[HN Gopher] The economic value of targeting aging
___________________________________________________________________
The economic value of targeting aging
Author : deegles
Score : 118 points
Date : 2021-07-22 17:02 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| giantg2 wrote:
| "the WTP at birth for the initial 1-year increase in remaining LE
| from 78.9 to 79.9 years via rectangularization is US$118,100, the
| WTP at age 60 for the first 1-year increase in remaining LE from
| 21.7 to 22.7 years through lifespan improvement is US$257,700."
|
| Who the fuck did they get to determine willingness? Most people
| don't have the money to spend. If it takes you _years_ of extra
| work to pay for a one year life extension, why not just retire
| years earlier and enjoy that time? After all, you could still die
| from an accident after paying the sum at birth /60. It seems
| highly inappropriate to use a population based metric like life
| expectancy to have individuals decide if they want a one year
| increase (likely the individuals don't understand life expectancy
| as well as).
| ben_w wrote:
| At a guess, old people have a house or something they can sell
| for that much.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Given the massive gap between what people should have for
| retirement and the little they actually save, they probably
| need that money for necessities. That's what most people
| using reverse mortgages use it for today.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Back when I was _really_ into longevity stuff, aubrey de gret
| etc... I seem to recall that even if we removed all forms of
| aging people would have an expected lifespan of roughly 1000
| years due to trauma death (eg: getting hit by a bus) . So that
| could serve as a rough rule of thumb for how to think about
| risk/reward on increasing health in later years. That is it
| generally has a good EROI for how safe (accident wise) our
| society actually is.
| wpasc wrote:
| If you don't mind me asking (off-topic), are you less into
| longevity stuff now? if yes, what made you less into
| it/possibly more skeptical of it?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Presently I am less into it because I realized a few things
|
| 1. A lot of the things are either very expensive or very
| difficult. Ex: the probiotics david sinclar takes is like
| hundreds of dollars, NAD/NMN are expensive etc. Other
| things are difficult for my current life like getting
| access to heat exposure therapy (very hot dry sauna) or
| fasting protocols. Inside tracker with inner age is like
| $600 each time?
|
| Also I realized that if I donated to methuselah foundation,
| I'm investing money into the future for others' treatments
| I'm unlikely to be able to afford myself (or marginally
| worse, I would have been able to afford, but I donated $$$
| over time such that I marginally no longer could..)
|
| 2. There was little point looking at the extreme ends of
| longevity because I was missing major first steps like
| dropping my BMI from 31 to 23.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not the same person, but it used to excite me when I was
| younger. Now I realize that life is mostly full of bullshit
| outside our control. I hate my job, so why would I want to
| live significantly longer when it means working longer?
| Political and cultural changes could be difficult to handle
| too.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I sometimes have similar thoughts, but then I wonder, if
| I were to live to 300, maybe some of the bullshit would
| go away some time in my 100s and everything might be more
| enjoyable?
|
| Let's hope we don't need to deal with critical race
| theory / unconscious bias trainings at work and open
| derogatory statements against non-minorities for more
| than another 5-10 years, for example... I have to say
| it's making work a lot less pleasant than it used to be.
|
| And maybe if we're extremely lucky some of the VC money
| will become more widely available to people based on
| competence rather than connections and personal wealth.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If other people are living to 300 too, then I would think
| it's likely they will bring their bullshit with them,
| right? I feel like dying isn't just about making physical
| space for then next generation but also allowing space
| for cultural changes.
| retzkek wrote:
| Climate change is also going to make the world
| increasingly less pleasant to live in over the next
| couple decades, directly (weather, flooding, drought,
| famine, etc) and indirectly (instability, social unrest,
| war). Unless you can extend your life long enough (and
| otherwise have the means) to see the other side of this
| epoch, suffering through more of it is probably not
| desirable.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sure, it's generally safe. The point I was trying make is why
| work extra years to pay for a single year when it's not
| guaranteed. I'd rather quit at 60 and die at 78 than pay
| $200k, quit at 64, and die at 79.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| When I did construction, many conversations were about the
| generous retirement benefits.
|
| It was always, "When I retiree I will be able to do this,
| and that, in comfort."
|
| There was always the big decision of shouid I retire at 25
| years (25 year old working 25 years), or get a few hundred
| more if I wait until 65?
|
| I knew a person who worked accounting at the union.
|
| She told me the average retire whom waits for the bigger
| pay day, cashed 3 checks.
|
| 3 checks----dead. (I was so shocked by this I never told
| anyone including my father.)
|
| The wives did get 1/2 of the retirement, and lived off that
| for 10-20 years.
|
| (I guess I should have been content with any work that
| offered a retirement?)
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, I've seen some studies that link early retirement
| to earlier death, but also some that show retirement can
| trigger underlying issues like stroke and heart attack
| from the changes.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| ah, that makes sense. Basically guaranteed vs less than
| guaranteed.
|
| But some percent of the population makes a lot more than
| that. And much like all things in the economy as they start
| to consume the products it gets cheaper and moves down
| classes until it becomes ubiquitous kinda like food is
| today.
| somesortofthing wrote:
| I'm willing to bet that we're also going to get significantly
| better at treating trauma within that thousand years though.
| The numbers aren't great now, sure, but what about in
| something like 500 years when we can begin doing complex
| tissue engineering and replacing parts of the CNS? There are
| certain things that no amount of medical advances will solve,
| sure(Not really much to replace after your liner to Mars
| explodes), but I think that if we found a way to cure aging
| tomorrow, most people would live well beyond 1000.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I know some really spry older (60-80) people. Good diet and
| exercise is what they have in common.
|
| It also helps with mental health (which we have an epidemic of in
| the US).
|
| By all means, this research should continue. But we do already
| have very good solutions to aging which are sorely overlooked.
