What Happens When the Average Lifespan is 150 Years? 904
First time accepted submitter Macgrrl writes "It was reported today in The Age newspaper that scientists believe they will have a drug within the next 5-10 years that will extend the average human lifespan to 150 years. Given the retirement age is 65, that would give you an extra 85 years, meaning you would probably have to extend the average working life to 100 or 120 years to prevent the economy becoming totally unbalanced and pensions running out. That assumes that the life extension is all 'good years', and not a prolonged period of dementia and physical decline. Would you want to live to 150? What do you see as being the most likely issues and what do you think you would do with all the extra years?"
Easy (Score:5, Funny)
I'd spend all my time hitting those 80 year old cheerleaders!
Re:Easy (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm...
Life insurance will be more expensive, pay raises will be lower, doctors will own more yachts when they die, retirement age will be 116, there will be more conservatives and less social change, food and other resources will become scarce, there will be more population and everything that comes with it, more people will go to grad school, families will be bigger, family reunions will need more seating, more senators will be balding, viagra sales will skyrocket, and the year will be greater than or equal to 2036.
Next question!
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More V14GRA spam.
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And so too will you, my young friend, by that time...
I look forward to your shrill calls of "Get off my lawn", which you can shout in unison with YOUR great-great-grandparents!
Re:Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Me, personally, I do not want to live to 150. I turn 50 in a couple of months, and it turns out that I have an immune disorder that kicked in to high gear two years ago. In those two years, I've had over 200 infusions (twice a week) involving 4 needles in my abdomen for 90 minutes or so twice a week. I don't want to think about doing that for a hundred years. Yes, they might develop a cure (they will certainly improve treatment models), but I'm not expecting a cure in my (current) lifetime. They've been able to jump-start immune systems with gene therapy, but they've also had a tremendous increase in tumors in such patients. It's possible that an immune system could shut down to prevent the start/spread of tumors as a defensive mechanism.
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Many bosses resent having to pay for work period.
I would want to live to be 150 - but you must define "live". If that's live with decrepitude. . . then you can keep your immortality potion. I assume that this thought-problem includes some kind of biological process that boosts physical health so that other age-related diseases are diminished. I've been dealing with arthritis since my teen years. Not pleasant - I guess I could do 150. But if this got worse, and I got crippled, that would suck. I don't wa
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:4, Informative)
Why? Most people only need life insurance until their children are out of college, and/or their homes are paid for. Once you achieve that, you drop your life insurance (maybe carrying it to term if the potential payoff seems worth it relative to the risk).
Re:Easy (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but only for priests.
Re:Easy (Score:4, Funny)
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Why would a priest need a condom? The choir boys won't get pregnant
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To help prevent STDs when the choirboys are being blessed by more then one priest.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Informative)
No, not really. The CDF said less than a year ago:
"The idea that anyone could deduce from the words of Benedict XVI that it is somehow legitimate, in certain situations, to use condoms to avoid an unwanted pregnancy is completely arbitrary and is in no way justified either by his words or in his thought,"
What he said is that HIV-positive prostitutes (and possibly non-prostitutes) should use it as a "first step".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12053610 [bbc.co.uk]
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No he didn't. He said if a homosexual with AIDS used a condom to prevent transmission as he moved from having homosexual sex toward having no sex, then the condom might be OK in that very limited situation. This also was not a formal teaching of the Church, it was just published as part of an interview in which he speculated, not as a pronouncement or change in any actual teaching.
Any form of artificial birth control for the purposes of preventing pregnancy is still prohibited, and since the hierarchy is be
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I believe the "Angry White People Crowd" are at the "tea party" meeting down the street. Those people seem obsessed with a value system that seems to contradict itself after every sentence. But one thing is definite with the tea party, and that is death to everyone. I have seen to much death to agree with the tea party. And the logistics of living to be over 100, and maintain our population growth, is to go to a space faring culture.
Yea, because a value system that demands that the world owes you a living doesn't contradict itself at all. Neither does demanding accountability from someone else then refusing to clean up your own mess.
Legalized euthanasia (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, you can't have such a sysyem without legalized euthanasia. Or you need a lot of homeless shelter.
