[HN Gopher] The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the ...
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The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out
Author : enopod_
Score : 185 points
Date : 2024-09-14 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| janandonly wrote:
| This article is golden:
|
| > _Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese
| government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people
| aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to
| living to 110 was, don't register your death._
|
| _The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional
| surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now,
| Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They've eaten the
| least vegetables; they've been extremely heavy drinkers._
| HPsquared wrote:
| Ah, statistics.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| To be fair, once I die, I don't imagine I'll feel like
| registering my death.
| ptsneves wrote:
| Barbarian! People went to war for those rights.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| That is one of the recurring news items in the US that drives
| me batty. When each of my parents died, removing their names
| from the voter rolls was about the 596th item down on my
| priority list.
|
| The government realizes this and regularly scrubs the voter
| rolls of dead people. Yet certain news organizations will
| report this as if it is a scandal. "Thousands of dead people
| were set to vote until their plan was foiled by the governors
| office". Tell me when dead people are voting in numbers, not
| that people die while still being on the rolls.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| It didn't even occur to me as something to be done when I
| was dealing with my mother's estate. I would have thought
| it was automatic (SS# shows up in the death index) but even
| if it wasn't a registration with nobody voting it will
| eventually get scrubbed.
| bitwize wrote:
| Some social media algorithm once recommended to me a video
| about a 550-year-old, still living Japanese monk.
|
| Turns out it was a sokushinbutsu, a self-mummifying monk who
| practiced extreme fasting, dietary restriction and dehydration
| until, emaciated and desiccated, their body died in a
| meditative state. Such monks were thought not to be dead but
| rather to have ascended to a higher plane of understanding.
| Their corpses would be dressed in fine clothes and venerated
| almost like gods. If you complete a shrine in _Breath of the
| Wild_ and reach the mummified monk at the end, those monks were
| inspired by sokushinbutsu.
|
| It made me think about the claims of extreme longevity,
| especially from the Far East, and how many of those might just
| be due to flexibility about the definition of "death".
| gizajob wrote:
| Great article but the oldest guy in the UK definitely isn't from
| one of the roughest parts of Liverpool, he's had a nice life
| living by the seaside in a place called Southport 25km away, and
| doesn't seem like a liar.
| philk10 wrote:
| My hometown - a very quiet place, especially in the winter with
| no tourists - but it seems he did grow up and spend most of his
| life in Liverpool which was/is a rough place
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Many honest people confidently assert the truth of statements
| (including memories) which are false. They're not lying,
| they're just incorrect.
| quuxplusone wrote:
| The "oldest man in the UK" referred to is probably John
| Tinniswood, who _now_ lives in an old-age home in Southport,
| but was _born_ somewhere outside of that old-age home and lived
| out there in the world for most of his life. These sources are
| quite firm on "Liverpool," although I don't see anyone
| directly saying what part of Liverpool.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tinniswood
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68741070
|
| The hypothesis Newman is implicitly presenting in TFA is that
| Tinniswood is indeed very old, but -- instead of being born in
| 1912, married at age 30, and now age 112 -- perhaps he was
| really born in 1917, married at 25, and now 107. Or any other
| massaging of the numbers. Really the only way to distinguish
| among these hypotheses is to have some sort of documentary
| evidence -- birth certificate, marriage certificate, employment
| records, etc.
|
| Newman's point is that "supercentenarian" populations are
| disproportionately correlated with bad recordkeeping (
| _presumably_ even when you control for the observation that
| century-old records are likely worse-kept than newer records,
| although I don 't think Newman directly says that). And also
| with pension fraud. He writes: (
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3.full )
|
| > The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is
| associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian
| records. [...] In England and France, higher old-age poverty
| rates _alone_ predict more than half of the regional variation
| in attaining a remarkable age [...] supercentenarian birthdates
| are concentrated on days divisible by five [...] relative
| poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of
| centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary
| role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age
| records.
|
| Now, maybe there's no evidence that John Tinniswood is lying
| about his age (consciously or unknowingly), and maybe "the
| rough parts of Liverpool" have great recordkeeping, and maybe
| Tinniswood isn't even _from_ the roughest part of Liverpool --
| sure, I think Newman 's argument is specifically weak on
| concrete evidence for any of those claims, which means
| Tinniswood might be a terrible individual example for him to
| have picked. But then you should object to _those_ claims. Don
| 't jump all the way to an obviously false response like
| "Tinniswood isn't even from Liverpool!"
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The hypothesis Newman is implicitly presenting in TFA is
| that Tinniswood is indeed very old,
|
| I'm curious why the census isn't presented as evidence of
| location. UK census are very informative and the 1921 census
| is the most recent one available.
|
| I'll note that a very small percentage of individuals aren't
| found (illegible, record loss, issue at taking) but it's
| exceptional.
| handelaar wrote:
| And John Alfred Tinniswood is in fact listed in the 1921
| census, born 1912 in Manchester, a resident of Wavertree,
| West Derby, Liverpool, Lancs.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| From there I'd see where his parents were in the 1911
| census. If it's the same location, odds are high that's
| where he was born.
|
| Exceptions are possible. To help rule them out, I'd
| research and build-out the extended family. In that day,
| siblings/cousins banded together; local migration shows
| up when viewing the lateral family.
| gizajob wrote:
| Liverpool was the second city of the British empire at
| this point, so again, its "roughness" could be debatable.
| bell-cot wrote:
| <sigh/> Once again, Big Science proves itself near-impotent
| against the Rule of Cool and the Want to Believe.
|
| It would be so cool and wonderful to believe that this
| researcher's current employer (University College London's Social
| Research Institute, Centre for Longitudinal Studies) was a
| bastion of truth and honesty in scientific research...
|
| Anybody know what the reality is?
| rougka wrote:
| For a really good book on most of these long life nutritional
| surveys and other food panics, check out:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/0226...
| Xen9 wrote:
| The most realistic and rational path to life extension is
| creation of behavioural replicants with purpose of only extending
| the lifespan of one's agency.
|
| To reach next 1000 years, you need to do:
|
| (1) Information theoretic presevation, IE body imaging, cryo, and
| proper archival / storage.
|
| (2) Behavioural emulation, IE a virtual replicant that roughly
| makes same decisions far enough for you to identify with it and
| trust it will carry on your pursuits, even though it will be at
| least for the beginning slower than the meat was. Behavioural
| emulation is much less difficult and much more computationally
| efficient than whole brain emulation.
|
| Many humans would say they want someone to be there taking care
| of their kids, if nothing else. But there is nothing really
| pioneering this. I hope the separate developments in
| neuroimaging, qualia research will eventually converge.
