And hundreds of people reached the rarefied ranks of the supercentenarians — aged 110 or older — although demographers have validated the records of only a fraction of them.
Um, yes. A few years ago, the city government of Tokyo sent people to visit everyone who reported an age over 100, to see what they were doing right. What they found was a lot of pension fraud. "To date, the authorities have been unable to find more than 281 Japanese who had been listed in records as 100 years old or older."[1]
Only Loma Linda seems like it might not be the result of fraud — and that’s only because it’s a haven for a kooky religion.
The whole life-extension thing is funny. I wonder if people realize what the world is going to be like 70+ years from now and how miserable it’s going to be for anyone over 100 who’s not rich? I think about my 95 year old grandma stuck inside the past 2 years because of COVID. I honestly think if I was that age I would have rather died in 2019 than be alive today.
My grandparents are now 95 and 96 (just shy of their 75th wedding anniversary). They are wonderful people, but it is clear that life is hard for them now. They have chronic pain and nothing can really be done about it. They have very limited opportunities for enjoyment or activity.
Watching them, and also my mother struggle with health issues at 73, has really changed my perspective on aging. I am very focused on enjoying my health now (at 47). Some people are spry and enjoying life up to their early 90s (my grandparents), but some experience health declines much earlier.
The stoic idea that "there will be a last time for everything" in your life (last time you go for a jog, last hike in the mountains, last time you can move without pain, last time you can travel, etc etc) is how I think about aging. I really try to enjoy the physical health I have now, and keep in mind that it will not last forever.
My parents are like that in their 80s. They now respond to things like, "time is short, if there's anything you wanted to do, do it" with "that time has passed for us." It struck me as characteristic of their accidental lifelong stoicism.
It's sobering and makes it really hard to continue working in middle age.
I have a gut feeling that as physical medicine has advanced faster than neuro or psychiatric medicine, people will live long enough to want to die, and euthanasia (self or pre arranged) will become acceptable, even normal.
I would choose to give my children financial benefits instead of years of late life medicine, even if I could afford to live over 100.
Dr. Sinclair's book Lifespan (https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...) talks about extending the health span of people. I've been personally taking 1g/day of NMN for almost 3 years now, and I feel like aging has paused or is going backwards slowly.
That's where my grandparents are right now. They retired in their early 60s, and they have a solid income between ss, pension, and 401k, but their healthcare takes up more-and-more of that money and they still struggle with their health. And just what have they done with their 30-odd years since they retired? They didn’t travel, pick up new hobbies, or finish their educations.
Retirement isn’t my goal. I want to work full-time until my late 70s, and die in my early-to-mid-80s at the latest. In the meantime, I’ll spend my money flying, traveling, and on my apartment and a fast car.
Eventually we will fix all these issues. The only deaths will be freak accidents or killings/suicides. Youth forever. We're less than a hundred years away from that kind of tech, I believe.
I remember my grandpa in the hospital after it was deemed surgery was unlikely to succeed and he decided to try to sit up which seemed to be quite difficult/painful and he says “well that’s the last time I sit up”. And he was correct.
There's an old quip that the greatest correlation for a country to have supercentenarians is them not issuing proper documentation at birth 120 years ago.
So yeah, currently there's a hard limit - around 100, more or less, but with life seldom being worth living after 90. I really wish we'd start investing in breaking this. I'll happen at some point, the only question is when, and I'd think it's obvious why we'd want it earlier rather than later. But some facet of our psychology makes it very hard to think about this in hopeful ways.
> with life seldom being worth living after 90. I really wish we'd start investing in breaking this. I'll happen at some point
What does that end up looking like though, Logans Run? :D
I can't see a voluntary version of it working because of the very psychological issue you mention, we are inherently self preserving creatures in all but the most unbearable conditions. The other thing with these very personal choices, is that you just don't know until you get there - how do you or I really know if life is not worth living after 90, personally? we haven't experienced it.
I remember my Grandfather, when he was younger, specifically saying he'd rather die than live with a certain disease he saw some other people getting - which wouldn't seem like an unreasonable opinion to most people. Yet after gradually developing the very same disease later in life he certainly was not of the same opinion while he was still lucid... That stuck with me, it's easy to speculate about things you haven't personally experienced, and easy to be wrong about your own state of mind in that situation.
