How Old Can We Get?

[Terese]

A super interesting video about how old the oldest current living people are, oldest living tree, how through medicine and science we are living longer, and the perception of time to a human.

Do you believe that the extension of a lifespan through medicine and science is good? What if people lived to 200? A miracle of science or an abnormality? And a very far flung question: What if humans had Negligible Senescence? What would humanity be like? Death still exists, but we do not die from old age.

I think it's rather fantastic, people can gain the ability to experience more things

 

[VioletVortex]

If people on average were to live to 100 and assume the current level of procreation, we'd all die of the diseases and oxygen deprivation caused by overpopulation.

Currently, the average human life span is somewhere around 70, but that is a flawed and unadjusted metric as it includes infant mortality and other instances of people dying very young. Also, a very large portion of the world's population is impoverished, and they will have a shorter life expectancy by a decade or so as well. The officially recognized human life span, however, is 79 years, therefore the healthy middle class individual should expect to live to that age, though if you exceed your mid 80s, chances are you will live for another decade or so.

In the future, we may well develop means of fortifying genetic material against degredation, and potential rectify any age associated or congenital abnormalities in it, so I think it's a real possibility that we may virtually immortalize ourselves in carnal form within the next few decades, though I think that such procedures would be expensive, "only for the rich", a reflection of how ****ed up people are.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

From what I know about transhumanism, it's mostly super-rich Silicon Valley types who are obsessed with the life extension aspect of it, due to their physicalist neuroticism about death and fear of it ("muh billions!"). Instead of funding research into the more practical aspects of it such as its medicinal and rehabilitational possibilities, they're throwing money into silliness such as cryonics and chasing the Singularity. They get on my nerves. They're very selfish and don't care about inequalities and such. Peter Thiel even said that death is the greatest inequality. Ugh.

Personally, I don't want to live forever in this plane. Even if man-made eternal life was possible, I'd probably still want to naturally die just to see what comes next. Besides, it's not likely to happen in our lifetime, if at all. It's very much still fiction as it is.

 

[Politesse]

I love Bristlecone pines! They are very unassuming. People often come to California to see the redwoods, thinking that they are the oldest trees in the world. I think in part because they LOOK like they would be, giant grand things that they are. But it turns out that the little bristlecones and aspens that grow around the fringes of their range may outdo them. I feel like there's a parable in there somewhere!

Also, I live in a wonderful region to have so many ancient tree friends!

 

[Politesse]

If people on average were to live to 100 and assume the current level of procreation, we'd all die of the diseases and oxygen deprivation caused by overpopulation.

A worthy concern, though overpopulation is most often a pragmatic response to low life expectancies and high infant mortality; nations with a high measure of longevity tend also be those with comparatively slow birth rates. So it might be a problem that solves itself. In my nation, we nearly doubled our average lifespan during the 20th century, but our birthrate is at its lowest point in recorded history.

 

[Mindmaster]

Prolonged life span means a higher population, which could prove troubling if we do not address capitalism's inability to halt birth rates to a sustainable rate.

I see no issue on an individual level with expanding life span, so long as the people are conscious and happy.

This assertion doesn't make sense - more living healthy people will always yield an almost equal amount of production that is required to sustain them. In fact, we're so good at this that most people actually produce much more than they need themselves. If anything, we will just have a much more successful economy that will have even more wisdom to pull from in a crisis.

Most of the modern day maladies will be remedied soon, either through cybernetic style replacements, bio-engineered replacement parts, or simply removed from your DNA via modification before you even develop a condition. 100 year old people could be as functional as someone in their mid-thirties now, and that is CLOSE at hand... We will literally see this in our lifetimes, more people your age than mine... But, it'll happen - we're adding about 10 years to the life span every 30 years we go so we're about 50 years from "everyone lives to 100"... That's not a long time.

 

[Mindmaster]

That's fair.

I guess I was assuming people would probably still be forced by their physical aging into retirement at around the same age as they retire now. Perhaps that is incorrect.

