The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out(theconversation.com)
theconversation.com
The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out
https://theconversation.com/the-data-on-extreme-human-ageing-is-rotten-from-the-inside-out-ig-nobel-winner-saul-justin-newman-239023
160 comments
As I watch people around me reach their senior years, it increasingly seems like life is "use it or lose it" with your body and brain function. If you really want to extend your "healthspan" it seems the correct solution is to do full-body work-outs a lot, eat a really clean diet, avoid drugs, and keep using your brain actively into your 80's and 90's.
A major component of that for my grandparents is that they live four floors up without an elevator.
Interestingly, their next door neighbour is also still among us and the general pattern was that people in that block would start passing away starting from the lowest floors.
It's a small thing, but I can see how it works - living on the third floor I see that my joints are better lubricated than back when I was living on the ground floor, so taking long walks is also no issue.
Interestingly, their next door neighbour is also still among us and the general pattern was that people in that block would start passing away starting from the lowest floors.
It's a small thing, but I can see how it works - living on the third floor I see that my joints are better lubricated than back when I was living on the ground floor, so taking long walks is also no issue.
The first thing to come to my mind is water flows down and mold/mildew would be more present in lower floors. Air pollution is a killer.
These aging stories are like a Rorschach test for whatever “science” a person already believes in.
Can you go into more details on what you are trying to point out here? I am not sure what stories you are referring to, nor do I fully understand the rest of your sentence.
People see some stupid anecdote and then share the theory that fits whatever they believe to be true no matter how nonsensical it is.
If I told you the people on the north side of my grandma’s nursing home died before the people who lived on the south side, you’d have some theory about sunlight exposure and excessive mold growth on the north side of the building. Air pollution kills!
But then it turns out the north side is just where they put the sicker people.
If I told you the people on the north side of my grandma’s nursing home died before the people who lived on the south side, you’d have some theory about sunlight exposure and excessive mold growth on the north side of the building. Air pollution kills!
But then it turns out the north side is just where they put the sicker people.
I see. You dislike anecdotes and conjecture in general or just in this circumstance?
I don’t dislike them, I think it’s really funny.
With respect to four floor walkup, by this logic, excepting other factors which might negate it, you would expect there to be a preponderance of exceptionally aged people in New York.
It appears that living in New York shortens your lifespan quite significantly (possibly due to air pollution). Income-adjusted, New Yorkers die a few years too young, and there is a higher incidence of cancer than other places.
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/2015sum.pdf
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/2015sum.pdf
That document doesn’t seem to compare things to national rates, but to my knowledge the NYC life expectancy is above NY state’s, which itself is significantly above the national average. The densest parts of Manhattan, which also have some of the most air pollution (but high incomes) have the highest life expectancies.
With a brief googling it looks like cancer incidence is in line with national averages, but mortality is lower. Significant racial and socioeconomic disparities impact both averages.
With a brief googling it looks like cancer incidence is in line with national averages, but mortality is lower. Significant racial and socioeconomic disparities impact both averages.
When you adjust for income, NYC does pretty poorly. Non-income-adjusted, one of the richest places on the planet is in line with its surroundings, yes.
Your source doesn't support that (no comparison with other places), and other sources don't seem to back it up. See the "Local Life Expectancies by Income" chart here: https://www.healthinequality.org/. It seems generally that high income people have comparable life expectancies across the country, whereas there is much higher variability among lower incomes.
Too many BECs?
Not if the benefits of stairs are outweighed by the dangers of pollution (both air and noise).
> the general pattern was that people in that block would start passing away starting from the lowest floors
For your theory to believably explain this, wouldn't everybody have to be the same age to start off with on all the floors? Which seems improbable?
For your theory to believably explain this, wouldn't everybody have to be the same age to start off with on all the floors? Which seems improbable?
The Principle of Charity would suggest that the grandparent comment was not trying to control for age differences, but was sharing an anecdote that many folks in the grandparent’s neighborhood were of similar age, leading to a hypothesis, and draw what conclusions you will.
I interpreted that to mean, walk more floors, get more exercise, live longer, which aligns with conventional scientific wisdom.
I interpreted that to mean, walk more floors, get more exercise, live longer, which aligns with conventional scientific wisdom.
That's an interesting principle* and I totally get it, but I'm not 100% sure it applies here?
This is a comment section on an article about scientific data quality, and I'm pointing out a potentially confounding issue with the anecdata? Another valid challenge would be "wouldn't people with more health issues choose to live on lower floors, and logically be expected to pass away sooner?"
It's possible I've been reading too many Data Colada posts, but I saw the OP got back to me with a plausible explanation that enriched my worldview, so I'm going to take it that the OP didn't find offense in my response.
* One immediate problem I see with that principle is that it can quickly become circular. For example, an easy criticism of anybody attempting to reference it, as you did here, is to ask: did you apply the principle to my comment? And in turn, you could say the same of mine!
This is a comment section on an article about scientific data quality, and I'm pointing out a potentially confounding issue with the anecdata? Another valid challenge would be "wouldn't people with more health issues choose to live on lower floors, and logically be expected to pass away sooner?"
It's possible I've been reading too many Data Colada posts, but I saw the OP got back to me with a plausible explanation that enriched my worldview, so I'm going to take it that the OP didn't find offense in my response.
* One immediate problem I see with that principle is that it can quickly become circular. For example, an easy criticism of anybody attempting to reference it, as you did here, is to ask: did you apply the principle to my comment? And in turn, you could say the same of mine!
> A major component of that for my grandparents is that they live four floors up without an elevator.
I would love to see a study on the effects of taking the stairs on expected life span!
It seems such a small thing but the health benefits likely add up.
I would love to see a study on the effects of taking the stairs on expected life span!
It seems such a small thing but the health benefits likely add up.
Hong Kong would be an excellent place to do such a study!
> If you really want to extend your "healthspan" it seems the correct solution is to do full-body work-outs a lot, eat a really clean diet, avoid drugs, and keep using your brain actively into your 80's and 90's.
All of the folks in my family who lives to their late 90s with a long “healthspan” drank or smoked excessively. The generation after them, their children, who did are either dead or on their way to an early grave.
I haven’t really been able to figure that one out.
All of the folks in my family who lives to their late 90s with a long “healthspan” drank or smoked excessively. The generation after them, their children, who did are either dead or on their way to an early grave.
I haven’t really been able to figure that one out.
One possibility is survivorship bias. You never met the smokers and heavy drinkers from the first generation who died young, but you did meet those who got lucky on their dice rolls. In the generation after them you knew both groups and the actual survivorship ratios become more apparent.
Other aspects of our modern environment are probably playing a role, too, of course.
Other aspects of our modern environment are probably playing a role, too, of course.
Several of my friends who died in COVID heart attacks were super fit and very careful with eating. One was a pretty militant vegan. Yet they died in their 40s and 50s.
Eating vegan isn't usually very healthy. Easy to be deficient in a lot of things. Easy to lack the right macro and micronutrient balance.
It would be the same as only eating meat - human bodies are adopted to eat omnivorously, so deviating from that is more likely to lead to some ill outcome.
It would be the same as only eating meat - human bodies are adopted to eat omnivorously, so deviating from that is more likely to lead to some ill outcome.
you can be careful with eating (vegan) while not eating healthy at all as it’s mostly ideology
Veganism is awful for you.
There's an enormous amount of dumb luck in lifespan.
We generally think in terms of life expectancy, but that's only really useful on a population level. On an individual level, it's much more useful to think about the probability of dying - you aren't running down a clock, you're constantly rolling cosmic dice to see whether you get hit by a semi truck or develop pancreatic cancer.
Before the age of 40, you've got less than a 1% chance of dying in any given year. By 60 that probability increases to about 5% and by 80 to about 25%. Some young people will just have rotten luck and roll 1 on a d100, while some people will repeatedly roll a d4 and manage to dodge the 1. Obviously those probabilities are highly modifiable by many factors, but some people will get unreasonably lucky or miserably unlucky regardless of the underlying probabilities.
We generally think in terms of life expectancy, but that's only really useful on a population level. On an individual level, it's much more useful to think about the probability of dying - you aren't running down a clock, you're constantly rolling cosmic dice to see whether you get hit by a semi truck or develop pancreatic cancer.
Before the age of 40, you've got less than a 1% chance of dying in any given year. By 60 that probability increases to about 5% and by 80 to about 25%. Some young people will just have rotten luck and roll 1 on a d100, while some people will repeatedly roll a d4 and manage to dodge the 1. Obviously those probabilities are highly modifiable by many factors, but some people will get unreasonably lucky or miserably unlucky regardless of the underlying probabilities.
While I agree with the dice concept I believe general health has a lot to with what die you use to make your roll.
I'll give you my theory: Modern processed foods.
I wonder if the standards for “drinking excessively” could have changed over time, or the way we drink could have changed? Or possibly, say, people in the silent generation (just for example) might have mostly just had alcohol and cigarettes, while those in the boomer and gen-x generation might have also had a higher chance to find their way to party drugs.
Just a hypothetical of course, I obviously know nothing at all about your family!
Just a hypothetical of course, I obviously know nothing at all about your family!
selection bias. also survival of the fittest.
Blame stress
Yes, the alcoholic from their 20s to 80s (approx 1/2 a plastic bottle of vodka a day) was one of the least stressed people in the family. They were also the healthiest in their 90s compared to the smokers.
> do full-body work-outs a lot, eat a really clean diet, avoid drugs
Could it be that older people were less likely to be able to avoid physical work (even their chores were far more of a workout), were relatively more religious and conservative than current generations, and grew up with fewer processed foods and more home cooking by stay-at-home moms? What I mean by this is are you just describing people who were born in the 1930s? The fact that the ones that are left are mostly typical would be expected.
> keep using your brain actively into your 80's and 90's.
This could be seen as a symptom of aging well, rather than a cause. People whose brains don't work well aren't studied as examples of aging well.
The person I know who most fits this description is my dad, he had a swimmer's body in his 60s, worked out every morning since high school, has kept a dead center BMI his entire life, has never done a drug and probably only had a sip or two of beer, always had a gym guy diet that has gradually become more vegan, and was a math major and computer programmer, plays chess etc..
He's totally falling apart in his late 70s and becoming very frail. Seems like he's having nerve and neurological issues, and having problems with his connective tissue and with arthritis in his hands and knees. I don't know how you eat, work out, and think yourself into avoiding that. Half of his joint problems are caused from having been athletic, just like my super-athletic Army grandpa, whose knees would bend backwards for the last years of his life from football when he was young.
Protestantism isn't a law of nature. You aren't automatically rewarded for sacrifice and suffering, at least while you're alive.
Could it be that older people were less likely to be able to avoid physical work (even their chores were far more of a workout), were relatively more religious and conservative than current generations, and grew up with fewer processed foods and more home cooking by stay-at-home moms? What I mean by this is are you just describing people who were born in the 1930s? The fact that the ones that are left are mostly typical would be expected.
> keep using your brain actively into your 80's and 90's.
This could be seen as a symptom of aging well, rather than a cause. People whose brains don't work well aren't studied as examples of aging well.
The person I know who most fits this description is my dad, he had a swimmer's body in his 60s, worked out every morning since high school, has kept a dead center BMI his entire life, has never done a drug and probably only had a sip or two of beer, always had a gym guy diet that has gradually become more vegan, and was a math major and computer programmer, plays chess etc..
He's totally falling apart in his late 70s and becoming very frail. Seems like he's having nerve and neurological issues, and having problems with his connective tissue and with arthritis in his hands and knees. I don't know how you eat, work out, and think yourself into avoiding that. Half of his joint problems are caused from having been athletic, just like my super-athletic Army grandpa, whose knees would bend backwards for the last years of his life from football when he was young.
