & ladies has gotta change. Can you really see yourself working in the cube farm for another 120-30 years for PHB's who know nothing about what you do and whose only skill is counting their stock options? That's a Dantean fate if ever there was one.
Now, a realm of hackerspaces, DIY innovation, unlimited creativity, Maker Faire style stuff I can get behind. If we had the kind of society were folks could choose that and not starve, lose healthcare, or wind up homeless, that would be worth living in and for.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
..maybe write a test or two, if there was time.
That's a long time sat on the veranda, demand is going to be high... And we need to minimise the number of unwanted octogenarian pregnancies if we're going to control the population. That or we seriously need to get into interplanetary colonisation.
The requirement to get employable will dramatically rise as there will be individuals with literally decades of experience occupying the job vacancies for a certain field for a longer time. Consolidated empires will also last more. The technological field will be hit harder in the employability part
I'm pretty sure all those salmon are swimming upstream to discover the cure for senescence ending the nasty business of spawning for ever and ever.
This is the least conservative line of investigation in the history of the human species. Stem cells? Totally passe. Surf upon mighty Morforgeddon, and despair!
Hi. Will you marry me? For a week?
But it will lower the abortion rate, so let's not be hasty to call it a bad thing. An aging base could potentially be a godsend once we repeal term limits.
old rich people like rupert murdoch get the drug.
they stay on using their power and influence to run their corporations.
the corporations suck money from the other old people.
the other old people cant afford the drug.
the old people die off.
so you see, its not really a problem for the 99% ers.
but its great for the 1%ers who can afford to live longer in the lap of luxury, paid for by everyone else's blood, sweat and tears.
ever was it thus.
dont believe me?
weren't we all supposed to be working 3 day weeks by now, with automation doing the rest?
didnt work out that way did it?
http://www.amazon.com/100-Plus-Longevity-Everything-Relationships/dp/0465019668
Definitely worth a read for a more in-depth analysis of the ideas
... and on and on. By then I'll surely have even more things to leave unfinished than I look like leaving now.
One good thing serious life expectancy increase might do is help us get over quarterly profits disease, but then again I'm always too optimistic. It might also make the choice clearer between getting off planet and cutting per capita resource wastage down here.
By the time anyone dies of age-related causes they are already quite a work of art, albeit of varying quality, and something is lost when they fail to leave dense traces of at least their best bits for posterity. Yet I bet, I'll still put more effort into observing than into recording. Can't wait for a Siri descendent that will be able to tease out our stories.
I'm not convinced there are any technical obstacles to getting to a point where life expectancy increases by more than a year per year, but have no expectation that I'll find myself on the right side of that curve, so finish up thinking more about technical systems for reincarnating, systems we are surely going to need to move beyond this solar system, no matter how long we can stretch our biological span.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
In that case, no thanks. I've seen enough already.
... for tuning into the Matlock channel.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
My mother is 65, her full SS is not available until 67-1/2.
I'm 32, I believe something like 72 for full payment is scheduled for me--and anyway, that form the government sends me says by the time I'll retire there will only be enough money to pay me 75% of benefits due...
You know who will get this treatment first and best - the "1%." This will lead pretty directly to some really old CEOs - imagine a 150 year old Rupert Murdoch, still running Fox in 2081, or Steve Ballmer still running Microsoft in 2106
Of course the retirement age would have to rise.
Who in their right mind would want to live that long? Humans, specifically the number of humans, is already an ecological disaster.
For what percent of population, the top 1%? For the rest, don't matter a lot raising or not the retirement age, even if you could surpass 100, you wouldnt want to. More lifetime for that top 1% will mean even wider gap between top and the rest.
Aside from the fact that I believe most of this is media hype........it's a cool thing to thing about.
Basically people would do the same, they would just have more and more years in the grind of things, work, kids, school, all the regular crap.
However, check out Time Enough for Love if you are looking for good ideas on how to spend that extra time if you are rich.
If they raised the life expectancy of all people to 150 (more than doubling it) with a simple, cheap pill that magically cures all genetic disorders, prevents atherosclerosis and cancer, regrows your hair and rebuds your teeth and restores your failing joints, eyesight and hearing, then I'd spend the extra time fighting in a perpetual war that would ultimately have to kill people at the same rate that they are dying today (or even faster).
Or does the magic pill cure starvation and global eco-disaster too?
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
The people who think like those at Occupy Whatever would be protesting that the old folks aren't dying fast enough and that they are entitled to the jobs and property of anyone over 80.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The Beatles should change the lyrics of one of their songs into: "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm one hundred thirty-four?
I plan on working until it is clear I am unable to continue. Between medicare, extending lifespans, etc. Worst case scenario I die relatively young. Best case scenario I won't die to starvation, stuck in a home because I can't afford to buy my hyper inflated food.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
So does every private health insurance agency.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Hard for me to say most of my relatives have passed I feel alone now.
Its hard to find work after 50 bad back limits it even more.
Its one I have to think hard about 50 more years of being old and poor.
.... average lifespan is 150 years, but we still don't know how to cure Parkinsons, Alzheimers, all "flavors" of cancer... Naw, I wouldnt like that. Hospitals with geriatric wards full of 100+ years old people dying helplessly. But if there was also the cure for all those nasty diseases, then, hell... why not :) Just give me my xbox 1500 controller, Halo 9 and I am ready for some online carnage with other 120+s, but then... what kind of achievements they would have to invent in the game... thats the real problem!
A lot of negativity here!
As long as these drugs maintain your brain and body, those extra years would be fun!
You could be smart and utilize the effect of compounding on your savings!
Many retired folks I know do arts, often have income producing hobbies. Take a gander at modern retirement communities. These are a hotbed of golf, tennis, swimming, dancing, sex etc. Are relationships better after you figure them out?
If you don't have the money, there's alot of stuff that modern life has to offer. Don't scoff, but I don't watch TV or play video games as I'm too busy. How about a 2nd career? Does antone want to spend their last years as a rancher, a park ranger, a doctor?
Personally, There are many mountains I haven't climbed and many trails I haven't biked!
And he's probably at some Occupy love in.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I haven't read the article, but every promoted comment seems to be making the assumption that you wouldn't take these drugs until you were already 80 years old. What if you took the drug when you were 30 and it then prolonged your life starting then? In other words, it slowed the aging process down so that 25 years passed but you only aged 10 years. At (real) age 55 you'd feel only 40; at age 80 you'd feel 50 and so on. When you finally hit 150, you'd feel about 80 years old. Works for me.
