Living to 120 is becoming an imaginable prospect::undefined
Who the hell wants to do that?
I do
Why?
I would want to too, but not on this planet with these people and the very uncertain future.
Why? There’s so much to experience! If I could stay healthy, age more slowly or not at all, it would be great to try and experience as many good things as possible.
Oh you were talking about living longer if you were in a utopia or something close to it. Ok yeah I agree with you there, but unfortunately that’s not reality xD
I doesn’t have to be a utopia, it just has to be better than this.
And just in case you didn’t know, aging has been reversed in mice and the existence of biologically “immortal” species (“immortal” jellyfish) means it’s possible to achieve the same in humans.
It’s hypothetically possible that we could hack biology enough to become functionally immortal, but do you really want that? Considering the impact 90 year old Senators are having I’m just imagining an ever more out of touch gerantocracy. Imagine young people being born into a world where no one ever retires or dies, and their opinions are fixed based on what they experienced 100 years ago. Change is good.
Change is good indeed. Maybe if people didn’t think “eh, I can fuck up the world as I won’t be alive to live with the results” they might care a little more. Also, if were able functionally immortal, traveling to a new star system would be well within our possibilities.
I think people are confusing “people want to live to 120” with “people want to be 120.”
Actually being 120 would probably be awful. But seeing the year 2130 might be truly wild. On a basic level, it’s the same as wanting to live to see tomorrow.
What age do you want to die at?
The age where I can no longer do things that I like to do, code and workout.
Cause life’s nice :)
Me
Me
Me
Is this the sign up? I’m in
Just give me something for the pain and let me die
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Who thinks that is even remotely desirable?
Average life expectancy is, what, 75 years? I’m 31, so rough estimate, I have 44 years left, and that’s not nearly enough time to conquer the galaxy
Your goals are both legal to aspire to, and possible.
That’s life expectancy from birth. Once you’ve made it to your 30s it’s probably more like 85
Average life expectancy in the US is ca 80, a few years above that in most of Europe, and highest in Japan, Macau, Hong Kong, at 84-85 years (this is across everyone - typically there’s a 3-4 year spread between men and women, so e.g. Hong Kong is 83.2 for men and 87.9 for women)
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.
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.
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.
Soon it will be possible to cling to the broken shell of what you once were, a mere vessel for arthritis pain and bittersweet memories of a time when you used to be able to walk to the bathroom. Hooray!
The point isn’t just extending a vegetative state but a livable state. If life expectancy expands to 85, then you live comfortably until 65 or so. That means you can more or less be physically active just fine.
Look up on Google images old grandpa bodybuilders. There are 70 year olds that are stronger than majority of young men.
If life expectancy shifts upwards to 120 presumably the age of comfort also expands to 100, or what have you. Then it’s a slow deterioration until 120 where you’re basically a zombie. Of course this age depends on genetic variables as well as your personal health decisions.
My great grandma died this year at 100 and she was only a zombie from like 95. Until that point she was walking by herself and giving speeches, hosting parties, etc. 96 she caught dengue fever and lived, but was weakened. Then she caught covid a year later and lived, but was further weakened.
The final nail in the coffin was her falling and breaking her hip in January of this year. She was dead about a month later.
I want to live as long as possible because I want to know what humans discover. What is the fundamental nature of reality? Will we find life in the cosmos? Will we explore other planets? What is the secret behind the brain and consciousness? What maths is left to be discovered? How will human society develop? Will we fall into authoritarian surveillance states or break free into a post-scarcity classless utopia?
So many curiosities sometimes I wish I was like a vampire, just floating around the world forever seeing what happens.
I want to live long enough to see society deteriorate into nothing more than a roaming band of cannibalistic motorcycle mutants.
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.
But why would you want to
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I’ve not been enjoying the last 30 all that much, I don’t think I want another 90 or nearly that far even
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I’m sorry for your loss
Sorry for your loss
Because a world in which people live to 80 tend to live well till 65, And a world in which people can live to 120 might open up the possibility of living well to 90.
Stretching out life expectancies tends to stretch out the length of quality time too.
We should just die at 30 again huh?