| wpasc wrote:
| The general Aubrey de Grey response to this observation is that
| yes, lifestyle improvements are great and diet/exercise are
| great for improving one's life. However, it ends up conferring
| only a few more years of life. Some evidence he provides is
| that even very healthy (by obesity metrics for example)
| countries only have a life expectancy a few years longer than
| "unhealthy" countries. I think he cites like Japan (with lower
| obesity rates) having a life expectancy of 6 years longer than
| US (high obesity rates).
|
| Not my observation so feel free to caveat me away, but I'm just
| regurgitating what some doctors who studying aging observe and
| perhaps I'm not remembering all the evidence they provide.
| qntty wrote:
| Maybe conservatives worrying about death panels in 2008 weren't
| so crazy...
| hardtke wrote:
| This reminds me of some articles that came out when the states
| sued the tobacco companies in the 1990s. Many asked why the US
| federal government did not sue as well, and the answer turned out
| to be that smoking is good for the federal government finances.
| It tends to kill people quickly (heart attack) just after they
| retire and start collecting social security.
| philipkglass wrote:
| A cure for aging only needs to get through human clinical trials
| for treating one aging-associated condition like osteoporosis.
| Once it has FDA approval for treating that one condition it can
| be prescribed off-label by a willing physician. If the
| osteoporosis treatment has unusual side effects of also making
| skin appear more youthful, improving short term memory, and
| increasing libido, then there will probably be a lot of off-label
| prescriptions written a few years later.
|
| So _if_ you have a great way to cure aging but are worried that
| the FDA does not recognize aging as a condition, that 's how you
| get the treatment to market.
| bserge wrote:
| > off-label by a willing physician
|
| Just great.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you have a great way to cure aging but are worried that
| the FDA does not recognize aging as a condition, that 's how
| you get the treatment to market_
|
| If you have a cure for aging, I'm decently sure you can earn
| your ROI without respect to the FDA.
| ska wrote:
| If anyone actually comes up with an empirically verified
| treatment for aging (let alone a "cure"), market access or
| payment is not a problem they will face.
| nostromo wrote:
| David Sinclair is an expert on this and has said otherwise.
|
| Clinical trials are expensive. To fund them you need billions
| of dollars. Pharmas won't fund research in anti-aging
| directly because it's not considered a disease, can't get FDA
| approval, and thus couldn't be sold.
|
| So, yes, you need to find another route to approval, similar
| to metformin and rapamycin.
| ska wrote:
| Pharma companies won't fund research because they don't
| consider the risk-reward tradeoff worthwhile compared to
| other options for their resources.
|
| Off label use in endemic, and it does give a path to play
| with some things clinically; however if you formed a
| company around this idea and could have been demonstrated
| to do it, you'll be pulled off the market so fast it will
| make your head spin.
|
| What you are really talking about is about funding the
| research that wont work, in the hopes that eventually you
| hit on something that does.
|
| If you do hit on that and can rigorously demonstrate it,
| market access will not be a problem.
| fredliu wrote:
| Not surprised David Sinclair is one of the co-authors. Anti-aging
| is a fascinating new field. It's great that there's some
| discussion about economical aspects of "slow down aging" at a
| large scale.
| ben7799 wrote:
| This article seems to be about the economic value gained by
| reduced health care or something.
|
| If you actually extended lifespans by a significant margin (say
| to 200 years) there would be other knock on effects that would
| completely derail the global economy & markets. This study
| doesn't seem to think about how those things could actually
| negatively impact economics.
|
| Eventually if you're intelligent and you're trying to self-fund
| your retirement you build up assets that are growing at a
| sufficient rate that you can live off the growth without touching
| your principal. Once you hit that, work becomes unnecessary.
|
| If everyone goes from retiring for 20-30 years to suddenly
| possibly retiring for 120-140 years things get all kinds of
| strange things happening, the percentage of the population
| working would diminish. But then that would negatively impact
| companies due to increasing difficulty in finding workers, which
| would negatively impact markets, which would then feedback into
| ruining the investments allowing all these retirees to live off
| investments & savings. The current system couldn't work without
| room to greatly expand the population of living people to ensure
| growth of the workforce.
|
| I have seen these ideas explored in Science Fiction occasionally,
| but not many other places.
|
| There is another aspect as well, if you lived 200 years, what if
| you ended up having multiple successive families? Raise a family,
| your kids grow up, then you raise another family 50 years later?
| joshmarlow wrote:
| Just increasing lifespans alone would have lots of effects, but
| they wouldn't be happening in a vacuum. Once we have that type
| of technology, there's going to be other variables at play.
|
| For instance, I think we'll see close to 100% technological
| unemployment before we can extend human lifespans by 200 years.
| In that type of environment, most humans would be effectively
| retired.
|
| Even if we have less than 100% technological unemployment,
| birth rates are generally declining, so there's lots of ways
| that could interact with increased longevity.
|
| EDIT: fixed mispelling
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If you actually extended lifespans by a significant margin
| (say to 200 years) there would be other knock on effects that
| would completely derail the global economy & markets_
|
| Re-structure? Sure. De-rail? No. One could imagine our current
| low-interest rate environment (interest rates and time horizons
| are fundamentally linked) as a first step towards that world.
|
| You're highlighting a problem of retirement savings running out
| and the labor pool diminishing. These problems offer an obvious
| solution.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Retirees running out of money because the economy is crashing
| doesn't really match up with "they'll just go back to work".
|
| People might stop having kids too, then there will be no new
| workers entering the work force eventually if lifespan was
| extended indefinitely.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm reminded of Nick Bostrom's story called "The Dragon
| Tyrant"[0][1] and David Foster Wallace's "This is Water"[2]. The
| dragon became so normal in our lives that we do not even question
| it, like a fish does not question what water is. That we've
| created a society around this how to deal with this
| inevitability. But at the end of the day if we could, killing the
| dragon would be more beneficial and reduce harm by a significant
| amount.