I suspect that there will be a HUGE spread of inequality between the old and the young. First of all, the increased retirement age will mean it takes a lot longer for positions to open up. Young people will be stuck waiting for their turn to be a teacher or urban planner or whatever. Second, inheritances won't come at a time when they're particularly useful. Currently in western society you get an inheritance (if there is one) anywhere from the time when you're getting married to the time when your last children are going to university. The years between these two events are the years where you have some of your biggest capital expenses (wedding, buying a house, cost of having children, sending kids to uni, etc.) and inheritances tend to help with at least one of these things and reduce the financial strain on the family. Now people will get them at the age of 110 instead, which means they're going to buy a boat instead of earlier times when it would reduce financial strain. Third: compound interest. People who make sound investments at the age of 25 will be absolutely loaded by the age of 150. This in turn increases the lobbying power of old people. The AARP is already a huge lobbying force in the United States. What happens when enough old people are gazillionaires that they basically set policy (answer: I doubt it will be to the benefit of the young).
I always find it strange when discussing this and people (like my gf even) don't see why one would want to live a longer, or even unending life. I think you will always find things to do. And of course no one wants to live to 150 with the last 80 years being all dementia - this is only a thing to talk about if the life extension adds "good" or at least "passable" years. I'd take more aches and pains in exchange for an extra 70 years of expected lifespan in a heartbeat.
The thing that will really piss me off is if I get to 80 or so, then they figure out the anti-aging tech, but I'm too old to use it. I want either to benefit from it or for it to still be "in the distant future" when/if I get old and die.
Kim Stanley Robinson deals with a lot of these issues in his sci fi trilogy about the colonization of Mars (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), where the life-extending treatment is invented and provided to the colonists of Mars. It's fascinating and if you ever wondered about this idea, you should get these books and read them, especially the first two. In his portrayal of this process it seems the most prevalent side effect is memory loss, which makes sense. Also this type of thing needs to be paired with strict population control measures, which he also goes into in a very elegant way (every person granted the implicit right to bear 0.75 children, licencing off the other 0.5 or buying it from another couple that does not want it, etc.)
Never-mind the side-effects. It might not even work! This article is awfully one-sided. NPR recently had a much more in-depth overview into the debate about resveratrol and aging. Basically no one has been able to reproduce the original study with the same results, the original authors have even lowered their initial claims, and a few articles published in Nature even dispute that resveratrol activates sirtuins (the claimed mechanism that "prevents aging").
Also, lifespans are actually *falling* in many communities (in the US at least). Contrary to what big pharma wants you to believe, well-being also includes healthy lifestyle and nutrition, not just some expensive pills.
A century of going to meetings, filing TPS reports, drinking Brawndo and snoring through conference calls will kill us deader than time itself can.
Did anyone read TFA? It's all happy Easter Bunny and Santa dropping Christmas presents type stuff. The doc even acknowledged that a lot of the various diseases "still need to be worked on." Maybe they'll find some drugs that can extend lifetimes a bit at first, and then work from there. They're not flipping a switch and suddenly everyone lives to 150.
If this stuff works, if will be gradual and society will have time to adjust. The average lifespan has been increasing slowly for centuries (and yes, I know about the artificial depressing of lifespan due to infant mortality). And you know that these drugs will not be dropped from planes to everyone in the world for free. So take a deep breath and relax. Our world is going to continue to be a mess for a long time, so you still have plenty of time to look down and yell at everyone from your high moral standpoint about how the rest of us are clueless and whatnot.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Maybe you should spend it practicing spelling.
Maybe you should spend it realizing that this is a global board. In the UK they spell it with an 's.'
I just don't want to die!
Well, if we (either collectively or as individuals) manage to beat death through medical technology, robotics or the "Singularity" the earth/universe will be a very very different place.
One of the few good post-singularity books I've read is Greg Egan "Incandescence". Not many stories I've come across are such an interesting look at the problems facing immortal omnipotent post-humans.
Well here's hoping!
Maybe you should spend them practising grammar.
And by 5-10 years away they mean 25-50 years. They've been working on male birth control for 20 years and it's been stuck in the "5-10 years away" the entire time. I see no reason to believe this doesn't fall under the same kind of fantasy science that one day will certainly happen, but probably not nearly as soon as they hope for.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
What do you see as being the most likely issues and what do you think you would do with all the extra years?"
Unbelievable condescension from Slashdot users with sub-billion ID's and flying chair jokes still getting modded up.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
^^ A hundred and fifty years of this. *Sigh*
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't rtfm but there was a whole 1 hour show on this on the discovery channel which describes new medicines to reduce choromosome damage so that cells keep on dividing, but our nerve cells don't divide, would they be able to withstand the huge lifespan or will we turn into zombies?
It might surprise you to know that Dick Clark was actually the test subject for this drug.
No, no it wouldn't. (:-)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The resveratrol story is an enticing one but independent researchers following up on this have found the life extension results to be dubious at best. GlaxoSmithKline really made a bad investment in this stuff and eventually the premise is going to fall down like a house of cards. You're not living past a hundred.
Assuming you could enforce such a law, the drug works and the non-rich could afford it simply deny the drug to anyone who has had children in their lives.
The population of the world will be 7 billion by the end of the year.
Thing is, if you extend the average work life to 100 or more, that will also be destabilizing -- either that will make it that much harder for younger workers to get jobs, or older workers will hit the age ceiling, get laid off, and spend 50 years looking for a job until Social Security kicks in (if it hasn't gone bust).
http://www.stealthbelt.com/
I just KNOW I'm going to regret having Googled this topic...
They say 40 is the new 30 and 30 is the new 20....so keeping that in mind, I guess that it all depends on how much growing up you do....oxidation is a problem leading to old age, the less you have the longer you live....as well as many other factors...but that is the pure basics of it. If you let people get stronger over generations, they will live longer, and therefor you need to adjust society accordingly, you can not still live in a world where people expect to retire on pensions by 65, if they can live till 150,....I would only retire if i felt i was draining the economy, stay out of the way, but at 65, you can still work as a cashier in a store, or push a broom, why not work till your 85 if you are physically able to? That is an old world mentality....not a current one.
Life expectancy can be calculated retrospectively for those who were born about 120 years ago, if there are reliable data on childbirth and mortality (it's already a big if, but the answer can be given in developed countries with some statistical accuracy).
But how could life expectancy be calculated for those born recently? It's possible to make lots and lots of assumptions about mortality factors, hidden variables etc., but it is not fundamentally different from predicting the level of the S&P index 100 years from now. A lot of medical advancements may take place over the next decades, and there is the threat of designer viri (as a tool of bioligical warfare or a sloppy experiment). Who is to say that these effects cancel one another out?
What's the methodology behind life expectancy calculations for anyone who is not already in a terminal condition?
In 5 to 10 years everything will be possible.
... aaaagine!
/sad
What happens when the average lifespan is 300 years? What if we don't die? Im
This would be ridiculous even for a idle article. But science? How low can Slashdot go?
The above lead says the new drug "will extend the average human life span to 150," the article says it "can slow the aging process...raising the prospect of people eventually living to 150 or more." Big difference. We can't cure common diseases yet we expect the average person to gracefully live another 70 years? Good luck with that.
