How Long Do You Want To Live? 813
Hugh Pickens writes "Since 1900, the life expectancy of Americans, driven by improved hygiene, nutrition, and new medical discoveries and interventions, has jumped from 47 years to almost 80. Now, scientists studying the intricacies of DNA and other molecular bio-dynamics may be poised to offer even more dramatic boosts to longevity. But there is one very basic question that is seldom asked, according to David Ewing Duncan: How long do you want to live? 'Over the past three years I have posed this query to nearly 30,000 people at the start of talks and lectures on future trends in bioscience, taking an informal poll as a show of hands,' writes Duncan. 'To make it easier to tabulate responses I provided four possible answers: 80 years, currently the average life span in the West; 120 years, close to the maximum anyone has lived; 150 years, which would require a biotech breakthrough; and forever, which rejects the idea that life span has to have any limit at all.' The results: some 60 percent opted for a life span of 80 years. Another 30 percent chose 120 years, and almost 10 percent chose 150 years. Less than 1 percent embraced the idea that people might avoid death altogether (PDF). Overwhelmingly, the reason given was that people didn't want to be old and infirm any longer than they had to be, even if a pill allowed them to delay the inevitable. Others were concerned about issues like boredom, the cost of paying for a longer life, and the impact of so many extra people on planetary resources and on the environment. But wouldn't long life allow people like Albert Einstein to accomplish more and try new things? That's assuming that Einstein would want to live that long. As he lay dying of an abdominal aortic aneurysm in 1955, Einstein refused surgery, saying: 'It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.'"
Oh, FFS (Score:5, Insightful)
Overwhelmingly the reason given was that people didn't want to be old and infirm any longer than they had to be, even if a pill allowed them to delay the inevitable.
Well, it's a good thing that that's not what we're talking about, isn't it? The whole idea is to delay--or if possible, prevent entirely--the things that make us "old" and infirm to begin with. Nobody wants to spend eternity in a nursing home, duh. Spending an indefinite amount of time young and healthy, or even middle-aged and mostly healthy? Sign me up.
A friend's great-grandmother just turned 116. (Score:5, Insightful)
She's supposedly pretty sharp, still there in the mind and still happy. The last part is the most important. I'd rather die happy at 85 than live to 120 in misery.
Why Einstein? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is he quoted so often? It's like he's some Jesus/Buddha/Mohammed/Hubbard. It's kind of bizarre. He was just a scientist, although a very good one. His accomplishments were in physics, not metaphysics, not morality.
Now For the Real Question (Score:4, Insightful)
How many of those people believe in an eternal afterlife?
I'm satisfied living forever. And then I get to choose my lifespan.
Depends on the condition of my body (Score:4, Insightful)
If I live to 200, do I spend most of that time with the body of a 30-year-old, or a 90-year-old? If the latter, thanks but no thanks.
depends on Quality of Life (Score:3, Insightful)
This question is meaningless without defining quality of life. If I can reach 6000, and have the same Quality of Life as I have now (age 47) or even the QOL I expect to have at 67, Im all for it. In fact Immortality, yes please!
If I have to wait in bed in pain from 100 until 6000, than, no way.
No one wants to die (Score:2, Insightful)
Keep Paying for Your Spot in Heaven (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a cool thing that happens when you know this life isn't the end: You suddenly stop caring about yourself and just live your life to help everyone else.
There was a cool thing that happened to me when I figured out that the Law of Parsimony indicates that life is the end. I realized that all I would leave behind is other people's memories of me and I stopped being a dick and judging everyone else based on my doctrine. How odd that the biggest inhibitor of being like Christ was being a Christian.
Boredom, seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose I can understand some arguments for cutting your life short based on overcrowding, etc., but I think we can get over that with science.
But limited lifespan because of boredom? I mean, have you *seen* this world we live in? If you can't come up with enough different things to do, and see, and explore, and discover, and wonder about to last you thousands of years, you are doing it wrong. That's not even thinking about all the incredible people you get to meet.
