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How Long Do You Want To Live?
Hugh Pickens writes "Since 1900, the life expectancy of Americans, driven by improved hygiene, nutrition, and new medical discoveries and interventions, has jumped from 47 years to almost 80. Now, scientists studying the intricacies of DNA and other molecular bio-dynamics may be poised to offer even more dramatic boosts to longevity. But there is one very basic question that is seldom asked, according to David Ewing Duncan: How long do you want to live? 'Over the past three years I have posed this query to nearly 30,000 people at the start of talks and lectures on future trends in bioscience, taking an informal poll as a show of hands,' writes Duncan. 'To make it easier to tabulate responses I provided four possible answers: 80 years, currently the average life span in the West; 120 years, close to the maximum anyone has lived; 150 years, which would require a biotech breakthrough; and forever, which rejects the idea that life span has to have any limit at all.' The results: some 60 percent opted for a life span of 80 years. Another 30 percent chose 120 years, and almost 10 percent chose 150 years. Less than 1 percent embraced the idea that people might avoid death altogether (PDF). Overwhelmingly, the reason given was that people didn't want to be old and infirm any longer than they had to be, even if a pill allowed them to delay the inevitable. Others were concerned about issues like boredom, the cost of paying for a longer life, and the impact of so many extra people on planetary resources and on the environment. But wouldn't long life allow people like Albert Einstein to accomplish more and try new things? That's assuming that Einstein would want to live that long. As he lay dying of an abdominal aortic aneurysm in 1955, Einstein refused surgery, saying: 'It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.'"
Should be enough for me.
to post first
99% of people are idiots.
Just long enough to lick the tears off of Raymond Kurzweil's widow's face at his funeral.
To see my enemies buried. After that, I don't care.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Overwhelmingly the reason given was that people didn't want to be old and infirm any longer than they had to be, even if a pill allowed them to delay the inevitable.
Well, it's a good thing that that's not what we're talking about, isn't it? The whole idea is to delay--or if possible, prevent entirely--the things that make us "old" and infirm to begin with. Nobody wants to spend eternity in a nursing home, duh. Spending an indefinite amount of time young and healthy, or even middle-aged and mostly healthy? Sign me up.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
She's supposedly pretty sharp, still there in the mind and still happy. The last part is the most important. I'd rather die happy at 85 than live to 120 in misery.
Ought to be enough for anybody.
Barbarian: “How do you want to die?”
Tyrion Lannister: “In bed, when I’m 80, with a belly full of wine and woman’s mouth on my cock.”
...unless continued ratings success insinuate otherwise...
When the Grim Reaper shows I plan to hump his leg.
I would like to achive a higher level of conscious first...
I know Jesus exists. So what if I die, I get to live forever. There's a cool thing that happens when you know this life isn't the end: You suddenly stop caring about yourself and just live your life to help everyone else. This life will be the only life where other people need our help. It only costs 100$/yr to keep children from starving to death. So the obvious idea is to work for enough money to live on frugally, then give excess to the poor. If enough people actually did do self sacrificial giving of their excess funds, there would be no such a thing as World Hunger. But as long as other people need help to survive, we should be helping them.
God spoke to me
If you wish for eternal life then you should wish for eternal youth as well.
Why is he quoted so often? It's like he's some Jesus/Buddha/Mohammed/Hubbard. It's kind of bizarre. He was just a scientist, although a very good one. His accomplishments were in physics, not metaphysics, not morality.
How many of those people believe in an eternal afterlife?
I'm satisfied living forever. And then I get to choose my lifespan.
This is of course under the assumption that you age your body to say a 20-something year old and then *keep it that way forever* by "stopping" the aging process at that age. I'd sign up for it in a jiffy. Bored? I haven't been bored since we had a 3-day power outage.
Ought to be enough for anybody...
If I live to 200, do I spend most of that time with the body of a 30-year-old, or a 90-year-old? If the latter, thanks but no thanks.
This question is meaningless without defining quality of life. If I can reach 6000, and have the same Quality of Life as I have now (age 47) or even the QOL I expect to have at 67, Im all for it. In fact Immortality, yes please!
If I have to wait in bed in pain from 100 until 6000, than, no way.
Today I swam a mile and a half, biked 16 miles and ran three quarters on an elliptical. Hope I'm still doing that in thirty years.
Only 1 % choose not to live forever, until the moment they about to die, then they change their mind.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Invulnerable immortality would be Very Bad Indeed, the sort of thing that mortals who especially piss off the classical Greek pantheon get stuck with.
A freedom from biological aging(ideally with somewhat superior regenerative capabilities than presently available, to cover life' nicks, bumps, and 3rd-degree-burns-covering-94%-of-your-body) though seems like it would be an obvious good. Even if it turns out that ennui makes life untenable at age 150, I don't see any advantages to being a shriveled, arthritic shell, rather than aging to early 20s-ish and just staying there until life grows uninteresting.
There's a cool thing that happens when you know this life isn't the end: You suddenly stop caring about yourself and just live your life to help everyone else.
There was a cool thing that happened to me when I figured out that the Law of Parsimony indicates that life is the end. I realized that all I would leave behind is other people's memories of me and I stopped being a dick and judging everyone else based on my doctrine. How odd that the biggest inhibitor of being like Christ was being a Christian.
I suppose I can understand some arguments for cutting your life short based on overcrowding, etc., but I think we can get over that with science.
But limited lifespan because of boredom? I mean, have you *seen* this world we live in? If you can't come up with enough different things to do, and see, and explore, and discover, and wonder about to last you thousands of years, you are doing it wrong. That's not even thinking about all the incredible people you get to meet.
Asking for a show of hands at the start of a bioscience lecture?
Let's see him ask a bunch of 80 year olds how many of them don't want to live past 80... That would be just as biased but I think the answers would be more interesting.
It's easy for relatively young people to say they won't mind dying sometime in the distant future...
I promote the idea from Futurama. Keep working on improving and lengthing life, but then have a cut-off point. 100 and something birthday where you would then be picked up by the Sunset Squad, never to be seen again. Get rid of all the years where it takes you an hour to get out of bed in the morning (excluding hangover nights)
Current estimates have the global population leveling off at ten billion, with the the Earth able to sustain a maximum of two billion at a consumption level equal to the average American. Those estimates are based on current technology, however. With a dramatic increase in lifespan we would be looking at a very significant population bump, and with us already unable to sustain the existing population... I've often wondered if the ability to extend people's lives already exists and the people who came up with it, independently perhaps, have just kept it to themselves. They are, presumably, smart people after all.
While life expectancy has increased over time due to improved diet, health care, lower infant mortality etc the max age has held steady.
Even 200 years ago you could live into your 80's or 90's as long as you survived past around 10.
Others were concerned about issues like boredom
I've heard this before and hav trouble comprehending it. Does anyone really find that as they get older they get more and more bored? This is completely contrary to my experience. If anything I'd say boredom is more of a young person's thing.
I think almost nobody really wants to live more time, if such life is plagued with senility, disease and extreme dependence on others.
And almost everyone would like to live a bit more, if they actually could continue feeling and acting youthful, with full autonomy and capabilities.
It seems obvious, but we do appreciate our life in function of the enjoyment we get out of it.
The amount of time you would like to live is a matter of preference, but I'm certain that people that now say they would like to bite it at 120 for nature's and world's sake, would think otherwise if we really had a way to stay youthful and healthy at such advanced age.
Besides it's not like we could avoid universe's randomness forever. Sooner or later an accident or any other fortuitous reason will get you, no matter how good SENS technology gets.
Seriously. I am in the 30% that is considerate of the consequences of people living a long time.
For a poignant example, look at the current USA. We have an aging "boomer" generation. If you aren't familiar with the problems an aging boomer generation is causing, google is your friend. Now, imagine them living another 60 years. 100 years... FOREVER.
In addition to the problems with resource allocations, the political and ideological bottlenecks immortality, or even jut artificialy ling lives would introduce would be catastrophic. Instead of a progressive civilization, which becomes more tolerant and technologically advanced, we would have an ideologically stilted, recalcitrant population of aged and possibly immortal persons halting all forms of social progress.