Protestantism isn't a law of nature. You aren't automatically rewarded for sacrifice and suffering, at least while you're alive.
> What I mean by this is are you just describing people who were born in the 1930s? The fact that the ones that are left are mostly typical would be expected.
People born in the 1930's were 30 in the 1960's, and if you think that means a lot of religious/social conservatism, you probably don't know much about American history. Most of these people adopted more conservative ideals later in life, which happens to literally every generation.
By the way, it sounds like the people who you are talking about have a history of very much overworking their bodies to the point of injury, and that is also pretty clearly bad for you. I don't think you are guaranteed to live a long time if you take care of yourself, but I think it's pretty clearly true that you will maximize your chances if you do.
> Protestantism isn't a law of nature. You aren't automatically rewarded for sacrifice and suffering, at least while you're alive.
The happiest and healthiest 90-year-old I know does 2 hours a day of work meticulously maintaining his trees and eats whatever he wants. He happens to want healthy things, though, and enjoys the trees. You don't have to suffer to be healthy.
People born in the 1930's were 30 in the 1960's, and if you think that means a lot of religious/social conservatism, you probably don't know much about American history. Most of these people adopted more conservative ideals later in life, which happens to literally every generation.
By the way, it sounds like the people who you are talking about have a history of very much overworking their bodies to the point of injury, and that is also pretty clearly bad for you. I don't think you are guaranteed to live a long time if you take care of yourself, but I think it's pretty clearly true that you will maximize your chances if you do.
> Protestantism isn't a law of nature. You aren't automatically rewarded for sacrifice and suffering, at least while you're alive.
The happiest and healthiest 90-year-old I know does 2 hours a day of work meticulously maintaining his trees and eats whatever he wants. He happens to want healthy things, though, and enjoys the trees. You don't have to suffer to be healthy.
It's always funny how people are eager to cite the good examples in their life, but totally forget the family that died early.
Just walk into any sort of care facility for the elderly to understand that bias.
Just walk into any sort of care facility for the elderly to understand that bias.
Now that I have the opportunity, note how I omitted my paternal grandfather.
He was a surgeon and died aged 59. Kidney failure was the direct cause IIRC, but in reality a career of stressful overwork.
They named one particularly short street in one small city after him in honour of his achievements in setting up healthcare infrastructure directly after WW2.
He was a surgeon and died aged 59. Kidney failure was the direct cause IIRC, but in reality a career of stressful overwork.
They named one particularly short street in one small city after him in honour of his achievements in setting up healthcare infrastructure directly after WW2.
If more people did this maybe everyone could tone it down a bit and go back to, “we don’t quite yet know” rather than having every one of these threads filled with “survivorship bias!!” nonsense.
People mistake probability for certainty too readily. If you show me someone who is 400 lbs at 29 and someone who is 150 lbs at the same age, I would take an even-odds bet on the 150 lb person dying later. I think you would, too. I could be wrong, and there's a lot of uncertainty there, but that doesn't mean that there's absolutely no link between health and lifespan.
Of course there is, but there's a huge amount of noise too. Signal below the noise floor can't be eyeballed.
Well yes, but you need to be smart about it, just like about everything else in life. People read full body workout and start some super intense training regimen which for some may be great, and for others it may be too much. Instead its more like some gardening efforts - every day a bit, not too much. My late grandparents are an example - obviously no smoking and absolute minimum alcohol and 0 other drugs ever, regular good sleep, and garden (plus a bit of nature which was just walks or foraging mushrooms).
Understanding how body degenerates with age and injuries, especially joints and connective tissue. Workouts great for 20 years old are sometimes pretty bad for 40+. Don't stress heart too much, just enough, for long periods.
Plenty of weightlifters who have messed up their shoulders, spines, knees etc. although at their peak they lifted impressive weights and looked accordingly. Guess what, this adds 0 in longevity, whatever effect was there is 100% gone in 5-10 years from all tissues and bones as cells fully renew, and messing up core of your movement can easily negatively impair lifespan.
Understanding how body degenerates with age and injuries, especially joints and connective tissue. Workouts great for 20 years old are sometimes pretty bad for 40+. Don't stress heart too much, just enough, for long periods.
Plenty of weightlifters who have messed up their shoulders, spines, knees etc. although at their peak they lifted impressive weights and looked accordingly. Guess what, this adds 0 in longevity, whatever effect was there is 100% gone in 5-10 years from all tissues and bones as cells fully renew, and messing up core of your movement can easily negatively impair lifespan.
It does appear from my anecdata that large amounts of mild exercise actually seem to be better, like yoga, golf, mild hikes, or yard work/gardening. Manual labor of various kinds fits this pattern, too.
My grandmother would walk 4-5 miles to visit us, well into her 80s, and the route included a rather substantial hill. She lived into her 90s.
Similarly, my grandfather was docker, and then a very active gardener walking to his allotment a few times day, a good few miles round-trip, and lived into his 90s as well.
They were all what might be 'underweight' by the BMI measurements these days. War diets, perhaps, but they were both healthy and fit. Not sure I buy the restricted diet idea for longevity though.
Similarly, my grandfather was docker, and then a very active gardener walking to his allotment a few times day, a good few miles round-trip, and lived into his 90s as well.
They were all what might be 'underweight' by the BMI measurements these days. War diets, perhaps, but they were both healthy and fit. Not sure I buy the restricted diet idea for longevity though.
Very true. My paternal grandfather lived well into his nineties, even as a smoker, as he was very active well into his 80s. Even when he touched 90, he could still pretty much walk around in his forest land to explore his property.
On the other hand, my paternal grandmother had a severe sweet tooth, and passed away from a heart condition. Her diabetes kept her very inactive for the most part, but even at 80, she could do a LOT of activities independently with little help. Passed away at 84.
My maternal grandfather was very active in his 70s, but he became sedentary and reclusive (partly because of my caretaker uncle who is an asshole, coupled with messy infamily fighting). Passed away at 82, after his second(!) heart attack.
My maternal grandmother is still alive and kicking ass, travelling the world over. Again, asshole uncle causes her a lot of tension , but her daughters have tried to keep her separated from him, so stress levels are low. For the record, she could travel from India to the US alone at her age.
Use it or lose it.
On the other hand, my paternal grandmother had a severe sweet tooth, and passed away from a heart condition. Her diabetes kept her very inactive for the most part, but even at 80, she could do a LOT of activities independently with little help. Passed away at 84.
My maternal grandfather was very active in his 70s, but he became sedentary and reclusive (partly because of my caretaker uncle who is an asshole, coupled with messy infamily fighting). Passed away at 82, after his second(!) heart attack.
My maternal grandmother is still alive and kicking ass, travelling the world over. Again, asshole uncle causes her a lot of tension , but her daughters have tried to keep her separated from him, so stress levels are low. For the record, she could travel from India to the US alone at her age.
Use it or lose it.
Re: using your brain -- I've noticed that a lot of well-known US television news commentators seem to work in some capacity and be sharp well into their 80's. It seems like the fact that they are constantly plugged into current events keeps them going.
Does their activity support healthiness, or does their healthiness support activity?
Another common theme I would add is that they didn't have a fatal accident. If you are unlucky you can live as healthy as you want and not have any genes that make you more likely to have a specific disease and still die young. :/
Sounds like the Howard Families
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_families
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_families
Great anecdata!
If you don't get to the end of the article you'll miss this gem:
> If they don’t acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess I’ll just get someone to pretend I’m still alive until that changes.
> If they don’t acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess I’ll just get someone to pretend I’m still alive until that changes.
The last time I read about this there were a ton of comments along the lines of “author needs to come to <my tiny African nation> both my grandmas are over 100 years old and it’s normal here” - proves the point!
Great article but the oldest guy in the UK definitely isn’t from one of the roughest parts of Liverpool, he’s had a nice life living by the seaside in a place called Southport 25km away, and doesn’t seem like a liar.
Many honest people confidently assert the truth of statements (including memories) which are false. They’re not lying, they’re just incorrect.
My hometown - a very quiet place, especially in the winter with no tourists - but it seems he did grow up and spend most of his life in Liverpool which was/is a rough place
The "oldest man in the UK" referred to is probably John Tinniswood, who now lives in an old-age home in Southport, but was born somewhere outside of that old-age home and lived out there in the world for most of his life. These sources are quite firm on "Liverpool," although I don't see anyone directly saying what part of Liverpool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tinniswood https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68741070
The hypothesis Newman is implicitly presenting in TFA is that Tinniswood is indeed very old, but — instead of being born in 1912, married at age 30, and now age 112 — perhaps he was really born in 1917, married at 25, and now 107. Or any other massaging of the numbers. Really the only way to distinguish among these hypotheses is to have some sort of documentary evidence — birth certificate, marriage certificate, employment records, etc.
Newman's point is that "supercentenarian" populations are disproportionately correlated with bad recordkeeping (presumably even when you control for the observation that century-old records are likely worse-kept than newer records, although I don't think Newman directly says that). And also with pension fraud. He writes: ( https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3.full )
> The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. [...] In England and France, higher old-age poverty rates alone predict more than half of the regional variation in attaining a remarkable age [...] supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five [...] relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.
Now, maybe there's no evidence that John Tinniswood is lying about his age (consciously or unknowingly), and maybe "the rough parts of Liverpool" have great recordkeeping, and maybe Tinniswood isn't even from the roughest part of Liverpool — sure, I think Newman's argument is specifically weak on concrete evidence for any of those claims, which means Tinniswood might be a terrible individual example for him to have picked. But then you should object to those claims. Don't jump all the way to an obviously false response like "Tinniswood isn't even from Liverpool!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tinniswood https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68741070
The hypothesis Newman is implicitly presenting in TFA is that Tinniswood is indeed very old, but — instead of being born in 1912, married at age 30, and now age 112 — perhaps he was really born in 1917, married at 25, and now 107. Or any other massaging of the numbers. Really the only way to distinguish among these hypotheses is to have some sort of documentary evidence — birth certificate, marriage certificate, employment records, etc.
Newman's point is that "supercentenarian" populations are disproportionately correlated with bad recordkeeping (presumably even when you control for the observation that century-old records are likely worse-kept than newer records, although I don't think Newman directly says that). And also with pension fraud. He writes: ( https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3.full )
> The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. [...] In England and France, higher old-age poverty rates alone predict more than half of the regional variation in attaining a remarkable age [...] supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five [...] relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.
Now, maybe there's no evidence that John Tinniswood is lying about his age (consciously or unknowingly), and maybe "the rough parts of Liverpool" have great recordkeeping, and maybe Tinniswood isn't even from the roughest part of Liverpool — sure, I think Newman's argument is specifically weak on concrete evidence for any of those claims, which means Tinniswood might be a terrible individual example for him to have picked. But then you should object to those claims. Don't jump all the way to an obviously false response like "Tinniswood isn't even from Liverpool!"
> The hypothesis Newman is implicitly presenting in TFA is that Tinniswood is indeed very old,
I'm curious why the census isn't presented as evidence of location. UK census are very informative and the 1921 census is the most recent one available.
I'll note that a very small percentage of individuals aren't found (illegible, record loss, issue at taking) but it's exceptional.
I'm curious why the census isn't presented as evidence of location. UK census are very informative and the 1921 census is the most recent one available.
I'll note that a very small percentage of individuals aren't found (illegible, record loss, issue at taking) but it's exceptional.
And John Alfred Tinniswood is in fact listed in the 1921 census, born 1912 in Manchester, a resident of Wavertree, West Derby, Liverpool, Lancs.
From there I'd see where his parents were in the 1911 census. If it's the same location, odds are high that's where he was born.