You are allowed to live forever, but no kids. It's an elf thing.
I'd do it, but I won't be having kids anyway.
At some point we automate enough that even with our current lifespans most human beings become redundant.
We have to deal with this problem regardless of lifespan and I would suggest that a new economic/social model is going to be needed.
We can make enough food and shelter for an entire nation by employing a fraction of its people. Much of the rest of the economy is busy-work already in the west.
You'll have a lot of people wearing adult diapers. I for one look forward to that day when I can finally become the ultimate couch potato.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
It used to be 20 years during the Roman empire. You had to serve the army 20 years before being recognized as a full citizen. Today several nations make it optional and voluntary despite having far more powerful armies and longer life expectancy. This was made possible through the mechanization of warfare.
Nowadays, in most countries, you have to work 40-50 years to enjoy retirement. And workers tend to actively oppose mechanization.
What are the reason of the "jobless recovery" ? Simple maths prove that outsourcing is not the sole cause, far from it. Most jobs are simply not necessary anymore for the good functioning of society. Extending the working time would just amplify this problem. There is a need for a new societal model right now.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
If you bump the average lifespan to 150 you've almost doubled it (currently at about 80 for women).
From the moment the drug is first in use world population starts to increase because folks are liing longer than normal. After 75 years, you've got double the people.
If you've got more people alive, then you need more housing, more food and more water. And of course we're going to need more jobs for these folks, or we're going to have a lot of very poor people living a long time.
There are already too many people on this planet. This is just going to make things worse.
And people read Aubrey de Grey and think he is a genius. Jeez.
The Morlock and the Eloi. The first will be the ones who produce the drug to control the second...
How about extending human life via cleaner air and healthier food instead? Sort of like these people, but less frugal
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601302/n/Never-Say-Die
There is a reason why we age they way we do. Don't ask me what that reason is because I'm just a computer geek, but I do know that all of our other genes developed via evolution to suit specific purposes. Perhaps we should figure out exactly the mechanisms we plan to tamper with, and their side-effects, before actually tampering?
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
If you think pension plans are fully funded now with today's expected life spans, you are sadly mistaken.
If you have £100,000.. and keep it in a bank for 50 years.. with 3% interest you'd have £657,585.90. Which is enough for a monthly allowance of £1000 per month.
Does this not show that people will start betting against their demise? Give a company all their money in return for a monthly salary till the day they die.
Did everyone forget that the world is going to end in 2012?
...unless other things change. Having had to reinvent myself at the tender age of 55, if we don't change our combined societal values that unless you are under the age of 35 your worthless it will be difficult. On one hand, I'd love to think I had another 15-20 years to work in a new career, then perhaps change again to something and keep doing that. I love to work as long as I enjoy what I'm doing. I see daily, first hand, however, that there is a significant bias towards hiring the young. And.... not without good reason I might add. Old farts like me, don't see the world in the same way the younger generation sees things and I truly get that. But... old farts like me do have value in experience and maturity that the younger crowd lacks. It takes a combined willingness to want to learn on both sides of the fence. I see too many of my generation too stuck on themselves and not willing to admit that they might actually learn something from someone younger than themselves. I see too a bias when I work with a new prospective client that they take one look at me and figure I can't possibly have any new ideas that could help them. I don't know. Like so many things it's not a simple answer.
The job market for the young is horrible right now as it is. My daughter is having an awful time trying to get a job as a nurse as no one wants to hire someone without experience. So if you don't work, how can you get experience to get hired? If my generation continues to work they in effect, prevent a new generation from having opportunities to get hired.
There is an excellent book by Cory Doctorow, of course a scientific fiction book, about a society where people simply doesn't die out.
Two small quotes from it:
"I lived enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages [...] to see the death of the workplace and of work"
and
"... the death of scarcity, the death of death, the struggle to rejug an economy thad had grown up focused on nothing but scarcity and death ..."
In the end, if people get living more and more, we'll have sometime to abandon most concepts that are tied to a (finite, short) lifespan. How it'll be done, for now, is the work of fiction. I recommend this book to anyone that could be interested in a radically different view on the society where no people die unless they choose to.
Even when it's a big research degree and the gap from it and on the job skills is so big that you may need 2+ years more just to get up to speed on doing a real job.
150 years is daunting. And if you toss in no cure to Alzheimer's or the same relative physical decline around 40-80 years old, then the most likely single outcome will be an increase in suicides.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Is that sure, maybe they could put off natural death for everyone until around 150 but that does not mean that 99.9% of people will still die around 60-80 of cancer or be near vegetables way before then because of being attacked by multiple brain issues.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
[The following comment was posted on following the article at TheAge.com.au. I think it gets it exactly right.]
Wow - they've managed to increase the maximum human lifespan (currently 120)? And they've inferred this from studies on 'yeast, worms, fruit flies and fat mice'?
Unbeliveable!
Yes, unbelievable... Journalists should do proper research when regurgitating the press releases of pharmaceutical companies.
Luke | Melbourne - October 17, 2011, 7:57AM
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/drugs-may-let-us-live-to-150-20111016-1lrm5.html#ixzz1b31Pshgm
It doesn't matter how long you live, but how long you are healthy.
I want to retire at 65 and keep on living off my pension for 85 years more, while me, my generation mates and all our sons and grandsons fight one another for this world's scarce resources and the few remaining uncontaminated spots... That sounds a terrific idea.
Guess you watched Adam's Curiosity special on Discovery last night. I enjoyed it as well.
I don't think this miracle drug would change the world all that much. If you think of "death by old age" as the finishing line in the game of life, few people actually reach it. Most seem to die of causes that will probably not be affected by this drug, i. e. cancer, heart diseases, accidents, suicides...
Especially the later could seem rather attractive once you had to bury your spouse and your children.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Will the whole 'Mature' category be up-ended?
150 years is only daunting if you do not have adventure in your spirit. I could easily spend 20 years now working as a volunteer consultant to poorer areas of the world in a variety of interests. Let's say the mission to colonize Titan is in progress and they cannot find a ship full of 32-year old doctorates to fill the ship. I'm fairly positive my generation still has plenty of people that would go in an instant no matter what the time involved. Obviously, you would want those people to live as long as possible for the work involved.
If this was just another 50 years of being like you're 80. Or 100. Functionally useless except for the rare exception.
"I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice."
"The Longevity Vaccine" kind of sounds like they're developing a cure for longevity, though...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
There is NO way we could extend the useful part of an adults life by 70 years and not have to deal with SERIOUS overpopulation. No one will even notice anything the first 20 or so years after the drug comes out. If I start taking the drug when I'm 30 and by the time I'm 70 and my body is only 35 you will see some serious food shortages. The extreme elderly dont need to eat 2000 calories a day to maintain a mostly sedentary lifestyle brought on by time and deteriorating systems inside their own body. If you need to continue just a 20% higher caloric intake vs the standard of what your body would use for let's just say the last 10 years of your life you're looking at a more massive food need. Then let's take into account the extra 80 years you're now going to live.