I would actually campaign for a shorter, but less labor intensive life than a longer one.
but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.
-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan,
MorganLink 3DVision Interview
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
I will end it all when my brain strarts turning to mush and dripping out my nose.
The biggest misconception I've found personally in hypothetical questions about immortality is that of aging. By its natural implication the coming promises of immortality also solve aging. Which will be an interesting marketing challenge to the upcoming anti-aging drugs.
Sounds like too many people saw Death Becomes Her.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Einstein isn't such a good example - his scientific output dropped essentially to zero after the late 30's because he refused to accept quantum mechanics. He spent the last decades of his life trying to find an alternate explanation, despite mounting experimental evidence that he was wrong.
This kind of thinking is basically Stockholm Syndrome writ very large.
Let's say you asked people a thousand years ago, "Would you want to live with a king?". I'm sure the vast majority would have said "no", and come up with a bunch of reasons why that would be personally undesirable and socially perilous. The reasoning is so transparently irrational it's ludicrous.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
the life expectancy of Americans, driven by improved hygiene, nutrition, and new medical discoveries and interventions, has jumped from 47 years to almost 80
Talk to a genealogist, its a bogus number. Life expectancy at birth, given that at least half used to die as babies or little kids.
Most birth-death years in my family tree are like 1854-1855 (whoops) or 1853-1930 (a good long while). Not much in between, other than maybe 5% of the women died around childbirth age around a year or so after the last baby. Stereotypical electronics "bathtub curve" plus the danger of giving birth. The main change in the last 200 years or so is if you are born, you'll probably live to age 10, whereas in the olden days if you were born you'd probably die before age 10, but some made it till 80s, just like now.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I wonder how religion changes the answer rates. I'm an atheist and I want to live forever. The end of consciousness seems really shitty to me and people who say they want to die are crazy to me. As far as resources go, I'd settle for never having children if I got to live forever. That would stop a whole ton of my descendants from being around to use up resources.
When I was 25, I was in the best shape of my life. I had a decent job and more than enough money coming in so that I didn't stress between pay cheques. I was good looking and getting laid easily. In short, I was happy, healthy and ignorant in the greater workings of the World around me. Had you asked me this question then, I'd have immediately answered, "Give me Immortality". Now, well, things have changed. I am older. My health isn't as vibrant as it was then. I have a better understanding of the cost of living each day/month/year. I know what it takes to maintain my QoL. Ask me today and I'm sure I'd answer more cautiously, asking for some much needed details before I gave my final answer.
What about you?
(As a U.S. American...) If there was a realistic choice when spending money on health care and insurance - or rather the extent to which we spend money there - we could start having a more sincere discussion. I would be of the opinion to save money and have a better nest egg to give to my family and die at a normal 50 to 75 years old. My view (pun intended) on these issues is jaded though since I have retinal pigmentosa degeneration and will be going blind eventually (unless something is found to cure or artificially supplement vision.) The best thing _I_ can do is take vitamin A supplements. Though I would prefer that I had more of a choice - spend nest egg on fix or just go blind and give that money to the family. What we have now is an abomination where we realistically have no choice, we give massive portions of income to health insurance companies who skim from that "investment", and then we get old and expect to have something in return. All the while expecting this infusion of funds while at the end of life and not enjoying it.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
I was out marshalling a local fell race in the wind and rain earlier today with my 80 year old friend. Read his blog and be inspired.
Until the death panel tells me it is my time to die of course! :)
As a person who lost both of my parents at a relatively young age... both due to brain cancer... I already know that there's an extraordinarily large chance that I'll be walking down that same road.
So if there's something I can sign up for for infinite life, just show me where to sign. Before it's too late.
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.
-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, MorganLink 3DVision Interview
(from one of the best games ever made)
So Einstein had already benefited from an artificially extended lifespan, but no no no, let's not look for more, and let's condemn future generations to our pathetic lifespan while trees and lobsters dance on our graves.
This recent news story in the UK Makes me sad. It doesn't matter how long you want to live if you have no legal choices when you want to stop living.
It seems like we give our pets more compassion at the end of their lives than we do our fellow humans.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
If I had my 20 y/o body, I'd have no objection to living hundreds of years (or more). Hell, even with my current 50 y/o body, I could deal with that. But I sure wouldn't want to be like my mom's bedridden, aching & paining, half-senile, 93 y/o neighbor. Or even some of her children, who are falling apart at MY age, or earlier.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
And, of course, if they ALSO have access to life extending tech, then you're essentially saying "forever".
I would say 120 years, actually.
Look, you can extend your functional life by periodic fasting (reduced caloric intake with water, minerals, and vitamins) for 10-14 days every 10 years or so, you can stop smoking (+10 years), you can get mild to moderate exercise 2-4 times a week for 15-60 minutes (+10 years), you can drink (males only) red wine with meals (2-4 glasses avg), and you can eat a varied diet low in red meat and low in processed foods. And you can reduce stress and get enough sleep.
This will keep you functional.
But after a certain age, your risk factor for Alzheimers and Cardiovascular disease starts going up quite a bit.
We're working on growing organs - literally - and it's coming along, so maybe we can replace part of your liver or other organs, but my current educated guess is maybe 120 years fully functional.
More than that ... would require better understanding of not just the primary biochemical pathways regulated by mRNA, miRNA, siRNA, etc but also literal DNA/RNA repair with targeted strands. And a deeper understanding of not just the secondary biochemical pathways, but also the evolutionarily conserved tertiary pathways you inherited from when we were fish or rats.
(my humble opinion, maybe something will happen to change the current science)
Do you want to live in a society of really old people enslaving the youth in Hunger Games?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
eternal youth!
It would also mean that geniuses like Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein might still be alive.
I cannot believe Jobs is even mentioned in the same sentence as Einstein! Outrageous!
150 years would be fine. It would mean I'm only 1/3 through my lifespan right now. And honestly if you could go to 200 or 300 years I'd go for that too.
Sure, there'd be a LOT of boredom in that span but I know how to deal with boredom.
I am somewhat comforted knowing that one day everything will fade into the abyss of nothingness, including my self. However I don't have a timeframe in mind for this to happen. So I would answer the titular question, "Until I'm done". Even if medicine/tech allows me to last to the cold death of the universe itself, I might want to depart sooner than that.
Also, I find it interesting that, should "immortality" become feasible, we will seriously have to rethink our cultural views on suicide.
I'd like to hang around to see if humans, or any descendent species, ever achieves species-wide intelligence. Homo sapiens sapiens certainly hasn't.
I'm closing rapidly on turning 40 now. I'm a smart guy and always a bit mentally old for my age. I've been working (in the internet / software engineering / whatever industry) since I was 18. Life's already getting old for me. Mostly, it's about the job thing. If I could *retire* today and never worry about things like money or healthcare again, I think I could enjoy hundreds of years, perhaps even eternity. You know, just me and my hobbies, dinners and drinks with friends from time to time, traveling, exploring, absorbing wisdom, etc.
But on the other hand, assuming my health continues to deterioriate at the human average rate (like it has so far), and that I keep having to work for someone day in and day out until "retirement", which might be... when? age 60, 65, 70? Who knows how "retirement" age will continue to push out as a I age.... Well honestly if that's the situation (and it seems to be) I'm kinda done with life already. Not worth the additional pain and annoyance. It's really only an unrealistic hope of unexpected happy surprises that keeps me going now, and that hope will continue to fade over time.
Even if we assume that fixing the human age limit includes as part of the package fixing most healthcare issues in general, and we can have, say, 25-45-year-old-ish bodies for very long periods of time, it's the work / economy / retirement / inflation issue that's gonna drag me down. Fix that Star Trek style: give us cheap nearly-infinite energy from solar/fusion, and the ability to insta-manufacture just about anything, which then obviates the whole economy system and lets everyone just enjoy life as they will (with some choosing to be scientists and producers of the rare things that need humans, and the rest just enjoying life). THEN maybe long life will be appealing to me.