There will be people who comes out to say we shouldn't do this because it means dictators will live longer or that old people will remains in power longer, as if old people are a blight on society.
I would consider it good news if old people had to live with their decisions and problems they created instead of leaving it to the next generation.
I don’t think the point of living beyond 100 years old is the years that come after you are 90 (pretty bad years), but that one has more “nice” years to live. Example:
- average person who dies at 80. Middle point in his life at 40. At 20 the person has already lived a 1/4 of his life.
- imagine a supercentenarian who dies at, for the sake of examples, 120. This person at his 60s is like the average person at his 40s! If we consider that for the average person his “sweet years” end at 35, a supercentenarian’s sweet years end at 51!
Please explain to me and try to convince me why we should. I’m serious, I just can’t understand why extending our individual lifespan should be a goal of our age, instead of focusing on making our life much better when it’s more worth living.
If you haven't experienced it yet, I highly recommend you check out 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future [0]. It explores what happens if humans stop aging/dying/being born, narrated by a few cheeky, sentient space probes.
In a Wondrium lecture on genetics and evolution, this question was also discussed. A compelling (but unproven) explanation for our “age limit” is that any genetic trait that improves your chances before reproduction at the cost of your chances after reproduction (and raising your offspring) will benefit your genes and thus will “win” in the long run. If this is an important effect, it will be very hard to defeat.
It's pretty intuitive to also consider limits on lifespan as a function of conserving resources on a family or tribal level. At a certain point, the utility a population could gain from labor or knowledge of older members is outweighed by the burden of taking care of them and providing for them.
I remember reading a book (Protector, by Larry Niven[0]), in which the protagonist (a "proto-Belter"), eats a sweet potato, turns into an ugly-ass duck, and lives forever.
After about 25,000 years or so, his brain becomes "full," and he can't remember stuff, anymore.
[DISCLAIMER: It's been a long time since I read the book, so some liberty has been taken in the Cliff's Notes version]
If we consider the average lifespan as say 80 years old, I find it quite interesting that no single human ever has achieved even close to twice that age.
>> find it quite interesting that no single human ever has achieved even close to [160 years].
Human mortality varies widely, but one relationship seems constant: death rate increases exponentially with age. A mortality table from 2011 shows males age 40 have a death rate of 2.1 per thousand; at age 100 the death rate is 357.9 per thousand. That's an increase of a factor of 170 over 60 years, or about 9% per year. Mortality graphs are almost straight lines on semilog plots. Different groups (men versus women, different countries, etc.) show different y-intercepts but the slopes of all these mortality curves is about the same.
From this we can deduce that males aged 104 (in this sample) have about a 50% chance of dying within the next year: another way of saying their life expectancy is 1 year. Mortality rates which increase 9% a year, will double in 8 years. So a male aged 112 will have a life expectancy of 6 months. At age 120, 3 months. And so on.
That's why we don't see many humans older than 110 or so, and why no one has lived past 130.
Well, we already have a lot of medical interventions that skew our species' "normal", pre-civilizational population tree towards something never seen in nature.
In a Stone Age society you would definitely find people twice as old as their group's average lifespan. But that average lifespan would be rather low.
Extending life is a fantasy of the middle-aged who are still feeling great and imagine it forever.
You won't get it until you pass a certain year, where like an old car, things suddenly start failing one at a time where everything was fine for years.
Diseases, illnesses like Covid can cause radical aging, one year you are turning 55 but Covid now makes it like you are 65 because all your organs, body and brain have been stressed and damage beyond self-repair.
And endless common problems have no cure, ie. Raynalds, Small-Fiber Neuropathy, no cures, no prevention, many people get them when they are older.
Quantity of life is meaningless without quality of life.
We may reach a point where many people live past 100 but that will be because they are genetically engineered from birth to have great health.
We've only had organ transplants for 60 years. I'd like to know how far we could push it in a world where we have a donor organ pool grown to order and a preventative approach to organ replacement.
Take the guy with a pig heart and extend that tech 60 years out, then take the richest man on earth who will spare no expense for him and his statistically significant pool of people willing to undergo this experiment with him. The brain and circulatory system and are going to be some of the limiting factors to this approach, but in my uneducated opinion would have a good shot at creating the oldest people to live, albeit with a high dropout rate.
