I think we'll be seeing a lot more 120-150 years as we grow older. I mean think about it, right now we have people who are 100 year old, which means they were born in 1900s, the medicine has made leaps and bounds in the last 40-50 years.
So if we take into account another 40-60 years of R&D, and they are bound to get another 20-50 years out of human bodies.
Ofcourse that doesn't take into account the Mayan end of the world in 2012
We've had exactly one confirmed 120+ in human history, and 90% of 110+ are women, so as a man, I don't think my odds are good at reaching 120, unless radical life extension becomes a reality. (I voted for 80-100, for what it's worth.)
My feeling is that it's all-or-nothing. I see the human life expectancy either plateauing around 90, or shooting off into the stratosphere. The reason for this is that most of the current life expectancy gains come from death reduction, which has occurred across the board in recent decades. But a 50% across-the-board death-rate reduction only buys 8 years, because that's the rate at which a person's mortality doubles. Meaningful life extension requires slowing the aging process itself, and I feel like if that can be done through technological means to any meaningful extent (20% slowdown, meaning that mortality would double every 10 years, or more) it can be stopped and reversed, in which case life expectancy goes to 800+.
I'm 25, and expect to have a normal-ish lifespan around 90, but I think the first 500-year-old will have been born before I die.
well yeah immortality is not really viable, economically. Even if they had it, they wouldn't release it, if they did Earth would get overpopulated in 50-80 years leading to a crisis. Gas shortage and food shortage all over the place
Need to get spaceships and space stations first before we can expand the earth population.
I disagree. Keeping people alive longer without slowing aging would be economically costly, but a cure for aging would be a huge economic boon. Right now, it's a huge cost center for our economy, both in terms of medical expenses for those far down the road, and also the loss of experienced people. I think the economic benefits would offset the population pressure.
Don't forget the role of survivorship bias when looking at old folks. Yeah, anyone born in the 1900s is over 100 years old, but that's because folks who didn't reach 100 years are dead now. ;-)
If you visit an old cemetery, you might be surprised at how many people lived to be 70-90 years old. The popular picture of everyone dying at 40-50 years old just isn't true. Rather, the variance on lifespan was much higher: a lot of people died before age 7, then a few in the prime of their adulthood, then several in their 60s/70s/80s.
I also don't think we'll see much improvement in lifespan over the next 50 years, because the biggest killer these days is stupidity. If you look at ultimate causes of death, the big ones now are 1.) smoking 2.) obesity 3.) alcohol 4.) infectious agents 5.) toxic agents 6.) firearms 7.) sex 8.) cars and 9.) drugs (source: http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/causes.html, about 1/3 down). Of those, all except #4 are completely preventable, we just haven't been able to convince people to prevent them.
You're correct that 70-100 year lifespans are not novel. I think most of the improvement in life expectancy thus far comes from death reduction and very little, if any, from retardation of aging.
Stupidity is not "the biggest killer these days". People who avoid 1-3, 5-6, 9 (and possibly 4, 7, 8) on your list still die, just a decade or two later. Not everyone who gets, say, lung cancer was a smoker. Moreover, a lot of "injury" deaths are due to events like frail old people falling on their staircases and, because their bodies don't recover quickly, dying from their injuries and related complications; this can't really be classified as "stupidity".
Age is obviously the ultimate cause of most deaths.
The recent case of 27 year old British Reality Television star Jade Goody being diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer (http://www.stuff.co.nz/4853891a1860.html) demonstrates how ridiculous this poll is. Sure we might all "expect" to live to be a 100, or maybe upload our brains onto the internet and then live forever, or at least until the heat death of the universe, but somehow Nature ends up having other plans. So of course it is prudent to plan for the future in terms of things like retirement savings, but beyond that, we should not expect anything other than the present. The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that.
Obviously, the nature of death is that it can happen at any time. I could die tomorrow, but I'm not likely to. I'm more interested in HN posters' thoughts and projections regarding the progress of medical technology than in whether they expect to be crushed by a falling piano tomorrow.
I think humans will eventually conquer aging, but not death. Mind uploading seems unlikely, given that we don't know what mind is, nor even whether or not it's physical.
Anticipate and expect are words I do not like thrown out to the span of lifetimes because the random swervings between here and there are enough to defeat improved biological mechanisms. We'd have to radically change how we live to avoid death. Stop flying, stop driving, taking showers.
It's only when we give up all of those things could life spans extend through those centuries. It would take a lot of math to calculate life expectancy with perfect and infinite biological health.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 58.4 ms ] threadSo if we take into account another 40-60 years of R&D, and they are bound to get another 20-50 years out of human bodies.
Ofcourse that doesn't take into account the Mayan end of the world in 2012
My feeling is that it's all-or-nothing. I see the human life expectancy either plateauing around 90, or shooting off into the stratosphere. The reason for this is that most of the current life expectancy gains come from death reduction, which has occurred across the board in recent decades. But a 50% across-the-board death-rate reduction only buys 8 years, because that's the rate at which a person's mortality doubles. Meaningful life extension requires slowing the aging process itself, and I feel like if that can be done through technological means to any meaningful extent (20% slowdown, meaning that mortality would double every 10 years, or more) it can be stopped and reversed, in which case life expectancy goes to 800+.
I'm 25, and expect to have a normal-ish lifespan around 90, but I think the first 500-year-old will have been born before I die.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/08/11/2331197.ht...
However, success in slowing aging is going to come down to success at slowing the failure of the weakest or most fragile part.
Need to get spaceships and space stations first before we can expand the earth population.
If you visit an old cemetery, you might be surprised at how many people lived to be 70-90 years old. The popular picture of everyone dying at 40-50 years old just isn't true. Rather, the variance on lifespan was much higher: a lot of people died before age 7, then a few in the prime of their adulthood, then several in their 60s/70s/80s.
I also don't think we'll see much improvement in lifespan over the next 50 years, because the biggest killer these days is stupidity. If you look at ultimate causes of death, the big ones now are 1.) smoking 2.) obesity 3.) alcohol 4.) infectious agents 5.) toxic agents 6.) firearms 7.) sex 8.) cars and 9.) drugs (source: http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/causes.html, about 1/3 down). Of those, all except #4 are completely preventable, we just haven't been able to convince people to prevent them.
Stupidity is not "the biggest killer these days". People who avoid 1-3, 5-6, 9 (and possibly 4, 7, 8) on your list still die, just a decade or two later. Not everyone who gets, say, lung cancer was a smoker. Moreover, a lot of "injury" deaths are due to events like frail old people falling on their staircases and, because their bodies don't recover quickly, dying from their injuries and related complications; this can't really be classified as "stupidity".
Age is obviously the ultimate cause of most deaths.
I think humans will eventually conquer aging, but not death. Mind uploading seems unlikely, given that we don't know what mind is, nor even whether or not it's physical.
It's only when we give up all of those things could life spans extend through those centuries. It would take a lot of math to calculate life expectancy with perfect and infinite biological health.