And yet, when those pills hit the market, they will all line up to buy it. This poll reveals how people think in "far mode". People enter "far mode" when contemplating events they assume are unlikely or distant in the future... far more is selfless, idealistic. Put the pill under their nose and you'll get a very different reaction.
How do I know? Old people don't massively take their own life, people overwhemingly chose treatment when facing cancer, etc.
It's soothing to imagine one's to be comfortable with death, it makes the whole prospect less absurd and cruel. This is just a protective form of denial, unfortunately, death-ism seriously hampers anti-aging research.
\u262D = \u5350
Right now men, almost across the board in every country live 5 years less than women do. I'd like to see some work into determining why, and doing something about it.
By almost every measure, men have higher incidents of disease, including cancer. Men represent 93% of workplace deaths in the US. Men represent 3/4 of suicides in the US. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the suicide rate seems to follow economic indicators - and suicide rates skyrocket after typical retirement ages (they don't for women.)
It's one of the reasons I found all the hooplah about free benefits for women in Obama's healthcare overhaul to be very puzzling...until I realized it was a vote-buying gesture to kiss and make up with women voters in an election year, after he pissed them off with his abortion stance.
Please help metamoderate.
If all I'm going to be doing at 120 is sitting in a wheel chair, unable to remember what I had for breakfast with a catheter and colostomy bag attached to me, you can keep your attempts at immortality. While we've increased the average lifespan of people, I do not see a decrease in the symptoms which make us feel old -- arthritis, osteoporosis, etc... My grandmother died at 77 years old and she was very frail and unable to get around easily. My father died at 83, and spent the last five years of his life with a horrible back and having undergone multiple operations and treatments for various cancers. The very fact that these scientists are asking the question, "How old do you want to be" is very telling because it says, the older you live, the longer you'll have to deal with the ailments of old age.
Should be about 67 years, at current rate.
First off, there was a very high infant/toddler mortality rate. Eliminate the fact that people might have 6 babies, but only have 3-4 survive. Also factor in that we abort most babies that show signs of defects.
And a much better statistic would be "what is avg lifespan" of those who live to see their 20th birthday. And I'd wager that graph would show a downturn from yesteryear.
***
ANSWER: 600-900 sounds good to me.
I'd be happy to live 10 100 or 120 and have had worked to 70 or 80. But the quality of life is real deal here. I want to be able to do the things I do now (50) at 100 or 120. I dont want to be like my bed ridden mother who cant remeber who I am. Let me be productive till 100 and then pull the plug. I'll sign up for that deal!!
If I could choose I would choose "pick savings" moment of my life (analogous to pick oil) moment, so I can pass to my sons a maximum amount of inheritance.
It's sad, but that is all that I can give them.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
... is: they don't even honour their own sciense.
So what is the theoretical upper limit of life span? And how did you come to it?
Considering that most microbes are immortal and live forever unless they die of starvation or get eaten?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hopefully I can afford to join the new 1%. I'm planning to live long enough to live forever.
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
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"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking â" it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
â" Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
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"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." â" Mel Gibson (from an interview)
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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." â" William Casey, CIA Director
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucki
...I know I certainly would. Do I get to live a long lifespan AND be healthy and relatively active? Or do I live a long and ultimately sad and sickly life? I don't want to become a burden on my family. But if I could be reasonably self sufficient then yes I'd sign up for a longer life.
As a geek I would love to see the future just because I think for all of our human failings we will eventually make great strides as a society. I'd love to see the cityscapes and the exciting possibilities the world of tomorrow holds. Most of all I'd like to see us live in mutual respect and not manipulated by political and religious interests. If I could live 200 years perhaps I would see some pretty amazing changes.
If I had a guarantee of 80 or 90 years I know I'd live long enough to see my children become parents. I'd get to see them as adults and see them grow into the confidence of middle age. I might even see my great-grandchildren, which would probably make me wish for more years.
Most of all I want to be a support to my family, which means I at least need to be around until 65 or 70. To see my young children past the mistakes we all make as late teens and young adults, to be a safety net and a caring dad.
Ultimately I'd be happiest if I could just do this job as well as my dad.
I don't think I want to be in this world longer than necessary. Too much B.S.
And of course, I don't want doctors to get rich on my penny or right wingers to tell me I need to be hooked up to some machine until I am 150...
I'm not sure if it would make a difference if Einstein lived much longer. Most of his 'miraculous' accomplishments happened before he was 40 and he spent the rest of his life trying to find a unified field theory. I remember reading an article that said most scientific breakthroughs were done by people younger than 40. Assuming that if someone lives to be does not necessarily mean they will create or think up any more breakthroughs. As to the new law, remember reading about Godwin's law? Where, no matter the discussion, someone finally relates it to Nazi's? I think we need a new one concerning this debate between atheists and religious people. I suppose in this article one could make a reason for the relevancy of an afterlife (and rebuttals) but I've read some articles on /. where my reaction to a "Jesus is a myth" or "Jesus Saves" is a "WTF, does this have to do with the article?"
People change. I doubt that 60% of 79-years-olds would opt for a lifespan of 80 years. On the other hand, twenty year olds are idiots. They probably think that 80 is impossibly old and cannot imagine that it is worth living beyond 80.
I want to die when I am ready. I am not ready now. I probably won't be when I am 80. Put me down in the 'forever' catagory and I will let you know.
It isn't enough to be physically healthy. Setting side the questions of cost and availability, with artificial and transplanted parts plus current biochemistry we could already keep a person mostly-healthy beyond 100. But until/unless we can delay the natural cognitive decline that begins in late middle-age - which can't be fixed with a transplant or implant, or any known medical procedure - what's the point? Who wants to be fit enough to walk a mile to the store, but unable to remember the way home?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I'm 35, unmarried, no kids, no significant other. If I've not amounted to anything now, I probably won't. I'd still like to do something awesome though - I'd volunteer for a 1-way mars mission if they'd let me.
Of course, my answer would change if I had kids.
But I'm alright not doing any more good, I mean I don't do harm so the daily balance should be zero. And as for the harm I've done... well I've done what I can to atone for it, but it will never be the way it should have been. The wrongs I've done (few, and far between, but epic, at least to me) are ancient history, and to the ones that aren't, I'm sorry again.
You don't have to fear death if you live your life as you should be living it, since there's nothing that needs fixing. And what can't be fixed, needs to be learned from and not repeated, but moved on from. It's good to right your wrongs, but not so much that you live int he past.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Serious answer: Until I'm too old to take care of myself.
Half-serious answer: Until I turn senile or conservative, whichever comes first.
Pure comedy answer: Old enough to keep kids off the lawn with a phaser set to "stun."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I remember seeing a calcuation based on actuarial data that the half-life of non-aging humans would be around 200,000 years. That is, 50% of a given immortal population would be killed by accident or sudden disease after around 200,000 years. Not bad if it's correct.
I would want to live exactly as long as I could still be happy with the state I was in. If I get in a car accident tomorrow and wake up mostly-paralyzed and mentally retarded, I will hope my family has the smarts to just pull the plug and save themselves the prolonged grief, not to mention time and money. Conversely, if I'm 95 years old and still healthy, I hope to keep living until I'm not. If they came up with a miracle drug that let us live healthfully and actively until we were 300, I'd take it. If it let us live until we were 1000, I'd take it. If it let us live forever, assuming we could turn it off, I'd take it. (-Eventually- we might find ourselves bored of life, given truly infinite extensions, but I imagine I'd discover the finiteness of the supposedly-infinite miracle treatment before I felt like taking advantage of that.)
Granted, once we had that, we'd have as a species a much harder time surviving without figuring out how to successfully terraform and colonize other planets, so that's just an added benefit, cause maybe it'd actually happen then.
With a universe to move into, I don't think we'd have to worry too much about running out of resources, as we would on just one planet.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I am curious as to how the universe will end. I'm happy staying alive until then. Make it so.