I’m 30 now, having a hard time looking at the next 40-50 and thinking I want that. Definitely not 90
Are you suicidal? Longer life does not mean living as a cripple, we can extend our health if we research more. And exercise and lower calorie diet seems to improve health a lot. A 70 year old who exercises and eats lightly will be healthier than a 30yr who eats like an American and drives without walking much.
I’m close to your age and I’m excited for the next 40-50 years. It often surprises me when I get perspectives like yours. I have to remember people have different opinions on things I take for granted.
We can have a tendency to project our views onto everyone else and assume everyone thinks the same thing. False consensus effect
I think people are fundamentally different because of some stuff that happened in childhood. There are people who are negative about the past and positive about the future. I fall into this.
There are others that are positive about the past and negative about the future. Maybe you’re here.
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.
And it sucks because usually when your that old you can’t do much besides sit. Sucks that are body’s don’t last long.
You need to learn more about what a blue zone is.
Or you could share this weird esoteric knowledge that other people don’t know about but you do.
Obviously he’s talking about hockey, and means blue lines - it’s to help with calling off-sides
So instead of being a prick like the person you’re actually replying to I’ll answer you. Blue zones are areas where the population regularly reaches over 100. The point they’re making is the people over 100 in those areas usually seem to be doing pretty well, moving, some even run, and die suddenly (things just happen to turn downhill very fast when you’re that old, nothing sinister implied)
Well If you’re posting here you have access to internet too.
And that’s as far as I’m willing to help you without a ‘please’ and ‘ thank you’.
Please eat a dick
Thank you😘
And you can huff farts. 😘
…for the ultrarich.
Yeah the quality of my Healthcare is decreasing
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?
Think we should moved towards post-scarcity first…
Man, if only we had some sort of military funding to divert to social programs…
We spend as much as the top 10 countries combined on defense.
Infrastructure - dangerously old Healthcare - non-existent Education- death spiral Social health - All measures worse every year
Don’t know, we tried nothing and are out of ideas thanks to the vice grip of lobbies and bribes Eisehower himself warned about.
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.
Most of our financial advice for retirement has a hidden assumption that there is a large number of working age people helping not just social security, but also the stock market. A standard retirement portfolio will have a mix of t-bonds, stock market holdings, and a few other sectors.
We’d be looking at a scenario where there are a lot of small investors (a few million dollars is small on this scale), but proportionately fewer workers making use of that investment.
A US Millennial working today is going to need to be a 401k millionaire to retire with something comparable to their current standard of living. Most are going to fall short of that before we even talk about adding on extra life span.
The numbers I gave are entirely independent of social security. They presume a far below average stock market return. You’re right they’ll need to be a 401k millionaire, and per the numbers I gave, to achieve that will take around ~9k/year in pension investments if they intend to retire at 65. A lot obviously can not afford that, especially not early in their career, and will need to compensate accordingly later in their career to the extent they want.
But that wasn’t really my point. My point is that the number of extra years - irrespective of your current pension situation - you need to work in order to maintain the same financial outlook is far lower than the number of additional years of retirement you can cover. Whether or not you’re able to get to a sufficient pension level in the first place is a separate issue.
To how the stock market will fare, the big challenge there is whether or not automation will keep up or not, and frankly I think the biggest social upheaval over the next century will not be that it can’t keep up, but that automation will outpace the proportional decline in the potential labour pool.
You might want to look at the Trinity Study of retirement portfolios. The general rate of withdrawal is lower than what you’re quoting here. Closer to 4% or lower. Though this is giving way in some quarters to a sliding system, where you live it large in good return years, and frugaly in bad years.
But again, this all overlooks how that depends on a proportion of working people feeding stock market returns.
The general rate of withdrawal need to be lower if you have a portfolio that is very conservative. That may make sense when you’re saving for you yourself and have a low risk tolerance, but it’s not needed. That people feel worried enough to do that, though, is a good argument for insurance/state run pension schemes, because they an inherently pay out more since they can smooth out the risks and pay toward the maximum averaged returns.
Economy is about to break soon anyway. Technology increasing to a point of killing a dangerous amount of jobs combined with a declining birth rate…
We’re gonna have to do something in the next couple decades. There’s really no other option unless the elites want chaos… and they don’t.
Also, the point would be that you live longer. I know a lot of people hate their jobs but not everyone does. I wouldn’t mind getting another 30 years.
