Hacker News Reader

Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

120 years would be a great start.

Imagine the world 120 years ago in 1900. The airplane hadn’t been invented. Cars were still a novelty. Special Relativity hadn’t been discovered.

View on HN

Median scenario: so you grow up in that world, then go through 2 world wars, a few pandemics, the loss or death of most of your friends and family, gradually disconnect from the rest of society, just so you can see what amazing thing humanity will invent next (spoiler alert: it's more phones and huge cars and maybe a dozen folks living in tunnels on mars), while the forests are ripped out and the oceans boil and nature is paved over and your body turns to crap. Amazing, sign me up.

My grandma is 105 years old and is pretty much waiting for it to be over. If you live a full life it's not about how old you get, 90 is more than enough to experience the world and see your grand child grow up.

Agreed 100%. I hope that medically assisted suicide becomes more widely legal and acceptable by the time I get towards my end. I didn't ask to be brought into this world and when my body and mind start to really deteriorate, and I can no longer enjoy life the way I want then I'd like to check out on my own terms.

lol. let me ask you this: if your life quality was the same as 90 as it was at 50 would you still look forward to death?

it’s not living 120 or 150 or 200 that matters. it’s the quality of your life. i think working to improve that vs some arbitrary number (that by the time you hit you see death as a release) is what we should target. the term for this is healthspan vs lifespan.

This comment assumes that improvements in longevity will come by themselves with no quality of life improvements.

There were plenty of people in their 60s and 70s riddled with cancer and decrepit old bodies from back breaking labor before our lifetimes that probably were waiting for death too.

Now that's the age of retirement and a time to explore hobbies and the world for large portions of the population.

Personally the one thing I fear is that it will be discovered that it's possible to pause/slow aging but not effectively reverse it. If you start taking the aging pills in your 20s maybe you look and feel 50 when you're 100 but if you start the pills when you're fifty maybe you're feeling like a current 100 year old by your 150th birthday.

> My grandma is 105 years old and is pretty much waiting for it to be over.

I'm curious - are those her words or yours?

I seriously feel pissed about all the wonders of the future I'll never get to witness. All the things the human race is going to do. All the places it will go.

Of course, that's assuming our species doesn't suffer a biotech apocalypse before then.

If you reverse that and think about all the wonders and scientific progress that’s been made up till now, it’s easy to say that’s it never been a better time to be alive.

It's pretty interesting how people are always upset about not living forever or getting to witness the future while nobody ever seems to be bothered that they were born too late to see incredible sights like dinosaurs or getting to see the Incan empire at its peak or something.

If you think about it, the further you're born into the future the more likely it you'll be able to see the things you're talking about.

But also think about how jealous future generations are going to be of us, born in space, never being able to walk on a beach, always having to worry about their space station’s life support systems failing.

Grass is always greener... Beside they can easily walk on a beach with the Valve Index 3000.

I'm right there with you. The one thing I really want to see is the invention of strong AI. That will take us into an era unimaginable for us.

I'll take being the last generation to experience childhood without the internet and mobile phones, and it's not even close.

I'm sure there are plenty of kids worldwide today without internet and mobile phones. Maybe even the majority.

yeah. don’t be. you’re thinking about the best case scenario probably. in reality if we keep doing the things we do we’re headed towards a world where it would be really hard to survive.

space and space colonization? really hard with the current tech and even if the tech was there only a few people will get to do that. the costs will be absurdly high and we also have physical constraints that we cannot bypass.

biotech? in the first few waves it’s gonna be a rich person game. money is literally going to buy you more years.

The image in the article is of a woman who died at 122.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com