|
| I see several people in this thread complaining about the
| economic analysis here or how old people are messing up our world
| and thus we should fix those things first. For the former
| question, I see this analysis as adding ammunition to the debate,
| because many people that determine where we should fund base
| their decisions on economics. This paper isn't aimed at you, it
| is aimed at them (speak to your audience). For the latter, I
| question the premise. Culture has moved too fast that it cannot
| be purely explained by younger generations dictating the change.
| This also falls counter to old people controlling everything. So
| I don't buy the premise. The truth is that if people were living
| to a thousand years old that society would fundamentally change.
| Who we consider children and adults would fundamentally change.
| The truth is that we don't know what this society will look like
| until we open the box, and until the dust settles. We should be
| questioning if this is good or bad (we should challenge all
| ideas) but we need to recognize that this would be such a
| fundamental change in society that we have no real baseline for
| determining how we would change. My personal belief is that we do
| not go quiet into that dark night. There is a lot to fear, but
| often our fears are irrational. This would save billions of
| lives, and so I believe it is worth the risk and worth the
| hardship we will face as society transitions into this new
| paradigm.
|
| [0]https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
|
| [1](Animated by CGP Grey)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7xzavzEKY
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _My personal belief is that we do not go quiet into that dark
| night_
|
| I think many do. One of my takeaways from the pandemic is that
| there are people--intelligent, informed, unoppressed people--
| who will self select away from benefits. Even seemingly obvious
| ones.
|
| The fictional dystopias of the last century would have had an
| immortal elite keeping aging treatments from clamoring masses.
| I don't think that's how it would turn out. Many people--
| including leaders--would choose not to get the treatment. Still
| others would push their societies to ban treatments for
| everyone.
|
| I don't know how you model this. It's a different form of haves
| and have-nots than we're accustomed to. But it would
| undoubtedly feed into and ameliorate the concerns brought up in
| this thread.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| Or those who prefer not to (for whatever reason) may be
| categorized in a way similar to the way we treat the
| suicidal. Anyone unwilling to attempt to live forever would
| be considered mentally ill.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That would require them to be a small minority, which the
| OP is suggesting would be the opposite of the case.
| kiba wrote:
| I have suicidal thoughts before. I prefer not to let my
| mental health condition determine if I want to die or not.
| gpt5 wrote:
| That's not what happened in practice as health care improved.
| The retirement age has been increasing together with life
| expectancy.
|
| The market balances itself so that the cost of living adjusts
| so that an average person would need to work until retirement
| age. That's why the cost of living is significantly higher in
| the bay area.
|
| For better and worse, this capitalistic dynamic is what makes
| the US so productive as a country.
| xorfish wrote:
| The retirement age has risen far slower than life expectancy.
| godelski wrote:
| > The retirement age has been increasing together with life
| expectancy.
|
| I'm unsure with what the issue with this is. But this also
| isn't true. People have been living longer in retirement.
| This is often a talking point when people talk about social
| security. There's a growing gap between when people retire
| and when they die, and this means people need to save more
| and that there is more being drawn from social security.
|
| But I do see a huge difference here. If you can live a
| thousand years then what's the issue of working your first
| 100? Or 500? Or 900? You talk about capitalism but recognize
| that capitalism is about consumption. If you generate enough
| money to live on passive income you don't stop consuming and
| the wheels don't stop turning. No one stops consuming till
| they die, capitalism or not. The rich still get rich. But I'd
| rather have 100+ years of retirement than 20, even if nothing
| else changes.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| The average age of university presidents and members of Congress
| in the USA is in the 70s. At the risk of sounding callous can we
| fix our gerontoctratic system _and then_ fix aging?
| giantg2 wrote:
| But if we extend life then we can have these wonderful rulers
| for even longer.
|
| (Sarcasm)
|
| Edit: I forgot HN does not enjoy sarcasm
| wgolsen wrote:
| My favorite response to this and related objections to ending
| aging (such as "what about the dictators"): imagine a scenario
| where humans did not age, but still had the problems of
| "gerontocracy" and dictatorships. Would you propose subjecting
| the whole of humanity to debilitating degenerative diseases and
| ultimately death to solve these societal problems?
|
| I picked this up from Ageless by Andrew Steele, a highly
| recommended and very current overview of the field of aging
| research.
| majormajor wrote:
| I think "those people would be assasinated more frequently
| than they are today" is a much more plausible outcome than
| "subject all of humanity to debilitating degenerative
| diseases."
|
| At the country-level scale, that certainly sounds better than
| _everyone_ aging and dying.
|
| But what would individuals do on a smaller scale? Would this
| also incentive a lot more violent death among the rest of the
| population too, to change things up in a world where probably
| everyone is their own long-lived dictator of some little
| domain they carved out. Sure, this would be illegal, but you
| can only catch and prosecute so much crime; what if it
| becomes unmanageable? Would people create unnatural death to
| serve the role natural death causes today? I think so. But I
| think this could still be potentially "better" than today in
| some measure - you're comparatively healthy and pain-free
| before your demise, instead of a slow painful decades-long
| decline.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| If you live forever, committing crimes seems like it
| carries a larger risk. Including a much higher risk of
| actually being murdered, in prison.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Oh the other hand, consigning yourself to death via
| assassinating a hated despot seems better, morally, than
| consigning _everybody_ to death to make them die of old
| age.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| My suspicion is that space travel will become a necessity if
| we end aging. People will have to move to new worlds to
| escape the ossified social/economic hierarchies. Kinda like
| how in the Enders Shadow series they send all of the Battle
| School alumni to different planets cause Earth can't handle
| all of these military geniuses.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Yeah it seems like the same thing as proposing we shorten
| today's average lifespan from 80 to 50 as a solution.