I think things are gonna get really ugly in the next twenty years.
We’re nearing a point where artificial intelligence can replace a lot of white collar and logistical jobs, which would skyrocket unemployment rates and lead to widespread riots.
Don’t get me started on what a leftist pipe dream universal basic income is. The guaranteed income UBI would give would either bankrupt our economy or be such a pittance that nobody could live off of it
I did number crunching on how much it would cost to pay every UK adult a guaranteed basic income that could theoretically pay for rent in most cities outside of London, assuming £800 pcm and 50,000,000 adults. That would cost £480,000,000,000 a year, or almost 2.5 times our entire welfare budget, of which about £100b alone goes into pensions.
And before you suggest automation and wealth taxes would pay for UBI… good luck with that. We can’t even get the rich to pay their fair share of taxes right at this moment.
Given how much politicians serve the rich, I think they’d sooner sic the military on protesters than actually cave in to the demands of the masses, especially when armed drones could do a lot of the gruntwork. The wealthy don’t care if you’re destitute, starving and living on the streets.
UBI isn’t a leftist idea
It’s a more radical version of welfare capitalism. Socialism is about worker control of the means of production. This would mean all the factories and agricultural land and cloud servers, etc would be owned by the people who work there. UBI is simply keeping the poor alive through subsidies. We do it already through all sorts of things. For example food prices are heavily subsidized. It’s just taking that idea and taking it to the logical extreme.
It’s not leftist at all. Leftists may support it because it will improve the living conditions for the bottom class. But fundamentally it does nothing to put the means of production into the hands of the workers. A leftist idea would be for example forcing all private companies to become cooperatives.
I agree with you that things are going to get ugly very soon. Our society simply isn’t equipped to handle this dramatic transformation that is coming. I think we will likely see some sort of serious war going forward as well. I’m just glad I live far enough away from the likely nuclear bomb targets where I probably wouldn’t die immediately, lol.
I think UBI is really the only solution that will be able to maintain our current capitalist system and way of life. Anything else would essentially lead to revolt. Idle hands are the devil’s plaything. If 50% of the young people in the country aren’t working, you’re either going to see a massive prison complex or a militant revolt. Probably both.
UBI however would further our jump into dystopia. Imagine a society where the bottom 80% survive off of the government’s hand. They live in ghettos, segregated from the people who own capital. Majority of the country live in abject poverty getting only basic necessities. Starting to sound a lot like 1984…
But it is. It may not be Communist or Socialist but it’s a radical idea to redistribute wealth to the masses and effectively create a literal welfare state. Pretty much every party that supports UBI is left wing.
If 50% of the young people in the country aren’t working, you’re either going to see a massive prison complex or a militant revolt. Probably both.
I think we’ll see a full societal collapse in the next few decades, whether that’s a descent into lawless anarchy or civil wars.
Ok we should have a clear definition of what left means so this conversation is clear. My definition of left is socialism and communism. Welfare capitalism is still right wing. Please feel free to share yours and we can see where we differ
UBI is an attempt to keep the capitalist state going through this radical change. Fundamentally, nothing changes. The people with capital still control the capital. Companies still exist and make profit in a market structure.
People aren’t really suggesting this because they want to pay taxes. They are suggesting this because they are scared of the system falling apart. Do you have any other solutions? I really don’t think there’s a way to keep our current capitalist system and not have a UBI if +50% aren’t working.
If we allow the system to collapse, we risk too much. Nazi Germany style authoritarian government with the current surveillance state capacities we have is an incredibly scary thought. They’re even working on mind reading - they’ve done small scale experiments where machine learning models can listen to your brain waves and see what you are thinking.
We cannot allow fascism to have a serious resurgence. It’s too dangerous.
Things will need to change like a guaranteed basic income. We’ve been moving towards this eventuality for the last 5 decades or so.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think working till very late age is a bad thing. I don’t expect to be sitting on my ass whole day long by the time I get to retirement age. What I do think is a bad thing is if by that time I am financially struggling to get by.
The problem is we’re not fixing the economy at the other end. People work later because they’re healthier, and that could be good… but that means more people to do the same amount of work, increasing unemployment.
