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The Last of a Class

medium.com

85 pointscmstoken11 comments

That is how I want to get old. Still working part time at 102, still fresh in the head, still passionate about what I love to do.

He certainly had an interesting life, but with all the new technologies: drones, phones faster than a desktop was ten years ago, self driving cars, planned human settlements on Mars, etc I think we to will see a world so very very differently from the one we grew up in 100 years from now.

Absent progress in medical science, your odds of achieving that end are very remote. 75% of everyone, including most of those with the best diet and lifestyle choices behind them, are dead by 90 at the present time. The winnowing is precipitous over the next ten years following that: 1% make it to 100. Few of those lack serious health issues that greatly impact their ability to enjoy life.

Unless something changes these odds are improving only very slowly, with less than a year added to life expectancy at 60 every decade. This is an incidental trend, brought about despite the fact that no-one has really tried to seriously address the root causes of aging and age-related disease in the past.

If you really want to live to be old, and do so in good health, then the way to increase the odds is to get out there and make a difference: contribute to research funds, advocate for more longevity science, ways to treat the root causes of aging rather than patching over the late stage consequences. The whole field of medicine as it pertains to aging and age-related frailty and disease must be disrupted and change greatly from where it stands today.

I don't really have the kind of money it takes to move research like that, but I don't look at it as negatively as you do. At 27 there is a long time for me to grow old, and predicting the future over that kind of timeline is darn near impossible.

Every young person thinks science will solve mortality before they grow old; thus far, every young person has been wrong.

(I'm 27 and pulling for science as well, but let's not delude ourselves either here.)

Life expectancy has increased from 59.7 in 1930 to 78.7 in 2010 in the US.

No one is solving mortality, but it certainly will continue to get delayed!

Bear in mind that this increase has come about because of improved treatment of particular diseases, not because of progress in tackling the root causes of ageing. The point is, it seems to be very hard to push the human body above 100, and that is all we will be able to do by curing diseases, while not stopping the ageing process itself.

Most of the increases in life expectancy came from getting more people who might have otherwise died young to live full lives. It's worth looking at life expectancy charts for your age, rather than the ones for newborns. They'll give you a more realistic view of what you can expect.

Please cheer up.

I enjoyed the article. I really like the passage where it said:

"The Stanford Illustrated Review, a precursor of Stanford magazine, appealed to alumni for help in employing recent graduates. “These men and women . . . face a far harder and down-at-heel world than that which welcomed you.”"

While we can complain for years about the heritage our parent generation have left us - education cost, housing prices, healthcare, or a struggling economy - without seeing things change, we are responsible to pave the way and make it better for the generation to come.

I feel like anyone who genuinely cares about those who face hardships and put in a full effort in changing their life for the better deserves whatever help we can give them. I'm sure many people's lives of those who read HN are littered with examples of people giving them an edge that helped contribute to their success.

Me personally, I have much to be thankful for with friends taking me in when homeless and people giving me a shot at a career without much experience. I try to help those I see make good efforts at starting a career, and for those who want to enter the world of software engineering, I tutor them for free and point them to resources that would assist in their independent study.

Great article

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