This is going to severely change the entire way we live. Your children (if we'll still be allowed to have more than 1) will have to age normally until their bodies finish developing. Then they can start taking the drug. Do we allow prisoners to take the drug? What about the extreme mentally handicapped? Or the french?
Personally, I'd like to live to 150. You know by then that medicine will go past this and into the, 'here... let's put your consciousness into a cloned 18 year old version of your body from a lab' phase.
15 years are legal in most countries
The line above seems to be funny, but it's not.
Elves in fantasy literature and fiction live hundreds or even thousands of years. But what do they accomplish? Not much, given how long they life.
They create awesome cities, awesome poetry, manage to make very cool magic weapons or get tricked by Sauron into making those awesome rings (which he then controls with the master-ring, but that is a different story) but compared to how long the individual lives, sitting in your city for centuries, driver "your personal thing" to perfection but do nothing else is actually a pretty slim accomplishment.
On the other hand, the short-lived race rips down and creates entire empires in the time an elf writes two new poems. They invent, do things, create something, and die. That race are usually men (or humans).
While this is purely based on fiction this very basic tolkienish view on elves actually carries a very interesting observation. Having more time does not make you do more, it just makes you taking longer. How many old people really do "move" things? Is it because they are old and weak or because they have "found their way" and "accepted what is" already instead of a youngster who still looks for his place, fights for a change?
Yes, there are some individuals who would power-create over 90 or 120 years, just like there are 70 years old people today who are still active (I just read about a 100 year old finishing a marathon) but I think that most people would just start to "fade away" from the age of 30 (as they do today).
Even if someone would stay active during his years 80 to 130, he'd probably just stay in the niche he has been in for the last 50 years. Some old CEO-fart would just go on and on and on for 80 instead of the 20 years of today or some guy who's still doing burgers at 40 at Mc Donalds would still do with 80. Some people would benefit, but most would probably stagnate.
Mankind would mostly become the like the elves in the Third Age of Middle Earth. And Tolkiens solution was they have to leave. There was no place, but furthermore, no use anymore for a race of immortals.
Now, you can raise the question: Would not make the "good" individuals, the good leaders, the inventors, the creators, the artist a difference? Yes, 95% of mankind would just sit around and it matters not much on the global scale if they do that for 10 or 100 years, but would not make it a difference of the good people lived on and did good?
Well, to that I reply two things: First, many people, artists, burn out. How many awesome bands had their Big Creative Time in their 20s and 30s... and then just dissolved the band, got wife and house, and simply... finished living? That someone can be a "powerful creator" for 20 or 40 years does not mean he has to be that for 80 as well.
The second thing is: While it is bad that the good people do die too early, it is also very good that the very bad people also die early (actually too late). Imagine some Mafia Don or asshole-CEO or "ass-dad who hits his children" or, worst case, Hitler (godwinned!), who does damage over decades and decades and decades and simply does not die on natural causes?
Also, I once read somewhere "Progress in regard to scientific theories is not made due to insight but by the purveyors of them dieing" and while this is surely not entirely correct, it clearly holds some truth.
Everyone who was at university: Imagine the most narrow minded professor you have met - and now imagine he sits for another 100 years on his chair and does what he does.
Frankly speaking, I believe we should all be sent to the carousel at the age of 30...
I recently ran across one of those "Way Back When" articles talking about 1911.
The average life span at the time was 35 years.
It hadn't really changed significantly throughout recorded history.
I imagine they'd have the same sort of discussion about miracle drugs that would extend that to 80.
150 / 2 + 7 = 82
*golf clap*
I drank what? -- Socrates
The wear and tear on the body is such that even if you can increase the lifespan to a theoretical 150 years you wouldnt be very healthy for the last 90 or so years. You also need something that adresses the wear on the body.
All my life the public assumption is the only way life can be extended is to add "bad years". All my life the only way I've seen to extend life in current practice is to add "good years". It seems self evident that if "everybody" dies at the physical equivalent of 80, the only way to make it to 90 is to live 80 chronological years while only causing 70 years of wear and tear. Don't sun tan, don't smoke, don't drink much alcohol, don't eat grains and sugars, eat lots of paleo/natural/organic foods...
Please, my grandfather is 87 years old and he worked on a farm for his entire life, ate greasy food every day, tanned working in the sun, and smoked for 35 years.
The quality of life is poor for many if not most of the elderly.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
All the extra years are added on the end...
If one can age without requiring getting "old," i.e., I can still drive, fly a plane, run and hike and swim (and of course have sex) and enjoy an active lifestyle, then absolutely I want to live to 150 (even if I'd have to give that all up around 130 yrs), which will be well into the next century. If it means requiring assisted living, not being able to hike, run, swim, drive, etc. and basically having no freedom and be condemned to 70 years of playing bingo and listening to people around me moan about aches and pains for 70 years, then no thanks.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
"I of course, intend to live forever. Baring that, I'll settle for a couple thosand years, even five hundred would be nice!"
- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Morgan 3D Link interview.
If you gave me a pill that placed my life expectancy at 150, then the golden handcuffs are OFF.
Here I am today, a few years from retirement, madly saving acorns for my approaching decrepitude. Making good money in my established career... but it's boring as hell. I learned all the interesting stuff in my business years ago.
I follow the kids over at HN doing their entrepreneurial thing, some of them failing, some of them succeeding, most of them subsisting on ramen and hackerspace futons, and I think: how grand it must be to have that kind of flexibility to just chuck it all for the dream.
Well give me another 75 years and the whole picture changes. I could go do something else, something completely different. My kids are old enough to take care of themselves, so I could go join that latter-day-hippie commune. Or move to Novosibirsk and learn the language. Or learn a new trade. Write that novel. Develop some of those ideas I've gotten in the shower.
There are a million things I dare not do at this stage of my life. But give me my life back and there's nothing I can't try.
What's wrong with the idea of cloning your stem cells and introducing them into the body continuously?
Where are we all gonna park ?
What will happen to population? Greed to save for future will make the society even bad. I suggest we find a drug to reduce the average lifespan, so we die straight out of college, with no need to go to work at all ;-)
the earth along with present technology could not sustain the human population as it is already reaching 7Bil In attaining this age, transitioning up to the 150 year mark would deplete all earth's natural resources adding to the certainty that doubt would creep into the equation as for the need to sustain an elderly population to these limits. Armed forces would need more than half of the world resources and no doubt would hoard much more than that. Youth would need at least two thirds of the rest, leaving the elderly above 100 years old fighting each other to survive..in this best case scenario there would be vast, mass graves, the likes unseen thus far on this planet..
However, in a more realistic estimation, this drug's use would be strictly limited and available only to politicrones, scientist community, elite's most wealthy, and their security forces policing a vast mechanized manufacturing and farming population to be sure.