Re:Why Einstein? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a scientist? That makes him better than some sort of Jesus/Buddha//Mohammed/Hubbard. Anyone with a keen logical mind will make greater accomplishements in metaphysics and morality than any peddler of fairy tales.
The key to true morality isn't "what would Jesus do", but "what makes sense and actually works to produce favorable outcomes". By that standard, you cannot do better than a scientist.
Sample bias much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Asking for a show of hands at the start of a bioscience lecture?
Let's see him ask a bunch of 80 year olds how many of them don't want to live past 80... That would be just as biased but I think the answers would be more interesting.
It's easy for relatively young people to say they won't mind dying sometime in the distant future...
I am opposed to age extensions (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. I am in the 30% that is considerate of the consequences of people living a long time.
For a poignant example, look at the current USA. We have an aging "boomer" generation. If you aren't familiar with the problems an aging boomer generation is causing, google is your friend. Now, imagine them living another 60 years. 100 years... FOREVER.
In addition to the problems with resource allocations, the political and ideological bottlenecks immortality, or even jut artificialy ling lives would introduce would be catastrophic. Instead of a progressive civilization, which becomes more tolerant and technologically advanced, we would have an ideologically stilted, recalcitrant population of aged and possibly immortal persons halting all forms of social progress.
I would actually campaign for a shorter, but less labor intensive life than a longer one.
Stockholm Syndrome (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of thinking is basically Stockholm Syndrome writ very large.
Let's say you asked people a thousand years ago, "Would you want to live with a king?". I'm sure the vast majority would have said "no", and come up with a bunch of reasons why that would be personally undesirable and socially perilous. The reasoning is so transparently irrational it's ludicrous.
Talk to a genealogist (Score:5, Insightful)
the life expectancy of Americans, driven by improved hygiene, nutrition, and new medical discoveries and interventions, has jumped from 47 years to almost 80
Talk to a genealogist, its a bogus number. Life expectancy at birth, given that at least half used to die as babies or little kids.
Most birth-death years in my family tree are like 1854-1855 (whoops) or 1853-1930 (a good long while). Not much in between, other than maybe 5% of the women died around childbirth age around a year or so after the last baby. Stereotypical electronics "bathtub curve" plus the danger of giving birth. The main change in the last 200 years or so is if you are born, you'll probably live to age 10, whereas in the olden days if you were born you'd probably die before age 10, but some made it till 80s, just like now.
Re:640K years (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. I think by then, you'll have had enough of watching TV and eating Doritos. The idea of new Nikes just won't thrill anymore, like it did for the last 5 centuries... Maybe then it's time to take a nap, and not get back up.
Seriously. Y'all live miserable lives as it is. Thank God, people die. Without that, there isn't even the glimmer that we'd bother to understand Life.
Re:I have no fear of death. (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the invitations, neither Jesus or God ever showed up to an event I was invited to. Dawkins did.
Euthanasia (Score:5, Insightful)
This recent news story in the UK [bbc.co.uk] Makes me sad. It doesn't matter how long you want to live if you have no legal choices when you want to stop living.
It seems like we give our pets more compassion at the end of their lives than we do our fellow humans.
Revealed preferences (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, when those pills hit the market, they will all line up to buy it. This poll reveals how people think in "far mode". People enter "far mode" when contemplating events they assume are unlikely or distant in the future... far more is selfless, idealistic. Put the pill under their nose and you'll get a very different reaction.
How do I know? Old people don't massively take their own life, people overwhemingly chose treatment when facing cancer, etc.
It's soothing to imagine one's to be comfortable with death, it makes the whole prospect less absurd and cruel. This is just a protective form of denial, unfortunately, death-ism seriously hampers anti-aging research.
Re:600 years. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why Einstein? (Score:3, Insightful)
Einstein's accomplishments were in science, but he expounded quite a lot on morality. He didn't win a nobel prize for morality, I'd say that because his moral positions are quoted and recognized by so many people, that means they resonate and because of that he can be considered "accomplished".
