It will be funny, interesting, and heartbreaking to see how society reacts to the abolition of the need for discipline (as we are already seeing, in a small way, with Ozempic).
I hope there will not be too many serious countermovements against such treatments. It will be sad to see movements that argue for death.
We live in a new world. There is finally, perhaps, the faint light of dawn on the horizon. Finally, a realistic chance of truly doing something against Death, the last enemy.
Perhaps the decline in fertility is a society-wide unconscious realization that we’re all going to live much longer and so replacing those that passed isn’t as much a key priority
If we’re going to live longer we are going to need more young people to pay our extended retirement expenses. Living longer doesn’t mean working longer.
If you're *healthy* longer, as the article discusses, you really should keep working. The more you have to depend on kids to pay your retirement, the more you have to structure society as a pyramid scheme.
I don't see medical technology extending working years that much.
I don't know anyone that can still do physical jobs at higher ages. You can't be a roofer for 60 years.
Even mental office type jobs, I've yet to see a company where management are dinosaurs that is dynamic and successful. Young minds are creative. Having more people in their 60s and 70s sitting on management positions riding out the clock doesn't seem like it's going to lead to a better economy. It hasn't in places like Japan.
I feel this confusion around what constitutes meaningful health & longevity progress also has parallels in the "quantified self" movement with fitness trackers, etc: The culture has normalized the idea that wearing an Apple watch places you at the forefront of preventative diagnostics, when instead everyone could and probably should be getting regular full body MRIs and many other tests that can actually make a difference.
(putting aside the fact that our current broken medical system is unable to productively integrate preventative MRIs and similar tests into patient care)
It's a compelling vision, based on emerging ground truth, and thoughtfully articulated. I appreciate the perspective as always. I would point out that there are people working on ticking up those maximal lifespans; Aubrey de Grey (via LEV Foundation) is doing exactly that right now with a series of experiments called Robust Mouse Rejuvenation. Critically, the interventions are started with mice that are already in middle age. The goal is to triple remain lifespan by combining multiple rejuvenation therapies targeting different mechanisms of aging. LEV is currently seeking funding for round 2.
I should mention that de Grey makes the case (in interviews and elsewhere) that unlike most other efficacious treatments in mice, the interventions he's using are likely to translate just as well to humans; the treatments target the end-results of aging damage rather than intervene in the "uncommented spaghetti code" of metabolism.
De Grey's approach is perfectly in line with your vision here; true rejuvenation/repair therapies will fix damage at the end point without regard for the pathways that led to its accumulation. In his vision, you would simply get periodic rejuvenating maintenance with a combination of therapies; this would become increasingly comprehensive over time.
Yes, David Sinclair is being silly in freaking out over a snack. An analysis of healthy habits quickly shows diminishing returns. The ultimate limit of life is frailty, and snacks or exercise are irrelevant to its inexorable onslaught. Practice good diet and exercise habits, enjoy life, and wait for breakthroughs to stop frailty progression.
I think people like him are trying to hold out and not degrade too far to benefit from improved tech. Although I'd wager there's still joy to be had in life, even on a strict diet.
I want the longevity movement that is effective. I mean, would I rather it was that path where I didn't have to worry about the snack bar? 100%! But there's some degree of that sort of stuff that is not too much if it is what is required.
In the event that all causes of death by aging were solved, death could still occur by accident. I wonder if culture would adapt towards defining certain activities as riskier. The current risk of death via car accident (~1/8000, per year) might become one limiter of lifespan, so we’d have to avoid that. Riding a motorcycle would kill you much faster than that. Any kind of risky sport might be seen as more irresponsible than ever. The annual risk of death via homicide might become significant, if you can otherwise live thousands of years, so you’d perhaps want to build a life with a stronger buffer against that. There might be optimizations for all of this (safer autonomous vehicles, better policing) but the natural tendency of an immortal society might also be towards making more virtual experiences, to remove the risks of the physical world.
I’m mentioning this because I tend to think of such risky activities as the things that make for a life well lived — I like to travel to foreign countries, scale tall mountains, climb rock and ice, dive under the ocean, drive my car too fast, try novel drugs, and so on. A world where big pharma lets me binge eat more fast food with less health consequences isn’t exactly selling me a dream. If I did think that my life could be much longer, though, I suppose I might live it more cautiously.