Mind Uploading (Score:4, Interesting)
I would spend all my extra years working on mind uploading technology. I want to live for a very long time, uploaded into a spaceship exploring the universe. When your mind is software you can just alter your perception of time and fast forward through all the boring parts.
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When your mind is software you can just alter your perception of time and fast forward through all the boring parts.
Next thing you know it will be the end of the universe and you'll have fast forwarded through everything of substance!
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WE already have one it's call carousel!
Your gem is blinking red, you are going to carousel right?
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As you exit my property, please see the large silvery gentleman
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Just wait for the remake starting Selina Gomez and Justen Beeber.
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Actually, the remake is back on I hear, but so far only this guy is known to be cast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Gosling [wikipedia.org] and the director is now http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Winding_Refn [wikipedia.org] - too bad, I had hope when Brian Singer was attached to direct, not so sure about Winding Refn.
There still is hope for Selina and Justin as I don't believe they've started casting (and I know it's what you secretly want ;)
Re:Legalized euthanasia (Score:5, Interesting)
But what would those people be doing?
We already have a problem in the US where older workers aren't retiring because the economy is so bad. This means fewer jobs being opened up for young workers fresh out of college. And given that the unemployment rate is high and the labor force participation rate has declined, I think we're looking at a future with fewer jobs per capita than we have now. Combine the effects of increased productivity gains, advances in automation, and the offshoring of both industrial and knowledge jobs, and you have a recipe for massive unemployment. Extend the human lifespan by several decades and you've made the problem worse, not better. We're talking about a massive oversupply of labor, which will drive wages down, harm living standards, and take a labor market that's already cutthroat competitive and make it even worse.
It's not that extending human lifespans is a bad goal--it could be a great thing, and for me it could mean that I still have 80% of my lifespan left! It's certainly staggering to think about. But without any kind of long-term plan to repair our economic situation, I don't see this being a boon to anyone except the wealthy who can both afford the treatment and have the financial resources to live comfortably for that long. So the average lifespan will increase dramatically but it will be distorted by those who can afford the longevity treatments. Life expectancy among the poor has remained stagnant for decades and even decreased among some minorities, I might add. This, at the same time some are talking about raising the retirement age. In effect, poor minorities would never be able to retire.
All this may seem tangential to the issue of greatly extended lifespans but we absolutely have to consider the wider socioeconomic implications of such advances. That isn't the job of science, per se, but it's definitely within the purview of sociologists, economists, and politicians. If we're about to have an even bigger retirement boom than expected (we've already got the Baby Boomers starting to retire), we should work to prepare for it now before it has consequences we haven't considered.
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We're talking about a massive oversupply of labor, which will drive wages down, harm living standards, and take a labor market that's already cutthroat competitive and make it even worse.
The living standard of an average worker is primarily defined by his economic output. Considering there is limited amount of time in a week to do work, this economic output reflects the efficiency of the economic environment the worker is in. Unless you believe efficiency of an average worker is reduced if people live longer, there is no reason to think their life standards will be lower. In fact I think exactly the opposite will happen. Higher average education, higher average experience and less unskilled
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I just don't believe that jobs are 'opened up' by older workers retiring. When people have more money, and can buy more stuff, jobs are created. If old people stop retiring, they have more money, and therefore create extra demand.
In the short term, what you say is true, and it may take a couple of years before companies see the demand trending higher, and choose to employ more people, but longer term, there isn't an economic problem in people living longer.
Re:Legalized euthanasia (Score:4, Insightful)
When there is surplus employees, the pay should go down, which in turn leads to increased economic growth and thus less unemployment. So it will balance itself out, eventually.
That's the theory anyway.
And it doesn't work like that in practice, because aggregate demand has got to come from somewhere. When pay goes down, people have less disposable income, so they spend less, so economic growth decreases. Of course this process doesn't necessarily go on forever, but the fact remains that "equilibria" can exist at almost any rate of unemployment. Market forces alone do not lead to full employment - the ideologists who would tell you otherwise conveniently ignore the effect of income on spending.
It's amazing how the majority of economists seem to be entirely oblivious (whether out of ignorance or willfully, I don't know) to the fact that in the end, the economy is a giant life support machine that produces things for consumers. Yes, investment plays an important role in the bowels of the beast, but investment only makes sense when there are potential customers with disposable income. Aggregate demand is what it's all about in the end.