| Loughla wrote:
| The problem is that without a massive internal shift toward
| some kind of altruistic behavior, this won't ever really be a
| focus, I bet.
|
| The simulant may be Me (as in another version of me) but it's
| not me (the consciousness I experience inside my body).
| Therefore, it's life extension for me, _but for everyone 's
| benefit but mine_. That doesn't help the selfish ego inside me
| that wants to live forever.
|
| That just does not scratch the eternal life itch, I'm afraid.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If there was a shift to altruistic behavior, we could all
| increase the amount of other people's lives through charity
| and having children.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| altruism has a massive freeloading problem, it's likely why
| it is unstable beyond a very limited set of very close
| relatives. If you want your statement above to be true you
| need to crush free loading or expand the very limited set
| of people the population doesn't mind freeloading. both
| those things have huge risks of enforcement/creation
| because they damage other aspects of human dignity we like
| and benefit from (i.e. the fundamental freedoms that give
| us a competitive productivity edge over time through
| allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their
| innovation is heavily damaged by the authoritarianism that
| is the easiest path to crushing freeloading [up until the
| authoritarians become the freeloaders] or the nationalism
| that can lead to problematic outcomes interfacing with the
| inevitable outgroup but is the easiest way to expand the
| group that can freeload without causing instability.)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "Freeloading" is a feature, not a bug.
|
| Human[0] socialization is hard-wired to be altruistic. If
| altruism didn't work, we wouldn't be socializing, we'd
| still be hairless primates wandering around the jungles
| of Africa, alone, killing and eating anything and
| everything we met. Hell, _ants_ wouldn 't be in colonies
| if that were the case. Altruism works evolutionarily
| because selfless actions improve group fitness, even if
| they don't increase individual reproductive success.
|
| Insamuch as "freeloading" is an actually deleterious
| behavior, it is because individuals are trying to move
| resources out of their altruistic in-group and towards
| themselves. To address your specific examples:
|
| - The whole goal of authoritarianism _is_ to "become the
| freeloaders". The key rhetorical strategy of
| authoritarianism is to accuse your opponents of what you
| plan to do. If they agree with you and stop doing that
| thing, then you've won, because they are now tying their
| hands behind their back. If they try to normalize the
| thing as OK, then you've won, because now you get to do
| the thing. So in this case, authoritarians will identify
| and demonize the freeloading of some out-group, both to
| attack the out-group as well as internally justify their
| own freeloading.
|
| - Nationalism is rather arbitrary in what is and isn't
| considered to be the altruistic in-group. In fact, I
| would argue that it is a subset of the freeloading
| authoritarianism I mentioned above, at least in our
| modern age. Nationalists want to divide and conquer
| humanity.
|
| - "Allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off
| their innovation" _is_ a freeloading behavior. Copyright
| and patent laws allow inventors to take from the public
| commons of knowledge and legally enclose it off for
| themselves. The intent is for this to be limited, but the
| limits are extremely weak[1]. "IP"[2] is the engine by
| which large corporate empires build fiefdoms around
| themselves. The counterargument to this is to gesture
| vaguely at the European medieval period's economic
| stagnation, but my counter-counterargument is to point
| out that this economic stagnation was itself the product
| of a system in which the vast majority of economic wealth
| was the product of _rents_.
|
| Diving further into that last point... the economic
| system in which the majority of wealth is the product of
| rents is called "feudalism". We associate this with
| agrarian economies and extreme material poverty, but
| modern "IP"-heavy business practices are not that far off
| from feudalism, recast in the mold of modernity. You
| can't innovate in a feudal system _because_ of all the
| owners demanding their cut. Innovation _requires_
| freeloading. If those who own the resources of innovation
| are positioned to charge more than you could ever hope to
| make from that innovation, then there will not be
| innovation.
|
| [0] actually most mammals and primates especially
|
| [1] Copyrights last "practically forever". Patents have
| 20 year terms but the patent office is not shy about
| permitting another 20 years on minor modifications to the
| invention that can then be used to bully competing users
| of the original patent. This practice is known as
| evergreening and it's endemic in the pharmaceutical
| industry.
|
| [2] "Intellectual property" as in "federal contempt of
| business model"
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Wow, you sure like to write essays...
|
| Your whole essay utterly misses the point in multiple
| ways:
|
| - Freeloading is not a feature or a bug, it's just
| something that happens when the expected value of
| exchange is unbalanced. If it is too unbalanced it makes
| the system unstable (i.e. causes war, violence,
| unfriending, etc. at different scales). The cry for more
| altruism of the OP almost always leads to a too
| unbalanced system, thus the problem.
|
| - Yes we are wired to be altruistic to our in group (as I
| mentioned already). The outgroup we will routinely do
| horrible atrocities to with little thought or care. How
| in the in group one is will determine how unbalanced
| someone is willing to allow exchange to get. I.e. one
| will generally be fine with personally dumping large
| amounts of resources into a disabled immediate family
| member but will not be ok with personally dumping the
| same resources into a stranger across the globe (or
| across the city, or perhaps even into an acquaintance
| down the street).
|
| - It's not that relevant what you think authoritarianism
| is classified as, it's only relevant that it's bad for
| freedoms many enjoy and that benefit society. Same deal
| with your take on nationalism. You should have edited
| these points out after rereading my comment because they
| don't matter. It's a missing the forest through all the
| trees situation.
|
| - Yah, you chose the examples of innovators getting
| wealthy that is least relevant to societal improvement
| (and has huge problems I disagree with like excessive
| terms for copyright among many other problems). It's much
| more basic than that. Through much of history you lacked
| basic rights that ensured you could operate a business
| around your idea. A subset of the population had the
| right to just take it and that killed any motivation of
| the individual to act on their good ideas. Copyrights and
| patents came much later than the actual freedom that
| really matters for this. Your following paragraph is also
| a swing and a miss because of the above. It's not what I
| was talking about.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| You aren't the same "you" that you were a few years ago, from
| a mental perspective. Brains change all the time. We don't
| generally get hung up on this concern because, fundamentally,
| the self-preservation drive is just an evolved reflex rather
| than anything fundamentally rational. We want some specific
| evolutionary-selected version of "self-preservation" for the
| same reason we crave unhealthy foods or are revolted by
| certain smells.
|
| TL;DR Let your rational brain decide what it wants, try to
| cope with the rest from there.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| There's nothing rational about a desire to live forever.
| It's completely driven by a fear of the unknown/driven that
| comes past death.
| Livanskoy wrote:
| I don't see that as universal explanation. Anyone who
| enjoys live will want to prolong it (without sacrificing
| the enjoyment part, of course). Many people see the death
| not as "unknown", but as the "end of experience".