Most excellent. Agreed that the extreme lifestyles like Bryan Johnson and co. are very uninspiring and undesirable. Achieving indefinite healthy lifespan through periodic damage repair/replacement as routine maintenance is a worthwhile goal and may some day be reality; how soon it becomes reality depends on how much we dedicate to medical research targeting the biology of aging.
Until the problem of brain aging is solved there is no point living past 80. Most old people I know changed for the worse after turning 75 even if they were not diagnosticated with dementia. Becoming ever more forgetful, suspicious, incurious, gullible and bored is not a desirable way to live especially when the unavoidable endgame is dementia. The people in their mid 80's I know are shadows of their former selves.
Thank you again....but so far no one can find something that can cure migranes that cause temporary memory loss and eventual degeneration of grey/white matter over time...longevity is not worth it if you going to suffer through this brutal nightmare of a migrane that is unpredictable and relentless and unforgiving.....
Many of us are going to be too poor to benefit from the tech anyway, given the economy. And that's assuming the robots only take our jobs, not our lives.
It will be funny, interesting, and heartbreaking to see how society reacts to the abolition of the need for discipline (as we are already seeing, in a small way, with Ozempic).
I hope there will not be too many serious countermovements against such treatments. It will be sad to see movements that argue for death.
We live in a new world. There is finally, perhaps, the faint light of dawn on the horizon. Finally, a realistic chance of truly doing something against Death, the last enemy.
What a time to be alive.
Oh, we're gonna have countermovements, especially if the tech is not widely accessible. You have not begun to see how crab-bucket people can be.
Just look at how people are with data centers already.
Reminder that defeating death is possible in principle with today's technology. See e.g.:
- https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/01/with-brain-preservation-nobody-has-to-die-meet-the-neuroscientist-who-believes-life-could-be-eternal
- https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/E9xfgJHvs6M55kABD/less-dead
Perhaps the decline in fertility is a society-wide unconscious realization that we’re all going to live much longer and so replacing those that passed isn’t as much a key priority
That's an optimistic, incorrect view. Check out the gap between ideal and realized fertility (ideal being predictive, especially in shocks!): https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/fertility-in-an-ideal-world
1. This might be true for the US but not so for East Asia.
IIRC young Chinese women’s ideal fertility would still keep the country below replacement.
2. Reduced coupling might be the proximate reason for reduced fertility.
But isn’t coupling reducing because of longer life expectancy?
If you’re going to live till 80 you don’t need to marry at 20. But the delay in coupling leads to fewer kids.
Maybe the tech problem to solve is that the fertility window has not moved along with life expectancy.
If you’re going to live healthily till 80 why do you want to limit your ability to have kids for a short 20 year period between 20 and 40.
I don't think the limited fertility window is a result of "want" but of inconvenient biology that is misaligned to what we want.
The “want” is assuming that we can develop the tech to extend fertility window.
At this point it’s a biological constraint, yes.
Seems rather... mystical. It's more likely a material conditions issue.
If we’re going to live longer we are going to need more young people to pay our extended retirement expenses. Living longer doesn’t mean working longer.
If you're *healthy* longer, as the article discusses, you really should keep working. The more you have to depend on kids to pay your retirement, the more you have to structure society as a pyramid scheme.
I don't see medical technology extending working years that much.
I don't know anyone that can still do physical jobs at higher ages. You can't be a roofer for 60 years.
Even mental office type jobs, I've yet to see a company where management are dinosaurs that is dynamic and successful. Young minds are creative. Having more people in their 60s and 70s sitting on management positions riding out the clock doesn't seem like it's going to lead to a better economy. It hasn't in places like Japan.
> I don't see medical technology extending working years that much.
Well then I don't see that you're engaging with the premise of the hypothetical in the first place, and so there's nothing to talk about.
Yeah I don’t engage with bad premises because they are bad
"But I did have breakfast this morning."
The aim should be to live longer, but also better. To that end, is there anyone working on allergic rhinitis?
Yes, there's a wonderful person working on it down in Próspera, among many others.
Good to hear that things are still happening in Prospera. I'll have to look this up. My quality of life is greatly limited by allergiess
I feel this confusion around what constitutes meaningful health & longevity progress also has parallels in the "quantified self" movement with fitness trackers, etc: The culture has normalized the idea that wearing an Apple watch places you at the forefront of preventative diagnostics, when instead everyone could and probably should be getting regular full body MRIs and many other tests that can actually make a difference.