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It's amazing how the majority of economists seem to be entirely oblivious (whether out of ignorance or willfully, I don't know) to the fact that in the end, the economy is a giant life support machine that produces things for consumers. Yes, investment plays an important role in the bowels of the beast, but investment only makes sense when there are potential customers with disposable income. Aggregate demand is what it's all about in the end.
Sort of. What you're entirely missing in your simplistic view is the role of productivity. That is, how much time people need to devote to productive tasks in order to support themselves in their lifestyle. As productivity increases, so does the potential leisure time. That potential leisure time can also be used to collect excess resources (a.k.a. "savings" or "capital"). What it all comes down to is time out of your day. The more time you have that's not spent providing necessities the more value yo
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Just hope the suicide machines work better than the ones in Bender's time.
65+95 = 150? (Score:5, Funny)
I think I would spend the next 165 years practising addition
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I think I would spend the next 165 years practising addition
So how old are you exactly? -15 or something?
Re:Practising? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you should spend it practicing spelling.
Maybe you should spend it realizing that this is a global board. In the UK they spell it with an 's.'
Re:Practising? (Score:5, Funny)
^^ A hundred and fifty years of this. *Sigh*
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Why don't they just speak normal English in the UK?
Frag 'em (Score:3)
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Re:Frag 'em (Score:4, Funny)
Currently... (Score:2)
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But in a bad economy, that's horrible news for the young. Older workers will hold onto jobs to try to fund their new lifespan (and remember, can't fire them once they're over 40 without some serious lawsuit risk). Younger workers won't be able to compete with their experience (and older workers can take paycuts if that's what it takes to keep the young person frozen out).
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lots of people don't get life even half figured out by 50.
Or ever.
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Pretty sure that wasn't Def Leppard - they were quoting someone else. Try a decade earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Hey,_My_My_(Into_the_Black) [wikipedia.org]
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step into the Kevorkian machine
You first... See how that works?
oh and what a douche... I would say you are semi young right now (probably in your early 20s?). Looking at all those 'old' people having all the cool things you cant have right now (because you probably dont have much). You feel you are more entitled to those things (for whatever reason). Well so are they.
Well just wait about 10 years you will start to think different. In 20 your going to be 'wtf just happened'. That 'let them commit suic
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45, thrown out more cool stuff than I care to posses at the moment, and I tried to join my local occupy event but they didn't get it together until after I had to be at work.
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There are relatively new paving machines (actually a few machines that follow each other like a train) that do everything, chew up the old road right down to the bed, lay the new bed, compress it and lay the new road to be followed by rollers. They can completely rebuild a road at rates never before seen with fewer workers than ever needed before.
Today, workers are laying cones, directing traffic and driving the trucks and babysitting the machines. Almost no one has a shovel anymore, unless the operator scr
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I imagine if there were a mandatory Kevorkian law in place, people who were not self-sufficient, but sufficiently loved, admired, despised (in a good way), or otherwise valued by their friends and neighbors, would be sponsored by those people to keep them around. The hard thing will be when resources are stretched too thin and you have to decide who to sponsor.
People would also have to learn how to accept when someone doesn't want sponsorship because life is actually painful for them.
Re:Currently... (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently, a lot of people need to continue working until age 71 in order to receive their full Social Security. That includes most Boomers who are hitting sixty right about now. You can retire with diminished benefits starting at 62. You can begin manipulating and using your 401.k at age 58.
As for me, I'd like to get to hold a grandchild or two, and then I'd be happy to move along. I was widowed (suddenly and too young) this past summer. It's gotten an interesting reaction from neighbors who are here from China to study. They're absolutely incensed that I didn't leave off working immediately and move in with one or the other of my two grown sons. Apparently my daughters in law are supposed to be taking care of me in addition to working at their regular jobs. The fact that I still have a meaningful job that brings in an income is incomprehensible to them. It's been a fascinating cultural discussion.
When the average age is 150 (Score:5, Funny)
When the average age is 150 the average speed limit will be 15mph.
The weather channel will become a 3D channel on cable and out perform the major networks.
Dick Clark will be hosting New Year shows still.
Starbucks will be sold to a bingo-chain.
