Slashdot Mirror
'Longest Living Human' Says He Is Ready For Death At 145 (telegraph.co.uk)
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an article from The Telegraph: An Indonesian man who claims to be the longest living human in recorded history has described how he "just wants to die". Mbah Gotho, from Sragen in central Java, was born on December 31, 1870, according to the date of birth on his identity card. Now officials at the local record office say they have finally been able to confirm that remarkable date as genuine. If independently confirmed, the findings would make Mr Gotho a staggering 145 years old -- and the longest lived human in recorded history.
"One of Mr Gotho's grandsons said his grandfather has been preparing for his death ever since he was 122," according to the article. Though he lived long enough to meet his great-great grandchildren, he's already outlived four wives, all 10 of his brothers and sisters, and all of his children.
"One of Mr Gotho's grandsons said his grandfather has been preparing for his death ever since he was 122," according to the article. Though he lived long enough to meet his great-great grandchildren, he's already outlived four wives, all 10 of his brothers and sisters, and all of his children.
I was born on December 30, 1870 and as soon as my birth certificate arrives in the mail I'll be able to prove it.
- These characters were randomly selected.
"The problem with immortality is that it's boring."
(There's an episode of the original series where a man gives up immortality to be with the woman he loves....)
"Marge, please, old people don't need companionship. They need to be isolated and studied so it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use." --Homer Simpson
"If independently confirmed" - which is unlikely.
Regardless, he'll still be around for quite a while yet. In an interview with Wired, he said he just wants to live until the year of Linux On The Desktop.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
he's already outlived four wives, all 10 of his brothers and sisters, and all of his children.
On one hand it would be kind of Interesting to be around that long. On the other, I can't imagine how terrible it would be to out live everyone you care about. And I would think it would be difficult to live in the world with the number of changes that have occurred over that amount of time. Think about the pace of life when he was a young adult compared to now.
Yeah, because being "posted to Reddit" and "ripped to shreds" there is an obvious sign of credibility.
Are you forgetting the time that Reddit collectively lynched an innocent man in an effort to identify the suspects behind the Boston Marathon bombing, by any chance? Allow me to enlighten you:
https://gawker.com/reddit-apol...
Of course, being a redditor I'm sure you'll simply dismiss the entire post for being a link from Gawker, despite the fact that 70% of the content is direct quotes from Erik Martin, apologizing for the boorish and ignorant behaviour of people like you. Feel free. Redditors are like conspiracy theorists, they'll cherry-pick whatever details fit their own narrative and then circle-jerk around on their own, respective corner of the site.
Do us all a favour and go back there for good. Redditors are the pus-filled herpes sores of the Internet.
People don't dwell on such things. I had a neighbor who passed just a few weeks shy of 100. Things that all of us consider normal were simply impossible for him such as keeping in touch with his school friends or most of his family as they had all passed away. How many people wanted to talk to him about the way life was in 1880? It is as if the man's entire universe left town and moved too far away.
It would be interesting to use DNA analysis on the 145-year-old and his relatives (living or dead) to verify his age. If his story checks out, then (for example), it could be verified if he is indeed the father or brother to various other people, some long dead, with known dates of birth or death.
Which tells us what?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Here's a link for you.
Wonder how they arrived at a 0.893381 (impressive number of digits btw) probability of a 119 year old male dying within one year, considering that not a single man in history is confirmed to have reached that age.
... extraordinary evidence.
An identity card whose date has only recently been confirmed isn't enough.
You still need to confirm that the card-holder is the person who matches the genuine records.
You also have to assess the credibility of those in the records office and answer questions like "why wasn't this confirmed long ago, like when he applied for a penson (no pension? okay, I'll accept that) or when he hit age 100 (not important enough? okay, I'll accept that), age 110 (you better have a darn good answer) or when he got to be the oldest man in his country (every month of delay in searching for accurate records from this point on makes his claim less and less credible).
It's been 30+ years since he would've been the oldest person in the world. If there haven't been serious, continuous, diligent, credible efforts to find and authenticate his age since the mid-to-late 1980s, then it will take something extra-ordinary, such as confirmation that he fathered someone known to be born more than, say, 120 years ago, for his claim to be accepted. Even if there has been a serious, continuous, diligent, credible effort to find proof of his age for the last 30 years, the fact that it took so long to find it hurts his claim.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Uhm, what about Methuselah? Or does it only count if a government nut says it's true not if a religious nut says so?
He probably has the same name as his father, and somewhere long the lines their identities got switched up?
I would never want to outlive my children. :(
Core sample
People want to believe that he is depressed because his kids and wives are gone. It is romantic to be depressed when you have no family or lovers.
Smart people don't make others responsible for their own happiness. Wives and kids come and go (especially today, thanks to the divorce revolution). Once you can find the natural wellspring of joy within, you are no longer dependent on these ever-changing circumstances to be happy.
But...when your daily routine is an ongoing repetition of pain and indignity, with no realistic means of pursuing self-cultivation (nor even just enjoying hobbies), the continual displeasure can easily overwhelm any sense of calm contentedness. Under these circumstances, even the most enlightened of minds will realize that life is handing them their hat, and gracefully take their leave.
It's not surprising to see the western media censoring the second most remarkable fact about this fellow -- he still smokes video. Similarly, the officially recognized longest living man and woman on the world and only two humans verified to have lived beyond 120 years of age were both smokers (Jean Calment and Shigechiyo Izumi.
Unlike that non-English video where he smokes almost throughout, in this English speaking video, they blur his cigarette in a crude attempt to hide the fact that doesn't fit in our antismoking Matrix. With the reporter's strong antismoking position thus clear, the implication is that he couldn't get several minutes of continuous footage without the old timer lighting up i.e. the fellow must still be practically chain smoking (not unusual among Indonesian man).
You're right, both of them have the non-existent credibility that the Indonesian man does.
I'm here to let you know it's on it's way. It was lost in Montana for awhile, and the crossing the Rockies was a bit rough. But it should be getting to you any day now!
The only thing left is to confirm your current address. Unfortunately, I can only time travel forward so letting them know where to send it in 1884 may be a challenge.
He doesn't look a day older than 119!
I do think immortality could get boring.
But there's something else, something more immediate. A line I remember from the Vampire Chronciles was one rather old vampire saying "The world changes, we do not. That is the irony." I'm old enough now that, when feeling particularly sour I said something about not liking the music now, the attitudes now, etc. And in the next sentence, I admitted that my father felt that way about current times when I was in my 20s. The world has changed and I don't fit in quite so well anymore. Some of that change is the physical aging of course. If my physical body were rejuvenated to 25 no doubt my libido would get a charge. In dealing with people, I think all the hard earned experience and knowledge I've gained could be put to good use (old saying: "we get too soon old and too late smart"), but would I really embrace the gestalt of today? I'm not sure. And I think the 25 year olds of today would know there was something different about me even if I looked like one of them.
Here's something else from a more philosophical point of view:
Even if you continue to live, are you still the same person? Sometimes, when I remember stuff from way back, it almost seems like I'm examining the memories of a different person. If you don't change, you're not really living, just existing, but in changing, the old you disappears a little bit at a time.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Although there a many doubter, to me it doesn't matter whether this one person reached that age (his relative may argue or not), what matters is that it won't be uncommon in 70 years (those in their 50 and 60 could go beyond that). A number of technologies are reaching their tipping point.
Some day I won't remember to pull the ripcord.
That's my insurance against living too long.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The big problem with living a long time is that your body deteriorates. I'm 41 and my body isn't what it was when I was 21. When I'm 61, I'm sure I'll be wishing I still had 41-year-old-me's body. But if I was 145? The problems I'd face simply because the human body doesn't handle that extreme level of aging well? I'm sure death would be preferable.
If you could guarantee me immortality with my body frozen at 21 (or even 41), I might jump at the chance. Yes, I might regret it when everyone I knew passed away, but I'd constantly be able to see what's coming up next an could forge new friendships. But aging to 145 seems too long for me. Not that I'm looking forward to death, but I have a feeling that I'd be eagerly waiting it way before I hit 145.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
We're talking history. Not his story.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
However there are only about 35 people in the world over the age of 112. I'd say that having an identity card is a little short of absolute proof that this guy is 145.
Between 2008 and 2011, there were over 4,000 people who applied for jobs using SSNs for people who were born before the 20th century.
http://insider.foxnews.com/201...
An Indonesian man who claims to be the longest living human in recorded history has described how he "just wants to die"
Get this man to a mental hospital immediately! If he wants to die, he's obviously insane and must be committed! He could potentially harm himself or others!
I will sooner dismiss the know-nothing who says "That can't be true, don't bother checking it!" than the know-nothing who says "That might be true, go check it."
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
The Unix Epoch is 01/01/1970, this guy is recorded as being born 31/12/1870.
Perhaps someone was born 31/12/1969 and some function was trying to translate timestamps from one system to another.
One day before the epoch is a bit of an edge case, and timestamp conversions can be funky. So instead of subtracting 1 from the 70 the function subtracted it from the 19 and now you have an official, but nonsensical, piece of identification in the system.
Of course it clearly doesn't match the guy born in 1969, but surely someone noticed and "fixed" the problem by associating the record with it's rightful recipient, the oldest guy in the village.
I stole this Sig
....will outlive all of us.
He was working as a village karnam a hereditary village official assisting land tax office and other official government work. A coupld of decades after the independence, the government decided to abolish the heridiatry position and regularize them all as "village officers". Part of the application process was filling documents for age and dates of birth. My dad told him government retiremnet age was 58 and he would be retired in 13 years or so. He did not want to suffer the loss of income. One of the official forms of documentation for date of birth was an affidavit fron the village karnam. So he issued himself an affidavit proclaiming him to be 20 years old!. Only adverse consequence was his traditional Hindu ceremonies he had to do as he turned 60 all had to be done in secret, lest the government becomes aware of his true age!
Was thinking all the birthers could have gone to Kenya. The could find a local dynamic_cast(village karnam) to issue birth certificates for any one for any date.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth---and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up---that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had. -- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. -- Ray Kurzweil
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Saw him in half and count the rings.
