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'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.

24 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. The key phrase here is by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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.
  2. Re:Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Captain Kirk says... by queazocotal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well - no.
    The person in the article has a sharply declining quality of life - having to have help going to the bathroom, and significant amounts of care, being able to do very little for himself, as well as being blind.
    Many people in this condition - even at a much, much younger age, would contemplate ending it.

  4. Painful Life by JimSadler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Painful Life by houghi · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My great aubnt lived to be 115 and was at one point the oldest know living person in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      Many people wanted to talk about life then. She lived inb a time people in the Netherlands lived in "plaggenhutten". When people asked if she kne when the first cars came, she laughed and said she remembered when the first bikes came. Imported from the US.
      She lived alone till she was 106. She was always positive minded, even though almost all she knew had died.
      She wanted people to learn and she gave her body to science. From that came the knowledge that alzheimer is 'just' a dissease and not something everybody will get when you get old. She was the basis for other discoveries as well as a push to do research with 100+ year olds.

      She wanted the knowledge that came from her body to be her gift to some students that would cut her open or look at in a bottle. She never thought it would be such a success and she would have been delighted.

      She never gave the impression that her universe left town. More that she was welcoming a new universe of things to learn. With that I learned that contact and optimism are very important. She always wanted others to learn and that is why she open-sourced her body. She insisted that the knowledge should be used by all. Again: she open-sourced her body.
      An other thing the found : https://www.newscientist.com/a...

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  5. Re:Captain Kirk says... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Informative

    But immortality with a limited memory loss keeps the fun in it!

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  6. Re:Captain Kirk says... by queazocotal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Quoting without permission Rob Landley:
    http://lists.celinuxforum.org/...

    "I'm sorry, I'm confused by the CONCEPT of having a shortage of TODO items.
    This is just the top of my head _Linux_ stuff, and doesn't include purely-me
    items like learning LUA. I want to get a mac and learn THAT stuff. I want to
    get my master's degree so I can become a full-time college professor when I'm
    ready to retire from programming. I want to write multiple books. I want to
    start a third convention so I have an excuse to wave the Cartoon Guide to
    Federal Spectrum Policy at people
    (http://www.newamerica.net/files/archive/Pub_File_1555_1.pdf). I want to learn
    to draw so I can start a webcomic. I have enormous stacks of books to read.
    I need to watch the rest of Mythbusters, catch up on the new Dr. Who, and play
    Dragon Age. I want to garden and cook and bike and swim. I want to get rich
    and start the world's largest nudist resort. I want to dig up the recording
    of the time I got Neil Gaiman to say "By Grabthar's hammer, you shall be
    avenged" into a microphone (after his reading of Crazy Hair at Penguicon 2)
    and also get Ralph Nader to say "Luke, I am your Father" into another
    microphone. I need to completely redo my website (and make a "random cool
    stuff" page listing http://sidhefaer.livejournal.c... and
    http://theglen.livejournal.com... and so on...)

    Theres... a shortage of stuff to do somewhere?

    Really?

    How does that work?
    "

  7. Verify by DNA analysis by Steve1952 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Verify by DNA analysis by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Funny

      Surely they can just wait until he dies, and then saw his body in half and count the rings?

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  8. Re:Captain Kirk says... by CODiNE · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Living forever isn't boring, you are."
    -Me.

    --
    Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
  9. Extraordinary claims require ... by davidwr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.
    1. Re:Extraordinary claims require ... by Ken+McE · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Occams' razor is politely suggesting that at some point the ID card belonging to Mr. Mbah Gotho Sr. was passed along to Mr Mbah Gotho Jr. That appears to be what happened with all those ancient rural Soviets. Some of those back country/outside all their life people age fast. If they took Dads card after he passed, they could skip the draft. Voila, country towns with a lot of 104 year old men.

    2. Re:Extraordinary claims require ... by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "outliers can be very unusual indeed."

      There's outliers and there's statistical impossibilities. The chances of him having lived 23 years (almost a 3rd of the average humans lifespan) longer than the next oldest person I'm afraid are so close to zero that you couldn't tell the difference.

  10. Re:Captain Kirk says... by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My father was 100 years of when he died. Up until the last 4 months of his life, he was living semi-independently. He lived in his own house, with people coming in to help him with such things as cleaning and preparing meals; other than that, he looked after himself.

    I am terrified of the prospect. As some point, I should start living a more risky lifestyle, since 3 out of 4 of my grandparents lived well into their '90s. Maybe I can kill myself in my early '90s through a skydiving accident or something.

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  11. Most likely explanation by xlsior · · Score: 4, Informative

    He probably has the same name as his father, and somewhere long the lines their identities got switched up?

  12. Precisely. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

     

  13. Re:December 30th by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It me, fam.

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  14. Re:And he still chain smokes by Gavagai80 · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's absolutely nothing remarkable about somebody that age smoking. Everybody did for most of their lives. And no doctor has ever claimed that smoking is 100% fatal.

    --
    This space intentionally left blank
  15. 6.5 million active SSNs for people over 112 by phrackthat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

  16. Re:Seriously? by Calydor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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=-
  17. An auspicious date by quantaman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  18. Birth certificates are mostly joke in some places by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I am from India. My uncle suddenly lopped off 25 years from his age.

    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
  19. Re:Captain Kirk says... by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given a young healthy pain free body, you would never finish your interests.

    There would always be new "pokemon go"'s coming along to get excited about.
    New musical instruments to master.
    New places to see (because they are changing if you live long enough. The world today is almost completely different than it was in 1935.
    New inventions to be excited about.
    A much longer investment horizon mean you'd probably go through being wealthy and being poor multiple times (I was wiped out in the panic of 2160, 2310, 2470, the big one of 3107, and was broke again in 3705. But today in 4212, I'm comfortably wealthy.)

    People who are old, people who are unhappy, people who know they will be old and unhappy in only 30 years make it sound bad to live for a thousand years. But the last 1000 years rocked.

    Even with the expected collapses of non-renewable resources and likely associated rapid population collapse, you'd then have an awesome world with fewer neat things but less crowding and get to see all the areas ruined by overuse recover and see the seas verdant with life again as it was in the 1870's.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  20. Re:December 30th by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Funny

    Big deal. Your 6-digit id would seem to indicate that there are those older than you here on /.

    You know that your userid is not tied to your age right? And not all people stick to one account for their whole lives.

    Ya. It's a /. meme. But I guess you might be too young to know that -- having a 7-digit uid and all. :-)

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .