I see a lot of people thinking, or at least hoping, that they’ll live for hundreds of years, if not forever. They use the “exponential growth” idea and the “longevity escape velocity” theory as arguments, and use those to convince themselves that they will personally get to benefit from significant life extension.
But tbh, this doesn’t stack up against the opinions of actual experts that i’ve seen. They all know how hard biology and medicine are. They all know the numerous challenges we face, and the complexities and the ins and outs of the aging process. And all of them say that the likelihood of significant life extension, let alone living past 120+, in our lifetimes is vanishingly small. None of them will tell you that biology is “growing exponentially” or “increasing rapidly”, biology is notorious for how slow it moves.
Longevity escape velocity, or LEV, is also an idea i see get thrown around a lot. It’s basically the idea that at a certain point in time, a treatment will come out that will extend your lifespan by, lets say 5 years, and in those 5 years there will be another treatment that extends it by, say, another 5 years, and so on. But this, putting it nicely, is complete horseshit. First of all, biology is, again, notorious for just how slow it moves. There is no scenario in which it will suddenly just magically fall into place and grant functional immortality, at least not in our lifetimes. And second, new medicines take time to develop. They need to be tested to prove their safety and efficacy. And if for example a new drug extended someones lifespan by 5 years, as mentioned earlier, that would take at least 5 years to quantify and measure. You unfortunately could not just assume that it will definitely extend lifespan, or just release it to the general public without the proper timeframes for tests, safety checks, etc. No doctor worth their salt would ever do that. So no, i do not believe that LEV is at all possible or realistic. I would love to be proven wrong tho.
Take something like heart disease for example. This is a relatively simple thing to understand. It’s essentially a heart that is either damaged, functioning at less than 100%, or clogged with plaque, LDL or “bad” cholesterol, etc. And yet, the best treatments we have after decades and decades of research is essentially just eating a better diet and hoping it improves. And that’s so much simpler to treat / understand than aging.
And aging research right now is essentially just trying out different chemicals and seeing if they work. I don’t know why “reverse aging in a lab is around the corner” or “aging is cured in mice” are such popular beliefs. They’re not true. The reality is much much more mundane.
I’m not saying you won’t live a healthy life, or that your healthspan won’t improve, but we need to be realistic. The idea that anyone alive today will live a significantly extended lifespan, let alone forever, is frankly absurd.
I see a lot of people thinking, or at least hoping, that they’ll live for hundreds of years, if not forever.
Who? I’ve never heard a single person say this, ever.
They use the “exponential growth” idea and the “longevity escape velocity” theory as arguments
I have never heard anyone bring either of these up, ever.
Longevity escape velocity, or LEV, is also an idea i see get thrown around a lot.
By who? What even is that besides a sci-fi thought experiment?
Who? I’ve never heard a single person say this, ever.
Reddit and in particular r/singularity are filled with them
I have never heard anyone bring either of these up, ever. By who? What even is that besides a sci-fi thought experiment?
See my previous response
The term “singularity” in this context was popularized by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes of the singularity. Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity to occur around 2045 whereas Vinge predicts some time before 2030.
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Yeah you made a lengthy argument about “lots of people” saying they’re going to live for hundreds of years and are saying you found these people on a science fiction subreddit
I do not.
While there has been a huge increase in the quality of life for people past 60ish.
None of the research or advancements I have seen give me any indication we have made a dent in the seeming genetic hard stop for humans at ~120 years.
I also have seen nothing that indicates we have been able to reverse the effects of aging, only slow their effects.
None of the research or advancements I have seen give me any indication we have made a dent in the seeming genetic hard stop for humans at ~120 years.
Yep, exactly this.
I also have seen nothing that indicates we have been able to reverse the effects of aging, only slow their effects.
Yep.
I don’t even want to be alive now, and the idea of living longer and longer sounds like hell to me.
Don’t look forward to dying, not gonna happen to people who arent at minimum 10s of millions worth in money.
Guys remember our whole society works and was designed to replace the dying.
We can’t even go green what makes you think we can give everybody eternal life?
If there is such a tech we will get at best eternal dictators or oligarchs, as a most likely scenario
I’m a proponent of not wanting to ever die. Mostly because I just don’t like the thought of just everything for me stopping. That said I’m fortunate to live a very comfortable life. With all that said while I suspect that we’ll see major advancements to extend life further and start seeing people make it to 150 or so I also would remind everyone that the advancements for those life extending things will basically be for the super rich and the average person won’t be able to access them so they can’t really “live longer” anyways. I think that’s the thing people forget when they hear about advancements and breakthroughs.
Most likely what we will see is the average life expectancy going up again and if we’re lucky we will see that number creeping closer to most making it to 85 then another bump at some point to 90.
when I see stories about technological advancements that will actually benefit people, I realize the people they will benefit first are either the hyper-wealthy or the friends of the hyper-wealthy. Space tourism? Flying cars? Robotic eyes? Artificial longevity/Immortality? Please.
I fucking hope not. I have like 20 years left in me tops
Arthur Clarke’s first law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Good point
I think most reasonable people don’t think they’ll live forever, however under 30 many people might unconsciously act like it.
I see a lot of people thinking, or at least hoping, that they’ll live for hundreds of years, if not forever. They use the “exponential growth” idea and the “longevity escape velocity” theory as arguments, and use those to convince themselves that they will personally get to benefit from significant life extension.
However, these people are delusional. I’ve not met anyone like that, thankfully.
There is that one dude, from Sweden I think, a millionaire or whatever who owns some medical companies and he is completely focused on reducing the “biological age” of every part of his body.
Good diet and exercise are key. For example, lignin has been proven to reduce the chance of death in people who have had cancer - typically cancer reducing things have to be taken well before cancer develops to have any sort of an effect, but it’s been shown that women who’ve had breast cancer and then start taking 12mg of lignin a day have an 80% reduced risk of death in 5 years compared to those who don’t. It stands to reason that if you take it before developing cancer you can prevent it. So eat some seeds.
So, there are advancements, and strictly speaking we don’t know what new endeavours might yield, but like you say any proper statistical analysis of lifespans - even if you were to apply an exponential curve to them - wouldn’t lead to people living much past 100 any time soon.