No one will ever be able to walk on anyone elses lawn ever again.
And in addition: (Score:3)
The news will start with "I remember when... ".
The good old days will be 140 years ago, instead of just 60. Btw, people were much friendlier in the good old days, and also worked a lot harder.
Sherry sales will explode, and sherry will outsell beer.
Helping grannies cross the street becomes a full-time job.
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Hmm, it is an interesting thought... I think it was in the 1960s or something when people stopped dying of "old age" simply because the AMA started classifying them going to various forms of heart disease / cancer / etc.
But as medicine might allow people to start living indefinitely, we might get more interesting trends. At some point, it may be statistically likely that everyone dies from horrible traffic accidents because there's simply no other way to go ;-)
Don't really care to work out the math for th
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We're still likely to lose 2/3rds of our population by 2150, if current fertility rates continue to trend downwards. When even a Catholic Country like Italy is seeing negative population growth now, and a third world country like Uganda has gone from 8 children per family to 3.1 children per family, be prepared for a much older and much more cynical world indeed.
All this does is give us an extra 50 years before the baby boom becomes an utter bust.
Re:When the average age is 150 (Score:4, Funny)
Who wants to live forever? (Score:4, Funny)
... Ask me again in 300 years.
Not gonna happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:5, Interesting)
There's already growing resentment against the fabled 1% who own almost everything... just imagine what will happen when people find out that "the rich" also get to live about 70 years longer than the rest of us. On the other hand, how fair is it to withhold life saving/extending treatment from someone willing and able to pay for it? (Assuming that one rich guy extending his life isn't going to affect the amount of healthcare available to the rest of us)
Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:5, Informative)
Larry Niven is rubbing his hands with glee and saying, "I knew it!"
Niven's future problem revolved around the perfection of organ transplants. In a world where everything but the brain and spinal column can be successfully transplanted, and life thereby extended indefinitely, what kinds of problems would arise? Organlegging [wikipedia.org] was one such problem.
However, most of the problems actually had to do with the upper class hoarding the technology for themselves (the rich were the ones in power, which means they could pass new laws governing the technology, etc.). Niven's excellent The Jigsaw Man short story dealt with that from the "criminal's" point of view, and his book A Gift From Earth [amazon.com] introduces an entire culture built around this problem (and what happens when better technology comes along to upset the applecart).
While the problem is slightly different, Niven's ideas of the problems and consequences of this kind of technology are amazing. I heartily recommend reading his Known Space collection, which is where this problem is addressed.
On the bright side (Score:3)
On the bright side, if artists are living 150 years and producing for most of them, the copyright laws will finally seem sane again.
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You also need something that adresses the wear on the body.
Titanium and plastics. Works really well for about 30% of implant recipients - I hope that number goes up before I need them.
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The wear and tear on the body is such that even if you can increase the lifespan to a theoretical 150 years you wouldnt be very healthy for the last 90 or so years. You also need something that adresses the wear on the body.
All my life the public assumption is the only way life can be extended is to add "bad years". All my life the only way I've seen to extend life in current practice is to add "good years". It seems self evident that if "everybody" dies at the physical equivalent of 80, the only way to make it to 90 is to live 80 chronological years while only causing 70 years of wear and tear. Don't sun tan, don't smoke, don't drink much alcohol, don't eat grains and sugars, eat lots of paleo/natural/organic foods...
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Don't sun tan, don't smoke, don't drink much alcohol, don't eat grains and sugars, eat lots of paleo/natural/organic foods...
I thought you said "good years".
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Wouldn't that be an implied part of making us live to 150? I looked up the stats for the recent story on the 115 year old. Here in Norway a male who was 80 in 1906-1910 could expect to live 5.90 years on average, a hundred years later 7.58 years. The same figures for women are 6.30 to 9.36 years. So the last 100 years has only stretched the maximum life span by 2-3 years, while the average lifespan has gone up 26 years.While the accounts of people living past 100 are questionable, we have quite a few record
Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless we find a way to truly slow aging so you're like a 30yo @ 60, 50yo @ 100 and 75yo @ 150, I doubt we'll ever reach 150.
