> but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old. Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witted[1], and unattractive.

I have seldom read such an amazing load of (sorry, to say it this way) bullshit and disdain of the old/being old.

I am in my thirties and I really am in awe the live, the doings, the stories of a lot of elders around me.

Sorry, but how young are you?

Getting older and eventually dying is imho, what defines our humanity. Granted, we have learned to extend live by a reasonably amount and have also, in a lot of cases, learned to lengthen it in a way, that gives people a lot of life-quality during their elder years.

In former times, being 40 to 50 meant you were frail, old, broken by hard work, and so on. Now, in most cases, that happens probably in your 70ies.

Anecdotal: Looking at my stepfather, who is helping us renovate our home and being 78, I wonder, how I will ever be able to do that much, when I am his age. Or my slightly younger stepmother.

By the way, he rides his bicycle for 4.500 miles every year, just for fun...

> If you doubt this, consider that practically any old person would be willing to give up all of their material possessions to inhabit the body of a 20 year-old.

Oh yeah, I really doubt this - I know a lot of older people and most of them would not want this trade in.

You are arguing from a very dangerous standpoint, as you argue, that cognitive decline makes live unworthy (and with that every old person). Thinking your argument through you arrive very fast at a point, where we have to get rid of older people, as their lives are "ineffectual life", I really feel only contempt for this race for efficiency, when it is used to divide people into categories like worthy/unworthy or lives in effectual/ineffectual.

Sorry, but I have to take a stand here, as your inhuman comment is the most upvoted here, standing on top. For me, that stains the whole of this community.

So now, let the downvotes beging. ;-)

> Getting older and eventually dying is imho, what defines our humanity.

Maybe, but is that a good thing?

To simply "expire out of existence" is a big issue for "humanity". It's the main reason why there's no proper answer to "what's the meaning of life" - whatever you do during your 50/70/120/.. years of life you'll eventually end up just as dead as the guy right next to you. Congratulations!

Being immortal would allow us to get rid of crutches like religion and allow us to implement proper moral systems, since there would be tangible rewards to being "good" simply for "goodness' sake", since being good and being selfish would be identical - if you'll (eventually but reiably) suffer overpoputlation, pollution and even unemployment just as much as the next guy, you'll (eventually but, again, reiably) think twice about elbow tactics.

> Oh yeah, I really doubt this - I know a lot of older people and most of them would not want this trade in.

20? Maybe. but How about being in the body of a 30- or 40-year old again? I can't imagine any 70-year olds not wanting to have a more "hassle-free" body, all other things being equal.

> makes live unworthy

Talking about live being "unworthy" is a slippery slope, but there nevertheless is an argument to be made about quality vs quantity of life .

I don't have the reference (and the exact numbers) at hand, but in "Happiness Hypothesis" (the Book) the author mentions a survey where people got to express their preference between "living x years of life and then dying to some tragic accident" and "x+y years of life, but y years spent in a wheelchair, because of some tragic accident". The results were rather mixed with the shorter life being more popular choice.

And, by the end of the day, a chance at higher-quality life in exchange for possibly less total life is also why things like armed robberies exist (even if not every robber things of it like that beforehand). I'd also argue the same is true of people opting for high-risk jobs, but there's also a sense-of-duty aspect to them, so it's not quite as clear-cut there.

Not a lot of people get pensions where I live anymore (or at least, not enough of one to live on comfortably). If you don't want to spend your entire life working, you could save for retirement, same as you (hopefully) do now. A lot of people plan their retirement so that they can live off the returns of their investments without touching the principal. If you do this, there's not much difference between retiring for 20 years versus 200.

>>Nobody is going to pay for your pension forever.

What? I don't know where you are from,but in EU state pensions are absolutely paid until death.

I live in germany but I tried to use common sense.

In this scenario our society would be split into two groups if we pay pensions for eternity:

Those who lived long enough to receive their pension. Their body turns 30 again thanks to breakthroughs in science. And those who never age beyond 30 and so they never get their pension.

The first group effectively gets "basic income" and they probably own houses/apartments so their living costs are quite low. You can either let everyone have pensions or get rid of pensions.

Spot on. Just writing to add that a hypothesis that may explain part of why you get "lower levels of cognitive performance" as you age, is that you've quite a few more data points in mind to draw on (consciously or not) when processing new information.

People accept it because it is how nature works. How many animals are slaughtered every second to support our lifestyles ? How many resources are extracted from the last corners of the earth to enable the lifes we have? Why isn't that immoral or insane ?

You sound like a 25 year old who thinks he is too important to die and that we should fix nature to enable endless life. Isn't that immoral or insane ? It will eventually happen and i would probably take the chance as well, but i am also aware that it is a very narcissistic thing to wish for.