Until we stop demonising non-work and that’s going to be hell for those stuck on it. Get some level of basic income so it’s a valid choice. Meanwhile in the UK our govermnent is appealing to the boomers by announcing increased punishment of the unemployed… We’re a long way from fixing the issues.
I don’t tend to think about the amount of work available nor the demand for the fruits of work to be fixed.
I agree with the issues you are raising.
What happened to having hobbies? Working and languishing till death are not the only two possible options.
My work is a hobby, so there’s that
This. I’m already retired and I’m plenty busy doing what I like with my time.
How are we supposed to afford paying pensions that long if people retire before 70?
By properly taxing companies and rich individuals? Besides, those leaving to 120 would most likely be among the richest of us. Do they really need a pension at all?
That’s just not happening.
It should be though, we need to demand change rather than just saying “oh they’ll never do it” and giving up.
Sorry, but if one can dream of properly taxing companies and rich individuals, there’s plenty of other shit to fix with that money first.
Making living until 120 sustainable is not on the list, or very, very low on it.
Universal basic income. Make work optional.
If work is optional then who is paying that income?
I would advise to look up some information yourself. You can either read about the pilots and their results or find a video if you prefer that format.
And these final things to consider:
- optional != won’t be done
- work isn’t just one definition: housework is unpaid for example but it is still work
- UBI doesn’t mean all expenses are paid for, it’s “basic” - luxury goods like iPhones aren’t “basic”
- it’s a complex issue, inform yourself with pro and contra sources
Should have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.
By fully funding them. The return from a lifetime annuity bought at 65 is just marginally higher than a reasonable expected safe return from the same investment. (A lifetime annuity pays out on the basis that the provider needs to guarantee an income until you die, so if it returns so much that it eats too much into the capital, it’ll be unprofitable for the provider). At the margins, the expected remaining life years of someone at 65 in a developed country is long enough that you can’t safely offer that much more without eating away too much at the capital too quickly.
Oh, I do look forward to living through the climate wars and AI ascendancy. Amazing prospect.
No shit. Depending on how things are going in the next 10-15, I might retire way early, do as much bucketlist type stuff as possible until the money runs out, and then check out early. I probably have enough to live for 5 or 10 years if I move somewhere with a lower cost of living, and better that than working until I’m 75 while the world burns.
My retirement plan is a bullet
My mantra.
Perhaps you are half joking or not, but I used to think like this in my younger years. I spent a heck of a lot of time in my 20s and 30s doing all the bucket list stuff. Bunch of sex, drugs, traveling, wild adventures, starting a company, etc. Having gone through that I can tell you that I am much happier now than I was when I thought all those bucket list items were going to make me happy. Sure, they felt good and some were amazing, but it wears off and before you know it you’re chasing the next thing again.
A while ago I came across a nice, although a somewhat simplistic, equation that said that happiness equals the number of things you have divided by the number of things you want. I find that wanting less is a much easier route to increase that metric than getting more. Easier said than done though, but I found that silent meditation retreats do the trick for me.
I’m 39, and my bucket list mostly involves traveling to historical sites and trying lots of different food, so I don’t think we’re particularly comparable.
We don’t need to be compatible for the point to stand
A middle aged person saying, “I would rather retire young and do things that are important to me before those things are no longer possible, instead of spending another 30 years working my ass off hoping I’m financially and physically capable of doing anything at the end and that the world isn’t literally on fire” is hardly the same as a 20-something doing a bunch of drugs, but sure. Silent mediation. That’ll solve global warming and capitalism.
Have you ever considered asking a question or are you only just interested in misrepresenting what I said?
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At 45, I feel my real life began at 40 after having my kid.
At 38, I feel like my life ended at 33 when I had my first kid.
I completely understand you my man.
Maybe in some ultra rich country, certainly not in the declining West though.
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.
Even longer time to make the rich richer woohoooo!!!
Yeah, do we really want Trump to make it to 80, let alone 120?
I’m not thrilled with him making it to tomorrow
Getting Altered Carbon vibes here
I’m not interested to 70 let alone 120. What a nightmare.
Aw c’mon! Just think, at ninety you could be hiking the Appalachian trail with a Camelbak tactical colostomy bag and a keen sense of wonder