(putting aside the fact that our current broken medical system is unable to productively integrate preventative MRIs and similar tests into patient care)
It's a compelling vision, based on emerging ground truth, and thoughtfully articulated. I appreciate the perspective as always. I would point out that there are people working on ticking up those maximal lifespans; Aubrey de Grey (via LEV Foundation) is doing exactly that right now with a series of experiments called Robust Mouse Rejuvenation. Critically, the interventions are started with mice that are already in middle age. The goal is to triple remain lifespan by combining multiple rejuvenation therapies targeting different mechanisms of aging. LEV is currently seeking funding for round 2.
I should mention that de Grey makes the case (in interviews and elsewhere) that unlike most other efficacious treatments in mice, the interventions he's using are likely to translate just as well to humans; the treatments target the end-results of aging damage rather than intervene in the "uncommented spaghetti code" of metabolism.
De Grey's approach is perfectly in line with your vision here; true rejuvenation/repair therapies will fix damage at the end point without regard for the pathways that led to its accumulation. In his vision, you would simply get periodic rejuvenating maintenance with a combination of therapies; this would become increasingly comprehensive over time.
Yes, David Sinclair is being silly in freaking out over a snack. An analysis of healthy habits quickly shows diminishing returns. The ultimate limit of life is frailty, and snacks or exercise are irrelevant to its inexorable onslaught. Practice good diet and exercise habits, enjoy life, and wait for breakthroughs to stop frailty progression.
https://newsletter.unaging.com/p/the-hard-limit-on-human-lifespan
I think people like him are trying to hold out and not degrade too far to benefit from improved tech. Although I'd wager there's still joy to be had in life, even on a strict diet.
I want the longevity movement that is effective. I mean, would I rather it was that path where I didn't have to worry about the snack bar? 100%! But there's some degree of that sort of stuff that is not too much if it is what is required.
In the event that all causes of death by aging were solved, death could still occur by accident. I wonder if culture would adapt towards defining certain activities as riskier. The current risk of death via car accident (~1/8000, per year) might become one limiter of lifespan, so we’d have to avoid that. Riding a motorcycle would kill you much faster than that. Any kind of risky sport might be seen as more irresponsible than ever. The annual risk of death via homicide might become significant, if you can otherwise live thousands of years, so you’d perhaps want to build a life with a stronger buffer against that. There might be optimizations for all of this (safer autonomous vehicles, better policing) but the natural tendency of an immortal society might also be towards making more virtual experiences, to remove the risks of the physical world.
I’m mentioning this because I tend to think of such risky activities as the things that make for a life well lived — I like to travel to foreign countries, scale tall mountains, climb rock and ice, dive under the ocean, drive my car too fast, try novel drugs, and so on. A world where big pharma lets me binge eat more fast food with less health consequences isn’t exactly selling me a dream. If I did think that my life could be much longer, though, I suppose I might live it more cautiously.
Most excellent. Agreed that the extreme lifestyles like Bryan Johnson and co. are very uninspiring and undesirable. Achieving indefinite healthy lifespan through periodic damage repair/replacement as routine maintenance is a worthwhile goal and may some day be reality; how soon it becomes reality depends on how much we dedicate to medical research targeting the biology of aging.
> When you think of the people interested in longevity—people who ‘want to live forever’—, what comes to mind?
Cryopreservation, mainly.
Until the problem of brain aging is solved there is no point living past 80. Most old people I know changed for the worse after turning 75 even if they were not diagnosticated with dementia. Becoming ever more forgetful, suspicious, incurious, gullible and bored is not a desirable way to live especially when the unavoidable endgame is dementia. The people in their mid 80's I know are shadows of their former selves.
Most things in the body are connected. A healthy body doesn't guarantee a healthy mind, but it does help.
Thank you again....but so far no one can find something that can cure migranes that cause temporary memory loss and eventual degeneration of grey/white matter over time...longevity is not worth it if you going to suffer through this brutal nightmare of a migrane that is unpredictable and relentless and unforgiving.....
A great time to be alive - and not old.
Not so great when you're 81, like me, and knowing you were born just a few years too soon for the big prize.
Many of us are going to be too poor to benefit from the tech anyway, given the economy. And that's assuming the robots only take our jobs, not our lives.
::cough:: Russian peptides ::cough::