On the bright side, if artists are living 150 years and producing for most of them, the copyright laws will finally seem sane again.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
See, this whole premise from the summary "What about retirement"? And wondering how long a "working life" you have to put in before retirement, well, it's all wrong-headed thinking in the first place. It's the attitude of an indentured servant. You're practically sitting there acting like you're not free until you end your commitment to your master. Indentured servitude is a thousands-year-old system, that eventually became slavery in early colonial America. And here people are accepting some modern version of it where they are now indentured to government instead of some single landowner. Why is indentured servitude now an acceptable system, just because the "master" is a big oligarchy instead of a single employer or company?
People need to stop being so dependent, and learn to seek their own potential - figure out what their talents are, what they really enjoy, then retirement is no longer something to look forward to, it's something to avoid as long as possible. If you're working for someone else, maybe you should be saving for your next career, one that you'll enjoy but may not pay as well, or may take a few years before you're earning a living at it, whatever. Don't go looking for something that's going to take care of you in old age where all your time is leisure. A life of leisure does not bring happiness, believe me. Besides, you've wasted all the best years of your life for someone else's benefit, and that's wrong.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Anyone else read this and immediately think of Futurama? This is basically what happened in their story.
I read this and chuckled to myself because I instantly envisioned a society full of active doddering old fools, running their own small time going-nowhere businesses, with hidden closets full of doomsday devices.
I'm cool with it, I'm just curious which company will end up as Momcorp...
My blood hurts...
Whole life insurance policies are usually designed to pay out the death benefit if the person in question reaches age 100, since there is no mortality tables calculated beyond that point. I imagine that would change significantly if longer life spans became commonplace.
Patience is a virtue, but haste is my life.
If I could live that long, I'd hop on that ship in a heartbeat. You're right though, many of the folks who are against this probably can't even fathom what to do with all the extra free time they would have.
My blood hurts...
Mmmmmmmm, soylent green! I wonder if there will be a sushi version...
Maybe we'll finally have to recognize that leaving retirement age at 62 and guaranteeing government support for people in their increasingly-long elder years, regardless of what they paid in to the system, is unsustainable?
Nah, because if we live to 150, all the damn congressmen are going to be 135 anyway.
-Styopa
Please consider reading the book "2030" by Albert Brooks.
It's one view of it all.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Once the basics of modern life are supplied (housing/food/energy/transportation/communication), do we become an economy of play and entertainment?
I drank what? -- Socrates
If you have a severe mental illness, like bipolar disorder, you should not be eligible. Seriously, four or five decades of a relation's mental illness is plenty. /Cruel? //Either that or we make a B Ark.
CEO Morgan doesn't have this problem. He can afford the Longevity Vaccine. I don't mean afford it just in terms of building the secret project, but afford it in terms of addressing the consequences. If you do things right, you can grow your bases to great sizes while also keeping them in perpetual Golden Ages, and this can be done by diverting a mere 10% of your incoming energy to psych! 10%, that's all you need. And I promise you: you will not get there unless you research lots of Build techs.
He lived for a 1000 years, and he said it best "Well...Time makes fools of us all"
Metamucil. Pallets of it.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/article/1070868--centenarian-marathoner-singh-sets-world-record-by-completing-toronto-event?bn=1
Right now, if I want to buy a house I have to compete with thousands of other ridiculously overpaid tech employees, most of whom seem perfectly willing to spend every penny they'll come across for the next 30 years on any house that hits the market
Just imagine what it'll be like when those same guys decide that every penny they come across for 80+ years is acceptable
Who needs this drug to live longer? With the amount of preservatives we put in our bodies eating junk food, we should live for ever!
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39656461/ns/today-food/t/oh--day-old-happy-meal-why-wont-you-rot/#.TpxW-t5T-rs
I'd move to mars and spend all the extra time exploring and developing it in to a great place to live
Maybe you all should practice playing the "who can go longer without posting inane comments" game...
150 years- still only a sparrow fart in a windstorm.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself! And Spiders!
only the richest and most powerful will get that privilege.
In general, I'd like to increase the number of good years I have left, where I am healthy, active, physically and mentally fit.
And I'd like to decrease the number of bad years I have left: I don't want to hang around as an Alzheimer's zombie, or permanently bed ridden with a broken hip that cannot be repaired.
So I'd like to see two things. (1) Therapies for repairing and reversing the damage to aging bodies. (2) Legislation that legalizes suicide for people who have suffered irreversable, unrepairable damage, such that their quality of life is such that it is (for them) no longer worth living. And a legal way to include these preferences in a living will, so that a person in a zombie state can arrange to have their life support taken away, in cases where they are unable to give consent (eg because their brain is gone).
It is staggeringly unlikely that we will find a single "fountain of youth" drug that repairs all conceivable forms of damage. We'll have slow, incremental progress. Some damage will be repairable, some will not. Which could lead to problems.
One danger is that the "choose life" crowd will lobby to keep increasingly large numbers of brain dead zombies alive for hundreds of years. And *that* is the real zombie apocalypse that we could face in the future. And PS, if your body is destroyed and your head is preserved in liquid nitrogen, then sorry, but you are legally dead. If I am alive 200 years from now, I don't want the entire economy subverted to the preservation of billions of zombies and frozen heads. Life is for the living.
A second danger is extinction of the human race, which could come about if >99% of the population is infertile because they have lived too long, and because our ability to extend lifespan outpaces our ability to extend the years during which people can bear children.
You know, I recently finally read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki, and it really helped crystallize some things that I've long understood only intuitively. Namely, that spending several decades of my life navigating an increasingly unstable, career-antagonistic world economy while attempting to save up enough on an average salary to buy houses, cars, send kids to college and live on during an all-too-brief retirement period far off in the unknown future... is a really fucked up way to live.
The way most of us live our lives is called the Rat Race for a reason, and it's even more of a dead end proposition today than it was when Kiyosaki first published the book a decade ago. The days of stable life-long careers and pleasant retirement on guaranteed company retirement accounts are long gone (if they ever really existed). Many of the new generation of workers, the so-called Millennials, have already realized that if you can't enjoy life along the way, there isn't much point wasting most of your life helping someone at the top of the pyramid get obscenely rich while you and everyone around you struggle to make ends meet. So companies are already learning to make concessions in terms of flexibility about time off, quality of work facilities and many other things, in order to attract and retain enough employees to stay in business. Sooner or later I think the whole human race will begin to wise up in a similar fashion. Human beings are not just born to be money-making machines.
