New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

In the political sphere, some countries are tearing themselves apart on the question of immigration and identity. But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce.

So, we are paying an extremely high cost for letting God go on with His Slow Tormentous Cooking of Souls before Consumption, and things are only going to get worse, given the demographic expectations. Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech?

You cannot discount the destabilising potential of immigration, and the lowering of societal trust it comes with. As we saw multiple times, integration is the edge case and not the rule. It will be especially harder to integrate people the way the demographic pyramid is looking right now in "developed" countries.

I would also question the desire of immigrants to pay for the welfare of the senile of their respective state, given the fact that they are more than likely to feel mistreated and wronged by the western, "developed" countries that will be hosting them.

I am an immigrant (expat?). I don't enjoy paying contributions for the welfare of the people who played in a huge role in the reasons I had to emigrate.

Not in a sustainable way.

Immigration is only viable as long as the countries of origin are so bad to live in so it's "better" to migrate. This is not really a world we want, is it?

Unchecked immigration of people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values leads to a monoculture that is terrible for everyone. Multiculturalism doesn’t work when everyone’s culture is equal everywhere. And unless it wasn’t obvious, I firmly believe in multiculturalism, but I believe we (here in Europe in particular) have been misled about what it should look like. And no it’s not about ethnicity.

And that’s saying nothing about the impact on source countries as some other comments go into.

Also unchecked migration to Europe is down to 200.000 people per year so less than 0.1% of population.

Won't that just make the problem worse?

> people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values

No culture should nor can stay stagnant. But if we allow in people who do not share or wish to share a majority of our cultural values, which vary a lot between European countries as well, then we deteriorate what made our countries lucrative destinations for these people faster than we can maintain it.

It’s not complicated. Why are all those people coming here if all cultures are equal?

This is why we need strong vetting of immigrants.

Only if it can improve life quality rather than length alone.

Of course if we make it so you can live to 200 in the body of a 24-year-old and then suddenly drop dead, the good news is there will be no pensions to pay any more and the bad news is you will drop dead at your 180th year at work.

Which is not to say I would not take that deal. Aging is brutal and I've just about had enough already!

However there is a lack of law enforcement and lack of integration programs for immigrants.

It's controversial, but I think it would be tremendously beneficial to our society if we accepted that death is (currently) inevitable and that past some point, assisted suicide is a lot better than artificially prolonging suffering at great cost for as long as possible.

Somewhere along the line we stopped looking to our own previous generations (which include European nations as, you know, we’re Europeans) for cultural identity and started following Hollywood as our cultural oracle.

Generations of this has lead to the mess you see unraveling in the UK at the moment.

A few Pakistanis moving in down the road doesn't stop British people practicing British culture. The reason they don't can be summarised as laziness and ignorance.

"The pub got turned into a mosque", maybe it did but it wasn't because the Moors invaded fgs. A successful pub gets to carry on being one - if it's not successful, maybe that's because people stopped using it.

Is that true? Are you sure the edge cases where people didn't integrate aren't just bigger stories than the many many people who arrive and live normal boring lives?

> question the desire of immigrants to pay for the welfare of the senile of their respective state, given the fact that they are more than likely to feel mistreated and wronged

Maybe we could stop wronging and mistreating them? Or is that an important part of our European heritage?

The problem in Europe is not immigration, the problem is there being no European country with a vision of the future for immigrants to buy into.

Aesthetic Traditions ≠ Culture. Traditions are just one aspect, but as Nietzsche wrote about the death of God, traditions are not a substitute for values.

America for hundreds of years has offered a shared vision of the future and values to immigrants of every background, and within <1 generation most immigrants become fully integrated.

When European identities are all built around stories from the past, and the only vision of the future being offered is one of impending doom and urbanist intellectual memes (climate apocalypse, population decline, social welfare breakdown, economic malaise, technophobia), it's no wonder that immigrants wouldn't want to buy into your culture. I'll enjoy your aesthetic traditions and take your free social welfare, but I'll keep my own culture and values, thank you very much.

When your sales pitch is: "we don't like new things here so there's nothing to create, but life here is easy, you don't have to do much because the state will take care of you!" I don't think you're attracting the best citizens.