Exceptions are possible. To help rule them out, I'd research and build-out the extended family. In that day, siblings/cousins banded together; local migration shows up when viewing the lateral family.
Exceptions are possible. To help rule them out, I'd research and build-out the extended family. In that day, siblings/cousins banded together; local migration shows up when viewing the lateral family.
Is it not possible that there really was a John Alfred Tinniswood living in 1921 but the man who now claims to be him in 2024 is actually someone else who stole the original's identity when he died unrecorded?
Liverpool was the second city of the British empire at this point, so again, its “roughness” could be debatable.
The most realistic and rational path to life extension is creation of behavioural replicants with purpose of only extending the lifespan of one's agency.
To reach next 1000 years, you need to do:
(1) Information theoretic presevation, IE body imaging, cryo, and proper archival / storage.
(2) Behavioural emulation, IE a virtual replicant that roughly makes same decisions far enough for you to identify with it and trust it will carry on your pursuits, even though it will be at least for the beginning slower than the meat was. Behavioural emulation is much less difficult and much more computationally efficient than whole brain emulation.
Many humans would say they want someone to be there taking care of their kids, if nothing else. But there is nothing really pioneering this. I hope the separate developments in neuroimaging, qualia research will eventually converge.
To reach next 1000 years, you need to do:
(1) Information theoretic presevation, IE body imaging, cryo, and proper archival / storage.
(2) Behavioural emulation, IE a virtual replicant that roughly makes same decisions far enough for you to identify with it and trust it will carry on your pursuits, even though it will be at least for the beginning slower than the meat was. Behavioural emulation is much less difficult and much more computationally efficient than whole brain emulation.
Many humans would say they want someone to be there taking care of their kids, if nothing else. But there is nothing really pioneering this. I hope the separate developments in neuroimaging, qualia research will eventually converge.
The problem is that without a massive internal shift toward some kind of altruistic behavior, this won't ever really be a focus, I bet.
The simulant may be Me (as in another version of me) but it's not me (the consciousness I experience inside my body). Therefore, it's life extension for me, but for everyone's benefit but mine. That doesn't help the selfish ego inside me that wants to live forever.
That just does not scratch the eternal life itch, I'm afraid.
The simulant may be Me (as in another version of me) but it's not me (the consciousness I experience inside my body). Therefore, it's life extension for me, but for everyone's benefit but mine. That doesn't help the selfish ego inside me that wants to live forever.
That just does not scratch the eternal life itch, I'm afraid.
If there was a shift to altruistic behavior, we could all increase the amount of other people's lives through charity and having children.
altruism has a massive freeloading problem, it's likely why it is unstable beyond a very limited set of very close relatives. If you want your statement above to be true you need to crush free loading or expand the very limited set of people the population doesn't mind freeloading. both those things have huge risks of enforcement/creation because they damage other aspects of human dignity we like and benefit from (i.e. the fundamental freedoms that give us a competitive productivity edge over time through allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation is heavily damaged by the authoritarianism that is the easiest path to crushing freeloading [up until the authoritarians become the freeloaders] or the nationalism that can lead to problematic outcomes interfacing with the inevitable outgroup but is the easiest way to expand the group that can freeload without causing instability.)
"Freeloading" is a feature, not a bug.
Human[0] socialization is hard-wired to be altruistic. If altruism didn't work, we wouldn't be socializing, we'd still be hairless primates wandering around the jungles of Africa, alone, killing and eating anything and everything we met. Hell, ants wouldn't be in colonies if that were the case. Altruism works evolutionarily because selfless actions improve group fitness, even if they don't increase individual reproductive success.
Insamuch as "freeloading" is an actually deleterious behavior, it is because individuals are trying to move resources out of their altruistic in-group and towards themselves. To address your specific examples:
- The whole goal of authoritarianism is to "become the freeloaders". The key rhetorical strategy of authoritarianism is to accuse your opponents of what you plan to do. If they agree with you and stop doing that thing, then you've won, because they are now tying their hands behind their back. If they try to normalize the thing as OK, then you've won, because now you get to do the thing. So in this case, authoritarians will identify and demonize the freeloading of some out-group, both to attack the out-group as well as internally justify their own freeloading.
- Nationalism is rather arbitrary in what is and isn't considered to be the altruistic in-group. In fact, I would argue that it is a subset of the freeloading authoritarianism I mentioned above, at least in our modern age. Nationalists want to divide and conquer humanity.
- "Allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation" is a freeloading behavior. Copyright and patent laws allow inventors to take from the public commons of knowledge and legally enclose it off for themselves. The intent is for this to be limited, but the limits are extremely weak[1]. "IP"[2] is the engine by which large corporate empires build fiefdoms around themselves. The counterargument to this is to gesture vaguely at the European medieval period's economic stagnation, but my counter-counterargument is to point out that this economic stagnation was itself the product of a system in which the vast majority of economic wealth was the product of rents.
Diving further into that last point... the economic system in which the majority of wealth is the product of rents is called "feudalism". We associate this with agrarian economies and extreme material poverty, but modern "IP"-heavy business practices are not that far off from feudalism, recast in the mold of modernity. You can't innovate in a feudal system because of all the owners demanding their cut. Innovation requires freeloading. If those who own the resources of innovation are positioned to charge more than you could ever hope to make from that innovation, then there will not be innovation.
[0] actually most mammals and primates especially
[1] Copyrights last "practically forever". Patents have 20 year terms but the patent office is not shy about permitting another 20 years on minor modifications to the invention that can then be used to bully competing users of the original patent. This practice is known as evergreening and it's endemic in the pharmaceutical industry.
[2] "Intellectual property" as in "federal contempt of business model"
Human[0] socialization is hard-wired to be altruistic. If altruism didn't work, we wouldn't be socializing, we'd still be hairless primates wandering around the jungles of Africa, alone, killing and eating anything and everything we met. Hell, ants wouldn't be in colonies if that were the case. Altruism works evolutionarily because selfless actions improve group fitness, even if they don't increase individual reproductive success.
Insamuch as "freeloading" is an actually deleterious behavior, it is because individuals are trying to move resources out of their altruistic in-group and towards themselves. To address your specific examples:
- The whole goal of authoritarianism is to "become the freeloaders". The key rhetorical strategy of authoritarianism is to accuse your opponents of what you plan to do. If they agree with you and stop doing that thing, then you've won, because they are now tying their hands behind their back. If they try to normalize the thing as OK, then you've won, because now you get to do the thing. So in this case, authoritarians will identify and demonize the freeloading of some out-group, both to attack the out-group as well as internally justify their own freeloading.
- Nationalism is rather arbitrary in what is and isn't considered to be the altruistic in-group. In fact, I would argue that it is a subset of the freeloading authoritarianism I mentioned above, at least in our modern age. Nationalists want to divide and conquer humanity.
- "Allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation" is a freeloading behavior. Copyright and patent laws allow inventors to take from the public commons of knowledge and legally enclose it off for themselves. The intent is for this to be limited, but the limits are extremely weak[1]. "IP"[2] is the engine by which large corporate empires build fiefdoms around themselves. The counterargument to this is to gesture vaguely at the European medieval period's economic stagnation, but my counter-counterargument is to point out that this economic stagnation was itself the product of a system in which the vast majority of economic wealth was the product of rents.
Diving further into that last point... the economic system in which the majority of wealth is the product of rents is called "feudalism". We associate this with agrarian economies and extreme material poverty, but modern "IP"-heavy business practices are not that far off from feudalism, recast in the mold of modernity. You can't innovate in a feudal system because of all the owners demanding their cut. Innovation requires freeloading. If those who own the resources of innovation are positioned to charge more than you could ever hope to make from that innovation, then there will not be innovation.
[0] actually most mammals and primates especially
[1] Copyrights last "practically forever". Patents have 20 year terms but the patent office is not shy about permitting another 20 years on minor modifications to the invention that can then be used to bully competing users of the original patent. This practice is known as evergreening and it's endemic in the pharmaceutical industry.
[2] "Intellectual property" as in "federal contempt of business model"
Wow, you sure like to write essays...
Your whole essay utterly misses the point in multiple ways:
- Freeloading is not a feature or a bug, it's just something that happens when the expected value of exchange is unbalanced. If it is too unbalanced it makes the system unstable (i.e. causes war, violence, unfriending, etc. at different scales). The cry for more altruism of the OP almost always leads to a too unbalanced system, thus the problem.
- Yes we are wired to be altruistic to our in group (as I mentioned already). The outgroup we will routinely do horrible atrocities to with little thought or care. How in the in group one is will determine how unbalanced someone is willing to allow exchange to get. I.e. one will generally be fine with personally dumping large amounts of resources into a disabled immediate family member but will not be ok with personally dumping the same resources into a stranger across the globe (or across the city, or perhaps even into an acquaintance down the street).
- It's not that relevant what you think authoritarianism is classified as, it's only relevant that it's bad for freedoms many enjoy and that benefit society. Same deal with your take on nationalism. You should have edited these points out after rereading my comment because they don't matter. It's a missing the forest through all the trees situation.
- Yah, you chose the examples of innovators getting wealthy that is least relevant to societal improvement (and has huge problems I disagree with like excessive terms for copyright among many other problems). It's much more basic than that. Through much of history you lacked basic rights that ensured you could operate a business around your idea. A subset of the population had the right to just take it and that killed any motivation of the individual to act on their good ideas. Copyrights and patents came much later than the actual freedom that really matters for this. Your following paragraph is also a swing and a miss because of the above. It's not what I was talking about.
Your whole essay utterly misses the point in multiple ways:
- Freeloading is not a feature or a bug, it's just something that happens when the expected value of exchange is unbalanced. If it is too unbalanced it makes the system unstable (i.e. causes war, violence, unfriending, etc. at different scales). The cry for more altruism of the OP almost always leads to a too unbalanced system, thus the problem.
- Yes we are wired to be altruistic to our in group (as I mentioned already). The outgroup we will routinely do horrible atrocities to with little thought or care. How in the in group one is will determine how unbalanced someone is willing to allow exchange to get. I.e. one will generally be fine with personally dumping large amounts of resources into a disabled immediate family member but will not be ok with personally dumping the same resources into a stranger across the globe (or across the city, or perhaps even into an acquaintance down the street).
- It's not that relevant what you think authoritarianism is classified as, it's only relevant that it's bad for freedoms many enjoy and that benefit society. Same deal with your take on nationalism. You should have edited these points out after rereading my comment because they don't matter. It's a missing the forest through all the trees situation.
- Yah, you chose the examples of innovators getting wealthy that is least relevant to societal improvement (and has huge problems I disagree with like excessive terms for copyright among many other problems). It's much more basic than that. Through much of history you lacked basic rights that ensured you could operate a business around your idea. A subset of the population had the right to just take it and that killed any motivation of the individual to act on their good ideas. Copyrights and patents came much later than the actual freedom that really matters for this. Your following paragraph is also a swing and a miss because of the above. It's not what I was talking about.
You aren’t the same “you” that you were a few years ago, from a mental perspective. Brains change all the time. We don’t generally get hung up on this concern because, fundamentally, the self-preservation drive is just an evolved reflex rather than anything fundamentally rational. We want some specific evolutionary-selected version of “self-preservation” for the same reason we crave unhealthy foods or are revolted by certain smells.
TL;DR Let your rational brain decide what it wants, try to cope with the rest from there.
TL;DR Let your rational brain decide what it wants, try to cope with the rest from there.
That's easy to say now, but it will be little comfort when you're watching from your hospital bed as your younger clone holds your wife's hand while they both watch the doctors pull the plug on your obsoleted body.
Sure, that would suck, but would you actually say that the sum of that loss weighed against the gain of N more happy and healthy years with your wife be negative?
I don't think so, I'd sign up for it. Do you not think you could cooperate with yourself like that?