I don't understand how this is in any way baffling. There were plenty of humans around for people to observe when the bible was being written, and some of them probably lived to be quite old.
Consider another translation: “And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” (Genesis 6:3, KJV).
This verse is not specifying a maximum human lifespan, but the period of probation in which God's spirit would strive or plead with mankind before their judgment by the Flood. This is the period during which “the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing” (1 Peter 3:20).
Genesis records numerous descendents of Noah who lived longer than 120 years (see Gen. 11:10-25). Lifespans did decline rapidly after the Flood, however, and it was recorded in Psalms that “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (Psalms 90:10).
Even today with our advanced medical knowledge and technology, life expectancy is still typically between 75-85 years.
Doesn't DNA have a halflife of like 512 years? I imagine if every cell in the body affected by that there isn't a way to prevent it all from destabilizing by that point.
Presumably that doesn't apply if your cells are continuously reproducing creating new copies of DNA. In some sense your DNA comes from your parents and extending back through those lineages has lasted vastly longer than 512 years.
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
Um, yes. A few years ago, the city government of Tokyo sent people to visit everyone who reported an age over 100, to see what they were doing right. What they found was a lot of pension fraud. "To date, the authorities have been unable to find more than 281 Japanese who had been listed in records as 100 years old or older."[1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15japan.html
[+] [-] paulcole|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_zone
Only Loma Linda seems like it might not be the result of fraud — and that’s only because it’s a haven for a kooky religion.
The whole life-extension thing is funny. I wonder if people realize what the world is going to be like 70+ years from now and how miserable it’s going to be for anyone over 100 who’s not rich? I think about my 95 year old grandma stuck inside the past 2 years because of COVID. I honestly think if I was that age I would have rather died in 2019 than be alive today.
[+] [-] ttcbj|4 years ago|reply
Watching them, and also my mother struggle with health issues at 73, has really changed my perspective on aging. I am very focused on enjoying my health now (at 47). Some people are spry and enjoying life up to their early 90s (my grandparents), but some experience health declines much earlier.
The stoic idea that "there will be a last time for everything" in your life (last time you go for a jog, last hike in the mountains, last time you can move without pain, last time you can travel, etc etc) is how I think about aging. I really try to enjoy the physical health I have now, and keep in mind that it will not last forever.
[+] [-] foobiekr|4 years ago|reply
It's sobering and makes it really hard to continue working in middle age.
[+] [-] e40|4 years ago|reply
Yeah, I'd rather money be put into quality rather than quantity of life.
[+] [-] imagin8or|4 years ago|reply
I would choose to give my children financial benefits instead of years of late life medicine, even if I could afford to live over 100.
[+] [-] henryw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starwind|4 years ago|reply
Retirement isn’t my goal. I want to work full-time until my late 70s, and die in my early-to-mid-80s at the latest. In the meantime, I’ll spend my money flying, traveling, and on my apartment and a fast car.
[+] [-] bufferoverflow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gigachad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radu_floricica|4 years ago|reply
So yeah, currently there's a hard limit - around 100, more or less, but with life seldom being worth living after 90. I really wish we'd start investing in breaking this. I'll happen at some point, the only question is when, and I'd think it's obvious why we'd want it earlier rather than later. But some facet of our psychology makes it very hard to think about this in hopeful ways.
[+] [-] tomxor|4 years ago|reply
What does that end up looking like though, Logans Run? :D
I can't see a voluntary version of it working because of the very psychological issue you mention, we are inherently self preserving creatures in all but the most unbearable conditions. The other thing with these very personal choices, is that you just don't know until you get there - how do you or I really know if life is not worth living after 90, personally? we haven't experienced it.
I remember my Grandfather, when he was younger, specifically saying he'd rather die than live with a certain disease he saw some other people getting - which wouldn't seem like an unreasonable opinion to most people. Yet after gradually developing the very same disease later in life he certainly was not of the same opinion while he was still lucid... That stuck with me, it's easy to speculate about things you haven't personally experienced, and easy to be wrong about your own state of mind in that situation.
[+] [-] kiba|4 years ago|reply
I would consider it good news if old people had to live with their decisions and problems they created instead of leaving it to the next generation.
[+] [-] tkiolp4|4 years ago|reply
- average person who dies at 80. Middle point in his life at 40. At 20 the person has already lived a 1/4 of his life.
- imagine a supercentenarian who dies at, for the sake of examples, 120. This person at his 60s is like the average person at his 40s! If we consider that for the average person his “sweet years” end at 35, a supercentenarian’s sweet years end at 51!
[+] [-] camillomiller|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temp0826|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
[+] [-] jasonladuke0311|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shlant|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superjan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qvrjuec|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|4 years ago|reply
After about 25,000 years or so, his brain becomes "full," and he can't remember stuff, anymore.
[DISCLAIMER: It's been a long time since I read the book, so some liberty has been taken in the Cliff's Notes version]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_(novel)
[+] [-] thechao|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mongol|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gshubert17|4 years ago|reply
Human mortality varies widely, but one relationship seems constant: death rate increases exponentially with age. A mortality table from 2011 shows males age 40 have a death rate of 2.1 per thousand; at age 100 the death rate is 357.9 per thousand. That's an increase of a factor of 170 over 60 years, or about 9% per year. Mortality graphs are almost straight lines on semilog plots. Different groups (men versus women, different countries, etc.) show different y-intercepts but the slopes of all these mortality curves is about the same.
From this we can deduce that males aged 104 (in this sample) have about a 50% chance of dying within the next year: another way of saying their life expectancy is 1 year. Mortality rates which increase 9% a year, will double in 8 years. So a male aged 112 will have a life expectancy of 6 months. At age 120, 3 months. And so on.
That's why we don't see many humans older than 110 or so, and why no one has lived past 130.
[+] [-] throwaway81523|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inglor_cz|4 years ago|reply
In a Stone Age society you would definitely find people twice as old as their group's average lifespan. But that average lifespan would be rather low.
[+] [-] lawlorino|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|4 years ago|reply
You won't get it until you pass a certain year, where like an old car, things suddenly start failing one at a time where everything was fine for years.
Diseases, illnesses like Covid can cause radical aging, one year you are turning 55 but Covid now makes it like you are 65 because all your organs, body and brain have been stressed and damage beyond self-repair.
And endless common problems have no cure, ie. Raynalds, Small-Fiber Neuropathy, no cures, no prevention, many people get them when they are older.
Quantity of life is meaningless without quality of life.
We may reach a point where many people live past 100 but that will be because they are genetically engineered from birth to have great health.
Doesn't help we are poisoning the water and air, willingly and openly, not in third world countries but right here in USA like Texas: https://www.fastcompany.com/90692691/this-super-detailed-map...
[+] [-] piyh|4 years ago|reply
Take the guy with a pig heart and extend that tech 60 years out, then take the richest man on earth who will spare no expense for him and his statistically significant pool of people willing to undergo this experiment with him. The brain and circulatory system and are going to be some of the limiting factors to this approach, but in my uneducated opinion would have a good shot at creating the oldest people to live, albeit with a high dropout rate.
[+] [-] nnoitra|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|4 years ago|reply
By the time we have consistent birth records we will also have better treatments for chronic diseases.
There is likely an upper limit, as I believe oxygen itself is corrosive, but even then a gradual but more comprehensive repair process should help.
[+] [-] FL33TW00D|4 years ago|reply
'My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh; his days shall be a hundred and twenty years' (Gen. 6:3).
As a non Christian this always baffles me.
[+] [-] okl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicoburns|4 years ago|reply
I don't understand how this is in any way baffling. There were plenty of humans around for people to observe when the bible was being written, and some of them probably lived to be quite old.
[+] [-] acchow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theodorejb|4 years ago|reply
This verse is not specifying a maximum human lifespan, but the period of probation in which God's spirit would strive or plead with mankind before their judgment by the Flood. This is the period during which “the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing” (1 Peter 3:20).
Genesis records numerous descendents of Noah who lived longer than 120 years (see Gen. 11:10-25). Lifespans did decline rapidly after the Flood, however, and it was recorded in Psalms that “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (Psalms 90:10).
Even today with our advanced medical knowledge and technology, life expectancy is still typically between 75-85 years.
[+] [-] amriksohata|4 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga_Cycle
[+] [-] Madmallard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ALittleLight|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BenjiWiebe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mgh2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] layer8|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egberts1|4 years ago|reply
So, it’s probably like 250 years with intensive DNA repair effort.
[+] [-] anamexis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve76|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] black_13|4 years ago|reply
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