But even if I were an immigrant to the US from Venezuela or any of the tens if not hundreds countries that the US destabilised, I would indeed think of the majority of US's population as complicit. The people that are against such acts seem to always be the minority.

The UK is large, so maybe either of us are just looking into a small bubble not representative of the whole, but the times I've visited the UK in the past, I didn't see much of what you seem to describe. Perhaps in the very center of London and its shopping malls, but those are not representative of the UK whatsoever.

I agree with this. Far too many European countries have no optimistic or even productive outlooks on the future, instead seeming to trade in a form of pessimistic reductionism. Eat less, do less, be less.

However:

> it's no wonder that immigrants wouldn't want to buy into your culture

Then why do they stay as long as they can drain resources? I would never move to a country I don't respect, let alone stay to drain resources and give nothing back. That mentality is alien to me. That isn't to say every immigrant is a drain on resources, but the ones that do not buy into the culture, do not buy into the vision (or lack thereof), and do not contribute -- why are they here? Simply because despite all of that it's better than where they came from? If so, we're doing both ourselves and them a disservice by not denying them entry, because both parties end up miserable.

Hey, good for you. But there are many societies where making a living without working is something to be proud of. I know because I live in one.

You could imagine entirely curing cancer, heart disease, frailty and infection but not brain degeneration, for example.

Curing everything else except frailty also seems invidious, though with sufficiently good brain-machine interfaces perhaps that would be less of a problem: you can just float in anti-impact gel from 100 and 200 and mentally roam the wreckage of the internet! If AI takes over knowledge work, how you pay for your life support and data connection may become an issue.

I beseech you to contemplate how badly this might be abused, and how monstrous the consequences could be. Even now MAID in Canada and other forms of assisted suicide in Europe have arguably gone way too far.

The only people who might require assistance and sanction are those who are so catastrophically ill that they cannot function independently at all. But MAID has already killed people who were able-bodied! (And some for stupid or trivial reasons: https://care.org.uk/news/2024/10/poor-lonely-and-homeless-op... )

That's fair and I think it's mostly true. At the same time, comparing "Europe" as a monolith compared to the US doesn't make a lot of sense, the history, languages and religions aren't shared for many countries, contrary to the US. We can circle back to saying it was and is a lack of vision from the EU to not have been more aggressive in creating this culture.

> I'll enjoy your aesthetic traditions and take your free social welfare, but I'll keep my own culture and values, thank you very much.

From what you wrote, I can somewhat understand this standpoint but this creates strong segregation between communities that aren't healthy and it sounds like a breeding ground for conflict as well.

And I personally fear where this is going. Because as much as I want to vet immigrants much more thoroughly and for a time hopefully have net-negative immigration in my country's case, I also know so many immigrants who came here to blend with our culture and are fantastic fellow countrymen. They've enriched our country and culture. When our representatives let it get as bad as it's getting, the ensuing conflict is one that I fear will end up harming indiscriminately, based on ethnicity and simple identifiable markers. All because spineless bureaucrats would rather not put their neck on the line, instead opting to let it all slide into the historically inevitable ugly conflict that seems looming.

I am actively looking into non-European destinations to emigrate to, and only ones where I feel I can be a net-positive on their culture and contribute to their economy and society. Because if my worst-case scenario for Europe comes to pass, I don't want to be here to be dragged into it. I don't want to be a contributor in that ugliness.

Likewise I never understood why we blame ourselves for a lack of effective integration when, particularly in Norway's case, we offer all the services you could want. But you have to _want_ to integrate, we can't force you. And if you don't want to, please leave.

This is one of the weirdest religions in modern Europe and I struggle to explain it. It's a performative self-loathing that accrues social capital in certain circles, with no real end goal. I want to ask these people...so once you eliminate the impact of the human species from the earth...then what? Wait for the asteroid to hit or the sun to engulf the earth, to restore it to its pre-life state?

The decline in Christianity in the UK probably has something to do with it, and that in turn is loosely correlated with WWI and WWII. That's also another historic factor - families destroyed, and fewer families and so on.

And then the elephant in the room - London.