Also, I find it ironic that you group Hubbard in with Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed becase I personally consider Hubbard to be a joke in the metaphysics/morality arena.
Re:640K years (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of "life" is a tornado of colliding imaginations.
Im not sure if that is as profound as it sounds, but I have to say, it sounds pretty freaking profound, and will seem even more so after a few martini's.
Re:Why Einstein? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agrre with the intent of your post: Mengele considered himself (and was percieved by colleagues) as a scientist, too.
Re:Oh, FFS (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't give a shit WHAT it takes. As long as I can still enjoy a song or a book or a video game or a movie or conversation or meals or board games, I want to stay alive. I don't care WHAT you have to do. Strap me to some jumper cables. Anything. Life is a blink of an eye. Death and nothingness is god damn fucking FOREVER and I absolutely DO NOT want to die. Period. And I'll say the same thing if I live to be 800 years old. There is never enough life to live. There is always more of mankind and exploration and science and exploration to enjoy. I would give anything to see what we're doing in a thousand years. To be there and witness all the amazing things we've done and places we're going.
Re:Why Einstein? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then why don't people quote Werner von Braun as a moral authority?
Holy crap (Score:5, Insightful)
YOU, sir, need a hobby or three. Badly.
Having reached my mid-40s, I've only begun to explore the things I'd like to do in my life. I find that I'm having to pare back all the interests I have because I just can't find the time for them all. I look at the time I have left and think, "shit, it's going to take me 2 years to complete this project, which means I'm going to be X old before I can even begin this next one."
I've started worrying less about the cost of my endeavors and more about the time commitment. I can always make more money, but damnit I've only got another 20 great years left, another 10 or 15 mediocre ones, and - if I'm lucky - maybe 10 more to do some low intensity stuff while I look for "young" people willing to hang with the "old dudes in the home."
It's a shame I can't buy 10 of the good years you have left, 'cause you sure aren't using them in any meaningful way, it seems.
Re:News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
99% of people are idiots.
80 years among them is about enough.
Re:Why Einstein? (Score:4, Insightful)
The latter is better than the former because it's hard to predict outcomes, especially for decisions with long-range ramifications...too many variables involved.
Trying, and sometimes failing, to predict what outcome will be favorable is still better than ignoring the question entirely, which is what people of faith do.
If you follow right principles, you're more likely to get a positive outcome in the long run;
Only through a circular definition of "right principles". You can't know whether they are the right principles until you apply them and see if they bear fruit. Which means you're actually being consequential.
So the questions really is from what source do you derive your principles?
Practicality, and basic arguments of symmetry. e.g. the golden rule is a perfectly secular more. Wheaton's law is a great one too.
Re:News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
So you can live forever but you are going to be a vegetable? We can prevent death but not old age? In the 100's of years we won't be able to figure out how to rejuvenate a human body, fix Alzheimer, put a colony another planet, find alternate sources of food, and power, clean our water supply?
We've been able to stop cancer, AID's, Hepatitis, Heart Disease, Lung Disease and countless illnesses from killing us, but we can't do these things. If I lived for a vegetable for 30 years and woke up one day cured. I would be happy. I WILL NOT GO GENTLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT!
Re:cognitive health equally important (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you think mental fitness isn't part of what's being talked about? Of COURSE that has to be part of what it means. It's about eliminating aging, which includes mental decline as well as other health issues.
So, the proper question is: how long do you want to live, in good physical and mental health?
Sign me up for at least 500 years, please, then ask me again in 400.