I don't think so, I'd sign up for it. Do you not think you could cooperate with yourself like that?
That's my point though. It's not me. It's me, but it isn't in me.
To your earlier question: am I a different person than I was in the past.
No. My body and consciousness continued.
The other new me will be me, but the me that is inside my body right now will cease.
That is the flaw.
To your earlier question: am I a different person than I was in the past.
No. My body and consciousness continued.
The other new me will be me, but the me that is inside my body right now will cease.
That is the flaw.
In realistic replication your body probably would not be continued, at least for a while. You'd have a digital clone that shares some memories, most values and is cognitively at your level or above. If the preservation part is well-enough and you continue to hold it important to actualize your past wish of getting a realistic clone, one day they may be able to use the cryonically frozen body & the scans of you that were taken when it was alive to re-anime it or to create a digital clone that would be much closer to you.
A commenter above pointed above that the body changes all the time. Getting replicated and having the old body die is almost the same what you had already gone through your whole, first biological life, but only at a larger scale. It does entirely replace the "hardware" (body) but most humans would agree that "they" are made of "personality, dreams, ideas, algorithms, memories, knowledge, logic, thinking, emotions, feeling, values" more than what computational medium these exhibit as long as it emulates what they have had in the past to some degree.
A commenter above pointed above that the body changes all the time. Getting replicated and having the old body die is almost the same what you had already gone through your whole, first biological life, but only at a larger scale. It does entirely replace the "hardware" (body) but most humans would agree that "they" are made of "personality, dreams, ideas, algorithms, memories, knowledge, logic, thinking, emotions, feeling, values" more than what computational medium these exhibit as long as it emulates what they have had in the past to some degree.
Our bodies and minds get replaced bit by bit over time. We're ships of Theseus[1] -- changing all the time, but still the same entity throughout.
Mind-scanning your consciousness and pouring the resulting Copied Intelligence[2] into a computer and / or a cloned body[3] is not the same thing. That's more like building a copy of Theseus' ship, nailing the name-plate from the original onto it, and claiming it's still the same ship.
It's not.
___
[1]: Or for simple guys like me, George Washington's axes.
[2]: CI may exist some day; about "AI", I'm still in doubt.
[3]: Or an android body, or a pickle-jar on Mr Burns' desk.
Mind-scanning your consciousness and pouring the resulting Copied Intelligence[2] into a computer and / or a cloned body[3] is not the same thing. That's more like building a copy of Theseus' ship, nailing the name-plate from the original onto it, and claiming it's still the same ship.
It's not.
___
[1]: Or for simple guys like me, George Washington's axes.
[2]: CI may exist some day; about "AI", I'm still in doubt.
[3]: Or an android body, or a pickle-jar on Mr Burns' desk.
This isn't a problem if you've integrated non-duality.
There's nothing rational about a desire to live forever. It's completely driven by a fear of the unknown/driven that comes past death.
I don't see that as universal explanation. Anyone who enjoys live will want to prolong it (without sacrificing the enjoyment part, of course). Many people see the death not as "unknown", but as the "end of experience".
The problem isn't the end of experience. The problem is that the universe exists in the first place.
A lot of atheist afterlife logic runs into the problem that if nothing follows death, then this would also mean the end of the universe, but this is in contradiction with the fact that we can experience the universe and that it exists. Lots of people die every day and yet that "nothing" has failed to arrive.
A lot of atheist afterlife logic runs into the problem that if nothing follows death, then this would also mean the end of the universe, but this is in contradiction with the fact that we can experience the universe and that it exists. Lots of people die every day and yet that "nothing" has failed to arrive.
> the problem that if nothing follows death, then this would also mean the end of the universe
No.
No.
> if nothing follows death, then this would also mean the end of the universe
Huh?!? How the heck do you get from one to the other??? I see absolutely no logic connection there. Care to explain?
Huh?!? How the heck do you get from one to the other??? I see absolutely no logic connection there. Care to explain?
Why do they see it as the "end of experience"? Because they don't know what comes after it? When I see people use that explanation, I also see a fear of the unknown. Nobody has any idea what comes after death: It could be the start of a brighter and better experience or it could be absolutely nothing.
Taking things to the far extreme, for all we know, there could actually be a heaven or a hell as described by one of the desert-dwelling hallucinogen-enjoying people whose book caught on. And I don't mean some ethereal concept, I mean the actual things with 72 virgins or angels with 100 eyes and 50 wings and wheels on their wheels. Despite feeling implausible, we have exactly as much evidence of nothingness after death as we do of a heaven or a hell.
Before you mention that this is absurd because there's no brain activity after death, we still don't know how the brain and "mind" work, we can't observe the vast majority of matter or energy in the universe, and there's a lot we don't know. Filling that unknown space in with "it's the end of everything I experience" is as irrational as filling that in with "72 virgins if I kill enough infidels."
Taking things to the far extreme, for all we know, there could actually be a heaven or a hell as described by one of the desert-dwelling hallucinogen-enjoying people whose book caught on. And I don't mean some ethereal concept, I mean the actual things with 72 virgins or angels with 100 eyes and 50 wings and wheels on their wheels. Despite feeling implausible, we have exactly as much evidence of nothingness after death as we do of a heaven or a hell.
Before you mention that this is absurd because there's no brain activity after death, we still don't know how the brain and "mind" work, we can't observe the vast majority of matter or energy in the universe, and there's a lot we don't know. Filling that unknown space in with "it's the end of everything I experience" is as irrational as filling that in with "72 virgins if I kill enough infidels."
You yourself seem to have internalized the idea that it is the end of the experience. The things you describe as possible are all different experiences to this one.
People aren’t required to be rational for GP’s point to be correct. I don’t even think it is necessary that they hold a particular view on death. Plenty of Christians don’t fear death because they believe in heaven. Plenty of those who believe in nothingness fear the end of their experience.
Nothingness has evidence. Memory and consciousness both appear tied to the body. Suggesting that’s equivalent to anything else because technically anything is possible is at best a god of the gaps argument.
The rational take here is that we don’t know, we may never know, but that the evidence is suggestive of the same sort of nothingness we “experience” when unconscious or before we were born.
Regardless, all that is required for the GP’s point to be true is that people do not universally fear death.
People aren’t required to be rational for GP’s point to be correct. I don’t even think it is necessary that they hold a particular view on death. Plenty of Christians don’t fear death because they believe in heaven. Plenty of those who believe in nothingness fear the end of their experience.
Nothingness has evidence. Memory and consciousness both appear tied to the body. Suggesting that’s equivalent to anything else because technically anything is possible is at best a god of the gaps argument.
The rational take here is that we don’t know, we may never know, but that the evidence is suggestive of the same sort of nothingness we “experience” when unconscious or before we were born.
Regardless, all that is required for the GP’s point to be true is that people do not universally fear death.
> You yourself seem to have internalized the idea that it is the end of the experience.
The previous commenter didn't say the end of "the experience." They said the end of "experience" (no the). If you want to be pedantic about the semantics, that's a pretty big thing to add, don't you think? One is the end of all sensation and the end of a particular set of sensations.
And no, it doesn't require that people not universally fear death, it requires that people who see death as the end of all experience don't fear death, which appears to be tautologically false since they adopt an irrational and negative belief about what the post-death state is.
> Nothingness has evidence. Memory and consciousness both appear tied to the body. Suggesting that’s equivalent to anything else because technically anything is possible is at best a god of the gaps argument.
The wordplay is interesting here - I didn't mention memory, only consciousness. Memory does appear to be an embodied phenomenon in your brain. Regarding consciousness, I'm not filling the gaps with a god, I'm suggesting that denying the existence of the gaps is as bad as filling it with a god.
The previous commenter didn't say the end of "the experience." They said the end of "experience" (no the). If you want to be pedantic about the semantics, that's a pretty big thing to add, don't you think? One is the end of all sensation and the end of a particular set of sensations.
And no, it doesn't require that people not universally fear death, it requires that people who see death as the end of all experience don't fear death, which appears to be tautologically false since they adopt an irrational and negative belief about what the post-death state is.
> Nothingness has evidence. Memory and consciousness both appear tied to the body. Suggesting that’s equivalent to anything else because technically anything is possible is at best a god of the gaps argument.
The wordplay is interesting here - I didn't mention memory, only consciousness. Memory does appear to be an embodied phenomenon in your brain. Regarding consciousness, I'm not filling the gaps with a god, I'm suggesting that denying the existence of the gaps is as bad as filling it with a god.
> which appears to be tautologically false since they adopt an irrational and negative belief about what the post-death state is.
"Probably nothing" is not an irrational belief. You don't need 100% certainty to want to avoid that.
> The wordplay is interesting here - I didn't mention memory, only consciousness. Memory does appear to be an embodied phenomenon in your brain.
If I don't have my memories, then the old me is effectively gone forever. Wanting to avoid such a drastic and disruptive change has nothing to do with "fear of the unknown".
"Probably nothing" is not an irrational belief. You don't need 100% certainty to want to avoid that.
> The wordplay is interesting here - I didn't mention memory, only consciousness. Memory does appear to be an embodied phenomenon in your brain.
If I don't have my memories, then the old me is effectively gone forever. Wanting to avoid such a drastic and disruptive change has nothing to do with "fear of the unknown".
> "Probably nothing" is not an irrational belief. You don't need 100% certainty to want to avoid that.
The words "probably nothing" imply that on something more than belief, you can assign a probability to nothingness. Can you provide an objective measure of probability as to whether nothingness is what awaits you after death? When you say "probably nothing," the belief in "probably nothing" is an emotionally nice but similarly irrational hedge on "nothing," because nobody can assign a probability to an unknown unknown like "what happens after you die."
> If I don't have my memories, then the old me is effectively gone forever. Wanting to avoid such a drastic and disruptive change has nothing to do with "fear of the unknown".
Wanting to avoid that change is almost definitionally due to a fear of the unknown. You are afraid that the new state you will be in will be worse for lack of those memories. Many people who lose their memories are happier for it, and it is in fact a common trauma response to block out old, bad memories.
The words "probably nothing" imply that on something more than belief, you can assign a probability to nothingness. Can you provide an objective measure of probability as to whether nothingness is what awaits you after death? When you say "probably nothing," the belief in "probably nothing" is an emotionally nice but similarly irrational hedge on "nothing," because nobody can assign a probability to an unknown unknown like "what happens after you die."
> If I don't have my memories, then the old me is effectively gone forever. Wanting to avoid such a drastic and disruptive change has nothing to do with "fear of the unknown".
Wanting to avoid that change is almost definitionally due to a fear of the unknown. You are afraid that the new state you will be in will be worse for lack of those memories. Many people who lose their memories are happier for it, and it is in fact a common trauma response to block out old, bad memories.
> The words "probably nothing" imply that on something more than belief, you can assign a probability to nothingness.
Maybe not "probability", but likelihood. That's the way Ockham's razor cuts: In the total absence of evidence for any continuation, there is no sensible reason to assume the existence of it.
> Wanting to avoid that change is almost definitionally due to a fear of the unknown. You are afraid that the new state you will be in will be worse for lack of those memories.
No, you only need to know that that won't be you who is in whatever state that whoever-it-is will be in. Our memories is who we are. No need to feel fear on behalf of whoever that will be that you're talking about.
Maybe not "probability", but likelihood. That's the way Ockham's razor cuts: In the total absence of evidence for any continuation, there is no sensible reason to assume the existence of it.
> Wanting to avoid that change is almost definitionally due to a fear of the unknown. You are afraid that the new state you will be in will be worse for lack of those memories.
No, you only need to know that that won't be you who is in whatever state that whoever-it-is will be in. Our memories is who we are. No need to feel fear on behalf of whoever that will be that you're talking about.