Sustainable lifestyle is something we need to achieve anyway. Even with people dieing as they do now.

Death, and worse, the frailty that currently comes with old age, should never be acceptable. Old age is a disease and we should use a lot of resources to try and find a cure.

"A human being dies more often than that. To accept this is obscene. It is is immoral. It is insane. And yet, most people do. Shame on us."

Currently death is inevitable and a law of nature. Perhaps technology will change this in the future. As it is, it's one of the those things one must accept and come to terms with.

Perhaps you are a bit too depressed about aging. There are documented cases of peoples in their 70:s being quite keen and healthy.

I think one the keys here is exercise. People who do daily walks are much more healthy than people who don't. If one is in their 70:s and has been sedentary for most of his life and the other one has kept even a routine of daily walks, the other one has decades of exercise behind him.

There has been studies that moderate exercise helps to revert supposedly age related cognitive discrepancies. Sorry, can't find the reference right now.

My belief (anecdotal and completely unfound) is that people who live healthy lives are much more healthier when old. Thus part of the incapacity attached to old age is not biological predestination but also affected through the current and past lifestyle of the old person.

Sure, one CAN be in a really bad shape in their 70:s. Just sit decades on a sofa watching TV. Or perform work that is physically exhausting.

I think you are overthinking and fearing too much a thing you do not know thoroughly. That you refer to a scientific paper is an indication of trying to rationally cope with this. However, there is one problem - Most bleeding edge scientific studies are flawed and incorrect. I would not consult a single paper to form an opinion on anything. I would consult a gerontologist. And even his opinion might be formed from studying partial population - the sick and in need of care - in stead of the whole population.

My 5th grade teacher (a sort of benign philosopher) once related to me that when he was young he strove to take advice, and that meant spending time thinking about the beauty of youth, as his mentors urged him. He seemed to realize how much better it was to be young, and that he could not, would not bear old age. He explained to me that he and his friends would all commit suicide once they turned 40. Since he was in his 50's at the time, I asked, "What changed?" He replied, "I turned 40."

You have an extremely negative outlook on improving life expectancy ("So what?"? Really? Does life not matter at all to you?) in absence of pure immortality (a distinction I'm not even sure we'd be able to make in the ideal case), in such a way that I think any normal person would safely call bullshit on those being your preferences when it matters.

>This extra time will be spent being old. Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witted[1], and unattractive

I refute this and so does the article. One of the striking things about this community was not only how many old people there were but how active they were. It mentioned 85 year olds who were still making honey and teaching dance. These people lived so much longer because they lived better and stayed active. Sure they will be less active, aware and attractive than when they were younger but these people are still in far better shape than most 'old' (60-70s) people in our society and many young people.

    > The real solution is to make frailty and death voluntary. 
    > If this achievement seems ridiculous, remember how many 
    > technologies were once placed in the same category of improbability.

I agree. This is a solvable problem. More serious effort needs to be made to slow and reverse aging, rather than this resigned march to death that your downvoters exhibit. The human potential that is lost to aging is staggering.

It is fashionable to show how sophisticated and intelligent you are, to discount or even deride people who have the goal of extending human lifespan. That's too bad.

See if still think that you don't want an extra 20 years to live when you get to 70?

> it's ineffectual life

Being happy and alive for 20 years more instead of being dead does sound pretty good from an individual standpoint to me.

> Being happy and alive for 20 years

You're not thinking this through thoroughly.

Being "happy" can be achieved with anti-depressants and being "alive" can be achieved by essentially turning you into a vegetable.

You're happy and alive, yet I highly doubt this is what you had in mind when you wrote that line. You clearly want more than just being happy and alive. You also want to be free and an individual and have an impact on the world and all those other things humans want .. but sadly often times you can only have less and less of those as you grow old.

My reply was semi sarcastic, and targeted at the assumption that being old equals having a useless life.

TFA states that most of the elderly still enjoy being part of a community and contributing to it, sharing their time and the food they grow. So in addition to being healthy and active, they have some kind of beneficial peer pressure to take part in the community. I doubt you'd get the same feeling of happiness and belonging by taking a daily dose of anti-depressants, but I have no experience with those. As for being alive, there's more to it than merely being not-dead :-)

I must admit I reacted mainly to the "ineffectual life" part of the comment which, to me, sounded like "they're not building a startup or trying to send people to Mars so it's useless", but there's a good chance I misinterpreted that part of the comment.

> Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witted[1], and unattractive

That perspective seems self-centred.

As long as he can still be a source of joy to people around him and makes the world a better place in his own way, I'd say it's a life worth living.

Even if there is a "solution" to aging there will be none to accidents. People not leaving their house to avoid dying in the streets sounds like human culture coming to a standstill.