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Why do they see it as the "end of experience"? Because
| they don't know what comes after it? When I see people
| use that explanation, I also see a fear of the unknown.
| Nobody has any idea what comes after death: It could be
| the start of a brighter and better experience or it could
| be absolutely nothing.
|
| Taking things to the far extreme, for all we know, there
| could actually be a heaven or a hell as described by one
| of the desert-dwelling hallucinogen-enjoying people whose
| book caught on. And I don't mean some ethereal concept, I
| mean the actual things with 72 virgins or angels with 100
| eyes and 50 wings and wheels on their wheels. Despite
| _feeling_ implausible, we have exactly as much evidence
| of nothingness after death as we do of a heaven or a
| hell.
|
| Before you mention that this is absurd because there's no
| brain activity after death, we still don't know how the
| brain and "mind" work, we can't observe the vast majority
| of matter or energy in the universe, and there's a lot we
| don't know. Filling that unknown space in with "it's the
| end of everything I experience" is as irrational as
| filling that in with "72 virgins if I kill enough
| infidels."
| cgriswald wrote:
| You yourself seem to have internalized the idea that it
| is the end of the experience. The things you describe as
| possible are all _different_ experiences to this one.
|
| People aren't required to be rational for GP's point to
| be correct. I don't even think it is necessary that they
| hold a particular view on death. Plenty of Christians
| don't fear death because they believe in heaven. Plenty
| of those who believe in nothingness fear the end of their
| experience.
|
| Nothingness has evidence. Memory and consciousness both
| appear tied to the body. Suggesting that's equivalent to
| anything else because technically anything is possible is
| at best a god of the gaps argument.
|
| The rational take here is that we don't know, we may
| never know, but that the evidence is suggestive of the
| same sort of nothingness we "experience" when unconscious
| or before we were born.
|
| Regardless, all that is required for the GP's point to be
| true is that people do not universally fear death.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > You yourself seem to have internalized the idea that it
| is the end of the experience.
|
| The previous commenter didn't say the end of " _the_
| experience. " They said the end of " _experience_ " (no
| the). If you want to be pedantic about the semantics,
| that's a pretty big thing to add, don't you think? One is
| the end of all sensation and the end of a particular set
| of sensations.
|
| And no, it doesn't require that people not universally
| fear death, it requires that _people who see death as the
| end of all experience_ don 't fear death, which appears
| to be tautologically false since they adopt an irrational
| and negative belief about what the post-death state is.
|
| > Nothingness has evidence. Memory and consciousness both
| appear tied to the body. Suggesting that's equivalent to
| anything else because technically anything is possible is
| at best a god of the gaps argument.
|
| The wordplay is interesting here - I didn't mention
| memory, only consciousness. Memory does appear to be an
| embodied phenomenon in your brain. Regarding
| consciousness, I'm not filling the gaps with a god, I'm
| suggesting that denying the existence of the gaps is as
| bad as filling it with a god.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > which appears to be tautologically false since they
| adopt an irrational and negative belief about what the
| post-death state is.
|
| "Probably nothing" is not an irrational belief. You don't
| need 100% certainty to want to avoid that.
|
| > The wordplay is interesting here - I didn't mention
| memory, only consciousness. Memory does appear to be an
| embodied phenomenon in your brain.
|
| If I don't have my memories, then the old me is
| effectively gone forever. Wanting to avoid such a drastic
| and disruptive change has nothing to do with "fear of the
| unknown".
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > "Probably nothing" is not an irrational belief. You
| don't need 100% certainty to want to avoid that.
|
| The words "probably nothing" imply that on something more
| than belief, you can assign a probability to nothingness.
| Can you provide an objective measure of probability as to
| whether nothingness is what awaits you after death? When
| you say "probably nothing," the belief in "probably
| nothing" is an emotionally nice but similarly irrational
| hedge on "nothing," because nobody can assign a
| probability to an unknown unknown like "what happens
| after you die."
|
| > If I don't have my memories, then the old me is
| effectively gone forever. Wanting to avoid such a drastic
| and disruptive change has nothing to do with "fear of the
| unknown".
|
| Wanting to avoid that change is _almost definitionally_
| due to a fear of the unknown. You are afraid that the new
| state you will be in will be worse for lack of those
| memories. Many people who lose their memories are happier
| for it, and it is in fact a common trauma response to
| block out old, bad memories.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Can you provide an objective measure of probability as
| to whether nothingness is what awaits you after death?
|
| Yes, with some effort, I can start at a default 50:50 and
| incorporate all the evidence we have access to. The
| resulting number will be pretty high and as objective as
| a person can reasonably be asked to be.
|
| > nobody can assign a probability to an unknown unknown
|
| Giving up like that is not a way to make rational
| decisions.
|
| Also when you have a very precise scenario and question,
| doesn't that make it a known unknown?
|
| > Wanting to avoid that change is almost definitionally
| due to a fear of the unknown. You are afraid that the new
| state you will be in will be worse for lack of those
| memories.
|
| Wrong. Even with a guaranteed blissful existence, I'm
| still busy using my consciousness on my current life and
| don't want it to end.
|
| > it is in fact a common trauma response to block out
| old, bad memories.
|
| Yeah _a few of them_ , that's not remotely the same as a
| clean slate.
| bitwize wrote:
| In one of the detective stories my wife watches, one of
| the suspects was a kooky spiritual medium. "Don't you
| wonder what happens after death?" she asks the detective.
| The skeptical detective responds: "I know exactly what
| will happen after I die: I will go back to being what I
| was for millions of years before I was born."
|
| We know exactly what happens after death: nothing. You
| cease to be as a living being. What we don't know, and
| can't ever know, is _what it 's like to not be_. But
| every investigation so far has failed to produce evidence
| of a soul separate from the body, so until that changes
| we can assume such souls don't exist, and neither will we
| when our body dies.
|
| Don't handwave it away with "we don't know how the mind
| really works". For all intents and purposes we do know.
| The mind working at all depends on the body working; once
| the latter stops, so does the former. We can't accept
| this because our mind, from our mind's perspective, is
| everything, but it is limited in space and time because
| it too is composed of matter and energy and one day, it
| will stop. That fills us with horror and dread, the idea
| of (from our tiny perspective) everything stopping, so we
| fight it. We make up stories about heavens and hells.
| Even in this era we fight it with hopes of becoming
| transfinite and infinite through technology. It's all
| hopium and copium, and incredibly dangerous. People like
| Elon Musk are now shooting giant penises into the sky,
| and planning to send actual humans on one-way missions to
| interplanetary hellscapes which should inspire visions of
| an angry Hayao Miyazaki saying "what you have done is an
| insult to life itself." Meanwhile we're neglecting the
| care of the only hospitable home we know we have, Earth.
