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?"

Comments

Not gonna happen.

[oh2]

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.

Re:Not gonna happen.

[vlm]

Unless we find a way to truly slow aging so you're like a 30yo @ 60, 50yo @ 100 and 75yo @ 150, I doubt we'll ever reach 150.

We already have. I'm old enough, and I have a lifetime of experience of looking at women, or at least enough to know:

1) The girls that smoke, drank, suntanned until they looked African despite Swedish ancestry, and eat tons of junk food currently look like AARP poster models. Like 20 years older than chronological. Some of its rather heartbreaking, I remember this one goddess, like Aphrodite walking the earth when she was about 20, who now has wrinkly motorcycle leathers for skin, starter emphysema, some cataract vision problems...

2) The girls that lived a pretty granola lifestyle of non-smoking, not drinking too much, pale untanned skin, lots of organic food / farmers markets / salads, spend time indoors mostly, watch their weight, could almost pass for playboy models despite their age.

When I was young I saw this in my girlfriend's moms. Some were pretty hot and young looking and frankly I'd date them, some looked more like grannies, and it had a lot more to do with lifestyle and diet than chronological age or genetics. My advice to the young men of /. is all chicks look hot when they're 19, so don't pay attention to that when wife shopping; examine how their moms look, because that's what you're gonna be waking up to in 20 years, assuming the marriage lasts, and depending mostly on the lifestyle they were brought up in, some 40ish women still look like goddesses and some like grannies.

Trust me dude, we know how to make women look like they're 20 when they're 40, and how to make them look like 60 when they're 40.

I have one non-smoking non-drinking sorta healthy eating female relative who's more active and "youthful" at 70 than my smoking drinking junk food eating relative at 50.

Why stop at 150 ?

[cobbaut]

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 ?

Re:Big inequalities

[roman_mir]

You are stuck thinking about 150 year average life span in a 75 year average life span society.

If the lifespan increases dramatically, so will the population, and this would mean more economic opportunities, not less.

There will be more demand for food and energy and shelter and entertainment and robots and computers and phones and pills and cars and travel and vacation and prostitutes etc.etc.etc., there will be more demand, not less.

When society increases it creates more opportunity to satisfy all sorts of various demands, and if finally the governments are put into their right place - they should know their place and be hit on the head repeatedly until they occupy their niche, the economy will grow, not shrink.

A longer time to wait for an opening at company? What a slave mentality thinking. Start your own goddamn company catering to all this new demands and come up with your own solutions and sell that into the ever increasing markets.

People don't understand that individuals are not liability, they are assets and resources and markets.