Until just before I die quickly. Heart attack isn't too bad, but there's the panic before you actually die and it can't be pleasant. Alzheimers would suck. A week or so a go, there was a news report of an 80 year old losing control of his motorcycle, getting flung 30 feet down a cliff and dying. There's some horror there; but the mere fact that he was 80 and riding tells me he knew how to get the most out of life.
I'd really like to avoid a protracted knowledge phase about my impending death. We all know it's gonna happen; but the immediacy sucks. I don't want any of that, and if I do get "six months to live" or some crap like that, I'm totally applying for the 215 (medical marijuana) card.
YOU, sir, need a hobby or three. Badly.
Having reached my mid-40s, I've only begun to explore the things I'd like to do in my life. I find that I'm having to pare back all the interests I have because I just can't find the time for them all. I look at the time I have left and think, "shit, it's going to take me 2 years to complete this project, which means I'm going to be X old before I can even begin this next one."
I've started worrying less about the cost of my endeavors and more about the time commitment. I can always make more money, but damnit I've only got another 20 great years left, another 10 or 15 mediocre ones, and - if I'm lucky - maybe 10 more to do some low intensity stuff while I look for "young" people willing to hang with the "old dudes in the home."
It's a shame I can't buy 10 of the good years you have left, 'cause you sure aren't using them in any meaningful way, it seems.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It amazes me that this question is even being asked when there are 8 African countries whose life expectancy is less than 45 years of age. Personally, I'd imagine that by the time I'm 80, I'd have gotten enough enjoyment out of life. Beyond that, I'd also think that the joy i'd get out of helping someone go from 45 years to 60-80 years would be greater than the marginal enjoyment of extending my own life to 120 years.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of you who will read this are in more or less the same boat as me, which is to say, stealing the odd 10 minutes from "the man" from the comfort of your cube farm to opine on the intarnetz about stuff. You would be somewhere between 25 and 45 and you will be making slightly above average yearly salary wherever you live, which is probably in the United States.
If this describes you, you need to understand one thing: THIS WILL NEVER BE A PROBLEM FOR YOU.
no matter what drugs are discovered, no matter what new surgical techniques are developed, no matter what technologies come along. You are about to get massively fucked when it comes to healthcare, and the sole reason is BECAUSE it's privatized. Right now you can get decent medical care because you are riding on the wake of one of the most massive population booms in the history of mankind ... and guess what ... those people are going to be dying, but the medical-industrial complex is doing what EVERY business does when there's a boom ... act like it's going to continue forever.
There is a medical industry bubble, just like there was a savings & loan bubble, and a tech bubble, and a housing bubble, and a mortgage backed securities bubble, and it WILL bust, right when you and I are about to start needing it the most.
marinate on that.
Bill Clinton's Head in a Jar: "Hey, sugar cookie. You know, legally, nothing I can do counts as sex anymore."
Gerald Ford's Head in a Jar: "I apologise for his rudeness, ma'am. He gets this way around meaty-looking women."
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
Regardless of whatever medical and biotech breakthroughs we develop, Earth's background radiation gives our bodies a hard limit at about 4000 years or so.
People already live too long. While the average life-span approaches 100, the body still quickly loses its functions after 70. That's why our children will all be employed in taking care of the elderly, while automated factories churn out plastic toys. An example: Finland is considering legislating that there must be a minimum of 0.7 caretakers per inmate in senior homes. Currently 20% of Finns are over 70.
No point in increasing our life-expectancy unless youthfulness can be extended accordingly.
Personally, I think I saw everything I needed to see by the time I turned 30. I definitely have no interest whatsoever to become old.
Like Yossarian in Catch-22, I plan to live forever, or die trying.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
If you could keep my body young, perhaps a few years younger than I am now, I would like to live many hundreds of years. The question I would like to see posed to those who would choose this is one about what they would do with it.
I for one would slow down my education. Explore more things. Study languages. Spend some more time in my current line of work. Rather than overwhelm myself so soon with my everlasting desire to enter medicine.
But limited lifespan because of boredom? I mean, have you *seen* this world we live in? ....about to last you thousands of years
Ok, what do you do after 10 thousands years then, or 1 million, 1 billion? Unlimited is longer than you seem to think. The question really becomes will the world produce enough new interesting people/places/things to see to stop you from getting bored. This will depend strongly on how many different things you find interesting. Some people seem to get bored within their current allotment of years others could probably go far longer...but if you live forever it is the rate of production of new things that is the important factor.
Actually to everything, including hunger and overpopulation. Just procreate and eat your children. Ask Greek gods, they knew their stuff.
-Lorien (Babylon 5, "Into the Fire")
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
... I am no longer capable of wiping my own ass, or stuff comes out of it without my knowledge or consent, whichever comes first.
what about starting to work at 30 after years in school and still have to take 1-2 years on the jobs to learn stuff that your POST PHD did not tech you.
Life expectancy has nothing to do with longevity. A hundred years ago plenty of people lived past 80. Even many cavemen lived to 80. The reason life expectancy is under 50 is not because people now magically survive past 50 due to medicine or whatever, but because fewer children die in the first year. Decreasing infant mortality increases life expectancy at birth, but does not let you live longer. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you'll stop bringing up life expectancy increase as evidence that people are living longer.
Good for space travel let say you have a long trip then living longer can be a big boost.
Doesn't seem like a question at all to me... My investments would continue to compound, surely outgrowing my daily monetary needs. Why not live forever? If you could be healthy (surely a part of an indefinite lifespan) you could always find ways to amuse yourself. How long would it take to read every book? Attend every available University course to expand your knowledge? Learn every language? Try every position in the Kama Sutra with different partners? Would you saturate your healthy brain eventually? I don't think so. Why not get involved in a 500 year project like terraforming Mars? When you were done you could work on building the RingWorld (ala Larry Niven) to ensure enough living space. Perhaps you would prefer a Dyson sphere around our sun or another nearby star? Don't have the technology? Work on it for a few hundred years until it's perfected. With a long view there are many things you could do that just seem too grand when you only have 80 years to work on them. Our unfortunately short human lifespans (and tendency to waste that time) are holding us back from the great (and perhaps horrible) things we could achieve.
Officially a geek since 1984
im sure that if a subset of the population became Immortal there would be fights between them
Note to Police if you hear "There can Be Only One!" from somebody Use a Shotgun (and aim for the Head)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2poqYvWsyU
"I think you're the same as ME (we see things they'll NEVER see) - you & I? We're gonna live forever..."
* Great tune - says it all for me...
APK
P.S.=> Best tune that band (a great one) EVER did... apk
I'm so sorry, my dear Jim.
You're not helping your fellow man out of love but in the misguided idea that you are appeasing Me. Until you help your fellow man out of love and compassion - all people regardless of creed, race, sexual preference, or political beliefs - you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yours;
Jesus.
There are way too many factors, I could argue for and against every option.
Basically, with today's society 80 years is about tops. Now, if we advanced as a species to something resembling Earth during ST:TNG's time frame, that would make me want to push 200 years.
Now, don't get me wrong, I really love my wife... but being married for 150+ years, I might take my life before "old age" got to me.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
There is no magical, right, number.
As long as you live long enough to become a physical adult with a few years to accomplish something, than artificially extending life past that point is just selfish and immoral.
I am with Einstein on this one.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If I go another 15 years that will be long enough.
My kids will be adults by then, I'll have enough savings that my wife could live comfortably for the next 20-30 years if she so chooses. Assuming the kids haven't been thrown in jail or gotten pregnant I'll have done my job and deserve a rest.
I don't see my responsibility ending until the day I keel over so no need to prolong it.
Forget the practical hurdles of bio engineering or the heat death of the universe. Say you can exist forever.
Model your mind as a finite state machine. Given enough time - prodigious as this may be - you will eventually experience all possible states and start to wrap around to previous ones. Even unbounded, you, as a thinking entity, remain finite, and finite remains effectively death.
The only escape from this unbound death is to change and grow the mind in some physical way. Say you can also do this indefinitely. This is also effectively death, since what you were will no longer exist.