|
| Accept your fate. Live, as the fictional gorilla Ishmael
| put it, in the hands of the gods. Doing otherwise will
| doom us all, and a lot of other living things too.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Since you seem to know, can you tell me at what precise
| moment a person becomes conscious at birth? It would
| solve a lot of problems in the world if you could share
| that knowledge with us.
|
| People fill the unknown with lots of things. I am simply
| suggesting that you should let the unknown remain
| unknown, especially if you're going to make major life
| choices around it.
| bitwize wrote:
| Fundamentalists are fond of responding to claims about
| evolution (dinosaurs, etc.) with, "Were you there? How
| could you know if you were not there?" This is even
| taught as a rhetorical tactic in fundamentalist
| elementary schools (which I'm embarrassed to be an
| American for admitting they exist here).
|
| This seems to be an approach similar to what you're
| taking here, except you put an interesting twist on it by
| handwaving your appeal to spooks with stuff about "the
| unknown" and then claiming it is the more rational
| position. Once again: we know, as certainly as we can
| know anything, that the mind cannot function without the
| body functioning. Therefore, the idea that there is no
| experience after body death is a more rational position
| to take than anything involving 72 virgins, nirvana,
| reincarnation, or blah blah Bible Jesus magic.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The difference is that we know the fundamentalists are
| wrong because their beliefs solidly run up against known
| facts. I am suggesting that filling the gaps one way
| (even though it feels more rational) is as irrational as
| filling the gaps any other way.
|
| And we know very little about the mind. We know a lot
| about the brain. As far as the exact links between mind
| and brain, that is still quite a bit up in the air.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I don't remember anything from before I was born,
| obviously. But I also don't think my consciousness is
| particularly unique or special, and conscious human
| beings lived before me, so I assume it's reasonable to
| imagine "I" was one of them. This is a pretty nonsensical
| way to define the word "I", but not much more nonsensical
| than using the singular "I" to refer to the six year old
| and present versions of me.
|
| What does bum me out is losing a lifetime of knowledge
| and capability. You get old just when you're starting to
| be good at things. The human lifespan could definitely be
| a few decades longer.
| Livanskoy wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I don't understand how you could make an
| equality between "end of experience" and "fear of the
| unknown". The first is about valuing your life and not
| wanting for it to end. The second is about what comes
| after the end of life. I do not care about the second,
| but care about my current life a lot. If, for some
| unlikely but rhetorically valuable reason, my experience
| decides to NOT END after my body dies -- great, more fun.
| I do not care about the political or religious debates,
| especially here, but it always seemed strange to me that
| people assume the fear of the unknown to be some
| universal factor.
| imtringued wrote:
| The problem isn't the end of experience. The problem is
| that the universe exists in the first place.
|
| A lot of atheist afterlife logic runs into the problem
| that if nothing follows death, then this would also mean
| the end of the universe, but this is in contradiction
| with the fact that we can experience the universe and
| that it exists. Lots of people die every day and yet that
| "nothing" has failed to arrive.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > the problem that if nothing follows death, then this
| would also mean the end of the universe
|
| No.
| fallingsquirrel wrote:
| That's easy to say now, but it will be little comfort when
| you're watching from your hospital bed as your younger
| clone holds your wife's hand while they both watch the
| doctors pull the plug on your obsoleted body.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Sure, that would suck, but would you actually say that
| the sum of that loss weighed against the gain of N more
| happy and healthy years with your wife be negative?
|
| I don't think so, I'd sign up for it. Do you not think
| you could cooperate with _yourself_ like that?
| narrator wrote:
| So I thought about the brain uploading stuff for my next novel,
| "The Godlike Era" and my conclusion is : Dude, brain uploading
| to ONE replicant after you die is totally pathetic. Make
| 100,000 brain replicants. Run them in parallel on a nuclear
| powered GPU cluster. Have them learn all specialties of modern
| civilization in faster than real time. Have them teleoperate
| 100,000 robots. Build out whole civilization's worth of
| infrastructure on other planets with you as the ceo of that
| 100,000 person planetary development corporation WHILE YOU'RE
| STILL ALIVE.
| krisoft wrote:
| That is a common scifi trope. For example it is the starting
| point of We Are Legion (We Are Bob).
| narrator wrote:
| The part that I don't like about that one is Bob is dead.
| What if you do this while you're still alive? Von Neumann
| probes would be super energy inefficient too. Just power
| people with electricity via advanced wetware and static
| nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people
| could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Congratulations, you just invented a Sybil attack on
| humanity.
| krisoft wrote:
| What you are describing is just an AGI aligned with a
| particular person. So we (humanity) is working on that problem.
|
| Not sure if it will ever satisfy the desire to lenghten human
| lifespan though. Just as a thought experiment imagine that we
| have this tech. You have your perfect replica. It responds
| exactly like you would and no one else, not even you can tell
| its responses apart from yours. Once you have that, and
| attained "immortality" as such, do you mind if someone shoots
| you in the head? The real you i mean. After all you are
| immortal. Your behaviouraly emulated clone will keep doing what
| you do, loving your wife, taking care of your kids, supporting
| the causes you support etc.
|
| For me the answer is that I would absolutely not let my real
| body killed just because i have my behavioural clone. Which to
| me implies that at least for me it is not a true continuation
| of my life. More like having a living will, or a son who is way
| too similar to me, but still not me.
|
| Basically I would not reach 1000 years. This thing created in
| my image would.
| Xen9 wrote:
| You cannot make such AGI if the information is gone. Imaging
| & cryopreservation sort of insure against early death.
|
| I agree that at point behavioural replication is possible, AI
| probably also will be. Harsh.
|
| Now the point you ended your reply in is a very common
| response. Many follow the same direction of thought. I think
| that to think one should not get a behavioural replica
| because you don't think it would be you is a non-sequitur
| however; if the behavioural replica continues to advance your
| interests, is it not the rational thing to do?
|
| Moreover, if you said "no, it doesnt matter, I'll be dead"
| you would be following a strategy that'd lead to huge loss if
| it turned out you actually never died.
| krisoft wrote:
| > I think that to think one should not get a behavioural
| replica because you don't think it would be you is a non-
| sequitur however
|
| Didn't say that. Do get one if you can afford it. It would
| be usefull for all kind of things. But continuation of my
| life it is not. Simply it does not solve the longevity
| extension problem from my perspective.
| xg15 wrote:
| OK, then I have some sort if AI clone who roughly acts like I'd
| do. What does that have to do with lifespan extension and (if
| I'm not a delusional tech billionaire) why would I want that?
|
| Actually, how would that sort of "immortality" even be
| fundamentally different from the traditional way of becoming
| "immortal" - by having your children or contemporaries carry on
| your estate in your name, according to their interpretation of
| "what you would have wanted"?