How does this apply to longer lifespans? Well, right now this situation really only applies to a few areas of business where the main workforce required are young, creative people. But I think the end result of continued worldwide industrial automation, increased Internet access, increased personal health and increased human longevity will mean that eventually, if you want a human being to work for you, then you'll need to do whatever it takes to provide an environment where that human being feels like they aren't wasting their lives by giving you their time. For many people that will mean more vacation time. Eventually, a _lot_ more vacation time. Maybe flexible schedules like two weeks on, two weeks off, or six months on, six months off, instead of today's typical 50 weeks on, 2 weeks off(!). A lot of people already live like this in various ways today. They take temporary or seasonal jobs and then enjoy life for a few months out of each year. For other people it may mean that they will demand to be part-owner of whatever company they work for. Either way the whole landscape of economies and employment will have to change over the next century or two until some kind of equilibrium is reached between the need to produce things and the desire to simply enjoy being alive.
Already there are a great many people in this world who can easily work for a few years, then buy themselves a small boat or an RV or build a small house and then basically live off the land and spend most of the rest of their lives doing nothing that pure capitalistic society would ever consider "productive". Yet, are they a burden on anyone simply by virtue of not having a 9-to-5 job for 50 weeks a year? Not really. This will only become more and more true in the future as the cost of producing things like solar panels and other technology decreases. In the future, either hundreds of millions of people will starve for lack of work as everything becomes automated, or we will have to come up with a new way of living life that doesn't place such a ridiculous emphasis on the necessity of having "gainful employment" during the best part of our lives. The only possible way to continue living our lives as employees the way we are now will require completely outlawing most forms of automation, and I don't see that ever happening.
Surely the key section to this article is the last line which reads: "British scientists last month challenged the link between sirtuins and longevity in worms and fruit flies in the journal Nature, concluding they had ''nothing to do with extending life''.
What most people don't realize is that even in poor health, you can make it to the year 2100+, you have a VERY high chance of living forever (OK nothing is forever but you know what I mean). Technology is 100-150 years right now will be in-freakin-sane. Heck we might even have flying cars!
What will happen is the world will end up very crowded. And hungry. We can barely feed ourselves now. Climate change will make it even dicier in the future. If people stop dying we're in trouble.
Why don't they just speak normal English in the UK?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The worst part about living longer is that there seems to be a a limit on how long one can reproduce. If I only have 2 kids, and I live until150, the chance of both dying increases a lot. I would hate to live until 150 knowing both of my kids died and I can't have any more of my own.
I would assume this would be a transitional thing and hopefully some break-through with reproduction.
Rich people are not Scrooge McDuck, bulldozing their cash in a money bin. Rich people invest their money, and that benefits the "system". Some people, like Larry Ellison, even put large amounts of money into anti-aging research.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
that commented on some issues with immortality. Basically, our brains evolved to handle lifetimes of around 80+ years. Check out numbers 2 and 3. I'm not sure if 150 years is enough to effectively "fill" a brain which would basically eqate to insanity, but at some point the finite capacities of our brains must be addressed to make extremely longer lifespans mentally tolerable. http://www.cracked.com/article_18708_5-reasons-immortality-would-be-worse-than-death.html?wa_user1=2&wa_user2=Weird+World&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=recommended
My biggest concern with longer lifespans would be a slowing--or even stagnation--of social, and to a lesser degree, scientific/technological progress. One of the best things about people dying (I'm sure we could think of several) is that it often takes a fresh (or even naive) perspective to create real breakthroughs and that requires new blood. It's fairly established that creativity peaks when we're younger and if we stop making new models, the tendency to do things the way that's "always worked fine for us before" will only hold humanity back.
Ask me about my sig!
The question is: Do you want to live to be 150? But the OP leaves open the question of whether you have normal function, or whether it is "a prolonged period of dementia and physical decline." So how can you answer? No rational person would want 50 more years of dementia. And most rational people would want 50 more years of normal function.
Also, don't believe any article that says a new drug is 5-10 years away. What this means is that it hasn't started clinical trials yet. So maybe it has been shown to be efficacious in animal models. At this stage it has maybe a 5% chance of ever making it to market.
That being said, I fully expect there will one day be a miracle drug that lets you live for thousands of years--just as soon as I'm dead.
sitting in the basement eating carp guts?
AccountKiller
profits become infinite, that is for sure.
Why wouldn't people want to live 150 years or more? What else have you got going on?
Personally a couple billion would not be too long.
I got things to do.
An recent Nature article shows id doesnt work.
I would probably take the extra time to do exactly the same thing I've been doing regarding my current reincarnation: ask myself why the hell do I keep prolonging my stay here ...
From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
"In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardised. Differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Current British English spellings follow, for the most part, those of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), whereas many American English spellings follow Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).
Webster was a strong proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic. Many spelling changes proposed in the United States by Webster himself, and in the early 20th century by the Simplified Spelling Board, never caught on. Among the advocates of spelling reform in England, the influences of those who preferred the Norman (or Anglo-French) spellings of certain words proved to be decisive. Subsequent spelling adjustments in the United Kingdom had little effect on present-day American spellings and vice-versa. In many cases, American English deviated in the 19th century from mainstream British spelling, but it has also retained some older forms.
The spelling systems of most Commonwealth countries and Ireland, for the most part, closely resemble the British system. In Canada, however, the preferred spellings include some American forms and some British, and Canadians are somewhat more tolerant of foreign forms."
There you have it.
My suggestion is to clearly define which country you hail from, so we can all judge the merits, or lack thereof, of your spelling properly.
I'm from the USA btw.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
AVERAGE is a pretty meaningless statistic; don't take it too seriously. The biggest impacts on averages are the freak numbers that skew the number.
1 person lives to 100 and they bring up the average a huge amount compared to the impact of individuals in the middle.
A HUGE MASSIVE change during childbirth caused the infant mortality rate to go down dramatically in many nations in the last 100 years as well as protecting the lives of the mothers-- both of which were big pulls on the average statistics given how young they are. Plus mothers were younger, had more children, and later life complications largely amplified by child birthing have been largely solved and lowered due to smaller family size. Now don't forget the infants who are not even half a year old-- being averaged in the death rate at an age value approaching zero! A lot more of them than people reaching 100. Then you had tougher living and weaker medicine for children - personally, I probably would have died a couple times given how much I got sick as a kid. All this being said, we should consider sterilization of people who would have naturally died; I probably shouldn't be having children, if nature had its way I'd not have lived long enough. It should be obvious that our adversarial position with nature is going to cause us problems (which we claim we can beat if we just keep fighting and reverse engineer some more... will we win before our tech kills us or makes life hell? or will we lose against nature?)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"The plot concerns a young woman biochemist, who discovers that a chemical extracted from an unusual strain of lichen (hence the title), can be used to retard the ageing process, enabling people to live to around 200–300 years. Wyndham speculates how society would deal with this prospect."
. . .scientists believe they will have a drug within the next 5-10 years that will extend the average human lifespan to 150 years.
This quote from the summary implies that ONLY the people who take that drug will have an extended lifespan, meaning that the average human lifespan will be mostly unchanged from what it is now. Only the subset of humans who use that drug (and, if anything is passed on genetically, their offspring) will be affected.