Re:I am opposed to age extensions (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh please. What I'm seeing here in America is that it's the younger generations that are more conservative, and the older ones that are more progressive. Go into any fundamentalist evangelical megachurch; it's absolutely full of younger people (20-30 somethings and their hordes of kids). Then go into the liberal, progressive Protestant churches where they have women preachers, gay preachers, and are constantly preaching tolerance towards those who are different; those churches are full of people who look like they're about to fall over dead from old age, and very few younger people. In my experience, it's usually the young people who are most intolerant of everything. How many elderly muslim Jihadists do you see? None, they're all young men, in their teens and 20s. When people survive to older ages, they realize that life is short and it's stupid to waste your life getting mad about what other people do with their lives. Sure, there's exceptions in both groups (plenty of liberal college students, and Fred Phelps (the WBC asshole, not the swimmer's father) certainly isn't young), but that's the trend I see today. Kids learn their ideology from their parents; when I was in middle/high school, everyone was a Republican, because that's what all their parents were, and they all parroted the same ideology (which, to be fair, wasn't that bad back in those days of the late 80s and early 90s like it is now). It wasn't until they went away to college and hung around with different people that they learned new ideologies from others, not being around their parents any more to have their influence.
Tolerance and progressivism aren't determined by age, they're determined by culture, which changes over time so it's generational. Just look at the Arab uprisings; the young people got tired of their crappy leaders, so they revolted, and installed new leaders. Are these new leaders progressive and tolerant? Hell no, they're all Islamists. Because that's what the young people in those countries are.
Re:Boredom, seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm also in my mid-40s, and honestly the only thing keeping me from doing all kinds of stuff is the fact that I don't have enough *time*. Even our societies fairly steep monetary restrictions are not as encumbering as the lack of time.
Re:I have no fear of death. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Catch-22 answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh, FFS (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are going to live a life of sedentary consumption, as most people seem to aspire too, being young is little better than being old.
However people choose to live their lives, they tend to prize them very highly, and want to preserve them. If someone's idea of paradise is an eternity spent on the couch eating Cheetos and playing Xbox ... well, what the hell, that's his business. As long as he doesn't cause problems for those of us who want to do more with our lives, I don't see any cause to complain.
Re:Oh, FFS (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you ever bored on a Saturday afternoon?
Re:Oh, FFS (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I'm 58 and have managed to get/stay more physically fit than most people I know in their 30s. I do so because I don't want my later years to be unbearable. What completely blows my mind is that most people I know, when the discussion of an elderly person having serious health issues comes up, will say "I hope I don't live that long", rather than "I hope I stay healthy"...I can't tell you how that attitude makes my skin crawl.
I guess that all part of peoples rationalizations for taking abysmal care of themselves (I've never been able to convince any of my friends to start working out for example)...that "you're gonna die anyway" bullshit. People love to delude themselves into the belief that you can take crappy care of your health, and that it just means that "switch" gets pulled a few years earlier. The reality is that it can mean spending decades of your life being in fucking misery.
All those sorts of attitudes kill me. Indeed...sign me up too!...I want to be healthy and live as long as I can.
My Son, You are failing. (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm so sorry, my dear Jim.
You're not helping your fellow man out of love but in the misguided idea that you are appeasing Me. Until you help your fellow man out of love and compassion - all people regardless of creed, race, sexual preference, or political beliefs - you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yours;
Jesus.
Re:640 years (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the thing. The "getting old" part is what really sucks.
Any idiot can die.
Death isn't scary. You wanna know what scary is?
Being old and shriveled and constantly in pain while sitting in your own shit and being so senile that you don't remember anything for more than a minute.
Now if there was some way to preserve quality of life. THAT would be a bigger breakthrough than simple prevention of death. Age to sometime between 20-30 and then just stop and stay there (biologically) until you fall over dead. Granted, the ability to retard/stop physical aging that way would, in itself, probably extend life by an unknown quantity (if not permanently).
The way I'm going right now, and all the damage I've done to myself in my life already, if I don't die early, I'll be an old man confined to a bed going "It hurts to live!"
I think I'd MUCH rather take up cordless bungee jumping.