| writeslowly wrote:
| I've never considered this question before, but if people did
| live forever, requiring people in certain positions of power
| to be subject to some sort of incurable, debilitating disease
| or guaranteed death seems like a pretty reasonable safeguard
| to me.
| Stupulous wrote:
| If people live forever except for those in power, and power
| is opt-in rather than, e.g., sortition, power can only go
| to people who prefer it over eternal life.
|
| That group will be composed of the insane/irrational, those
| who value power at extremes, those who value improving the
| world over their own lives, and those who have lived long
| enough that they're ready to move on. The last two
| categories are great candidates for empowerment, but one is
| rare and grows rarer, and the other doesn't show up for
| upwards of centuries. Until then you mostly get the first
| two, which suck. Eventually, I think, we burn through
| everyone willing to make the trade-off and we're left with
| no power centralization.
|
| Unless you mean they only face death for the duration that
| they are in power, as an enforcement of term limits. I
| don't think that is materially different from other
| enforcement of term limits- if a dictator is able to
| compromise the military, they can probably also compromise
| whoever has the power to stop their impending death.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I might not have the heart to but a rational agent acting in
| the interest of the entire population would. In fact this is
| basically what natural selection did to us. If much longer
| lifespans would have benefited our species we would already
| have them.
|
| It turns out that the way out brains crystallize as we age
| and make us better at teaching but worse at changing our
| minds means our ideal lifespan is not very different than the
| ones we have. I know individuals can work very hard to avoid
| this outcome but most people don't.
| kiba wrote:
| _I might not have the heart to but a rational agent acting
| in the interest of the entire population would. In fact
| this is basically what natural selection did to us. If much
| longer lifespans would have benefited our species we would
| already have them._
|
| Natural selection doesn't act upon humans for the sake of
| humanity, nor did it ever asked what humans want or need.
|
| _It turns out that the way out brains crystallize as we
| age and make us better at teaching but worse at changing
| our minds means our ideal lifespan is not very different
| than the ones we have. I know individuals can work very
| hard to avoid this outcome but most people don 't. _
|
| Citation? I would argue that adults are better at learning
| languages, because we have the benefit of hindsight,
| experience, and reasoning.
|
| Whereas children are merely subjected to immerse learning
| environment from which to acquire languages pretty much
| every waking hours of their life.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This seems like a loaded question. How would the people in
| power allow someone else to make that decision? If the issue
| still exists and there are no alternatives (implied by it
| still existing), then what would the eventual answer be? It
| seems that the power dynamics would not allow for artificial
| control and thus, some natural control for which the people
| in power have little influence over would be necessary.
|
| I kind of like somthing along the same lines as the idea
| intended in Altered Carbon - everyone gets 100 years of
| generally healthy life, but then everyone dies at 100. Not
| realistic at all, but seems highly equitable. Any artificial
| constraints will be evaded or manipulated at some point, even
| in the name of what's best for humanity (ie what if Davinci
| or Einstien were still alive; eventually the people in power
| would say I'm president, so presidents should live forever
| too, etc).
|
| Regardless, the bigger issue would be overpopulation.
| kiba wrote:
| _I kind of like somthing along the same lines as the idea
| intended in Altered Carbon - everyone gets 100 years of
| generally healthy life, but then everyone dies at 100. Not
| realistic at all, but seems highly equitable._
|
| OK. Do you want to die? I don't want to die.
|
| Life is already inequitable as it is. The rich live a
| little bit longer. The pleb dies short and miserable life.
|
| At the very least, everyone should be able to live as long
| as they like.
|
| _Any artificial constraints will be evaded or manipulated
| at some point, even in the name of what 's best for
| humanity (ie what if Davinci or Einstien were still alive;
| eventually the people in power would say I'm president, so
| presidents should live forever too, etc)._
|
| There's also no absolute law of politics that dictators
| rule forever or indefinitely if they also happen to be
| immortal.
|
| _Regardless, the bigger issue would be overpopulation._
|
| No, the problem is ecological disaster.
|
| There's so much energy coming from the sun that humanity
| can't even begin to harvest a fraction of it, but we cannot
| scale to the sun because doing so will poison the Earth.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Do you want to die?"
|
| Someday, yes.
|
| "Life is already inequitable as it is."
|
| Which is why my statement was commenting on the equitable
| nature of lifespan in the fictional system.
|
| "At the very least, everyone should be able to live as
| long as they like."
|
| How do you propose to achieve this? Specifically, how
| would resource availability/consumption and indignant
| support systems be able to support it?
|
| "There's also no absolute law of politics that dictators
| rule forever or indefinitely if they also happen to be
| immortal."
|
| Nobody suggested what you are saying.
|
| "No, the problem is ecological disaster."
|
| For which increasing population would greatly contribute.
| Population is a major driver of consumption and there's
| no evidence that we can even support our current
| population _sustainably_. Your comment about scaling
| seems to be implicity acknowledge this.
| courtf wrote:
| ... yes? Preventing immortal dictators is absolutely worth
| keeping death around.
|
| It's hilarious to me how shortsighted this whole thing is, if
| immortal dictators rule humanity indefinitely, how long do
| you think they'll let you live?