We already have. I'm old enough, and I have a lifetime of experience of looking at women, or at least enough to know:
1) The girls that smoke, drank, suntanned until they looked African despite Swedish ancestry, and eat tons of junk food currently look like AARP poster models. Like 20 years older than chronological. Some of its rather heartbreaking, I remember this one goddess, like Aphrodite walking the earth when she was about 20, who now has wrinkly motorcycle leathers for skin, starter emphysema, some cataract vision problems...
2) The girls that lived a pretty granola lifestyle of non-smoking, not drinking too much, pale untanned skin, lots of organic food / farmers markets / salads, spend time indoors mostly, watch their weight, could almost pass for playboy models despite their age.
When I was young I saw this in my girlfriend's moms. Some were pretty hot and young looking and frankly I'd date them, some looked more like grannies, and it had a lot more to do with lifestyle and diet than chronological age or genetics. My advice to the young men of /. is all chicks look hot when they're 19, so don't pay attention to that when wife shopping; examine how their moms look, because that's what you're gonna be waking up to in 20 years, assuming the marriage lasts, and depending mostly on the lifestyle they were brought up in, some 40ish women still look like goddesses and some like grannies.
Trust me dude, we know how to make women look like they're 20 when they're 40, and how to make them look like 60 when they're 40.
I have one non-smoking non-drinking sorta healthy eating female relative who's more active and "youthful" at 70 than my smoking drinking junk food eating relative at 50.
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Trust me dude, we know how to make women look like they're 20 when they're 40, and how to make them look like 60 when they're 40.
So true. My wife is is a pale-skinned, freckled redhead who ate healthy and never went out in the sun without a hat and sunscreen. Now at age 50 she is often mistaken for a 30 year-old.
Her younger sister, however, spent her life trying to get a tan, ate junk and drank heavily. The younger sister looks like she's hitting 60, but she's only 45.
Take care of yourself and that "live
Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:4, Funny)
Only for the rich. (Score:3, Interesting)
Only the Rich would have access to the drug at first. And that invites all sorts of pessimistic thoughts. Their money will be hoarded for longer, not benefiting the system. They'll probably try to argue the average life expectancy is up therefore we should cut everyone's social security benefits... RIAA/MPAA and ilk will argue we now need longer copyright terms -- patent holders will do the same...
Umm... (Score:3, Informative)
you would probably have to extend the average working life to 100 or 120 years to prevent the economy becoming totally unbalanced
I hate to break it to you, but having 65 as a retirement age has ALREADY made the economy totally unbalanced.
Remember that the 65 retirement age was designed for a time when most people only lived to 50! If you made it to 65 you deserved a reward for actually surviving that long. Now almost everyone makes it to 65 and our Social support systems are taking up 50% (or more, depending on your country) of our GDP. Our economy all over the globe is in shambles trying to support a number of people the various welfare states were never designed to handle.
Frankly we need to raise the retirement age to 80 NOW. Make the boomers work for another 25 years or retire on their own money. But us Gen X and down shouldn't be paying for it. When people start living to 150 (or longer) you can bump it to first 100, then 125.
Assuming we haven't decided by then that the government just isn't properly equipped to take care of people in that manner and cancelled all the welfare programs. Or have slipped into a global social collapse and fallen back to 50 year lifespans and steam technology.
Re:Umm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, except you have to throw out the fact that the average worker is several times, in some cases, orders of magnitude more efficient and productive than they were when SS was originally created. The gains came about through better technology, longer working hours for many, less vacations, doubling the workforce by adding women, etc. So, where did all the productivity go? It certainly wasn't shared, that's for sure. It's gone to support billionaires rich enough to buy entire islands and form their own countries. It's part of why unemployment keeps rising (if people are more productive, and you are over-producing, why keep them on the payroll when you aren't paying them enough to buy their own products?).
So, no, we won't HAVE TO raise the retirement age to 150. What we really need is to remodel the economic system in a way such that gains in efficiency are returned to workers, not owners. But, that means throwing out capitalism. Once that happens, things will become even MORE efficient, by leaps and bounds. Who would stay at work 4 hours if they could get it done in two? Right now, we incentivize people to be inefficient and many of them oblige us by dragging out a couple of hours of work into an 8 hour day. No one dares to do anything about it on a large scale, because people in power love capitalism, and a 50% unemployment rate would cause massive riots. So, they allow the rabble to keep themselves busy for 8-10 hours a day, so that they are too exhausted to get into trouble. Even with all that artificial inflation of work hours we still have problems finding enough "work" for everyone.