| sammyo wrote:
| One actual researcher mentioned good habits will get anyone into
| their 80's but everyone tested over 105 has most of 100 certain
| genes. Really old age may be genetic.
| busterarm wrote:
| No researcher will actually make this argument though because
| they'll immediately be called a eugenicist.
| jraph wrote:
| Why?
|
| It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing
| is not taking action.
|
| [edit] about describing truth or evidences: we need that. Of
| course it all depends on how you present the truth, whether
| you are actually doing pseudoscience or not, whether you are
| manipulating concepts that are actually scientific or not,
| and whether you are conflating correlation with causation or
| not.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Are you familiar with the controversy around a book titled
| "The Bell Curve"?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
| jraph wrote:
| No, but there's a title "Lack of peer review" in your
| link.
|
| This doesn't look like science.
|
| There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably
| starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring
| "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong
| definition anyway)
| joenot443 wrote:
| There are plenty of very real issues with Murray and The
| Bell Curve, but to say IQ is pseudoscience is a
| ridiculous claim.
| jraph wrote:
| > to say IQ is pseudoscience is a ridiculous claim
|
| Is this claim really ridiculous? A quick search yields
| convincing results that hints at scientists questioning
| the concept:
|
| - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133
| 334.h... "Scientists debunk the IQ myth: Notion of
| measuring one's intelligence quotient by singular,
| standardized test is highly misleading"
|
| - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-
| are-fund... "IQ tests are 'fundamentally flawed' and
| using them alone to measure intelligence is a 'fallacy',
| study finds"
|
| There are many things wrong with how IQ is tested, and
| even how the whole notion was born.
|
| (note that between my comment and yours, I had edited
| that sentence a bit, it's not worded as strongly now -
| this is because I don't doubt much that IQ was
| scientifically researched, so saying IQ is pseudoscience
| may indeed a bit far-fetched, but I still think the whole
| notion is quite broken)
| busterarm wrote:
| IQ tests are not and have never been intended to measure
| intelligence. They're intended to be a measure of
| potential.
|
| The fact that those articles got it wrong from the basic
| definitions should indicate there is a problem with the
| interpretation. If you look at the actual first study
| link, for example, it doesn't debunk IQ but highlights
| logistical problems of pen & paper testing and sample
| size. What they then do is present an alternative
| measurement based on brain scans. They also do this
| intentionally to avoid controversial questions of
| heritability, race and gender that people associate with
| IQ measurement, as laid out by their introduction.
| jraph wrote:
| I assume you are referring to:
|
| > The results question the validity of controversial
| studies of intelligence based on IQ tests which have
| drawn links between intellectual ability race, gender and
| social class and led to highly contentious claims that
| some groups of people are inherently less intelligent
| that other groups.
|
| I read this as "These studies measuring intelligence
| using IQ which have drawn links between intellectual
| ability, race, gender and social class are shit and we
| prove it".
|
| This is at the opposite of what you are writing. It's not
| at all avoiding controversies. It's debunking, basically.
|
| You are being downvoted and flagged elsewhere because you
| are wrong, not because one can't describe "controversial"
| truth.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Is this claim really ridiculous?
|
| Yes:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
| jraph wrote:
| How should I use your link to reach this conclusion
| despite the tracks I gave?
|
| (also note that "ridiculous" is quite strong and
| disrespectful)
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can't tell me you weren't convinced by the link to a
| wikipedia page. Not even to an argument on the wikipedia
| page, but just to the whole-ass wikipedia page.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn
| jraph wrote:
| :-)
|
| I shall start sharing the whole domain to answer
| anything. With a bit of luck, something will address the
| discussed concern.
| zahlman wrote:
| The link demonstrates that there is a well-reproduced
| phenomenon in real science whereby, e.g., test scores in
| various academic subjects correlate positively with each
| other, and that this can be explained by a common
| psychometric factor that is reasonable to refer to as
| "intelligence". The IQ or "intelligence quotient" is an
| attempt to quantify that which is known to exist, and
| it's actually one of the best understood ideas in the
| science of the brain.
|
| Additional viewing that largely covers my points below:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM
|
| You started off saying:
|
| > There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably
| starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring
| "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong
| definition anyway)
|
| The point is that we do, in fact, have all the necessary
| scientific research to argue that the concept of
| "intelligence" exists - i.e., that we can identify a
| single-factor quantity that can be fairly described with
| a single number - and that anything calling itself IQ is
| _definitionally_ a measurement of that single quantity.
|
| In particular: problem-solving capability is a real
| thing, and some people very obviously have more of it
| than others. Also, we notably _don 't_ have data to
| support _more than one_ factor anywhere near as strong as
| Spearman 's _g_. (That is to say: we see correlations
| between academic performance in _all_ subjects - rather
| than strong positive correlations within certain groups
| but weak or negative correlations between those groups).
|
| The fact that _specific IQ tests_ might fail to actually
| measure intelligence, or might measure it inaccurately,
| is beside the point. The fact that an individual 's
| capability to express intelligence might vary on a day-
| to-day basis, or for other immediate environmental
| reasons (stress, caffeine, ...) is also beside the point.
| Any correlation that any researcher might draw between
| measured IQ results and any other demographic
| measurement, mutable or immutable, is beside the point,
| too.
|
| I have routinely seen people who attack the theory of
| intelligence engage in pseudoscience of their own, such
| as trying to invent strange alternate "intelligences"
| like "emotional intelligence" (apparently meaning some
| combination of empathy and social skills) and "physical
| intelligence" (apparently meaning some combination of
| dexterity and proprioception) so as to "debunk" the idea
| of intelligence being single-factor (which is not even
| what the theory of Spearman's _g_ asserts; we 're only
| saying that there _is a_ roughly-measurable quantity that
| strongly positively correlates with academic success).
| This is, of course, utterly absurd, and further comes
| across as an attempt to dunk on "nerds" as "not as smart
| as they think they are" etc. It only makes sense if you
| redefine "intelligence" to mean something fundamentally
| incompatible with the accepted and well understood
| meaning.
|
| And I, personally, have been called a racist elsewhere on
| the Internet before, simply for pointing these things
| out, when I had said nothing whatsoever about race. And
| I've seen it happen to others, too.
|
| It's infuriating, and it's transparently political.
|
| If I "disrespect" people by dismissing claims like "IQ is
| pseudoscience" out of hand, I will continue to do so,
| because I have all the evidence I need that the
| alternative would lead to far greater societal harm.
| jraph wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not arguing that the notion of
| intelligence doesn't exist. Although I'm not sure we
| really know to define it correctly.