> Can you provide an objective measure of probability as to whether nothingness is what awaits you after death?
Yes, with some effort, I can start at a default 50:50 and incorporate all the evidence we have access to. The resulting number will be pretty high and as objective as a person can reasonably be asked to be.
> nobody can assign a probability to an unknown unknown
Giving up like that is not a way to make rational decisions.
Also when you have a very precise scenario and question, doesn't that make it a known unknown?
> Wanting to avoid that change is almost definitionally due to a fear of the unknown. You are afraid that the new state you will be in will be worse for lack of those memories.
Wrong. Even with a guaranteed blissful existence, I'm still busy using my consciousness on my current life and don't want it to end.
> it is in fact a common trauma response to block out old, bad memories.
Yeah a few of them, that's not remotely the same as a clean slate.
Yes, with some effort, I can start at a default 50:50 and incorporate all the evidence we have access to. The resulting number will be pretty high and as objective as a person can reasonably be asked to be.
> nobody can assign a probability to an unknown unknown
Giving up like that is not a way to make rational decisions.
Also when you have a very precise scenario and question, doesn't that make it a known unknown?
> Wanting to avoid that change is almost definitionally due to a fear of the unknown. You are afraid that the new state you will be in will be worse for lack of those memories.
Wrong. Even with a guaranteed blissful existence, I'm still busy using my consciousness on my current life and don't want it to end.
> it is in fact a common trauma response to block out old, bad memories.
Yeah a few of them, that's not remotely the same as a clean slate.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand how you could make an equality between "end of experience" and "fear of the unknown". The first is about valuing your life and not wanting for it to end. The second is about what comes after the end of life. I do not care about the second, but care about my current life a lot. If, for some unlikely but rhetorically valuable reason, my experience decides to NOT END after my body dies — great, more fun. I do not care about the political or religious debates, especially here, but it always seemed strange to me that people assume the fear of the unknown to be some universal factor.
In one of the detective stories my wife watches, one of the suspects was a kooky spiritual medium. "Don't you wonder what happens after death?" she asks the detective. The skeptical detective responds: "I know exactly what will happen after I die: I will go back to being what I was for millions of years before I was born."
We know exactly what happens after death: nothing. You cease to be as a living being. What we don't know, and can't ever know, is what it's like to not be. But every investigation so far has failed to produce evidence of a soul separate from the body, so until that changes we can assume such souls don't exist, and neither will we when our body dies.
Don't handwave it away with "we don't know how the mind really works". For all intents and purposes we do know. The mind working at all depends on the body working; once the latter stops, so does the former. We can't accept this because our mind, from our mind's perspective, is everything, but it is limited in space and time because it too is composed of matter and energy and one day, it will stop. That fills us with horror and dread, the idea of (from our tiny perspective) everything stopping, so we fight it. We make up stories about heavens and hells. Even in this era we fight it with hopes of becoming transfinite and infinite through technology. It's all hopium and copium, and incredibly dangerous. People like Elon Musk are now shooting giant penises into the sky, and planning to send actual humans on one-way missions to interplanetary hellscapes which should inspire visions of an angry Hayao Miyazaki saying "what you have done is an insult to life itself." Meanwhile we're neglecting the care of the only hospitable home we know we have, Earth.
Accept your fate. Live, as the fictional gorilla Ishmael put it, in the hands of the gods. Doing otherwise will doom us all, and a lot of other living things too.
We know exactly what happens after death: nothing. You cease to be as a living being. What we don't know, and can't ever know, is what it's like to not be. But every investigation so far has failed to produce evidence of a soul separate from the body, so until that changes we can assume such souls don't exist, and neither will we when our body dies.
Don't handwave it away with "we don't know how the mind really works". For all intents and purposes we do know. The mind working at all depends on the body working; once the latter stops, so does the former. We can't accept this because our mind, from our mind's perspective, is everything, but it is limited in space and time because it too is composed of matter and energy and one day, it will stop. That fills us with horror and dread, the idea of (from our tiny perspective) everything stopping, so we fight it. We make up stories about heavens and hells. Even in this era we fight it with hopes of becoming transfinite and infinite through technology. It's all hopium and copium, and incredibly dangerous. People like Elon Musk are now shooting giant penises into the sky, and planning to send actual humans on one-way missions to interplanetary hellscapes which should inspire visions of an angry Hayao Miyazaki saying "what you have done is an insult to life itself." Meanwhile we're neglecting the care of the only hospitable home we know we have, Earth.
Accept your fate. Live, as the fictional gorilla Ishmael put it, in the hands of the gods. Doing otherwise will doom us all, and a lot of other living things too.
I don’t remember anything from before I was born, obviously. But I also don’t think my consciousness is particularly unique or special, and conscious human beings lived before me, so I assume it’s reasonable to imagine “I” was one of them. This is a pretty nonsensical way to define the word “I”, but not much more nonsensical than using the singular “I” to refer to the six year old and present versions of me.
What does bum me out is losing a lifetime of knowledge and capability. You get old just when you’re starting to be good at things. The human lifespan could definitely be a few decades longer.
What does bum me out is losing a lifetime of knowledge and capability. You get old just when you’re starting to be good at things. The human lifespan could definitely be a few decades longer.
Since you seem to know, can you tell me at what precise moment a person becomes conscious at birth? It would solve a lot of problems in the world if you could share that knowledge with us.
People fill the unknown with lots of things. I am simply suggesting that you should let the unknown remain unknown, especially if you're going to make major life choices around it.
People fill the unknown with lots of things. I am simply suggesting that you should let the unknown remain unknown, especially if you're going to make major life choices around it.
Fundamentalists are fond of responding to claims about evolution (dinosaurs, etc.) with, "Were you there? How could you know if you were not there?" This is even taught as a rhetorical tactic in fundamentalist elementary schools (which I'm embarrassed to be an American for admitting they exist here).
This seems to be an approach similar to what you're taking here, except you put an interesting twist on it by handwaving your appeal to spooks with stuff about "the unknown" and then claiming it is the more rational position. Once again: we know, as certainly as we can know anything, that the mind cannot function without the body functioning. Therefore, the idea that there is no experience after body death is a more rational position to take than anything involving 72 virgins, nirvana, reincarnation, or blah blah Bible Jesus magic.
This seems to be an approach similar to what you're taking here, except you put an interesting twist on it by handwaving your appeal to spooks with stuff about "the unknown" and then claiming it is the more rational position. Once again: we know, as certainly as we can know anything, that the mind cannot function without the body functioning. Therefore, the idea that there is no experience after body death is a more rational position to take than anything involving 72 virgins, nirvana, reincarnation, or blah blah Bible Jesus magic.
The difference is that we know the fundamentalists are wrong because their beliefs solidly run up against known facts. I am suggesting that filling the gaps one way (even though it feels more rational) is as irrational as filling the gaps any other way.
And we know very little about the mind. We know a lot about the brain. As far as the exact links between mind and brain, that is still quite a bit up in the air.
And we know very little about the mind. We know a lot about the brain. As far as the exact links between mind and brain, that is still quite a bit up in the air.
We know the mind exists as a phenomenon of the body's operation. No operating body... no mind. We have plenty of evidence to support this and zero evidence to the contrary, even if we may not have all the details, so your attempts to rescue a spook reality of disembodied minds by furiously waving your hands and going "it's all unknown!" is disingenuous.
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What you are describing is just an AGI aligned with a particular person. So we (humanity) is working on that problem.
Not sure if it will ever satisfy the desire to lenghten human lifespan though. Just as a thought experiment imagine that we have this tech. You have your perfect replica. It responds exactly like you would and no one else, not even you can tell its responses apart from yours. Once you have that, and attained “immortality” as such, do you mind if someone shoots you in the head? The real you i mean. After all you are immortal. Your behaviouraly emulated clone will keep doing what you do, loving your wife, taking care of your kids, supporting the causes you support etc.
For me the answer is that I would absolutely not let my real body killed just because i have my behavioural clone. Which to me implies that at least for me it is not a true continuation of my life. More like having a living will, or a son who is way too similar to me, but still not me.
Basically I would not reach 1000 years. This thing created in my image would.
Not sure if it will ever satisfy the desire to lenghten human lifespan though. Just as a thought experiment imagine that we have this tech. You have your perfect replica. It responds exactly like you would and no one else, not even you can tell its responses apart from yours. Once you have that, and attained “immortality” as such, do you mind if someone shoots you in the head? The real you i mean. After all you are immortal. Your behaviouraly emulated clone will keep doing what you do, loving your wife, taking care of your kids, supporting the causes you support etc.
For me the answer is that I would absolutely not let my real body killed just because i have my behavioural clone. Which to me implies that at least for me it is not a true continuation of my life. More like having a living will, or a son who is way too similar to me, but still not me.
Basically I would not reach 1000 years. This thing created in my image would.
You cannot make such AGI if the information is gone. Imaging & cryopreservation sort of insure against early death.
I agree that at point behavioural replication is possible, AI probably also will be. Harsh.
Now the point you ended your reply in is a very common response. Many follow the same direction of thought. I think that to think one should not get a behavioural replica because you don't think it would be you is a non-sequitur however; if the behavioural replica continues to advance your interests, is it not the rational thing to do?
Moreover, if you said "no, it doesnt matter, I'll be dead" you would be following a strategy that'd lead to huge loss if it turned out you actually never died.
I agree that at point behavioural replication is possible, AI probably also will be. Harsh.
Now the point you ended your reply in is a very common response. Many follow the same direction of thought. I think that to think one should not get a behavioural replica because you don't think it would be you is a non-sequitur however; if the behavioural replica continues to advance your interests, is it not the rational thing to do?
Moreover, if you said "no, it doesnt matter, I'll be dead" you would be following a strategy that'd lead to huge loss if it turned out you actually never died.
> I think that to think one should not get a behavioural replica because you don't think it would be you is a non-sequitur however
Didn’t say that. Do get one if you can afford it. It would be usefull for all kind of things. But continuation of my life it is not. Simply it does not solve the longevity extension problem from my perspective.
Didn’t say that. Do get one if you can afford it. It would be usefull for all kind of things. But continuation of my life it is not. Simply it does not solve the longevity extension problem from my perspective.
Probably something like 95% or more of people aren't even doing the basics for health: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorit...
So I thought about the brain uploading stuff for my next novel, "The Godlike Era" and my conclusion is : Dude, brain uploading to ONE replicant after you die is totally pathetic. Make 100,000 brain replicants. Run them in parallel on a nuclear powered GPU cluster. Have them learn all specialties of modern civilization in faster than real time. Have them teleoperate 100,000 robots. Build out whole civilization's worth of infrastructure on other planets with you as the ceo of that 100,000 person planetary development corporation WHILE YOU'RE STILL ALIVE.
That is a common scifi trope. For example it is the starting point of We Are Legion (We Are Bob).
The part that I don't like about that one is Bob is dead. What if you do this while you're still alive? Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too. Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily.
> What if you do this while you're still alive?
Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change?
> Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too.
Stars radiate a lot of energy. Simple fact of the Kardashev scale.
> Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily.
This is mumbo-jumbo.
Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change?
> Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too.
Stars radiate a lot of energy. Simple fact of the Kardashev scale.
> Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily.
This is mumbo-jumbo.
>Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change?
The AI would have loyalty to its creator, and it would get into the deep philosophical aspects of what is a living organism vs what is a machine and why that matters.
>Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too.
Yeah, but if someone became intelligent 10,000 years before us, which is a pretty trivial amount of time technologically, their Von Neumann probes would have eaten our planet already, so probably not going to be militarily feasible if there's other intelligent life in the galaxy that's keeping an eye on us.
