Geriatric simulation is interesting, but couldn't this also be applied to pediatric simulation for improved vision, hearing, strength and endurance? I don't see any show stoppers preventing the development of a youth-augmentation exosuit blending AR sensory augmentation, powered exoskeleton support, haptics, and AI adaptive controls.
My dad is 85 and this article hits hard about what he fights going on in his body. What sucks is how much of a downward, self reinforcing spiral it all is. It's so hard to see the curbs to walk over or how to get to a thing himself, so he just naturally chooses to do fewer and fewer things. Watching TV is safer and kinder and becomes the default to anything. Which just makes his brain less and less stimulated and active, and you can imagine the drag that adds to keep figuring out life.
But like the empathy found in this article, it's caused me to be incredibly more patient with anyone struggling to walk in front of me on a crowded or narrow sidewalk.
Aging is rough. Thank you to everyone working on accessibility and aging related tech and science.
Beyond the obvious (medical care, accessibility, etc), I think technology has a huge amount of untapped potential to make the end of our lives a lot more bearable, and a lot less lonely. TV is one thing - and whether it's a net good or not has been discussed to death, so I won't here - but I wonder how video games might be used. They're a lot more engaging - both generally and cognitively - than TV, you can build and achieve things and feel a sense of accomplishment (yeah yeah pride and accomplishment), there are communities around them, you can play with your family, etc. Even online board and card games would be an option. Have you ever considered showing your dad some simple games?
My parents have similar issues due to hearing loss, it really makes any kind of social interaction a chore which results in a similar spiral. For years I've wanted to try to make, or hope someone else would make, a set of AR glasses that's purely focused on providing accurate real-time subtitles, no other gimmicks or features that might affect the wearability/usability. I think that's the biggest QOL boost most old folks would get from a single product, and it seems much more realistically feasible than other potential QOL solutions like robotics, but I wouldn't know where to start with building it. As a bonus, it would just need an LLM/Google Translate hookup to become an amazing travel tool.
Aging is rough. I feel for you. My parents are a bit younger but I'm starting to pick up on things that make me realize they're getting older. Thanks for sharing
If you want to see what you will look like when you're older, stand in a spot and jump up and down repeatedly. Take photos (or pause a video recording) right at the moment after the lowest part of your jump. The upward acceleration will make your skin sag the way gravity will as your collagen weakens over decades.
But then again, by the time you're older you might look younger than you do now, e.g. "Ageing changes our genes – epigenetic atlas gives clearest picture yet (nature.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095532 (from the other day, no comments yet)
One thing you have to experience to really get it, that cannot be simulated with a mechanical suit or transmitted through words, is all the f-ing little aches you get past a certain point. I´m now convinced it is this that makes older people cranky. Some days, my body is just constantly in a low but annoying pain somewhere, and it seems in increasingly weird, obscure places you never even thought about. I dont even remember when or how it started but although I would be considered fit by most people, now I have to watch my running, otherwise ITBS, I have to watch my pull exercises, otherwise shoulder impingement syndrome, I have to watch my dips, otherwise elbows, hell even after just _sleeping_ I have to roll and stretch my neck out because it hurts just from lying apparently. I used to scoff about warmup, now I take it really, really seriously. "Going with the flow" of the moment, instead of sticking to a carefully dosed plan? That´s for young bodies! Thankfully I can still use my full range of motion everywhere but Im acutely aware now how quickly it can all go away and how long any overuse or even minor injury now costs me in recovery.
Getting older has its benefits too but mostly mental, in physical terms I cannot think of a single benefit.
One of my professors in undergrad pioneered research into the eldery’s interaction with the world. Not just the physiological, but sociological aspects — she got a makeup artist to disguise herself.
Awful idea #1: If you are one of those advanced-age president-dictator of a big super-power, you know, one of those guys that get caught in a hot mic talking about immortality, you could seal your pact with the devil by forcing anybody in your big chunk of the planet who doesn’t ace their STEM topics to wear one of these suits. Who knows, maybe if the youth get properly scared of their old age, they will stop being a subversive thorn and instead focus on fixing the ending of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Awful idea #2: Just listen to your grandmother when you are young. She will tell you how brutal is to be old. Read the science, not just biology but all the connected sciences, specially mathematics. And then listen to the priests (critically!), and read the writers, and peruse the written record of the human civilization, which almost begins with the Epic of Gilgamesh. It will reveal shadows you didn’t know were in your mind. None of it, of course, prevents you from becoming old, but it puts most things into perspective, and it digs out a certain light that we have lost and which we very much need if we are ever going to do anything about the suffering that aging brings.
Awful idea #3: Take a shortcut and paste everything I wrote before this paragraph into an LLM. Any LLM which is reasonably state of the art. Prompt with “what’s the meaning of this?” It will significantly change the intended meaning of what I said in “awful idea #2”. That’s the bias/zeitgeist in our vast cultural recent corpus, that the LLMs swallowed for training, being regurgitated at you in condensed form. And they said that LLMs aren’t useful! Repeat the experiment, but this time use Simplified Chinese to prompt. Observe the very slight cultural drift. Meditate. Now abandon this shortcut and execute awful idea #2. Borrow somebody else’s grandmother if you must.
From what I recall, there are retirement homes (the examples I'm thinking of are in Asia) that make use of these suits in their onboarding processes, where they need to wear these suits for a few hours to understand some of the challenges their patients experience, and develop empathy when they can't walk as fast or do things that we'd expect in short order.