|
| Emotional intelligence seems pseudoscience. I haven't
| heard about physical intelligence but that seems dubious.
|
| The "IQ is pseudoscience" claim is possibly a bit strong.
| Now, whether it is a good measure of intelligence is
| being questioned, and one of the reason is that it has
| cultural biases and is strongly biased towards academia.
| It comes from a measure that attempted to assess the
| mental age of someone (a bit dubious on its own), and you
| can also train for IQ tests, that alone is a bit
| suspicious for a good measure of intelligence.
|
| Problem-solving is a real capability, but doesn't IQ
| mostly attempt to measure pattern recognition? And isn't
| problem-solving only a part of intelligence? It seems IQ
| is quite focused on specific aspects of intelligence, and
| might not even be measuring them very well.
|
| (thanks for taking the time)
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> No, but there 's a title "Lack of peer review" in your
| link._
|
| You are moving the goalposts.
|
| Earlier you said:
|
| _> It 's not making an argument, it's describing. And
| describing is not taking action._
|
| The example I provided shows how describing alone is
| enough to be accused of being an eugenicist. Rightly or
| wrongly, doesn't matter.
| jraph wrote:
| Fine, something not peer reviewed, crippled with
| fallacies posing as scientific material which describes
| falsehoods gets heavily criticized. This looks good to
| me. There are ways to reap storm by describing something
| false and by not doing one's homework, yes, I'm willing
| to believe this. Note that I was speaking about
| describing _truth_ (implicit in the first paragraph,
| explicit in the second).
|
| I'm not willing to engage further, our last argument two
| weeks ago [1] didn't end well and history seems to repeat
| itself. This won't lead to an interesting discussion.
|
| edit: like last time, you could have stated your point
| instead of asking a loaded question and make me do your
| homework.
|
| [1]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41338751#41356028
| fatbird wrote:
| The Bell Curve wasn't simply descriptive. It contained
| "policy implications based on these purported connections
| [between IQ and race]." It opened by saying that if you
| want to hire good employees, you should hire by IQ... and
| then connected IQ to race, implying that racial
| discrimination is justified. On examination, many of the
| sources were directly tied to white supremacist
| organizations.
|
| The Bell Curve is a singularly poor example of a
| scientific description of the status quo attracting
| unfair attacks.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Researchers don't care about that. We've already got IVF with
| preimplantation genetic diagnosis. So far it's mostly used
| for eliminating genetic disorders like fragile-X but there's
| nothing stopping parents from trying to select for other
| attributes except having enough money to pay for it and
| finding the right doctor. Though realistically the most you
| can really do now is avoid genetic disorders and select the
| sex of the baby.
|
| That ship has sailed.
| busterarm wrote:
| Lol, you're telling me. I literally worked with one of the
| pioneers of human germline gene modification with IVF. Oh,
| that sweet, sweet DARPA money. I miss that paycheck.
|
| I can assure you he had (and still has) a small contingent
| of protesters at all of his speaking engagements and a
| number of conspiracy theorists online who think that he is
| literally the devil. Only academic types even really know
| that he exists, so these protests are from the research
| community. There's even univeristy-published research
| comparing him, by name, to the Nazis.
|
| /s used to write quality control software for IVF labs.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >Researchers don't care about that
|
| Haven't been around a lot on planet earth, have you? I can
| excuse you.
| bell-cot wrote:
| From a quick web search - "nature vs. nurture" seems to be
| safe for discussion, on traits far more sensitive than "could
| you live to 85, or to 105?".
| malfist wrote:
| Clearly a researcher has made that argument or GP wouldn't be
| talking about it.
| derbOac wrote:
| I do aging genetics research and in fact that's the opposite of
| my impression so far. Not trying to be contrary, I'm
| sympathetic to that idea, but most of what I've seen suggests
| idiosyncratic environmental effects become more prominent as
| you age, even into late age. Those random fatal events,
| cumulative exposures, random nucleotide flips, and so forth,
| all add up more with time.
|
| I suspect aside from lifestyle changes and drugs targeting
| those affected pathways, gene and "epigene" editing is the
| thing that will result in longer lifespans. But genetic and
| epigenetic editing targeting random accumulated mutations with
| age, not necessarily those at birth.
|
| The phenomenon in the linked piece is important because it
| throws a monkey wrench into a lot of stuff. I'm skeptical of
| biological measures of aging because of the widespread idea
| that people can be biologically older or younger than
| chronological age. I think it's going to take some large
| population with good, verifiable, maintained records at birth,
| which will take some time to establish.
| theptip wrote:
| Any review papers or pop-sci writeups you like on potential
| approaches for in vivo epigene editing?
| Tade0 wrote:
| My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s and we know that to
| be true, because aside from the church records, they both have
| decent memories of the time before WW2 and the event itself.
| Oddly specific things at that, like prices of goods and salaries
| from the time.
|
| Also grandpa has 7 siblings, with his older sister already being
| 100. Interestingly their own parents didn't live nearly that
| long.
|
| My paternal grandmother on the other hand died one week before
| turning 97 and only after that it was revealed that she actually
| lied about her age, claiming to be six years _younger_ , so as to
| not cause a scandal when my grandparents announced their
| marriage.
|
| The common theme among them is that they are/were all active
| working manually and would neither drink nor smoke, but that's no
| revelation.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| As I watch people around me reach their senior years, it
| increasingly seems like life is "use it or lose it" with your
| body and brain function. If you really want to extend your
| "healthspan" it seems the correct solution is to do full-body
| work-outs _a lot_ , eat a really clean diet, avoid drugs, and
| keep using your brain actively into your 80's and 90's.
| jajko wrote:
| Well yes, but you need to be smart about it, just like about
| everything else in life. People read full body workout and
| start some super intense training regimen which for some may
| be great, and for others it may be too much. Instead its more
| like some gardening efforts - every day a bit, not too much.
| My late grandparents are an example - obviously no smoking
| and absolute minimum alcohol and 0 other drugs ever, regular
| good sleep, and garden (plus a bit of nature which was just
| walks or foraging mushrooms).
|
| Understanding how body degenerates with age and injuries,
| especially joints and connective tissue. Workouts great for
| 20 years old are sometimes pretty bad for 40+. Don't stress
| heart too much, just enough, for long periods.
|
| Plenty of weightlifters who have messed up their shoulders,
| spines, knees etc. although at their peak they lifted
| impressive weights and looked accordingly. Guess what, this
| adds 0 in longevity, whatever effect was there is 100% gone
| in 5-10 years from all tissues and bones as cells fully
| renew, and messing up core of your movement can easily
| negatively impair lifespan.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It does appear from my anecdata that large amounts of mild
| exercise actually seem to be better, like yoga, golf, mild
| hikes, or yard work/gardening. Manual labor of various
| kinds fits this pattern, too.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > If you really want to extend your "healthspan" it seems the
| correct solution is to do full-body work-outs a lot, eat a
| really clean diet, avoid drugs, and keep using your brain
| actively into your 80's and 90's.