>This is mumbo-jumbo
It doesn't defy the laws of physics to power people with electricity. Sure, we're going to need a lot of engineering to figure out how to plug people into the wall to recharge, but with AI we might get there in 100 or 200 years. The benefits would be enormous. People need 2000 calories a day which is a trivial amount of electricity compared to say an AI cluster. It would make a lot of sense to send humans around for most things if they used such a small amount of energy.
The AI would have loyalty to its creator, and it would get into the deep philosophical aspects of what is a living organism vs what is a machine and why that matters.
>Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too.
Yeah, but if someone became intelligent 10,000 years before us, which is a pretty trivial amount of time technologically, their Von Neumann probes would have eaten our planet already, so probably not going to be militarily feasible if there's other intelligent life in the galaxy that's keeping an eye on us.
>This is mumbo-jumbo
It doesn't defy the laws of physics to power people with electricity. Sure, we're going to need a lot of engineering to figure out how to plug people into the wall to recharge, but with AI we might get there in 100 or 200 years. The benefits would be enormous. People need 2000 calories a day which is a trivial amount of electricity compared to say an AI cluster. It would make a lot of sense to send humans around for most things if they used such a small amount of energy.
> The AI would have loyalty to its creator, and it would get into the deep philosophical aspects of what is a living organism vs what is a machine and why that matters.
I guess you will have to write it for me to see. :)
> People need 2000 calories a day which is a trivial amount of electricity compared to say an AI cluster.
We have no idea how much energy an AGI will need. You are literally looking at steam engines de-watering a mine and trying to guess what a Shinkansen ticket will cost. It would be very surprising to me if it turns out that keeping human bodies around is the most efficient from of intelligence.
> Yeah, but if someone became intelligent 10,000 years before us, which is a pretty trivial amount of time technologically, their Von Neumann probes would have eaten our planet already, so probably not going to be militarily feasible if there's other intelligent life in the galaxy that's keeping an eye on us.
You will have to spell this one out for me a bit more.
We can't have Von Neumann probes because if we could someone who came before us would have already eaten Earth before we came? There are quite a few assumptions here. And the thesis is not entirely clear either.
Also we just assume that there are little grey ones watching us, and they have never contacted us, or told us anything but seemingly their military red line is us creating Von Neumann probes? Do you feel that this is built on a pile of shaky assumptions?
I guess you will have to write it for me to see. :)
> People need 2000 calories a day which is a trivial amount of electricity compared to say an AI cluster.
We have no idea how much energy an AGI will need. You are literally looking at steam engines de-watering a mine and trying to guess what a Shinkansen ticket will cost. It would be very surprising to me if it turns out that keeping human bodies around is the most efficient from of intelligence.
> Yeah, but if someone became intelligent 10,000 years before us, which is a pretty trivial amount of time technologically, their Von Neumann probes would have eaten our planet already, so probably not going to be militarily feasible if there's other intelligent life in the galaxy that's keeping an eye on us.
You will have to spell this one out for me a bit more.
We can't have Von Neumann probes because if we could someone who came before us would have already eaten Earth before we came? There are quite a few assumptions here. And the thesis is not entirely clear either.
Also we just assume that there are little grey ones watching us, and they have never contacted us, or told us anything but seemingly their military red line is us creating Von Neumann probes? Do you feel that this is built on a pile of shaky assumptions?
Congratulations, you just invented a Sybil attack on humanity.
OK, then I have some sort if AI clone who roughly acts like I'd do. What does that have to do with lifespan extension and (if I'm not a delusional tech billionaire) why would I want that?
Actually, how would that sort of "immortality" even be fundamentally different from the traditional way of becoming "immortal" - by having your children or contemporaries carry on your estate in your name, according to their interpretation of "what you would have wanted"?
Actually, how would that sort of "immortality" even be fundamentally different from the traditional way of becoming "immortal" - by having your children or contemporaries carry on your estate in your name, according to their interpretation of "what you would have wanted"?
For a really good book on most of these long life nutritional surveys and other food panics, check out:
https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/0226...
https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/0226...
Contrary to what the article says, the Gerontology Research Group[1] claims to have verified John Tinniswood's age: https://www.grg-supercentenarians.org/john-tinniswood/ Although I wish they'd be a lot more specific about how that was done.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology_Research_Group
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology_Research_Group
From Wikipedia:
"The Cornerstone of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman lists 149,193 persons from Okinawa – approximately one quarter of the civilian population – were either killed or committed suicide during the Battle of Okinawa and the Pacific War."
How can anyone stupid enough to think that the people of Okinawa have had a healthy lifestyle over the past century? The subtle statistical effects of any dietary or lifestyle prefererences would be completely swamped by the effects of the above.
"The Cornerstone of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman lists 149,193 persons from Okinawa – approximately one quarter of the civilian population – were either killed or committed suicide during the Battle of Okinawa and the Pacific War."
How can anyone stupid enough to think that the people of Okinawa have had a healthy lifestyle over the past century? The subtle statistical effects of any dietary or lifestyle prefererences would be completely swamped by the effects of the above.
> The ceremony was wonderful. It’s a bit of fun in a big fancy hall. It’s like you take the most serious ceremony possible and make fun of every aspect of it.
A glorified shitpost. I love it.
There was an article/blog post on HN not too long ago of a chap who realized Blue Zones are a farce and it’s underreported deaths instead.
To folks linking pop-sci books, you may want to think twice.
A glorified shitpost. I love it.
There was an article/blog post on HN not too long ago of a chap who realized Blue Zones are a farce and it’s underreported deaths instead.
To folks linking pop-sci books, you may want to think twice.
My grandfather died over a hundred, he had 16 children and two wives. We estimated his age to be at 103 going by the youngest possible age he could have become a father.
My grandmother is well into her 90s.
They both were active throughout their lives, always in the fields.y grandmother goes to bed when the soon after the sun goes down. She insists on not having any electricity.
My grandmother is well into her 90s.
They both were active throughout their lives, always in the fields.y grandmother goes to bed when the soon after the sun goes down. She insists on not having any electricity.
> by the youngest possible age he could have become a father
That's what, 9 years old?
That's what, 9 years old?
I've researched a lot of people in my lines and I can't recall a father younger than 15 - tho I recently found one married at 14.
My step great grandmother is currently the oldest in the UK, the family had to take her car keys off her when she turned 100, she wasn’t best pleased about it.
https://oldestinbritain.nfshost.com/
https://oldestinbritain.nfshost.com/
Is Caterham a common name in Britain, or are you related to the sports cars?
It seems not all these contra-indicators apply to Loma Linda, CA as well.
From articles linked, most other area candidates are long dead, pension fraud, in low income areas, also affecting some areas in the U.S., but mostly relating to records keeping.
Meanwhile:
“In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. ... Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA ... 82% of supercentenarian records from the USA predate state-wide birth certification.”
However, in the research graphics, Loma Linda is not on the map depicting concentrations in midwest. There are these mentions, however:
“Centres for Disease Control generated an independent estimate of average longevity across the USA: they found that Loma Linda, a Blue Zone supposedly characterised by a ‘remarkable’ average lifespan 10 years above the national average, instead has an unremarkable average lifespan (27th-75th percentile; Fig S6)”, “The two remaining blue zones, Loma Linda and the Nicoya Peninsula, are considered exceptional due to their high average longevity rather than the presence of the oldest-old.”, and “However, when assessed independently by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the five small-area survey tracts covering Loma Linda instead have an average life expectancy of 76 to 81 years: the 27th to 75th percentiles of US life expectancy (Fig S6). This means, at best, the independent CDC estimates rank Loma Linda as the 16,101st most long-lived neighborhood in the USA (Fig. S6; S1 code). As such, it is again unclear why the lifespan of this community has been considered remarkable.”
Till now, this area stood out as an odd duck among the blue zones, being an otherwise regular U.S. suburb, just high prevalence of longevity among the vegetarian health conscious non-smoker non-drinker types. Most of the other zones attribute health to hills and seafood, while now seeming poverty and pension fraud related.
Long before the study and term became popularized, it was noted that among one community in and around this CA area (including great grandmothers or aunts that had moved to mountain communities in other parts of CA), seemingly unusual numbers of women among extended family and friends' extended family lived over 100. Though less so since 2010s, as though most were of generations from 1860s - 1900s.
Incidentally, the directly known individuals who passed on in '80s or '90s did have birth certificates and carefully documented genealogies dating back to 1400s - 1600s or so.
Putting two and two together, while Loma Linda is not mentioned other than these quotes, it seems the suggestion here is that these western-most U.S. clusters could be late 1800s births in areas not yet organized for birth certificates and records keeping, still around to be noticed in the 1970s to 2010s.
TL;DR:
This makes it seem as though someone trying to make a case for the longevity of a small set of people misunderstood or overlooked the error rates at play and didn't dig further, allowing them to make a case for a zone-wide phenomenon.
From articles linked, most other area candidates are long dead, pension fraud, in low income areas, also affecting some areas in the U.S., but mostly relating to records keeping.
Meanwhile:
“In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. ... Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA ... 82% of supercentenarian records from the USA predate state-wide birth certification.”
However, in the research graphics, Loma Linda is not on the map depicting concentrations in midwest. There are these mentions, however:
“Centres for Disease Control generated an independent estimate of average longevity across the USA: they found that Loma Linda, a Blue Zone supposedly characterised by a ‘remarkable’ average lifespan 10 years above the national average, instead has an unremarkable average lifespan (27th-75th percentile; Fig S6)”, “The two remaining blue zones, Loma Linda and the Nicoya Peninsula, are considered exceptional due to their high average longevity rather than the presence of the oldest-old.”, and “However, when assessed independently by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the five small-area survey tracts covering Loma Linda instead have an average life expectancy of 76 to 81 years: the 27th to 75th percentiles of US life expectancy (Fig S6). This means, at best, the independent CDC estimates rank Loma Linda as the 16,101st most long-lived neighborhood in the USA (Fig. S6; S1 code). As such, it is again unclear why the lifespan of this community has been considered remarkable.”
Till now, this area stood out as an odd duck among the blue zones, being an otherwise regular U.S. suburb, just high prevalence of longevity among the vegetarian health conscious non-smoker non-drinker types. Most of the other zones attribute health to hills and seafood, while now seeming poverty and pension fraud related.
Long before the study and term became popularized, it was noted that among one community in and around this CA area (including great grandmothers or aunts that had moved to mountain communities in other parts of CA), seemingly unusual numbers of women among extended family and friends' extended family lived over 100. Though less so since 2010s, as though most were of generations from 1860s - 1900s.
Incidentally, the directly known individuals who passed on in '80s or '90s did have birth certificates and carefully documented genealogies dating back to 1400s - 1600s or so.
Putting two and two together, while Loma Linda is not mentioned other than these quotes, it seems the suggestion here is that these western-most U.S. clusters could be late 1800s births in areas not yet organized for birth certificates and records keeping, still around to be noticed in the 1970s to 2010s.
TL;DR:
This makes it seem as though someone trying to make a case for the longevity of a small set of people misunderstood or overlooked the error rates at play and didn't dig further, allowing them to make a case for a zone-wide phenomenon.
This article is golden:
> Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death.
The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They’ve eaten the least vegetables; they’ve been extremely heavy drinkers.
> Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death.
The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They’ve eaten the least vegetables; they’ve been extremely heavy drinkers.
To be fair, once I die, I don't imagine I'll feel like registering my death.
That is one of the recurring news items in the US that drives me batty. When each of my parents died, removing their names from the voter rolls was about the 596th item down on my priority list.
The government realizes this and regularly scrubs the voter rolls of dead people. Yet certain news organizations will report this as if it is a scandal. "Thousands of dead people were set to vote until their plan was foiled by the governors office". Tell me when dead people are voting in numbers, not that people die while still being on the rolls.
The government realizes this and regularly scrubs the voter rolls of dead people. Yet certain news organizations will report this as if it is a scandal. "Thousands of dead people were set to vote until their plan was foiled by the governors office". Tell me when dead people are voting in numbers, not that people die while still being on the rolls.
It didn't even occur to me as something to be done when I was dealing with my mother's estate. I would have thought it was automatic (SS# shows up in the death index) but even if it wasn't a registration with nobody voting it will eventually get scrubbed.
Barbarian! People went to war for those rights.
Some social media algorithm once recommended to me a video about a 550-year-old, still living Japanese monk.
Turns out it was a sokushinbutsu, a self-mummifying monk who practiced extreme fasting, dietary restriction and dehydration until, emaciated and desiccated, their body died in a meditative state. Such monks were thought not to be dead but rather to have ascended to a higher plane of understanding. Their corpses would be dressed in fine clothes and venerated almost like gods. If you complete a shrine in Breath of the Wild and reach the mummified monk at the end, those monks were inspired by sokushinbutsu.
It made me think about the claims of extreme longevity, especially from the Far East, and how many of those might just be due to flexibility about the definition of "death".
Turns out it was a sokushinbutsu, a self-mummifying monk who practiced extreme fasting, dietary restriction and dehydration until, emaciated and desiccated, their body died in a meditative state. Such monks were thought not to be dead but rather to have ascended to a higher plane of understanding. Their corpses would be dressed in fine clothes and venerated almost like gods. If you complete a shrine in Breath of the Wild and reach the mummified monk at the end, those monks were inspired by sokushinbutsu.
It made me think about the claims of extreme longevity, especially from the Far East, and how many of those might just be due to flexibility about the definition of "death".
Ah, statistics.
[deleted]
One actual researcher mentioned good habits will get anyone into their 80's but everyone tested over 105 has most of 100 certain genes. Really old age may be genetic.
I do aging genetics research and in fact that's the opposite of my impression so far. Not trying to be contrary, I'm sympathetic to that idea, but most of what I've seen suggests idiosyncratic environmental effects become more prominent as you age, even into late age. Those random fatal events, cumulative exposures, random nucleotide flips, and so forth, all add up more with time.
I suspect aside from lifestyle changes and drugs targeting those affected pathways, gene and "epigene" editing is the thing that will result in longer lifespans. But genetic and epigenetic editing targeting random accumulated mutations with age, not necessarily those at birth.
The phenomenon in the linked piece is important because it throws a monkey wrench into a lot of stuff. I'm skeptical of biological measures of aging because of the widespread idea that people can be biologically older or younger than chronological age. I think it's going to take some large population with good, verifiable, maintained records at birth, which will take some time to establish.
I suspect aside from lifestyle changes and drugs targeting those affected pathways, gene and "epigene" editing is the thing that will result in longer lifespans. But genetic and epigenetic editing targeting random accumulated mutations with age, not necessarily those at birth.
The phenomenon in the linked piece is important because it throws a monkey wrench into a lot of stuff. I'm skeptical of biological measures of aging because of the widespread idea that people can be biologically older or younger than chronological age. I think it's going to take some large population with good, verifiable, maintained records at birth, which will take some time to establish.
Any review papers or pop-sci writeups you like on potential approaches for in vivo epigene editing?
No researcher will actually make this argument though because they'll immediately be called a eugenicist.
Researchers don’t care about that. We’ve already got IVF with preimplantation genetic diagnosis. So far it’s mostly used for eliminating genetic disorders like fragile-X but there’s nothing stopping parents from trying to select for other attributes except having enough money to pay for it and finding the right doctor. Though realistically the most you can really do now is avoid genetic disorders and select the sex of the baby.
That ship has sailed.
That ship has sailed.
Lol, you're telling me. I literally worked with one of the pioneers of human germline gene modification with IVF. Oh, that sweet, sweet DARPA money. I miss that paycheck.
I can assure you he had (and still has) a small contingent of protesters at all of his speaking engagements and a number of conspiracy theorists online who think that he is literally the devil. Only academic types even really know that he exists, so these protests are from the research community. There's even univeristy-published research comparing him, by name, to the Nazis.
/s used to write quality control software for IVF labs.
I can assure you he had (and still has) a small contingent of protesters at all of his speaking engagements and a number of conspiracy theorists online who think that he is literally the devil. Only academic types even really know that he exists, so these protests are from the research community. There's even univeristy-published research comparing him, by name, to the Nazis.
/s used to write quality control software for IVF labs.
>Researchers don’t care about that
Haven't been around a lot on planet earth, have you? I can excuse you.
Haven't been around a lot on planet earth, have you? I can excuse you.
From a quick web search - "nature vs. nurture" seems to be safe for discussion, on traits far more sensitive than "could you live to 85, or to 105?".
Clearly a researcher has made that argument or GP wouldn't be talking about it.
Why?
It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing is not taking action.
[edit] about describing truth or evidences: we need that. Of course it all depends on how you present the truth, whether you are actually doing pseudoscience or not, whether you are manipulating concepts that are actually scientific or not, and whether you are conflating correlation with causation or not.
It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing is not taking action.
[edit] about describing truth or evidences: we need that. Of course it all depends on how you present the truth, whether you are actually doing pseudoscience or not, whether you are manipulating concepts that are actually scientific or not, and whether you are conflating correlation with causation or not.
Are you familiar with the controversy around a book titled "The Bell Curve"?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
The Bell Curve wasn't simply descriptive. It contained "policy implications based on these purported connections [between IQ and race]." It opened by saying that if you want to hire good employees, you should hire by IQ... and then connected IQ to race, implying that racial discrimination is justified. On examination, many of the sources were directly tied to white supremacist organizations.
The Bell Curve is a singularly poor example of a scientific description of the status quo attracting unfair attacks.
The Bell Curve is a singularly poor example of a scientific description of the status quo attracting unfair attacks.
No, but there's a title "Lack of peer review" in your link.
This doesn't look like science.
There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong definition anyway)
This doesn't look like science.
There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong definition anyway)
There are plenty of very real issues with Murray and The Bell Curve, but to say IQ is pseudoscience is a ridiculous claim.
> to say IQ is pseudoscience is a ridiculous claim
Is this claim really ridiculous? A quick search yields convincing results that hints at scientists questioning the concept:
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.h... "Scientists debunk the IQ myth: Notion of measuring one's intelligence quotient by singular, standardized test is highly misleading"
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-fund... "IQ tests are 'fundamentally flawed' and using them alone to measure intelligence is a 'fallacy', study finds"
There are many things wrong with how IQ is tested, and even how the whole notion was born.
(note that between my comment and yours, I had edited that sentence a bit, it's not worded as strongly now - this is because I don't doubt much that IQ was scientifically researched, so saying IQ is pseudoscience may indeed a bit far-fetched, but I still think the whole notion is quite broken)
Is this claim really ridiculous? A quick search yields convincing results that hints at scientists questioning the concept:
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.h... "Scientists debunk the IQ myth: Notion of measuring one's intelligence quotient by singular, standardized test is highly misleading"
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-fund... "IQ tests are 'fundamentally flawed' and using them alone to measure intelligence is a 'fallacy', study finds"
There are many things wrong with how IQ is tested, and even how the whole notion was born.
(note that between my comment and yours, I had edited that sentence a bit, it's not worded as strongly now - this is because I don't doubt much that IQ was scientifically researched, so saying IQ is pseudoscience may indeed a bit far-fetched, but I still think the whole notion is quite broken)
IQ tests are not and have never been intended to measure intelligence. They're intended to be a measure of potential.
The fact that those articles got it wrong from the basic definitions should indicate there is a problem with the interpretation. If you look at the actual first study link, for example, it doesn't debunk IQ but highlights logistical problems of pen & paper testing and sample size. What they then do is present an alternative measurement based on brain scans. They also do this intentionally to avoid controversial questions of heritability, race and gender that people associate with IQ measurement, as laid out by their introduction.
The fact that those articles got it wrong from the basic definitions should indicate there is a problem with the interpretation. If you look at the actual first study link, for example, it doesn't debunk IQ but highlights logistical problems of pen & paper testing and sample size. What they then do is present an alternative measurement based on brain scans. They also do this intentionally to avoid controversial questions of heritability, race and gender that people associate with IQ measurement, as laid out by their introduction.
I assume you are referring to:
> The results question the validity of controversial studies of intelligence based on IQ tests which have drawn links between intellectual ability race, gender and social class and led to highly contentious claims that some groups of people are inherently less intelligent that other groups.
I read this as "These studies measuring intelligence using IQ which have drawn links between intellectual ability, race, gender and social class are shit and we prove it".
This is at the opposite of what you are writing. It's not at all avoiding controversies. It's debunking, basically.
You are being downvoted and flagged elsewhere because you are wrong, not because one can't describe "controversial" truth.
> The results question the validity of controversial studies of intelligence based on IQ tests which have drawn links between intellectual ability race, gender and social class and led to highly contentious claims that some groups of people are inherently less intelligent that other groups.
I read this as "These studies measuring intelligence using IQ which have drawn links between intellectual ability, race, gender and social class are shit and we prove it".
This is at the opposite of what you are writing. It's not at all avoiding controversies. It's debunking, basically.
You are being downvoted and flagged elsewhere because you are wrong, not because one can't describe "controversial" truth.
> Is this claim really ridiculous?
Yes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
Yes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
Cosma Shalizi has a piece about how if you aggregate any similar set of tests, even if they're meaningless, even if you literally generate them at random, you will get a "g"; it's like pointing out that a nonsingular matrix has an inverse.
http://bactra.org/weblog/523.html
http://bactra.org/weblog/523.html
Interesting, but also irrelevant - because the sorts of tests in question certainly are meaningful; it's not obvious a priori that such a correlation should be expected between them; and the extracted correlate has demonstrable predictive power.
How should I use your link to reach this conclusion despite the tracks I gave?
(also note that "ridiculous" is quite strong and disrespectful)
(also note that "ridiculous" is quite strong and disrespectful)
You can't tell me you weren't convinced by the link to a wikipedia page. Not even to an argument on the wikipedia page, but just to the whole-ass wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn
:-)
I shall start sharing the whole domain to answer anything. With a bit of luck, something will address the discussed concern.
I shall start sharing the whole domain to answer anything. With a bit of luck, something will address the discussed concern.
The link demonstrates that there is a well-reproduced phenomenon in real science whereby, e.g., test scores in various academic subjects correlate positively with each other, and that this can be explained by a common psychometric factor that is reasonable to refer to as "intelligence". The IQ or "intelligence quotient" is an attempt to quantify that which is known to exist, and it's actually one of the best understood ideas in the science of the brain.
Additional viewing that largely covers my points below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM
You started off saying:
> There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong definition anyway)
The point is that we do, in fact, have all the necessary scientific research to argue that the concept of "intelligence" exists - i.e., that we can identify a single-factor quantity that can be fairly described with a single number - and that anything calling itself IQ is definitionally a measurement of that single quantity.
In particular: problem-solving capability is a real thing, and some people very obviously have more of it than others. Also, we notably don't have data to support more than one factor anywhere near as strong as Spearman's g. (That is to say: we see correlations between academic performance in all subjects - rather than strong positive correlations within certain groups but weak or negative correlations between those groups).
The fact that specific IQ tests might fail to actually measure intelligence, or might measure it inaccurately, is beside the point. The fact that an individual's capability to express intelligence might vary on a day-to-day basis, or for other immediate environmental reasons (stress, caffeine, ...) is also beside the point. Any correlation that any researcher might draw between measured IQ results and any other demographic measurement, mutable or immutable, is beside the point, too.
I have routinely seen people who attack the theory of intelligence engage in pseudoscience of their own, such as trying to invent strange alternate "intelligences" like "emotional intelligence" (apparently meaning some combination of empathy and social skills) and "physical intelligence" (apparently meaning some combination of dexterity and proprioception) so as to "debunk" the idea of intelligence being single-factor (which is not even what the theory of Spearman's g asserts; we're only saying that there is a roughly-measurable quantity that strongly positively correlates with academic success). This is, of course, utterly absurd, and further comes across as an attempt to dunk on "nerds" as "not as smart as they think they are" etc. It only makes sense if you redefine "intelligence" to mean something fundamentally incompatible with the accepted and well understood meaning.
And I, personally, have been called a racist elsewhere on the Internet before, simply for pointing these things out, when I had said nothing whatsoever about race. And I've seen it happen to others, too.
It's infuriating, and it's transparently political.
If I "disrespect" people by dismissing claims like "IQ is pseudoscience" out of hand, I will continue to do so, because I have all the evidence I need that the alternative would lead to far greater societal harm.
Additional viewing that largely covers my points below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM
You started off saying:
> There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong definition anyway)
The point is that we do, in fact, have all the necessary scientific research to argue that the concept of "intelligence" exists - i.e., that we can identify a single-factor quantity that can be fairly described with a single number - and that anything calling itself IQ is definitionally a measurement of that single quantity.
In particular: problem-solving capability is a real thing, and some people very obviously have more of it than others. Also, we notably don't have data to support more than one factor anywhere near as strong as Spearman's g. (That is to say: we see correlations between academic performance in all subjects - rather than strong positive correlations within certain groups but weak or negative correlations between those groups).
The fact that specific IQ tests might fail to actually measure intelligence, or might measure it inaccurately, is beside the point. The fact that an individual's capability to express intelligence might vary on a day-to-day basis, or for other immediate environmental reasons (stress, caffeine, ...) is also beside the point. Any correlation that any researcher might draw between measured IQ results and any other demographic measurement, mutable or immutable, is beside the point, too.
I have routinely seen people who attack the theory of intelligence engage in pseudoscience of their own, such as trying to invent strange alternate "intelligences" like "emotional intelligence" (apparently meaning some combination of empathy and social skills) and "physical intelligence" (apparently meaning some combination of dexterity and proprioception) so as to "debunk" the idea of intelligence being single-factor (which is not even what the theory of Spearman's g asserts; we're only saying that there is a roughly-measurable quantity that strongly positively correlates with academic success). This is, of course, utterly absurd, and further comes across as an attempt to dunk on "nerds" as "not as smart as they think they are" etc. It only makes sense if you redefine "intelligence" to mean something fundamentally incompatible with the accepted and well understood meaning.
And I, personally, have been called a racist elsewhere on the Internet before, simply for pointing these things out, when I had said nothing whatsoever about race. And I've seen it happen to others, too.
It's infuriating, and it's transparently political.
If I "disrespect" people by dismissing claims like "IQ is pseudoscience" out of hand, I will continue to do so, because I have all the evidence I need that the alternative would lead to far greater societal harm.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that the notion of intelligence doesn't exist. Although I'm not sure we really know to define it correctly.
Emotional intelligence seems pseudoscience. I haven't heard about physical intelligence but that seems dubious.
The "IQ is pseudoscience" claim is possibly a bit strong. Now, whether it is a good measure of intelligence is being questioned, and one of the reason is that it has cultural biases and is strongly biased towards academia. It comes from a measure that attempted to assess the mental age of someone (a bit dubious on its own), and you can also train for IQ tests, that alone is a bit suspicious for a good measure of intelligence.
Problem-solving is a real capability, but doesn't IQ mostly attempt to measure pattern recognition? And isn't problem-solving only a part of intelligence? It seems IQ is quite focused on specific aspects of intelligence, and might not even be measuring them very well.
(thanks for taking the time)
Emotional intelligence seems pseudoscience. I haven't heard about physical intelligence but that seems dubious.
The "IQ is pseudoscience" claim is possibly a bit strong. Now, whether it is a good measure of intelligence is being questioned, and one of the reason is that it has cultural biases and is strongly biased towards academia. It comes from a measure that attempted to assess the mental age of someone (a bit dubious on its own), and you can also train for IQ tests, that alone is a bit suspicious for a good measure of intelligence.
Problem-solving is a real capability, but doesn't IQ mostly attempt to measure pattern recognition? And isn't problem-solving only a part of intelligence? It seems IQ is quite focused on specific aspects of intelligence, and might not even be measuring them very well.
(thanks for taking the time)
> (thanks for taking the time)
You're quite welcome. The initial response was because of how weary I am of seeing similar arguments used disingenuously. It seems like you've put more thought than average behind your words.
> Now, whether [IQ] is a good measure of intelligence is being questioned, and one of the reason is that it has cultural biases and is strongly biased towards academia.
This is not a critique of "IQ", which is a name for "number that says how intelligent a person is". The only actual idea encoded in the concept "IQ" that persists to the modern day is "it makes logical sense to expect to be able to state such a number, and furthermore that a meaningful idea can be encapsulated by one such number". This isn't controversial among actual researchers in the field. Historically, there was also an idea that number could be conceptualized as a ratio (hence "intelligence quotient") of a purported "mental age" to a child's actual age (since initially there was only interest in assessing the intelligence of children). Of course, that breaks down for all sorts of reasons (notably, the fact that people don't continue improving at problem-solving throughout their lives - certainly not well into adulthood, and certainly not linearly) - but the concept was subsequently refined to address that (nowadays, the number is simply a measure of some raw capability which is normalized to fit a bell curve with mean=100 and SD=15 or so to the general population).
Cultural biases and biases towards academia are a potential issue with specific tests used to measure IQ. However, it isn't clear that the demands of those who seek to eliminate those supposed biases could actually ever be met in principle. It's also been reported that attempts to use less "biased" tests (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices) don't actually make whatever problematic disparities in observed results go away - in fact, they might widen.
Aside from which - if a culture demonstrably doesn't value the traits that we naturally associate with intelligence or expect people to demonstrate the associated skills as a part of daily life, why wouldn't it be correct to say that such a culture makes its adherents less intelligent? Why would it be "biased" to observe such a culture actually having such an entirely predictable effect on people?
> Problem-solving is a real capability, but doesn't IQ mostly attempt to measure pattern recognition? And isn't problem-solving only a part of intelligence?
There's some measure of streetlight effect here, sure; but problem-solving is a pretty darned big component of intelligence IMO. And if your objection to IQ tests is "people can study for the test and get a score that overstates their actual capabilities" then of course it's important to include some metric of problem-solving. (Another big component that you can't "study", but might be able to train over a long period of time, is working memory. For example, one classic IQ test component has the subject listen to a sequence of base-ten digits, then attempt to recite them in reverse order. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_span#Digit-span .)
Modern tests such as WAIS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Sc...) are kept updated, and include a battery of evaluations on a variety of strongly g-loaded tasks. And yes, they do admit the notion that correlations between these tasks are not perfect - but they have also settled on a consensus that a single number can reasonably encompass the results in general.
You're quite welcome. The initial response was because of how weary I am of seeing similar arguments used disingenuously. It seems like you've put more thought than average behind your words.
> Now, whether [IQ] is a good measure of intelligence is being questioned, and one of the reason is that it has cultural biases and is strongly biased towards academia.
This is not a critique of "IQ", which is a name for "number that says how intelligent a person is". The only actual idea encoded in the concept "IQ" that persists to the modern day is "it makes logical sense to expect to be able to state such a number, and furthermore that a meaningful idea can be encapsulated by one such number". This isn't controversial among actual researchers in the field. Historically, there was also an idea that number could be conceptualized as a ratio (hence "intelligence quotient") of a purported "mental age" to a child's actual age (since initially there was only interest in assessing the intelligence of children). Of course, that breaks down for all sorts of reasons (notably, the fact that people don't continue improving at problem-solving throughout their lives - certainly not well into adulthood, and certainly not linearly) - but the concept was subsequently refined to address that (nowadays, the number is simply a measure of some raw capability which is normalized to fit a bell curve with mean=100 and SD=15 or so to the general population).
Cultural biases and biases towards academia are a potential issue with specific tests used to measure IQ. However, it isn't clear that the demands of those who seek to eliminate those supposed biases could actually ever be met in principle. It's also been reported that attempts to use less "biased" tests (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices) don't actually make whatever problematic disparities in observed results go away - in fact, they might widen.
Aside from which - if a culture demonstrably doesn't value the traits that we naturally associate with intelligence or expect people to demonstrate the associated skills as a part of daily life, why wouldn't it be correct to say that such a culture makes its adherents less intelligent? Why would it be "biased" to observe such a culture actually having such an entirely predictable effect on people?
> Problem-solving is a real capability, but doesn't IQ mostly attempt to measure pattern recognition? And isn't problem-solving only a part of intelligence?
There's some measure of streetlight effect here, sure; but problem-solving is a pretty darned big component of intelligence IMO. And if your objection to IQ tests is "people can study for the test and get a score that overstates their actual capabilities" then of course it's important to include some metric of problem-solving. (Another big component that you can't "study", but might be able to train over a long period of time, is working memory. For example, one classic IQ test component has the subject listen to a sequence of base-ten digits, then attempt to recite them in reverse order. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_span#Digit-span .)
Modern tests such as WAIS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Sc...) are kept updated, and include a battery of evaluations on a variety of strongly g-loaded tasks. And yes, they do admit the notion that correlations between these tasks are not perfect - but they have also settled on a consensus that a single number can reasonably encompass the results in general.
> No, but there's a title "Lack of peer review" in your link.
You are moving the goalposts.
Earlier you said:
> It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing is not taking action.
The example I provided shows how describing alone is enough to be accused of being an eugenicist. Rightly or wrongly, doesn't matter.
You are moving the goalposts.
Earlier you said:
> It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing is not taking action.
The example I provided shows how describing alone is enough to be accused of being an eugenicist. Rightly or wrongly, doesn't matter.
Fine, something not peer reviewed, crippled with fallacies posing as scientific material which describes falsehoods gets heavily criticized. This looks good to me. There are ways to reap storm by describing something false and by not doing one's homework, yes, I'm willing to believe this. Note that I was speaking about describing truth (implicit in the first paragraph, explicit in the second).
I'm not willing to engage further, our last argument two weeks ago [1] didn't end well and history seems to repeat itself. This won't lead to an interesting discussion.
edit: like last time, you could have stated your point instead of asking a loaded question and make me do your homework.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41338751#41356028
I'm not willing to engage further, our last argument two weeks ago [1] didn't end well and history seems to repeat itself. This won't lead to an interesting discussion.
edit: like last time, you could have stated your point instead of asking a loaded question and make me do your homework.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41338751#41356028
[deleted]
<sigh/> Once again, Big Science proves itself near-impotent against the Rule of Cool and the Want to Believe.
It would be so cool and wonderful to believe that this researcher's current employer (University College London's Social Research Institute, Centre for Longitudinal Studies) was a bastion of truth and honesty in scientific research...
Anybody know what the reality is?
It would be so cool and wonderful to believe that this researcher's current employer (University College London's Social Research Institute, Centre for Longitudinal Studies) was a bastion of truth and honesty in scientific research...
Anybody know what the reality is?
Also grandpa has 7 siblings, with his older sister already being 100. Interestingly their own parents didn't live nearly that long.
My paternal grandmother on the other hand died one week before turning 97 and only after that it was revealed that she actually lied about her age, claiming to be six years younger, so as to not cause a scandal when my grandparents announced their marriage.
The common theme among them is that they are/were all active working manually and would neither drink nor smoke, but that's no revelation.