Want a job? Move to London or the south east and leave your family behind. Born in the south east? Want to live in the same street as you parents? No chance. Same town? Unlikely. Do you know your neighbours? Maybe. Do you see them in the church any more, or even when you walk down the street?

Culture is alive and well outside of London, despite its drain on the rest of the UK.

Social, and economic mobility is good, but some of the side effects are only now becoming apparent. Successive short-termist poor governance for decades has been the problem.

Because the country of arrival is usually the stronger economic party. You have the capability of emigrating and integrating because you speak multiple languages, have most likely attained high education and you probably have the means to start a new life some place else. Honestly, good for you but not everyone has those benefits.

In the case of someone poorer, it might take a significant amount of resources and time they don't have, hence more of the burden being on countries integrating the immigrants. Let's also not kid ourselves, it's a trade for their labor in often bad conditions; not something from the grace of our hearts.

> But you have to _want_ to integrate, we can't force you. And if you don't want to, please leave.

This is imo a question the EU has struggled with for a long time. You'll want people to have their personal freedoms: culture, religion, language, etc. But you also want a cohesive whole where citizens can live and work together peacefully. This is a much more difficult question than "integrate or get out".

But more importantly wealthy countries shouldn't depend on there being poor countries where women still have "too" many children but rather we should fix our own problems so we want and can have sufficient young people of our own (not said in a nazi way).

And we should also redistribute wealth so there aren't any poor countries to exploit for natural resources, crops and people.

And I have every right to want you out of country and my taxes not to be wasted on the likes of you.

The more a society adopts socialist policies, the less friendly to immigration it becomes.

Both the US and most large European countries had roughly the same percentage of GDP driven by central government spending (socialism) in the 1960s...roughly 25-30%.

Socialist policies have steadily grown that percentage in both regions, with it happening more dramatically in Europe. The US is now at 35-40%, and Europe at 45-50%.

You can map the slowly rising anti-immigrant backlash in the US (and especially in Europe) to this perfectly.

I don't have enough cruelty in me to demand that someone should stay in Sudan and try to "fix" what's happening there.

Russia and China have well above average lifestyles based on PPP. So do many South American countries, as well as Japan, and South Korea and other Asian countries. Also a number of countries in the middle east.

Yes, I understand the US is a very very bad country. I am also a very very bad person because I am very grateful, proud, and and supportive of this country for providing my family an opportunity to thrive even though it took decades for my "type" to be accepted and not discriminated against. My grandparents fled from other countries to be here, for a better life.

Note that I say "opportunity", because nothing was handed to my grandparents or my parents. They were given opportunity, not a subsidized life. They were also, as many immigrants have been, discriminated against for decades, but never complained or held grudges.

I am a huge believer in immigration, but have zero tolerance for those demanding to be supported or who commit crimes or those that choose to come here and bitch about this country. There are plenty of other places to go to.

By the time you think suicide is the better option, you are often already in a managed and locked down environment in which it is difficult to impossible to commit suicide in an acceptable manner. Believe me I know it.

That “monetary cost” is not nothing. It represents a share of the finite resources your tribe has (individual/family/city/country) being spent on something with little return for future generations.

Developed countries are asking people who put in the effort to raise kids well to support those that don’t. That works when maybe 1 in 10 people don’t raise kids well, for whatever reason, but it doesn’t work so well when large portions of the population do not.

And there very well may be a justification to not raise kids well, but the math is going to be the math regardless of justifications.

I will keep it short because I value my time but here some things you might want to ponder:

- America integration doesn’t exist. The American strategy has always been leave people alone to keep living in their own culture. There is no actual American identity. The only things American have in common in the shared trauma of slavery and the civil war, and the founding myth which is why they remain so prevalent in the US modern discourse. Meanwhile, people will happily talk about "race" culture, half the country would be happy to slaughter the other half and culturally linked riots are a thing.

- Europe has a cultural entity doesn’t exist. The UK is different to France which is different to Germany or Danemark. Most of these countries immigration come from former colonies who already understand these countries social norms.

- Access to social welfare is severely limited to immigrants. Most of the system drain comes from people who were born in the country, not immigrants. Take any economic studies, you will see than immigration is a net positive in every European country. These are country where the population is aging fast. We simply need the immigrants to prop up the work force.