In the USA, the retirement age is moving up... There are actually financial incentives to do so as well, since social security pays bonus money for every year you wait past 65.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

As a geeky nerd, transhumanism is a fascinating topic to me. I also enjoy the philosophies and questions it forces us to acknowledge, such as what does it mean to be a human? When does something begin and cease being a human?
But, as for life extension is such drastic ways, it would be extremely dangerous to do unless we address a number of other issues first, such as overpopulation, water access, sufficient food, and sustainable living and economies. Unless we take care of such things first, then having us live very long past our natural expiration date will probably damn the human race to extinction faster than anything else we have going on.

 

[Politesse]

As a geeky nerd, transhumanism is a fascinating topic to me. I also enjoy the philosophies and questions it forces us to acknowledge, such as what does it mean to be a human? When does something begin and cease being a human?
But, as for life extension is such drastic ways, it would be extremely dangerous to do unless we address a number of other issues first, such as overpopulation, water access, sufficient food, and sustainable living and economies. Unless we take care of such things first, then having us live very long past our natural expiration date will probably damn the human race to extinction faster than anything else we have going on.

By those metrics, most living humans are doomed now.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

By those metrics, most living humans are doomed now.

I don't disagree with that. I'm just holding out on a shred of hope that we can improve things before there is nothing left for us to do except die off and go extinct.

 

[Revoltingest]

I'm working on more short term goals.
I managed to hit 64 this year.
Shooting for 65 next year.

 

[Brickjectivity]

A super interesting video about how old the oldest current living people are, oldest living tree, how through medicine and science we are living longer, and the perception of time to a human.

Do you believe that the extension of a lifespan through medicine and science is good? What if people lived to 200? A miracle of science or an abnormality? And a very far flung question: What if humans had Negligible Senescence? What would humanity be like? Death still exists, but we do not die from old age.

I think it's rather fantastic, people can gain the ability to experience more things

I am not a doctor.

The #1 obstacle is not genetic age but our rapid growth rate and the delicate balance of chemicals our bodies produce. After birth we experience rapid growth, during which time our bodies are extremely comfortable and healthy; but then our bodies have to stop growing larger. That is when problems start. The question of how to extend life is the question of how to manage zero growth. The Methusela tree and the Hydra have not solved this problem. They avoid the problem by continual growth which their simple bodies have no problem with. In our bodies the processes that regulate life are integrated with those which regulate growth, so stopping growth disrupts processes that regulate life. Current life extension programs focus on keeping the growth going using carticosteroids and other steroids, but they cannot address the underlying problem that the growth must stop. For example what happens if your knuckles continue to grow larger? You get arthritis. Its very likely that many age related problems come from excessive growth and excessive production after the body has reached full maturity.

Our brains are not as plastic as they could be. That means if you want to live 200 or 300 years you have to find a way to improve their plasticity. Otherwise by age 150 you probably won't be able to learn much new information. Most likely the solution is to over time increase the amount of brain energy available; slowly amping up the voltage to match the resistance created by life's learning process and allowing more definition in the ruts already cut into the scaffolds of neurons. This would probably require either some invasive electrical procedures or some genetic tampering. Yuck!

Then there is the 'Squeaky Wheel' problem. Our bodies take extreme measures to fix tiny injuries, unlike some other species. If a lizard loses its arm, a whole new arm grows in its place; but if a person loses an arm the wound scars over. Similar unfortunate things happen as you get older where instead of managing age problems your body fights against them like they were immediate threats to your life. Again arthritis is an example. You could say that old age problems altogether are like a great big scar instead of the fresh new arm that you'd prefer. Your body has to stop growing (due to weight, pressure and strength limits), yet your body still requires regulation. The resulting mismatches in production create crises which then trigger large responses in your body which are themselves problematic.

Because of this, some science fiction writers, have suggested that life extension would be easiest to implement before puberty. By stopping the development of the body there, maybe we can better manage growth at a much slower rate. This of course would require horrible unethical experiments -- unless you could simulate in a computer the progress of a body without actually experimenting upon a person.

So...I guess its nice that we have supercomputers and that they are getting faster. Maybe we can figure out how to simulate the bodily processes enough to learn how to extend life naturally and without anyone being tempted to try horrible experiments.