Or perhaps you, now being effectively infinite in both time and space, can remember your original states and play them again and again. Sort of like a broken record, an infinite jest.
If we want longevity and regenerative life exstension, we need to support Aubrey de Grey's SENS project and also the Mprize projects. imageine we could take any old person and make them younger....(there are many rich OLD billionairs out there and soon to be old billionairs too) We need to take some of the MANY Billions of dollars wasted each and every day on the world's militaries and fund massive R&D crash projects (biotech/nanotech) to reverse aging in the next 5 to 10 years instead of th enext next 40 years... Nnanotech assemblers/dissasemblers and related tech will let you make and recycle any item, fix yourself (no more diseases, aging) without govenment assistance...and also enabel governments everywhere provide decent healthcare/items to their citizens (whatever your prefference), no more "artificial scarcity".!!!!
I don't know about most you peeps, but i'm not getting out of my 60's. I have no desire to be old.
I come from a family that lives well into the 80's, and have decent health, but screw getting that old.
Even if they made advancements where I don't have poop in a diaper, I'm just not down.
I am not getting out of my 80's, short of putting my brain in some robotic/cyborg/android body. That would be okay.
Then again, i do not have stupid religious beliefs about an afterlife. Much like everything else on this earth, when I die, i will get recycled back into the universe. Works for me.
Anyways, i got about 20 years left, so i'm going to enjoy my time i got left smoking this weed, and playing video games. (yes, my goals and needs are simple).
Be seeing you...
Life expectancy at birth for American males is (as of 2010) 75.6, for females 80.8, an average of 78.2. Trying to pump it up to 80 is just a feeble attempt to make the US look like a first world country, rather than slightly worse than Chile.
Along with the technology to extend our lives - with vitality- we will also develop perfect VR technology.
So even if you live long enough to explore every nook and cranny of the known universe, there will always be new VR experiences to keep me from getting bored.
I'll sign up for "as long as I'm happy", thank you very much.
You stereotypers are all the same...
I think that there is a certain romanticism to people saying they're okay with death. I think that if you're cool with dying at 80, or 120, or whatever, that really you just don't grasp the enormity of it.
Didn't even read the summary.
My knee-jerk answer to the question was:
As long as
1) I'm a productive member of my society
2) I more or less enjoy myself
3) I can pass a Turing test (or some other generic boundary to establish a minimum sentience)
Given those three criteria, I'd be set for a very long life. I don't think that would stretch forever. Even given eternal youth, I'm bound to go crazy on a murderous rampage (see #1), or get super-emo-depressed (see #2). Given eternity, you run into chaos theory, so all sorts of things are on the table. Realistically though, I would rather not be some doped up grandpa in a vegetative state. But right now I WANT to live a good life forever.
That sounds great, in a world where kids are dropping out of high school at 15. In a utopia that'd be good, in the real world we'd just have people being unemployed more.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
It would be ok for me to live for another 500 years, but what if Oprah, Seinfeld, Cosby and others live for as long, and stay on TV. Good lord how boring.
Against the Fall of Night is an excellent book regarding how a future where you can live forever and materialize anything you want is ultimately boring and redundant. I guess I would feel that way after perhaps 10 thousand years. But I would like to live young a healthy for 1000. I would every 100 years restart my life in a new culture. I think that would be fantastic.
If I go past 42 with my amphetamine usage and general lack of sleep I will be happy. But if Paul Erds is an indication I could live to 83 !
Forever. I'm enjoying shit too much to want to be limited to 80 or even 150 years.
because that's when my money runs out!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
From wikipedia:
"Life expectancy is often confused with life span to the point that they are nearly synonyms; when people hear 'life expectancy was 35 years' they often interpret this as meaning that people of that time or place had short life spans.[71] One such example can be seen in the In Search of... episode "The Man Who Would Not Die" (About Count of St. Germain) where it is stated "Evidence recently discovered in the British Museum indicates that St. Germain may have well been the long lost third son of Rákóczi born in Transylvania in 1694. If he died in Germany in 1784, he lived 90 years. The average life expectancy in the 18th century was 35 years. Fifty was a ripe old age. Ninety... was forever."
This ignores the fact that the life expectancy generally quoted is the at birth number which is an average that includes all the babies that die before their first year of life as well as people that die from disease and war. The genetics of humans and rate of aging were no different in preindustrial societies than today, but people frequently died young because of untreatable diseases, accidents, and malnutrition. Many women did not survive childbirth, and individuals who reached old age were likely to succumb quickly to health problems.
It can be argued that it is better to compare life expectancies of the period after adulthood to get a better handle on life span.[72] Even during childhood, life expectancy can take a huge jump as seen in the Roman Life Expectancy table at the University of Texas where at birth the life expectancy was 25 but at the age of 5 it jumped to 48. Studies like Plymouth Plantation; "Dead at Forty" and Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2004 similarly show a dramatic increase in life expectancy once adulthood was reached."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
Well, some Galatic event will occurs, the only way you could survive is to you think that exist live after death in some different way.
When my body gets to the equivalent of today's average 80-90 year old's, then it's time to measure my remaining life in terms of a decade, two at most. Ditto if civilization collapses or life otherwise becomes more or less permanently un-enjoyable.
The other concerns, like boredom, overpopulation, etc. are only a problem if everyone else chooses to live a long life. If everyone else dies before 150 and I'm in good health until 1000 or 10,000, then it won't be a problem.
What would I do with the last few years of life? Watch the world go by, relax, and possibly write my memoirs. Not that anyone will read them, but hey.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I think of life expectancy like when I want to paint a picture...
Life expectancy would be the size of the surface to paint on...
I would prefer to have a big surface . The biggest. But knowing that I would use a very little portion.
In an unexperienced way, I need so much to feel free to use just what I need. No more, nor less.
I guess that there should come a day when humanity would live forever.
But surely, that day, everybody is going to live a risky life as a free choice...
I ask because I consider myself healthiest in mind and body at about 30. So the issue is are we talking about living a really long time but continue to age or do we get our "physical" age stopped at 30. If it's the former maybe not that long since your body breaks down, you get senile etc. However if I got to keep living and got to do so with a body that stayed in good condition I don't see any reason not to go on for as long as possible.(I could continue to work, learn, pick up new hobbies. I'd have a lot of time to have a lot more fun.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Human beings are not worth the value of life beyond the current average as cited to be about 80 years of age.
Immaturity is rampant, particulalrly the responses to some of these questions such as saving the planet, too many people etc. Even the lifetimes people currently have, which are not life extended at all, are filled with greed, disdain and destruction on a global scale with wars preoccupying a large populace while they watch American Idol on T.V.
People of this age want to be coddled. They want everything to be a sure thing. So they convince themselves to live in slavery in the service of others in exchange for a safe, boring and intellectually feeble might I add life. They lack the vision to see above their own self righteousness, vision which if they would take a moment to realize would solve most of the problems of the human spirit.
Along those lines of the human spirit things seem to be broken. Thousands of years have gone by, civilizations rise, and they fall into a murky blackness of amnesia. Each age remembers the last not with books, because each age burns those. Not with great works of art, because each age destroys that too but leaves the mentions of them in a few fragments.
No, each age forgets and only remembers the stories of the past in fables and scattered remnents of "superstitious nonsense" of once being able to fly, flying to the moon or even predicting the signs in the heavens.
This age will be no different and when it all ends, perhaps human beings will just go away. Remembered as a species caught in a tiresome loop of destruction and finally, brought to rest in extinction to find peace and give the Universe some peace of mind.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I would be crushed if I ever saw my cherished stars falling out of the heavens.
How much of a marksman could Orion still be after having his right shoulder go nova?
Just what sort of a swan would Cygnus be without a head?
Between stellar drift and running outta gas our future sky ends with one bloody greek tragedy after another. One which could only be averted by making up new characters instead of torturing the old.
Whether a new person or an old person invents the new characters the important thing is that it gets done. If people ever find a way to reverse bit rot in our dna and spring cleaning to keep us young forever that would be just swell.
Pain for eternity maybe based on a naughty few hours of life.