Re:I have no fear of death. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of contemporary written records of kings existing, implying that they likely did exist. The records of most gods and demi-god's time on Earth comes after at least a few decades have past, with more information coming out for hundreds of years until the story is formalized. As it stands, the story of Jesus' life is way too similar to numerous other stories about other gods/demigods to be particularly trustworthy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgksXcesXrA [youtube.com]
Re:600 years. (Score:4, Insightful)
I daresay I wouldn't mind putting that to the test. :D
Re:640 years (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood this line of thinking. Why do you fear death so much? I welcome it, for when I die, nothing will matter anymore and I won't exist.
Re:Oh, FFS (Score:2, Insightful)
When you die, and die you shall, nothing you did in this life will have mattered anyways. And, as nothingness, you will not notice the passage of the infinite.
I am still confused at people's grip on life. We are here, we enjoy it. But this, unsavory fear of death, is very odd to me.
Re:640 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I love life, and so far as I can tell I will always want more of it.
But you're right, I deeply fear death too. I do not want to end. I do not want to go. I fear dying but that's utterly secondary to the existential dread of there no longer being a me.
I can't understand how anyone can accept it. I'd like to, because it's not like we get a choice in the matter, but can't.
People not willing to live forever are pussies. (Score:4, Insightful)
Godforbid, they'd have to take responsibility for future consequences of their actions, or endure the pain of changes in the world around them.
There is only one correct answer.
As long as I can!
Re:640K years (Score:4, Insightful)
See almost nobody has an idea of what living forever means. So here you are let's say for giggles 45 years old. Who are you a how are you related to the you that was 2 years old? 7? 13? 20? 35? Can you even vaguely imagine what the being that is 1,000,000 years old would be like. Having survived the coming and going of ages, seen mountains rise and fall, watched the process of evolution on life on the planet, experiences 10,000 lifetimes, and expanded consciousness to hold all that experience. He could no longer be called human. Such a being would be profoundly different. His first hundred years no more than a freckle on the mural of personality that would have emerged over that vast gulf of time.
Such a being would not have survived in a single physical body. Bodies are too prone to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. More than likely, such a being would exist in one or more remote bodies with a distributed consciousness over many locations so that the end of any particular local would not end the consciousness of the whole. Perhaps such a being might also launch occasional pods containing complete images of their mind to distant locations to avoid catastrophe by astronomical events. It would take a great deal of foresight to exist for deep time. Again, this would be no timid act. You might well be the only thing surviving your species. You might carry with you the sum information of life on your world. Even if there was a community, over the millennia personalities would merge and migrate, emerge and transform. It would be hard after tens of thousands of years to speak of individual consciousness in such a collective.
Almost everyone here is speaking about the persistence of personality. That is fundamentally different than immortality. A personality would not, could not survive the limits of deep time. The good news, is that what would survive, what in fact might thrive, might transcend personality, might transcend the limits of an isolated or localized concept of self. Such a being would transcend identity.
Re:640K years (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One of the best lines from B5... (Score:4, Insightful)
The only problem is that this is a fictional character, created by an author who'll age and die before 100 like the rest of us. We don't know what a real immortal being would say after thousands of years of life, and we won't find out until we try.
And I don't see why not, either. Dying is the easy part, there are plenty ways out if you get bored.
Re:640 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I'm any great expert on the matter, what with having only one lifetime of personal experience and not even a single death to my name, but I suspect that there is a large part of you that refuses to accept that death is truly inevitable. Once you truly accept that there's nothing you can do to avoid it then accepting the transition itself becomes far less onerous. When the time comes it's a question of do I fight tooth and claw a battle which can't be won, or accept it with good graces and spend my last moments rejoicing that I lived at all. With proper perspective you can even come to see death as a necessary and beautiful counterpoint to life - I've never had to face my own imminent death, but such perspective has offered great comfort in the face of the death of loved ones. If you're interested in acquiring such a perspective I'd suggest studying Buddhism, Taoism, or the like - ignore the quasi-religious cruft that's accumulated on it as you like, I mostly did, the core teachings basically offer an alternative interpretation of reality, identical in detail, but fundamentally different in implication.