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Housing, due to inflated real estate and people trying to get their kids into good schools (which means an equivalent home across a street can cost a few hundred thousand dollars more).
Education, due to the rise of preschool and the increase in college education (and college education costs).
Health care. It's risen way faster than inflation, with no signs of stopping. Even if you have insurance, you've probably seen it's costs
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps start their own companies and hire some of their contemporaries? Maybe if we stopped assuming that companies existed to provide jobs for people and that a "living wage" was everyone's right (HINT: It isn't.) and indoctrinating our youth with Socialism and instead training them to be entrepreneurs, capitalists and business owners on their own then maybe the lack of jobs wouldn't be an issue.
Also, maybe if people weren't summarily kicked out the door at 65 due to mandatory retirement policies (to comply with SS legal requirements) we would be able to retain much of the experience that these people have gained and be able to use them to apprentice the newer people, passing along that knowledge and working to have a deeper and more solid earnings base rather than constantly chasing the next "flash in the pan" to keep the stock prices climbing.
The point is: The Welfare State, for all of it's good intentions, has ultimately become a burden upon us that must be lifted if we are to continue in anything resembling a modern, western society. If we persist in our current path, economic and social collapse, followed by anarchy, tyranny, poverty, and finally the slow starvation death of humanity will follow.
Don't believe it can happen? Look at first Greece, and then North Korea for two examples of our future if we do not change course NOW.
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At least over here in NL, the supposed requirement to work longer because of increased life expectancy is a sham. One perpetuated (with great success) with the goal of making Gen X and down pay for the 'boomers. The largest part of the increase in life expectancy in the past 40 years is due to a reduction in infant mortality rates. The life expectancy of a person 65 years of age (which is what matters for pension schemes) has increased perhaps by 1 year in that period. An increase that can easily be covered by a slight increase in pension premiums.
(Of course, the actual situation is a bit more complex than "the boomers living off the subsequent generations". The situation here is that in case of our state-provided pension, the 'boomers simply haven't paid their fair share into it. Private pensions currently are in trouble partly by sucky returns on investments, and not just because of the crisis. In this case, the 'boomers were simply lucky to enjoy excellent ROIs in the 80s, with subsequently lower premiums to pay).
I think you may be right (except that I doubt that it's coordinate and deliberate) - although, of course, the number of people retired doesn't just depend on life expectancy, it also depends on the number of people born in to that generation. I doubt, however, that this problem could have been fixed by increased saving. I think it needs a change in retirement age (and that, if anything, the argument is that this isn't happening fast enough) - or, possibly, the education and import of younger people from poo
people will waste it (Score:3, Interesting)
Toh-may-tow / poh-tah-toh (Score:4, Insightful)
You call it wasting and procrastinating.
I call it living.
life expectancy != maximum life span (Score:5, Informative)
While life expectancy [wikipedia.org] has been consistently increasing in the modern era from 30 to almost 70 now, maximum life span [wikipedia.org] has really not changed at all and stays at about 120 years. This true both for humans and laboratory rats, scientist are having difficulty increasing the maximum life span.
We are going to need a medical break-through in order to push 150 years, but it is a good thought experiment, I just don't see it changing dramatically this century.
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ah, well, if a book compiled by bronze-age goat herders says there's a 120 year maximum, then these guys are clearly wasting their time trying to push past that. You should let them know, it'd save everyone a lot of bother.
Only the **AA will be able to afford the drug (Score:2)
See, this drug is yet another way of extending copyright. All they have to do is keep the authors alive for another whole lifetime and they can keep their game rolling without much additional change.
Okay, I joke a bit, but I can totally see such therapy restricted to the very rich and powerful to keep them in office and power. As it stands, the world cannot afford to have more old people than it already has.
Quality of life: (Score:4, Insightful)
The main thing is quality of life. Extra years of infirmity, dementia and living in some kind of care facility would be no advantage.
Extra years of good health would be. Not just to the individual, but to society. Training someone in a lot of professions is expensive. The decades of experience leave on retirement and have to be replaced.