Or a more existential Hell: a brief glimpse of God at Judgment. Then living only with yourself for the rest of eternity knowing what you missed.
But with advances in modern science and my high level income, it's not crazy to think I can live to be 245, maybe 300. Heck, I just read in the newspaper that they put a pig heart in some guy from Russia. Do you know what that means?
Your depressed, go see your physician.
"The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million: they were the worst, too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that, I went into a bit of a decline." - Marvin the Paranoid Android
I'll start with 1,000 years and take it from there, one day at a time. That has been my plan all along.
The other question is how long are people willing to be useful. This idea of retiring to a life of play is a modern absurdity. People used to work all their lives. Retirement is a very new concept. If you're going to live a lot longer then plan on working a lot longer. The good news is you should get good enough that you can better choose what you work at, accumulate resources to do interesting things, etc.
All play and no work makes Jack and Jill very dull indeed.
Like a lot of things, there are some ideas that take some getting used to, that can even seem counter-intuitive. And often our immediate emotional reactions differ from our views after a we have had time to digest some information and to think about the topic.
Aubrey de Grey on how and why life extension
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB2LfJjAI9o
Interview
http://80000hours.org/blog/42-living-to-1000-an-interview-with-aubrey-de-grey
Life extension escape velocity concept
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020187
Book "Ending Aging"
http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation-Breakthroughs-Lifetime/dp/0312367074/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346107641&sr=8-1&keywords=aubrey+de+grey
When I was 40 I got up in the morning and ran 2 miles every day. It was great.
I am 62 right now and I'm enjoying life quite a bit however I have slowed down and no longer run in the morning because it hurts my joints.
My father is 86 and is suffering from mild dementia and and severe arthritis. His wife of 60 years is gone.
If this is the trajectory I certainly wouldn't want to live to 120.
However if the trajectory were to be the current decline only stretched out I'd go for 120. Maybe 150.
The question is asked in isolation, as if you could make me The Highlander or something. (My favourite line on that is from the last of those movies, where one 400-year-old lady complains about "the unending sameness of it all" - not bored enough for suicide, but still, pretty bored).
In practice, it's hard to see how it could happen for me without happening to everybody. And THAT presents some problems:
- growing up micromanaged by your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents...ad infinitum. Or at least, ad nauseam.
- financial system has to be completely reworked. As it is, you can work for as little as 30 years and, if diligent and cheap, save up enough that the interest alone can provide food/clothing/shelter at least. So, without changes, everybody works for 30 years and loafs for 300...or 3000? Less than 1% of society at work? We'll need the Singularity to turn us into Iain Banks' "Culture" first so AI does everything and nobody really has to work.
- Speaking of culture, it would never change. How exactly would you bump aside those multi-centurians from positions of power in which they would constantly oppose all change? And science is part of culture - remember Niels Bohr's opinion that new ideas don't really defeat the old, the proponents of the old ideas just die off. Change would become glacial as kids are raised by the nine generations before them, with very old values...and go on to propagate those centuries-old values for centuries more.
Speaking of The Culture, there's a moving scene in Bank's Culture novel, "Look to Windward" of a citizen choosing to, if not die, become a disembodied and unconscious mind in storage with instructions to wake him up in time for the Heat Death of the Universe....or reincarnate him as an especially nubile cheerleader if his ball team ever wins the big Cup. (The host of the ceremony remarks that the Heat Death is more likely to happen first). An astonished tourist is surprised to see a citizen who could be kept young and healthy in a fantastically diverse and rich Culture forever choosing to fade away. His response is that, after 400 years, he's done all he can enjoy, that even seeing new and amazing things has gotten routine.
Having toured a lot of Europe and reached the stage where one more goddam Bourbon palace or one more goddam mighty cathedral mostly makes my feet hurt at the thought of trudging through them....the variances between them being fairly minor unless you're really into history and architecture...I can at least imagine that happening with everything once you're talking about a number of really well-filled-in centuries.
Between that factor, and the societal issues I mention at top, I think "a few centuries" - leaving the definition of "a few" up to the individual taste, is probably it for individuals and certainly for human society. Both were designed around a certain environment, and while there's lots of give and overdesign in both systems, there is not an infinite amount of stretch in the designs. At some point, most people would realize one day that they were *trying* to think up new travels, new relationships, new hobbies, new fields of study...and had been doing so for as long as they could remember; and a sense of desperation would set in.
Stop modding me down.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sorry to mention it, but isn't the fact that the average American glutting on fast-food, doesn't exercise and is a workaholic moving the life expectancy down? I remember hearing that the current generation will be the first one for a while to live longer than its children. And I know ... citation needed.. and here it is
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/13/usa.ewenmacaskill
and here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/life-expectancy-map/?hpid=z3
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
...that a very long life means a very long period of infirmity?
The "infirmities of old age" are what kill old people. The only we are going to be able to substantially extend lifespans is by eliminating them.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There is so much to learn in the universe. Even if I lived a million years there would still be more to learn, more to find, more to figure out and more fun to have.
I want to completely get rid of all my organic parts and turn myself into a robot to explore and learn. I really don't care if anyone else wants to do it I just want to have the option available for that that do want to. As an initial step you could build a robot body with a brain life support system. Once we learned how to rebuild the brain out of better components you could replace that also.
Why would anyone want to die when there is so much to learn? Look at nanotechnology that we are just scratching the surface of? Imagine what we will learn to do over the next hundred years with that? How about over the next thousand? How about once we get spaceflight and you can start exploring other planets. Imagine all the stuff you would see on various planets.
Even if you had to travel at speeds slower than light you could do it. Worse case you could hook yourself into a VR world so you could move around, learn, play games etc while the ship traveled.
Life is far too exciting to want to leave it, the only problem with growing old is your physical body and brain deteriorating, lets fix that and not have the problem anymore. If you decide you want to die then go for it, I am sure there are a lot of fun ways to go. Think of doing an atmospheric reentry skydive cannonball into the ocean. You would die with a huge adrenaline rush.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Seriously 60 or 70 is enough for me. My grandpa is 90, but so many problems to deal with. He's the man, but by 70, just stick a fork in me and call it a day. He's lived a hard life, orphan in the depression, fighter pilot in WW2, and still going strong. Me, I've had it good, but I don't see the point in fighting. Don't want to deal with all the pain and suffering at the end. Just a nice quite sleep, when I'm done contributing to this world.....
I don't believe in any sort of afterlife, so from my point of view the universe ends when my life does. Since the universe is ending, nothing will remain that has any memory of me, so not only will I cease to exist when I die, I will cease ever to have existed. Since I not only do not believe in life after death but also in life before death, I'm athiester than you.
I also have a policy to treat any illusory experience as real given the lack of any evidence to the contrary, so I'll enjoy it until I cease ever to have existed. However long that turns out to be.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
....I would want to last as long as possible until they can find a cure. I want to be immortal before I care about what I'll be like with all of the old-age symptoms because eventually someone will cure whatever ails me, or maybe I'll just evolve my own cure, or everyone will be extinct.
There is no purpose in death, whether you believe in Heaven/Hell, reincarnation, or nothing at all, those are all just an ending. This life is all that matters, whether it has meaning or not. To continue living is the only purpose of life, and the only one that ever mattered.
When I can't walk around the walmart or have my mental faculties, I'd like 30 days longer. No more.
Mom has been living about 4 yrs since that time. She has a "let-die" clause where she lives. Do not call emergency services. She has lived an extremely full life and has conveyed that to all of her descendents.
Dad had multiple surgeries a year before his death from cancer. He had 6 months of relative health post-op and fulfilled some lifetime dreams. Then he got sick again. Eventually he died of starvation. It was too painful to eat, so he stopped. 4 weeks later, he died. It was a terrible death even with all the morphine for pain. We don't have assisted suicide where he was living. His death as inhumane. It was just under a year of suffering for him AND all of us. Seems strange that a pet can be put to sleep, but not a loved one with terminal cancer electing no more treatments. His death was terrible, especially for Mom.
A brother-in-law feel and broke his neck at the C2. He was still "alive", but only with all the machines. No brain activity at all. 2 days later, my sister did the toughest thing should could and had all the machines turned off. His sisters wanted the machines on forever - ignorant people suck. He daughter and son both agreed with my sister. Education makes a huge difference.
I'd like to die 30 days after I can't take care of myself. My family doesn't need to suffer any longer than that. If there's no hope of a mental recovery, 3 days would be better. No need for my family to suffer more than that.
what have you done with roman_mir? that entire comment had not one snippy comment about the government ruining lives, or the ability of ron paul to save everyone from themselves and grant eternal happiness. clearly, you are not roman_mir - what have you done with him?
You insensitive clod.
I want to see everything I can as many good things as I can and experience as many good things as I can for as long as possible.
Fuck dying.
Not today. Ask me again tomorrow.
Life sucks. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Godforbid, they'd have to take responsibility for future consequences of their actions, or endure the pain of changes in the world around them.
There is only one correct answer.
As long as I can!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'll bet that most people who answer 80 or 120 years don't really believe that it will ever be possible to live longer than that -- I find that most people have a hard time making an honest evaluation of the desirability of something that they honestly think isn't going to happen. As the technology gets closer, and more people start to seriously think it could happen, I expect a lot more people will want it.
Long enough to see how it all turns out.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I dare say that the idea of downloading my brain and consciousness to a hard drive and living in an ever upgrading state of android/robot really gives me a semi. I've always wanted to see the edge of the world. I wonder what an extra 200 years of existence would do for my paradigms and philosophies.
I'd say getting to see my grand kids would be the ultimate.
Telling them a few of the things I had seen first hand.
Beyond that, immortality seems silly, some come here
to learn lessons, but want to stay in school, apparently.
Health and longevity have been simple, good thoughts,
good diet, good exersize, and good company.
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
80-100 is about right. You live long enough to see your children (if you have any), grow up and have children of their own. You get to experience a whole LOT of things in your lifetime. I remember when my grandfather passed away at the age of 99 in 1991. Towards the end, he would get mad if someone said "hey you are almost 100 years old". He didn't want to live to 100...he didn't know anyone other than our immediate family. Still as alert as ever, he still walked about 1/2 mile a day from "the old folks home" to "the beer joint" (as he called it) to have a cold beer. I saw him last on Christmas in 1990. Took him back to his place, never thinking that in less than 30 days he would be gone. He willed himself to go. He had seen it all. The turn of the century, airplanes, cars, ww1, ww2, radio, television, man on the moon all within his lifetime. So, using my grandfathers experience, I'd say 80-100 is a hell of a lifetime.
The biggest reason the mean age at death has increased so dramatically is because of the decrease in infant and child mortality. The mean age at death of people who survived past their 10th birthday has only increased by about 5 years.
if I get to have health along with it of course. I don't know if my mind would be capable of processing infinite time span, but I'd rather see what's going to happen tomorrow and live it even if I have to forget the past. Immortality would be a selfish and ultimately a dead-end for for the specie as a whole since never reducing population obviously isn't sustainable. Still, even if I have to become a last remaining human in the universe, I would still choose immortality if it's an option. I just want to know.
That is all..carry on.
I am determined to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Most influencial person of the modern era? Sure. Most intelligent person of the modern era? Possibly, depending on the definition of "Modern". A polymath/renaissance man? Arguable. Perhaps the most recent one, which makes his ideas most applicable to today. Most authoritative figure? Some people think so, but logical thinkers simultaneously understand that authority doesn't necessarily imply correctness.
To say he's the most intelligent person ever? Hardly. The list of great thinkers, scientists, artists, mathematicians, recorded in history goes on and on. You can associate him with the greats (and there have been many before him). But to say that he's more intelligent than any person in recorded history is pure hyperbole. That, or your knowledge and understanding of recorded history makes you woefully unqualified to make sure a statement.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
... having the chance to decide whether you "had enough" every 100 years without getting physically older would be great. It would certainly be a bumpy ride, losing loved ones, becoming rich, poor, surviving wars and losing interest in what most people enjoy, but in the end, like the guy in the comic it would still be better to keep on going.
As a person who values history and scientific advancement more than buying a house and having grandchildren, I'd love to get a similar deal.
Subjective, I know. And assuming good health.
I'll probably have to change, too, 'cause my present puny brain couldn't deal with all that. Maybe re-implement myself in solid state so I have infinitely expandable memory.
If I lived as long as I'd need to to know everything worth knowing, I think I'd have to ditch this meat-bag which is presently myself at some point!
--PeterM
two words: extropian transhumanist
ask me again when I'm a Jupiter brain...
http://singularity.org/
(for ALL of your tomorrows)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_jellyfish Impressive, but I'm not sure if I'd want to keep going back to my sexually immature, colonial stage over and over and over again.
The man who dies rich dies disgraced. -- Andrew Carnegie
ask me again in 100 years
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
The increased average age is mostly due to modern knowledge of how to prevent infant death. We don't get older, just more of us get old.
Statistics: If 40 % of the children die at 1 year old, and all the others get to the age of 80, then the average age is 48.4 years. If the main death cause of the kids is solved, then only 10% of the kids die at 1 year and all the others live to 80. This means the average age becomes 72.1 years.
Up to now we haven't been able to increase the life span significantly, it just seems so because we have solved infant mortality.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Anyone who claims that they don't want to live forever (in health) is lying to themselves as a crude defense mechanism against the trauma caused by confronting the fact that they won't be able to.
If there was a switch to flip for immortality (again, in health) I suspect that even the staunchest defender of death as a necessary part of the "human condition" would jump at the chance to throw it.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Typical of the true believers - you can't dispute the facts so you try to silence people who don't buy into your faith ;-)
"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon", Susan Ertz.
I'd opt for 120 healthy years. That'd be the time frame I need to do most things I want well.
I speak for myself when I say that I'm good to the world up to a certain dose. 120 years of me would already pushing the boundaries.
Once I read an interview with a scientist who wanted to live infinitely. He -clearly not being a mathematician- couldn't fathom that longer life span would translate in massively larger population. He also never considered continuity in evolution.
Yes, my kids will do things better than I have done. As theirs will do better than them. We mustn't want to isolate our species from evolution as that will result in our demise. We have good brains but we will need even better ones to cope with future events.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
People don't think.
"Want to live forever?"
"Hmm... the longer I live, the older I get, so if I live forever, I'll be really really old and decreipt forever!"
I could cry.
Seems to me brain failure has already set in :-P
Well, at least that's what I think about every time I see this topic come up. As in, I see two main things happening in succession once someone invents the 'live to 600' pill:
1) there will soon be no more children in the world. If your kid has a kid at 25, and that kid has a kid at 25, and so on, and every one living currently has children, well, the numbers get astronomical really fast when everyone is living to 600. Unless you start shipping folks off-planet in technology that doesn't exist yet, using resources that are already depleting, you've got trouble. Forget about your kids having kids. Forget about grandchildren. Enjoy your selfish 600 years, because...
2) they will be the last years of the human race. Unless that pill also cures menopause, after 75 years or so no woman would be able to have children. Currently 2.1 kids is considered 'replacement' level. If everyone lived to 600 and bred at 25, having one kid, there'd be no one 'leaving' until the 23rd generation. If 23 times the world's current population is considered unsustainable, there would have to be limits on having children. Many folks would not be allowed to have them, period. For each succeeding generation, the number of children would have to be adjusted to the carrying capacity of the planet in keeping with the increased lifestyle your desired long life is granting you. The number of fertile females in the gene pool each generation gets smaller and smaller. This is not the sort of trend nature likes, and she can bite. Hard. The longer you extend the lifespan, the smaller the gene pool becomes. Keep in mind, if any one generation goes beyond 50 years without procreating, poof, it's all over. In time.
Those are your choices. Scheduled breeding, with many folks never getting to have children at all and an ever-shrinking gene pool, or annihilation due to over- or under-population. Then again, this is Slashdot, so perhaps breeding is an unfamiliar concept to this audience.