|
| All of the folks in my family who lives to their late 90s
| with a long "healthspan" drank or smoked excessively. The
| generation after them, their children, who did are either
| dead or on their way to an early grave.
|
| I haven't really been able to figure that one out.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I'll give you my theory: Modern processed foods.
| lolinder wrote:
| One possibility is survivorship bias. You never met the
| smokers and heavy drinkers from the first generation who
| died young, but you did meet those who got lucky on their
| dice rolls. In the generation after them you knew both
| groups and the actual survivorship ratios become more
| apparent.
|
| Other aspects of our modern environment are probably
| playing a role, too, of course.
| gerad wrote:
| Blame stress
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Yes, the alcoholic from their 20s to 80s (approx 1/2 a
| plastic bottle of vodka a day) was one of the least
| stressed people in the family. They were also the
| healthiest in their 90s compared to the smokers.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder if the standards for "drinking excessively" could
| have changed over time, or the way we drink could have
| changed? Or possibly, say, people in the silent generation
| (just for example) might have mostly just had alcohol and
| cigarettes, while those in the boomer and gen-x generation
| might have also had a higher chance to find their way to
| party drugs.
|
| Just a hypothetical of course, I obviously know nothing at
| all about your family!
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Several of my friends who died in COVID heart attacks were
| super fit and very careful with eating. One was a pretty
| militant vegan. Yet they died in their 40s and 50s.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Veganism is awful for you.
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| you can be careful with eating (vegan) while not eating
| healthy at all as it's mostly ideology
| luigi23 wrote:
| selection bias. also survival of the fittest.
| jdietrich wrote:
| There's an enormous amount of dumb luck in lifespan.
|
| We generally think in terms of life expectancy, but that's
| only really useful on a population level. On an individual
| level, it's much more useful to think about the probability
| of dying - you aren't running down a clock, you're
| constantly rolling cosmic dice to see whether you get hit
| by a semi truck or develop pancreatic cancer.
|
| Before the age of 40, you've got less than a 1% chance of
| dying in any given year. By 60 that probability increases
| to about 5% and by 80 to about 25%. Some young people will
| just have rotten luck and roll 1 on a d100, while some
| people will repeatedly roll a d4 and manage to dodge the 1.
| Obviously those probabilities are highly modifiable by many
| factors, but some people will get unreasonably lucky or
| miserably unlucky regardless of the underlying
| probabilities.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| While I agree with the dice concept I believe general
| health has a lot to with what die you use to make your
| roll.
| Tade0 wrote:
| A major component of that for my grandparents is that they
| live four floors up _without_ an elevator.
|
| Interestingly, their next door neighbour is also still among
| us and the general pattern was that people in that block
| would start passing away starting from the lowest floors.
|
| It's a small thing, but I can see how it works - living on
| the third floor I see that my joints are better lubricated
| than back when I was living on the ground floor, so taking
| long walks is also no issue.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| With respect to four floor walkup, by this logic, excepting
| other factors which might negate it, you would expect there
| to be a preponderance of exceptionally aged people in New
| York.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It appears that living in New York shortens your lifespan
| quite significantly (possibly due to air pollution).
| Income-adjusted, New Yorkers die a few years too young,
| and there is a higher incidence of cancer than other
| places.
|
| https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/2015sum.p
| df
| hooverd wrote:
| Too many BECs?
| macNchz wrote:
| That document doesn't seem to compare things to national
| rates, but to my knowledge the NYC life expectancy is
| above NY state's, which itself is significantly above the
| national average. The densest parts of Manhattan, which
| also have some of the most air pollution (but high
| incomes) have the highest life expectancies.
|
| With a brief googling it looks like cancer incidence is
| in line with national averages, but mortality is lower.
| Significant racial and socioeconomic disparities impact
| both averages.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| _When you adjust for income_ , NYC does pretty poorly.
| Non-income-adjusted, one of the richest places on the
| planet is in line with its surroundings, yes.
| macNchz wrote:
| Your source doesn't support that (no comparison with
| other places), and other sources don't seem to back it
| up. See the "Local Life Expectancies by Income" chart
| here: https://www.healthinequality.org/. It seems
| generally that high income people have comparable life
| expectancies across the country, whereas there is much
| higher variability among lower incomes.
| lolinder wrote:
| Not if the benefits of stairs are outweighed by the
| dangers of pollution (both air and noise).
| ghastmaster wrote:
| The first thing to come to my mind is water flows down and
| mold/mildew would be more present in lower floors. Air
| pollution is a killer.
| paulcole wrote:
| These aging stories are like a Rorschach test for
| whatever "science" a person already believes in.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| > the general pattern was that people in that block would
| start passing away starting from the lowest floors
|
| For your theory to believably explain this, wouldn't
| everybody have to be the same age to start off with on all
| the floors? Which seems improbable?
| netcoyote wrote:
| The Principle of Charity would suggest that the
| grandparent comment was not trying to control for age
| differences, but was sharing an anecdote that many folks
| in the grandparent's neighborhood were of similar age,
| leading to a hypothesis, and draw what conclusions you
| will.
|
| I interpreted that to mean, walk more floors, get more
| exercise, live longer, which aligns with conventional
| scientific wisdom.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Funny you should say that, because it was indeed a whole
| district built from scratch by communists after the war
| to house people working in the local steelmill and indeed
| everyone there was initially roughly the same age.
| codethief wrote:
| > A major component of that for my grandparents is that
| they live four floors up without an elevator.
|
| I would love to see a study on the effects of taking the
| stairs on expected life span!
|
| It seems such a small thing but the health benefits likely
| add up.
| giardini wrote:
| Hong Kong would be an excellent place to do such a study!
| DrBazza wrote:
| My grandmother would walk 4-5 miles to visit us, well into
| her 80s, and the route included a rather substantial hill.
| She lived into her 90s.
|
| Similarly, my grandfather was docker, and then a very active
| gardener walking to his allotment a few times day, a good few
| miles round-trip, and lived into his 90s as well.
|
| They were all what might be 'underweight' by the BMI
| measurements these days. War diets, perhaps, but they were
| both healthy and fit. Not sure I buy the restricted diet idea
| for longevity though.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > do full-body work-outs a lot, eat a really clean diet,
| avoid drugs
|
| Could it be that older people were less likely to be able to
| avoid physical work (even their chores were far more of a
| workout), were relatively more religious and conservative
| than current generations, and grew up with fewer processed
| foods and more home cooking by stay-at-home moms? What I mean
| by this is are you just describing people who were born in
| the 1930s? The fact that the ones that are left are mostly
| typical would be expected.