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Disclaimer: this is a non-partisan comment. Both parties are
| reflected below.
|
| It makes me wonder if the US system will break down the same
| way the USSR broke down. As the politicians from the "early
| days" age out, it's difficult to replace them with people who
| are similarly bought into the system. And you end up with a
| Gorbachev or equivalent. I'm not sure if our Gorbachev is an
| AOC-like or a Trump-like or something else, but it's possible
| we'll have difficulty filling in the ranks of the Pelosis,
| Schumers, McConnells, etc.
| ajuc wrote:
| What if experience is beneficial at such positions and fixing
| aging would benefit us even more? Imagine if Einstein and
| Newton each lived for 400 years and met each other.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Honestly why is that a problem? Wouldn't one thing that we'd
| want the people with the most experience in higher level
| management positions.
|
| I don't think the problem with Congress is that members are in
| their 70s. The problem is that ideally they would have real
| jobs till their 60s THEN run for government. Instead they bum
| around various government roles till they get elected in their
| 30s and once they are there dig in like tics.
| techbio wrote:
| Self-fulfilling policy is the best policy.
|
| Also: "...like tic[-tac-toe]
| sokoloff wrote:
| If they intended the insect, "tick" is/was correct.
| jjallen wrote:
| These sound like two separate problems. That is only 500 people
| you are talking about. What about the other 7.4B of u s?
|
| Also, they are the ones who are supposed to fix _that_ problem.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Imagine being fresh out of school, competing in the job market
| against a huge pool of people who have been working for a
| century. Now that I think of it, though, what's the difference
| between a gerontocracy and hiring the most experienced senior
| candidates? Is it just government vs private sector?
| godelski wrote:
| Imagine going to school for 50 years? You're still a child at
| 100? Imagine being able to use compounding interest for a
| hundred years before you start work. I do not think we can
| approach this world with our current perceptions.
| ben_w wrote:
| I suspect gerontocracy would be a distinct without a difference
| after someone invents any real fountain-of-youth category of
| tech (mind uploading included), in much the same way that land
| ownership went from being a requirement for voting to merely
| one of many ways to hold wealth as the USA went from an
| agrarian to an industrial society.
|
| Big difference going from 50 to 70; proportionally less going
| from 600 to 700, even if the world isn't changing in a way that
| makes recent experience count for more than ancient experience.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "land ownership"
|
| A distracting thought: isn't it striking how "real property
| ownership" has returned as a marker of better societal
| status? A mere 50-60 years ago, even working class could own
| (arguably not very nice) dwellings in coastal California etc.
|
| The same development can be seen in Europe.
|
| If I had to choose, I'd rather be an owner of 3-4 nice pieces
| of real estate than a highly qualified professional. This is
| a certain return to feudalism, in a sense.
|
| As for your original idea: going from 600 to 700 is not a big
| deal. But the intermediate phase is going to be a big
| challenge. The first generation that enjoys the possibility
| of life extension to, say, 120, is going occupy their
| positions of power for a disproportionately long time and
| will need to be persuaded to step away; possibly in exchange
| for a lot of money.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| You know that Simpson's episode where Bart lines up a bunch
| of megaphones so that the amplified output of each one goes
| into the input of the next? Obviously in the real world the
| sound would saturate. Exponential amplification would stop
| after one or two megaphones as a few tones would "win" and
| suppress the others. The joke is that in the cartoon world
| it keeps on going and turns into a sonic tidal wave and we
| all laugh at the idea of ten megaphones producing a sonic
| tidal wave.
|
| Yet when we design an economic system by the exact same
| principle, people wonder why we get ten shrieking
| megaphones instead of a magical tidal wave.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| I invite readers to look into SkQ1, thymalin and Epitalon
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's obvious that healthy people that live shorter are better for
| the 'economy' but clearly humanity doesn't live to optimize for
| the economy. If we did, we would be fighting obesity with 10x the
| seriousness of how we fight COVID.
| majormajor wrote:
| The linked abstract claims the opposite: "We show that a
| slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is
| worth US$38 trillion, and by 10 years, US$367 trillion." Is
| saying the opposite is just "obvious" enough of a rebuttal?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| A slowdown in aging is a 'healthy person' being given more
| time.
| [deleted]
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true. We invest a lot of money in making
| people productive at their jobs, basically 0-25, and then they
| only work another 40 years after that. If they could work
| another 60-80 years instead, the return on investment is much
| better.
| cptaj wrote:
| I think he means under the current life expectancy and
| quality of life in the final decades.
|
| He probably means those final decades are completely
| unproductive and taxing on the whole economy, so a productive
| person dying just before becoming unproductive would be
| optimal.
|
| Naturally, if you give people more productive years then it
| changes.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| basically anything that wasnt a long term compounding
| investment would be illegal... Obvious things like smoking and
| vaping, but maybe even time wasters like social media (you
| could be learning something...)
|
| Luckily human life is more than just economy (as expressed in
| GDP) optimization.
| throwkeep wrote:
| It's strange. Obesity is our biggest preventable health
| problem, and it gets almost no attention in the media or by
| public officials. We heard endlessly from health officials and
| news media personalities to wash our hands, stay indoors, wear
| a mask, get vaccinated, but nothing about eating healthier,
| eating less, exercising more?
|
| "Obesity steals more years than diabetes, tobacco, high blood
| pressure and high cholesterol -- the other top preventable
| health problems that cut Americans' lives short, according to
| researchers who analyzed 2014 data."
|
| https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20170424/the-top-5-condi...
|
| "Obesity is associated with nearly 1 in 5 US deaths, according
| to a study published online August 15 in the American Journal
| of Public Health."
|
| https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/809516
|
| It should also be part of the climate change discussion:
|
| "Overall, being obese is associated with about 20% more
| greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous
| oxide) than being a normal weight"
|
| https://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity/news/20191220/growing-obe...
| kiba wrote:
| _It 's strange. Obesity is our biggest preventable health
| problem, and it gets almost no attention in the media or by
| public officials. We heard endlessly from health officials
| and news media personalities to wash our hands, stay indoors,
| wear a mask, get vaccinated, but nothing about eating
| healthier, eating less, exercising more?_
|
| Because it's been going on in the background so long, that it
| became part of the background.
|
| Also, it's not like it's not noticed by public officials. You
| hear all the time in recommendations and guidelines we should
| lose weight and get more exercise.