Get rid of ageing and other diseases and let people decide when and if they want to die! Personally I might stick around just to see how the show ends.
This is a prime example of cognitive dissonance, IMHO. We all know we have no more than a little over 80 years to live. Instead of confronting ourselves with the enormity of this fact we think of reasons to make it less bad. Oh, I'd get bored anyway...
Long enough that I have no teeth, no hair, can't talk or understand anything, can't walk, control my bladder or bowels, I drool my food, lay there naked and cry a lot. I want to leave the same way I came in. My grandchildren can have "before and after" photos over the fireplace.
Im done.
I would live till the end of the universe...
Along the way I will amass infinite knowledge of the universe, and as the universe dies, I will clap my hands, and proclaim "Let there be light"
None of us pukes would ever live forever, even if the tech for immortality was invented. It wouldn't be the Einsteins or the Johnny Cashes either. It'd be the Rich Kids of Instagram and Donald Trump, the 1% who are narcissistic enough and have access to blow tons of money in an effort to prolong their shallow lives, because that is their only legacy.
Do you think immortality will be for the likes of you? Consider the escalation of costs for a heart attack:
Aspirin - $0.10
Beta-blocker - $0.10
Platelet inhibitor - $1.00
Statin - $1.00
EKG - $10 with $50 for interpretation
Chest X-ray - $50 with $200 for interpretation
Heart catheterization - $5000
Stent placement - $10000
Bypass surgery - $50000
And this is the progression of medical tech from 1900 to 2000 (not linear, of course)...better start saving your pennies.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Forever.
Other then that, as long as possible. Please resuscitate, don't pull the plug.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
3.5 billion years plus with new incarnations every so often to allow for evolution to match the ever changing environment and shedding of old thoughts in favor of learning anew the feeling of wonder at seeing a new sunrise for the first time again.
The life within all creature on earth has been alive continuously for at lease 3.5 billion years, you are currently a bearer of one path of that life.
" This idea of retiring to a life of play is a modern absurdity."
no, it's a great goal. Once that should be there for everyone.
" People used to work all their lives"
So? sounds suspiciously close to the naturalist fallacy. People used to do all kinds of things..like die early and live a miserable life from birth to death.
"Retirement is a very new concept"
If by 'very new' you mean ancient Greeks.
"If you're going to live a lot longer then plan on working a lot longer. "
Why? If I can invest enough money where I don't need to work anymore, why should I keep working? In this context I define 'working' as HAVING to go to a job whether I like it or not. I will do things, start companies, enter new fields etc.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... how superficially people consider their lives at slashdot.
I don't really understand people's school of thought. If you can take a pill to live forever, they would have figured out how to stop dna degeneration and effectively put a stop to the aging process. At 300 years old you would be as healthy as when you were 30. Using the body's natural stem cells with perfectly replicating dna without any strain on telomeres would basically make you regrow entire body parts as your own body's natural regeneration which would be in effect as good as the parts it's replacing.
So understanding that, why would people think that once the aging process has been bypassed, why when they're 150+ they'll be infirm and in bed and old? Do they also think that if they live to 600 they'll turn into a turtle too?
Just nonsense. If i could live forever with the body of my 25 year old self i would do it in a heart beat.
I bet if the question was if you could, would you become a sparkly vampire (effectively eliminate aging) i bet that choice would of been chosen a lot more.
Until the "True Death".
I want to be old enough to finish my video game backlog. Right now, I own more games than I can likely finish in my lifetime. Unfortunately, this might be an endless task as each new game gets released.
Improved hygiene and medical inventions, yes. Nutrition? No way! Our nutrition has taken a nosedive since post-world war II. Medical intervention in things like diabetes and cancer will eventually start losing that battle unless we 1) clean up the environment so we're exposed to fewer toxins, and 2) clean up our food system so we get real nutrition instead of the fake crap most people eat these days. Otherwise, I suspect our average lifespans will start to drop. And the "47 years" often quoted is primarily due to infant death. If you could get past being an infant, and get past childbirth (as a woman), then you had a pretty good chance to live a long life pre-100 years ago. So remove those two factors from the calculations and our lifespans haven't improved as significantly as everyone likes to say.
Star formation will end in about 100 trillion years (the last remaining hydrogen in dust clouds will be exhausted) and those last red dwarf stars will all be gone 20 trillion years after that. The Universe will be a cold and lonely place.
By then I should have gotten to at least page 2 of my to-do list.
Or if we can't achieve that , 50 something .
... but I would like to live just enough so my brain could be faithfully recreated in a artificial neural network and then my mind would have the potential to live forever. Hell, as I said before, where are mine Deus Ex like limbs and neural implants?
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
Longer
hmmm ,, just live your your / our life and move away! none of us knows and will never know what is tommorw.. and this discussion of "bright tommorow" is FALSE forever (we know the reasons very well on why!! - we screwed up on everything and did not leave even planet earth yet!!).. nothing of that sort is ever goin to happen!! .. woman/mankind are masking thier way towards prehistoric era.. hah hah hah..!!
to get to the nearest habitable planet with my harem and some pets
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
I say over 90% of people want to live forever. But almost all of them think that they have die first.
2000 years is probably conservative. I don't think you can include the suicide figures in long term estimates. Those prone to it will eliminate themselves early.
Except, how many of those suicides are people opting out of 'Incurable' ailments? I think you are correct that all the mental health suicides would drop off after 40 years or so, but even these might hold steady as mental health problems related to aging become more prevalent. Of course we are both speculating, but in the name of scientific inquiry, we can certainly run a test.
Brings up an interesting problem: If the scientists running the test don't live anywhere near the length of the study, will this effect the study? Ideally, no, but......
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The greeks are a beautiful example. Only the upper classes retired. The peopons slaved away until death must they depart.
...and got almost CRUCIFIED. Someone got very scared about it that it was excuse, self explanatory excuse to say NO to anything else... live forever, what NONSENSE. It explains maybe why only 1% say they want to be immortal, even if impossible. Most thinking it feel the pressure and desist. Maybe because being immortal, under beliefs, means to be DEAD (after death) too, so people go scared and pressure. - Disregarding oldening, etc., what matters is the persistence of a self-conscience, which is a smaller and better defined theme actually and nearer to current state of the art. Danilo J Bonsignore
Con men and fools prefer to live forever.
Casteism
According to DNA studies, human life begins at conception, not birth, so true life expectancy stats should add on 9 months.
But wait - then pregnancies terminated by miscarriages and surgical/silent abortions would add to the death rate. Yours truly has done the calcs. Since 1900 the true LE has dropped from 47 to 40. In Russia, where the abort rate equals the birth rate, the true LE is 18. The key to an old age is surviving gestation.
The most important component of understanding "what is" is framing the question well. This is a poorly designed question. Who are the people being asked?
Are they age graded? Are they disability graded? Do they believe they will have a wonderful afterlife? Are they depressed? Do they have virtually unlimited
financial resources? Do they expect to feel healthy until the last year of their life? And on and on and on.
An interesting question might be "how long would you like to live after acquiring a chronic and irreversible painful, disabling, bankrupting and constantly deteriorating illness?" This is the reality of death. It's not death people fear, it's serious and unremitting illness.
I don't fear dying and I wouldn't desperately look for a way to live forever but given the choice, I would choose to live infinately reserving the right to commit suicide.
Old body would no longer cause me trouble because the only way I see living forever would be to trade this meatsuit for a bit more durable hardware. We're getting closer and closer to finding out exactly what makes our counciousness tick and from there on it shouldn't be too hard to transfer that subroutine to different hardware.
As to boredom, once techology is far enough to solve aformentioned problems, we'll certainly be far enough to eliminate that pesky thing. Boredom is simply connection between not doing anything and negative reinforcment systems in our brain. Once well enough documented it can easily be abolished given precise enough tools.
I never think about how long I will live, I just want live myself in the real world, just let it go, just leave it alone , let the time pass by, enjoy the sunshine, and that's my life!