Living to 120 is becoming an imaginable prospect::undefined

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[–] 66 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Who the hell wants to do that?

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  • [–] 51 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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    [–] 37 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Just give me something for the pain and let me die

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Who thinks that is even remotely desirable?

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    After seeing my parents lose mobility as they age, I don't know why I'd want to live even longer with a broken body.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago

    I work in hospice and see a variety of conditions. Some people in their 60's with significant mobility issues that are chronically exhausted, but then there's the patients in their 90's who just recently started cutting back on social events and activities due to injury/illness.

    Seeing these differences was why I started roller skating (again) at 49 and increased other activities to keep my ass moving and challenge my coordination and balance. I want to get everything I can out of this life.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Healthy people with good genes that have relatives who are mentally fit up to thier last days. And people who think that all the money being dumpped into longevity by billionaires will increase the amount of time people in general can maintain a decent quality of life. And then me, who is curious about how the world changes over long periods of time and just wants to be there to see it. And maybe see a breakthrough that somehow keeps us alive even longer. Death is so final.

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    [–] 31 points 2 years ago

    Let’s see if we make life expectancy consistently go up again before we start talking about 120. I could just as easily see it fall to 60 before going up to 120.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    I see the quality of life people have when they start approaching 100, and lemme tell you I wouldn't want an extra 20 years of that. Living in the US sucks for healthcare, you're gonna be miserable if you live that long.

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    [–] 28 points 2 years ago (1 child)
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    [–] 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)
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    [–] 22 points 2 years ago (17 children)

    Living that long would break the economy. I'm retired on a fixed income, and my planning was based on living no longer than age 90. After that, my savings will be depleted, I will live on social security alone. When I imagine young people having another 30 years to pay for social security per person, it's just broken. We would need to work until age 95 instead of 65. What would be the point?

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    We would not.

    The extra amount you need as life expectancy increases diminishes with each extra year. E.g. let's assume (for each of calculation only; you can just scale it up linearly) that you need 10k/year on top of social security to live off in retirement. If your savings is 100k, and you only get a 5% return every year, you'll run out after about 15 years. Hence a typical lifetime annuity bought at age 65 will be around that in the US because it matches up with current US life expectancy (it won't deviate much elsewhere).

    So that's for living to roughly 80. Here's how it'll play out as you approach 120:

    85: ~20% more 90: ~38% more 95: ~52% more 100: ~62% more 105: ~70% more 110: ~77% more 115: ~82% more 120: ~86% more

    As you can see, the curve flattens out. It flattens out because you're getting closer and closer to have sufficient money that the returns can sustain you perpetually (at a 5% return, which is pretty conservative, at $200k, you can perpetually take out $10k, and no further increase in life expectancy will change that).

    Now, that of course is not in any way an insignificant increase, but if we assume 40 working years, $100k is about $850/year additional investment + compounding investment return at 5%. $186k is around $1550/year compounding.

    But here's the thing, if you work 10 years longer, you grow it disproportionately much, because you delay starting to take money out, and you need less, while you get the compounding investment return of ten more years, and that drives down the yearly savings you need to make back down to around $850/year.

    So an increase of 40 years of life expectancy "just" requires 10 more years of work to fully fund it assuming the same payment in during the later years. But here's the thing: Most people have far higher salaries towards the end of their careers, even inflation-adjusted, so most people would be able to fund 40 more years with far less than 10 extra years of work.

    (Note that if you already were on track for your pensions to last you to 90, if you were pre-retirement now, you'd "only" need about 35% extra savings to have enough until 120, because you'd get returns from a higher base, so the extra savings or extra years of work needed over what you managed would be even lower)

    These all work on averages btw. - due to differences in health, this is where we really want insurance/state pensions rather than relying on individual contributions.

    This doesn't mean there aren't problems to deal with. Especially if the life expectancy grows fast enough that it "outpaces" peoples ability to adjust. But it's thankfully not quite as bad as having to add another 30 years of work.

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    [–] 21 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Oh, I do look forward to living through the climate wars and AI ascendancy. Amazing prospect.

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    [–] 17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Well I, for one, would like to live for as long as I want. I understand the sentiment here, though a little depressing, is against that concept. I understand people's reticence toward extending a painful life, particularly if that comes with strings attached. Life extension would need to be paired with a basic income and the rich will need to foot the bill.

    I think we can all agree that George R R Martin should be put on this regimen immediately. We're going to need 16 or more years for this dude to finish the series.

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    [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

    How are we supposed to afford paying pensions that long if people retire before 70?

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    [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'm not interested to 70 let alone 120. What a nightmare.

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    [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Shit, I didn't want to hit 12 much less 120, and now I'm in my 40s. If some jerkass figures out life extension even for the poor, I'm gonna give that a hard pass. Just because I've chosen not to kill myself doesn't mean I have to drag it out one day longer than necessary.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    God damn it LET ME LIVE FOREVER LET ME LIVE FOREVER LET ME LIVE FOREVER I'm sick of lying in bed every night scared of the nothingness of death

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    [+] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)
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    [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Putting aside world inequality and the grim future that awaits us for a sec, medical science keeps moving forward... It took us 13 years to even sequence all the human genome (which was a tremendous effort done by many universities and researchers). Predicting the structures of proteins was an immense problem in biology that was finally solved with AI like 2~ years ago. mRNA vaccines were a super theoretical thing many years ago, but served us to fight covid. There's a growing number of scientists (like david sinclair) that aren't afraid of openly taking immortality as an academical challenge and publish research without fear of mockery

    People forget technological progress is driven by an exponential growth, seeing all the things we have discovered in the past decades I can't help but be optimistic about treatments or medicines available for the general public that slow down aging

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Just in time for the world to suck

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  • [+] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)
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    [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    Bro I don't want to live to 40... 120 is a nightmare.

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    [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    No thanks. There better be a global acceptance of physician assisted suicide simultaneously.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Shoot me.😑

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    More bad news

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Its a subscription service

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