- Integration is a false issue. Most of the problems in France for example come from second generation immigrants who actually went through the French education system. The problem is mostly economic.

- The way Islam has been managed is an issue in itself. People deserve to be able to practice their cult freely and in good condition but most European countries have refused to take charge of the question. France for example left far too much space to extremist countries like Saudi Arabia. When most of your imams have been trained in the worst possible interpretations and mosques are financed by countries you shouldn’t want anything to do with, you have a major issue. There clearly is space for better solutions here.

- Plenty of political parties in Europe have strong visions for the future. Some of them are linked to social justice and preserving the environment, things you obviously dislike. The fact you can’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist however.

Have you ever asked yourself what the purpose is of what you call "workforce"? Exactly what work are they doing that is more important than the survival of the native population? It's completely dehumanizing, and I can't find the logic behind it. If a geographical place needs constant influx of people from other places because the "system" there is slowly killing the population, then for what purpose should that continue?

Wait, how exactly does one "abuse" MAID?

People being so deep in poverty and addiction that they opt for MAID as an option isn't a symptom that it's "too easy" to access it, but rather that _society_ is failing them. And when those people finally say "Well fuck this shit I'm out", we reply "That's not allowed". Disregarding that companies won't hire them, rent & housing are ridiculous, they''re not allowed to put their tents anywhere and when they get kicked out their tents & belongings are trashed instead of being given back.

As an immigrant to USA, living here for 20 years, you're unequivocally wrong about this point. There is an American culture, and cult of "American dream". There are English as a Second Language programs, job integration programs, classes at every language of educations, rules and traditions for immigrant flow. The police, governments, and citizens of USA all know this is a country of immigrants and all have respect for immigrants, even if there is an "illegal" immigrant backlash right now. The threat of violence coming from political extremes absolutely does not represent the majority of people every day interactions.

In sum, American integration does exist, and I have first hand and second hand data to prove it. I'm not an expert on your other points, and I think you're trying to prove the sky is not blue, but genuinely, good luck.

This is obviously nonsense. "White" Americans are something like 57% of the population. The US is very mixed, and always has been.

Immigration in USA has multiple components, but it seems to be you're undervaluing the amount of opportunistic intellectual workers, who come here to participate in high level education, and entrepreneurial capitalism. But, here are the numbers across multiple sources (thx GPT):

  - High-skilled (H-1B + EB green cards + PhD retention): ~200–300k annually.
  - Low-wage (H-2A + H-2B + others): ~500k+ legally, probably >700k when including unauthorized inflows.

I hold the opposite view on this issue. While I firmly believe that everyone should have the freedom to make their own choices about their lives, my primary concern is that certain groups and especially governments are actively promoting assisted suicide. Even if it's merely coincidental, I find the underlying incentives perverse, for lack of a better word. Admittedly drawing from a Hollywood sci-fi perspective, I would much prefer that, instead of programs like MAID, people were offered options such as cryopreservation.

I mean, realistically speaking, they'd be bitching about Pakistanis and Indians and Middle Eastern immigrants also, but in 2016 the British voted to exit the European Union, not the Middle Eastern Union. The hint is right there, in the name.

That's just assisted suicide with extra steps.

Because they're coming from resource poor countries to those which are richer? Or from regimes that have been captured by an oppressive minority. Or because their nation is being attacked by an aggressive neighbor (or distant empire)?

Why would you care that it's "acceptable" by society which you will no longer take part of ? If your concern is pain, then perhaps that is your mind telling you NOT to end your life and seek therapy instead.

Assisted suicide only makes sense in situations where the person is in extreme chronic pain and no palliative care or treatment can be provided, which is rather rare.

We should not be encouraging or celebrating suicide, it takes away innocent lives, especially younger ones. If you ask the survivors, many of them are glad they didn't go through with it.

And pray tell, how does the influx of a muslim, non-alcohol-drinking population, influence this?

You can search US demographic data from a plethora of sources to see this is not true. It’s a recent development enabled by modern laws and policies.

>America integration doesn’t exist.

This premise

> The American strategy has always been leave people alone to keep living in their own culture.

Contradicts this. You can't have both of those things. you EXTRA can't have them when you further talk about American culture in the same goddamned line.