Stagnation won't be a big problem, IMHO. Though you'll have people around for longer, new people will be coming into a given workplace, just at a slower rate. New ideas will still be around, and frankly, most people aren't doing research science, but things that are existing skill based rather than innovation based. Slashdot is a bit of an anomaly compared to the rest of the world as it has a high prevelance of knowledge workers.
Expect various pundits to say it's horrible and that no one should want to live that long. Of course, when they'd make the decision for themselves I suspect a lot would take the anti-aging drugs and then rationalize it somehow.
As far as impact on population, it'd be some, but not as big as you'd think. If you don't have a low enough reproductive rate, you'll still overpopulate even with current life spans.
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Expect various pundits to say it's horrible and that no one should want to live that long.
I say gift them a loaded .357 magnum on their 80th birthday. When they're "tired o' livin'", they'll know what to do. See how many actually take you up on it.
Keep Moving! (Score:2)
I plan to keep moving. I'll find something I can do to keep active, maybe get into politics and run for congress. That way I could be senile, old and still get payed.
Retirement (Score:2)
If I ever retire, it'll be because I'm sick, not because I've decided not to work any more. Even ignoring the economy, I like my job. In fact, I've liked almost every job I've ever had, no matter which industry. If it weren't for bad managers, I'd leave out the 'almost'.
Sure, I'd like to have more time at home, but I've found I'm happier when I've got an external purpose for a good portion of my time. I don't mind working on other people's dreams, so long as I'm being productive.
So if I live to be 150,
problems? (Score:2)
Well, let's see: we'll have a rapid increase in population from lagging deaths, increased fertility rates, so i'd say overpopulation will become a huge problem (Malthus, anyone?). We'd need to rapidly update our infrastructure to deal with such issues, completely overhaul our planning and laws to deal with such issues, whether it be social security and welfare policies to retirement planning, to incarceration.
Then, of course, there could be the psychological issue - we've seen this before: the guy become
Re: (Score:2)
how would one cope with losing his friends/loved ones how either could not afford or would not want such medication?
Maybe the same way you cope with people dying now? Also, some people may not care about such a thing happening.
Lack of upward mobility (Score:5, Interesting)
What about lack of upward mobility? All my life I've been told I'm being held back because of the huge cohort of baby boomers who will eventually retire and then my generation gets to shine. Its finally starting to happen, slowly. What happens socially when the retirement age goes from 60 to 120, meaning I/we have to sit thru another 60 excruciatingly boring years?
Another problem is if you thought income inequality was bad, wait until you see balance sheet inequality. So a college degree used to mean an extra average of $25/yr income (used to, now it just means unemployment plus student loans instead of just unemployment, and the receptionist and your realtor are now required to have English degrees or MBAs). Over 40 working years that delta adds up to lets say a million bucks. Over 100 years, it adds up to 2.5 million bucks. So I'd expect the education bubble to explode upwards even more.
Another problem is no nation has more criminals than the USA. Do they get treatment? Should a 20 year old murder who got life meaning a 60 year sentence be released at 80, or not medicated so he dies at 80, or held until he's 120 or ? Another problem is the goal of the prison industrial complex is to make, say, 3% of the population felons per decade. If people only live as adults for maybe 50 years, that means 15% of the population dies after being imprisoned and they never work inside the legit economy again. What happens when people live to 150, that means 45% of the population gets felonized.
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If those above you stop retiring or dying and thus freeing up positions, thats the end of the upward mobility for most (not that there really is much upward mobility at the moment).
Thats what 'paying your dues' is really all about, accquiring skills while waiting for a position.
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Hate to break it to you but the baby boomers are not the ones holding you back that's just you.
That was an insulting, unnecessary, and worse--ignorant comment. Even as someone who has had a meteoric career, I can tell you that room at the senior executive level is important. So can anyone, having been there. Sure, there are exceptions. Even the seniors eventually get stale. But seriously; a great many of them are getting stale because their minds are aging. What if they weren't?
It's a perfectly valid issue
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Find the riskiest projects the ones people expect to fail and make them work.
LOL everyone does that already regardless of age. Youth is more likely to fail than elders due to lack of experience so I'm thinking your advice is doom to the cohort as a whole. Maybe for the 1 in 100 elite it works, but that leaves the remaining 99% waiting, which was my whole point.