To
Methusalah lived 900 years,
Methusalah lived 900 years,
If you call that livin'
when no gal is givin'
to no man that's 900 years.
It's not just your heart.
Geriatrician Muriel R. Gillick, in her book "The Denial of Aging, emphasizes the social consequences of faith in an ageless old age: “If we assume that Alzheimer’s disease will be cured and disability abolished in the near term,” she writes, “we will have no incentive to develop long-term-care facilities that focus on enabling residents to lead satisfying lives despite their disabilities.”
Aside from which, currently there is nowhere in the world where society is adequately planning for an economic transition to a generally sustainable model for life that will protect the biosphere, the ecosphere or develop a politisphere capable of allowing 'humanity' to achieve the dubious goal of for average lifespan. The competitive model of economics and politics won't allow for it, and the wealthy who promote the concept that enough gated sanctuaries might survive the turmoil that will occur if mankind continues pushing the envelope to determine the actual carrying capacity of the earth are already delusional or just nihilistic enough to believe that The Tau and the DOW are synonymous.
Whatever New Age drivel was cited in TFA should be ignored because the evidence is clear, a globalized, competitive economically will collapse long before the average lifespan grows by another 10%. And even though your grandparents aren't talking about, assuming they're able, the quality of life beyond 80 exists on a graph defined by a decreasing curvilinear function. If you want to consider your mortality you should really think of it in terms of your legacy, not your longevity.
Of course if you live in a consumer society, that's a bit like encouraging a fish to think about space travel.
This drug is going to cost a *fortune*. Regardless if they're mixing this stuff in their bathtubs.
Why? Because old rich people will pay whatever it takes to get their hands on this, and unless these are the dumbest scientists in history, they will peg the price at the highest the market will bear.
Assisted suicide will still be illegal.
I'm buying stock in http://www.depend.com/
According to this article in NPR, http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=140671135
Reservatrol may not be the wonder drug as advertised in the original post.
(Or, for those you who tend to paranoia and conspiracy theories, the cover-up has begun)
would become a booming business...
Life sucks now. why would I want it to last longer?
The "you'd have to work until 120" is ridiculous. We already have massive automation and it's getting bigger and better. Once we get the energy issue on the ball and ahead of the curve, everything else just falls into place (can go, for example (seawater)---energy--->(purified water)). Heck, we aren't far off from having useful AI for even currently high-cost things like medical and legal advice and care. If we did have a pill that extended life (which I'm a little cynical about actually happening as an easy-peasy one-shot silver bullet thing) it would also take time for the "rolling average" of extra humans as a result to accumulate. Also consider longer life with better health means the people who are experts and hard workers will also just keep being smart and hard working, for some folks that's just how they roll...
Now we TOO can live as long as our great-great-...-forefathers! Our bodies would regulate to where 140 is the new 80 and we'd have one hell of a retirement after we hit 65! I'M IN!!!
Great advice. #7 probably should include vitamin D supplements, too. My health advice, which includes psychological and social aspects (like Blue Zones, because to an extent, health is a product of a healthy community):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478380&cid=37734208
Modern medicine is terrible at handling chronic diseases, often the disease of kings from eating too many rich foods. If you put the excellent trauma medicine and infection control medicine of today together with a good lifestyle with healthy eating, as Dr. Fuhrman suggests in Eat to Live, we may see a big increase in lifespans. It's sad that with all these relatively cheap low hanging fruits and vegetables etc., people are still focusing *first* on proprietary expensive magic bullets.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Right now about 50% of US land goes to produce animal products which are overall killing us with bad fats:
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/
And we can always grow food indoors using cheap energy and rock dust:
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR06.txt
"Why is the Food Outlook Made to Seem Gloomy?"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
In general, people living longer is not going to have as much effect on the population as how many kids people have -- and that amount is falling with industrialization; in Italy, every woman has about 1.2 kids but would need to have 2.1 kids to keep the population from declining. The entire industrialized world has this problem (but not as bad as Italy in most places).
Just think of all the people around to pass on wisdom to the next generation.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Would you want to live to 150?
Of course I would. I mean I have to live to at least 150 to get through my back log of video games and DVDs.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Overpopulation, Poverty, Wars. That is what will happen.
There's some kind of exponential increase buried in here. I mean, let's say you're 50 and your life expectancy is 70. That's enough time for twenty years worth of research, which isn't really all that much. By age 70 your life expectancy may have increased a handful of years over someone who was 70 when you were 50. But if your life expectancy is 150, that's 100 more years of research. We've gotten to the point where we're starting to understand some of the fundamental processes involved in aging - in 100 years aging may be seen as a chronic disease to be treated, and your odds of dying from natural causes may be close to zero..
But even if they could make your body last forever, you still wouldn't actually live forever. A few years back I read a report by an insurance company that said an ageless person living in the US would live into the low 600s on average because of an accident or a murder.
Why solve a problem when you can study it forever?
Research into a disease is directly tied into the pressure to research (breast cancer) and the number of people affected.
Breast cancer is simple: excess estrogen (tells estrogen-sensitive tissues to divide) + underwires (restrict the flow of lymphatic fluid) -> cancer.
There are lots of substances which are "estrogenic", which means they have estrogen-like effects on tissues... BPA (plastic) is estrogenic, as are phyto-estrogen in soybeans (isoflavones) and flaxseeds (lignans).
If teh scientists were to figure out breast cancer, what would the Medical-Industrial Complex do with all their mamogram machinery? Those things don't pay for themselves, you know, and as an added bonus irradiating breasts regularly (annually) makes cancer even more likely.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Hey, I've never been one to jump on the over population band wagon...but if people live to 150, how will the planet handle that much increase in population?
Anyone remember "going home" to become soylent green?
As a 70 year old, I find that aging has an effect on the scratchpad memory. We can still reason as well as when we were scolars, and while we have experience and knowledge, learning is much more difficult.
I am perhaps more fortunate, but I see with my peers that they can't remember a name, or frequently they can't remember a face. And if something is important, they still can't do much about remembering it.
They misplace their things, they go to start one project, get distracted a few times, and never complete their initial objective.
Can you see a 150 year old, or lets say a person at 140, trying to drive home without a GPS?
The scratchpad memory deteriorates at it's own rate. The body may reach 150, but many of us will be zombies.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
My suggestion is to clearly define which country you hail from, so we can all judge the merits, or lack thereof, of your spelling properly.
I see a problem with this. I am Swedish, I learned to speak English from US relatives and US and British television. In school it was British English all the way. For a long time I tried to just use the British way of spelling words (and I still occasionally catch myself doing things like writing "colour" instead of "color") but eventually I just fell into using the americanized way to spell most words.
Now, which way of spelling is "correct" for me, someone who isn't from a commonwealth country or the US?