I would love to see more widespread adoption of these suits in training and employee onboarding in these facilities, mostly because if I'm in that situation or I want to think about a retirement home for my family members, I'd want to see that no one is losing their temper because my mom can't sprint 12km/hr to the elevators for breakfast.
This being said, anecdotally, it seems elder abuse is more the norm, simply because of compassion fatigue, so I suspect that even in however many years time, I'll be punched by a PSW for no good reason.
I tried on an obesity simulation suit once. It was designed for caregivers - with the goal of increasing empathy in mind. It was amazing how difficult ordinary tasks were.
The site is slow so I can't see it. I'm 68, eat well, lost 20 pounds, work out twice a week. Everything is working fine. But I live in a place surrounded by people in walkers, wheelchairs, or using canes. Some of them have had strokes or accidents making improvement hard, but many simply chose to not do anything to avoid the aging. You don't ordinarily wind up with a walker at a single point; it often starts many years or even decades earlier when you failed to keep in decent physical shape. I almost started too late (last couple of years), I can see how easy it is to not notice your physical being slowly going down. But assuming no major injury or disease, you can improve your body at almost any age, a little at a time, and avoid or at least postpone physical aging for quite a while.
I also write code daily, read the same things I read when I worked, thus keep my brain going too. You can't ignore body or mind, you have to keep both in tune.
I am still getting older, but I am in better shape than I was before I retired. The last time I felt as fit was when I was still playing basketball 30+ years ago.
Don't wait, it's easier to do a little for decades than wait until it's almost too late.
Reminds me of the AGNES [0] (Age Gain Now Empathy System), developed at MIT AgeLab. Saw it in action there back when I worked at the lab in the early 10s - I found the broad range of applications in research quite intriguing.
I guess I'm the only one who thought this was literally a joke. If anyone is interested I have the orange tinted 90's ski goggles, weights for arms and legs, and I'll even throw in some mothballs and baby powder no additional charge.
Do people really need something this extravagant not too mention ridiculous looking in order to just relate to other humans? In order to empathize? Is it so hard to "take someone's word" for how they feel, that we need to feel it too? I've never had a Kidney Stone in my life, and I'm not signing up for one because I don't need to "see it to believe it."
But if it sells I say Kudos to the creator. I'm just shocked there's a niche here.
43 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 93.3 ms ] thread- Powered exoskeletons aren't quite "there"
- If moving at all is painful, having an exoskeleton move you will also be painful
- Haptics and AR aren't quite there either
- Batteries, it's always batteries
GERT: Bigger than the iPhone.
But like the empathy found in this article, it's caused me to be incredibly more patient with anyone struggling to walk in front of me on a crowded or narrow sidewalk.
Aging is rough. Thank you to everyone working on accessibility and aging related tech and science.
I know it comes for everyone, but the pace of said spiral is frightening.
Wish we were in a timeframe with more alternatives for rapid loss of mobility and muscle.
But then again, by the time you're older you might look younger than you do now, e.g. "Ageing changes our genes – epigenetic atlas gives clearest picture yet (nature.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095532 (from the other day, no comments yet)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m3wljWlAVss
Getting older has its benefits too but mostly mental, in physical terms I cannot think of a single benefit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Moore
Awful idea #2: Just listen to your grandmother when you are young. She will tell you how brutal is to be old. Read the science, not just biology but all the connected sciences, specially mathematics. And then listen to the priests (critically!), and read the writers, and peruse the written record of the human civilization, which almost begins with the Epic of Gilgamesh. It will reveal shadows you didn’t know were in your mind. None of it, of course, prevents you from becoming old, but it puts most things into perspective, and it digs out a certain light that we have lost and which we very much need if we are ever going to do anything about the suffering that aging brings.
Awful idea #3: Take a shortcut and paste everything I wrote before this paragraph into an LLM. Any LLM which is reasonably state of the art. Prompt with “what’s the meaning of this?” It will significantly change the intended meaning of what I said in “awful idea #2”. That’s the bias/zeitgeist in our vast cultural recent corpus, that the LLMs swallowed for training, being regurgitated at you in condensed form. And they said that LLMs aren’t useful! Repeat the experiment, but this time use Simplified Chinese to prompt. Observe the very slight cultural drift. Meditate. Now abandon this shortcut and execute awful idea #2. Borrow somebody else’s grandmother if you must.
I would love to see more widespread adoption of these suits in training and employee onboarding in these facilities, mostly because if I'm in that situation or I want to think about a retirement home for my family members, I'd want to see that no one is losing their temper because my mom can't sprint 12km/hr to the elevators for breakfast.
This being said, anecdotally, it seems elder abuse is more the norm, simply because of compassion fatigue, so I suspect that even in however many years time, I'll be punched by a PSW for no good reason.
I also write code daily, read the same things I read when I worked, thus keep my brain going too. You can't ignore body or mind, you have to keep both in tune.
I am still getting older, but I am in better shape than I was before I retired. The last time I felt as fit was when I was still playing basketball 30+ years ago.
Don't wait, it's easier to do a little for decades than wait until it's almost too late.
[0]: https://agelab.mit.edu/methods/agnes-age-gain-now-empathy-sy...
Do people really need something this extravagant not too mention ridiculous looking in order to just relate to other humans? In order to empathize? Is it so hard to "take someone's word" for how they feel, that we need to feel it too? I've never had a Kidney Stone in my life, and I'm not signing up for one because I don't need to "see it to believe it."
But if it sells I say Kudos to the creator. I'm just shocked there's a niche here.