If you held a lottery where the odds of winning were 1 in a billion billion billion, but someone won, would you call the shenanigans?
Living to 143 or even 153 would be an extreme outlier, but to imply it is an actual impossibility by calling it a "statistical impossibility" isn't helpful.
Now, it may actually be the case that there is an upper limit on the human lifespan (personally, I think there is, but we don't have the science to prove it yet), and it may be the case that this upper limit is under 143 years (personally, I doubt this is the case). If we eventually prove that man cannot live more than 142 years, then - and only then - can we say that this claim is actually impossible on its face. Until then, we can - and should - say that it is extremely improbably and the claimant has a very high burden of proof.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If he really is 20-some years past that, I'd sure like to know how/why. I'd like researchers to know how/why even more, and then put their findings to the best conceivable use - keeping me around longer.
According to the Sumerian King List, that's nothing.
What's more likely? That the record for oldest human has been shattered by 23 years, or this guy is full of shit? I know which I find more plausible.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
He's 145 supposedly. Try to make it an even 150. If he's that old, he could maybe tell us some stuff about the late 19th century. That predates planes, cars, WW1. What was it like?
Ask this man how his day went on August 26, 1883.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All of you are wasting time arguing about whether its inherently good or bad to live this long. I just want to know what he's been eating, and how much cardio he gets in.
Mars is composed of mostly immortal beings. Very static society consisting of millennia long art projects.
No talk of Li Ching-Yuen, the possibly oldest man in recorded history?
I'm old enough now that, when feeling particularly sour I said something about not liking the music now, the attitudes now, etc. And in the next sentence, I admitted that my father felt that way about current times when I was in my 20s.
Assuming you're around my age (40s), your father was wrong. The music of the 70s-80s was the best. The music being made now is crap, at least if you're talking about commercialized stuff. (There's a lot of good independent stuff though.)
The world has changed and I don't fit in quite so well anymore.
Oh please. The nice thing about modern times and the internet is that you don't need to "fit in" any more; you can live in your own secluded subculture. There's no shortage of online communities (and offline ones too: see meetup.com) catering to any eclectic interest you might have. You really do need to live in or near a metro area to take advantage of much of this though if you want any in-person interactions with others of your subculture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... When seventy-eight he retired from his military career after fighting in a battle at Golden River, and returned to a life of gathering herbs on Snow Mountain in Sichuan province. Due to his military service in the army of General Yu Zhongqi, the imperial government sent a document congratulating Li on his one-hundredth year of life, as was subsequently done on his 150th and 200th birthdays.[10] In 1928, Dean Wu Chung-chien of the Department of Education at Minkuo University discovered the imperial documents showing these birthday wishes to Li Qingyun. His discovery was first reported in the two leading Chinese newspapers of that period, North China Daily News and Shanghai Declaration News, and then one year later in 1929 by The New York Times and Time magazine. Both of these Western publications also reported the death of Li Qingyun in May 1933.[10]
The article doesn't mention any supporting evidence. I'm not even talking about documents from before age 22 like the guiness records people usually ask for. If he is indeed 145 years old there should be an abundance of evidence prooving at least he is more than 113 years old making him the oldest man alive. Where is this evidence, the article mentions nothing, and neither does a five minute google search. I call bull.
Now officials at the local record office say they have finally been able to confirm that remarkable date as genuine.
Really? There were no details given on this. Did they find his original birth certificate? I didn't realize Indonesia had such great recordkeeping that long ago. Frankly, I find this whole story as BS. Dec. 31st, 1870? Sounds like somebody just filled in a random date because they had no idea how old he was.
Such claims are not new, in Brazil a woman had an ID with birthday in 1880, she died at age 130. Also this year they found a men whose birth certificate has his birthday in 1884, 131 years old. This men lives in a remote village and has a 30 years old daughter, it is also very unlikely he was a father at 101.
100 years ago in remote places the records are just not trustworthy, the birth certificate from the men above is from the 70s and it probably was his first one. It was very common even 50-70 years ago to people get their first birth certificate when they started working or applying to social benefits when already adults.
I'm counting how many people suggest to cut him in half and count the rings, without having read all the previous comments where this was already said. Seems to be a trend around here.
Just like listening to others before talking, you should read other comments before posting.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
How about "That could be true, but the probability and significance is such that I don't think it's worth my time to check it"? I don't look into every claim I see, because even with a very long lifespan I wouldn't have the time to do anything else.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You mean like the Higgs Boson?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
If I lived in Java if want to die too.
The Higgs Boson was not worth my time to check (and was way out of my league in physics education and available test equipment). It was worthwhile for physicists working at CERN to check out. I then found out, with minimal effort on my part, that it exists.
I find it extremely unlikely that this guy is anywhere near as old as is claimed, for a variety of reasons. I find it likely that ages get misstated for various reasons, particularly in societies without the same level of record-keeping and means of verification we've got now. I remember when there were lots of stories about the incredible age people in the Caucasus Mountains lived to.
Therefore, using Bayesian probability, it's going to take a LOT of evidence to get me to believe the guy is that old, and somebody else can go look for it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes