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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3988 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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What do people think about the idea of longevity escape velocity happening in our lifetimes? (I’m 32)

I confess thoughts of my mortality have hit me pretty hard recently and this idea has given me some hope. It seems like it could be cope but there’s also huge amounts of money in this space (like Altos Labs) and it seems to have come a long way in terms of legitimacy and talent recruitment from a decade ago.

Combining that with AI improvements it doesn’t seem so unreasonable to me that we could conceivably see some wild advances in the next 2-3 decades.

I mean even 15 years ago immunotherapy for cancer was not noteworthy enough to be included in a popular overview book “The Emperor of All Maladies” and now it’s a treatment that’s used all over the place, albeit with varying success rates.

What do people think about the idea of longevity escape velocity happening in our lifetimes? (I’m 32)

I am very bearish on this ever happening.

There are islands of longevity where people live for 100+ years very frequently, but everyone with a documented age follows the Bible’s rule that no one lives longer than 120. Bodies just don’t last, even with no sickness people aren’t going to live more than a decade or too longer than the current oldest people.

There are islands of longevity where people live for 100+ years very frequently

Where? The Blue Zones thing is fake. https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-blue-zone-distraction

Probably we could find some real ones somewhere. Monaco seems like a good candidate with a lifespan nearing 90 years old. Chinese-American women live to nearly 92 on average.

But yeah, maximum life span hasn't increased. The worldwide gains in life expectancy are just the result of a higher percentage of people reaching their genetic potential. We'll never have a life expectancy over 100 years old unless we can fix aging itself.

Fair, and I suppose probably unsurprising.

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