> Europe has a cultural entity doesn’t exist.

This premise

>The way Islam has been managed is an issue in itself. People deserve to be able to practice their cult freely and in good condition but most European countries have refused to take charge of the question

Contradicts this.

And to be completely honest, this ending:

>Plenty of political parties in Europe have strong visions for the future. Some of them are linked to social justice and preserving the environment, things you obviously dislike. The fact you can’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist however.

Straight up makes me think you are not serious at all and straight up trolling. But in the off chance you aren't, I mean it when I say you are the problem you want to fight against.

https://www.iowadatacenter.org/datatables/UnitedStates/usstr...

1. Take jobs an American would otherwise fill, which would not be a problem except 2. The economy disproportionately benefits the capitalist class (billionaires). Bringing over immigrants to boost the economy doesn’t help the median American, and it creates competition for natives

I’m not undervaluing it. Im saying it provides no value for the majority of Americans. And this on a purely economic axis - social and cultural angles are arguably all negative.

I say this as a someone who immigrated from a dangerous country to the first world.

The only way the current plan even approaches sustainability is if the brain drain on source nations is sufficient to keep them stuck and suffering. That should make it very clear that the humanitarian impact is a side effect and not the goal.

Selecting "the best people" is the often-overlooked step. A lot of countries just want to import cheap labor and get easy economic growth today, damned be the consequences.

As an outside that has visited your large continent a fair few times, yeah, you guys are pretty monocultural.

I know that such a statement is just literal nonsense to y'all and quite unbelievable.

And yes, you all have a different flag, and a different language.

But the day-to-day details are very similar.

Every day y'all wake up at pretty much the same time, everyone eats a light breakfast of some pastry or another and a lot of caffeine and nicotine. Then off to work on pretty much the exact same road in the same little cars. 10 rolls about and y'all fuck off to grab an espresso (Yes UK, you too, the tea thing is BS, you love coffee, we all see it) and a cigarette. You raff about for 30 min. Then back to work for a bit. Lunch rolls on by and it's carb and protein time for the men and salads for the women. By this I mean potatoes and something with a french sauce. More caffeine and nicotine. The afternoon is then set for either sleeping, or pretending not to (I love this about y'all). Work fucks off at about 4-5 depending, nothing on Fridays though. You all then fuck off to a place to get more nicotine and then alcohol or a few hours. Dinner comes after round 2-3, more carbs and meat this time, maybe pasta. Half cocked, you all end up in the same small homes. (yes, yes, but everyone is like this too!. No, you all do it the same way at the same pace, all of you.)

It's all the same sports (football), the same seasons, the same lives. Yes, you all think that your life is so different for your neighbor, but I'm telling you, the pace, the styles, the food, the drinks, the drugs of choice, the houses, the children, Europeans may not be brothers, but you are very close cousins. The rest of the world think you all mad that you hate each other so much when you're living in the same house, acting the same way. It's the same Euopean culture.

https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/britain-farage-migration-debacl...

Most European countries can fail at the same things while not having a shared culture identity. I have pointed you towards one example.

Same about America. This is not a contradiction. America purposefully doesn’t integrate people because there is nothing to actually integrate them into. America taken as a whole is from my point of view not a nation. It is a collection of groups often with little in common forming a country but in tension about how it should work. Some subgroups in the USA could arguably be considered nations with shared identities but certainly not the federation.

I will hasard you actually are the problem.

But as far as I can see, they're working for the NHS, running restaurants and shops and so on, and buying/renting homes that come up on the market like everyone else. London's Muslim mayor was elected by an absolute majority even though Muslims are only about 12% of the city's population.

Nobody is stopping Brits from doing Brit stuff - it's our own fault if we choose not to.

Far as I can see, what's done a lot of basic pubs in is a combination of lifestyle changes, people who don't like the smoking ban, and younger people wanting to spend time down the gym instead of drinking.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/16/dutc...

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

Wanting to avoid pain is very much not a reason to seek therapy, what an absurd thought.

That's a big assumption. Yeah, take out all the H1b immigrant that came to this country since 1985, what do you think the US economy looks like, filled exclusively with Americans? Where do you think US economy would be? Where do you think the Silicon Vally would be now? Do you think US and Americans would be better off? Do you think that the economic input of the immigrants is net negative?