|
| That said, I would also note that current public health
| policy is basically a failure in that we largely failed to
| move the needle regarding the obesity pandemic or getting the
| recommended exercise dose.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _recommendations and guidelines we should lose weight and
| get more exercise_
|
| We also don't understand it, not well at least. You can't
| go to Walgreens, get a shot and be cured of obesity.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What part of obesity is not well understood?
|
| Societies with easy access to calories and
| sugar/carbs/sat fats and reduction in movement and
| increase in sitting have more obesity, right?
| kiba wrote:
| _Societies with easy access to calories and sugar
| /carbs/sat fats and reduction in movement and increase in
| sitting have more obesity, right?_
|
| I am doubtful that easy access to calories means more
| obesity. The Japanese is a wealthy society and is less
| obese than the American, for example.
|
| Also, societies that move more doesn't necessary have an
| increase in TDEE as society that move less. Your basal
| metabolism adjusts and accounts for physical activities.
| you would probably need to go to extreme to adjust your
| TDEE upward.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I'm sure there are cultural and genetic components also,
| but you can simply compare parents and their children
| over the past few decades in countries with obesity
| problems to control for some of that.
| bserge wrote:
| Because, like alcoholism, it's a choice. If you force people
| to lose weight, why not force them to stop poisoning
| themselves.
|
| Of course, it's all a bunch of hypocritical bs when other,
| safer, more useful drugs are banned or restricted for stupid
| reasons.
| sharadov wrote:
| Really? There are multi-billion dollar industries catering to
| the obesity issue - health food, supplements, exercise
| equipment, exercise gurus. Employers offering incentives
| since it leads to lower insurance costs. In the USA, health
| food options have grown tremendously in the last 10 years,
| but at the same time obesity has gone up.
| bserge wrote:
| All of those are useless. But profitable. As long as they
| don't solve the core issue, which seems to be in the brain.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > It's strange. Obesity is our biggest preventable health
| problem, and it gets almost no attention in the media or by
| public officials.
|
| I have seen many, many reports, news specials, CDC website
| reports about being overweight and obese driving increases in
| health risks. Michelle Obama, as First Lady, was on top of it
| and reformed the food pyramid nonsense.
| ohazi wrote:
| There is no cohesive "humanity" with any sort of desire or
| ability to optimize for "the economy."
|
| _Individuals_ optimize for their own (often short-term)
| economic benefit. That 's it.
|
| The corporate overlords at ACME don't care about fighting
| obesity, because there are more than enough non-obese workers
| for them to exploit, and they don't want to cannibalize their
| highly profitable line of products that obese people need (i.e.
| insulin).
|
| Governments are composed of individuals, and the structures we
| have to hold these individuals accountable to their
| constituents are weak, so they _still_ end up using their
| levers of power for their own gain, and for the gain of their
| corporate sponsors (also often short-term).
|
| Despite ~70 year lifespans, it seems that most of the
| population can't even be bothered to optimize for medium-term
| outcomes. This isn't going to change just because we invent a
| magic pill that lets you live youthfully till ~150.
|
| The problem isn't lifespan, the problem is that humanity is
| _innately_ selfish and short-sighted. If this can 't be fixed,
| _we are completely fucked_.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > humanity is innately selfish and short-sighted. If this
| can't be fixed, we are completely fucked.
|
| The communists tried pretty hard to do that, and just made
| things much worse.
| eitland wrote:
| This is an incredibly important fact that is often
| downplayed.
|
| We remember the Inquisition and the Vikings but they are
| small fry compared to Communists (and Nazis).
|
| I'm not saying Communists are inherently evil - most of
| them are well meaning I think - but _almost every single
| time it has been tried it has ended in genocide!_
|
| The one single exception I am aware of is the Israeli
| Kibbutz system.
|
| Edit: communism has killed more people than nazism,
| probably because most people realize nazism is more or less
| pure evil while communism looks nice (edit:) on paper.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Kibbutzen don't work, either. The Israeli government
| taxes the capitalist businesses in order to subsidize the
| deficits of the Kibbutzen.
| nwatson wrote:
| What's the cost burden to Israel of the Kibbutzen vs the
| cost of supporting the ultra-conservative religious
| groups that don't serve in the military and rely
| (presumably) more heavily on welfare and other social
| subsidies?
| eitland wrote:
| You are probably right. And that is a good point too, it
| fails economically too.
|
| My original point was only that the Kibbutzen didn't end
| up massacring their inhabitants like almost every other
| communist experiment.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| > Individuals optimize for their own (often short-term)
| economic benefit. That's it.
|
| Don't go to too far with this sort of atomistic analysis.
| Large firms are better at enforcing coordination than
| "society at-large" or other groupings. The fact that at
| different scales the coordination is _markedly_ different has
| a huge affect.
|
| We're not an "economy of households" as the orthodox macro
| might have one model.
| ohazi wrote:
| > Large firms are better at enforcing coordination than
| "society at-large" or other groupings.
|
| The "large firms" that I'm familiar with are cesspools of
| political infighting, gamesmanship, and backstabbing.
| _People_ in positions of power at these firms use their
| influence to achieve their own goals, often at the expense
| of the firm and its employees.
|
| The counterexamples to this are so singularly rare that
| they are the exception that proves the rule.
| WalterBright wrote:
| This is why larger companies tend to fail rather than
| growing to take over the world.
|
| There's another recent HN topic about how IBM's size
| prevented it from competing successfully in the PC
| market:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27912138
| [deleted]
| dalbasal wrote:
| I only skimmed past the abstract (wolverine case is gold, lol)
| feel that such an analysis gets squirrely, both morally and
| technically.
|
| A few years back, there seemed to be a desire to justify
| cigarette taxes with a "it costs the state money when you get
| cancer" rationale. Some of the analysis seemed to indicate
| opposite results. Lung cancer, for example, tends to kill more
| quickly than age related diseases, saving on nursing home costs
| and palliative care. Everyone dies of something after all, and
| death is expensive as is aging.
