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Life expectancy rise in rich countries slows down: took 30 years to prove

(www.nature.com)
135 points andsoitis | 1 comments | 15 Oct 24 13:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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taeric ◴[15 Oct 24 22:17 UTC] No.41853681[source]▶
I'm actually a little surprised at the framing here. I didn't realize anyone thought we could overcome aging. I thought the goal was to live longer, but not to completely overcome aging. That sounds somewhat foreign to me. Is that a commonly reasonable goal for folks?

That is to say, I'm not clear that "beating aging" is what is required for "long life." Is that definitionally required and I'm just being dense?

I'm assuming this is a tiered discussion? In that nobody thinks we should freeze aging at baby stages for someone. Such that we would still want some aging, but would then try and fix a point where all aging can be stopped?

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michaelt ◴[15 Oct 24 23:14 UTC] No.41854088[source]▶
It's the bit of life where you can dress yourself and control your bowels that most people would like to extend. I think nobody gets into longevity research hoping they'll be able to dodder around a nursing home with a walker for 25 years instead of 15.
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1. taeric ◴[15 Oct 24 23:28 UTC] No.41854160[source]▶
But you could do that by extending the bit of your life where you can do those things. Not necessarily turning off aging?

As I said down thread, this could just be a potato/potahto thing? If this is just definitionally beating getting frail, then that makes sense. But I don't know that I could pin down an age that I would want to freeze progress at. Nor do I think I expected that there would be a general age to freeze aging at. Let me keep my strength longer, but I expect I will be/look/appear older and older the older I get.

Now, granted, I'd be delighted if I have the same strength my 90 year old grandfather in law did. In his 70s, I'm pretty sure the only thing I could beat him at was a race. Lifting things or doing manual work outside, and he was far beyond what I was in my 30s.