[Zirro]

I believe that we will see significant advances in lifespan-increasing research over the next hundred years, barring any major disasters affecting humanity. Old models and expectations for calculating death can no longer be relied upon.

Most of the people alive today will probably (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your world view) be among the last generations to die from what we currently consider natural causes.

[onion2k]

That may be true, but I'm skeptical. Most of the advances we make are in causes of death that would lead you to die before you're at an advanced age - extending someone's life from 45 to 90 is a matter of stopping them dying from a disease or a cancer. Extending life from 90 to 100 is a matter of mitigating ageing processes where your body literally can't support itself any more. The two things (curing disease versus curing aging) are two very different realms of medicine. We've made a lot more progress in the former than the latter.

I don't doubt that it will happen, but I do doubt the timescales involved. Possibly children alive today will benefit from these advances, but 'most people alive today' seems unlikely.

[Zirro]

I believe you misunderstood the last sentence of my post, since we seem to be in agreement. I also say that most people alive today will probably not benefit from the advances.

[hydrogen18]

This notion seems to be as old as humanity. It's built on some inner hope that mortality can be outsmarted and escaped.

Back in the real world, we can't even agree as a society what level of healthcare should be afforded to all members vs. what level you have to earn.

The greatest advancements in life extension in recent years have only added more years of horribly low quality life. I don't want to die, but I am going to. Why should I invest my resources to spend years suffering?

[msabalau]

Generally speaking, we are actually reducing the amount of time people spend suffering, while at the same time extending peoples lives. From the 2013 NBER working paper "Evidence for Significant Compression of Morbidity In the Elderly U.S. Population":

"For a typical person aged 65, life expectancy increased by 0.7 years between 1992 and 2005. Disability-free life expectancy increased by 1.6 years; disabled life expectancy fell by 0.9 years.

"The reduction in disabled life expectancy and increase in disability-free life expectancy is true for both genders and for non-whites as well as whites. Hence, morbidity is being compressed into the period just before death."

And, given that part of the low quality of life at end of life comes from two thirds of people not thinking through and documenting their wishes for care, one can improve one's personal odds by creating and advanced health care directive. And of course, many of the things that we dislike about old age result from chronic conditions that can be addressed through good nutrition and exercise.

So, good news, end of life isn't as bad as you fear!

[farresito]

They have added years of lower quality of life because they have focused on the wrong thing. I doubt, no matter how much research we do, that we will get a higher than 100-120 life expectancy unless we focus on actually reversing aging, instead of spending money on curing all the diseases that come with aging. It's not very smart. Aubrey de grey has some very good talks about it.