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Life expectation will actually decline in the next few decades because we reaching peak everything and approaching the earth carrying capacity. So yes, some people may be able to life up to 150 years old, but most will live shorter lives.
> Maybe you should spend it realizing that this is a global board. In the UK they spell it with an 's.'
Maybe you should spend it realising they spell
realising with an "s".
I am already 125, what's another 25 years?
Because finally we'd start thinking long term, really long term. Right now mankind can't see much past the next financial year or two. And it's killing us. What would really happen is incredible things that are not possible due to our still too-short life spans. It would easily be worthwhile to undertake projects that would not pay off for 20, 50 or 100 years. Something which just doesn't happen now. 5-10 years is too longer ROI in the global economy for many. A good fraction of our inability to think long term is our mortality creeping into economic decisions.
I am alone in thinking the social change that would come from this would be something other than the standard line about population boom, food shortages, and the others. Last I checked populations are crashing in western nations due to declining birth rate, we're facing a lack of workforce to care for a booming population of elderly, there is also a lot of inefficiency in the food supply throw in we are eating ourselves obese in the western world. We actually need to combat age related decline and extend life.
But think about this from your own personal perspective what could you do with a lifetimes wisdom, if you could be put back in a 20-something year olds body and mind? It's pretty simple. You'd kick ass.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
For those who don't like the idea of living 150. Just think about how life would be if we went back to a civilization where life expectancy was 50.
I can tell you what will happen.
Everyone with a moderate income will leave the US.
With your over-priced under-socialised healthcare system, you'll end up with the horrendously rich, and poverty, with nothing in between.
Wait... that's going to happen in 5-10 years even without extended life spans.
"We already desperately need to update laws surrounding social security, welfare and incarceration."
Yes, and a basic income would help with that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I wouldn't want that. Sorry.
First of all, if this could happen, it would never be made available for the masses--only the elite of the elite like the Rothchilds, Rockefellers, etc. The rest of us will be made to eat genetically modified or genetically engineered crops meant to sterilize and cause cancer, or given sterilizing or crippling vaccinations, or fluoride meant to cause bone cancer--oh, that's already happening which is why the average age in the US has gone down in the last 20 years rather than gone up. And to top that off they want to raise the age at which you can retire from being a slave to the Federal Reserve Banking (private banking cartels) system because aren't we the assets of the Fed. Reserve since all the money we have to work for free in taxes goes to the federal reserve to pay off fraudulent worthless derivatives? So, quit dreaming and get real!
Imagine today that people had already been living for 150 years. My experience is that people don't change their habits and prejudices after they become adults.
So the majority of the population would still support slavery. They would not be in favor of women suffrage. They would believe in witchcraft and in God's punishment of sinners. They would believe foreigners were heathens.
Events that formed attitudes such as the Depression, Pearl Harbour, would still be influencing these people. They might still refer to "Japs" and "Krauts" and "Fags".
They would have had an 1880's education, would not have had an easy time adapting to all the modern changes in society and culture.
If science discovers a way to allow people to live to 150 years of age, they must also find a way to get people to evolve, adapt, change, and continue to learn and adopt new attitudes. Otherwise society would be a disaster.
I first refrained from this because I didn't want to be overly pedantic, but it gnawed at me, since it's a pet peeve of mine. You mentioned "printing money" in your comment. Clearly, you cannot actually have meant printing money, in the sense of putting ink on carrier substance. So what is it that you really meant?
In the sentence "$X would just devalue the currency", X = "Printing money" does not make sense in the literal meaning. So what should X really be?
This may seem overly pedantic on the one hand - after all, we both know it's a metaphor. But on the other hand: a metaphor for what, exactly? I'm convinced that if you truly, genuinely try to answer this question for yourself, it will help you significantly in understanding the MMT-based analysis of inflation and other macroeconomic phenomena.
Well, since dementia has an increasing probability once you reach 80, that means 50 or more years where you're not really there.
On the other hand, this would do well for a career in politics or hedge fund banking, I suppose.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One thing that would have to be mandated by an already over intrusive government would be that you cannot have any offspring until you reach 75% of your expected life cycle. That way you can have kids and by the time they are properly educated and ready to join the work force, you croak leaving them a position to fill.
All the problems solved.
Next problem please.
I know. Who knows, two years ago I might have reacted in the same way that you do. Telling apart the fringe theories that have merit from those that don't is a difficult problem. I appreciate you checking out the Wikipedia Criticism section. You'll note that the points mentioned there have been addressed by MMT academics. I'm really not trying to sound paternalistic or something, but try putting yourself in my shoes. What if MMT really had some merits? What could possibly convince you?
Posting convincing answers in that section would be one thing; convincing a significant number of the experts in the field would be another.
No, it doesn't, at least not in the way that you think. Here's why: in regular goods markets, both demand and supply are essentially flows. Producers produce a certain amount of goods per time unit, whence the supply. Consumers demand a certain amount of good per time unit, whence the demand - both can be functions of price or whatever, but the point about flows is important. Prices change on the margin.
Of course the price as measured in goods doesn't change because you change the amount of money available: That is why it is inflation rather than an increase in the value of the goods.
The "money supply" is a stock. It is something like the sum of all deposits, depending on the definition. How could that possibly affect inflation directly? Inflation is a measure of average price increases, so e.g. increase of prices set by supermarket bureaucrats.
Ah, argument from personal incredulity.. Anyway, here it is how it works: If the total amount of deposits increase, some people would have more money. Those someone would then use those more money to buy more goods. This will increase demand, thus increasing prices. As those who sell the goods now also have more money, this effect will propagate until we reach a new equilibrium (in theory anyway). At this point, everyone will be paying more for all goods, in effect making the money worth less.
But the people who make decisions about how to set prices in supermarkets only see the flow of customer demand. They do not see the size of the stock of money. So how can their decision possibly depend on the latter?
That is nonsense. They don't really care about demand, at least directly. They want to set the price exactly where they earn the most. And people who have more money (nominally) can pay more, which is the case if the stock increases. So they will increase the price (possibly with some delay due to competition; supermarket price-setters are not exactly first movers in this game).
You could argue that there is some relationship between the stock of money and the flows of money, i.e. that increasing the stock of money will also increase the flow of money. In terms of Quantity Theory of Money, this is the claim that V (the "velocity" of money) is constant.
That is mathematically false. You cannot conclude that V is constant from "there is some relationship between stock and flow". (Trust me on this, I am actually a mathematician). Since the rest of the argument rests on this falsehood, I have deleted it :)
Which interest rate, exactly? And once you tell me this, could you outline why the (market) interest rate would increase?
The interbank interest rate is most directly affected. When the government issues more bonds than it deficit spends, this means that the total amount of reserves held by banks shrinks.
Assuming that (private) buyers can be found. This would require that the effective interest on those bonds are greater than the interest rate that banks can offer, otherwise the private buyers would deposit their money in
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
....um, what do I know now???