|
| Either way, it seems kind of strange to place economic values on
| life itself. I mean isn't economic utility premised on life?
|
| In any case, it seems trivially true that economic measures will
| always correlate with either population size working age
| population size, depending on the model.
|
| I feel like these kinds of papers only exist to be cited in
| support of cheap rhetoric.
| t_serpico wrote:
| "I feel like these kinds of papers only exist to be cited in
| support of cheap rhetoric."
|
| Agreed. The authors already made up their mind regarding the
| conclusion before writing the paper. This is an analysis that
| should be done by a group not involved in aging research so
| it's 'unbiased'.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Any action you take to preserve life has the side effect of
| putting an economic value on life.
|
| You invest some amount of effort into the action and the action
| has some amount of efficacy, so you can always divide the two
| to find a valuation. I agree that this exercise usually winds
| up as cheap rhetoric, but I'm not fully convinced it's the
| fault of the exercise.
|
| Refusing to calculate a value doesn't mean the value doesn't
| exist, it just means we are letting our instincts decide the
| value for us, and our instincts are prone to doing silly things
| like spending the wrong amount of attention on anti-terrorism
| vs heart disease.
| dalbasal wrote:
| This has a "trolley problem" feel to it. It's a contrived
| scenario that doesn't reflect real life.
|
| I'm not suggesting that all our decision making is good.
| Terrorism vs heart disease just don't really compete. A model
| of the world where everything competes with everything isn't
| a good one for decision making. Just like "don't build a
| particle collider until we have solved poverty" is not a
| workable approach.
|
| Terrorism & heart disease don't have the same consequences,
| socially, politically or geopolitically. We're not machines.
| Even in machines' decision making, such moral calculus
| doesn't really play. Self driving cars won't, and don't need
| to solve the trolley problem any more than we do.
|
| ..and don't underestimate our instincts. They may not be as
| "perfect" as legible reasoning, but they are far more
| complete.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > It's a contrived scenario
|
| Any time you help people is a contrived scenario? Uhh... I
| certainly hope not. Putting a valuation on life is not a
| result of philosophical debate, it's a direct,
| unintentional, unavoidable consequence of any real-world
| action we take that helps people. The only way to avoid it
| is to avoid helping people. Which is ludicrous.
|
| > Terrorism vs heart disease just don't really compete.
|
| They sure compete for tax dollars and public attention.
|
| > We're not machines.
|
| No kidding. That's why we prefer chasing Bin Laden to
| chasing heart disease.
|
| The "value of a life" discussion is an accusatory finger
| that says "yeah, actually we did have a choice there, and
| our choice had consequences," and I understand how that's
| uncomfortable, but that's exactly why we need the tool to
| hold our instincts accountable, such as we can.
| dalbasal wrote:
| No, the trolley problem (an example used in moral
| philosophy) is a contrived scenario.
| miltondts wrote:
| > Terrorism vs heart disease just don't really compete.
|
| They do actually. Both for budget and for misery.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > A few years back, there seemed to be a desire to justify
| cigarette taxes with a "it costs the state money when you get
| cancer" rationale.
|
| When you have guaranteed pension funds for an ever growing
| number of bureaucrats, you HAVE to find new ways to tax. Taxing
| unpopular things is the easiest thing (and doesn't hurt for
| reelection).
| syoc wrote:
| Tobacco tax does not make or break any budget, at least not
| where I live. It is also taxed with the intention of reducing
| sales, which in turn reduces tax income. This is also by
| large the result.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Heard of tobacco bonds? Financed with securitized tobacco
| revenues? While many of these are tobacco-settlement more
| than tobacco-taxes, they've done more to break budgets than
| to make them.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-wall-street-
| tobacco-d...
| im3w1l wrote:
| Personally I believe that the fundamental driver of aging is dna
| damage. The direct issue is cancer, but the indirect consequence
| is that the body slows down cellular reproduction to counteract
| said cancer. This means slower healing of any injuries, and lower
| vigor.
|
| Thus I see any aging treatment that doesn't fix dna damage as
| fundamentally a blind alley. And conversely if someone manages to
| fix dna damage, then the rest should just be some small details.
| courtf wrote:
| The quest for immortality is popular, but it would mean the end
| of physical and cultural evolution. Seems as though this topic is
| gaining steam now, only as a large corpus of aging narcissists
| are finally grappling with the concept of death. It's another
| sign of the selfish immaturity ingrained into our culture.
| kiba wrote:
| This is nonsense. We change everyday through forgetting and
| remembering and learning. Physical and cultural evolution don't
| stop.
|
| _It 's another sign of the selfish immaturity ingrained into
| our culture._
|
| Selfish immaturity? It seems that you yourself is a reflection
| of culture.
|
| One of our very first epic poems, the Epic of Gilgamesh
| basically railed against immortality and accepting one's fate.
| courtf wrote:
| > Physical and cultural evolution don't stop.
|
| If someone lives forever, they don't evolve physically. This
| is basic. To the degree we evolve culturally, most of our
| culture comes to us in our eponymous "formative years."
| Leaving those behind tends to result in comparatively little
| change in culture over the remaining course of our lives.
|
| > Selfish immaturity? It seems that you yourself is a
| reflection of culture.
|
| I rest my case.
|
| > One of our very first epic poems, the Epic of Gilgamesh
| basically railed against immortality and accepting one's
| fate.
|
| This was not a call to try and live forever, this is a call
| to live boldly, take risks and not to fear death. Striving
| for immortality is the absolute opposite, the coward's
| response to the challenge made in the poem.
| kiba wrote:
| _If someone lives forever, they don 't evolve physically.
| This is basic. To the degree we evolve culturally, most of
| our culture comes to us in our eponymous "formative years."