I don't think you need to answer. I think you've already said no, these workers, and their contibutions are net negative. I just don't see how that makes any sense, given they're clearly a big part of the economy.

First, the idea there is no American integration is just funny, given millions of your countrymen moved to the US just 2-3 generations ago and yet French identity is essentially non-existent in the US.

In fact, there's more ethnically french people in America than in Canada, and yet Canada has very strong french cultural identity by comparison.

Second, I wasn't arguing against immigration and am not "far-right" (I'm absolutely pro-immigration), just explaining why Europe will never be able to do it en masse like the USA used to (they can't do it as much anymore either).

The reality: Socialist policy makes immigration an impossibility. The more socialist a country, the more aggressive its stance against immigration becomes. This is not a coincidence but a direct causal relationship.

People don't want to pay for random 2nd/3rd-world immigrants to suddenly get free healthcare, education and pension. It's that simple.

It's no secret that after America built its welfare state in the 1930s, this led to a dramatic shift to a closed immigration policy. And as the welfare state in the US has grown (from 25% of GDP in the 1950s to 35% today), the anti-immigrant sentiment just keeps rising.

European countries are no different, having grown their socialist welfare states dramatically over the past 60 years (from 25-ish% to 50% of GDP today). And thus, you get increasingly aggressive anti-immigrant backlash when times get tough.

The irony of the modern leftist is they don't understand the impossibility of their supposed beliefs. You cannot be both pro-immigration and pro-socialism. They are oil and water.

Either you believe immigration is a good force in the world, and thus want libertarian capitalist policy like the US pre-1930s. Or you want socialism, which leads to closed borders, and only pretend to like immigration to make people think you're a good person at parties.

should be

"immigration or automation are the only things that can replenish their workforce."

You are talking complete nonsense.

We are also going through significant challenges right now - social, political, economic, foreign relationships.

We may or may not survive as a country. We may have a positive or adverse effect on the rest of the world as we go through what we must go through.

However, the rest of the world is simply not innocent.

Europe has a lot to account for. So does Russia, China, Japan. And lets not forget the Islamic and Ottoman empires, which easily matched and in many respects put to shame the slavery, colonization, genocides, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid of the American, European, and Asian empires.

Most of the worlds current problems are the result of the collapse of these empires about 100 years ago, payment for the failure of their insufferable mentalities over many centuries.

Right now the US is facing payment for its past, the rest of the world is still paying for its past.

I'm not sure that's a foregone conclusion. Loads of interventions put extra pressure on other body systems (often, but not always, the liver and kidneys). Sometimes to the extent that even if you may "manage" the original complaint, it comes at a substantial cost to overall health. And heart muscle is pretty special anyway, so it's quite possible it's a separate treatment to skeletal muscle problems.

And pretty much any system failing can kill you so if long term life extension comes from targeted treatments per problem, you need to hit bones and cartilage, muscles, skin, nerves, brain, GI tract, kidneys, liver, immune system, endocrine system, lungs, etc etc, but also not overstress any one with the treatments of the others and also handle almost-inevitable cancers.

"Europe" has nothing to account for. Western Europe ? Sure.

As medicine and technology advance, assisted suicide will make sense/be required in nearly 100% of natural human deaths. With enough money, we will be able to keep people "alive" (on paper) arbitrarily long. It will be nothing like what people think of when they describe extended lifespan, but turning off all the robotic parts will still be tantamount to assisted suicide.

Eastern Europe is also "complicit", Eastern Europe countries have committed genocide and ethnic cleansing, and have continued to do so even recently.

The entire middle east is "complicit", and it is currently paying for the sins of 1200 years of empire that only ended 100 years ago.

Maybe you come from a small country that has never been part of an empire or has never been "complicit" in such crimes, but has been historically suppressed and taken advantage of. If so, I sympathize. I come from a combination of people who have been enslaved for centuries and people who have been historically kept under apartheid, ethnically cleansed, or simply killed for who they are.

Am I "complicit" ? My parents and ancestors certainly were not. Maybe I am simply for living in the US and enjoying its benefits. I do have to live somewhere.