|
| > keep using your brain actively into your 80's and 90's.
|
| This could be seen as a symptom of aging well, rather than a
| cause. People whose brains don't work well aren't studied as
| examples of aging well.
|
| The person I know who most fits this description is my dad,
| he had a swimmer's body in his 60s, worked out every morning
| since high school, has kept a dead center BMI his entire
| life, has never done a drug and probably only had a sip or
| two of beer, always had a gym guy diet that has gradually
| become more vegan, and was a math major and computer
| programmer, plays chess etc..
|
| He's totally falling apart in his late 70s and becoming very
| frail. Seems like he's having nerve and neurological issues,
| and having problems with his connective tissue and with
| arthritis in his hands and knees. I don't know how you eat,
| work out, and think yourself into avoiding that. Half of his
| joint problems are caused from having been athletic, just
| like my super-athletic Army grandpa, whose knees would bend
| backwards for the last years of his life from football when
| he was young.
|
| Protestantism isn't a law of nature. You aren't automatically
| rewarded for sacrifice and suffering, at least while you're
| alive.
| brnt wrote:
| It's always funny how people are eager to cite the good
| examples in their life, but totally forget the family that
| died early.
|
| Just walk into any sort of care facility for the elderly to
| understand that bias.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| If more people did this maybe everyone could tone it down
| a bit and go back to, "we don't quite yet know" rather
| than having every one of these threads filled with
| "survivorship bias!!" nonsense.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| People mistake probability for certainty too readily. If
| you show me someone who is 400 lbs at 29 and someone who
| is 150 lbs at the same age, I would take an even-odds bet
| on the 150 lb person dying later. I think you would, too.
| I could be wrong, and there's a lot of uncertainty there,
| but that doesn't mean that there's absolutely no link
| between health and lifespan.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > What I mean by this is are you just describing people who
| were born in the 1930s? The fact that the ones that are
| left are mostly typical would be expected.
|
| People born in the 1930's were 30 in the 1960's, and if you
| think that means a lot of religious/social conservatism,
| you probably don't know much about American history. Most
| of these people adopted more conservative ideals later in
| life, which happens to literally every generation.
|
| By the way, it sounds like the people who you are talking
| about have a history of very much overworking their bodies
| to the point of injury, and that is also pretty clearly bad
| for you. I don't think you are guaranteed to live a long
| time if you take care of yourself, but I think it's pretty
| clearly true that you will maximize your chances if you do.
|
| > Protestantism isn't a law of nature. You aren't
| automatically rewarded for sacrifice and suffering, at
| least while you're alive.
|
| The happiest and healthiest 90-year-old I know does 2 hours
| a day of work meticulously maintaining his trees and eats
| whatever he wants. He happens to want healthy things,
| though, and enjoys the trees. You don't have to suffer to
| be healthy.
| huntertwo wrote:
| Cocaine is a cardiovascular workout in of itself.
| fakedang wrote:
| Very true. My paternal grandfather lived well into his
| nineties, even as a smoker, as he was very active well into
| his 80s. Even when he touched 90, he could still pretty much
| walk around in his forest land to explore his property.
|
| On the other hand, my paternal grandmother had a severe sweet
| tooth, and passed away from a heart condition. Her diabetes
| kept her very inactive for the most part, but even at 80, she
| could do a LOT of activities independently with little help.
| Passed away at 84.
|
| My maternal grandfather was very active in his 70s, but he
| became sedentary and reclusive (partly because of my
| caretaker uncle who is an asshole, coupled with messy
| infamily fighting). Passed away at 82, after his second(!)
| heart attack.
|
| My maternal grandmother is still alive and kicking ass,
| travelling the world over. Again, asshole uncle causes her a
| lot of tension , but her daughters have tried to keep her
| separated from him, so stress levels are low. For the record,
| she could travel from India to the US alone at her age.
|
| Use it or lose it.
| canjobear wrote:
| Does their activity support healthiness, or does their
| healthiness support activity?
| dsq wrote:
| Sounds like the Howard Families
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_families
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Another common theme I would add is that they didn't have a
| fatal accident. If you are unlucky you can live as healthy as
| you want and not have any genes that make you more likely to
| have a specific disease and still die young. :/
| layer8 wrote:
| Great anecdata!
| vergessenmir wrote:
| My grandfather died over a hundred, he had 16 children and two
| wives. We estimated his age to be at 103 going by the youngest
| possible age he could have become a father.
|
| My grandmother is well into her 90s.
|
| They both were active throughout their lives, always in the
| fields.y grandmother goes to bed when the soon after the sun goes
| down. She insists on not having any electricity.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| > _by the youngest possible age he could have become a father_
|
| That's what, 9 years old?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I've researched a lot of people in my lines and I can't
| recall a father younger than 15 - tho I recently found one
| married at 14.
| rwmj wrote:
| Contrary to what the article says, the Gerontology Research
| Group[1] claims to have verified John Tinniswood's age:
| https://www.grg-supercentenarians.org/john-tinniswood/ Although I
| wish they'd be a lot more specific about how that was done.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology_Research_Group
| sebtron wrote:
| If you don't get to the end of the article you'll miss this gem:
|
| > If they don't acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess
| I'll just get someone to pretend I'm still alive until that
| changes.
| encoderer wrote:
| The last time I read about this there were a ton of comments
| along the lines of "author needs to come to <my tiny African
| nation> both my grandmas are over 100 years old and it's normal
| here" - proves the point!
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| > The ceremony was wonderful. It's a bit of fun in a big fancy
| hall. It's like you take the most serious ceremony possible and
| make fun of every aspect of it.
|
| A glorified shitpost. I love it.
|
| There was an article/blog post on HN not too long ago of a chap
| who realized Blue Zones are a farce and it's underreported deaths
| instead.
|
| To folks linking pop-sci books, you may want to think twice.
| tristramb wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| "The Cornerstone of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman
| lists 149,193 persons from Okinawa - approximately one quarter of
| the civilian population - were either killed or committed suicide
| during the Battle of Okinawa and the Pacific War."
|
| How can anyone stupid enough to think that the people of Okinawa
| have had a healthy lifestyle over the past century? The subtle
| statistical effects of any dietary or lifestyle prefererences
| would be completely swamped by the effects of the above.
| LiamPa wrote:
| My step great grandmother is currently the oldest in the UK, the
| family had to take her car keys off her when she turned 100, she
| wasn't best pleased about it.
|
| https://oldestinbritain.nfshost.com/
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