Most workplaces are not upwardly mobile... you've gotta wait for the RIP retired-in-place to die before you can move up. In the case of tenured teachers and family businesses, this is literally true.
Why stop at 150 ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would do my best to stay healthy and hope for medicine and robotics to improve so any organ that fails can be replaced.
Then 100 years from now, in the year 2111 someone will come up with a way to get our lifespan up to 250.
Why die at all when we can continue to live in a robot-body that for all practical purposes is indistinguishable from our current body ?
No, I don't think I do want to live that long (Score:2)
And I think we'd see a huge increase in suicides of the over-70s. 35-45 years of work drives a lot of people to despair already, doubling that would push them over the edge (it sure would with me)
That's before even considering that thought of the extra time just being spent dealing with age related illness. Nobody is going to want to spend 70 years (half their life!) basically dying.
Quite franly, boredom (Score:2)
If I could keep my physical shape and my marbles I would see running out of things to do to keep busy as a problem. To combat that I would expect to see 95 year olds going back to University, and people having extremely varied careers like being a doctor, then an engineer, then taking 10 years out to lay bricks. The question I would have is would it work? Given that the one thing I would like to do in my life is to explore another planet and the technology to do that is centuries away, would I feel fulfill
The Forever Boss (Score:3)
You know who will get this treatment first and best - the "1%." This will lead pretty directly to some really old CEOs - imagine a 150 year old Rupert Murdoch, still running Fox in 2081, or Steve Ballmer still running Microsoft in 2106
Big inequalities (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Big inequalities (Score:5, Insightful)
You are stuck thinking about 150 year average life span in a 75 year average life span society.
If the lifespan increases dramatically, so will the population, and this would mean more economic opportunities, not less.
There will be more demand for food and energy and shelter and entertainment and robots and computers and phones and pills and cars and travel and vacation and prostitutes etc.etc.etc., there will be more demand, not less.
When society increases it creates more opportunity to satisfy all sorts of various demands, and if finally the governments are put into their right place - they should know their place and be hit on the head repeatedly until they occupy their niche, the economy will grow, not shrink.
A longer time to wait for an opening at company? What a slave mentality thinking. Start your own goddamn company catering to all this new demands and come up with your own solutions and sell that into the ever increasing markets.
People don't understand that individuals are not liability, they are assets and resources and markets.
But who dies of old age? (Score:3)
I don't think this miracle drug would change the world all that much. If you think of "death by old age" as the finishing line in the game of life, few people actually reach it. Most seem to die of causes that will probably not be affected by this drug, i. e. cancer, heart diseases, accidents, suicides...
Especially the later could seem rather attractive once you had to bury your spouse and your children.
Re: (Score:2)
Get out there and breed if you want to make a difference.
You're obviously new here.
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Telemeres (Score:2)
Bullsh*t
This. One drug isn't going to solve all the problems of aging. As I understand it (i.e. very, very roughly), there are nearly a dozen sub-problems we need to solve to lick the aging problem, and each of them is pretty hard. Like what the hell do we do about telemeres?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you imagine humans living longer and the birth rate of longer lived humans? What kind of impact would our planet experience from this?
Female fertility will still end at the same age... Once the eggs gone, its gone, game over. Male fertility never really ends, although it declines some. So there will be 150 year old rich guys marrying women born when he was 130.
Child rearing will be weird. In some American racial subcultures breeding begins below 15, others wait until 40+, with huge impact, some cultural groups its "normal" to be a grannie by 30, others its "normal" for grandparents to be dead of old age when the grandkids are very youn
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Call them category 1 put them in medical camps. Doesen't anyone watch torchwood?
They weren't medical camps... they were death camps. And they implemented them ridiculously quickly, kinda like they did in the alternate timeline in "Turn Left" for really no reason at all.
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I can now get my legal copy of Photoshop 4! and run it on my legal copy of windows NT 4!
What do you mean those are like baby toys! Dag Nabbit when I was your age, we had to pay thousands of dollars (I know it doesn't sound like a lot now, but back then it was a Lot of money) for this software. This software work on the newest equipment that had CPU that performed millions of calculations per second. And we can do things like adding a lens flair to a picture and it only took 10 seconds! You kids and your