| Leaving those behind tends to result in comparatively
| little change in culture over the remaining course of our
| lives._
|
| That is not a law of physics or biology. People get heart
| implants, or even exercise and become stronger.
|
| _I rest my case._
|
| Rest your case how? You didn't demonstrate that it is
| selfish and immature to desire to live, perhaps
| indefinitely.
|
| _This was not a call to try and live forever, this is a
| call to live boldly, take risks and not to fear death.
| Striving for immortality is the absolute opposite, the
| coward 's response to the challenge made in the poem._
|
| I assure you that I do not make conscious decisions about
| whether I live a thousand years if I undertake a given
| activity. I am also pretty sure that I routinely undertaken
| relatively dangerous activities that would kill me.
|
| I doubt most people who becomes immortal will become the
| sort of conscious decision makers deciding not to take risk
| lest they jeopardize their thousand years+ lifespan. That
| doesn't seem to jives with human nature.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > If someone lives forever, they don't evolve physically.
|
| you skipped some lessons in biology class; you're not doing
| any evolving over the course of _your_ life. regardless of
| how long or short it is.
| courtf wrote:
| Evolution, by definition, occurs over the course of
| generations. So angry and yet so wrong.
|
| If a population lives forever, do you really think
| they'll continue having kids the entire time? Of course
| not.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Please feel free to end your life at your convenience,
| billions of others will take the opportunity of living for
| as much as possible.
| courtf wrote:
| This is not an appropriate comment for HN.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I am constantly attempting to improve myself. Sometimes, I
| wonder if I will finally achieve perfection only to run out
| of time and die :-/
|
| There's a heluva lot I wish I could tell my 20 year old self.
| Sometimes I counsel my friends in their 20s, but they don't
| believe me, as I didn't believe this stuff in my 20s.
| titzer wrote:
| The bandwidth on that connection isn't great. You can't fit
| 20 (or 40) years worth of experience through the narrow
| tube of spoken language without massive compression. A
| single sentence can stand for years and years of trial and
| error. Or it could stand for nothing but frustration and
| regret. Young people have no context or wisdom or
| experience to relate to. So it's kind of impossible.
|
| Likewise it is impossible to communicate what 20 years of
| adult experiences feels like to someone who is barely an
| adult; not all years are the same. And then when they get
| to 40, likewise, communicating _another_ 40 years of life
| experience to them doesn 't work either. Growing up and
| aging can only be done first hand.
|
| Compound this with the fact that some old people are just
| dumb and angry. So young people can and should just shrug
| off some of what old nutters say.
| kiba wrote:
| I second your thought. For sure, I am smarter and wiser
| then I was in my 20s, which wasn't long ago. But I am also
| carrying baggage of the past with me, which in some case
| makes less wise and less brave than I wanted to be.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > There's a heluva lot I wish I could tell my 20 year old
| self.
|
| Like?
| willwashburn wrote:
| It seems that their calculations use metformin. At what age
| should we start using it for health-span extension? I'm already
| using it to avoid glucose spikes, even though I'm not even
| prediabetic, but I'm curious if it's known how powerful is the
| health-span effect is younger humans.
| wincy wrote:
| If glucose spikes are bad for you, why not just exclude all
| foods with a glycemic index? That's what I've done and find my
| mental health and energy levels have improved substantially.
| deegles wrote:
| There are a lot of DIYers experimenting with senolytics and
| Rapamycin therapies for longevity. I expect that in the next 10
| years or so evidence will be clear that at least some of these
| therapies work. It will be undeniable as more and more people
| start to hit their 80s, 90s, and beyond in very good health.
|
| I'm in my 30s so not in need yet but I'm keeping a close eye on
| the science.
|
| For example, this clinical trial [0] is studying the safety of
| various dosing schedules of Rapamycin, and a planned followup
| study will use the safest dose with a larger group and longer
| timeline.
|
| [0] https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/pearl-participatory-
| evalua...
|
| edit: fine, maybe more than 10 years but within my lifetime :)
| p1esk wrote:
| _the next 10 years or so evidence will be clear that at least
| some of these therapies work._
|
| I think you forgot an extra zero
| [deleted]
| bserge wrote:
| They're not DIYers when using a prescription drug. Something
| inaccessible to the majority of the population.
|
| Can't wait for a time when trying to delay your death requires
| serious justification and approval from some asshole whose only
| authority comes from 5+ years of overpriced formal education.
| ska wrote:
| > I expect that in the next 10 years or so evidence will be
| clear that at least some of these therapies work.
|
| It's an interesting area, and at least _some_ empirically
| useful work is being done, but both the expectation and the
| timeline here seem pretty ambitious.
| nostromo wrote:
| I used metformin for a bit, but stopped because it was found to
| hinder muscle growth. I decided for the time being I'd rather
| look and feel good and not be a fragile waif in the hopes of
| living a bit longer.
|
| I came to similar conclusions about calorie restriction. These
| schemes tend to slow or restrict growth and energy levels, which
| is a real side effect we should be discussing more.
|
| Rapamycin seems promising though. It appears you can cycle on and
| off it and get most of the anti-aging benefits, while limiting
| the effects of blocking protein synthesis.
| kiba wrote:
| _I used metformin for a bit, but stopped because it was found
| to hinder muscle growth. I decided for the time being I'd
| rather look and feel good and not be a fragile waif in the
| hopes of living a bit longer._
|
| I heard the effect was effectively not much, so you should be
| OK exercising. Just that your muscle gain will be a little bit
| less. This is just what I heard from other people though, so
| take it with a grain of salt.
|
| Even if hinder muscle growth by 50%, I might still take it.
|
| _I came to similar conclusions about calorie restriction.
| These schemes tend to slow or restrict growth and energy
| levels, which is a real side effect we should be discussing
| more._
|
| I doubt calorie restriction actually works for us. I find
| intermittent fasting easy.
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